Ice Queen (11 page)

“I have two house staff,” he explained. “Sarah is our cook and does the cleaning.

Robert, her husband, does maintenance and repairs. He’s also the best organic gardener in Florida.” He guided her toward the water’s edge. “He keeps the grass back just far enough. That’s why there’s the mulched area with the oaks to serve as a wind break. At least that’s what he tells me to justify why it’s so green. I personally think he met the devil at the crossroads. He insists he just has a knack for knowing how to work with nature. So, was I right about the grass?”

“It’s very soft.”

“Robert proves his reputation by keeping it this way practically year-round. We host Shakespeare in the Park here for the community theater in the spring and have even been known to show old movies on a wide screen and serve ice cream in the summer.” His eyes glinted. “In the fall, I have a three-day D/s carnival I’m sure you’ve heard about. It’s an invitation-only fundraiser, a thousand dollars per Master or Mistress and their chosen sub. We donate the money to the Tampa domestic violence shelter.”

“Anonymously, of course.”

“Of course. I just send it in as a donation from one of my trusts, since people won’t accept money from a bunch of sexual deviants.” She noted that he sounded amused, not offended. “Maybe you’ll come to the one this fall. You could always come as my slave.”

“Or you could come as mine,” she retorted.

“I already am, Marguerite.” He lifted her hand to his lips again, flustering her with that old-fashioned gesture he did so well. Even the words should sound silly, contrived, but he had an ability to make real what another man could not. “Don’t you understand, when all is said and done, it’s the Master who’s the captive?”

“No.” She drew her hand back. “I don’t understand that.”

“Maybe you will by the end of the weekend. It would be an honor to know I’ve taught you something about being a Mistress that you didn’t already know.” 63

Joey W. Hill

“Who are
you
, Tyler? You keep pounding at my boundaries but I don’t know anything about you.”

“Hmm.” He sat on a long bench, drawing her down next to him. “Lately I’m an amateur gardener and a bit of a handyman. When I moved here, I paid to have this house restored. Money makes a lot of things easier, but I wasn’t as involved hands-on as I really wanted to be. That’s one of the reasons I eventually chose to ease back on the writing and film production, take more time to be part of those details. Something else money allows you to do.”

But she was sharp enough to catch a darkness in his eyes. That wasn’t the only reason he’d taken the time off, she suspected. Not the most important one.

“Look over there. A heron, like the one in your picture.” Marguerite turned her head, watched the long-legged, graceful white bird step through the shallows, looking for dinner.

“He’s like you. Perfect in his isolation. Everything goes in slow motion around you, Marguerite. You steal time when people look at you.” She’d intended to retort to the comment about isolation, but with the compliment the response died on her lips. Turning, he laid his head down in her lap, stretching out his long body along the length of the bench. One knee crooked up against the back, the other foot resting on the ground. When he looked up at her, the weight of his skull pressed into her thighs. His hair whispered against the fabric of her blouse, so tempting she had to curl her fingers into a tight ball to keep from touching it.

“I think you know everything about me, Marguerite. That’s your special gift. From whatever plane you view the world, you see right straight to the heart. I don’t believe in games, so I’ll say I know that I attract you. I thank God for the gift and hope to keep earning it, because I know you attract me like the proverbial moth.”

“Then it’s probably not very professional for me to use you as my mentor.” He chuckled. “Nice try. You contacted me, remember? And there’s nothing that says the mentoring can’t be done by people with personal relationships. This is The Zone, not a corporate work policy.”

“I think you’ve just come up with a charming way to avoid questions about yourself.”

“Maybe I’m afraid if you know the sordid details of my life, you’ll like me less.”

“Than I do now? I hardly see how that’s possible.” She sniffed.

“Petulance looks very sexy on you. Don’t get me stirred up.” At his lazy grin, she shoved at his head and shoulder.

In a movement that was so fluid it did not seem hurried, he brought his hand up and captured both of her wrists. In the same smooth motion he reversed their positions, laying her head into his lap and putting her shoulders against his denim-covered thigh.

