Naked & Unleashed (3 page)

“What I want is for you to let me go,” she answered raggedly. “You’re scaring me.”

“I know.” And even though she was so hot the crotch of her pants was wet, scaring her was a problem. Scaring her would make her run.

Sobered by the thought, Mikal shook himself and shifted from out-of-control to levelheaded in an instant, but his position was precarious. Struggling to reestablish distance, he released her and backed away. “Get out. Next week we’ll work. But Callista?”

She wobbled on her feet but met his eyes warily. “What?”

Holding her gaze, he said, “You lied to me today. Do it again and we’re finished. I’ll find someone else.”

She paled visibly and Mikal realized at some point along the way, she’d stopped thinking of him in terms of client and occasional fuck. Worse, he could no longer deny that he’d stopped thinking of her that way too.

Well, he had to go back to the way things were or push her out of his life entirely. Callista called to parts of his soul that he couldn’t afford to set free. Even though she wasn’t responsible for his slipping control, he wanted to blame her. He wanted to punish her for his weakness. Weary of fighting the losing battle with his dark urges, he turned and walked away from her.

Chapter Three

Several hours later, Callista stood behind a black velvet rope barrier surrounded by people like her—experimental, curious, frustrated with the partners they found elsewhere. The private-membership fetish club Bondage held an open-to-the-public night once a month. Like any popular club, however, admission was not guaranteed. Two men stood at the door screening the waiting hopefuls.

“How long has it been since they let anybody in?” someone asked at her elbow.

She glanced back and met the kohl-lined eyes of a thin young man. “About half an hour.”

“Who’d they admit? Tops or bottoms?”

Callista raised one bare shoulder in a shrug. “They weren’t wearing signs on their backs.”

“Three subs and maybe a Dom,” someone else interjected as Callista turned her attention back to the door. “About half and half on the gender line. I think the crowd’s pretty evenly split tonight so you have as much chance as anybody, Marki.”

“Oh good,” Marki said. “I hope they let me in before I have a chance to get bitter and bitchy like
some
people.”

Wincing at the commentary on her attitude, Callista folded her arms across her bare stomach and shifted her weight from one spiked heel to the other. She hated the club scene and the display of flesh, hair and fashion that was more important to admission than the cover charge. She’d decided to subjugate herself to the humiliation tonight because she’d finally accepted that she needed an outlet. Her encounter with Mikal earlier in the day made her realize bottling up urges and suppressing desires was doing her more harm than good. Mikal’s threat to end their relationship…well, it wasn’t much of a relationship but she’d become attached to it. She couldn’t tell him the truth and he wouldn’t tolerate a lie. The thought of not seeing him anymore scared her into action. So—tonight she’d find someone who could do what she needed done and next week she’d resume business as normal with her favorite client.

A sense of excitement rippled down the line and shook Callista from her reverie. She quickly found the source of the change. One of the security staff left his post at the door and started walking the length of the rope barrier.

He stopped at her section of rope and pointed at her. “You have your card ready?”

She reflexively tightened her fist around the stiff square of paper she held, then forced her hand to relax and nodded.

“In,” he said. He unclipped the rope and waved her toward the door.

Behind her, Marki started cajoling the staff member. Callista pushed everything besides her goal out of her mind. Less than a minute later, she passed through a metal detector and into the dark, blue-lit club.

A petite redhead in a short black skirt and a trim black t-shirt printed with Bondage’s unmistakable logo stopped her just past the metal detector. Here, the club’s trance music didn’t reach full volume. Callista easily heard the woman’s one-word request of, “Card?”

Her stomach fluttered with a sudden burst of nervous energy. She made herself relinquish the piece of paper but there was no ignoring her anxiety. Now a complete stranger had knowledge of one of her darkest desires. But that was part of the appeal of a club like Bondage—and it was Callista’s purpose in seeking out admission tonight.

The redhead glanced at the single word printed neatly on the square, then said, “Wait here.”

