U is for… (Checklist #21)

Chapter 1

This conversation wasn’t going well.

Mara stood on a crushed stone path in the moonlight facing a Dom who radiated cold irritation.

In any other venue, being alone in the dark with this man would have prompted her to cross the street, call a friend, and lace her keys between her fingers.

Not because of something superficial like the muscles, tattoos, and overall biker-gang aesthetic but because of the hardness of his impatience and irritation radiating off him.

He didn’t want to be here.

That wasn’t accurate. He undoubtedly wanted to be here; he just didn’t want to be here with her.

Five minutes ago, he’d hailed her by name as she walked with the crowd of slaves and submissives back to the main building. She’d stopped, quietly thrilled the game was starting already. There was inherent awkwardness baked in to their greetings since they were meeting in a BDSM club.

And not meeting by choice or chance.

They were assigned partners for a game no one asked to play. For a BDSM club that took consent seriously, the club’s leadership—the three Las Palmas Overseers—hadn’t bothered to ask if anyone wanted to play.

Members had been given a choice, so technically there was no coercion, but it was a bad choice. Play the game with your assigned partner, or quit the club.

Mara was quite delighted with the game. Something like this was exactly what she needed.

Her partner didn’t seem to share her enthusiasm.

“Mercer.” He offered his hand and they shook briefly.

“Mara. But you already know that.” She glanced at the large folder he held in his other hand. Doms, Masters, and Tops had stayed behind after the game announcement to get their assigned letter and an information packet with their partner submissive’s checklist.

He grunted to confirm her statement.

When he didn’t say more, her own impatience rose, though she made sure it didn’t show. “What’s our letter?”

“U,” he said.

“Me?”

“No. The letter.”

“Oh. Are there many items?”

“Only two, and one of them is a hard pass for both of us.”

Mara looked at her kink-focused project partner.

He wasn’t handsome, but he was dangerously sexy. Or perhaps she found him sexy because he looked dangerous.

He wore classic Dom leather—leather pants and a leather vest—which was rather unusual for this club where often the male Doms, Masters, and Owners looked like they’d just stepped out of a boardroom.

The vest showed off his heavily muscled and tattooed arms and shoulders.

Her first categorization of him as a “biker” was certainly influenced by the leather and ink, but it wasn’t just that. The attitude sold the comparison.

His hair was cut short, a rich brown sprinkled with gray.

He had a heavy brow, and both his forehead and the corners of his eyes were marked by deep lines.

Between the lines and the gray in his hair, she would have calculated his age in his late forties or early fifties, but his body made her think younger than that. Early forties.

“We better fucking do this,” he said with a growl. “I doubt there are playrooms open, so it will be in a courtyard.”

“Do what?” she asked.

He frowned then spoke slowly as if she were stupid. “A scene. To satisfy the game.”

“What, specifically, will we be doing?” She wasn’t bothered by his tone. Hers was a perfectly reasonable question, so he was unreasonable to act irritated.

“I’m not fucking you if that’s what you’re asking.”

Mara’s brow twitched up. A dozen responses sprang to mind, none of them submissive. She was mentally editing the least scathing when he continued.

“I’ll paddle your ass and we’ll call it a day.” He held up the envelope. “Your checklist says you’re good with a paddling?”

At this point, she was perversely interested in this dickhead’s thought process, so she abandoned the verbal evisceration she’d been softening and replied simply, “I am.”

“Great. All you need to do is wear your uniform.”

Genuine surprise made her blink. “My…uniform?”

He studied her, and his expression shifted. This whole conversation he’d been visibly irritated. Now, he looked confused.

“Your sub uniform.”

“Sub uniform?” Mara’s stomach knotted. Was there a uniform that she’d ignored? She could be rather single-minded when focused on something, so it was possible she’d bypassed a rule, or more likely ignored a social norm.

Is that why she had such a hard time getting people to play with her? She was out of uniform?

Mara frantically ran through her memories, looking for some through-line to how the other subs dressed.

There were common items—corsets, short skirts, latex dresses, sheer robes—but nothing worn consistently by the majority of the subs.

“There’s no sub uniform.”

“Isn’t there?” He sounded unsure for the first time, his gaze unfocused as if he too were scanning his memories.

“Las Palmas doesn’t even have a dress code.”

Most clubs had dress code or attire rules.

She’d been a member of one other club before discovering Las Palmas.

At that club, there was a hard rule around sub footwear—subs had to be barefoot or wearing high heels—and guidelines around clothing, which resulted in most subs wearing a corset and a skirt.

Las Palmas had far fewer rules in an inverse relationship to the more stringent membership requirements.

“Fuck,” Master Mercer sighed. “There isn’t.”

“What did you think it was?” She was genuinely curious.

He shot her a hard, reprimanding look, as if she’d been mocking him. That look made her want to smirk and put him in his place, but she settled for arching a brow. She wasn’t going to placate and smooth over his being wrong.

And yet…

Yet his hard, almost-warning look also made her want to sink to her knees. The context of being at the club allowed her to react in a way she never would outside these walls.

Then kneel and be submissive! Shit like this is why you have a hard time getting anyone to scene with you.

She refused to believe it. She knew plenty of women here at the club who weren’t immediately and easily submissive. Who weren’t submissive at all outside of the club. They all got to scene whenever they wanted. More than that, the Doms seemed to like that they were powerful and assertive.

Which meant it was something else about her that turned tops away. She spent most nights at the club watching rather than participating.

“A corset and skirt,” he snapped.

Mara tugged on her sleeve self-consciously.

She was wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved teddy.

It wasn’t latex, but there was a coating to the stretchy, thick polyester that gave it the glossy, almost-wet look of latex.

