His Keepsake (CNC Fraternity #1)

Chapter 1

EMME

“Are you sure you want to do this, Emme?” Charity took a sip of her strawberry shake while waiting for my answer.

“Why? Worried I’ll call it off?”

“More afraid you won’t.” Slowly, she licked cream off the straw using a tongue method that would give most guys a hard-on. “Dirty girl.”

“Me?” I laughed.

Fifteen minutes ago, she’d been bent over a man’s knee getting spanked.

The club was only two buildings down the street, but we tried not to advertise our kinks once we left.

My black stockings were demure. Beneath my ankle-length black coat was a little red dress with cutaway sections and much underboob and ass revealage—to phrase it in faux French—and unless I opened the coat, none of that showed.

If anyone from the Christian college I worked for saw my dress, I’d get a severe reprimand. Lightning would strike me if they knew I’d been inside a BDSM club.

“Like you’re so innocent, Charity? You? Your butt will be so damn bruised after what Kris did to it.”

“I’m coping.” She swirled the straw in the shake. “What I do is downright sensible compared to your plans tonight.”

“You have a point.” I shrugged.

The club was located in a quiet street, with a small hardware store and an adult shop that were closed. If, by some ungodly miracle, someone saw me, I would frown at them, too.

Was I doing this?

I readjusted my butt on the timber booth seat, thinking about how insane this would seem, to most people. This arrangement would look like an invitation to be raped.

In reality…it kind of was?

“It’s too late to say no.” I spread my fingers and stared at the back of my hand. The gold stars on my black nail polish looked like blobs. So much for my artistry.

“It is so not.” Charity pressed her lips together. “Do what you need to do. He won’t mind. Well, he might? But it’s still your call.”

“Why would I?” I tweaked my mouth into a half-smile. Why had Charity waited until now, seconds from launch, as it were? “You said you know him.”

“He’s a sadist, a Dom, and a friend of a friend.” Her tongue curled around that straw. “But what about you? Are you going to need therapy after this?”

“I hope not?”

“You hope not?” Her face screwed up in disbelief.

“As in no. I’m excited for this. Am I nervous? Yeah, but…” I opened my hands. “This is what I need.”

“Fear?”

“Yes.”

“That, I do get. The best Doms instill a little fear, a little of whatever will they do to me.” She sighed. “Fuck. I envy you. Still a little concerned.”

“If I end up dismembered and tossed into the sea in a box, I trust you to avenge me.”

Charity chortled and slid down the seat. She shook her head. “We are both fucked up.”

“My underwear is already soaked.”

“TMI!”

“You deserved that.” I pointed out.

“I know, I know. But CNC is not simple. It’s way too easy to screw up. What about a dry run?”

“Ha!” I opened my mouth to add to that, and she frowned.

“Miss Emme, do not make a pun about that. Or else.”

“Mouth zipped.” I opened my hands. “Keep going.”

“Do it at the club.”

“Like a take-down scene, where people watch us perform on stage?” I wrinkled my nose. “Too public. Too rehearsed. Too…temporary. Not even vaguely edgy enough.”

“Yawnworthy? Really?”

“I want the edgeplay. Zero of my kinky buttons would be pressed.”

“Fiiine. Forward me everything I don’t yet know—the safeword and everything.”

“I will. And stop worrying.” Even though, deep inside, I was worried. “I asked you to ask him.”

“I know.” She pushed aside her shake and slowly drummed her fingers on the table.

“It is sensible. I know it is and thank you for caring. But, somehow, it is the danger in this that I crave. I don’t quite understand myself or my sexual fantasies.”

“Hmm.” One of Charity’s eyebrows quirked upward. “I’m sorry but you need someone to be the voice of reason.”

“I get it. I do.”

“Let’s go get you abducted then?”

I repressed a giggle and nodded. “Think of me as a skydiver who wants to freefall for a while before I return to earth.”

I picked up the phone and checked to make sure I hadn’t missed him texting me anything, like a cancellation. He hadn’t. I tapped out a new message to double check he was willing and able, then I sent Charity the info.

“Done. There is no safeword, though.” I ignored her tsk. “We have a word he can use if he wants to, if he thinks I need it.” I left the choice up to him. If I could just safeword out, I may as well not do this at all.

Charity nodded. “That is…” I could see the wheels spinning as she stopped herself from saying something. “Good.”

Having no safeword was iffy at best, but I was aiming for RACK here—risk aware consensual kink. And I am so aware this is crazy, telling him he can do anything to me. Theoretically, he could fly me to Transylvania and have me sucked on by a flock of vampires. Now that would be a new kink.

