Red Hot Obsessions (170 page)

Rae picked out a diaphanous harem girl outfit that hung like a cloud on a hanger. The chiffon clung to her rough knuckles like cobwebs. “You guys wear this?”

Georgie glanced over to see what Rae was holding. “Sometimes for special requests. We usually wear the formals, which are racked by size.”

Lizzy stood by the far end of the racks, sorting through sparkly sheaths. “I’m down here in shorty land. The eights are at the other end.”

Rae’s face flushed hot, and she felt like Lizzy and Georgie’s pet elephant. “I don’t know about this.”

“We’re party girls,” Lizzy said. “We hostess wild, crazy parties, and get paid wild, crazy money to do it.”

Rae asked, “Did that party the other night turn into an orgy after we left?”

The girls laughed. “No.”

“But that couple was screwing by the dance floor.”

Lizzy said, “That was just advertising.”

“So,” and Rae almost slipped here and said
Wulf
but she stopped herself, “so
The Dom
was showing off his wares?”

“So crude,” Georgie said lightly. “Besides, our client lists are full. More likely that he was scoping out new clientele to see if they should be invited to one of the private parties at the club, and from there, admitted to membership, and after that, offered a spot on an associate’s private roster. There are a few members who are irregular clients, mostly special requests, but they’re all very heavily screened.”

Lizzy added, “Yep. The Dom is very careful about the people he lets in.”

Rae asked, “Is he going to let in those two who were fucking against the wall at the party?”

Georgie laughed. “That was Lena and Frank. They’re associates.”

“So they were the
entertainment?”

“No, not at all,” Georgie said. “They volunteered, and The Dom was watching people’s reactions to them. Fucking out in the open was a bit inappropriate, and he wanted to see who would follow suit, who would watch, who would be shocked, and who would mind their own business.”

“He arranged that? Just to watch people’s reactions?”

“Like I said, they volunteered,” Georgie said. “Even with all the cameras around here, which are for our protection as much as theirs, The Dom vets the clients heavily. The Devilhouse’s admission rate is lower than that for the Sonoran Country Club, and our annual dues are higher. He investigates everyone who works here, too. I’ll bet he has a private investigator asking your family all kinds of questions right now.”

“What!”
Rae jumped back. Fearful blood raced to her head. “He can’t tell my family. Tell me he won’t tell my family about this!”

Rae’s scolding, preaching cousin-roommate Hester had moved up to the city to go to college when Rae did, which made Hester one of the more liberal members of Rae’s family. The rest of her family would really freak out if they found out
anything
about The Devilhouse. It might kill her Aunt Enid, who was frail at best these days.

“Don’t worry. The guy won’t blab,” Lizzy said. “When he talked to my family, he told them he was a reporter or something. People will tell the press anything.”

Rae like her head was floating in that huge warehouse room, and her knees wobbled. She sat down on the cement floor. The rough whorls in the cement caught on the skirt of her sundress and chilled her thighs.

Georgie appeared beside her. “You okay?”

“No,” Rae said. Her family might be disapproving and judgmental and proud to be fundamentalist rednecks, but they were the only family Rae had. Rae wouldn’t trade her family for an education. That price was too high.

Evidently, however, Rae would sell her body to get an education. Did she value herself so little?

This was all so confusing.

Georgie leaned down and asked, “You didn’t get rufied again, did you?”

“Nope. Once a week is enough.”

From across the room, Lizzy asked, “What time is your interview with The Dom?”

Oh, yes. She had a date.

Not a date. A training session.

A get-beaten-up-and-like-it session.

It all so dang confusing.

“One o’clock,” Rae said.

“It’s nearly one o’clock now. You’d better suck it up and get a move on. The Dom
hates
it when people are late.”

His punctuality must be because he’s Swiss, and Rae had almost said that out loud, holy cow.

Lizzy and Georgie didn’t know why he had a little bit of an accent. Lizzy and Georgie didn’t know even his real name, which he had told Rae was Wulfram blah-blah-blah van Hanover. Rae considered herself a solid friend who didn’t narc, but keeping secrets for such a secretive guy seemed beyond what a . . .
something
. . . should ask.

