The Compound (21 page)

“Alexis?”

Alexis opened her eyes, for a second confused as to where she was. The old barn was still lit by candles, the smell of melted wax filling the room. The rain was falling more lightly now, just a patter against the old tin roof. Paul was lying beside her on the narrow cot, their bodies slotted together as if made for one another.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry
,” he said into her hair. His arms were warm and strong around her. “It’s a breach of every protocol but I just had to have you. I hope you can forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” Alexis laughed in spite of herself. She twisted back in his arms to face him. “Forgive you for making the most incredible love to me? Forgive you for making my dreams come true? Are you kidding?”

He looked startled for a second and then he started to laugh, and she laughed too. All the angst and misery she’d wrapped around herself like a shroud over the past week fell away in the face of their happy, giddy laughter. Paul began to kiss her again, and she kissed him back, the laughter dying, replaced by them murmuring each other’s name again and again as their bodies connected for a second time.

This time they moved slowly, the initial flare of passion now a smoldering heat that left them both sweat-soaked and exhausted by the time they were done. Again Alexis drifted in an endorphin-soaked doze.

When she opened her eyes again Paul was lifted on his elbow, smiling down at her. Reality suddenly kicked in and she struggled to sit up, a tendril of anxiety curling its way through her gut. “I better get back. Master John is probably worried. I guess I’m in a ton of trouble for running from the presentation.”

Paul shook his head. “I texted him when I found you. I told him I’d take care of you. You aren’t in trouble, Alexis. You’re with me now. You’re mine.”

“Oh,” she said softly, not wanting to ruin the moment by asking just what he meant by those sweeping, romantic words. The rain had stopped altogether and Alexis pushed back the covers, hot beneath them in the closeness of the barn.

“Stand up,” Paul said suddenly, rolling from the cot. “Position one, hands behind your head.”

Without thinking, Alexis immediately rose and assumed the position. She stood silently as Paul went to the chest of drawers, this time removing a flogger with a long, braided handle. He returned to her, leaning down to kiss her lips.

He moved behind her and began to stroke her back and ass, warming her skin with the flogger’s tresses. Her nipples
hardened, her cunt moistening as he brushed her skin with the sweet heat of soft leather.

He began to strike her harder, the intensity building like banked embers that burst into flame as the leather pelted her skin. The flogger thudded against her flesh from shoulder to thigh and then back again. The leather slapped against her body, the force of the blows nearly pushing her off her feet. But she stood erect and strong against the onslaught, savoring the erotic pain and letting it lift her with each fiery stroke.

She began to breathe hard, panting to get herself through the pain, which was edging from erotic pleasure into something harder to take. She felt herself sliding toward that panicked, ungraceful place and she began to dance on her toes, wondering how long she could endure this.

“Breathe,” she heard Paul say behind her. “Work through it. Flow with it. Let go. Do it for me, Alexis.
For us.”

And then it happened.

He continued to hit her as hard as before, maybe harder, but the panic that had threatened to spill over her ebbed away. She felt strong, as if she could endure anything, handle anything Paul gave her.

Do it for me, Alexis.
For us.

“Oh,” she said softly, filled with wonder. The leather continued to snap against her skin but the pain was transmuting into something different. Not pleasure precisely, but a kind of interweaving between pleasure and pain that was more powerful than either experience on its own.

A curious kind of light seemed to fill her, and Alexis thought she might actually rise from the ground and float away. The only thing that kept her tethered to the earth was the steady, thudding beat of the flogger against her skin.

Her head felt heavy and suddenly she could no longer hold it up. She felt it fall back and her mouth gaped open. Her heart slowed its pounding tempo and her breathing eased into a deep, steady cadence—in…and out, in…and out—like the peaceful lull of an ocean’s waves.

“Yes,” she heard Paul say from a distance, as if he were far away instead of just behind her. “Yes, that’s it, baby. You got it. Yes.”

She drifted, vaguely aware of the steady whoosh and stroke of the leather as she skimmed the top of the calm, shining water beneath her. The sky was a brilliant blue, tiny
puffs of clouds in the distance. She was filled with a peace she’d never experienced before, as every care dropped away and only joy remained.

When she came to herself again, she was once more in Paul’s arms. They lay together on top of the blankets on the narrow cot. She opened her eyes to see Paul’s face close to hers. He was smiling, his golden-brown eyes filled with a curious light.

“Hi,” he said softly. “Welcome back.”

She grinned weakly. “Where did I go?” But she knew. She had flown. It had finally happened for her. The elusive experience she’d thought she would never attain had finally come to her in a barn, at the hands of the man she loved.

~*~

Paul lay awake for a long time, listening to the steady tapping of rain on the tin roof. Alexis slept peacefully against him, her lips lifted at the corners in a small, secret smile that made him wonder what she was dreaming. He felt as if he could just lie there with her forever, suspended in the perfect afterglow of their lovemaking.

Yet he must have eventually drifted into sleep, because when he next opened his eyes it was morning. Paul stared down at the lovely woman beside him, her face softly lit by the early morning sun streaming in through the dusty barn windows. She was still asleep, curled sweetly into his arms, her soft cheek pressed against his bare chest.

Carefully he extracted himself from her embrace and eased himself quietly out of the cot. Retrieving his jeans, he pulled out his cell phone and again texted John.

“Oh my god!”
Alexis shot bolt upright in the cot, her hands flying to her mouth. “I’m in trouble. What time is it? I’m going to be late for morning inspection. Master John will be waiting!”

Paul slipped the phone back into his pants pocket and returned to the cot. Sitting beside Alexis, he took her into his arms and nuzzled his face against her tousled hair. “Relax. He knows you’re with me. He’s not expecting you this morning.”

