Ice Queen (8 page)

47

Joey W. Hill

There will be ten new playrooms here instead of thirty. We’ve made them larger for more expansive role-playing, bigger groups or small parties. Special effects technology will give it even more options.”

“I suppose that’s where your contacts in the movie industry made you a very desirable partner.”

“One of the many reasons I’m a very desirable partner,” he agreed, giving her a wink, an astonishing bit of flirtation that did in fact amuse her. “Here it is.” Unlocking one of the doors, he gestured her in, snapping on the lights.

The floor of the large room was still plywood, the walls only primed. A great deal of electrical work was going on, equipment hanging from the ceiling. Tyler stepped over and into a frame built of two-by-fours that looked like it was intended to be sheet-rocked into a hidden control room.

“I thought you said it’s almost finished.”

“It is. The hard part. Programming the lights, the sound.” He gestured to the speakers. “With this kind of setup, you want to get everything right before you rough in the floor, walls, et cetera, because when we’re done almost none of this will show.

There’ll be access panels for repairs but those will be well concealed. Would you stand in the center of the room for me, in that circle marked with orange tape?” Boys and their toys, she concluded. He was intent on what he was doing, his fascination with the control panel obvious. She wanted to brush the soft strands of hair over his forehead, see if he would smile distractedly at her. Instead, she went to the circle. She froze as the room went completely dark.

“Tyler—”

“Hold on.”

Spotlights came on from various positions on the ceiling, strobing smoothly over the room. She jumped as the light revealed a man and woman whirling past her in a tight turn. She spun at another motion behind her and let out a startled yelp as this pair of dancers passed right through her, molecules of light and color. Like the other couple, they were doing a graceful ballroom dance across the room, the woman’s skirt flowing out from her like the glittering sweep of a peacock’s fantail.

When he pressed another series of buttons, the dancers changed. Now she found herself on the stage of
Swan Lake
. Prince Siegfried knelt before her, his holographic face lifted to her with a surreal sad expression as if he was looking at his precious Odette.

The music came in then, the strains of the classical piece. The prince gracefully leaped from her, his muscular body perfect, movements of effortless grace among the froth of lace-clad ballerinas. The music drifted off, the images fading.

As she looked over at Tyler, he gave her a smile, though she noted there were shadows in his amber eyes as he watched the ballerinas fade to ghostlike images before disappearing entirely. But his fingers were moving. Now the speakers offered her a primitive, tribal piece. He made more adjustments to the lighting and the room was full of shadows like flickering firelight. Overhead a wash of stars were flung against the 48

Ice Queen

night sky, surrounding a heavy yellow moon. She was by a large fire surrounded by African women wearing colorful scarves wrapped tightly about ample hips, their upper bodies bare, jewels glittering on their arms and necks. Medallions struck against their breasts as they stomped and circled, slowed, sped up, dancing for the gods above to answer their prayers.

Or perhaps they were simply moving the way the music told them to move. The heavy beat resonated inside her most vital organs, making her want to join them, to let go of thought and simply move, open her body to the night. The women turned outward, moving forward, their thighs spreading out, hands reaching up to cup their full breasts. The whites of their eyes, the dark irises, glowed with firelight.

It was marvelous. She saw where Tyler was planning to take it. Even now, unfinished, the detail shone through. She noted he was studying something about the bonfire, making some adjustments. If he found something wrong, she suspected he’d be driving the special effects team insane tomorrow, because he would demand that it be perfect.

The program changed. She was in a club, Latino couples moving in silent, erotic dances with lots of close, undulating movements. The men stripped down to their jeans, the women in slit skirts and silken tops, club wear meant to titillate, their hair brushing their partners as they moved together almost as one body, feeling the music.

There were storyboards leaning against the wall which showed the design of gleaming hardwood that would be the floor, the chandeliers done in an art deco platinum that would hide further projection equipment, the walls in simple white, for they would be further areas to project the décor desired for each programmed scene.

