Red Hot Obsessions (187 page)

Once More into The Devilhouse

Rae caught a ride over to The Devilhouse with Georgie the next afternoon because she had left her car in the parking lot overnight. The spring sun cascaded through the windows, warming her arm on the armrest, even though she felt like she should curl up and weep.

Georgie drove Rae to work in her Lexus. “What, did you go home with someone last night?”

“I got tipsy, and Glenda drove me home.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to take a chance with that.”

And that was all.

Georgie drove quietly but far too fast, and she jammed the car around the corners.

Something must be terribly wrong.

Rae had been all wrapped up in her own misery. “Something wrong?”

“Nope.”

Lizzy hadn’t been in Georgie’s dorm room when Rae had knocked on their adjoining bathroom door that morning, and her bed was still made. “Where’s Lizzy?”

“She quit.” Georgie’s voice sounded grim.

“What?”

“This morning. The Dom hooked her up with some Dommy-Dom, and she quit The Devilhouse. She’s moving her stuff out of the dorm this weekend.”

Rae had watched from the security booth while the man bound and fucked Lizzy, but she never thought that Lizzy would lose her mind. “Did she drop out of school?”

“Not officially, not yet. I’ll bet that she won’t be back for senior year, though.”

Rae dropped her purse on the car’s floorboards, and she leaned forward to press her face into her hands. Dang, this was so her fault. “Can we talk to her?”

“She texted me this morning and that was it. She isn’t answering her phone. She won’t even reply to my texts.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s the dark side of The Devilhouse. Some of the girls here, maybe a third, don’t really want The Dom to find them an international job after graduation or go to grad school. They want to find a sugar daddy and sit at his feet for as long as they’re young and pretty and compliant, until their Dom finds himself another, more malleable, younger sub.” Georgie turned the car violently into The Devilhouse’s long driveway, and Rae leaned from the force.

Rae said, “That’s sick.”

“It’s the way of the world. I just didn’t think Lizzy was the type. You don’t think of the girl with the Taser in her purse as the one who becomes a slave girl.”

Shock bashed through Rae. “A
sex
slave?
Is that what she is?”

“She is now. If he gave her a contract, I wish she’d have a lawyer look over it first. Some of those slave-girl contracts have punitive clauses if she has sex with someone else or doesn’t put out often enough, or if she refuses to have sex with someone her Dom loans her to, or if she gets an opinion of her own into her head, or if she gains five pounds. Subs get a safe word. Slaves don’t.”

Rae’s heart slowed a little. Lizzy had decided to enter into a Master-slave relationship, which is a lot different than the kidnapping and human slavery that went on near the Border.

Good Lord, Rae had been ready to go home, arm herself to the teeth from her family’s gun safes, press her cousins into service as a posse, and mount a rescue mission before the human trafficker sold Lizzy and she disappeared into the maze of slum whorehouses where they would have beaten her until she was broken and then sold her to rapists.

Rae’s voice was still a little shaky with adrenaline. “I’ll bet you can’t get that contract on Legal Room dot com.”

“Nope.” Georgie She screeched into a parking place. “That’s a specialty item.”

“Could you draw her up a proper one that would protect her?”

“I’m just pre-law, Rae. I don’t know how to draw up a watertight contract.” She turned over the steering wheel to Rae, and her brown eyes brightened. “I’ll bet Dr. Blaise,” her independent study professor at the law school, “would do it
pro bono,
though.”

“Oh, yeah. Your internship.”

“He might think it was an interesting case. I’ll call him.” She smiled at looked over at Rae. “Thanks.”

“I feel responsible. I told her to go to The Dom and tell him how she felt.”

“It’s not your fault that she got herself into a bizarro relationship. The Dom—you know,
our
Dom—would have been a better situation for her. I haven’t seen him mindfuck anyone, at least not on purpose. All we can do at this point is try to keep her safe.”

“Yeah. It would be terrible if she did something stupid and screwed everything up.” Tears scratched at Rae’s eyes, but Georgie was busy wrassling her purse out from behind Rae’s seat, so she didn’t see Rae blink them away.

Rae stepped out of the car and led the way to the white door on the back of the building.

Wulf’s silver Tesla was already in the back of the employee’s lot, parked in the back against the white wall.

