Saving Sunni (9 page)

“Sir,” sage started, and he gave her a stern look.

“Yes?”

She tried to look pathetic, but I could have told her it was no use. She apparently came to the same conclusion herself. “Nothing.” Her shoulders drooped a little as she went to the restroom to change.

I gave Sir a kiss on the cheek. “See you later.”

He smiled at me and patted my ass. “That’s my girl.” He glanced at the door sage had disappeared behind before he left.

There was no denying that it was a grueling two hours, although it did start slowly. Master Sandi and Master Rick were partners in the school, and I thought they were married as well. When they introduced themselves, sage and I exchanged a look and had to stifle giggles at the word “Master.” Rick was not a big guy, but he had a buzz cut and a military bearing. It didn’t surprise me that he was into martial arts. His personality belied his looks, though. He made an elaborate welcome speech to us and a shy teenage boy, and then launched into a long story about the Grand Master’s history and Rick’s own start in jujitsu. He went on for about fifteen minutes before Sandi cut in, reminding him that there was another class later and it was time to get started.

Sandi was a very petite redhead, probably around five foot two, and couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. She also had a girlish voice. Before class she had been giggling and joking with several of the students, but when she got up to lead the class, she was all business. There was nothing girlish about her anymore. She barked out commands, and it was soon apparent that she was as strong as any bodybuilder. I wondered, as we dropped to the floor to do pushups, how she put up with Rick’s prattling—there was just no other word for it. The contrast between their looks, their teaching style, and each other was startling.

Besides the pushups, we did sit-ups, something called “frog jumps” which made sage groan loudly in protest, practiced punches and blocks, and then split up into smaller groups to learn the first of our forms. sage looked extremely unhappy whenever I glanced at her. I tried to talk to her a little bit, but I could tell she blamed me for making her go through this and she wouldn’t meet my eyes very often.

When we had to spar, we were paired up as the most inexperienced. sage looked apprehensive, as if she thought I might actually try to hit her. This was getting a little silly. I did a few slow, exaggerated movements from the form we’d been learning, hoping she would take the hint and try the blocks they’d shown us. Instead, she did some flailing with her arms and hit back, not bothering to control where her fists were going. I managed to avoid most of her wild punches, but she did catch me in the arm once. I could tell she was feeling insecure and frightened, so I tried not to take it personally. I saw Sir come in and stand at the door watching toward the end of the sparring. He looked thoughtful, as if deciding that he needed to work with us himself. I wasn’t sure whether that would be fun or not.

In the morning, sage was obviously sore. I had gotten up early, feeling energized and going over the new forms in my head. I could hardly wait for Sir and sage to leave so I could do some more practicing. I was making breakfast and visualizing myself as a super-buff martial arts champion when sage stalked stiff-legged into the kitchen, moaning.

“I can barely raise my arms,” she complained, lowering herself gingerly into a kitchen chair.

I poured her a cup of coffee, resisting the urge to say, “Poor baby.”

“I’m a little sore too,” I lied, setting down two plates of scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast. I sat down across from her to dig into mine. “But wasn’t it kind of fun?”

She glared in my direction, but it didn’t look completely sincere. “It was interesting,” she conceded. “Maybe we can work on the forms a little tonight before Sir gets home,” she added, surprisingly. “I don’t want to forget them.”

“That would be great!” I said. sage gave me a skeptical look, and I wondered if I was being too enthusiastic. “I mean, it’d be cool to have them down before the next class.” She didn’t say anything, so I tried again. “And it might make resistance play scenes more interesting.”

Her eyebrows went up a little at that, but she only said, “Hmm,” before going back to her breakfast.

She was limping a little when she left for class and theatrically groaned when she hoisted her book bag onto her shoulder, but I thought she seemed a little less tense than she had been. Maybe Sir was right about the martial arts. I didn’t know how worried sage was about Randy bothering us, but having a few self-defense skills couldn’t hurt.

