Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80660 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80660 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“Did you enjoy the evening?” After the dungeon monitors had broken up that awesome fight Charlie had started, he’d decided to walk her through some of the scenes planned for the evening. He’d discovered watching other people play together could tell him a lot about what a submissive needed sexually. He preferred to learn through body language rather than question and answers since so often the sub lied, rather out of politeness or ignorance.
“Some of them,” she replied readily. “Though I was disturbed by the one with the cellophane. I don’t like tight spaces.”
Of course, the sub in question this evening didn’t seem to have the same issues as the ones he’d topped before. He was surprised she would admit her fears to him. If she was the instrument of chaos Rene claimed her to be, she should play this whole seduction thing close to the vest. Instead, she’d been open and real with him all night. Right up until they’d hit the mummification scene. That had been when she’d closed in on herself. When they’d watched that particular scene, her shoulders had tightened and her hands had balled into fists. Yet she’d stood there and if he’d only been looking at her face, he would have thought it didn’t bother her at all. Her expression had been perfectly placid. She hadn’t reached out to him, begging for comfort.
He’d been the one to put a hand on her shoulders, dragging her back against his chest. He’d been the one to whisper in her ear that everything was all right and they could go at any time. And he’d been the one to thread their fingers together and lead her away.
The fact that she’d called it a cellophane scene and not mummification confirmed what he believed. She wasn’t an expert. She might have played around a bit, but he would bet she’d never taken a collar.
He needed to figure this woman out or he might go crazy. It was time to see how far she would go. He would take her answers tonight and check them out. Likely she was lying.
Or she’d figured out that the truth was often the best way to play a man like himself. Either way, he was intrigued.
“Why are you claustrophobic?” He would call her issue what it was despite the fact that the submissive in the scene involved hadn’t been in a small room. She’d been on the main stage of the club. The sub had been wrapped in yard after yard of cellophane until she couldn’t move a muscle. The sub herself had relaxed the more her top had restricted her movement, but it had bugged the hell out of Charlie.
“Any number of reasons,” she replied, her eyes steady on him.
He forced himself to move toward the opposite side of the room from her. He had to force his legs to work because every instinct he had screamed out to get her on that bed and make her his.
That wasn’t going to happen. He took a deep breath as he looked around the room. Rene kept things elegant, even in his sex spaces. The privacy room was decorated as beautifully as a suite at the Ritz, though he doubted the suite was stocked with condoms and lube and an array of torture instruments.
There were three ways out. The door to the room. The window in the bathroom. The air ducts. Rene had shown him that he’d had the air ducts specially made in case he or his friends required a quick exit. Still, the first night he’d stayed here, he’d tested it out. Trust but verify—even his closest allies.
“How about you tell me one of those reasons,” he said.
He opened the armoire, leaving the doors wide so Charlie could see the collection of canes and paddles and the different types of rope he could potentially use.
He expected her to tell him about a time when she was young and got trapped in a closet. Or that she wasn’t sure, simply hated small spaces.
“My father used to lock me in a coffin as punishment. Sometimes he would leave small animals in there with me. Once he placed a snake at my feet and locked me inside for twenty-four hours.”
It took him a moment to process her words. “What?”
“My father is the head of the Denisovitch syndicate, though I’m sure you already know that,” she replied, as simply as if she were telling him the sky was blue. “Rene told you, I suspect.”
“Yes.” He forced himself to answer calmly because his heart rate had ticked up at the thought of the woman in front of him being tormented by her own father. His had been a shitbag, but he certainly hadn’t been physically abusive.
A soft expression crossed her face. “It’s fine, Master Ian. The snake wasn’t poisonous. I figured out a way to kill it and I survived. It’s in the past.”