Once more into The Devilhouse,
Rae thought. The sun heated her scalp as she slid her employee card through the card-reader, and belatedly she braced herself for it to not work.

Georgie stood behind her, fidgeting.

The green light on the door’s card reader flashed, surprising her. Rae had kind of suspected that Wulf would summarily fire her butt. It worked to unlock the second door, too.

No other girls were in the ladies’ locker room, and the rows of wooden cubbies echoed with emptiness.

Rae’s phone buzzed, and a text from Glenda read, Rae, honey? The Dom wants to see you in Play Room 3 as soon as you clock in.

Rae tapped the screen on her phone. Thank you. Be there as soon as I’ve changed.

If he wanted to see her in a play room, he probably wasn’t going to fire her, unless he wanted privacy for it.

No, he would fire her in his office.

Her body heated despite her misgivings.

~~~~~

Play Room 3

Rae hadn’t been sure what kind of outfit she should choose from the warehouse-like costume closet, so she wore basic Domme-wear: a black bustier corset and skirt that fell to mid-thigh. Georgie cranked the laces on the corset so tight that Rae could barely breathe, but the tight whalebones did curve her waist in.

The tall door to Play Room Three looked like it was off of a Spanish bordello, all honey wood and Moorish rococo adornments. Rae peeked around the cracked-open door.

Play Room Three looked like a jungle, except the hanging vines were ropes, and the air smelled like jute and salty iron instead of rotting leaves. The air conditioner hissed a cold breeze. No music played in this room of silently swinging rope ends.

Some of the ropes were skinny, snaky tendrils that curled from the ceiling. Others were thick, coarse cables that looked like severed elephant trunks. Chains hung from the ceiling, too. Evil silver links glittered in the bright lights. Black rings looked like cruel cast iron. Occasionally, one clinked.

Most of the hanging bonds ended in some kind of link: a loop, a shining metal hook, or shackles.

Wulf sat in the middle of the room in a huge wooden chair,
a throne,
a battle throne like Henry the Fifth might have taken to France on one of his campaigns, wearing black pants but stripped bare to his lean waist. The black tattoo crept over his pale shoulder. The overhead lights cast shadows under the defined bands of his chest and abdominal muscles. His blond head was bowed as he stared at the green rope coiled in his fists, and he didn’t even look up at her.

Rae almost backed out of the room, but she screwed what remained of her courage to the sticking place and stepped inside. The air conditioner blew cold on her bare shoulders. She closed the door behind her. “Sir?”

Wulf raised his head. The cold expression in his blue eyes looked like he could slash her throat without blinking, and then it was gone and he was as implacable as wind-smoothed desert sand dunes.

Maybe, instead of firing her, he was going to make her beg to quit.

Her heart clenched, but she didn’t turn and run.

Wulf let a length of the green rope fall from his hands. He looped one end of the rope into a noose and began tying hangman’s knots up the length of it.

Because he had taken his shirt off and exposed that dark Japanese tattoo and blown-out gunshot scar, Wulf must have told whoever was in the security booth to turn off the overhead cameras. She glanced at the black globe above her. It never made any sound, so she couldn’t tell if it was on or not.

They might be alone.

Her useless paranoia sounded the alarm claxons, but she ignored it. She wasn’t going to cut and run on him. If he fired her, fine. If he told her that he never wanted to see her again, fine.

She had violated his trust, but she wasn’t going to walk away from him.

Wulf finished fashioning the noose. “Come here.”

His voice sounded normal.

Rae walked across the dungeon to him, brushing aside ropes that snagged on her shoulders and hair.

“Take off your shoes and the skirt,” he said.

“And the corset?” If she was going to be mostly naked, she would like to breathe.

“No,” he said. “I’ll take that off you.” He spun the rope with each turn, coiling it at his feet.

Rae had grown up on a cattle ranch and could rope a steer from horseback. Wulf had coiled that lariat correctly, an unusual skill.

The noose had a tidy row of seven knots above the loop.

Rae didn’t move to take off her clothes, yet. “Why are we here, Sir?”

“Training,” he said. “Regular Domme training session. Today you will gain experience with
kinbaku-bi
, a Japanese term that means ‘the beauty of tight binding.’ One uses a slim rope for it.” He gestured toward the rope on the tile floor, which was indeed a thinner, more supple rope than Rae had used for roping steers. “It utilizes simple knots but complex patterns. Now take those clothes off.”

His British accent clipped his words, stronger than ever, but she could hear the Germanic inflections, too.

She
was not going to leave
him
.

