Chapter Five Rae
CHAPTER FIVE
Rae
THIS, THIS, THIS.
This is what I came here for. Exactly this.
Well, no, not exactly. Before tonight, I’d pictured this a dark, sleazy nightclub complete with heavily thumping bass and obscenely writhing bodies.
I’d imagined a masked Dom dragging me into a corner, pressing me against a wall, and having his way with me.
Now that I’m here, I get that what I’d envisioned was pure fantasy.
Impossible, unreal, and, in the end, completely unsafe.
I’d have turned right around and walked out if the place had been skeezy and some dude had tried to make me do anything, much less have random, unprotected sex against the wall.
This is so much better. Not once did I dare daydream a fraction of this excitement.
I whimper at the feel of the General’s breath against the side of my face.
“Had enough?”
“No way,” I whisper.
“What’s that?”
“Sir, I mean. No, sir. No. I want more.”
“Where do you feel it? The want?”
“I… I don’t know.” In my brain? Mostly. Other places too, I guess.
“Show me.”
Does he…? Does he want me to take off my clothes?
Touch myself? I can’t tell, and maybe that’s what he intends.
He’s destabilizing me so that up is down, and doing literally nothing while he massages my back has turned me on more than any single sexual act of my life.
This man—this erogenous zone wizard—should give lessons.
He should become a cult leader. Or at least an influencer.
Hell, if the man did a TED Talk, he’d get billions of views.
“In my lungs.” I finally eke out an answer. Honestly, I feel what he’s doing to me everywhere.
From where he’s now sitting at my side, I watch his eyes flick toward the quick rise and fall of my chest. “I see that.” The tiniest curve pulls at his lips. “Where else, Sunny?”
“My… um breasts. Nipples?”
Another brief look, down and back up to my face. “Good.” He shifts, the movement tilting my face into his neck, where the spice of his cologne is layered with skin, musk, and the tiniest hint of sweat. It’s a pure shot of aphrodisiac, whooshing straight to my core.
“Now touch them.”
I stop moving, my breath caught in my throat like a trapped bird.
People are seated at tables a few feet on either side of us, but they might as well be miles away for all the attention I pay them. They’re the hum of voices in the background, the occasional scrape of a chair. Can they tell just by looking at us how seismic this feels?
“Go on. Take those hot little hands and put them on those tight, aching nipples.”
“Uh… uh…” My hands, which I suddenly realize have been squeezing the velour edges of my seat cushion, hover in the air for a moment, above my body, seesawing between the mortification of following this stranger’s order with an audience versus the chance of pleasure glimmering just over that horizon.
Do I do the bananas thing? Do I?
“Now, Sunny. You touch them now. It’s an order. You wanted this, right?” Oh, there’s something different in his voice. A challenge that’s both playful and risqué. He’s the devil, armed with nothing more than the ammunition I gave him myself.
Coerce me. Make me do the bad thing.
This, this, this. It’s here in full force now, this feeling of right from wrongness, the hot, vivid spotlight shining deep into my inner workings, lighting up all the shadows I’ve spent a lifetime working to hide.
“You better do it, Sunny.”
Oh my goodness. My insides go liquid.
“You listen, you obey, you’ll get exactly what you came for. If you defy me…”
What? What happens then? Please, please, please, please tell me!
I guess I won’t be finding out, what with how my fingers have a mind of their own and set to tweaking my nipples through my dress, plucking at them and twisting until there’s enough pain to make me gasp.
“That’s it. Good girl.” Good girl? My stomach does a little dance. Level unlocked and mastered in one fell swoop. I am a good girl. I really, really am.
Seriously, what is it about his voice? So matter-of-fact as he watches me play with myself through my clothes. He’s the serious professor, the concerned doctor. He’s all the dirty, dirty, dirty things I’ve only ever let myself dwell on in the farthest reaches of my imagination.
With masterful precision, he kneads that knot in my back again. My mouth drops open on an embarrassingly loud moan.
“There it is. That’s the spot, huh? Goddamn, that looks good.” I go half-limp at what sounded like praise, though I’ve got no earthly idea what for. For groaning while he rubs me? Most people don’t find my groaning all that sexy. I groan at the gym. Nobody calls me a good girl for that.
“Did I say you could stop?”
I startle when I realize he’s waiting for my reply. “Uh. No. No, sir. I was just…”
“Just what?”
“Nothing.” I straighten in my seat, concentrating hard on the here and now.
“No. Truly. Communication is essential.” His heat backs off a bit. “Communicate. Please. What were you just doing?”