His arm settled with deceptive casualness over her waist, anchoring her in the vulnerable horizontal position.

64

Ice Queen

“Tyler, stop this. We need to get started.” Where any intimacy that happened could be explained as part of her training. Not a spontaneous, accidental pleasure experienced in his company as she was feeling now, with butterflies feathering around in her lower belly.

He stretched his other arm along the back of the bench and cocked his head, looking down at her with those intense eyes that seemed to convey two messages.

There was the surface gentle teasing light, and the darker shades. A man’s desire coming through, stirred by her presence and making no attempt to mask it.

“If you could ask me one question about myself, what would it be?” She didn’t want to know more. She’d just been being defensive and he knew it. She sat silently, stubbornly. Watched his smile die away. But she studied the clouds over his shoulder and wouldn’t watch the reaction grow in his eyes further.

“Look at me. Unless you’re afraid to.”

Of course that was an easy ploy to recognize, but she stepped right into it. The expression in his eyes was not what she expected. Not frustrated or angry, not hurt or rejected. Deep, focused, centered on her face. She reflected he was already figuring out things she didn’t want him to know with that intelligent mind of his.

“How far will you run, Marguerite, before you realize you’re not running away from me? You’re running to me.”

He put his hands beneath her legs and back and lifted her onto her feet as he rose before she could think of a response to that outrageous statement. “It’s time to go up to the house. Sarah and Robert will be here periodically through the weekend. Out of respect for them, I typically hire off-hours Zone staff for cooking and assistance when I have larger D/s parties. But they’ve started helping me with smaller groups or when I’m alone with a sub, or when I need certain areas or settings prepared. When I anticipate needing them through a weekend they stay in one of my guesthouses. While I’ve no indication of their own sexual preferences they understand mine, so you need feel no concern around them this weekend.”

She struggled to reorient herself as he shifted gears on her, physically urging her toward the house and that very significant threshold with a firm hand on her lower back. They paused briefly only to retrieve their shoes and slip them back on.

“Do you remember all the items on the requirements list?” Commands, total submission, restraints, flogging and punishment, exhibitionism…submitting before another Dom… She nodded, a quick motion, her stomach constricting in a twist of nerves.

He took her to the front of the house, up the steps. As he opened the door, he looked down at her, unsmiling, his mouth a little stern now. She wished he could be one of the many men who was shorter than her when she wore heels, though of course she’d maximized the difference in their heights with her insolent desire to wear the gender-neutral deck shoes.

65

Joey W. Hill

Why couldn’t he reassure her, say something that acknowledged she was just playing at this role? Why did he have to treat her like she actually was a sub?

Because that was the point of the training. She knew that. It didn’t work if it didn’t feel real and Tyler had integrity. He wouldn’t let her just skim through the basics. She’d talked to Lisbeth about her session. The woman had seemed so calm about it, like she’d been able to maintain some sense of…not detachment, but had actually enjoyed the experience of understanding what her subs felt. All Marguerite felt was a frightening sense of going down a dark tunnel where she wasn’t sure what would grab her. What might reach for her in the dark, a hand covering her mouth…

“Hey.” Tyler’s voice, like the warming heat of a summer sun, reached through the cold and found her. His hands were on her face again, his eyes close. Those beautiful brown and gold eyes. The tiger.
Taigaa
, in Japanese, though the word that came to mind was
mouko
. Fierce tiger. Afraid of nothing. Willing to do anything to keep her feeling safe forever.

“You can do this, Marguerite. Slow, easy steps. Let me hear that beautiful voice of yours.”

“I’m okay. I’m fine.”

She was trembling under his touch. Tyler took a firmer grip on her cold hands, drew her over the threshold, stopped. Rubbed his hands along her upper arms. “See?

Small steps. Just take it one thing at a time and you’ll be fine. Angel, I’m not going to hurt you. You know that, right? Can you nod for me? Breathe a little?” Tender humor mixed with the concern in his face could undo her. And give her reassurance. She was rather amazed at the combination. When she managed a nod, he put an arm around her waist, guiding her forward.