As if reading her thoughts, a silhouette of figures appeared on the white expanse of the wall before her, spotlighted over the dancers’ heads. The shadow of a woman, a man kneeling before her, his arms obviously bound behind his back. The woman adjusted cloth at her elbow, revealing that she wore elbow-length gloves. As she put her hands on his chest, she pushed him back slowly, moving him up to his heels so the impressive shaft of his erection was visible, jutting up from the black column of his thighs. Keeping one hand at his throat, collaring him to stillness, she reached down and gripped it. His head fell back to his shoulders in shuddering reaction.

The woman straightened, her lips moving in another command that could not be heard, that did not need to be heard. Her submissive came forward on his knees again, started to lean forward. Stepping around and behind him with one, two long-legged, sauntering strides, she drew attention to the jut of her breasts, the curve of her hip, somehow all the more prominent because only the dark outline of her could be seen.

Gripping his wrists, likely where the bindings joined, avoiding direct contact with his fingers, she put her hand to the small of his back and pushed him down. An apparent rough move but with her hands on the bindings it was a controlled descent. She braced her weight and made sure his face went safely, slowly to the floor, leaving his haunches high in the air. It was a poignant scene, her total control underscored by her careful protection of him.

49

Joey W. Hill

When she prodded him with a spike heel, he automatically lifted his buttocks even higher. She stood back, arms crossed under those proud breasts. Marguerite could tell she held a slender switch in her right hand.

Tilting her head, she visualized the moment in detail. “This is me. With Marius, last fall.”

“You’ve a good memory.” Tyler moved through the flickering world of the dancers, coming to her side. He considered the images above them. “We pulled quite a few remarkable pieces like this from the security tapes. All transformed to silhouette work of course, though later we might ask the permission of the participants to portray them in full detail, within the walls of The Zone only, of course.”

“But you didn’t feel you needed permission for this.”

“No. You’re perfect for this medium. Elegant, statuesque, your every movement precisely choreographed. You were the first person we thought of when we came up with the idea, which is why I’d like to know what you think of it. I don’t know of a tougher customer at The Zone than you.” He raised her hand to his lips, pressed her knuckles to his mouth. From the look in his eyes she thought he was suppressing the urge to nip. Perhaps to keep the wariness she was feeling from evolving into full-blown retreat.

“It’s all…fantastic.” She gave him honesty because she didn’t see any reason to dissemble. This was not about the two of them. “Literally and in the complimentary sense. Your detail…” She looked toward the dancers, was amazed to see the occasional gleam of skin that suggested perspiration, pulled off by some miracle of light and shadow. “You’ll have people lining up to use this room.”

“I hope so, because the capital cost is steep. We brought in guys who do work on movies that pull in millions but I think it will be worth the experience. We’re going to try and offer five different playing scenes and add five more every year, make them even more interactive.”

“The cost doesn’t matter to you.” She shook her head. “You’ve got more money than Kuwait. What matters to you is how people react to it. Will it have a glass ceiling?

Will they be able to see the images up there?”

“Some of the rooms will have the glass ceiling. Some of them will just have cameras to project onto the large screens upstairs, because of the wiring we need to run through the ceiling. But in either case they won’t see the holographic images. Just the suggestion of lights and shadows.”

“Good. That’s the way it should be. The focus remains on the actual people in the room. Seeing their movements without the images will be intriguing. Absorbing.” She pulled her hand from his grasp and backed to the center again, closing her eyes briefly as a couple, the woman in a colorful red strapless dress with flared skirt and her partner in jeans and a black T-shirt, rumbaed across her, the flickering light making a canvas on her white outfit, her pale skin.

