25. Chapter 25 – Sloane
Chapter 25 – Sloane
“T amen?” I called out one week later, cautiously entering room forty on the second floor. It was one of the darker themed rooms, with various BDSM tools and goodies. The man of the hour designed most of it himself, though he never admitted why he cared specifically for this room above all the others. “What’s going on?”
Val told me ten minutes ago that I had been booked for the evening and should report to the room. I recoiled at the idea, but her cheerful grin and the unexpected revelation that Tamen was behind it all quickly eased my apprehension. He was the only man allowed to book me for a private session. Which was exactly how I wanted it to be.
“Hello, My Pretty Little Rainbow.” Tamen’s thick accent drew my attention to the side of the room as he stepped out from behind a silk screen set up as a changing area. He looked magnificent striding across the room; the black fabric of his shirt shimmered against the charcoal of his suit pants as he walked, the undone shirt revealing a glimpse of his inked chest. With one of his favorite cigarettes burning between his fingers, he stood barefoot at the edge of the room, staring intently at me; the sweet scent of his tobacco hanging in the air between us. “Thank you for meeting me here.”
I crossed my arms over my maroon body con dress and watched him speculatively. “I wasn’t aware I had a choice.”
He grinned, taking a puff of his cigarette. He tipped his head back and blew the smoke up to the ceiling in that powerfully dominant way that always made me wet. “Tonight is all about you.”
The club was nearly at capacity, with a million different things he and I could both be doing to keep things running smoothly. “Why?” I asked. “Why are we here?”
“To recreate a night that was one of my favorites. But one that desperately needs a redo, nonetheless.”
“I’m so confused.” I shook my head with a stupid smile on my face. “You’re talking in riddles.”
“The first night I had you.” He replied, reminding me of the night at the private event when he tricked me into thinking he was a faceless John using my body for his own pleasure.
“I thought you said you’d never apologize for that night.”
“I won’t.” He shook his head, taking another drag off his cigarette before pinching it out with his fingers. “That’s not what this is.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s me giving myself to you, completely, without limits. Just like you gave yourself to me that night.” He undid his cuff links and nodded to the room where different implements were all waiting to be used. “Pick your poison, Rainbow. I can’t say no. I’m at your mercy.”
“My mercy.” I spun around, looking at all the fun items I could use on him if he were truly my toy for the night. “This feels like a test.”
“Does it?” He questioned, sliding his shirt off and hanging it up on a hook on the wall. “It feels like a gift to me.”
“I sure love getting gifts.” I hummed, desperate to give in to it. What I wouldn’t do to have Tamen in my clutches for a night of fun on my terms.
“So, pick your gift tonight, Rainbow.” He leaned over my shoulder, whispering in my ear as I took another appraisal of the room. “How are you going to use me tonight?”
“Fuck.” I moaned and then pointed to my favorite toy in the room. “St. Andrew’s cross.”
I could feel his smile against my cheek before he kissed my neck and walked around me toward the cross in the corner of the room. He pulled it out into the center of the room and eyed up the shackles already attached at the four corners. “This is your pick?”
“It is.” I crossed my arms and stared down my nose at him slightly. “Are you still brave enough to give yourself to me?”
Tamen chuckled with a sinister grin and pulled the fastener of his pants open. “I’m all yours, darling.” Holding my stare, he pushed his pants and boxers down, stepping out of them and adding them to his pile of discarded clothes. “How do you want me?”
I crooked my finger at him, walking over to the cross and looking up at the wrist cuffs at the top. “Tied up and silent.”
He tried to hide his grin as he turned his back against the cross, holding his arms up to the cuffs, waiting for me to fasten him.
Slowly, I shook my head and twirled my finger in the air for him to turn around. “Facing the cross.”
Raising one brow at me in question, he chuckled lightly and turned around, facing the cross and revealing his backside to me. “Like this?”