To her left was a sunken living room with a widescreen television, a white sectional sofa and a black glass center table. An alabaster statue of Isis rested on the table next to a small water bowl with floating fresh gardenias. Over the fireplace was an oill painting, a tall ship of the line plowing through a stormy sea. As he took her through the house, she noted that every room on the first level seemed to have windows and more windows affording the inhabitants panoramic views of the Gulf. There was absolute privacy here. The last neighbor she’d passed had been a few miles away, so it was easy to imagine him walking into his kitchen in his underwear to get his morning coffee, his eyes sleepy, a shadow on his jawline. All those wonderful muscles on display that she had felt under his clothes when she was pressed up against him.

She hadn’t expected to feel desire rush in so suddenly on top of fear but inside his house, his touch and the sense of sanctuary that the comfort of his home suggested allowed it to happen. She’d have preferred the fear of her training to this—fearing the emotions he evoked, how he made her think these intimate things about him. The sky was now a violet blaze, night settling in. He had the gas logs going at a low setting in a cozy sitting room. He paused in there a moment, stopping her in front of its warmth.

“Sarah will have us a small meal in about an hour. You probably haven’t eaten yet.” 66

Ice Queen

She shook her head. “I’m not really hungry.”

“You’ll eat, because I’m going to be requiring a lot of you.” His voice was the erotic touch of warm oill on bare skin. “And it’s my job to care for you. As much as it is for you to follow my direction for your benefit.”

Get a grip, Marguerite. They’re just words. Words have no power to change who you are.

It was just the way the game was played. That’s all it meant, though the focused way he watched her very movement, heard every word she spoke, made her stomach do a funny dip. Was this the way it was for subs? Every reaction of approval or disapproval from the Master ratcheting up the tension as well as the arousal another notch? And was it this easy to slip into the way a sub might feel? He hadn’t even demanded she address him formally as Master but she’d felt the new relationship settle onto her shoulders like a staggering weight the moment she’d crossed the threshold.

She’d always been a Mistress. It never occurred to her that the states of mind could be so easily tried on.

The foyer was a hallway that extended the length of the house. When he took her up a staircase to the second floor and turned her onto a catwalk that connected the two sides of the second level, she could look at the view of the Gulf out of the two-story-high window that framed the rear entry and rose high above it in an arc, a wall of glass.

The water moved calmly under the rose sky which was beginning to be jeweled with early faint stars that would grow more ornate as the night deepened.

“This is an amazing home,” she said out of politeness, sincerity and an awkward inability to come up with anything to say. He glanced down at her, reminding her again of their height difference before he tugged her to sit down with him on the catwalk. The slats of the railings were wide enough that he could slide his legs through them. When he directed her to do the same, they sat like two children, their feet dangling over the open space below. He put her hand on his thigh, his own hand curled over it.

“Here’s one of my rules, Marguerite. You speak only when I ask you a question or if you want to say something, in which case you ask my permission to speak first.” His thumb moved over her knuckles one at a time, tracing the bumps of bone, the veins running across them. “Do you understand why I would have that rule?”

“Because you’re an egotistical male who doesn’t want any competition with the sound of his own voice?”

He tightened his grip. “Marguerite, focus. Quit building up your defenses and think.”

The admonition stung, mainly because he’d seen so easily through her tartness, more easily than she had. Closing her mouth, she tried to think beyond his touch. He’d turned her hand over now and was running his fingers over her palm, down toward her wrist. She wanted to pull away, to make him stop doing things that were creating taut arousal in her lower abdomen. She could handle this. She could. Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to her sternum just below the pocket of her collarbone, inside the vee of the blouse. Her breath expelled sharply from her, her nipples instantly 67

Joey W. Hill

reacting. Her thighs wanted to press together, to contain the response between them, but of course her legs were between the slats and could not close. Her chin brushed his hair. Looking at his other hand braced on the railing just in front of her, she could imagine how easy it would be for him to let go of the railing and cup her between the legs of the slacks.