I spent the day on the computer, looking for supplies to recommend to Geri, reading threads on the puppy groups of Fetlife and writing down ideas for the club. I hoped Sir would let me have a party sometime soon. I had several people who had expressed interest in it.

I missed working at the store, even though I hadn’t been there very long. I daydreamed a little about when I would be able to go back. I would hand a large stack of papers to Geri with all kinds of great ideas for new products she could carry. She would be absolutely thrilled and immediately make me the assistant manager and give me a huge discount on anything in the store. Both Debi and Tina would acknowledge that I was the coolest person they knew, even if I was older than they were. But for now I was stuck in front of the computer, not allowed to leave the apartment. It just wasn’t fair.

Chapter 8

We went to The Keyhole that Saturday night. Sir let me wear my new puppy outfit when we got there, just in case I might meet some other puppies and interest them in the new group. sage wore a new outfit as well—a black stretchy miniskirt with a waist cincher and new four inch heels. She liked showing off her breasts, which were loose, but I knew the short skirt was making her feel self-conscious. She kept tugging at it, nearly losing her balance several times on the stilettos, which were taller than she was used to. Of course, at the club nobody cared if your legs were a little pudgy, and besides, with her D-cup boobs bouncing free, nobody was looking at her thighs anyway.

Sir gave her an appraising look. “You look very beautiful tonight.”

sage grimaced slightly and muttered, “Thanks.”

I might have felt a little jealous of the attention earlier in our relationship, but tonight it didn’t bother me at all. He usually called me “pet” because of my interest in puppy play, and he had lately begun to call sage “beautiful.” I knew that was to help her get used to being called and considered beautiful, but it seemed to make her uncomfortable.

I left her to her paranoid thoughts and followed Sir through the room, swiveling my hips a little to make my tail wave back and forth. For sexiness I would have preferred a cat costume, but it would have felt disloyal to my puppy self. So I concentrated on puppy gestures and thoughts, and when Sir sat down I positioned myself next to his legs and rubbed my face on them, savoring the smell of his leather pants. sage just stood, apparently trying to decide how best to lower herself to the floor. Sir tossed us both cushions, and I curled up in as much of a ball as I could, trying not to be aware of sage’s awkward maneuvering to the floor on her shaky heels, as she simultaneously tried not to let the short skirt ride up too much. I really didn’t want to be amused by it or think how much more gracefully I would have done it. It felt mean. So I stared around the room to see if I recognized anyone.

We waited while Sir chatted with the other dominants. Occasionally he would nudge sage and say, “Beautiful, would you go get us some more snacks?”

She looked exasperated, but I knew he was doing it mainly to make her practice getting up and down in her heels. She would have been much happier barefoot, and sometimes Sir allowed it as a slave thing, but I knew he liked us to wear heels and look classy. I’m not sure how puppyish high heels were, but they did look sexy with the body stocking, so I didn’t mind wearing them. I’d have asked to take them off if I’d been able to play, but I didn’t think there would be much of a chance of that tonight.

After a while Sir got up, picked up his toy bag, and motioned for us to follow. It was an “introduction” night with a class for people who were new to the club to get acquainted with bdsm, and the dungeon was packed. We had to maneuver around groups of people standing around watching the scenes. From all over the room there were the satisfying thumps of floggers and cries or moans from the submissives, or “bottoms,” who were getting beaten. Not too long ago, sage had walked through the dungeon wide-eyed and flinching every time she saw someone being hit with a flogger or a cane. At that time she wouldn’t even look at the needle play that frequently happened in the well-lit corners. It was only a couple of years ago that I had been introduced to the leather/bdsm scene myself, and I smiled as I thought back to how scary it had all seemed. Now everything was perfectly normal and understandable, and we had both even asked Sir if we could try play piercing in the near future. That was something he hadn’t done in a long time, but he promised to think about getting a kit so we could experiment. I knew it wasn’t his favorite kind of play, but I thought sage and I could use it with each other since people did it mainly for the endorphin rush, not as dominance/submission play.

