“It is, but it suits me when I’m at the club. I like to keep the two parts of my life a bit separate. I dress differently, this place is different. I don’t feel quite as homesick for the ranch if there’s nothing here to really remind me of it. It’s like having an office. It’s nice, you like it, but you wouldn’t want to live there, at least not all the time. Still, it’s better than a hotel room. And Rachel sometimes sends care packages of food from home.”
We ate in silence for a time, enjoying the food.
“Chase, can I ask you a question?” Something had been buzzing around in the back of my mind.
“Sure, darling. Always. Anything you want to know.”
“Do you have a submissive now?” I took a drink of wine, amazed at myself. Direct and to the point tonight, aren’t we?
He raised his eyebrows. “No, I don’t. I haven’t had one in, oh, maybe a year or more.” He was quiet for a moment, his eyes faraway. It took him a minute to come back from wherever that memory had taken him.
“Are you interested in being my sub?” He looked at me over the rim of his wineglass.
I hesitated just long enough to make Chase smile. But I shook my head. “No. I want to stay with Jake. I wondered though, if you didn’t have one, why? Or, if you did, where you had play scenes.”
“I see. Jake’s still interested in being a Dom then? Good for him. I don’t have a sub right now for a lot of reasons. For one, I don’t have time to devote to a relationship.” He stood, gathering up the dinner plates, taking them to the kitchen.
I had the sense I’d crossed a line, but if I wanted to know what potential this relationship had, I wanted to know it now.
He came back to the table, pulling his chair around close to me, swinging one long leg over the seat, straddling the back.
“The rest of the story: I had a sub, someone I really cared about. But something happened…and the relationship ended.” He took a drink from my wine glass.
He swirled the pale liquid around in the glass. “You picked a nice vintage here. I like this one. Fresh, but with a bit of bite in it.” He swallowed the rest.
“It’s a lot like you, Abby. You’ve turned out to have quite a bit of bite in you as well.” He stood, pushing the chair to the side.
He pulled me up to him, his lips on mine, insistent and hard. Almost too hard. I knew he wasn’t drunk but he was rough, holding my arms tightly. I responded to his kiss, but struggled in his grasp. There was a sound of tearing fabric.
“Enough Chase.” I pulled away, breathing hard. “Enough.”
Chase was looking down at me, a strange mixture of emotions on his face, with guilt eventually overshadowing the rest. He ran a hand through his hair, messing up the thick strands.
“I’m sorry, Abby. I’m not sure… I guess bringing up old memories isn’t that easy for me. Let’s leave the rest of this conversation for a different time, okay?”
He pulled me toward him. I stiffened, but he murmured some comforting noise against my hair, one I suspected he used on recalcitrant fillies. I let him hold me against his chest, his head resting against mine. We stood like that for a long time, his hands gently rubbing my back, me listening to the steady beat of his heart.
“We really should go.” His voice was soft, the words spoken over my head. He held me away from him.
“How much damage did I do to the dress?” He turned me around. I peered over my shoulder as he inspected the fabric.
“Here, there’s a little tear at the back of the sleeve. It’s not noticeable. I don’t think you’re going to lose the sleeve.” He turned me back to face him.
“Unless I suspend you by your wrists, which I wasn’t planning to do. And if I did, I’d undress you first anyway.” He kissed my forehead.
“I really am sorry, Abby. Are we okay?”
I nodded. I thought we were. Or at least I hoped we were.
***
The club was open by the time we arrived. Chase took me in through a back door, down a warren of narrow hallways and through the lounge area. The music from the dance floor was already pounding through the wall and the lounge held a smattering of couples and groups.
“Chase! About time you show up.” A female voice boomed across the lounge from the direction of Chase’s office. I expected to see a giantess, some flaming-haired Amazon striding across the room. But the woman attached to the voice was a diminutive blonde, barely five feet tall, if at all, with lively blue eyes set in a pixie face.
Chase leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Midnight Lace is due any minute and I wanted to watch the birth…”
“But she’s not cooperating? Typical female.” Her bright gaze turned to me, an open look of curiosity on her face.
Chase’s arm was around my waist, and now he pulled me closer, jostling me with his hip.
“Abby, I’d like you to meet Stacy, my right hand everything. She’s the glue that holds me together on the weekends. Stacy, this is Abby. She’s my guest for the evening.”
Stacy extended a delicate hand and I took it, expecting an equally delicate grip. I was surprised when my hand was engulfed in a grip that would have made a rig worker flinch. When she let go I resisted the urge to check for broken bones.
“Nice to meet you. If you need anything and Chase is busy, just find me. Or ask at the bar if I’m not riding herd out here.” She glanced around the room.
“I’d better make a tour through the back. We have several of the private rooms booked tonight. The schedule is on your desk. None of those clients are here; I think the first is due in about an hour.”