“Well.” I swallow, knowing this is probably not what he means by communicate, but then again… who am I to guess, right? “I was thinking about working out. And then the gym. And then gym class and, from there, I started wondering if they still let kids play dodgeball.”
His hands drop from my back. “Dodgeball?”
“You know. In school?” I crane toward him as I explain.
“Such a violent game for kids to play, right?” His face has morphed from its original stern expression to something teetering between annoyed and utterly baffled.
“Sorry,” I say, snapping my mouth shut and slapping my hands back up to my chest like I’ve been caught shirking my responsibilities instead of doing the important work of feeling myself up.
After a brief pause, he picks up again where he left off. I go as limp as a rag doll the moment his magic fingers hit my back.
“You’re easily distracted.”
“There’s a lot to think about.”
“Not here, there isn’t. Now keep touching yourself, Sunny. Or else.” The threat fills the narrow space between his mouth and my ear, and in a flash, everything disappears but the feel of this moment.
Oh, okay. Yeah. That does it.
“Or else what?” Now that he’s shown me this new mystery door, all I want to do is open it. “Sir?” I gasp, shutting my eyes against all the possibilities.
Will he make me do other things? Dirty things? Sexy things? Will he use those big, rough hands on my skin? Spank me the way that person’s getting spanked in the corner? What if he made me go down on him in front of this crowd?
The real me wouldn’t stand for that. Ever.
A liquid pulse, deep in my core, proves me a liar.
Okay, fine. Outside the club walls, I’d prefer to blend into the background and let someone else have the limelight. Not to mention the whole part where I don’t let men order me around in my real life. Or in any way diminish me. No more Brendans making me feel small and silly.
This me, though? Someday, when I’ve gotten past the initial weirdness of being here? I could maybe see myself being really into spanking—public or not.
“If you defy me, sweet girl, you get punished.” His voice is close and low, so quiet I can barely hear him.
Wow. None of what he’s doing is like the Dom I’d pictured in my head. It’s better, so much better. This guy doesn’t yell. He doesn’t have to. Why raise your voice when a skin-licking whisper does the trick?
Punished.
The word sends a fresh wave of frenzied need through my veins, along with a dozen freeze-frame flashes of possibility. Pain, sex, voyeurism. I didn’t want half those things coming in here, but now? I’d take them all. Anything. All of it. Make it rough. Make it last.
He doesn’t go that way, obviously. That route is too easy for the man who made massage sexy again. I see now, with every fresh unveiling of his Machiavellian plans, that a real Dom doesn’t have to yell or hurt or make his sub do a damn thing. A real Dom suggests.
And a sub? A real sub?
Well, based on the current state of my underwear, I’m guessing a real sub begs for whatever her Dom will give her. And then begs for more.
“What’s the punishment?” I ask.
“Depends. I could stop.”
“No! No, definitely not that.”
His eyes crinkle into what could almost be a smile. “Punishments would typically be negotiated before a scene.”
“Like spanking? Or… flogging or something?”
He’s outright grinning now. “Possibly.”
“Wow. Okay. But I mean, I won’t defy you,” I spit out in a pathetically rushed whisper. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Good girl.” A slight shifting of my weight in his arms, a gentle stroke on my cheek, just the back of his finger, barely touching, and I’m squirming in my seat. “You like the idea, though.”
“I don’t… I don’t… know. No. I… Yes. Yes, I do.” My eyes strain toward him as a huff of laughter escapes me. “Honestly, I’m a mess.”
“You’re a beautiful mess, Sunny. Gorgeous.”
With the next scary flip-flop of my stomach, I get it.
All of it. This man’s power isn’t about being a bully.
It’s more subtle than that. He’s a freaking hypnotist. He gets you with kindness, with care.
The compliments, the control, the suggestions…
all of it has turned me into a baser version of myself.
A little needy, very excited, and, if I’m to believe this man, beautiful.
Here’s the thing. I’ve been complimented before, even told I was pretty, but I never quite believed it the way I do in this moment.
This guy wouldn’t lie. Why should he? And, even if he were a master at it, he couldn’t fake the quick thump of his heart against my ear or the shakiness of his breathing.
He’s as excited by this exchange as I am.
It feels amazing.
I’ve just opened my mouth to tell him so when the whip cracks behind me. My shoulders tense up, the General curses under his breath, and the murmur of conversation around us shifts gears.
“That’s it for tonight, folks!” Tank’s jovial bass breaks through the sexy, warm little bubble in which I was happily basking. “Off the Cuff’s first monthly speed-dating night is done!”
And just like that, I fall back to earth with a thump.