Chapter 7
AERYN
Gage takes a step back, folding his arms across his chest. His lips twist into a frown, and he says, “We have rules at Kynk, little girl.”
I swallow hard because rejection tastes like bitter melon. But I say, “Of course, Santa.”
“Of course, sir.”
My mouth goes dry as he corrects me. He made me call him sir ten years ago. I giggled the first time he ordered me to say it, but it only took one spanking for me to understand the game.
A candle flame flickers beneath my ribs as I repeat, “Of course, sir.”
“Look around this room, babygirl.”
Babygirl. Not little girl.
He called me babygirl the first time he made me come. The first time he put me in a gag. The first time he tied me up.
He gazes down at me now. “What do you see, babygirl?”
Glancing over my shoulder, I see women on leashes. Men stripped down. I see handcuffs and butt plugs and nipple clamps tight enough to make my own chest ache.
But every person looking back at me has one thing in common.
“Everyone’s wearing a mask.” My knees are starting to burn. I pause for too long, then I remember. “Sir.”
“Where’s your mask, babygirl?”
“I didn’t think to bring one.”
He waits.
I’m out of practice. I finally remember to add: “Sir.”
“There are masks in the greenroom, babygirl.”
“I didn’t see them. I was in too much of a hurry to get out here. To offer you a present.” My knees throb, and I remember much faster this time. “Sir.”
“What do you think should be the penalty for breaking club rules, babygirl?”
I recognize the trick question from the games we played ten years ago. Whatever I answer will be the one thing he’ll deny me. So I swallow hard and say, “Whatever you decide, sir.”
He nods slowly, his lips barely quirking into an approving smile. He remembers our games too. “A spanking,” he says.
The candle flame licks the space between my thighs.
“Five blows,” he says.
“Because I skipped a feckin’ mask?” My outrage is genuine. I rock back onto my heels. “You aren’t wearing one either!”
He waits. I refuse to give him sir.
“Ten,” he finally says.
“I—”
His eyebrows rise.
We both remember the last time he spanked me, in the living room of the Atlantic City bungalow he shared with Logan. I argued with him then, too, until he ran my total up to twenty. We only got to twelve before our world fell apart.
“Ten,” I finally say. “Sir.”
“Master Jonathan,” Gage says, not taking his eyes from me. “A chair, please?”
A bare-chested giant with a stag’s-head mask drags an armchair to the foot of the dais. It takes two men to lift it onto the stage. They shift the Christmas tree back a couple of feet, positioning the chair in the center of a bright, white spotlight.
Gage takes his time settling into the chair. He shrugs his shoulders. Shifts his weight. He spreads his legs wide, and then he snaps his fingers. “Come to Santa, babygirl.”
This is wrong. This is filthy. Good girls don’t let themselves be spanked. Wise women don’t display themselves in public.
But I made my decision the instant I asked the Waldorf doorman to hail me a cab. I merely confirmed it when I offered up my name at the front desk. And I chiseled it in stone when I strode through the club to the Heart.
I strain my thighs, rising to my Louboutin stilettos without touching a hand to the floor. Gage watches me step onto the dais.
He reaches for the red bow I tied around my throat, the one I took from a locker in the greenroom. I shiver when he slides the ribbon across the back of my neck. “Hands,” he says, as my nipples turn to stone.
I hold out my wrists, because this is another game we played ten years ago. He lashes my hands tightly, efficiently, binding me palm-to-palm. Before I sprawl across his lap, he pulls his knees together, just a hair.
His thighs are steady beneath me, sturdy.
His cock twitches, pressing hard into my belly as I find my balance.
If my wrists weren’t bound, I’d reach beneath my body.
I’d stroke him through his trousers and make him cream his boxers.
I’d take whatever punishment he chose to give me after, once he stopped seeing stars.
He smooths my hair back from my face, taking his time to gather it in one hand. Bending over to brush a kiss against my bare nape, he lets his lips linger near my ear. “Say tiramisu, and I’ll stop.”
I manage a nervous grin. “Cranberry tart,” I whisper, but I have to swallow hard. “Sir.”
He smooths his free palm over my arse, and I feel every stitch of my lace knickers tattooing my heated skin. “Count,” he says. “Then thank you, sir. Loud enough for them to hear you in the lobby.”
I nod, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to make myself heard three feet away. I close my eyes.
“Not like that,” Gage says. “Eyes open, babygirl. This is why you came tonight. This is what you wanted—everybody watching you.”
I can’t do it.
He tugs my hair, not enough to hurt, but enough to get my attention. “Don’t make this worse than it has to be.”
I hear his voice. I understand the words. But I still can’t.
“Aeryn,” Gage whispers. “ Are you choosing tira—?”
I open my eyes.
The first blow comes before I expect it. I hear the sound, like a hockey stick breaking, before I register the fire splashed across my arse.
I thought he might go gently, easing me into things, giving me time to remember the past. But he’s started at eleven, and every nerve in my body leaps to attention.
Every nerve.
A drumbeat throbs between my thighs. My body remembers Gage’s touch.
It remembers the excitement of mixing pain with pleasure.
It remembers exactly how it feels to hold a safeword, to be the one ultimately in control of exactly how far a scene can go.
It remembers power and release and pure, uncomplicated heat.
“One,” I say. Then, “Thank you, sir.”
“Louder,” Gage commands.
