Saving Sunni (30 page)

I hardly noticed the ropes being removed, which was kind of a shame. I usually loved the feel of the ropes dragging over my skin, and Sir liked to pull each knot and twist as slowly as possible to give the maximum amount of sensation. This time, though, I drifted in and out of a light, contented doze while he put away his toys, and then lifted first me, then sage, and tucked us into bed. He kissed each of us and whispered, “I love you both. You never fail to make me proud.” sage surprisingly rolled over to the middle of the bed and cuddled into me as we both sank into the abyss of sleep.

Chapter 29

“Thank you for meeting us for coffee, Debi.”

Sir nodded solemnly to her as the three of us sat down with our Starbucks cups. Debi was even paler than usual, and I wondered whether she was going back to her Goth makeup or was simply nervous. I smiled reassuringly at her. Had I looked that scared the first time I sat like this with him, getting ready to discuss our first scene together?

“Of course, Sir,” she mumbled, then looked up in surprise and turned to me. “Is it okay that I called him Sir? It just kind of slipped out.” She darted looks back and forth between us, like a rabbit deciding whether the hungry coyote or the rushing traffic was the greater threat.

I reached across the table and patted her hand. “It’s fine with me, Debi. He does kind of have that effect on women. Is it okay with you, Sir?”

“Yes, of course. We will all need to get used to it if we are to take her to the club with us.” The slight hesitation in his voice caught my attention.

The focused way he looked at me made me pass my hand over my mouth in case of stray cookie crumbs. He lifted his eyebrows in a question, and I realized that he wanted to know if I had any reservations about this conversation. I nodded and pasted a large smile on my face, but internally I wasn’t sure if it really was a good idea. Did I want a young, attractive girl playing with my sir? I had gotten used to sage being around, and even enjoyed watching them together, but I wasn’t really sure how I would feel about a girl in her early twenties. The differences in our ages had bothered me a little at first, but I’d thought I was past that. Now it was making me nervous again.

“…how important it is that we negotiate this, so we agree on how we each behave, what actions are acceptable and which are not and what you are interested and comfortable in trying,” Sir said. I must have been more involved in my own speculations than I had thought. I resolved to pay more attention.

Concentrating on making my smile even wider, I turned back to Debi. “What kinds of things do you think you want to try?”

She turned a surprised look on me. “It’s up to me? I have no idea!”

Sir chuckled, putting a piece of paper on the table in front of her. “Here is a partial list of things that you might want to consider. Please put a three next to any you’re definitely interested in, a two next to any that you might someday be interested in but aren’t at the moment, and a one next to any that you have no interest in at all.”

Debi went through the list, making small comments to herself and occasionally looking up at us in bewilderment. Sir patiently explained the items she had never heard of, such as fire play, interrogation scenes, resistance play, and human ponies. She listened in amazement to his descriptions, switching to either disgust or thoughtfulness depending on whether the idea appealed to her or not. I was surprised at how unaware she was of kinky activities. But on reflection, it really wasn’t that shocking. Younger people, even though they might seem sophisticated, were often extremely sheltered. They might have tried drugs and alcohol, but very few of them knew much about the variety of possible experiences there really were in the world.

When she handed the paper back, Sir took it with a grave nod. He looked it over quickly and efficiently. “Very good. I believe I can work with this.”

Debi took a deep breath, like it had been a math test she thought she’d failed. She gathered her nerves and said, “I have a few other questions, if you don’t mind. Could you please explain what it means to be ‘under your protection’? Is it dangerous at your club? Who are you protecting me from? Would I be safer staying home?”

“Of course you would probably be safer if you stayed home. On your couch there is very little possibility of traffic accidents, random acts of craziness in the world, or unforeseen catastrophes. But in the general sense of the word you will be perfectly safe going to the club with us.”

I took a bite of my food to hide a smile at Debi’s startled look, but Sir went on seriously, as if he were explaining traffic rules to a new driver. “As to the other questions, let’s start with what it means to be under someone’s protection. It is not that you have to worry about gangbangers, muggers, or rapists dragging you off to a shadowed corner and violating you. No, it is simply a convention used in the lifestyle to loosely guide a new person and make sure that they do not get themselves into something they might not be ready for, or get involved with someone who might not be in their best interest to play with. As with any population, the lifestyle has a few bad apples. The older, more experienced members of the local community try to encourage those bad apples to go away and not bother new people. For the most part, they do a good job of keeping any predators out of the club and making it a safe, welcoming, and enjoyable place to meet people and have some fun.”

Debi listened wide-eyed, and Sir paused to take a sip of his coffee.

“So, in my role as your guide for the evening, if you have questions about anything you see, you are to please ask me about it before you freak out. If you have questions about how to behave, you may ask either me or one of the ladies. In fact, following their lead would not be a bad plan of action for you. Like any group, there are certain customs of behavior. While no one will yell at you if you do them wrong, we don’t want you to feel self-conscious or worry about how to act. Copying what sunni and sage do will help give you an idea of what is expected in most circumstances. Does that sound acceptable to you?”

“Yes, Sir.” Debi gulped. “Oh, that reminds me. What am I to call each of you at the club?”

“That is an excellent question. You may call the ladies by their scene names, sunni and sage. You may call me either Sir or Sir Rune as you are comfortable with, but please do not call me Rutger. We try to keep our vanilla lives out of the club to minimize some of the problems the uninformed can cause—such as you recently saw on television.” His face turned dark for a moment.