“Just like that.” I murmured, locking his left wrist first in the cuff and then moving around his body to do the right. When I was behind him, I laid a kiss directly between his shoulders and he took a deep breath, like it gave him life. “Nervous?”
“Anxious.” He replied, glancing over his shoulder as I hooked his other wrist to the cross before slowly lowering myself to the floor to attach his ankles. The cross was more of an X than a cross, and it made him have to spread his feet pretty far to reach the cuffs, leaving him unstable and on edge.
Exactly how I wanted him to be.
Having been detained appropriately, he silently watched me as I walked around the cross, looking at him through the V between the armbars. “I’m not sure how far to push you.”
“Are you afraid of breaking me?” He grinned monstrously. “I’m unbreakable.”
“Safe word of your choice.”
He rolled his eyes and glared at me before adjusting himself to stand as upright as possible. “Black.”
I let the word tumble around in my head for a moment, wondering why he chose that to be his saving grace, but I kind of already knew.
Tamen Bryce had a black soul, or so he thought at least. I wasn’t as convinced, but it didn’t matter.
“Black.” I repeated, walking back around the other side of the cross. “Limits?”
“None.” He replied instantly, following me as best as he could. “Do your worst.”
“I thought this was about pleasure.”
“Yours.” He countered. “And trust.”
“And yet you want me to hurt you, don’t you?”
Pausing before he answered, I knew he gave me his truth. “I expect you to.”
“Interesting.” I hummed, reaching behind me to tug the zipper of my dress down and shimmy out of it, letting it pool onto the floor. “I’m not a sadist, but I am into degradation from time to time.”
“Oh, joy.” He joked and then went silent when I went to the side of the room and took out a couple of different tools he couldn’t see. Wearing only a matching black set of lingerie left me feeling bold and empowered as I picked my weapons against Tamen.
This was my element.
“We’re going to play a game.” I sang, letting the click of my heels echo around the sound proof room as I circled him. “Questions.” I announced, glancing at him as I passed his face again. “If you answer all of my questions, I’ll reward you with pleasure.” I faced him head on and brought the satchel of clamps out from behind my back. “If you refuse, or lie, you’ll receive a punishment.”
His blue eyes dropped to the bag in my hand as I waited for his consent. “I hate this game already.”
“Afraid of a little pain?” I mocked him with a smirk, and he scoffed.
“Afraid of what questions you’ll ask is more like it. I get hard on pain.”
“Good.” I hummed, calling his bluff as I lifted a small metal clamp up in front of his face. “Because these are going on your balls each time you refuse or lie. Let’s get started.”
“Evil.” He replied, but he didn’t tell me no, and we both knew I’d respect his decision if he did.
“Let’s begin.” I walked back around behind him and slipped a black blind fold on over his head, blocking out his sight so he couldn’t study me like he usually did. When he was blind and restrained for me, I started. “How many people have you killed?”
He snorted, and I fought the urge to attach a clamp to his ass cheek just for the fun of it. “Hundreds, Rainbow. I don’t keep count.”
I mulled that over, imagining him killing that many people. The longer I imagined it, the longer Tamen’s face morphed into a sinister villain from a movie, splattered with red and smiling a grotesque evil sneer.
Not my Tamen.
“How many people have you spared?” I asked.
Instantly he replied, “None.”
I picked a clamp from the bag and attached it without a noise, making him buck and hiss from the pain it caused his sensitive groin. “Fucking hell, woman!”
“I don’t believe you, and I told you what would happen if you were dishonest with me.”
“Fuck!” He gasped, before taking a few deep breaths while I admired the tenseness in the long muscles along his back. “You have no proof I wasn’t honest.”
“It doesn’t matter; this is my game, remember?” I walked around to the front of his body on the other side of the cross, loving the way he cocked his head to track my steps with his ears. “Next question. How old were you the first time you killed?”
He sighed, but answered. “The moment I was born.”
I paused, running that scenario through my head as sadness for the little baby Tamen used to be, filled my heart. “Your mother died in childbirth?”
