Chapter 6 #2
“My family is in security. Bodyguarding, mostly, though one of my sisters is a private detective, so I’m not the only one who found a security niche a little different than the rest of the family.
I was taught martial arts nearly as soon as I could walk, and situational awareness was preached hard all my life, but…
” he shrugged. “Seemed to me, cybersecurity was just as important as the physical kind.”
He pulled the boat into an inlet with an island near the center of it. “Answer my original question, with an added bonus of the most interesting news story you’ve done — or rather, what I’ll find most interesting based on what you know of me, and I’ll show you something cool.”
“I don’t know much about you,” I protested.
“That’s the problem. I mean, I can go with the crude biker stereotype and tell you the backstory of how we caught a kinky scammer, or I can tell you how another story forced a state senator to resign after I showed him funneling tax dollars into a charity his wife ran so she could aim the money right back into their personal bank account. ”
“The kinky scammer sounds interesting.”
Of course it did. “Okay, I knew this guy was scamming old people, but I needed proof before I could go public with it. Also, this seemed the kind of thing one of the big news organizations might pay big bucks for, but none of them want to pay me because I’m their competitor.
Meanwhile, I’d found out he was a member of a BDSM club, which seemed a good way to get closer to him.
I used my contacts to get an invitation to join, but once I was in, I watched him and decided he was way too hardcore of a sadist for me.
So, another reason to bring Nickie in — Bud’s wife, long before she’d met him.
She sells things to the big TV news guys because she’s mostly print and they don’t see her as a competitor.
Anyway, we went to the club together, and she managed to get him interested in her.
While he was working her over, I cloned his phone, and then found someone more interested in high protocol than pain play to keep me occupied while they finished. ”
There. If he’s kinky, he’d know what questions to ask. If not, I’d know things with him wouldn’t be fun, so why bother. Maybe then I could focus better while we worked.
I kept going with the story. “We got enough off his phone to use other, more legal ways of proving he’d scammed at least three hundred million from about a dozen widows. Last I looked, asshole’s still in jail.”
“High protocol?” he asked. “That’s a pretty specific kink.”
The submissive in me was thrilled he knew what high protocol is, but the reporter was dismayed.
“You were going to show me something interesting,” I pointed out, because I couldn’t figure out how to ask him about his kinks without being too obvious, and I wasn’t prepared to talk about mine until I knew more about his.
“Baby herons,” he said with a smile, his gaze never leaving my face. “Twenty feet up in the sycamore tree, thirty yards to your left.”
The island was to my left, and once I saw one nest, I saw more. And more. It was an entire little rookery.
It took me a minute to find the nest with baby heron heads poking up, and I smiled when he handed me the binoculars. I hadn’t seen him bring them to the boat, but it was really good he did, because I got a great view of the babies.
And then he handed me a phone. “I disabled the hardware on it so it can’t connect to towers, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth, but it has plenty of storage and a decent zoom. Go crazy taking pictures, and we can use a cable to transfer the pics wherever you want once the coast is clear.”
While I was focused on taking pictures, he said, “Since we’re doing the turnabout-is-fair play thing with information, I’m a creature of habit.
I live and die by my schedules. My brothers do not feel the same as me, so I’m forced to live with a certain amount of chaos on the weekends, but during the week, I know exactly what I’ll be doing pretty much every minute of the day, and… ”
He paused a few seconds before continuing. “My kinks work best when a submissive is constrained to my schedule. High protocol works perfectly for me.”
Well then, so much for crossing him off my list of possibilities. The responsible adult in me was disappointed, because I had a feeling getting involved with this man would complicate the fuck out of my life, but I was mostly excited about the possibilities.
“I’m a wimpy masochist,” I told him. “I can enjoy a leisurely hand spanking if it isn’t brutal and I’m properly warmed up.
Soft floggers are yummy. Stingy paddles that don’t thud can be nice, but again, only if I’m properly warmed up.
Not a fan of clamps and clips. Mostly, it’s about the power exchange for me, and the constant reminders of it. I love schedules and rules.”
He seemed interested, so I gave him a little more. “When I visit a Dom I’ve been with a while, so I know what’s expected of me, and I only have to follow the rules, don’t have to decide what to do because it’s all laid out, it’s like the entire weight of the world comes off my shoulders.”
He smiled. “And what about the rules you hate? Do you love those, too?”
“Why don’t you give me an example? The question is too open-ended.”
“One of my rules is that during high-protocol times, women are either locked into high heels, or they must walk on their toes as if they are. Going flat-footed brings punishment, and it’s so much easier to punish a submissive who isn’t a masochist.”
My clit came to life, and I was suddenly extremely aware of my nipples. Fuck.
I turned away from him and aimed the camera to take some more pics of the rookery in general.
“Yeah, that’d be a rule I’d hate that would turn me on.
And you’re right about the punishment thing.
The Dom I work with the most, we’ve developed a level of trust so he can belt me up to a dozen times an hour without a safeword for true punishment. ”
I glanced at him and looked back to the herons. “Rules without a way to enforce them doesn’t work, but it takes me a while to trust someone to only use it judiciously, for actual consequences.”
“Someone you’re currently involved with?” Magnum asked.
“I’m not seeing anyone exclusively, but I have a few Doms in a handful of cities that I enjoy visiting.
I’m super-careful about the BDSM clubs I play in these days, and only go to the ones who are vigilant about keeping cell phones and cameras out of the play areas.
I’m too well known for images of me mostly naked on a Saint Andrew’s Cross to go public. ”