Bound With Pearls

Bound with Pearls

Sidney Bristol

The last thing Christine wants to do is another favor for her sister, but Lucy always gets what she wants. This time it’s Chris playing sub to a demanding Dom. Their relationship begins with a power exchange and progresses to time spent between the sheets. Now emotions are getting complicated and the Dom isn’t just a hunky guy in black.

Daniel’s expectations are turned upside down when he meets Chris. She’s more than a well-trained submissive. She’s a woman with a body he wants to memorize. He’s willing to spend as much time as it takes to learn her, because she might be his match and his muse. He’ll make her come so hard he’s imprinted on every inch, and then he’ll offer her the most precious thing he can. Himself.

Bound with Pearls

Sidney Bristol

Chapter One

“Oh Ginny, you didn’t have to bring me anything!” Christine’s modesty was eclipsed by excitement as she ripped off the festive paper with little UK flags all over it. “Tell me all about your trip,” she added, pulling the box free from the wrapping. In the cutout, she could see “I <3 London” emblazoned on a coffee mug with a matching disc that looked like either a coaster or a lid.

“You knew it was coming.” Ginny grinned and settled in one of the guest chairs in Christine’s new office. Their burger lunch lay spread out over the glass desk between them. On every vacation Ginny had taken since getting married straight out of high school, she brought Christine back a souvenir with “I <3 something” on it to repay her for dog-sitting. Socks, panties, sweatshirts, mugs—she was building up quite the collection—and she adored every gift.

“I love it.” She held the box up and grinned.

“I’m glad. So are you settling in here okay?”

She set the box on her desk and popped a fry in her mouth to buy a moment. “Mm, yes. The first few weeks were a huge relief. Not working with Lucy took so much stress out of my life.”

Further explanation was cut off by the ringing of her cell phone. Christine leaned over to glance at the display and rolled her eyes. So much for being stress-free.

“Speak of the devil,” she mumbled.

“Don’t answer it,” Ginny said forcefully.

“I have to. She’s my sister.”

“She’s going to whine or ask you for something. Has she even asked you how your new job is?”

“Not since she moved into my old office.” She put the call on speaker. “Hey, Lucy.”

“I need a favor, sis,” Lucy stated, perky as ever.

Cradling her forehead in her hand, Christine sighed, pointedly not looking at Ginny. It was no secret her best friend held no love for her little sister. And how could she blame her? Most of the time she didn’t like her sister very much either. “What is it?”

“It’s this thing Nathan got himself into. It’s silly really.” Lucy’s bubbly laughter set off warning bells.

Christine groaned inwardly. Nathan was Lucy’s boyfriend, the one she’d met after joining and running Chris off from her own BDSM club. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he indulged Lucy and she was already spoiled enough. It was hard to curb the motherly instincts. Lucy wasn’t a teenager anymore. She was an adult, and Chris didn’t have to fill their mother’s shoes anymore.

“He went to this BDSM poker game thing.”

Her head jerked up. Ginny’s eyebrows were halfway to her brow line, a fry frozen at her lips. Gesturing for Ginny to close the office door, she pinched the bridge of her nose. “Uh-huh. I’m going to assume you mean Master’s Poker?”

Ginny closed the door and resumed her seat. While she knew about Christine’s preference for D/s, it wasn’t a topic they discussed often. Just enough so that Ginny knew the bruises were consensual and what Chris meant by asking her to be her “safe call” when meeting a new guy. Though that hadn’t been an issue lately.

“Yeah, I think that’s what he called it. They bet money and stuff, but later on they all wrote out bets for their subs to do. Nate didn’t talk to me about it before, and I’m not comfortable with the guy who—who—”

“Won the pot?” Christine avoided looking at Ginny. She had a bad feeling about where this was going. She knew about the poker games from a Dom she’d gone on a few dates with, and the standards the attendees were held to were socially enforced. If Nate didn’t follow through on his promise, he’d never be allowed into the game again. There was probably more to it, but as a sub, Chris wasn’t privy to more.

