Chapter 3
Elodie
Rye hasn't touched me yet, but my body is on fire from head to toe. What is happening here? This man I've known as far back as my memories go has put me in a posture collar and an arm bar inside a kink club.
I feel like Dorothy, and I am definitely not in Kansas anymore. He's not the man I thought I knew. And somehow, that only makes me more feral.
Wow. The McAllister’s perfect daughter is soaking wet for her uncle.
This beautiful, magnificent, dark version of my father has me squeezing my fingernails into my palms so hard, blood is seeping through my skin. The urge I have to reach out and grab him is the only thing being controlled by this stupid arm bar.
So much of my life has been about control. Being perfect. And now, standing here in the middle of this club, I'm giving it all up. And I feel like I've taken my first deep breath in as long as I can remember.
I'm supposed to be the one holding everything together. But all I want to do right now is beg this man to explore parts of me that have never been explored. I want him to go full Lewis and Clark on my untouched territory. Plant his flag and lay claim to my continent.
Oh my God. This collar must be cutting off circulation to my brain.
There are things going on inside my head that would make our future family holiday get togethers rather awkward.
Not to mention what's going on inside my body. Everything feels like it's been turned up to ten. My hearing. The smells. His familiar cologne.
I bite down on my bottom lip and consider using my safe word, because my knees feel like Jello. So many years of perfect movement on stage, and right now I don't even feel like I can bear my own weight.
Is Rye just keeping me safe because I'm his niece? Or are those raspy inhales coming from beside me evidence that he's also struggling with whatever this pulsing sensation is between us?
“What are you thinking?” Rye’s chest brushes my shoulder blade as we watch several of the other newbies that were fully dressed when they came in with us are now in various states of undress taking on their kinks and dares.
A curvy blonde woman is in a black leather sort of dress, but the bodice is cut under the her breasts so they are fully exposed, swaying and moving as her ‘mentor-slash-guide’ attaches a glinting silver clip to each nipple, then adds grape-sized weights to the ends, drawing her nipples longer and longer as she shudders and gasps, her hands locked together in front of her by red rope laced multiple times around each wrist.
“I’m thinking…Mom would come ten kinds of undone if she knew my stand-in father has me at a kink club, introducing me to all the sinful, naughty things a prima ballerina should not know about. The underbelly of the world she’d call it, I’m sure.”
Without turning my head, I catch Rye’s nod in my peripheral vision, the slight pressure of his chest against my back incredibly comforting as I take in the circus of experiences happening around me.
“It’s not an underbelly, Dautie.” I suck in a quick breath.
He hasn’t called me that in years. The nickname he gave me the night my mother married his brother.
Something to welcome me to the family he’d said.
“It’s society’s puritanical judgment that drives people into the shadows.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with what they want or need or desire.
Sex, pleasure, and sensation are natural.
Tell me right now that you are not experiencing a sense of freedom and euphoria from being restrained? ”
I think for a moment, the knots tighten low in my belly coiling as Rye shifts behind me, his masculine, spicy scent swirling in my nose as his hip presses against my ass.
Part of me wants to be snotty and bratty and angry that he’s in this place with all these women who willingly would do probably anything he wants.
He’s clearly comfortable here. He knows people. He has respect here, I sense it.
But I can’t deny the floaty sense of freedom the collar and restrictions have created since he put them on me.
My pulse hammers between my thighs. I’m salivating. Freedom and euphoria… I guess that about sums it up.
I try to nod, then realize that’s not an option. The top of the leather cutting into the soft flesh at the apex of my throat. “Yes,” I manage as a screech of pleasure, pain, or both comes from somewhere behind us. “I feel…calm.”
“Good girl,” he says, low and steady, and those two words send a wild wave of heat and excitement through me.
We stand and watch a few of the other newbies’ names being called. Several staff members now move through the attendees, handing out their little scraps of paper, the little black experiences they're all going to have. Round two will be up soon.
I'm trying to remember my safe word. What if I need it?
Watermelon.
That was the word I chose when I filled out my release form.
I smile, remembering all the summers Rye would bring watermelon to Fourth of July barbecues and teach me how to spit the seeds as my mother reminded us that we did not live in a trailer park.