While the other woman headed off into the dark, Callista devoted her attention to calming her stomach. Through a series of steady, deep breaths, she blanked her mind and filled her head with the panorama of writhing dancers visible from where she stood. Bondage wasn’t particularly well-known for its dancing but from what she could see, the facility was not lacking in space or a crowd. A large, busy bar sat off to the right of the dance floor and even from her vantage, she could see doorways leading to other rooms on the main level. Those rooms, and their exclusive counterparts on the second floor, were what Bondage
was
known for: an active and imaginative semi-public dungeon.

Callista swayed toward the seductive energy flowing from the heart of the club. Her butterflies made way for impatience, which had her tapping her fingertips on her upper arm by the time the redhead returned.

“Sorry about the wait,” the other woman said conversationally. “Non-members have to be matched with handlers, which is why so few people are admitted even on open play nights. You’re all set now though, so you can follow me.”

But the redhead set off for the dance floor. Callista raised an eyebrow but fell into step behind her guide. Personalized tours weren’t part of the package in her other club experiences. She wanted to balk at the guide and be left alone to mingle, but quickly realized she was in over her head as a woman alone in a crowd of people bound to one another by cuffs and leashes.

Her escort moved quickly. Soon they were mounting the stairs and climbing to the second floor. Callista tried to catch the other woman’s attention over the volume of the music and the disorientating light show but she had no success. A moment later, the club employee waved Callista into a small room, handed her a small square envelope and said, “Have fun.”

She closed the door and left Callista alone in a room furnished with a large bed, a straight-backed chair, a lamp and a cabinet. The anxious butterflies returned and brought friends in the form of a hot, nervous pulse between her legs. Callista blew out a pent-up breath and placed her clutch handbag on top of the cabinet. A variety of instruments hung from hooks placed in the wall on the other side of the bed. None of them had sharp edges, a fact that both relieved and disappointed her.

Too unsettled to sit, she opened the envelope and stared at the imperative written in bold, heavy block letters. One sentence—
Take off your clothes
.

“Don’t think,” she said out loud before her self-preservation instinct could kick in.

Leaving her shoes on because they made her focus on balance instead of all the reasons this was a bad idea, she set herself to the task of undressing. Her temperature should have cooled when she lowered the zipper of her dress. Instead, it surged. By the time she shimmied out of the sheath, she felt feverish. Her skin tingled and tightened over her flesh as if recoiling from the razor edge to come. She kicked free of the dress.

Behind her, the door opened. Callista froze with her arms bent behind her back, on the verge of unhooking her lacy black bra. Her nipples tightened to points and her stomach hollowed on a sharp intake of air. A dark male silhouette entered her peripheral vision. She turned her head toward him but he moved before she could catalog any details…not that looking at him was at all necessary, she realized as soon as he spoke.

“Keep going. You’re not finished yet.” She’d recognize his voice anywhere. Mikal circled around to stand in front of her. He folded his forearms across his broad chest and braced his booted feet apart. “All the way to skin, Callista. You’ll have to wear these clothes out. You won’t want to get any blood on them.”

He knew. Now Mikal knew about her desire to be hurt.

She was afraid to move. Part of her brain rejected the proof of his unmistakable bass voice and the long, sleek black hair she trimmed and conditioned once a week. The other part rejoiced at being revealed and no longer having to hide at least
this
perversion.

Clinging to reason, she forced herself to remain calm and met his eyes. “I’m not sure why you’re here, but I don’t think this is a good idea.”

His pupils flared slightly in the room’s low light. He tapped the stylized “B” embroidered near the shoulder of his black polo. He wore the club’s logo like a uniform. “Really?
You
don’t know why
I’m
here?”

“I didn’t realize,” she whispered, unsure whether she told the truth or a lie. She knew he worked in a club—a hobby sort of thing, not a source of income sort of thing—but she didn’t know which one…or didn’t consciously know. Had she spotted one of his uniform shirts and filed the “B” away in the back of her subconscious mind?

“You didn’t realize.” He bared his teeth in an expression that could only be called feral. “So you came here looking to engage in knife play with a stranger. Did you even tell someone where you were going?”

Ashamed, she glanced away from him and licked her lips. “This was a mistake. I’ll go and—”

“What you’ll do is finish what you started. We’re going to ensure
this
is the worst idea you ever act on. Clothes off, Callista. Every last stitch.” He uncrossed his arms and produced a knife sheath from his back pocket. She couldn’t meet his eyes but she watched his hands, entranced, as he drew a long, thin knife with a scary-looking blade from the sheath.