I thought about The Fringe Element and wondered if Geri would consider carrying needle kits, when Sir found a free bondage table and claimed it. I hadn’t known he was planning on playing tonight. He generally carried his toy bag whenever we came to the club, although I thought it was mostly for the psychological effect. Tonight he sent me to get disinfectant for the table. Would I get to play? The bottom for the evening often set up the equipment beforehand, and the one who didn’t play cleaned it afterwards.

So I prepared the table as Sir and sage pulled out various toys and organized his working space. There was no point in guessing what he was going to do; he often intentionally put out toys that he wasn’t planning to use just to keep us guessing. But when he had me stand in front of him, facing away, and I heard the sound of plastic wrap being pulled away from the roll, I knew exactly what was going to happen, and started shaking a bit.

I was a little claustrophobic, and although rope didn’t bother me, plastic wrap did. Obviously Sir wanted me to get over that, and would work on it a little tonight. I suddenly really wished sage was going to be the bottom, but I knew there was no point arguing.

“Take off your clothes,” Sir growled in my ear, and I slowly peeled away the body stocking. Even though it was pretty much see-through anyway, there was something about undressing in public that was intense and erotic. I was acutely aware of people turning to watch as I stripped, and a surge of pleasure and excitement coursed through me. sage still had trouble getting used to being naked at the club, no matter how much Sir and I told her she looked very sexy, but I loved it. Most women fantasized about public nudity, but most didn’t have a place where they could do it without being judged. At the club size wasn’t important; people would still admire and appreciate you for being willing to show yourself. And you never felt like you were showing off, because you were only doing what your dominant told you to do. When I used to go to vanilla clubs, there was always a sense of needing to be perfect in order to “deserve” to show your body. Here it was the dominant who wanted to show you off, and no one would think mean thoughts about you for doing it.

So I undressed as slowly as I could, partly to put off the plastic wrap for as long as possible. Sir and sage began to wind the plastic tightly around me, pinning my arms to my torso and flattening my breasts. I concentrated on my breathing technique, trying not to be afraid, telling myself I could still breathe; this was no different than being tied in rope. I was going to do fine. The wrap went around and around as I tried not to pay any attention to the constriction around my chest.

Sir stopped after a few minutes and whispered, “Are you okay?”

I had closed my eyes and was holding my breath. I let it out slowly and opened them, nodding. I was still calm, although I could feel the pre-panic alarm starting. I concentrated again on my breathing, counting in for four and out for six. If I could focus on that, I could stop myself from freaking out. I knew that fear was part of the scene and it would probably always be there to some extent, but I had to learn to keep it under control.

Then I caught a glimpse of a face in the crowd that I thought I knew. Of course there were lots of faces that I
knew
; I had been coming to the club for two years or so. But this face struck a particular chord, and it immediately took my mind off the panic I fought.

Had it been Randy? I couldn’t tell. I only saw the face for a split second before it vanished behind a group of people, but there had been something about it…I just didn’t know if it was him. Maybe there was a new guy who looked like him. I almost asked sage to look around, but then I realized that Sir would go crazy if I suggested that Randy might be here. So I tried to see if I could spot the face as I waited for Sir to finish. I went into my breathing again and decided I was mistaken; Randy couldn’t possibly be here. I was almost grateful for the distraction. The added stress of looking for Randy got me nicely through the wrapping process and the residual anxiety of the wrapping kept me from obsessing about the face I’d thought I’d seen.

Now Sir bent over and picked me up, easily laying me on the table. sage slipped a rolled-up towel under my head and waited by the toy bag for instructions from Sir.

Sir reached around to his back and pulled out a huge machete, brandishing it above his head. I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me, but it was still a little frightening having it slice the air so close to where I was lying. I let out a scream, pretending more fear than I felt, but also trying not to struggle. That could easily trigger my claustrophobia.