“Yeah. Anyways. You’re not seeing anyone, so I was thinking you could come out to the club and—”

“No. No, Lucy, don’t even ask. The answer is no.” Ginny made a strangled noise Christine ignored, swiveling around to stare out her office window. She took a deep breath and felt her nerves settling. Being able to say no to her little sister was liberating. She needed to do it more often.

“Please, Chris. I never ask you for anything!”

Lie.
Lucy had asked a few weeks before to borrow her Jeep, used a whole tank of gas and left the interior a wreck. Before that there was college tuition, summer trips for Lucy but never Chris, fashionable clothes, money every week, hell, Lucy had even gone to prom before Chris because she was the special one. There was a laundry list of things Lucy had asked, begged and demanded from her since they were children. Being the “miracle baby”, she’d been born with entitlement as her first meal. Their parents had always capitulated to her wants, coddling her and excusing her bad behavior because she shouldn’t have been born.

“This will make Nate look bad. Come on. You aren’t seeing anyone, and it’s not like you have anything else going on.”

She winced again. No, her life was on an uninteresting path as of late, mostly because she wasn’t trying to play mom anymore.

Lucy sighed into the phone. Christine could imagine her little sister pursing her glossy lips and flipping her perfectly straight blonde hair over her shoulder. “If you do this for me I’ll give you Mom’s pearls.”

The world could have stopped, Hell could have frozen over and none of it would have had the impact on her that those little words did. Chris had given up on bargaining with her sister for them last year, convinced Lucy would keep them from her out of spite alone. Was Lucy offering them now because she’d finally stopped asking about them? She clutched at the armrest. She’d told Lucy no and the brat countered with the one bargaining piece Christine had always wanted. The necklace Lucy hadn’t been interested in possessing until Chris asked for it when their mother’s things were being divided.

“You said you loved those pearls.” Her voice was hoarse. She wanted the damn necklace.

“Yeah, well, Nate means more to me than a string of beads. I never wear them anyways.”

It killed her to think of their mother’s things treated with little care.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Christine knew she was going to do it. She knew she would and the knowledge ate at her stomach as though it were acid. Allow a stranger even her ditzy sister didn’t feel comfortable with to touch her? The idea had her shivering, and not in a good way. There would have to be some serious ground rules.

“Chris, please.”

She mentally clung to her resolve. “I’ll think about it,” she bit off and ended the call. She’d say yes but she’d damn well make her sister wait to hear it.

The office that had felt wide open now suffocated her. The skyscrapers out her window were like prison bars closing in around her. She didn’t look at Ginny, knowing they would have the same argument they had every time Lucy wanted her to do something she shouldn’t do. But they were sisters.

While her friend was right in insisting she couldn’t play mom forever, Lucy and her dad were all she had left, and if she stopped fighting for them, where would they go? Her mother had been the glue that held them together until the moment she passed away. As the last breath faded and her life slipped away, it had been as if the strings holding them together snapped.

She buried her face in her hands and sucked in a shuddering breath. Her father was a shell of the man she’d known and her sister had spiraled into a poisonous creature she didn’t know.

A hand gripped her shoulder. She glanced up to find Ginny standing next to her chair, concern and sympathy creasing her brow.

“Come here.”

Ginny pulled her to her feet and hugged her as only a mother could. She had plenty of practice with her own toddlers, after all. Chris clung to her best friend, feeling the grief over what her family had been as if the walls had crashed down yesterday and not years ago.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but you really need to accept that she’s going to do what she wants to and you can’t change her. Worry about you.”

She nodded, already acquainted with this discussion. Part of her taking the new job had been about owning her life and making herself happy. She just wasn’t up for that talk again, the one where Ginny told her all of Lucy’s faults and the pitfalls of succumbing to her desires. She had it out with herself over the same topic often enough in private, it seemed a waste to use up all her time with her best friend going over it. Again. Gathering her calm, she straightened and dashed the moisture from her lashes.

Ginny stepped back, giving her space.

Chris flashed her a smile that barely reached skin deep. “Please, can we talk about something besides my sister?”

Ginny nodded and headed back to her chair. “How about the charity run? Still doing it with me?”

