Red Hot Obsessions (176 page)

Rae shook her head. “No. Not at all.”

“Good. The Boss is funny that way. I’ve known him for five years, and that was the first I’d heard of it. I didn’t even tell my wife what we saw.”

~~~~~

Keep Calm and Carry On

Wulf reached his office before Rae and sat behind his desk, flipping through bright bands of email on his phone screen.

One of Wulf’s great uncles, a German who had married an Englishwoman, had spouted the WWII-era maxim “Keep Calm and Carry On,” as if he, himself, had originated it, and Wulf allowed that phrase to cycle through his mind while he tapped his phone screen, reading the banal emails that appeared in his account every day.

The desert sun shone in the window and glared on the phone’s screen. Wulf angled the phone away so he could see the small type.

Most of the emails originated with accounting firms and detailed his and his family’s other business holdings, which he tracked. His family knew nothing of The Devilhouse. Wulf had been misled about the business model when he had become a silent partner five years ago, believing the club was meant to be a dance venue. When his old friend, an alumnus of the Swiss boarding school where Wulf had been raised, had absconded with a substantial portion of his initial investment, Wulf had taken over and had planned to manage the property until it produced a profit.

The Devilhouse had turned an excellent profit for the last three years, and yet, he still hadn’t divested himself and moved on. Perhaps a genetic weakness for extravagance and indulgence was to blame.

The second to the last email was from his father. He chatted in German about problems he was encountering in the state parliament and his Grand Prix race next week. Wulf marked it to follow up.

The last email, from his sister Flicka, concerned her wedding plans, which he skimmed. He would concoct some excuse at the last minute. From her effusive detailing of the bouquets and décor, he suspected that even she did not believe he would attend though, as always, they kept up appearances. He would visit her and Pierre sometime soon after, somewhere private.

He paused for a moment and glanced at the gardens just beyond his window. Spring flowers bloomed at the bases of the hedges. He tried to appreciate the desert spring, but rage still seethed in his head.

When Rae did a scene with another man, it perturbed Wulf.

Any attempted rape of any of his women would have been dealt with harshly.

After what Mulligan had attempted, that jackass was a lucky bastard that Wulf hadn’t lost his temper in Play Room One and flayed his mottled skin from his fat body with the signal whip.

Wulf still wanted to destroy the puny man. His hand itched to dial his mobile phone, call the state’s attorney general, another Devilhouse client, and alert him about the warehouses full of drugs in Pirtleville.

One of Wulf’s old school chums worked in US Attorney General’s office, too. Networks of
Anciens Roséens
reached into most governments around the world.

Wulf could crush Jim Bob Mulligan as flat as he desired.

He must control his emotions. He must not lose control. He must not send a Panzer battalion against a lone horseman.

Keep calm and carry on.

~~~~~

More Convoluted than the Plantagenets’

Rae peeked through the doorway into Wulf’s Devilhouse office. He sat behind his desk, languidly reading on his phone. Sunlight dappled him through the leaves of the garden outside his window.

She might be able to breathe if she sat in his lap and rested her cheek against his suit just one more time.

If Wulf fired her for yet another debacle session, Rae could look Lizzy in the eye while she packed to leave college. She wouldn’t have to worry about her family finding out anything because, even if Jim Bob said something, she would have been at home for a while and would have no money. No one would believe his illogical accusations.

Rae wouldn’t have to worry about her sweet, stupid dream of a clinic for autistic kids any more, either. Her planned-out life would be simpler, less stressful, and require far less effort.

Wulf glanced up from his phone and saw her peeking around the door frame. His bright blue eyes seemed calm, as always. “Come in. You may close the door behind you.”

Rae pressed the door closed with her palms and then sat in one of the chairs in front of Wulf’s desk. “I’m sorry,” she began.

Wulf waved her apologies away as if brushing away smoke in the air. “There was no way you could have known. The pseudonyms in the files are for our clients’ privacy. You should peruse the business files, which include legal names, to ensure that you are not related to any of our other clients. There is one more relative of yours here, as I’m sure you’ve figured out.”

“My uncle. The mayor.”

If she wasn’t fired, then she either had to quit or figure out some other way to stop poaching Lizzy’s guy.