He traces the lace across my left hip, circling each red rose with his thumb. I groan as the pressure pulls my knickers tighter against my clit. His second blow is harder than the first.
“Two,” I call out. “Thank you, sir.”
The pulse between my legs grows faster. My body hasn’t forgotten my first time with Gage. My first time with any man.
It was the Friday after Thanksgiving. Logan and a couple of defensemen were taking some homesick Russian rookies out to one of the casinos for caviar and blini after the game.
I drove down with leftovers from a holiday feast I’d shared with fellow culinary students.
I had a month off from school. Most of my classmates were working all December, filling in at restaurants during the busy holiday season, but I was late looking for a job and not willing to accept the dregs available once I got my arse in gear.
I let myself into the house on Beach Avenue and put all the food away in the fridge. Settling down to wait for my brother, I started reading a super-hot romance novel on my phone. My hand slipped inside my knickers as the book got spicier. Gage walked in when I was one stroke away from coming.
Now, his fingers tighten on my knickers. He tugs, hard enough to make me gasp. The elastic stings as it snaps back to my arse. Gage’s hand lands after that, steady and solid and sharp.
“Three,” I cry. “Thank you, sir.”
The thrumming in my core spirals up my spine. My nipples are rock hard. My fingers stretch from my bound wrists, quivering with need.
That Friday night ten years ago, Gage saw exactly what I needed. He grinned from across the room and said he could help with that. I told him I was a virgin, and he crossed the room to twist a curl of my hair around his finger. He repeated his offer: “I can help with that too.”
I let him.
Here in the Heart, Gage’s strong fingers wrap around the triangle of lace that’s torturing my arse. The panel between my thighs cinches tight. I cry out from the pressure, and then he twists his wrist, tugging hard enough to shred the delicate lace.
His palm lands low on my arse, close enough to my drenched core that I yelp. My right shoe clatters to the stage. “Four,” I call out, desperate for more. “Thank you, sir.”
That first time, he didn’t gag me. He didn’t tie my wrists or use his belt. Those were games we mastered later, in the single month that followed.
Because I didn’t go back to New York after that Friday night.
Instead, I haunted Atlantic City. Logan and Gage put in long hours at the arena—practice and games and countless hours studying tape.
But Gage and I fucked whenever we could, hiding in his bedroom, discovering all the ways I longed to submit, all the ways he knew to own me.
My arse is bare now in the Heart. As he lands his fifth blow, Gage pulls my hair, tilting my chin toward the crowd. He wants me to see them.
I’m on display to every member of the club, subs and Doms, all of them masked, all of them studying the work of a master. All of them measuring out the service of an obedient sub.
“Five,” I cry, throwing my voice to the back of the room. My left shoe tumbles to the floor. “Thank you, sir.”
We had thirty days before we were caught. Thirty days before our lives spun out of control. Thirty days before I told him I hated him, before I said giving him my v-card was the biggest mistake of my life, before I screamed I never wanted to see him again.
I lied. I wanted him even then. I’ve dreamed about him ever since. I’ve never been with another man who could read the tiniest hints of my body, who could measure out precisely how much I can bear. No other man has ever known me better than I knew myself. No one has been as good as Gage.
“You’re so red,” he growls, just before his palm lands on the right cheek of my arse.
“Six,” I call, obedient even though my throat feels torn. “Thank you, sir.”
He’s hard beneath me. I’d forgotten the length of his cock, the girth. I want to beg him for it, make him promise he’ll feed it to me, then he’ll fill my aching pussy once my punishment is done.
But good subs don’t ask for what they want. Good subs trust their Doms. Good subs get rewarded when they follow the rules.
My left cheek ignites from the flat of his hand.
“Seven,” I croak, the loudest sound I can make. “Thank you, sir.”
I can smell myself, slick with need. He told me once I smelled like salt air. I tasted like honey, he said, but smelled like the sea.
His hands are scarred where he caught too many pucks. A thin white line slices through his eyebrow, reminder of some long-ago game.
He smacks the same place he did after ripping off my knickers, the bruised hot flesh so close to my core.
“Eight,” I moan, stretching my arms like they can reach an invisible light switch. “Thank you, sir.”
The same place, again. Every muscle in my body is taut. My fingers spasm. My toes point. My thighs feel like they’re roasting over an open flame.
“Nine,” I whisper. “Thank you, sir.”
“Look at all the people, babygirl,” he growls. “They’re here to see you grovel. They’re here to see you beg. Tell them what you want from me. Tell them what you need.”
They’re watching. People with cat masks, with sequins, with horns and with wires. Everyone came for the Mistletoe Masquerade, but they’ve stayed to watch me.
They can hear my ragged breath. They can smell me—salt and honey and sweat. They can see me, legs stretched, grinding my mound into the hard, iron heat of Gage’s covered cock.
“Whatever you desire.” I shape the words with my lips, barely able to speak them out loud. “Sir,” I add, drawing out the syllable on a sigh.
“Good girl,” he says. And his palm lands, harder than I dreamed I could take, sweeter than any punishment I ever imagined for myself.
Gage knows me. He’s weighed my strength to the ounce, to the gram. The spiral cord inside me unravels. My heartbeat thunders down my spine to pool between my legs, filling me, overflowing. Every stretched muscle in my body releases at once, and I pull apart at the seams.
“Ten,” I sob as my world spins apart. “Thank you, sir,” I gasp as my soul shatters.