Something.
What was Wulf to her?

He might become Rae’s boss, if she didn’t blow her chance by being late to today’s interview.

“I’d better go,” she said.

~~~~~

A Personal Favor

She trotted up to Wulf’s office with her phone in her hand glowing
12:59
and knocked on the open door.

Wulf looked up from his laptop on his glass desk and smiled at her. Desert sunlight streaming in the windows shimmered on his golden hair and caught the sharp planes of his face. She wanted his strong hands on her ass again so much that it took her breath away, and she recoiled from that terrible thought. What kind of a person only thought about another human being for sex? Shame flamed her face, which probably looked like a sex blush, which was even worse.

Wulf shut the top of his computer, revealing that he was wearing a black suit and a silver tie. The monochromatic colors looked a little more diabolical than yesterday when he had worn navy blue, but his hair shone more gold, and his eyes sparkled darker blue. Sitting relaxed, leaning back behind that huge glass and steel desk, he looked like he owned the world.

“Right on time,” he said, and his deep voice sent shivers down her back where he had kissed her spine. “We should speak first. Close the door.”

Rae closed the door and leaned on it because her knees were trembling.

“I have a bit of a problem,” Wulf said.

“Okay.” Rae steeled herself. He might tell her that he had changed his mind after her domination fiasco yesterday and that she couldn’t work for him, so she was out of a job and college and luck.

He might tell her that he was handing off her training to someone else because he wasn’t attracted to her any more. Her heart sank in her chest.

It might be that his investigator had found her family and they had proselytized at him, so she was obviously too screwed up to work at his high-class BDSM brothel. Yeah, she could see that.

The smallest part of her mind, the silly, girlie part that read romance novels when she should have been studying statistics, conjured up a scenario where Wulf dropped to his knees and told her that he loved her. That stirring in her heart scared her more than the other possibilities.

He was the sex god of the Devilhouse. He was a shiny, mirrored, empty shell. He wasn’t someone to fall for.

Wulf said, “One of my Dommes, Sonya, has called in sick. Her client is arriving shortly, and he’s not difficult as a submissive but he’s hell on my admins. I know that I said that you were not ready to work a scene yet, but no other Dommes are available.” Wulf sighed. “We could rehearse a scene during your training, and I will watch in case it takes a wrong turn. If it does, I’ll be there sooner than last time.”

This was Rae’s chance to secure the job so she jumped at it, even though she tried not to be disappointed that Wulf didn’t say anything else. “Sure, Coach,” Rae quipped. “Put me in the game.”

He looked her up and down.

Today, Rae had worn a blue sundress instead of her black interview suit, which was her only suit, and she did not feel like a Domme in this girlie dress. Indeed, she had kind of thought that Wulf might tie her up again, so she wore a flouncy skirt just for him, not that she wanted him to do such a thing.

Wulf said, “Let’s see what we have in the costume closet for you.”

“Um, can we talk a minute?”

“Of course.” He leaned at her, resting his elbows on his desk. His muscled arms bunched his suit at the elbows.

“Again, this was very nice of you, but you don’t have to do this.” She walked through his office, past the staged bookshelves, and laid the teal Tiffany box on his glass-topped desk.

Wulf cocked one eyebrow. “I shall have to find something that suits you.”

“You don’t need to give me presents at all.”

Wulf blinked, and his lowered eyebrow dropped farther still. “I don’t know how to interpret that, Reagan. Come, let’s peruse the costume closet.”

He led her through the Devilhouse and, via a back hallway, to the wardrobe area. Lizzy and Georgie were gone, the gowns and costumes were hung straight and orderly, and the room echoed when her heels clicked on the floor. Rae followed Wulf past the glamorous, sparkling gowns to the far back corner, where the leather things hung.

“You’ll need something like this,” he said and haphazardly flipped his hand at the rack. “Pick something out.” He leaned against a wall and flicked through something on his phone.

Rae finger-walked through the fetish wear. Ties bound up all of the leather garments, and everything was silver-studded or looked like medieval armor. “Um, Wulf?”

He glanced at the door, but they were alone. “This is considered public, Rae.”

“Sorry, Sir. I don’t know what these are.”

Wulf raised his pale eyebrows. “I beg your pardon.”