“As I said before, it will be my job to keep you from making an uninformed choice. If you see something you are interested in trying, I can either help you try it safely or help arrange it for you if I don’t have the expertise. If you are interested in playing with someone else, I can provide you what information I have about their experience in that form of play and what I know of their character from personal knowledge. I can assist you in negotiating a scene with them and then stand by to make sure your limits are honored. So, in general, my job is to act as a teacher and referee.”

Debi nodded.

“Now, it is important to understand one other thing before we finalize our plans. As the dominant and head of my leather family, the actions of my guest reflect on me. It will reflect also to a lesser extent on the ladies, but as your protector I am responsible for your behavior. If you go crazy or act rudely to anyone, not only will it affect how people look at you but how they look at us. If you get kicked out of the club, so will we. I will be the one held accountable for bringing you. Do you understand?” Sir spoke softly, but his voice made it clear he would put up with no nonsense.

“Yes, Sir. I think so,” Debi answered in an equally quiet voice, her eyes huge again. Was she was imagining the punishment for embarrassing him?

“Fine. Do you have any other questions?” He gave her a friendly smile, and she visibly relaxed.

“No, Sir.”

“I have one more thing that needs to be clarified before I pick your outfit. I think you will fit into some of the things the ladies have, but I need to know how comfortable you feel in revealing clothing or states of public undress. If you decide to take part in the scene I have in mind, that will be important.”

Debi looked appraisingly down at herself as she answered. “I think I feel okay about that. I don’t mind showing a bit, I think, but I don’t want to be completely naked in front of a bunch of strangers. If we do the scene, can I keep my panties on, please?” Her voice rose with a hint of panic at the end.

He chuckled. “Of course. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. This lifestyle is all about growing personally and overcoming your own issues and demons, not about making things worse. If you want to keep your bra and panties on, we can make that work.”

“Thank you,” she said, ducking her head a little. “Do the…other girls keep them on?”

“No, Debi, they do not. sunni here is quite the exhibitionist and enjoys the attention and appreciation she gets from others looking at her.” He smiled at me. “And sage is working with me to expand her self-confidence and self-worth through the mechanism of being naked in public. She trusts me to not let her be exposed in a situation where it would allow her to be hurt, and I trust her to do it and use the experience to further her understanding of what a beautiful person she is, inside and out.”

Debi sat up a little straighter. “I think I can do it too, or at least all of it except for my panties. I still think I want to keep those on for the first time at least—please?”

“That will be fine.” He smiled seriously. “Now, I have some general instructions for a scene that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I think it will be an excellent, if slightly unorthodox, introduction for you to the bdsm world. Here is the basic outline of what I want you to do…”

When we finally finished talking and stood up, I glanced down at my watch and saw that almost two hours had passed. The color had come back into Debi’s face, and she looked excited and eager. I marveled at how meticulous Sir was in negotiating with new people and how well he could put them at ease. This was the third time I had witnessed it: there had been my own first time at an event here in Denver, then when sage had joined us, and now with Debi. Watching her happily chatting with Sir as we walked to our cars, a strange thought struck me. What if, rather than simply playing together once, Debi would actually want to join our household?

I pushed the thought out of my mind, determined to deal with it later if it became an issue. Sir had said he might want to add other people to our household, so it was a possibility. At first I’d been quite upset by the idea, but I was beginning to think it might not be a bad thing. It had been rocky with sage at first, but things worked out pretty well once the emotional aspects had settled down. And Debi was a nice girl, at least when she was being an adult and not a teenage Goth chick. Of course she was very young, so it might not be a long-term thing. It would be really different having someone join our family only to leave in a few years if they decided they wanted something else. But then, there were no guarantees about anything in life. Change was pretty much the only constant thing there was.

Chapter 30

The first thing I saw as I swung the door open on Saturday night was the wide wings of the mask Debi was wearing. For a moment I had the impression that a bat had swallowed her head and taken up residence on her shoulders.

Laughing, I said, “Welcome, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark,” and ushered her into the apartment with a sweep of my hand.

“Is it too much?” Debi asked in a hurt tone. “I wasn’t really sure what to wear. I couldn’t remember what Sir said the other day when we were all talking.”

I looked down her body and saw a tight black T-shirt with “Goth Girrrl” printed in red ink that appeared to be dripping blood. It was tucked into a black denim skirt over torn hose, and finished off by her combat boots, which still lacked a proper shine.

“Nice shirt. But…” I hesitated, not sure how to answer without hurting her feelings. When Sir spoke, we both jumped. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me.

“Good evening, Debi.” His voice was low, rumbling, and very formal, and Debi seemed to forget I was there, transferring her mesmerized gaze to him. “As I mentioned the other day, since you are under my protection for the evening, you will behave as my girls do. I explained that day, and you agreed, that as with sunni and sage, I will pick out your outfit for the club tonight. Is that still acceptable to you?”

“Yes, Sir,” she squeaked, looking up at him with her mouth hanging open a bit. “I must have forgotten. There was so much that we went over.”

“Of course, Debi.” Sir nodded gravely, but there was a hint of a smile on his lips. “We are going to have dinner before we go, and I will answer any questions you may have. Now, why don’t you take that mask off before someone loses an eye and help the ladies in the kitchen while I finish up a few things? We can have a talk over dinner and get ready to go, if you are still interested in experiencing The Keyhole.”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned and calmly walked back into the living room.

“All righty, then. Let’s get dinner ready, shall we?” I said with a smile, taking the mask and leading a saucer-eyed Debi into the kitchen.

As we pulled up in front of the club at The Keyhole later, Sir turned to Debi, who was sitting in the back seat with me.

“Debi,” he said with a friendly but very serious air, “do you still want to go through with this? If not, there is no harm done and we will take you back to your car.”