“This
is
what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asked as he placed the knife on top of the cabinet. “When you’re using a razor on me, you’re fantasizing about the steel skimming along your own flesh, aren’t you?”

Her cheeks heated but she nodded, fascinated by the light glinting off the knife’s sharp point. “I…sometimes.”

“Tell me.”

“You already know I asked to be cut,” she said, unable to keep the trace of defensiveness from her voice. Even faced with the implement of her desire and a man she trusted to wield it skillfully, she had a hard time freeing herself of embarrassment. It wasn’t normal to want fear and pain. Deep down, nothing she wanted was normal. Cutting just scratched the surface.

She unfastened her bra and slid the straps down her arms, listening for a change in Mikal’s breathing but unable to hear past the blood pounding in her ears. He didn’t speak as she bent to remove her panties, stockings and shoes. Callista glanced up once to find his expression as blank as water-eroded stone. Her stomach sank. “This is a bad idea.”

When she straightened, Mikal clasped her chin and tilted her head back. He met her eyes. The heat in them made her draw a sharp breath.

“Coming to a strange place and offering to trust a strange man was a bad idea. This…” His eyebrows drew together and he shook his head a fraction. “
This
is something you should have trusted me enough to ask for directly. Turn around.”

She didn’t know what to say to that but obeying him gave her an excuse for silence. Pivoting on bare feet, she presented the naked line of her neck and back. Every muscle in her body was wound tight. When his fingertips skimmed her shoulder blade, she jumped. Mikal didn’t acknowledge the twitch.

“I’m going to blindfold you,” he said just before he passed a long strip of black cloth across her eyes. “I’m going to help you to the bed and then I’m going to strap you down by your wrists and ankles. You are going to hold yourself very still. Do you understand?”

The room was warm but Callista shivered. Without her sight, the feeling of exposure ratcheted up to a frightening new level. Her flight instinct crouched warily at the base of her skull. Despite muscle fibers twitching to run, she wanted to stay with him. She exhaled and pressed her forefingers and thumbs together for focus. “Do I get some kind of safeword or something? Isn’t that how these things work?”

Mikal’s breath warmed the back of her neck, making her regret her nape-baring hairstyle. His touch dropped away. “Do you want somebody to play with or somebody to submit to?”

The flat tone of his voice made her stomach lurch. Callista turned her head toward him before she remembered the blindfold. Wetting her lips, she said, “I don’t know.”

He was quiet for the span of several heartbeats. Callista had a difficult time concentrating on anything but the power of his presence behind her and the insistent throb of want between her legs but she did manage to ask, “What are you looking for?”

“I don’t look.”

Something in the way he bit off the words made her wince. She reached for the blindfold. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to do this. We don’t.”

Large, warm hands encircled her wrists and pulled her hands away from her face. “I stopped looking for
this
a long time ago. It’s not a game to me, I don’t engage in casual scenes, and I don’t back down just because my slave gets scared and decides she doesn’t trust me to see her through the other side. I don’t negotiate rights and responsibilities. I’m going to give
you
a one-shot taste because you don’t know what you’re asking for and I don’t want you turning yourself over to someone who doesn’t know you and doesn’t know how to avoid damaging you. But a safeword? No. You don’t get that. You either trust me until it’s over, or you tell me to stop before it starts. Which will it be?”

“I trust you,” passed her lips before she consciously knew she was going to speak the words. And she did trust him—enough that she wanted to confess everything and ask him to provide it all. Self-doubt held her in check. How sound was her judgment, really?

“One hour,” Mikal said. He slid his palms down her forearms and pulled her back against him. “If you need something to hold onto, hold onto that. You’ll only have to survive what I do to you for a single hour. You can ask me how much time is left and I’ll tell you, but during that hour, I’m the one who determines whether we stop or continue. Understand?”

His body was warm and well-muscled. She wanted to put her weight in his hands, lean into him and soak up the heat radiating through his clothes. Instinctively she knew there was comfort and security to be had in his arms—but there was also the knife. And the rock-hard line of his cock lodged against the small of her back. What he could do with both tools…