* * * * *

Daniel leaned back from the worktable strewn with bits of metal shavings. The delicate piece of kinky jewelry he’d been working on lay in a coiled heap. Propping his elbows on the edge, he tried to muddle through the text message on his phone. Words were missing letters and the damn kid used abbreviations he didn’t know. Text-speak made his head hurt. He would have thought not speaking to Nathan would be an improvement. He was wrong.

The jumbled mix of letters and numbers finally clicked. Daniel’s brows rose. Nathan wasn’t asking him to forget about winning the pot like he’d hoped. He had expected that. Instead, Nathan was changing it. He wasn’t surprised, but he still wasn’t looking forward to the evening.

Winning the pot at Master’s Poker had been an accident. He and every other person at the table had been trying to lose. Daniel hadn’t played badly enough.

The guidelines of Master’s Poker were simple. Standard poker rules applied, and participants could bet the time or services of their subs, or custom pieces such as floggers or paddles. Nathan wasn’t a regular at the poker nights, and he didn’t have any friends among them, but it was a public event. Anyone who identified as a Top or Dominant could attend. Why Nathan had bet an evening with his sub was a mystery. If possible, she was less popular than her Dom.

Shrugging, he pushed the phone to the side of the table. He doubted one sister would be better than the other. It was a pity, because Lucy was a beautiful woman. Instead, he’d wanted to win the pot because it included a custom flogger. A few of the other Doms who were craftsmen like Daniel had offered up their skills.

In fact, he needed to finish the gold-plated nipple clamps he’d been working on when his phone chimed. He didn’t make many items such as the clamps. They were both challenging and fun. He’d been focused on preproduction for his latest collection and doing a few custom items, wearable art. His style of jewelry wasn’t bought to match clothing. People bought clothing to match his art. At least that’s what he liked to think.

Every now and then he made special pieces, delicate things, which were beautiful in their symbolism and the pain they brought. These weren’t pieces he could display at his gallery showings. They weren’t even things he sold. A personal rule—items of this nature were made to be gifts.

It was the fourth item this week he’d made on a whim. His inspiration was lacking right now, when he should have been conceptualizing a new collection. The unveiling of his newest line was coming up and he had nothing to tantalize his buyers with for future purchases.

He was at a crossroads with his business. He’d enjoyed a few years as an artist, incredibly egotistical and full of his own worth. Then reality hit his bank account and he’d had to sit back and decide what he wanted to do. While he could continue to focus on one-of-a-kind masterpieces, the real money was in creating lines of jewelry to be produced for a larger audience. The last few years were about making his brand, hiring employees and figuring out retail. There were still days when the arrogant artist in him reared his head and sneered at what he did now, but so what? Before, he’d only seen his pieces as they walked out the door of his showroom. Now, he could pass someone wearing his jewelry on the street. Not that it happened often. He wasn’t a big enough name to draw a lot of attention, but he was working on that.

Each year he hand-produced two lines of original creations. One debuted for spring, the other for winter, and was then mass-produced by his employees. He was constantly working on new ideas, designs and concepts. At each unveiling he liked to have a small sample of what was in store for the following season. It was a tall order, but he’d always delivered. This was the first year he was in danger of having nothing beyond the current collection.

There was still plenty of demand for past pieces to keep his production line busy, but he couldn’t risk his brand going stagnant. It took enough effort for his inner artist to even wrap his head around what a damn brand was, he couldn’t lose it now. In all the years he’d been making jewelry, he’d never been this lost. But creativity wouldn’t strike if he forced it. Instead he focused on making this latest piece the best he could.

With the finishing touches done, he grabbed a velvet jewelry box from his stockroom and carefully arranged the clamps. Completing the set left him in a good mood. He was glad to make the gift for his friends, Bianca and Clay. Though they had won it in the poker game, it was something he would have liked to have given them for their wedding a few months ago but hadn’t thought about at the time. Instead he’d given them a gift card, which now seemed sorely lacking.

He’d moved to Atlanta without knowing anyone and met the couple at a munch, a monthly gathering of kinky people at a restaurant for food and hanging out. They’d hit it off and quickly became his closest friends in the local community.