“Oh,” she said softly, and then, “and Trisha? Your trainee? Don’t you need to go to her?”

He shook his head. “John’s got that covered. We have the whole morning to ourselves. We need to figure stuff out, right? You and me, and where we go from here.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

Then she lifted her face toward his, her eyes closing and her lips parting in a clear invitation for a kiss, and Paul forgot the words he was going to say. His passion ignited with the touch of her lips against his, and he had to have her again, and then again. He had finally found what he hadn't even known he’d been searching for. And she was lying there in his arms.

C
hapter 15

Miriam was already waiting for him in the small den on the first floor that she liked to use for informal meetings. A coffee carafe and three cups stood on a tray, along with a plate of blueberry scones. “Come in, Paul. John will join us in a moment. As if on cue, John appeared in the doorway.

The two men settled on chairs near the sofa where Miriam sat. She lifted the carafe in their direction.
“Coffee?” John held out his cup. Paul shook his head. He felt jittery enough without the addition of caffeine. John helped himself to a scone but Paul found he had no appetite.

After Alexis and Paul had returned from the barn, he had sent her back to the quarters to shower and rest. He’d found Miriam at work in her office and they’d agreed to meet once John’s dungeon session with Trisha had ended.

Paul had mentally rehearsed what he would say to Miriam and John. He would explain that it would be best for Alexis to stop her formal training with John, and see if John would be willing to take over Trisha’s training until Paul could get things sorted out. He would let them know he knew this was against protocol, as Alexis still had a week to go in the contract, but given how Alexis and he felt about each other, it was the best option for all concerned.

He realized both Miriam and John were looking at him expectantly, Miriam with a small, knowing smile on her lips, John with his eyebrows raised. Paul’s rehearsed speech vanished from his head and he found himself blurting, “I’m in love with her. I’m in love with Alexis Stewart. And she’s in love with me.”

John’s eyebrows went even higher, but Miriam just continued to smile. She placed her hand on Paul’s arm. “I wondered when you’d figure that out. Both of you.”

Paul laughed in spite of himself, his jangling nerves settling down at last. “You knew?”

“It was hard to miss. Marta saw it too. The way you drank each other in when you thought nobody was looking. I didn’t want to interfere, of course, especially during the contract tenure. I was hoping things would take their natural course after that. I guess you just jumped up the timeline a bit.” Her smiled edged into a grin, her eyes sparkling.

“She ran,” John said, frowning. “I understand the circumstances are unusual, but she should be brought to task for such an egregious breach. She needs to be punished.”

“If she were to continue as your trainee, John, I would agree,” Miriam interjected. She turned to Paul. “But she’s not, is she, Paul.” She said it as a statement, not a question.

Paul shook his head in agreement, marveling as he often did at Miriam’s insight and understanding of human nature. “No. She wants to petition to break the contract. I—we agreed she’s learned what she can from you, John.” He turned to his friend. “
Which was a great deal. She’s incredibly grateful for all you’ve done for her. But something happened last night. Between us.”

He leaned forward, wanting them to understand, needing them to understand. “She flew last night in the barn. It was the most incredible thing. That brick wall she talked about in her essay—the wall of resistance you came up against over and over throughout her training, John. It just”—he paused a moment—“fell away. I flogged her after
we”—he felt himself blushing and knew that was ridiculous, given the circumstance, so he forced himself to continue—“made love. It was the missing piece for her, you see. She needed the intimacy of what we’d shared prior to the flogging in order to get to that place. All the training and discipline in the world wasn’t going to get her there without that. She needed something more. She needed…” he paused, trying to come up with the word.

“You,” Miriam supplied.

“Yeah.” Paul grinned, and his heart felt as if it were filled with helium, as if he might just rise up into the air from sheer joy.

~*~

The next few weeks were a whirlwind of discussion, activity and upheaval, yet during it all Alexis felt surer of what she was doing than at any time in her life. It felt so right, as if her entire existence had been leading to this moment, to this man, to this life.

Master John took over Trisha’s training so Paul and she could focus on each other. It hadn’t taken too much soul searching to recognize that she was ready to leave her old life behind. She resigned from her job at the accounting firm, ready to assume her new life as a staff slave at The Compound. Her duties would include taking over the financial management of the place, which Miriam had been handling on her own, and, according to a laughing Miriam, not well.

Alexis informed her landlord she wouldn’t be renewing her lease, which as luck would have it was over at the end of the month. It was, she thought, just another sign from the universe that she was on the right path.

Back in the city, Paul helped her pack her things, and she shared the significance of this memento and that photo. They swapped stories of their childhoods, their careers and past relationships as they worked, stopping every few hours when the need for each other overtook them both.

The power and the passion between them continued to stun her each time they made love. Paul claimed her not only with his body, but with the whip, with rope, with such intensity and passion it left her breathless.

“I’ll never get used to this,” she mused one evening as they lay in each other’s arms after a particularly intense session that had left her soaring.

“Never get used to what?” Paul asked.

“To all this.”
She waved her hand vaguely, trying to find the right words. She found herself smiling at the sheer wonderment of it. “To you. To us. To how happy I feel now, like everything’s sparkling and new.”

Paul laughed. “I know. And I’ll do my best to make sure you always feel that way.” Pulling her closer, he dipped his head to hers and kissed her.

~*~

The night they’d been planning for had arrived. Alexis stood facing Paul in the presentation room. Though she was aware of the other people in the room—the Masters and Mistresses seated on sofas and chairs, their slaves kneeling beside them, and the row of naked trainees kneeling up along the wall by the door—she felt calm, even serene, as she gazed into the love light shining from Paul’s golden-brown eyes.