Clark, Rachel - Alicia's Awakening (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (6 page)

He steadies me, holding me upright as I gasp in agony.

“Breathe through it,” he orders in a tone I try desperately to obey. But I can’t. The pain is too intense. The agony blinding. Tears are pouring down my face as he pulls me into his embrace and holds me close. “It’s okay, baby,” he says soothingly. “It’s gone. I won’t put the other one on.”

The other one? Fuck.

“Sorry,” I whisper, embarrassed by my reaction. A week ago I’d been spanked and enjoyed every moment of the pain. I’ve already realized that I like things to hurt just a little, but I’ve never felt something so hideously excruciating in all my life—and there could have been two of them? Yikes!

“It’s okay, baby,” he says, caressing my breast soothingly until the pain settles into a dull throb. “Sometimes it’s just as simple as being overly sensitive on a particular day during your cycle.” He shrugs slightly. “And some women just have very sensitive nipples.”

It should feel very weird to be mostly naked, my hands fastened behind me, and cuddled into a man who’d just hurt me like that, but all I can feel is contentment.

I am definitely one strange woman.

“I think as punishments go, that was rather effective.”

“No shit,” I say breathlessly. He pushes me back onto my knees and gives me a stern look until I finally realize what I did wrong this time. “I mean, sorry, Sir. Thank you for my lesson.”

He gives me a smile. I’m actually just repeating something I heard one of the subs say to her Dom at the club, but it seems to fit the situation.

“Good girl,” he says, still rubbing over my sore breast. “We’ll try nipple clamps again another day, but for now we’ll save them for punishments.” I shudder all over. No way, now how, no fuck am I going through that again. Even the promise of the most amazing climax ever is not going to tempt me into a punishment like that.

He lifts me into his arms and settles into an extra large rocking chair. The gentle movement soothes me quickly, the pain in my breast finally receding to a manageable ache. Doug holds me for a long time. I didn’t even notice when he undid the clip holding the cuffs together, but I have my arms wrapped around his waist as I listen to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. His fingers filter through my hair as we just sit together quietly.

I see a silver chain with what I suspect is the nipple clamps he’d intended to use sitting on the bench beside us. I reach over and lift the offensive little piece of “jewelry” into my hand. He notices but doesn’t stop me.

“They’re beginner’s clamps,” he says as I open and close the little peg-like mechanism. They’re slightly curved. I assume that’s so they sort of wrap around the nipple without squeezing all that hard. I clip one onto my little finger and am surprised by how little it hurts. “I’ve never actually seen a sub react the way you did. If I hadn’t spanked you last week, I wouldn’t have believed you enjoy pain at all.”

I shake my head, confused by what had happened. “Maybe it was just the shock,” I suggest, still trying to understand how I can be such a wimp when it comes to my nipples.

“Maybe,” he says as he takes them from me and eases my head back onto his chest. “There are lots of different types. We can try some another day, but for now I think we need to talk about our contract.”

“Contract?” I ask stupidly. I know what contract he’s talking about but can honestly say I’ve never negotiated anything while sitting on a man’s lap with my pants around my ankles, my boobs hanging out, and a hand caressing my nipple.

“I believe training as a submissive will help you learn to cope with your panic attacks. We already know the pain of a spanking gives you something else to focus on, and helps you settle the endless thoughts in your head.”

“How do you know they’re endless?”

He gives me a light slap on the bottom. “Stop interrupting.” He waits for me to settle again before he continues. “We’ll also explore the use of restraints, floggers, and paddles. Submitting does different things for different people, but I think for you it will bring a type of clarity to your thoughts that you’re not really getting at the moment.”

“It’s only when I deal with people,” I say defensively. “My mind is perfectly fine when I’m working with numbers.”

“Have you ever wondered why?” he asks, still stroking his hand through my hair.

I shake my head against his chest. Until I blurted out the words, I hadn’t really given it much thought. There is just something about accounting and balancing spreadsheets that I find very soothing.

“My theory,” Doug says, “is that you’re comfortable with numbers because they’re always the same. One plus one always equals two. There is no variation. There is only one correct answer. So when you’re working with numbers and spreadsheets and double-entry accounting you can relax.”

I shrug. It makes sense and does explain my affinity for a job that most people consider rather boring. I like the fact that when everything is correct the whole thing balances.

“But with people there are no constants. The correct approach today can be the wrong approach tomorrow—even with the same person. I think a long time ago you started worrying about how you were perceived by other people, and that’s grown into the panic attacks you have today.” He strokes his hand over my back, tracing lower to glide over the curve of my ass. I’m a little bit distracted by the arousal he’s effortlessly creating in me, but I think I understand what he means.

“So I just want to be liked?”

“Mostly,” he says, “but you seem to have taken it a step further. You want to be liked by everyone so you second-guess everything you say and everything you do and afterward you replay it in your mind going over every nuance and every word and every expression until you work yourself into a heart-pounding, blood-curdling, stomach-churning panic.”