“He utilizes the very vanilla side of the business.” Wulf smiled, and sympathy spread through his eyes. “I would like to apologize to you. I had forgotten that this corner of the United States has as many familial relations as certain areas of Europe.”

“Yeah,” Rae said. She held her breath with conflicted emotions and blew it out with relief. “Bloodlines around here are more convoluted than the Plantagenets’.”

Wulf’s face hardened, and he reared up behind his desk to his feet. He leaned over the glass, bracing his hands as if to vault it. Rae pushed back in her chair even though the glass desk separated them.

Wulf asked, so quietly, “I beg your pardon?”

Rae didn’t know what had set him off, but he stared at her as if she were a heretic during the Spanish Inquisition. “The Plantagenets? Like Richard the Third? Shakespeare?”

“I know who the Plantagenets are. Why did you reference them?”

“Because, you know, everyone was their own uncle. Their family tree doesn’t so much branch as tangle in upon itself.” She’d heard that phrase a thousand times growing up. “My family is the same way. Second cousins marrying each other, you know?”

Wulf straightened and adjusted his shirt cuffs under his suit jacket. He inhaled through his nose and regarded the garden outside his window for a moment. “Yes, the Plantagenet line does evince consanguinity.”

Rae picked apart that last word into
con
, which means
same
, and
sang
, which means
blood
, so he must be agreeing with her. “Right.”

Wulf sat in his office chair and rolled himself in. “The business files are in our accountant’s office,” he said, as if he had never leapt out of his chair. “You should make use of them.”

“Right,” Rae said. “Just in case I’m related to any more of the spank-and-wankers.”

Humor returned to Wulf’s blue eyes. He adjusted his tie knot with a practiced tug. “Yes. Can’t have that.”

“You know, Wulf, maybe I shouldn’t work here.” Rae stared at her hands. She turned them over and flexed her rough fingers. She really needed to paint her nails, whether she was going to work at The Devilhouse or not. “I’m too much of a liability. I mean, girls like Lizzy and Georgie, who are both from Back East, they don’t know anyone around here. I’m connected to half the state, and they’re connected to everyone else, even politicians and police chiefs and judges and drug lords and coyotes from across the Border. I don’t want to cause trouble for you.”

“You don’t have to worry about The Devilhouse or me, Reagan.”

She looked up when he used her full name. Usually, she didn’t like it when people called her that, but Wulf tended to use more formal names, and on his lips, it sounded different, more polite.

He continued, “This establishment has special licenses from the state for its operation, and our clientele is our best asset.”

“Evidently. Man, I thought you were going to kill Jim Bob.”

“Oh, I never think about killing people.”

Rae glanced up at his icy eyes. That was a whole lot of denial for such an exaggerated cliché. It didn’t take a psychology major or a Shakespearean actor to notice that Wulf doth protest too much. However, maybe his reasoning came from having been on the wrong end of a rifle. “Um, well, I can’t believe you called Mayor Harding,” Jim Bob’s uncle and her uncle, too, “and that
he
comes here.”

Her family had never been on the best of terms with the Hardings, which is why Rae could never have asked them for the money for college. They would have laughed at her for her presumption, just because her mother’s sister had married one of the Harding brothers.

“Yes, and that’s another reason why you should remain employed at The Devilhouse. I told your cousin that I would protect you. If you return home, Jim Bob might not be so tractable. He might try his assault again.”

“I didn’t think about that.” Crud. She was kind of trapped, at least as far as working at The Devilhouse was concerned. However, Lizzy’s feelings were still foremost in Rae’s mind. “There’s another problem, though.”

Wulf leaned in and rested his forearms on the desk, the very image of a concerned employer. “What is that?”

She couldn’t narc on Lizzy crushing on Wulf, either. “This seems wrong.”

“What does?”

“The way that we always,” and she wasn’t sure what to call it because neither
making love
nor
screwing
seemed right, “can’t help ourselves.”

Wulf smiled a little more. “Well, then,” he said, “we will refrain.”

No!

Dang it, her brain couldn’t decide what it wanted.

Yet, if she and Wulf could just have a business relationship, then Rae wouldn’t be betraying Lizzy at every opportunity. “Okay.”

“Do you have any other reservations about working here, other than our lack of self-control?”