50

Ice Queen

“You should do an exhibitionism scenario, for couples that don’t want to do it for real, or for a Master or Mistress trying to break a sub into it gradually. You could have a tight circle of people watching. Do a soundtrack of whispers.” She stood next to one man taking a break, hands on hips, deep breaths expanding his bare chest, his pants snug enough that the bulge of his genitalia was impressively noticeable. His shaved head gleamed, dark eyes vivid in the flickering light as he watched his partner nearby bending over in a tiny miniskirt to adjust her shoe, her dark hair falling forward to cover her face. Though he was somewhat transparent, Marguerite put out her hand to touch, trace air, imagining what that gleam of muscle might feel like. Then she turned on her toe, stepping into his body, facing the imaginary circle of faces, visualizing a sub in the center.

“The sub could be stripped naked while ‘they’ all watch. The score is a jumble of whispers mixed up with a jazz piece… Murmurs, suggestions and you could change the background tape to the Dom’s specifications. ‘Make her play with her pussy…’ ‘Look what beautiful nipples she has’, ‘I want to fuck him next…’ Adding to what the Master or Mistress is saying.”

Tyler nodded, his eyes moving over the open expanse of floor, seeing what she was seeing. Imagining it the way she was imagining it. “Maybe you could help me plot out a script, be part of the production process.”

“Maybe.”

He smiled. She found herself needing to swallow, feeling the press of those firm lips on her hand again.

He moved back to the control room area, in its wooden open frame that would one day be hidden behind finished walls. She found she might like it better like this, where she could see what lay behind the magic. Seeing all the genius and sweat that had gone into it made it a far greater magic, more valued than the ability to wave a hand and make it happen without conscious effort or commitment.

When he looked up at her, her gaze drifted to the line of his shoulders, the strong line of his throat, the way his shirt stretched over his chest as he moved his hands over the controls. The smooth slope of his waist where his trousers were neatly belted, the lean curve of his hips beneath the cloth as he shifted his weight to one hip. She wondered what Tyler would look like in jeans, the snug fit at the crotch. She rarely watched him perform at The Zone. For one thing, he rarely opened the ceiling screen, preferring privacy. His skills were relayed by the subs who experienced them. Nothing about Tyler suggested they were exaggerations.

But none of that explained why he made her breath quicken when he looked at her.

Or why, after all the men she’d Dominated, her confusing sexual and emotional images about Tyler were
never
about Dominating him. Instead they lingered over touching his skin, getting close enough to inhale his scent at her leisure and feeling his arms around her. Simple, romantic images. Other more darkly sensual images sometimes beckoned to her from the shadows of her subconscious but she refused to go there.

51

Joey W. Hill

She had a
crush
on Tyler Winterman, that was all. A two-year obsession that she’d been able to keep under control by keeping her distance. A crush.

He’d stopped the club dance music. A low note pierced the quiet of the room, stilling her thoughts with its clear, beautiful pitch. As it built in strength, it blended into a melody of female voices, all crooning the same note. Then one broke away, began a soft blues song of longing, of lonely need. Bass kicked in, thumping through the room like the heartbeats of all the souls of shadow and light slowly undulating around her, moving to the rhythm in sinuous motion against one another. She saw hands move down low on hips, grip, rock together, breasts pressed tight against male muscle. The woman who had sung that first long note came back in, a strong R&B talent that gave romance to the primal sound. Every beat of it, every stroke, seemed to be urging lovers to take that step toward movement, toward each other.

Up on the opposite wall, the silhouette of a different woman lay on her back and a man lowered himself onto her, penetrating her as she arched up. Slowly he began to rock his hips in and out, in and out, taking her up.

Tyler was behind her, his breath on her neck. So close the curves of her buttocks brushed the front of his trousers, the tops of his thighs. His hand came up under hers so it was raised into the air, curved over the top of his. Flexing his fingers so they came through the spaces of hers, he crossed them so they were over the top of her knuckles.

He brought their now laced hands in to fold them across her body, low on her waist.

With his other hand he gripped her opposite wrist but didn’t lift it. Her arm was sandwiched between her thigh and his arm, both arms in a straight line pointed toward the floor. He closed the gap between them so his body was pressed completely against hers, chest to her shoulder blades, waist to the small of her back, his hips against hers.