Club Helix: The Power Games (30 page)

“Fine. But let me know if you want my help in giving them a taste of their own medicine when you realize I’m right. I love a man who can wield a whip,” she adds suggestively, trailing a finger up my forearm.

“The next time you proposition a Dom who is not your own, I will make sure your punishment is both public and severe enough that you think twice before disrespecting your Dom. Consider yourself warned,” I say coldly.

It doesn’t help my mood when I return to find Ava and Emmett standing close, their heads together. I’m slightly mollified by the brilliant smile Ava flashes me when she turns to see me standing behind her with her drink. I hand it to her and pull her aside as Emmett excuses himself.

“Rebecca says you snuck out to see Emmett this morning,” I say evenly.

She looks down. “I didn’t sneak out. You were asleep.”

“Did you know he was going to be at the gym this morning?”

She nods.

“How?”

“He gave me a note, asking me to meet him.”

“And you didn’t think you should mention this to me?” I ask harshly.

Her expression is contrite. “I…I didn’t know what to do,” she says finally. “He said he needed to talk to me alone. I’ve already explained to you that Emmett means everything to me. He will always have my loyalty because of our past. But you have my loyalty too because you’re my Dom for the show. And I… Well, it was a predicament,” she finishes lamely.

“A predicament?” I say incredulously.

“Yes,” she says firmly, nodding. “A predicament.”

“I see. And what exactly did Emmett need to talk to you about alone?”

She averts her gaze.

“Ava, you asked me to trust you where Emmett’s concerned, and dammit, I’m trying, but you’re not making this easy.”

She sighs. “He was worried when he saw the collar you gave me. He thinks I’m getting in over my head.”

“And what about you?” I ask softly. “Do you think you’re getting in over your head?”

“I know I am!” she says with a strangled laugh. “But I want to. I want to drown in you.” Her confession is a whisper.

Our conversation is cut short as our names are called to report to our station.

I grab her hand, and she looks at me nervously. “Where are we going?”

I don’t answer right away; I just lead her to the sawhorse and stop, making her wait as I walk to the wall where a variety of implements are displayed and take my time selecting a large black leather paddle. I walk back over to her, tapping it lightly against my open palm.

“Bend over the horse, sweetheart.”

“Oh.” The hint of fear coupled with excitement in her eyes is intoxicating. She studies the deceptively simplistic-looking piece of wood that’s fashioned into an A-frame. It looks like a traditional sawhorse but with leather padding on the top and restraints attached to all four legs as well as to the bars that connect the legs on either side. It’s ingenious and one of my favorite pieces of equipment, allowing a submissive to be restrained over it in either direction.

I indicate that she’s to bend over it from the side, and she tentatively drapes herself over the horse, bracing herself with her hands on the horizontal bar below her before looking back at me apprehensively. “Eyes forward,” I snap.

I spread her legs wide so her feet are even with the outside edges of the legs of the sawhorse and secure them to the horse with the attached leather cuffs. She is bent over at the waist with her pelvis resting on the padded top, and with her hands tightly gripping the horizontal bar on the opposite side, her back is flat and her breasts are dangling, free and easily accessible. I reach forward and tweak her nipples, smiling as they instantly harden.
Perfect.
A small crowd has started to gather around us, but Ava hasn’t noticed. She’s too worried about what I’m going to do to her.

I fasten the cuffs around her wrists, leaving enough slack in the straps so she can move a little. She tests the bonds, and her breath increases as she realizes how truly restrained she is. Her ass is sticking up delectably, and I rub my hand over it, letting my finger stray between the crack of her cheeks as she shivers. I spread her cheeks slightly with both hands, and she tugs at the restraints. I have no doubt she’s mortified. I slide my finger forward to explore her pussy; just as I’d suspected, she’s wet despite her whimpers of protest.

I come to stand in front of her and crouch down so we’re eye to eye.

“You okay?” I ask, my voice low.

“Yes,” she says, her voice shaking.

“Good,” I say with a smile. “Now all you have to do is breathe. And wonder what I’m going to do to you next.”

She inhales sharply. I stand up again and trail my fingers down her spine, enjoying her squirms. I’ve been looking forward to this all night.

