Finding Their Balance (43 page)

Back stiffening, Cal clicked his heels to a stop. “Not all appetites are so tame.” Standing between his subjects, facing the crowd, he spread his arms wide. “There’s pleasure in danger when I hold the whip.”

He stripped the subs’ cloaks to the floorboards.

Snatching her hand, Jay wrapped them together on his knee. “I’m not leaving.”

The man on stage shifted lean, muscular legs, the lanky strength in his calves and thighs leading to a trim waist and firm abs. Sparse hairs dotted his chest, and he boasted a thick, shaggy mop of black strands falling across his forehead. With his soft brown gaze, he surveyed the crowd in a state of attentive calm. His waiting pose.

Jay looked out from those eyes.

Oh God, she was going to be sick.

Henry tightened his embrace. A deep inhale brought her the gentle bite of citrus, light and fresh and oh-so-welcome.

“Not leaving,” she echoed. But Jesus Christ.

Flickering beyond Henry’s solid bulwark, audience members rotated their stares between the stage and their resolute trio. No fucking wonder. The woman, dark blond and curvy, carried attributes a smidge more generous up top than her own, but Cal more than made his point with the pairing.

“Step forward and be seen, slave.” Cal scooped up a short crop and slapped the man’s thigh with it.

Yelping, he skipped front and center. His brown eyes flashed below the fringe of his hair before he bowed his head.

“Seen, I said. Not heard.” With the crop, Cal prodded between the slave’s legs. “Spread.” When the man widened his stance, Cal drew back the crop. “Be still.”

Balls swaying from the hit, the slave confined his flinch to a silent grimace.

“What’s this? No thank-you for your master?” As Cal switched him, rapid strikes on his inner thighs, he targeted Jay with his stare. “What an ungrateful slut you are.”

Though the slave shuddered, his cock rose. “Please, master, this slave is sorry and thanks—”

“Too late. You’ve been ruined by impotent masters who dole out praise when punishment is deserved.” Cal’s shit-eating grin at Henry made adding
fuck you
redundant. “Retraining is a must.”

As Cal delivered punishing slaps, the crop whirred like playing cards tucked into bike spokes. Jay’d shown her on his spare bike one Saturday. They’d ridden up and down the street, building up speed, fake-revving their “engine” as the turning back wheel snapped the cards over and over. A fun sound. Sickening, now, when thighs glowed exit-sign red and tears streaked the slave’s cheeks.

“Proper order must be maintained. Slaves are a carpet of bones and flesh for my amusement. When they rise above their station?” Twirling his crop, Cal glared at Jay. “Well, it’s the cross and the whip for you.”

Jay turned her fingers white, but his face masked the distress leaching from his grip. He and Henry sat unmoved as matching bookends, a mix of boredom and faint disapproval graven in straight lips and slow blinks.

Scowling, Cal circled his slave and studied him face to face.

Anticipation. Henry mastered them with their own excitement most days. His murmured promises—

Cal straight-armed the slave in mid-chest. Grunting breath billowed out, and the slave stumbled back. His shoulders hunched as he sucked in air.

Arm extended, hand raised like a stop sign, Cal laughed. “To the cross, slut.”

The biddable Jay-copy complied. Cal manipulated him into position with flicks of his crop. Red splotches rose along outstretched arms and legs.

Henry had taught her to follow his tune with teasing feathers and gentle hands. When they played, her heart sang a giddy harmony with his and Jay’s.

The man strapped and padlocked to the heavy frame met his master’s training methods with gritted teeth and wide, rolling eyes. Skittish as a horse confronting a prairie rattler.

Cal unsnapped his whip. The coils thumped at they dropped to the boards, and the slave flinched. Stepping closer, grasping handfuls of muscled back, Cal grinned. He raised the whip handle—a fat, foot-long leather-wrapped club—and extended his arms over the bound man’s shoulders.

“A slave serves at his master’s pleasure.” Jamming the handle against the slave’s throat, Cal throttled him with a two-handed grip. “The animal’s own enjoyment”—he kneed the gagging slave in the balls—“though sport for laughter, is unnecessary, and ought to be strictly controlled.”

The whip hung around the slave’s neck, the weighted handle and stinging tail dangling down his back. His breath came in pained wheezes.

Cal abandoned him. At the corner nearest their seats, he slowed his swagger and stroked the bulge in his fancy pants. “A master, of course, is free to indulge his appetites where and when he will.”

