Chapter 4 #2
Lauren and Xiaolan work on their homework until I get home, most days.
Sometimes Xiaolan prepares dinner, sometimes I do, depending on how much homework she has and what time I get home.
I pay her a decent amount every month, plus provide a room for her and food, and she helps clean the house and prepares meals here and there, and stays home with Lauren at night when I need to go out.
Oh, and she helps Lauren and me keep in practice with our Mandarin.
And, she gives Lauren a positive Asian female role model, as my daughter is Chinese-American.
I met Lauren when she was seven years old, finalized her adoption when she was nine, and she’s been the love of my life ever since.
When Lauren and I arrived home, Xiaolan had dinner ready and we talked about everyone’s day as we ate. Lauren and Xiaolan returned to their homework after our meal, and I took my laptop to my bedroom to get some work done. And to talk to James.
Master James is quite famous in the BDSM world. I’m not sure how old he is, but based on how long he’s been active in the scene, I think he has to be in his sixties. However, he looks more like early fifties and is in better shape than most forty-year-old men.
When you mention him to people in the lifestyle, their eyes generally get big.
In his younger years, Master James was known for being a strict and somewhat extreme Dom, and people still talk about some of his public scenes from a decade or more ago — super-intense scenes most submissives aren’t capable of handling or interested in experiencing.
He only takes on experienced submissives looking for advanced training.
Everything’s consensual. Scary , but consensual.
I’ve never heard a past slave or submissive talk badly of him, and most are still friends with him.
Even with his daunting reputation, he’s incredibly well-respected.
And, for an old guy, he has tons of sex appeal. He has charisma, and a Dom voice that, well , either someone has it or they don’t, and he’s capable of melting panties by just giving a few orders.
I met him a little over ten years ago at a party after he’d recently moved to town.
His daughter was transferred here and he didn’t want to miss out on his grandson and granddaughter’s life, so he followed them.
He looked up the local scene and came to a play party.
I wasn’t dating anyone at the time and didn’t play with anyone at the party, though I did help one of the Mistresses during a scene with her slave.
She’s one of my friends, and I don’t mind handing her tools and implements as she needs them.
She doesn’t try to Domme me, we’re just friends, and I was merely handing stuff to her as she asked for it.
When the scene was over, James and I talked and kind of hit it off.
Not as Master/slave, not even as Top/bottom.
He’s a gentleman and is quite intelligent.
We talked for hours, and much of our conversation didn’t have anything to do with BDSM.
The next weekend, I was invited to a private party in Atlanta, and later in the week I asked him if he’d like to go.
He said he would, but he wanted to drive and I could ride with him.
Before inviting him along I’d checked him out, which included talking to two of his previous slaves, so I rode with him to Atlanta and introduced him.
Most everyone had heard of him, of course, but I guess it was nice to go with someone who could make introductions for him.
I’m submissive, but I won’t submit to just anyone holding a whip, and while I treated him with respect, I didn’t openly submit to him.
No yes sir and no sir and please Master , because he wasn’t my master.
There was someone at the play party I’ve played with before, and we did a scene together — an intense one where I ended up stuffed with a plug and a dildo and tied to a Saint Andrew’s Cross so my back and ass could be thoroughly flogged.
Andy was good at going back and forth from floggers that stung like hell to floggers with all thud and no sting, and he drew the scene out a really long time.
I think I must have had twenty or thirty orgasms, and when the last one rolled through me, I nearly passed out.
Two men got me down and wrapped a blanket around me, and Andy carried me to the sofa and sat with me in his lap until I came back to reality.
The endorphins your body releases while being flogged into orgasmic unconsciousness are better than any drug you can buy.
When I finally started coming out of it, I discovered that while Andy held me in his lap, my feet had been in James’ lap and he’d been massaging them, and I floated on a cloud of bliss.
It might seem warped that the person who causes you pain takes so much effort to take care of you afterward, but for me the aftercare is as important, maybe more important, than the scene itself.
On the two-hour drive back to Chattanooga, James asked if I was interested in being trained in the lifestyle by someone who knew what they were doing.
Someone who would not be a boyfriend, but a trainer.
Someone who could be a mentor if I chose, but who wouldn’t make any demands on my life other than the time spent in his presence.
I was intrigued, and agreed to have two scenes with him before we talked about any kind of long-term arrangement. I filled out one of those incredibly long BDSM questionnaires for him, and we talked about soft and hard limits as well as what I did and did not have experience with.
And then he gave me two of the best scenes I’d ever experienced, and I’d been active in the kink world for many years at that point.
So now he trains me, but he’s really more of my mentor.