Being dragged to the pavement, somewhere in the dark streets, tied up, and fucked there was more my fantasy. Yesss.

I dropped my cell phone into my coat pocket.

“I’m following you until I see you’ve been ummm grabbed. It’s nighttime, and we want the right weirdo, right?” Her grin spread.

“Yeah.” My heartbeat did an unsettling kick. Getting grabbed by the wrong guy would be disastrous. “But if you’re there, doesn’t that put you at risk after I’m gone?”

My phone buzzed, and I missed seeing her reaction. The text said he was still game. I slid from the seat. “I’ll get another coffee. He’s running late.”

Was this weird? Not according to the news. Most days the world was either heading for an ice age, or everyone was slaughtering their neighbors, or they had invested in a new Ponzi scheme based on something new and shiny.

With my hand trailing off the edge of the table, I paused and took a deep breath. “I promise that after I do this—a week alone with a man who has permission to do whatever he wants to me—I’ll be done with anything this extreme.”

Charity grunted and pursed her mouth, doubt on every line of her face.

A week of hot, off-the-charts dirty sex and kink? A week and then I returned to teaching at Monarte Christian College, where being a good girl meant only having sex within a heterosexual marriage. Their morality clause sucked, but I did love the job.

“Cross my heart, touch wood, and all that.” I reached across and squeezed her hand.

“Okay,” she whispered, nodding.

Sometimes I wondered how far Charity would go if I pushed her to try this.

Plans were made for falling apart. What if this was addictive?

I wasn’t really watching where I was going as I ambled to the counter.

I’d tried all sorts of things at the club. Getting flogged and paddled by random strangers was cardboard to me. It wasn’t simply the sensation of pain or the feelings one gains from bondage that worked for me. My fantasies had always called to me, and yes, they were potentially dangerous ones.

I’d tried Doms, I’d talked my face off about limits.

I’d even roleplayed a few times. Schoolgirl outfits?

Kitten? Burglar balaclavas while he pretended to force me?

No. Hell no. Keeping a straight face had been impossible, especially after I kneed one guy in the balls by accident.

Rolling around on the floor laughing tended to piss off dominants.

I tried kinky dating sites, at least tried them as far as I was happy with.

Some things seemed unsafe even to me. Who was at the other end of the web?

Charity’s friend seemed to check all the boxes without being too safe and bland.

I didn’t know him, and yet I trusted Charity not to hook me up with a serial killer.

A noise made me look around. The door closed silently behind a man exiting the café. He walked to the right, brooding, silent…broad-shouldered under that hooded coat.

When had he come in? I’d never even noticed him.

I couldn’t help but imagine him as my semi-anonymous kidnapper, pouncing on me, tying me up, then working his fingers inside me while I wriggled about and pretended to get away, lying helpless in the trunk of his car.

I pulled myself back to reality.

“What would you like, ma’am?” the barista asked.

“Coffee, please. Black, one cream, one sugar, thanks.”

“Sure. I’ll bring it to you.”

After paying, I returned to our table, and somewhere on the way I decided I wasn’t letting Charity follow me.

Once in a lifetime, a person should risk it all to follow their dreams. Even when those dreams were probably a terrible idea.

Charity following me out would make this fantasy turn to dust.

I needed that edge.

“Who was that?” As I slipped onto the seat, I thumbed toward the window.

“Mister tall, dark and mysterious? He was in the booth behind you. If he overheard us, you probably freaked him out, or gave him his next jerk-off fantasy.” She pretended to give her finger a sloppy BJ.

I suppressed a snort. “You’ll get pregnant from that.”

Truthfully, I was a little horrified. Working where I did, I was forever teetering on a tightrope.

On one side was me being pure and innocent to any average person I met, while on the other side lay the bad-girl me, who had impure thoughts.

Bad girl was ready to crawl naked across the floor and lick up some guy’s come from a dish if ordered to.

It made for an exhilarating, yet anxious existence.

I thought this was my fantasy, but I knew from experimentation that nothing was ever certain with kink. Whether I got off on this depended on it being the right man, the right day, the right everything.

Even so, being told I was a dirty slut should be on my astrological prediction for the day. Unless this guy was a polite Dom? I’d met those. I hoped he wasn’t, but then again, he might have any fetish under the sun.

He’d better have some.

Fuck.

I touched my grandmother’s necklace. The small golden bird was my good luck charm.

“You never said exactly what this friend of yours likes to do to his subs.”

“Secret.” Charity clamped her mouth shut and slowly shook her head.

I eyerolled. “Writing you out of my will then.”

“Too late,” She stuck out her tongue. “Waaaay too late for that, girl.”