“I have no clue which of these to wear, and I don’t know what to pick out, and I don’t even know how to put some of these on.”

“I assure you that I am of no help. I retain a tailor, and he tells me what to wear.”

“And yet, I have no idea what this is.” Rae held up a thing that looked like the left half of a black leather bustier with one long sleeve. Just the left half.

“All right.” Wulf went back to the wardrobe’s door and locked it. “Let’s get that dress off of you.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.” Undressing casually in front of him felt more intimidating than having him rip off her panties, like yesterday.

He glanced at his watch and then flipped through the hangers. “Everyone wears black,” he muttered.

Most of the mature women at the party where Rae had met Wulf, who she now realized were Dominants in their relationships, had worn black. She had spent a lot of time on her phone last night, browsing the internet and reading about BDSM and other sex-related acronyms, and was surprised at the end of the night to find that her panties were damp.

Wulf found a brown leather thing and tossed it to her. “Try this on.”

The soft brown thing in her hands was all straps and cups, leather panels, and ecru lace.

She said, “Turn your back.”

“Reagan Rose, surely we’re past such formalities.” His amused smirk bordered on teasing.

“Not by a long shot. Now turn around, Mister. I mean, Master.”

He laughed and pivoted on his heel.

It was nice that he remembered her middle name, though. She ducked behind a rack of dresses and peeled off the sundress.

She held up the sex clothes thing and eventually figured out which pieces were shoulder straps. If someone had told her last week that she would be trying on leather fetish wear in a sex club, she would have laughed at them, but she wasn’t laughing now. This second audition was her chance to stay in college, to have a life helping autistic kids instead of ringing up customers for minimum wage.

Stated like that, she should obviously take the job. Why was she so ambivalent about it?

An image flashed in her head: Rae herself, in church, wearing a prim, eyelet-lace skirt and long-sleeved blouse, eyes cast down, listening with an empty head.

She had fought against that bullhockey since she was sixteen, ever since she had confessed to her pastor that she didn’t feel the love of Jesus in the church because every time she entered through the intimidating black doors, she felt like she lacked the moral core that stiffened everyone around her and broke out in a shamed sweat. He had blustered at her for her lack of faith and sinful nature, even though her whole life she had been trying so dang hard to be what they wanted her to be.

Finally, she had given up trying to be perfect and had gone to college, despite that they all said she shouldn’t broaden her mind, but instead she should narrow her focus to Jesus and salvation.

And now it had come to this: a brown leather-and-lace teddy. Rae turned it around and considered the lace-up bodice in the back. She was going to look like a serving wench who told you what you would be having.

Well, underwear tended to bunch under a leotard, which was not attractive. She dropped her panties to the floor, too.

Rae eased the delicate garment on, thinking of it like a lace-up leotard. The soft suede clung to her curves, and whalebones stiffened the panels around her waist. Rae reached behind her own back to yank the cords but couldn’t reach them. “Um, Master? Some help, here?”

“Thought you’d never ask.” He strolled around the dress racks. When he saw her trying to hold the contraption on her chest and stomach, his gaze traveled the length of her body, and he smiled.

She said, “Stop laughing at me.”

His bright blue eyes finally rose to make eye contact with her. “I’m not laughing.”

Wulf stood behind her and tightened the laces until the teddy stayed up without her holding it on herself. His hands pressed around her waist, smoothing the leather over her hips and ribs, then he pulled the laces tight, cinching her waist.

Rae grabbed the dress rack like Victorian ladies had braced themselves with a bedpost and sucked in her stomach, letting the steel bands constrict her middle. When she looked down, the corset exaggerated her body, pushing up her breasts and binding her waist. She breathed with her chest, and her boobs swelled over the top.

Wulf smoothed the fabric again, pressing his hands over the suede and lace on her waist, then her hips. Wrinkles flattened, and Rae felt more comfortable, though it was still tight. His hands slipped around to her bottom.