“Just that, well, I don’t know.” Again, she always seemed to be on the verge of saying something obnoxious and judgmental. “I just don’t get why these guys would want to be spanked.”

Wulf’s smile betrayed nothing but calm amusement. “I believe that we were just about to have a training session.”

“Um, yeah. But we just talked about that.”

Wulf licked his lips, and even though his expression barely changed, Rae had the uncomfortable association of a wolf about to rush a wide-eyed lamb. He asked, “If I spank you and you like it, you’ll stay here and work for me,
ja
?”

~~~~~

Rae’s First Spanking

Rae had changed back into her street clothes—a sundress with a billowy skirt—because Wulf told her to.

She waited on the blocky couch in Play Room Five, which Wulf had called the Blue Room. The stand lamps threw light on the ceiling and glared off the marble end tables, exposing everything in the room to harsh light. The fake candle sconces in the medieval dungeon rooms were more forgiving of a person’s flaws.

Rae’s skirt had drifted up when she sat down, and the scratchy couch upholstery irritated the backs of her thighs.

Her leg trembled at being back in the same room where her cousin had tried to assault her, but she admonished herself that the
room
wasn’t the problem and to stop being silly.

The vanilla candle had half-melted in its jar. The flame cast a shimmery glow up the far wall, and the room designed for sexual deviancy smelled like cookies.

The candle flicked, and she couldn’t check her phone for the time or play a game to pass the time because Wulf had once again forbade phones, so she sat on the couch and waited.

She scratched at the nubbly fabric, waiting.

The candle sputtered, and its glow on the blue wall above it sparkled. The flame settled back down to a steady burn.

Still waiting.

Maybe Wulf was trying to turn her into a Bella.

During some particularly stupid drunken banter at the party last week, the night she had met Wulf, Rae had insisted that she was not a Bella but a Katniss because she loved her family more than anything and because she could bowhunt.

That had gotten his attention. She was pretty sure that their conversation had interested him more than her screwing him against the wall in the bedroom with only inches of drywall separating them from the partying crowd.

Wulf seemed to be trying break down Rae and turn her into someone who would interest him less. That manipulative tendency to damage and dump, if that was what he was doing, suggested that smoke and emptiness swirled under his mirrored shell, just like Georgie and Lizzy had told Rae, and the very definition of a psychopath.

You know, maybe it was a really good idea that she had stopped having sex with Wulf. Besides protecting herself, Rae suspected that her opinion of the girl in the mirror would change fundamentally if she betrayed a friend. Lizzy was already in thrall to Wulf.

If anything, Rae had to rescue Lizzy from his influence, though she had no idea how to do that.

The brass doorknob clicked, turning, and Wulf strode in. He had taken off his suit jacket and was rolling his white shirt sleeves up to his elbows. Even the man hair on his arms was blond.

Rae hadn’t seen his chest, just his back, when she had stripped off his shirt in the training session last weekend, she realized. She had been standing behind him and pulled his crisp shirt down around his elbows, revealing that terrible, twisted gunshot scar on his back, perilously near his spine, and the tattoo around it, but she hadn’t seen his chest.

From across the room, he asked, “Do you submit?”

She knew this routine. “Yes.”

“Safe word?”

“Macbeth.”

He waved up at the black security sphere in the ceiling then flicked his hand like he was dismissing it. Had he told them to turn it off, like he had when he had screwed her from behind that very first “training” session? If he teased her again until she was desperate for him, Rae was not confident in her willpower to say no.

Wulf kicked the door closed behind him and twitched one pale eyebrow, a nifty trick. “Have you been a bad girl?”

Rae wasn’t going to be a Bella for him. “No.”

Wulf’s blue eyes flared, and his smile turned ominous. “You know what you’ve done wrong.”

Oh, Rae had done so very many things wrong, and guilt sat on her shoulders for all of them, starting with screwing a guy who her friend already had feelings for. She stared down at her sandals sinking into the blue shag carpeting.

He said, “Yes, you do. Come here.”

Rae plodded over to him, still not looking up.

“How naughty have you been?”

Rae was betraying Lizzy right at that moment, though he had said they would stop having sex. She had lost her scholarship due to her own negligence. Working in The Devilhouse opposed every one of the values she had grown up believing.

She whispered, “Very naughty.”