Rae unzipped the boots down the backs of her calves and used her toes to pry them off. Even after only a short walk through the office hallways of The Devilhouse, the boots’ seams had pressed red creases into her feet. She shucked her skirt but delayed taking her off her panties until Wulf’s pale eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.

She dropped her panties.

“Turn around,” he said.

She pivoted and wrapped her coppery hair around her wrist to pull it aside. She felt Wulf move in close behind her. Whether it was warmth from his bare chest on her shoulders or air displacement brushing her naked ass, she couldn’t tell, but she knew he was there, and close.

Her skin blushed hot, thinking that he was standing right behind her. He had dropped her off at her dorm less than twelve hours ago, but desperation at the thought of never seeing him again, never touching him again, filled those hours.

The corset loosened around the tops of her boobs, and she could breathe a little freer already. The soft ribbons whispered as they slid through the metal loops down her spine. The bustier slid over her ribs, and she caught it with her hands, not so much out of modesty as reluctance to let go of that last bit of protection.

The dangling ribbons brushed her bare ass cheeks.

“Drop it,” Wulf said, and she did. The black satin fell to the floor. Steel whalebones thumped on the tile.

Wulf walked around in front of her, surveying her body again, just like he had that first time in a play room just a couple weeks ago.

That time, he had tied her up with sophisticated enthusiasm and teased her until she thought she would go nuts, and then he had taken her from behind.

This time, he had a rope, and he was angry.

At least, she thought he was from that flash she had seen in his eyes.

He should be pissed as heck at her. He’d asked for one thing from her, to not pry. She could rationalize the crap out of it, and if she’d found something despicable then it would have been better for her and Lizzy to know, but in looking, she’d crossed his line.

He didn’t look mad anymore, but his default expression was a detached calmness and controlled predatory gaze like a slightly hungry lion.

He hung the noose around her neck with the hangman’s knots dangling between her breasts. The soft rope felt like braided ribbons, like it was made of fine cotton or even silk.

He asked, “Have you ever seen
kinbaku-bi?”

“No.” Her shaking voice betrayed her nerves.

“I thought not.” He didn’t sound like he was chiding her for her inexperience nor disappointed in her lack of research. He was just stating a fact. “The experience is in the tying, the process, not the final product of knots and binds. Usually, the rope master finishes the knots, admires his handiwork for a moment or displays it for the audience, and then releases the woman.”

“And it’s always a woman being tied.”

“Except in homosexual situations. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a woman rope master tie a man, but that may be an artifact of Japanese culture.” He walked around behind her again. “Your arms will be like this.”

He turned her arms and held them behind her—both thumbs up, palms out, and forearms stacked together—like she had crossed her arms over her chest but behind her back. Her boobs pushed out when he folded her arms.

The position was more extreme than a straightjacket. If he tied her like this, she would be helpless. If he strung her up on one of those hooks, he could kill her, easily. A drain was cut into the tile floor, just like in Play Rooms One and Two.

When one’s brother was savagely cut down only a foot away, what kind of psychological damage did that cause? Maybe she should have let the browser translate those newspaper clippings under the pictures or looked up more about early childhood trauma in her psychology textbooks.

Those crazy, too-late paranoid sirens screamed in her head.

No, Wulf wouldn’t hurt her.

She trusted him to not hurt her, so she ignored the crazy, too-late paranoia screaming in her ears. It was usually wrong, anyway. It hadn’t gone off when Corn Guy rufied her. It felt more like a fear of change than an actual warning system.

Her shoulders strained from Wulf holding her arms crossed behind her back, but not too much.

He said, “When I say to, you fold your arms this way.”

Rae nodded. He released her arms, so she let them fall to her bare hips.

Wulf walked around to the front of her and picked up the rope from between her breasts. “Arms out.”

She raised her arms, trying to keep them from shaking. The shakes were a biological reaction, nothing more.

The hangman’s knot dangled around her neck like a necklace. The rope brushed the back of her neck when he snaked it under her arms and then threaded it through a loop at the center, then back around and under her breasts, framing her boobs with rope. The jade green loops down her sternum looked more like jewelry than a restraint, and Rae tilted her head to see it better.