I nod, a little bewildered that he could be so accurate about me. To be honest the idea isn’t exactly new. I’ve often considered my ability to remember every fucking detail of a conversation one of my biggest problems, but I hadn’t really considered that my need to be polite to even the most obnoxious of people came from a much deeper issue. Caring about everyone’s opinion of me, and then making them all happy, was never going to be possible.

“How do you know me so well?” I ask because I have to understand how he can see me so accurately. We met only a week ago, but he seems to know more about me than even my closest friends—Lachlan included.

He sits me up so that I can see his face, and for a moment I don’t think he’s going to answer. But then he takes a deep breath and gives me a smile. “Because I used to do the exact same thing.”

“You did?” Okay, I know I sound like a starstruck kid talking to Santa Claus but I can’t help it. I didn’t think there was anyone else in the world who would understand. “But you seem so normal.”

He laughs at that, lifts me to my feet, and guides me face-first over a spanking bench.

“I’m pretty sure there’s a whole lot of people who wouldn’t call what I’m about to do normal.”

He clips my wrist cuffs to anchors in the floor, tucks my shirt up to expose my ass, and starts to slap me hard. Within moments I’m flying, my mind no longer part of my body, the pain just a catalyst propelling me into that contented place where nothing else matters but what my Dom wants.

* * * *

“Has she signed a contract, yet?” Lachlan asked anxiously. He’d spoken to Alicia nearly every night for the past two weeks, but she’d never mentioned specifics of her relationship with Doug. It felt like she was hiding it from him.

“Of course,” Doug said calmly. “And before you ask, no I’m not going to tell you specifics. If you want to know what’s included, you’ll have to ask her.”

“Are you fucking her?”

A part of him didn’t want to know the answer. Lachlan knew that it was an option in submissive training. As long as the Dom and the sub both agreed, the contract could include or exclude just about anything. Lachlan had no right to be jealous or possessive. She was his best friend, but he certainly didn’t get to make decisions like that for her. She was free to pursue a relationship with anyone she chose. Especially since her best friend had gotten spooked and left her in the care of a highly trained Dom.
Fucking coward.

“Not yet,” Doug finally answered.

“But it’s in the contract?” Lachlan asked, already knowing the answer to that damn question.

“Lachlan,” Doug said in a tone that sounded tired rather than annoyed. Technically he had every right to verbally slap Lachlan down. A contract between a Dom and a sub was nobody else’s business but theirs. “I’m doing what you asked. I’m introducing her to the lifestyle you want to lead. Whether you find the balls to ever approach her about it is up to you.”

A part of him wanted to race home, tie the woman to his bed, and never let her go, but he’d stupidly arranged his business trip schedule so that he couldn’t. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, hold him back from temptation and all that, yet now it was blowing up in his face. Ironically he’d known that was going to happen even before he’d made the decision to run. Two weeks of living without the woman was putting a whole lot into perspective, including his own stupidity.

It wasn’t her having sex with another man—people who enjoyed his lifestyle shared that type of experience more openly than people in the wider community. It was the intimate, best-friend’s knowledge that Alicia had never slept with anyone she didn’t think herself in love with at the time that was messing with his head.

If she’d agreed to have sex with Doug in their Dom-sub contract, it was because she had feelings for the man. Lachlan didn’t like the way things were headed, but there was absolutely nothing he could do from the other side of the country.

How had he ever thought he could walk away from the woman?

He shook his head as he finished the call and hung up the phone. For a man with a first-class education he really was a dumb fuck sometimes.

Chapter Eight

The damn clock is going slow again. I keep checking it against my computer just to be certain the battery isn’t running flat, but nope, the slowing down of time is just my perception.

In less than an hour, well fifty-nine minutes and twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty…well in less than an hour Doug is picking me up from work and taking me to his home.

Starting today and for the next two weeks I will be a full-time submissive. I can still see the look on my boss’s face when I applied for two weeks’ vacation on short notice. He practically jumped through hoops to give them to me. It was a little disconcerting until I realized my last actual vacation was more than four years ago. I’ve been accumulating holidays and never taking the damn things. Thankfully my contract covers me so I don’t lose them, but as the boss said, that’s a lot of employee entitlements to carry from year to year.

I wonder why that thought hasn’t occurred to me. Perhaps I’ve been too busy hiding in my “number” world to notice.

I’m still woolgathering when there is a knock on my office door.

“Yes,” I say with my usual distracted inflection, expecting my secretary to open the door. Despite my tone, I’m actually glad for the interruption this time. Maybe it’ll make the time move faster. I’m surprised to see who my visitor is, but very happy to see him. I smile broadly as Doug steps into my office. He’s picked me up from work several times this week, so it’s not surprising that my secretary would have sent him straight in without buzzing me first.

I open my mouth to greet him, but he holds a finger to his lips, and I stay quiet.

“Did you visit the beauty salon like I asked?” I nod, unsure if I should speak out loud or not, even to answer his direct question, but I’m quickly distracted from my uncertainty by two small words. “Show me.”

I glance at the window behind me. We’re twenty-two stories up, but there is a building on the other side of the narrow street. I turn to close the blinds.

“No,” he says easily. “Show me now.”