Rye is so close his body heat wraps around me like a blanket. None of the other men in the club has cast a glance my way since he dragged me away. I don't know who he is to them, but if there’s a pecking order, he’s clearly at the top of it.
I have so many questions, and somehow none of them seem important right now. I'm completely at his mercy and more peaceful than I ever knew I could be.
"You doing okay, baby?" He leans toward my ear, his breath scented lightly with scotch. His favorite.
Ironic, right? My father's name is Scotch, his name is Rye.
Apparently, my grandparents enjoyed their amber liquid back in Scotland where my father and uncle were born. They moved to Michigan when they were both toddlers. Rye and my dad tell stories about their parents a lot.
They were full of Scottish grit and stubbornness but they loved their boys. They were both gone by the time my mom married Scotch and it’s a shame I didn’t get the opportunity to meet them.
I've never seen Rye overindulge in alcohol, though. He’ll pour one finger of scotch, finish it, and that's it. My father, on the other hand, enjoys his scotch, his rye, white wine, beer, margaritas on Taco Tuesday. He has been known to numb himself.
"I'm fine," I answer, swallowing against the dryness in my mouth, shifting my weight back and forth on my heels, my back pinned straight. The way he keeps checking in with me is sexier than I could have ever imagined. His interest in what I’m thinking, and how I’m feeling, is erotic in a whole other way.
The posture collar feels natural. I've been holding my neck like this since I was a toddler. How do I feel so at home in this dark, edgy, wrong-side-of-the-tracks club? Mom would curl up in a ball, have an aneurysm, a heart attack, and God knows what else, seeing her daughter like this.
"You're up for your next kink or dare after this person is done," Rye rasps against my ear. "Do you want to call your safe word, or do you want to keep going?"
A sticky stream of wetness answers him silently from between my legs. The urge to reach down and rub myself is all-consuming. Having my hands bound and immobilized only makes the desire multiply a hundred-fold.
This giant man next to me with the face of the man who raised me has my heart bouncing around in my chest. But before I answer him, the man with the slicked-back hair turns our way.
"Allegra, ready for round two, or are you tapping out?"
"I'm not tapping anything," I reply with a smile, first at him, then at Rye, who has stepped around from behind me. I add a wink, unsure where my sudden boldness is coming from. "I'll take dare this time."
The helmet-haired man nods, motioning to a young woman dressed in a frilly pink dress and knee socks, her bottom exposed under the hem to display frilly white panties. She approaches with another box, this one gold. He reaches in and pulls out a golden slip of paper.
"Now, Allegra chooses dare. What do we have here?" He pauses, dramatic tension building in the room, though most people are otherwise occupied at this point.
I did catch a glimpse of Anna earlier. She shot me a wink while a very handsome salt-and-pepper-haired man led her around the room by a leash and collar.
And Jeremy looked like a pig in shit as a muscular bald man with tattoos down both arms wrapped him in Saran Wrap against a red pole, then proceeded to blindfold him.
The man's voice cuts through.
"Well. This should be interesting." He looks up, catching Rye’s eye, then mine. "We dare you to treat your guide like your Daddy, and you do anything and everything you are told as his little girl. Everything, Allegra. No exceptions. Quite daring to be under someone else’s control. What do you say? Yes or just say your safeword and you’re free to go… "
I catch Anna staring at me from the other side of the room, smiling with a little head nod of encouragement. Jeremy is standing a few feet to her left, a red ball gag in his mouth with black leather straps holding it in place.
He just winks.
Daddy.
Rye.
Identical twin of my father.
“I’ll go with yes.”’ I announce toward the man with the black hair. The crowd offering murmurs and controlled applause as my uncle pinches the top of my ear between his teeth.
I tense, my spine goes stick straight as his lips brush lower and he releases an exhale, then, “Good girl. We’re going to have some fun.
Shit.
I think I just came a little bit.
“You are fucking lucky I was here tonight.” Rye turns as the man running the evening moves on to the next name.
My uncle’s, voice takes on a harder, stern edge as he steps in front of me.
His body blocking my visual field as I squeeze my core muscles, the slick warmth down low a constant reminder of the secret fantasies playing out in vivid Technicolor in my head. “What were you thinking coming here?”
“I wasn’t. This was Anna’s idea. It’s her bachelorette party.”