I had laid the paddle down in front of her while I’d fastened the restraints, and I pick it up now, trailing it lightly along her back as I move behind her. There’s a fairly large crowd gathered now, but she’s facing the wall away from the audience, her sweet little ass the main attraction.

“How many strokes, Avalon?” I ask softly.

“What? I get to choose?” she asks bewilderedly.

“I want to know how many you think you can take,” I say. “Choose carefully. If you try to get away with too few, I’ll double your number.”

She gasps, and the crowd chuckles. I rub her bottom roughly, increasing the flow of blood to her ass to ready her for the paddle.

“Um, twenty?”

God, she’s magnificent. “As you wish,” I say.

“Could I have gotten away with less?” she asks desperately, making the crowd titter again.

“You’ll never know now, will you, sweetheart? “

“Bastard,” she mutters.

“What was that, Avalon?” I ask menacingly, squeezing one round cheek firmly.

“Faster. I said faster,” she says breathlessly, and I have to admire her quickness in covering her slip. “I, um, just want to get it over with.”

Her trepidation, coupled with her feisty spirit and smart mouth, is ratings gold. The crowd adores her.

“Rule number eight. My timetable, not yours. You just bought yourself an extra five strokes. You’ll count the strokes and thank me for each. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she says between gritted teeth.

I slap her ass sharply in warning, and she pulls against the restraints rebelliously.

“Avalon.”

Her name, spoken in a stern voice, is enough to remind her.

“Yes, Sir,” she bites out.

I slide my hand between her parted legs and tease her clit for a few minutes before slipping a finger into her, smiling as the walls of her vagina tighten around me. I find her G-spot and press.

“Oh!” The little huff of surprise is audible.

As her pelvis begins to grind against the padded surface of the sawhorse, I pull my finger out and rub the paddle across her ass.

“Ask me to spank you!”

She hesitates a fraction of a second and then says, “Please spank me, Sir.”

She gasps at the first slap of the paddle, straining hard against the restraints. “Fuck!”

“Not the correct response,” I say drily. “Should I start again?”

“No,” she says quickly. “One. Thank you, Sir.”

I hit her again, and this time her count and thank-you are slightly muffled. Her cheeks clench together in anticipation of the third blow, and I rub them with my hand.

“Relax,” I say softly. “It will hurt more if you tense up. Let go and enjoy it.”

She laughs disbelievingly but relaxes her butt cheeks, and I spank her again, the leather resounding with a loud smack against her bare flesh. I paddle her methodically, stopping and starting randomly to increase her anticipation and, consequently, her enjoyment, knowing just where to place each stroke for maximum sensation. By the time I’ve reached twenty, her ass is a glorious red, and she’s squirming wildly against the restraints, much to the delight of our audience.

I pause, dipping my finger into her again and coating her clit with her juices. She cries out as I play with her, oblivious now to anything but the juxtaposition of pleasure and pain, her reddened ass no doubt on fire and her clit hard and needy. When she’s close to coming, I withdraw again.

“No grinding that sweet little cunt against the horse, Avalon,” I say as I smack her ass with the paddle again. She would have jumped clear off the horse if she weren’t tied to it. I wait for her to regain her composure before beginning again, and I finish the final four strokes quickly, pausing only for her to count and thank me.

Her breath is ragged as I run my hand over her flaming bottom, which is warm to my touch. I walk back around to crouch in front of her. I’d expected tears. Twenty-five strokes of a paddle is enough to reduce even an experienced sub to tears, but not my Avalon. Her eyes are glittering with a combination of humiliation, fury, and naked desire.

“Are you close to coming?” I ask softly.

She shakes her head vehemently. “No! My ass is on fire! That’s the last thing I’m thinking about.”

“We’ll see about that,” I say with a wicked smile.

Chapter Twenty

Ava

Roman’s words are incendiary, adding heat to the fire that’s raging through me from the paddling. I lied. I’m precariously close to coming, although it defies logic. He just beat me, and it hurt! Like a motherfucker, in fact. What the hell is wrong with me that I get off on being tied to a sawhorse and paddled until my ass is on fire? But there’s no way I’m coming here in front of all these people. I can’t see them, but I can hear them behind me, and I try not to think about the fact that my reddened ass is on display for the world, or at least the entire club, to see.

