The Lingerie Shop (12 page)

She turned over another card, the next word sending an arrow of sensation directly to the subject.
Cunt.
It was in white letters against a black cavernous circle, around which were twined black and red roses. A snake made a circle around all of it. A smaller word was printed in the lower right corner, against a tiny blood red heart.
Soul.

Curious, she chose three more cards and discovered the same pairing pattern:
Possession/surrender. Pain/release. Blindfold/trust.

She stared at that last card for a while. It showed a man and woman twined together, bound by red rope so they couldn’t move, but they didn’t look as if they desired to do so. His arms were wrapped over her shoulders, hers threaded beneath his to cling to his waist and back, her face pressed into his chest. She was the one blindfolded.

Two more cards.
Collar/belonging. Whip/flight.

Her reaction was climbing at an exponential rate, the flesh between her legs throbbing, her neck pulse thumping. With every restless shift of her body, she was reminded she wore the cuffs, the choker, the thong. She looked like a submissive, a sex slave, kneeling on the floor and playing sensual games with herself until her Master came home.

Unnerved by the thought, she forced the focus from herself to Logan’s training of Troy. She imagined the male submissive in nothing but a collar, kneeling in an aisle of the store while customers moved around him, unconcerned, knowing he was waiting for his Master . . . Was he waiting for his command? His punishment?

He would be staring at the floor. She couldn’t see herself in the same position, surrounded by people like that. Or could she?

As her mind’s wheels turned, she flipped six more cards, taking her to the thirteen. Then she kept going, until she’d turned over all of them. They ran the gamut of sexual play, from positions, to role playing, to toys . . .

She slid from her hip down onto her back, the slick cards pressing against her skin. She stretched her cuffed hands over her head, her body elongating, arching up, as if she were displaying herself for a lover. She wanted to spread her thighs, wanted to be commanded to spread them. She wanted his hands gripping her, pushing them apart, making her do his will. She closed her eyes, not wanting the reality of her surroundings judging her.

She rotated her hips, taunting him. Yes, she was bound to his will, but she would do all she could with her body to beg him to come to her, to touch her. He would stand back in the shadows and watch, letting the moments stretch out, her body getting more and more excited as she lifted her hips, lowered them as if he was already inside her. Fucking her. He wouldn’t let her demand, wouldn’t let her take control. He would let her keep doing what she was doing for
his
pleasure,
his
enjoyment, and that would just make her hotter.

Now at last he would speak.
Touch yourself, Madison. Rub your cunt for me.

She shuddered at the thought of his whisper, his fiery eyes burning her. She lowered her hands, and when the cool metal of the cuffs pressed against her pelvis, her fingers reaching her clit, her body bucked up, ass and shoulders pressed into the floor. A gasp broke from her lips. “Yeeess . . . please . . .”

He liked her begging, enough to make her do it for all eternity. He was a sadist, and she craved that, didn’t want him to give in to her. She wanted to know he held the power, the decisions. That she, the ultimate control freak, controlled nothing. Her only choice was to belong to him.

Sliding her fingers beneath the thong, she found her labia silky slick with her juices. She tweaked her clit, stroked the tender inner crevices that had so many nerve endings. She pushed up beneath the clit hood, increasing the intensity there, and then slipped her fingers inside herself. Watching her fuck herself with her fingers would make him harder, maybe make him take a step out of the shadows. That powerful body getting closer . . . She thought of his muscled chest beneath her hand, fingers twining and tugging on his chest hair.

She rose and fell, her hips twisting and grinding against her touch and the floor. The cuffs pressed into her lower abdomen, her thighs, and the fingers of the hand she wasn’t using dug into soft flesh. “Please . . . may I . . . let me . . .” She whispered it, and heard—at long, long last—the order.

Go over for me. Only for me.

She tightened up all over, forcing her thighs to remain open to increase the intensity of it, even as she wanted to curl into a ball around that hand and contain all those spasming nerves into one prolonged wave. She cried out, the sound echoing in the spacious room, and she rode the feeling until it ebbed away under her fingers, leaving her twitching and trembling there on the living room floor.

She turned onto her side, curling around that core. When she brought her trembling hands back up to her face, she smelled herself as she tucked her fingers under her cheek.

