The Contract (Nightlong #1) (20 page)

I couldn’t see that day, couldn’t see it at all – and I was trapped while such a simple gift could have such a powerful effect on me.

2016

I QUICKLY FILLED MY NEW moleskin notebooks with ink. Otherwise my days at Pussy Palace (my private name for it) were lazily spent; talking to the girls there, sipping tea all day and swimming when I pleased, reading when I pleased – then writing by night.

Dante filled my thoughts and only writing about him and our time together made being separated more bearable. I yearned for him like never before, felt his absence like a missing limb. Sometimes I woke shivering in the night, clawing around the bed for him, but he was never there.

It took Shay about a week before she made a move on me. I’d known it was coming.

“Why don’t you come down into the dungeons tonight, Cleo?”

“What for, to observe?” I crooked an eyebrow.

I lay on a sun lounger in the huge orangery at the centre of the mansion where women laid out all day, naked as the day they were born. On a sunny day, it was the perfect place to catch some rays. All the floors of the mansion were under-heated and being so clement, it was no wonder so many of the girls roamed completely naked all the time. No men around, nobody cared. I still preferred to keep some modesty and always wore one of the white bikinis I’d been provided with. (Not that it covered up much.)

“If you like,” she said.

“Dante trained me well. Of course, he’s probably already told you that.”

“He hasn’t told me anything.”

“What’s the dress code?”

“We have a wardrobe down there with plenty of fitting attire to choose from. You may mask yourself if you wish.”

“I brought some things with me, so I’ll wear those.”

“Okay,” she shrilled, “well you know, not many people get to just observe, you should clutch the opportunity with both hands.”

No doubt Shay thought I was horny enough (well, I was) to stray, now that it had been a whole week since my lover had last filled my body with his rampant cock.

Putting aside my horniness, I wouldn’t stray or touch another body. I belonged to Dante and he belonged to me. Our six-year courtship had ensured that. We were so strongly bonded, nothing could break us. He was already my husband (in heart) but Shay didn’t need to know that Dante was my whole world. I sensed she harboured feelings for him still – very strong feelings in fact.

“I’ll observe,” I agreed, “if only to give myself something different to do.”

***

BENEATH the house laid such an expansive network, you would never know it was there unless you were told. I saw men arriving through a heavy wooden doorway and when you looked beyond, it was a tunnel they came in from. Who knew where they tunnelled in from, but evidently they did arrive from somewhere separate to the Pussy Palace (I had to stop calling it that, but it just sort of fit).

The men wandered in from the tunnel in just silk robes and leather slippers and after arriving, most of them were met by regular girls. The girls wore all kinds of different outfits. Some wore just basques and stockings, others wore simple black dresses, and some favoured nursemaid outfits. It was whatever the men wanted it to be, which was all new to me. In Paris it was all female-centric and Dante had never taken me anywhere else. Pussy Palace was all for the pleasure of the male.

“Do you have some famous visitors?” I asked Shay as she wandered at my side, wearing her usual garb of jodhpurs, riding boots, tweed jacket, polo shirt and riding crop.

She smiled. “My pet is probably the most famous of all.”

“No big rock stars then?”

“No. This club keeps a certain clientele, for a definitive purpose.”

I wriggled my eyebrows and she admired what I’d chosen to wear that night – what Dante would have liked to see me in if he were there, too. I wore leather hot pants, a fringed black top with sequins shining against the low-amber lighting beneath stairs, my hair slick and tucked back behind my ears and a ridiculously amazing pair of latex thigh-high boots which caressed the backs of my legs as I walked, reminding me I’d recently been waxed ankle to thigh-top.

(My dimples were most certainly covered up.)

“I wonder what your true persuasion is?” Shay asked me as we walked around, both of us watching as men were taken to rooms along the corridors, all of the rooms without doors so nobody could ever get locked inside. It was all open house.

“What do you mean? Vanilla or kink or–” I asked as we passed a room in which a man who looked very much like the Foreign Secretary got poked with a big black cock.

“Dominant… or sub.”

“I’ve played both,” I told her openly, watching as other dommes admired Shay with respect as she walked me through the leviathan-esque realm of domination.

Beneath ground, this place reminded me a little of the Paris catacombs, with its solid tunnels and rugged floors; all very uncivilised aside from wall-mounted lights, huge wooden beams holding up the ceilings and sleek BDSM equipment which the girls used to restrain and tantalise the men. 

“You called yourself his domme though?”

I smiled with no malice. “Yes. I always told him he was dominant, though he wouldn’t admit it.”

“Really?” she gasped with excitement. “You never said the other night that you had him so quickly pegged.”

“Oh,” I burst out laughing, shaking my head, “Dante can’t be pegged. Even submissive, he’s mercilessly enigmatic.”

“You’re so right.”

I pointed at one man completely covered in cling film aside from his mouth and cock. “I’ve seen that so many times. A classic.” His dominatrix was busy poking a rubber cock in his mouth while she fondled his arousal with gloved hands.

She giggled. “One of the girls was once asked to procure foil and vegetable oil, to prepare the gentleman for a symbolic roasting. It was amazing how hard he got as she basted him.”

I snickered. “Men… they’re a mystery, aren’t they?”

“They really are, dear Cleo.”

We reached the end of the maze and came to a more communal room where most participants were dressed. There was a bar Shay led me to and we milled around drinking wine from pewter mugs. It all felt rather like a gentleman’s club, except this was different. All the women held the sexual power and the men sat or knelt at the feet of their Mistresses. Some were even caged and on all fours, waiting to be let free.

“Dante wanted a cage,” I remarked to Shay, “but we didn’t have the room for it. I said he should get a kennel and we could keep him locked outside if he wanted.”

She chuckled, knowingly raising her eyebrow. “Sounds typical.”