“So, they say.” He replied. “My father always said she saw how evil I was when I came out and her heart broke from the regret of having me.”
“Tamen.” I whispered, but stopped when he bucked against the chains.
“Ask something else. Something not about my childhood.”
“How did you get into this life?”
He groaned, “That’s my childhood, Rainbow!”
“You don’t make the rules, asshole!” I called back, reaching around the cross and attaching another clamp to his tight sack, making him cry out again in surprise. “Answer me.”
“I’ve already gotten the clamp, woman. Why would I still answer it?” He snapped angrily.
My intention hadn’t been to anger him with my game, but it was inevitable at the same time. He refused to share anything of meaning with me. Nothing of depth or importance ever passed his lips when we were together. To have something more than surface deep, I needed to know his brain and his reasoning.
My whole adult life I kept everyone at arm’s length, living like a cast member in a show, always on and hiding the real me. But with Tamen, I saw his darkness and his scars.
Now I wanted to know the story behind those parts of him.
“Why do you cut yourself?” As soon as the words passed my lips, I saw the grief in his body open up, threatening to swallow him whole.
“I don’t.” He replied in a strangled voice, “I used to.”
“Tell me why.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” He argued defiantly. “My life was shit.”
“Tell me why, though.” I urged, “Please.”
He growled and tightened his hands into fists where they were bound above his head. He wanted to deny me, but he wanted to avoid further clamps. I stayed silent, letting him decide his fate. Eventually, he parted his lips and admitted the truth, “To bleed the evil out.”
“How old were you?” I asked, praying my voice would stay firm and flat to hide my sorrow as he told me about his pain.
“I don’t know. Grade school to high school, I can’t remember.”
There were dozens of other questions I wanted to ask, but I knew he was teetering on the edge of losing his mind to his memories and if I pushed, he’d shut down out of spite.
“Did you do it anywhere else but your thighs?” I asked, silently lowering myself onto my knees so I could kneel between the bottom part of the cross and come face to face with the blackout tattoos covering his thighs.
“Why do you care so much about them? What does it matter, it’s done. They’re old and I’ve moved on.” He snapped again, letting his anger take control of him.
“Because I want to kiss every single scar you gave yourself.” I whispered, before leaning forward and laying my lips directly over the raised flesh on his inner thigh. Using my flat palms against his legs, I grounded him to my presence as I slowly and erotically laid kisses over every inch of skin that he had marred in his painful childhood.
“Sloane.” He gasped in a pained voice, bucking against my touch like each touch of my lips branded him again. “Are we done?”
“No.” I gingerly rose to my feet, sandwiched between his big hard body and the padded cross at my back. “I’m just getting started with you.” I kissed my way up his abs and to his chest, running my hands over his flesh as he growled and groaned. It was the first time I touched him so freely, over every inch of his body. I pulled his head down so I could kiss his lips, and he hungrily ate from them as if my kiss could soothe his demons. “You aren’t evil, Tamen.”
“You don’t even know me.” He argued and pain bloomed in my chest, but I forced it down. Tamen lashed out on a good day, not to mention when he was tied up, forced to expose his inner struggles to me in a power switch. Of course, he’d lash out and try to hurt me to match his own pain. “I don’t know you.”
“If you truly believe that, then I guess this is done.” I replied, sliding my body to the side, but he instantly pressed me into the cross harder, immobilizing me as I dragged my nails through the hair on the back of his head, holding him to me.
“I can’t—” He shook his head as his body trembled, “I don’t know how—”
“I know.” Kissing his face, I soothed him gently. “But you can’t shut me out when I try. One of us has to try.”
I held him just like that, and after a while, he broke the silence. “I was sixteen the first time I killed someone on purpose. My first job, for my father. Dane and Maddox were on a different job and something came up he needed me to handle. So I did it. I killed a person for him and came back to Harlow House, and sat down to dinner like everything else was fine. Yet the entire time my brain was screaming and bouncing off the inside of my skull like it was trying to convince me to run away from that life, even though I had spent a decade trying to prove I could handle it.” Lifting the blindfold off his eyes, I stared up at him as he shared parts of himself with me willingly. “My reward for doing such a good job was his hired whore for the night. I was a virgin even after I became a killer, and he thought I should cross off two big items on the same night.”