Wulf threaded the rope three times around her waist, lacing the cord together down her ribs and stomach. He yanked it tight until it indented her skin. Her tan flesh plumped around the green rope.

Since
kinbaku-bi
meant the beauty of
tight
binding, she assumed that the tightness of the rope was part of it.

The last loop settled around her hips, and he pulled it tight. Except for how terribly naked she was, the green cord looked like the structural parts of a ball gown, and against all odds, she felt
pretty
with the rope cinching her waist.

He glanced down at her abdomen, tied a knot in the last length of the rope, and let it dangle in front of her.

He picked up another coiled rope, scarlet this time. “Turn around.”

Trepidation crawled up her spine, but she turned.

“Position your hands like I showed you.”

She wound her hands behind her back and tried not to flinch when he eased the silken rope around one of her arms.

Wulf threaded her whole arm through a loop, pulled it tight around her biceps, and then wove the rope around her arms. Though he was behind Rae’s back, she could feel the intricate pattern that laced her arms together. Her arms’ position jutted out her breasts, and the jade rope girdling her waist and encircling her boobs made her feel unconscionably sexy. It felt like he was adorning her with jade and ruby jewelry.

Rae wanted to dance in this sexy get-up.

Her paranoia must have finally broken, like a bad fever.

Wulf finished tying the red rope around her arms behind her back, and he bent down, reaching between her calves for the long green rope dangling in front of her. He snagged it and dragged it up. It rubbed her skin between her knees and all the way up her inner thighs, until the rope nestled between the lips of her pussy. A knot rested on her clit and sent a shock of sexual heat through her.

He wound the rope through her arms in back, and she felt the noose hugging the back of her neck shift backward. The ropes pushed down on her shoulders, now more like a harness than a noose.

He pulled it taut, and the knot pressed her clit like a man stroking her.

Wulf stepped away from her, but she couldn’t see him back there.

She asked, “So how do I look?”

“Beautiful.” His voice was huskier than before.

She pivoted, turning toward him so he could see all the results of his handiwork.

He looked down her body to her legs and her feet, then back up. Rae could see the fire in his eyes. His breath was shallower that it had been.

She leaned toward him, feeling like a femme fatale. If he hated her, he could have tied her up in some hideous knot job, but he hadn’t. This was a little kinky, but it was beautiful. Every time she inhaled, her boobs strained in their ribbon harness. Every time she breathed out, her arms behind her back lowered, pulling the rope between her legs up and tightening the knot against her clit.

Lord, if she didn’t quit breathing, she was going to come.

Her rising passion made her breathe faster, and the rope ground harder against her clit, rippling her with pleasure.

He must see what it was doing to her. Surely he would make it stop. The ropes around her boobs felt like a man squeezing them, and her nipples hardened. Her eyes began losing focus with every time she exhaled, when knot lifted and rubbed her clit.

Her wet pussy soaked the rope, making it slippery.

Now, her every breath moved the knot, sliding back and forth across her clit. Her body began to tighten.

She fell to her knees, unable to stand when all the energy in her body was flowing down to her pussy, condensing and ready to burst.

Oh, she couldn’t come with him watching her like this. She bit her lip and wiggled her arms, trying to free herself, but that made the knot gyrate in her pussy, nearly sending her over the top but she held her breath to stop it.

“Are you going to leave me here, like this?” she gasped.

“Leave you here alone, so helpless, so vulnerable? No, I’m not that cruel.”

He walked around behind where she kneeled on the stone floor and yanked, unraveling the rope that tied her arms and releasing the rope between her legs. Her arms tingled as blood rushed into them. That intimate rope fell away from her clit and she nearly orgasmed as the slippery pressure came off, but passion made her crazy for him.

She jumped to her feet and grabbed Wulf around his neck, needing to touch him and his body. Pushing her bare feet to stand on tiptoe, she kissed him hard.

Just for a second, his lips didn’t move under hers.

Horror boomed in her head because she had made a hideous mistake and he was finished with her, but then Wulf’s lips opened and his strong arms crushed her to him, even tighter than the jade green rope still strapped around her breasts and waist.

Her breasts pressed against his bare chest, and their skin heated together. His hands were grabbing her bare ass and the ropes cinched around her waist, and he held her pelvis to him. She stroked up his neck and felt his short hair on her palms.