He must have trapped Jay long ago with the seductive charm he poured into the smile he targeted her with now. His lone trick, useless when he couldn’t resist showing the serrated teeth waiting to tear into fresh meat.

As he leered, his eyes lit up. “He compels obedience from mouthy bitches using every tool at his disposal.”

Calling on her is-this-boring-ass-lecture-over-yet face, she gave him no edges to gnaw or scabs to pick. Audacious jackass. As if she’d jump out of her seat and beg to join him.

Cal worked his jaw sideways and stalked away.

A
hmpf
sounded behind their couch. “He cheapens his gifts—”

Holy shit, the quiet, gentlemanly resignation was coming from Master Laurence.

“—with such a distasteful attitude.”

The nude woman on stage remained in the spotlight. She’d watched the cropping and binding with nonchalant interest. Either she’d perfected her mask of indifference the way Alice and Jay had at home all week, or she truly didn’t care about her co-submissive.

Cal passed behind her. Without a word, he yanked her by her hair, twisted her neck until she faced him on her knees, and ground his crotch against her cheek.

Nothing of Jay’s worship or her own love for sucking Henry’s cock came through the woman’s dead-eyed gaze. She allowed Cal to mash himself against her, but she wore the vacant stare of a clock-counter. How many minutes until her shift ended and her life would be her own?

In Cal’s hands, a pile of leather and buckles became bonds for the woman. Sleeves captured her forearms behind her back, and straps secured her wrists to her ankles. She rested on her haunches, immobilized.

Cal kicked her knees wide. “The animals must know who is the master here.” He dragged his boot, a scuffing rasp on the boards, and probed her sex with the black leather toe. Grabbing her by the hair, he jammed her face into his groin.

The woman uttered muffled groans and swung her shoulders, a pendulum out of balance.

“Their fear and struggle is the master’s reward for his toil.” Paying no attention to the woman at his feet, Cal reserved his sadistic glee for eye-fucking Alice. No telling how often he’d jerked off to this scenario with her in the key role.

But anger lived in the growing furrows across his forehead. He pumped his hips, violent thrusts rattling the rings on his slave’s gear and knocking her knees against the platform.

“They quake in terror, as they should.” Cal glared. The jackass had loved her quaking and crying the night they’d met. Her indifference almost seemed to offend him. “Their fate is mine to command.”

She faked a yawn and leaned into Jay. “Smile like Henry stepped into your shower.”

Jay laughed. He sure as hell hadn’t expected her whisper, and his surprise bolted through an all-natural grin. “He did.”

With a low hum, Henry declared the recollection a happy one.

Cal sealed his slave’s nose and mouth.

Escalating violence. Every time she and Jay refused to respond with pain and fear, Cal upped his cruelty and lost another piece in his powerful image. He couldn’t safely control partners. He barely controlled himself.

Oxygen-deprived, unable to wrench free, the woman writhed in futile, awkward jerks.

Cal’s truth ticked by. Thirty seconds. A minute.

Murmurs washed through the crowd. A striking redhead in steampunk chic, leather-and-buckle Victorian, stood and snapped her fingers. The man beside her jumped up.

“We’re going.” Leading him by a leash attached to his collar, the mistress exited the row. “This isn’t the brand of obedience I want you to learn. We’ll stop at the desk and sign you up for Master Henry’s next class.”

Squealing, Cal backhanded the slave at his feet. She landed sideways, thumping in a heap on the hardwood stage, and spittle flew as she choked.

“Try that again, and I’ll knock every tooth out of your smug-bitch mouth.”

Holy fuck. In her struggle for air, his scene partner’d left teeth marks in the crotch of Cal’s leather pants. She didn’t act near as cowed as the man he’d left tied. Part of imitating the “fight” Cal ascribed to Alice? The insolence he was so damned determined to beat—or fuck—out of her.

“Fuck you. You didn’t say fuck-all about choking.” The bound woman wheezed and rasped, her voice raw. “And I like air in my lungs.”

Cal dragged her back to her knees by her hair. “You’ll take what I have for you, wherever I put it, and if air can’t get through, you’ll learn to breathe cock.”

Wresting her head back, the woman laughed. “With that?” She nodded toward his groin. Her bite had deflated Cal’s interest.

“His cock must be allergic to laughter,” Alice whispered. “He’s melting like a wicked witch in water.”