I meet him from twelve thirty until four thirty every Monday, we talk on the phone some in between times, and we occasionally go hiking together.
I don’t call him — I text him if I want to talk.
We use the traffic-light colors for this as well.
If I have an emergency and need to talk to him right away I text an R for red, if I need to talk to him as soon as it’s convenient for him to talk I text a Y for yellow, and if I want to talk but only if he’s up for it at the moment I text a G.
Tonight I sent him a Y and he called back almost immediately.
“Good evening, Dear One.”
“Hi, Sir. I met someone tonight.”
“You did? Is he in the lifestyle? Or just some random stranger and you have no idea?” I could hear the amusement in his voice.
“Some random stranger and I have no idea, though that’s not quite how I would’ve put it.”
I told him about the encounter with Abbott Hamilton, and then mentioned I should probably look Abbott up online and see if his story checked out.
So while I had James on the phone I did some sleuthing and discovered Abbott really is one of the theater’s biggest contributors, and he owns several nightclubs.
Most were classy nightclubs, but two of them catered to the oddities of society — one was well known for their midnight drag queen show, and the other was a seedy goth club.
Since I’m usually defined as an oddity of society myself, I had no problems with those two clubs, but figured some of the patrons of our little community theater probably would.
I emailed James everything I knew about Abbott Hamilton, and told him our plans for Saturday night.
James makes a good safe-call when I’m going out with new people.
We set up times for me to call in, and if I don’t then he calls my cell and if there’s no answer — or if I don’t give the proper response to his questions — he calls Aaron.
James has only needed to call Aaron once, and by the time Aaron arrived, I’d managed to kick the guy’s ass and just needed a ride home. It’s a sad state of the world when women have to set up safe-calls when they meet someone new, but there it is.
Vanilla sex doesn’t do anything for me, no matter how much I once tried to believe it could be enough if I found the right person.
So now I make sure to find out before the second or third date whether the person is all vanilla or has any leanings toward dominance, and if they’re vanilla I make the dreaded, “I hope we can be friends,” speech.
The fact that Abbott Hamilton owned those two less-circumspect clubs gave me reason to hope maybe he wasn’t an all-vanilla sort of guy.
James and I said goodnight, and I finally checked my inbox to discover Aaron had sent an email around six in the evening, asking me to give him a call.
When he answered, he jumped right into it again with no niceties first, saying, “There’s been another murder.
I’m sending information on both victims. Can you look it over and see if you can find anything to tie them together?
The killer used the same kind of weapon, but removed the head and heart of the second victim and set them to the side.
The victim was human, and we need to figure out why the killer took him out as one would a supernatural. ”
I checked my email and skimmed through the information, working my way through the details out loud, “Both were males, one was a mail carrier and the other a mechanic. Both have obvious Irish last names, McKowan and Flannery. I don’t see any similarities in the way they looked, other than both had light hair, one a strawberry blond and the other a dirty blond.
Oh, and both had blue eyes. McKowan, the mechanic, had lots of freckles.
Flannery, the mail carrier, didn’t appear to, but I’m not sure the snapshot we have would show them.
And by the way, thanks for not sending me pictures of them after they were dead.
I’d just as soon not see it, but I should probably know which was decapitated. ”
“McKowan was decapitated and was killed second.”
“Maybe they were killed because they saw something they shouldn’t? A mail carrier gets around and sees a lot of stuff. I wonder if the mechanic worked on the car of someone who was on the mail carrier’s route.”
“Denny has his detectives looking into it, but you nailed one of the things bugging me — both of them have obvious Irish last names. Can it be a coincidence that someone who kills with a weapon like yours is killing people with last names like yours?”
I’d have been much happier if Aaron hadn’t voiced what was going through my head. “Are you trying to scare me?”
“No, just making you aware of a possible threat.”
“Well, gee thanks. I’m sure I’ll sleep much better now.”
“Keep Smokey close. He’ll warn you if someone is nearby. If someone should break in, kill first and ask questions later.”
Smokey is my two-hundred-pound Newfoundland.
He stays outside in the fenced-in backyard when no one’s home, but the rest of the time he’s in the house with us.
He’s more of an alarm dog than a guard dog, as I don’t believe he’d ever bite anyone.
He’ll stand between us and physically keep someone from getting to me, but biting isn’t his thing.
“Both of these men were killed in their homes?”
“Yes.”
“Smokey will sleep at the top of the steps, same as always. We’ll be fine.”
“I know. I’m not worried enough to post bodyguards yet. I just want you to be on alert.”
“Yeah well, sweet dreams to you, too. Goodnight, Aery.”
“Goodnight, Bug.”
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