“He would have done whatever I said, even sat in the kennel in winter. He always did everything I said.”

“People change,” she mused, “because before Daltrey, he never would’ve done that for any woman.”

“Maybe it was for a woman, that he changed,” I said, putting it out there.

“Nothing surprises me, even a man like Dante changing for a woman. However, I saw him before. He liked control too much, but obviously had that beaten out of him by life.”

“He still likes control,” I decided, “but he found other ways to take it.”

“Such as?” she asked, searching my eyes, the conversation ceaselessly interesting.

“Keeping everything in his life in pristine, military order.”

“I see.”

We wandered through the room, amusing ourselves with various sights and sounds. We weren’t inordinately out of place, but weren’t unnoticed either as we moved around.

“Pardon me,” someone asked, a man. I turned and looked into the eyes of a dashing, dark-haired gent.

“Cleo, this is Teddy. Teddy, Cleo,” Shay introduced us.

He leaned down to kiss my hand and I composed myself, wondering if he was
that
Teddy. I didn’t think last names were a prerequisite here… but I still couldn’t help wanting to know if this was Teddy Rayworth.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, keeping my voice level.

“Likewise. May I ask if you would spank my Mistress? She asked me to ask you.”

I looked beyond him and saw a redhead, buxom and gorgeous. Clearly it was him asking, not her.

“Ah, that’s Clementine,” Shay told me, “a real firecracker.”

“I don’t usually–” I began to say.

“Cleo is new,” Shay butted in, helping me out.

“I mean I don’t deal with women,” I hastily added, “I’m very direct you see, more suited to the male need.”

I was lethal, quite frankly. I was trained at a level Dante could cope with, and he could cope with a lot. He really had no limits. None at all. Superhuman, maybe.

“Perhaps you should show Clementine how it’s done, then?” He challenged me.

“Oh no, I didn’t mean–” I held my hands up. “I don’t want to step on toes.”

If this was Teddy, perhaps it was time to show him the wrath of a woman scorned… but better that he work for it.

“Nonsense, you don’t mind, do you Clem?” He turned and asked.

She frowned. “Why would I?”

When his back was turned to Clem, she mouthed to me,
Take the arsehole, please!

I chuckled internally.

“One moment, then,” I asked.

I grabbed Shay’s forearm and took her out of his earshot, off to one side.

“Rayworth, that Teddy?”

“The very one,” she admitted.

“Good.” I turned and smiled at Teddy, telling him, “Shay’s agreed to give me a bonus, just for dealing with you. I think we need a little audience… while I teach the old dog some new tricks, hmm?”

He licked his lips. “I can hardly wait. Show us what you’ve got.”

“Gather round, gather round,” Shay began shouting, encouraging everyone to get involved, “new girl in the house.”

As everyone assembled, I asked him, “What’s your cup of tea, Teddy?”

I straightened up, getting into character. Tall in my heels, I felt bold, felt big. Beautiful. It was lucky the low lighting was kind and flattering. It made you feel… not yourself, but a character in a book. A piece on a chessboard. An extra in a movie, able to perform but not have the camera aimed right on you.

“I like to be humiliated,” he said, “and flogged.”

“Good, very good.”

I reached up onto a tall shelf and grabbed a couple of things – a flogger with long tails (one of Dante’s favourites) and I also took down a cock cage, handing it to Clementine. “Put that on him.”

“He won’t wear that,” she whispered.

“Let’s see,” I offered.

I watched from a distance as she offered it to him and he looked back at me. I nodded slowly, with my arms folded and my tails hanging over my arm, a threatening look in my eye.

He gave a brief nod and she opened his cloak and put it on him. I didn’t look, I didn’t need to look. I just needed it on. I gave her a nod and she pulled his cloak off and tossed it away to one of the benches at the edge of the room.

“Let’s have him over the vault box, Clementine. Restrained.”

She walked him to a vault box and handcuffed him to one of the bars at the other side from where his legs were. I’d done this so many times to Dante and it made me wonder if Dante favoured the vault box after coming here. There seemed to be dozens of them placed around the dungeons of Pussy Palace. It gave a cushioned surface for their bellies as they were bent over, I supposed. Maybe even gave them something to bounce off, perhaps?

I circled the vault box, making sure the crowd knew to keep a certain distance, and swinging the tails through the air I flung them at the side of the box to demonstrate how fierce my lash could be. With the twitch of my wrist, I could slash skin, not just break it. Dante had taught me everything, including how to tease, how to taunt – and torture.

“May I remind you, slave,” I warned, “that your cage is a reminder of my fist around your blood-filled penis, your disgusting, full of fuck, penis?”

“Ah, yes, Mistress,” he said, his eyes wide, showing me he liked dirty talk.

“You dare to look upon your Mistress,” I warned him, and thrashed the tails against the floor, making one hell of a cracking sound. I hoped Shay had insurance against my propensity to destroy leather.

“Pardon, Mistress,” he said, looking down at the floor instead.

I could tell why he and Dante were friends. Same age. Same sort of build. Both good-looking, obviously men of the realm. Maybe they played polo together, or golf even? Maybe they swam together, ran together? I wondered how Dante suffered after the loss of such a close friend? Why were they no longer so close? Daltrey or… something else?

“Little bastards deserve to lick boots, don’t they everyone?”

“Yeah,” the crowd cheered, and I lifted my boot to the top of the vault so he could reach my shoe with his tongue. I’d actually done some gymnastics when I was younger and could still do the splits. Teddy seemed thrilled to see I could reach so high with my foot.

“Oh god!” he moaned, as he obviously threatened to overfill the cage.

“I’d like to shove this shoe so deep in your dirty feckin’ arse, such a tensing little aroused arse, you’d be thinking of me every time you sat down for at least two weeks.”