As Will’s bass guffaw boomed behind her, Jay laughed and Henry snorted. He’d been reading them
The Wizard of Oz
on storytime nights for the last month.

Cal swept up his cast-aside crop. “This is
my
show. I will have proper respect.”

The woman flinched from Cal’s slapping strikes at her breasts. “Knock it off, asshole. I agreed to this submissive role-play shit and the hair dye because the money was—”

Cal belted her with his closed fist.

Gasps rippled from the front row to the last. Henry tossed a pointed glance at the board members behind them. No money exchanged hands at the club. Professionals played elsewhere, by different rules.

“Calvin, did you pay this woman?” Master Laurence’s words came creased with disappointment, a napkin folded around a distasteful bite of a dish better left uneaten.

“A thousand bucks.” Rocking on her bound arms, the woman managed to roll sideways. “Three hours’ work, he said.”

Membership fees covered upkeep for the building and equipment. The charter forbade payments between individual members for activities inside the club. Pay for play violated the community spirit.

Behind her, hushed voices rose as board members argued. “—appalling lack of judgment.”

The whole place operated as a nonprofit social club. The philanthropic arm supported programs to end sexual assault and domestic violence. Too bad they’d taken so long to cut out the spreading rot in their own house.

“No, no, Master Laurence. All part of the scene.” Face flushed, Cal turned his back on the woman and stalked toward the cross. “Surely my word of honor has more worth here than that of a poorly trained submissive.” He unlooped the whip from the male slave’s neck. “She’s been coached, of course, to be deserving of punishment. I meant to show the sort of behavior other members’ submissives get away with.” Glaring at Henry, he cracked the whip. A testing stroke.

Locked to the cross, his slave shuddered. In a worm-wiggle of hip and elbow, the woman crawled toward the far side of the platform while eyeing Cal.

Alice battled the heart-galloping urge to interfere. “I don’t think she’s lying.”

“Nor do I.” Henry swept his knuckles down her arm and squeezed her fingers.

“—childish grudge turned tantrum.” The whispering among the board members intensified. Cal’d fashioned his own noose.

Cal raised his voice over the growing din. “But some few still understand what it means to submit.”

The whip snapped.

Moaning, the slave drove forward and sagged back. “Th-thank you, master.”

Jay, pressing hip to hip and knee to knee, stared unblinking as the whip fell. Cal’s strikes outpaced the slave’s supposed gratitude. Distinct thank-yous grew into a droning mumble.

The flood left the slave cringing from the onslaught, each
crack
the impact of a tree trunk, the slamming pain weakening a tenuous hold on safety. In his destructive nature, Cal cared nothing for limits. He smashed his toys and reveled in the pieces.

Blood beaded on a long diagonal.

The whip fell again, and the slave’s scream broke the chain of chanted thanks.

Cal bared his teeth in a fierce smile. Panting and sweaty, he raised his arm.

Tears and spit dripped from the bound slave’s chin. “Please.” He gulped for breath. “Please, I didn’t know.”

“I give it what it deserves.” Cal flicked the whip and raised a fresh cry. “Its fear spills forth. Submission is weakness—”

“Please, no more.” The slave’s shaking suggested a precursor to shock. “Please, master.”

“—suitable for animals who cannot attain mastery.” The whip descended.

Acid seething in her stomach, she forced herself not to look away. Jay hadn’t. The demonstration needed to end. The woman’s admission should’ve been enough. What more did the board members need to recognize Cal didn’t play by the rules?

Swinging his head, the slave squinted with dark, pinpoint eyes. “Please.” His voice cracked.

Cal laughed. “The fun has only begun. Do you imagine you have a voice here?”

The slave sagged. Cracks caused by Cal’s chilly disregard and stinging games might be racing through him, hidden stresses surging to the brittle fracture point when a final touch would shatter him. Once broken, a man—

Shooting to his feet, Jay attracted a hundred gazes. “There’s no shame in stopping.” On a cautious slant toward the stage, he approached the slave from the side. “Whatever he told you, whatever he promised, the choice is still yours.”

—only found himself again with hard work. And so much bravery.

“Do you see this interference?” Playing to the board, Cal swung his arm toward Jay. “This time is mine. Granted to me.”

“A master with true control doesn’t fear pausing to check his partner’s health and safety.” Hands clasped tight behind his back, Jay rubbed Henry’s watchband. “He understands safewording isn’t cowardice or a slight against his skills.”