Roman moves behind me, and I can feel his hands in my hair, gathering it back from where it’s hanging around my face. It’s strangely intimate the way his capable fingers gently but efficiently braid my hair. It’s also completely incongruous with the tough demeanor he exudes. He wraps something around the end of the braid, securing it before coming back into my field of vision to retrieve the toy bag he’d left on the floor in front of me. He reaches into the bag and pulls out a steel hook with a ball on one end and a ring on the other with some rope tied to it.

“I believe I’ve sufficiently shown the audience the basics of how this particular piece of equipment can be used to punish a sub. Now we’ll move on to my agenda.” There’s a wicked gleam in his eye that sends misgiving spiking through me. He caresses the large steel ball at the end of the hook. It’s enormous. “This is going in your ass,” he says softly.

“Like hell it is!” I say indignantly, pulling as hard as I can against the restraints. Damn. I can barely move. “It’s too big. Besides, I don’t like anal play.” I’m pretty sure that’s not entirely true since I found the plug pretty hot, but this is different. This thing is huge and intimidating as hell. No way is it going in my ass!

“You don’t have to like it. You just have to do it,” he says, his words echoing mine.
Crap.
I knew my words were going to come back to bite me; I just didn’t know it would be for something as awful as this.

“Do you want me to blindfold you?”

Although I have no doubt he’s going to push that gigantic ball into me whether I want him to or not, the fact that he cares enough to ask if I want to be blindfolded is oddly thoughtful, and it somehow makes what he’s about to do slightly more bearable.

“I don’t know,” I say a little desperately. I don’t know what I want. I want to escape what he’s about to do, yet I somehow yearn for more—more of him and more of this. “Do you want to blindfold me?”

He thinks for a second and then nods, slipping the blindfold over my eyes. “I want you to concentrate fully on the sensations.”

I feel his hands caress my burning ass again as he separates my cheeks, and I’m suddenly infinitely grateful for the blindfold. It’s absolutely mortifying, but I’m helpless to stop him. He squirts lube—cool and wet—over my hole, and then he’s pressing the ball into me. It’s shockingly cold, not to mention hard and unyielding. I squirm, but there’s no escaping the unrelenting pressure of the huge steel ball stretching me as he works it into my ass.

“You can thank me later for not putting it in the freezer first,” he murmurs in my ear as his hands stroke over my back, soothing me.

Oh, fuck!
I shudder at the thought, and my ass cheeks clench together, making him chuckle.

Once the ball breaches my sphincter muscle, it settles in me gently, and I relax a little, although my heart is hammering in anticipation of what Roman intends to do now that the ball attached to the odd-shaped hook is buried in my ass. I’m surprised to find it feels kind of good once it’s in and so much different from the plug. It fills me more, but it’s a subtle fullness, and the sheer weight of it inside me is a surprising turn-on.

His hands skim erotically over the curves of my hips and up my sides. He grabs the braid he just painstakingly made, pulling my head up. I can feel him tie something to my braid, but I can’t imagine what it could be.

Once he’s released my hair, I lower my head back down, but as I do, the ball presses intensely against the walls of my ass. It feels like Roman has stuck two fingers into my tight little hole and opened them, stretching me uncomfortably. Realizing he’s tied the hook to my hair, I quickly pull my head back up to ease the pressure.

Roman comes back around to stand in front of me, lifting the blindfold so he can see my eyes.

“How are you doing, sweetheart?” he asks with a diabolical grin.

I shoot daggers at him, and he actually laughs! Before I can curse him out and probably get myself into even more trouble, he slips the blindfold back into place and grabs my nipples. He tugs gently, rolling them between his fingers until they’re hardened points and I’m struggling to stay still. The hook immobilizes me more efficiently than the wrist and ankle restraints. I’ll do just about anything to avoid the intense stretched feeling that’s created when I move and pull the ball deeper into me.

He attaches a clamp to each tight nipple, and I inhale sharply. I breathe through the pain, knowing it will subside, but as soon as it does, Roman attaches a weight of some sort to each of the clamps and I’m pulling in air like an asthmatic again. The weights are heavy and cause the clamps to tug painfully on my nipples. It’s almost unbearable, but not quite, which I’m sure he knows full well. The bastard.