Cut high on the sides, it left her legs—someone once told her they were her best feature—bare, but a zipper from neck to navel as well as zippers over each breast made it obvious how easy it would be for a top to expose the parts of her currently hidden.

She had on low-heeled boots with shiny studs on the sides. They were admittedly more punk than fetwear but practical, given that they’d traipsed across the Las Palmas property in order to attend the meeting where the game was announced.

“Uniform is the one item on our list?”

“The only item on our list since neither of us is interested in urethral sounding.”

Mara’s gaze dipped briefly to his crotch. That kink was usually tied to the having of a penis. He made a noise that was half alarmed, half amused.

“Not happening, honey.”

The way he said “honey” was almost insulting. Mocking. And yet there was a smoothness to his voice that bypassed her normal response which would have been to in turn call him “sweetie” or something equally belittling.

“Is it specifically a sub uniform?” she asked to redirect. “Or will any uniform do?”

“It just says uniform, but anything else is role-play.” He snorted derisively. “I don’t do role-play.”

Mara took a moment to mentally process the new variables in their situation. That took only a second. The rest of the silence was spent secretly mourning what might have been. She’d been excited for the game because it meant she would get to scene, and maybe even try something new in that scene.

Instead, she got a pissy Dom who clearly didn’t want to have anything to do with the game or her. It hurt, but she buried the hurt deep, letting herself focus on the issue before them.

“I understand you just want to be done with me. There are several options to efficiently hit that marker.”

Master Mercer’s shoulders jerked, as if she’d tapped him with a live wire, and the hard expression melted off his face to be replaced by a slight frown that might have been concern. Then again, it was dark and she didn’t know him. It was probably anger that she was taking control of the situation.

“First, I borrow a uniform but we skip any role-play associated with it. I’m sure someone has a lingerie maid outfit. Failing that, maybe someone will let me wear their scrubs.”

There was an unspoken rule that no one talked about what they did in the real world once they were inside the club, but she’d seen more than a few people rush in on a Friday night wearing various medical scrubs.

She wasn’t sure how they’d feel about letting her wear their work clothes so she could get paddled, but hopefully someone was willing if that was the option they chose.

“Second, I change into a corset and skirt and we simply pretend it’s the sub uniform. Third, you’re the one in the uniform.”

For the first time, Master Mercer smiled.

Oh. Wow.

He had a wonderful smile—big and genuine, but with just the right amount of smirk tugging one side of his mouth up higher than the other.

“I don’t think you’ll find a French maid outfit that fits me, even if I were willing to wear it, which I’m not.”

Mara sputtered out a surprised laugh, her brain superimposing a maid uniform on the big man paper-doll style.

“As amusing as that is, I hadn’t imagined that possibility until you said it.

I meant that we say this is your Dom uniform.

No one has to change and we get the scene done immediately.

” She wasn’t sure what possessed her, but she reached out and patted his leather-covered pec twice.

The leather was warm and buttery smooth under her hand, the chest beneath the leather hard.

She meant to pull her hand back after the second pat, but instead, she pressed her palm against him, fingers splayed. His pectoral twitched and she snatched her hand back.

His gaze shifted slowly from his own chest to her. Something changed. Something she didn’t quite understand. His expression was the same, and it wasn’t as if he’d avoided looking at her before this moment, but now, it was as if he were seeing her.

“You had plans for this weekend already,” he said as if he’d just figured something out.

Mara took a deep breath, exhaling the need that touching him had ignited. “What makes you think that?”

“You want to get this over with fast.”

She raised a brow. “No, I don’t. You do. And you’ve made that very clear.”

He frowned, crossing his arms.

“I have no desire to scene with someone who is doing so grudgingly,” she went on. “Not only is it insulting, it’s dangerous.”

He uncrossed his arms, mouth open to protest, but she didn’t let him backtrack or justify.

“A partner who isn’t fully engaged won’t be truly present and focused in the scene, which is both emotionally and physically risky. I have no desire to be hurt.”

His frown deepened as he recrossed his arms. Maybe he felt bad since she’d tangentially accused him of bad behavior, but his feelings were his problem.

“My only plans this weekend were to watch, though I’m always hopeful regarding participation.” She crossed her arms, realized she was mirroring his body language, and uncrossed them. “We have three viable solutions. Would you like to choose, or do you want me to?”

She didn’t want to choose. She desperately didn’t, but there was no hope of having any kind of meaningful scene or dynamic with this Dom who clearly wanted nothing to do with her.

He’d probably shrug, have her choose, give her a few swats with a paddle, cursory after care, and they’d be done and have gone their separate ways in less than an hour.

Then she’d either go home and spend the weekend masturbating to fantasies, or stay and watch how everyone else handled the game.

If she opted to stay, she’d wear an insertable and effectively edge herself for at least a night, if not a full night and day.

Then she’d go home and spend what was left of the weekend masturbating to memories of what she’d seen rather than fantasies.

Experience had taught her that masturbating to memories was more effective and enjoyable, but the memory had to be substantial.

Depending on how Master Mercer handled the cursory paddling, she might be able to combine a memory of that with a reality-based fantasy about what might have been.

Settle in with her magic wand vibrator and start with the memory of the paddling and then switch to fantasy.

Mercer looked at her with such complete focus that she felt it like a physical touch. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

He was looking at her like he was interested in her. Like he wanted something from her. Which made no sense because every bit of the interaction until now made it clear he wanted nothing from her.

“You’re already one foot out the door,” he said after a long moment of studying her.

“As are you.”

“No.” He sighed. “I’m just an asshole. Come on, Brown Eyes, let’s go.”

Master Mercer put his hand on her back and with a gentle push, turned her toward the library.