“He didn’t.” I gasped, as if that was the worst part of the whole story. My composure was a mask, carefully constructed to prevent Tamen from seeing my disgust at his part in the events he was describing, the stench of his sick childhood heavy in the air between us.
Tamen smirked slightly. “I guess that’s where my fetish for prostitutes started.”
“And I guess I’m where it ends.” I countered, tsking my teeth at him snidely. “Thank you for sharing that with me.” Though it left me with way more questions I ached to have answers for. What was Harlow House? Why was his father running these jobs he kept talking about? And why couldn’t he leave if he wanted to?
“I’ll share more with you.” He backed up, releasing me from captivity against the cross. “But not like this. I want to do it in my own time. My own way.”
I groaned and rolled my eyes theatrically, knowing he was right. “Fine. But that’s a shame because your reward tonight was going to be—” I hummed and licked my lips seductively, “So fucking worth it.”
I went to slide out from my spot to release his bindings, but he held me tight again, pressing his body into mine. “Wait, I answered your questions. I earned my reward.”
I grinned and pet his chest mockingly, “You didn’t answer all of my questions. There are so many more. And they were far more fun than the difficult ones I wanted to start with. I was going to get through the dark stuff and into more of the—” I hesitated like I was trying to think of the right word, “pleasurable stuff.”
“Rainbow.” He growled regretting his call to end our game. “We have the room all night.”
“Hmm.” I hummed, glancing around the room. “Answer this for me and we’ll see where we go from here.”
He nodded in agreement, though I was pretty sure he’d agree to just about anything at that moment.
“Why did you show special interest in designing this room? Are you just that into BDSM or is there something more?”
Tamen grinned and leaned his body up off of mine to release his hold on me as he nodded to the wall. “Go look out the window and you’ll see why this room was important to me.”
Squinting at him, I hesitated and then untangled myself from him and walked toward the large one-way mirrored glass to look down at what I already knew was down there. “My stage?”
He rested his chin on his bicep as he winked at me. “This room sits right at the front of the stage, with a perfectly clear view of you as you run your shows. It was also the room I was in the night I met you. I watched you for the first time, from that very window.”
The man, the myth, the legend.
Walking away from the window back to my caged man, “Sometimes I think you’re perfect.” I scraped my nails down his spine to his firm ass and dug them in, leaving a mark on both perfectly taut cheeks. It should be illegal for a man to so effortlessly have a perfect ass. “But then I remember your flaws. Like the fact that this is the room that you fucked Val’s face in that first night.”
He grunted and groaned when I reached around his gigantic body and stroked his cock. The thing had been hard and ready since he stripped down; I was pretty sure it even got harder with each clamp placed on his sack. “I’m a flawed man,” He shrugged, “What are you going to do about it?”
“Fuck you.” I replied, biting his shoulder and leaving another mark. “Maybe when I’m done, you’ll finally be a good boy.”
His dick throbbed in my hand and he flexed his hips to push it deeper into my palm. “If you were trying to punish me, your pussy wrapped around my cock is never a hardship.”
“Jokes on you, Bully.” I chided, dropping his cock and pulling off one clamp aggressively.
He howled and bucked wildly as I walked away to the chests of toys available with a special saunter.
I was in my element again, back on top, and ready to dominate him and the scene. Tamen was in for a wild night of true submission and pleasure.
“I’m not the one taking it tonight.” I purred, lifting the lid on my favorite chest in the room. “Tonight, you’re going to fifth base.”
“Fifth base?” He questioned, and I could hear the anxiety in his voice as the cuffs rattled against the cross. “What the hell is fifth base, and what kind of baseball do you watch?”