Rae wasn’t sure what this was turning into, but she wanted him to touch her more. His warm hands curved around her body, and he lifted her arms over her head. Her tits rose nearly over the top of the corset, and Wulf’s palms and fingers lifted her breasts in the brown leather, cupping them. Rae closed her eyes and leaned back against him. His body molded to her, his muscular torso and chest hard behind her back.

All of her other acts of rebellion the last two and a half years—the drinking, the dancing, and the occasional, anemic sex—paled beside how every inch of her skin wanted to screw Wulf every time she saw him. Every time he touched her—like how his hands softly gripped her breasts and his quickening breath heated the nape of her neck—felt like blasphemy, and she craved more.

Oh, at some point, she was going to have a crisis of conscience about him, but not now, not yet, not while his body pressed against her ass and back and his breath blew ragged on her neck.

Wulf drew a deep breath and stepped away from her.

When Rae turned, Wulf’s hands were in front of him, palms out, like he was warding her off. He didn’t look at her. His head was down and turned to the side.

She asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Fine.” He inhaled again and looked up, his blue eyes bright with intelligence, as normal. He dropped his hands to his sides. “We should begin the training. Our client arrives in half an hour.” Wulf handed her a thick robe. “Wouldn’t want you to catch a chill.”

Rae held the robe up to her chest. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Not at all.” Wulf smiled, and his kind smile eased her nerves. “You are so beautiful.”

Rae tried to not let her shock show on her face. No one called an elephant or a fat fish beautiful.

Wulf asked, “Was that wrong to say?”

“No. It was fine.” Just weird.

“I hear all sorts of things from my girls and my clients. Nothing would shock me.”

“I don’t know why you said that. I’m chubby.” She studied the cement swirls that chilled her bare feet and clutched the robe.

“You’re a size eight. You’re not chubby.”

“I am around here.”

“Five of my girls are size eight or larger. The costume rack includes sizes twelve and twenty.”

He knew a lot about the girls’ sizes for a guy. “There isn’t, like, a weigh-in or something to work here, is there?”

“Certainly not.”

“How’d you know that, then?”

He shrugged. “Numbers stick in my head.”

“I wish they stuck in mine. Maybe I wouldn’t be failing statistics.”

“Georgie and Lizbeth were quite clear about that professor’s teaching and grading philosophies. Appalling. Anything else?”

Rae didn’t need to go into all the bullhockey that was in her head. Yet, he studied her so intently, and his unflinching blue eyes seemed forgiving.

He waited.

She dithered, unease rising in her stomach. “I’m just not used to all this.”

“All this?” He tilted his head.

“Back home, I’d be thrown out of church for even thinking about some of the things that I’ve done in the last few days.”

He chuckled. “Yes, the Devilhouse is built with bricks of religion.”

Church, and home, and family, and her breath caught.

Wulf’s investigator was going to talk to people in her church, her home, and her family. “My church is different. My family is different.”

Wulf said, “But you’ve been at college more than two years.”

“Yes.” She couldn’t seem to breathe. The corset thing must be too tight. The walls must be falling in.

“And you’ve done some of these things before.”

Rae tried to laugh, but her voice squeaked, “Yeah.”

Her hands, still holding the robe against her chest, started to shake.

“Is something else bothering you?” He waited for her answer, head cocked to the side, leaning toward her. Kindness wavered in his expression.

If he had been judgmental or dismissive, she would have been fine. Her eyes squeezed out tears, and the tears caught on her lashes, blurring her view of him. “Did you send someone to ask my family a bunch of questions about me?”

“It’s standard procedure.”

“So he’s there now?”

Wulf glanced at his phone. “He should be driving.”

“If he tells them anything about the Devilhouse,
anything at all,
they’ll never speak to me again. They’ll disown me.”

With that, Rae spilled all the crazy stuff that warred in her head every day.

She told Wulf about her childhood Baptist church, and her fight with the preacher, and how every Sunday in church, every Sunday for her whole life, she had tightened up until she thought that she was going to snap.

Wulf settled his arms around her. She buried his face in the blackness of his clothes because the overhead lights glared at her like small-town scrutiny. From under his suit, she caught a whiff of oranges and clean laundry and something masculine, dark and primal. College guys did not smell like that.