“Thanks, Stacy.” Chase kissed her cheek again. She moved off through the crowd, her gazed focused on a couple on the other side of the room, waving a greeting. Chase watched her as she made her way out of the lounge. I wondered what the history was between them, surprised by a sudden pang of jealousy.
“She’s amazing. I’d be lost without her.”
“How did you meet her?” I seemed to have no control over my mouth tonight.
“Stacy? She was a dancer at a different club. I liked her spunk. She takes no guff from anyone.” Chase laughed.
“I saw her drop a six foot six, two hundred fifty pound guy to the floor once at the dance club. She told me later he’d been ‘inappropriate’ with her during a lap dance. I decided then, if I had a club, I’d want her as the muscle. It’s been a match made in heaven.”
Chase turned to me, cocking an eyebrow. “I think I see a bit of the green-eyed monster in your very green eyes, Abby.” He leaned down, kissing me quickly.
“Don’t worry. It’s only the horses you have to be jealous of right now.”
***
I hadn’t really known what to expect from this evening, but it turned out to be very interesting. Chase knew everyone of course, introducing me to people, chatting with many of the members. We stayed mostly in the lounge until almost midnight. The noises from the hall with the public rooms had grown louder. I could hear a crescendo of screams and moans, the smack of something hitting flesh and the definite sound of a whip cracking.
Chase had left me to go greet one of his private clients. He planted a kiss on my forehead.
“I’ll be right back. These are very private people. I’d like to get them settled, see what they need. Stacy’s around if you need something. Just ask Jack to find her.” He nodded at the man behind the bar.
“I’ll be fine. I’m going to wander down there.” I pointed down the hall where I’d gone with Jake the last time I’d been here, following Chase to my first bondage session with him. It seemed like an eternity ago. The noises I was hearing were making me intensely curious; I hoped some of the rooms were public.
“Okay. I’ll find you when I’m done. Just don’t get invited in to a session. You’re mine now, not to be shared with the rest of the clients.” He ran a possessive hand over my back.
“In that dress, you are totally fuckable. And that’s my job now, no one else’s.” And then he was gone.
The first few rooms I went past had the curtains pulled. I could hear noises, had a vague idea of what was happening. In some cases, I longed to twitch the curtain aside just enough to see, but I knew that was bad manners.
There was a small group outside a room ahead and I stood at the back so if I ended up staring open-mouthed, no one would notice.
And I was staring open-mouthed as soon as I figured out what was happening.
A pretty black-haired woman was strapped to a huge X-shaped cross, nak*d except for nipple clamps and a thick spiked dog collar and a coat of red lipstick that made her lips stand out against her pale skin. She was covered in a film of sweat, red marks on her thighs and stomach.
As I watched, a nak*d man came into view, a black leather whip in his hand, trailing behind him like a lightly coiled snake. He asked her a question; she responded. My mouth dropped open further as he turned and I got a look at his erect cock, standing away from his body, hard and long. He held her chin in his hand, kissing her roughly. I could see her leaning after him as he pulled away, obviously hungry for more.
It made me think of Jake, my dominant, so obviously aroused during our sessions. And I thought of myself during our sessions, how I hungered for his touch, even the sting of pain, aching for more.
The man stepped back and paused. Then the whip flashed out, the tip striking the woman with a loud crack. She jerked, and I yelped. The man standing in front of me turned, his finger to his lips. I nodded, chastised.
I looked at the woman closely; her head was back, mouth open, a look of pure ecstasy on her face. The whip cracked again, hitting her in a glancing stroke at the top of one pale thigh. She cried out, her h*ps thrusting forward, pulling against her wrist and ankle restraints.
Again and again, the whip cracked, lashing against the woman’s body, inching higher and higher on her legs. My own body jerked with each crack of the whip, imagining what it must be like for the woman: wondering how high the whip would strike, the pleasure experienced from each bite of the whip against her tender flesh.
“Martin is an expert a whip.” The soft voice in my ear made me jump. I felt Chase’s body behind me, his hands on my ass. I pushed back against him and he slid his hands around to the front of my body, caressing the tops of my thighs, the very same places where the woman on the cross was being hit with the whip.
I could feel his erection pressed against my ass and I shamelessly arched my back, my h*ps undulating against Chase’s body, rubbing my body hard against him.
“Gets you hot, doesn’t it?” He nuzzled my ear, his tongue flicking along my neck. His lips pressed against my skin; I was certain he could feel my pulse pounding against his mouth.
I nodded. More than anything, right then, I wanted Chase, hard. I turned my head, looking up at him.
“Is there some place we can go?”
“Follow me.”
***
The room was small and dark, up a narrow set of stairs at the back of the club. I had my arms around Chase’s neck before he’d thumbed the lock, hands tugging at his hair, my tongue against his lips, body pressed hard against his. As I pulled him closer I felt the rip of fabric as the tear in my dress grew bigger. But I didn’t care.