She heard him chuckle low in his throat. “That’s better,” he whispered back.

It wasn’t better.

He stepped toward her and reached around her to her back, pressing himself against her body. He flipped her skirt up in back and grabbed her ass. “Since you’ve been very naughty, you’ll need a bare-bottom spanking.” He snapped her underwear elastic and then shoved them down. The cotton fluttered around her ankles.

“Remember,” she said. Her lips were near his shirt collar. “We shouldn’t.”

“I won’t,” Wulf whispered. His breath trembled on her temple. “No matter how much you want me to.”

Rae stepped out of her underwear, and they lay crumpled in a white lump on the carpet.

“Better.” Wulf grabbed her bare ass again and pulled her against him.

Rae jerked her arms to her chest, and her arms ended up wedged between their bodies.

“So naughty.” Wulf whirled her around, and she was startled with how easily he twirled her because she was no frail little girlie-girl. He ended up perched on the edge of an overstuffed paisley armchair, with Rae standing before him.

He pointed to his lap. “Down.”

Rae bent her shaking knees and lowered herself over his thighs, her ass in the air. Her stomach rested on his hard legs. She grasped the arm of the chair and held on, ready for it to hurt.

Wulf tossed her skirt up to her waist, baring her ass. Cool air drifted over her butt cheeks.

Her thighs started to shake, and she lowered her head onto her arms.
Here it came.

“Such tension,” Wulf said. “How shall we relax you?” His left hand rested on her spine and warmed her back. With his other hand, Wulf touched her ass cheek, and she jumped, thinking that this was it.

His one finger glided over her haunch. His touch almost tickled because Rae had been so ready for a slap. She grabbed the round arm of the chair and held on.

He stroked her other ass cheek with just one finger, slowly, just a feathery line over her backside.

On her spine, his hand massaged her lower back, kneading the tension away.

He brushed the skin on her butt, one cheek and then the other, alternating. “Such a lovely bum you have.”

That was pushing it. “It’s fat.”

He laughed. “Utter rubbish. Your bum is velvety, like a luscious peach.”

She’d never thought of her ass that way before.

However, he was going to bruise that peach in just a minute, and she tensed again.

The soft brushes of his fingers strengthened, and he caressed her backside.

Rae held onto the tapestry-upholstered chair arm with her fists, ready for his first strike.

His caresses with both hands deepened, pressing her flesh on the small of her back and her ass. He worked the stress out of her body. Considering her behavioral psychology exam yesterday, her childhood development test tomorrow, the cognitive dissonance invoked by signing that dang Devilhouse contract a few hours ago, and her cousin discovering her here and then trying to rape her, stress tied all her muscles in BDSM knots.

His hand dipped behind her, and he massaged the backs of her thighs.

Rae turned her head to sneak a peek. The look on his honed face seemed interested, like he was studying her skin, and intent, like he was playing a cello. She laid her forehead back on her arms.

His hand rubbing her back slipped farther down, past the small of her back and to her bottom. He stroked her backside with both of his hands, grasping and palming her ass and thighs.

Rae sighed, relaxing into the massage. Her legs sagged, and her body rested on his thighs.

His thumb grazed her pussy, sliding just inside the soft folds and sending a wave of pleasure up her spine.

“That’s not spanking,” she gasped.

“I’m the spanker, here,” Wulf said. His bass voice rumbled. “I’ll decide what is spanking and what’s not.”

“We said that we wouldn’t.” When he slipped one finger delicately along the lips of her pussy, her voice squeaked.

“And we won’t,” he said. “But you should enjoy your first spanking.”

So he was still going to spank her. He just hadn’t yet. Rae put her head down on her arms.

He kneaded her flesh more, palpating her bottom, and he slipped his hands between her thighs and eased her legs apart. She felt her legs open, and she wanted him to touch her there again. She knew that she shouldn’t let him touch her, shouldn’t allow him to get her all sexed up until she couldn’t help herself, but she shifted her weight, and her legs parted. It felt like her mind had no control over her thighs opening to him.

His hands gripped her, and his fingers slowly explored her plump butt cheeks. He neared her center again, and one of his hands continued to massage her hips and thighs while his fingers just grazed the lips of her pussy.

This wasn’t spanking at all.

A small part of her brain that wasn’t reeling in desire for him wondered if he had ever intended to spank her or if his plan had always been to drive her mad so that she would screw him again. She started to push up on her elbows—whether to run out of the play room or to unbutton his pants and straddle him, she wasn’t sure,—but he shoved her back down, and that was when he slapped her ass.

The sting shot through her, and she gasped.

“Don’t move,” Wulf said pleasantly. His hands caressed her sore flesh, kneading the hot skin.

She clutched the rough arm of the chair, bracing herself for another spank that must be coming, but his hands massaged her thighs and ass cheeks as if he had never spanked her.

His fingers drifted inward again, and he traced the soft folds of her pussy as if deciding what to do.

Rae breathed hard, controlling the desire to run or to turn. She lifted her head and stared at the stainless steel St. Andrew’s cross, silver against the blue wall.

If he tied her up, she would be able to relax, but only Wulf’s strong arms and the threat of spanking held her across his knees. She clung to the armchair’s upholstery with all her might.

One of his fingers glided between the lips of her pussy, stroking her sensitive nub. Rae arched her back as pleasure tightened. He smoothed his other hand down her thighs, and she opened more to him.

He slipped his thumb inside her wet center, and her body squeezed around him. She wanted his cock to pound into her like when he had taken her hard on his desk last week and, without thinking, she pushed herself up.

He smacked her again, harder this time, and pain sparked through her body. “Ow!”

“I said, don’t move.” He massaged her stinging skin with one hand. His other fingers brushed her clit, tracing slippery lines down her center, and his thumb slid inside her.

“I want to move. I want you,” she admitted.

“Stay where you are.” His thumb pressed inside her, pressed down on
something
there, and drove another shock of pleasure through her.

Her arms slipped off the chair and she grabbed the chair arm to keep from falling off. “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Please let me sit up.”

“That’s my naughty girl.” He spanked her again, and he grabbed the sore skin of her ass cheek and rolled it under his palm so that her core rippled around his thumb, rubbing her inside. She revolved around that spot of pleasure between her legs.

Another spank, and he slid his fingers over her clit, and pleasure rippled up her spine. The skin on her ass was so sensitive from the slaps that every brush sent a jolt through her.

Another sharp slap, and he pushed his thumb deeper inside her, rubbing the tender rim and stroking her clit with his other fingers.

Rae’s body squeezed, clenching his hand. Her vision of the candlelight flaring on the wall narrowed. She gasped, and he circled his thumb around that nub.

One more sharp slap stung her.

The tight need in her body vibrated and burst.

The pain of the spank got all mixed up with the pleasure that ricocheted through her body. She clung to the arm of the chair as wave after wave of frenzy rolled through her. Every time he slapped her ass and stroked her clit, a pulse rose and roiled from her pussy to her head, rocking her, and she cried out. He did it again and again, spanking her and grasping her pussy and clit as he squeezed another and another
and another
burst of fire through her.

Then he was massaging her again, and running his hands over the trembling muscles of her pussy and inner thighs. Cream ran out of her pussy and down her legs.

Rae gasped for air.
“What did you do?”

Wulf flipped Rae over on his lap, juggling her until he cradled her in his arms.

Tremors shook her body. Her pussy clenched like a heartbeat, and aftershocks pulsed through her.

She hadn’t known orgasms came in so many forms. Before the last week, the only orgasms that she’d ever had were a kind of half-hearted throbbing. She said, “If that’s how I’m supposed to spank the clients, I’ve been doing it
all wrong
.”

“The particulars are not the lesson. The point of today’s training is that the Dom’s will is paramount. Yes, we established parameters and a safe word; however, I took control. When you resisted, you were punished. Your decisions, your will, were irrelevant. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Now,” he said, “this part, afterward, is what about half of our clients come here for. We have finished the contractual obligations, and many of the clients enjoy talking with the girls for the rest of their time.”

Rae could barely concentrate on what he was saying. His body warmed her, and she slipped her arms around his neck. “Oh?”

“For the half of our clients who are low on the Scoville scale, so to speak, I suspect that the real attraction of The Devilhouse is a girl who will listen to them. The fact that many of our girls are half-naked or clothed in fetishwear while they listen only adds to the attraction.”