The ice cube tray had turned to water, the key floating at the top. She could unlock herself at any time. She didn’t move toward it. She didn’t want to leave this feeling behind. Somehow, the cuffs were vital to holding on to it. She preferred to think of herself as waiting for him to remove them. She’d wait as long as he required. Days if necessary.

It made her think of that scene in
Secretary
, Maggie at the desk in her wedding dress. A lot of people hadn’t understood that scene. Probably like Gerald, they assumed it was a sickness. But it was no different from the knight who swore an oath of fealty to a king and went into a hopeless battle for him. The test wasn’t the battle. It was proving his oath was more binding upon him than anything else, that his devotion and loyalty to his king, his Master, couldn’t be swayed.

It was a fantasy, yes, because you couldn’t trust another human being that much, could you? But you could pretend for a little while.

The cards beneath her were sticking to her perspiring flesh. When she moved the one beneath her cheek, she discovered it was the
Possession/surrender
one. The graphic was a woman kneeling, a collar on her throat, a tether wound around the hand of the male lover who stood over her. She looked up at him, and he touched her face. Even as an illustration, the bond between them was unmistakable.

In her last few relationships, the crap had taken over such that sex wasn’t a conduit to deeper emotions—it was a way to avoid them. Here she was surrounded by cards that spoke of sexual things. If the designer had left it there, she might have remained more detached. But adding that one provocative, emotional word to each, as well as the incredible detail of the illustrations, spoke of the far deeper things the physical were
supposed
to mean. Things she’d shut herself away from, because if the basics of the relationship were missing—trust, belonging, laughter . . . love—what was the rest, but a hollow illusion?

She’d never chosen her relationships based on her craving for a Dominant. She’d run from that, because the choice meant relinquishing control, and no one could be trusted that much.

But a woman could only let fear and repressed desire run at cross-purposes for so long. Gazing at the thirteen cards she’d turned over, she realized how many of them were about the world of Dominance and submission. There were as many cards in the deck not about that type of sexuality, so what did it say, that she’d picked those at random?

Coincidence. Accident. She wasn’t going to get maudlin here.

When it came down to it, her personal shit wasn’t important. What was important about tonight was that it had clarified how she could connect with her customers. She hadn’t failed yesterday because she couldn’t sell. She’d failed because, in order to connect, the conduit had to be as open on her side as on the customers’. She was going to have to embrace things she’d kept at bay, face what kind of sexual being she was in order to coax the same to life in those who walked through her door.

It was a useful revelation, but the idea of actualizing it brought the same overwhelming anxiety it always did. She curled into a tighter ball, trying to stave off the despair that started to spiral in her lower belly, spoiling the same track desire had taken only a few moments before.

Then she thought of Logan. His touch, his eyes, the understanding that lay in both, reaching as deep inside of her as the fear and desire combined.

Damn it, she wasn’t backing away from this. Even if she was a screw-up in her personal life, she’d never been a screw-up when it came to business, school, or anywhere the public stood in judgment of her performance. She was going to do what was needed to make this work.

Which meant she was going to go on Friday. She would watch Logan train Troy, would learn more about relinquishing control . . . at a safe distance.

Even as she had that thought, her mind scoffed at her. Looking at the cards, the cuffs and the key, she knew one thing for certain.

The words “safe” and “Logan” would never be paired on a card together.

Keep reading for a special preview of the next Naughty Bits novella

THE TRAINING SESSION

Available May 2014 from InterMix

What did one wear to help a modern day Master train a sex slave? Was it black tie, or like going to a Habitat for Humanity worksite, where one expected to get sweaty and dirty?

In the end, she did what most women did. She let the thought she’d be around two handsome men guide her, such that she tried to dress up while not technically looking like she’d expended that much effort. She wore a pair of black jeans with an off-one-shoulder top over it. The silky fabric belted at the waist and formed a short skirt over the jeans. Then she brushed out her hair and slid into a pair of heeled boots. The shirt clung to her breasts, the off-the-shoulder style a little sexy, without being slutty. It reinforced her intent to support the mood but not become part of the performance. No matter that her damp palms and elevated pulse rate seemed to indicate otherwise.

It wasn’t quite dark when she pulled into the alley behind her store, but twilight was settling in, the time of possibilities. She hadn’t returned to Naughty Bits this week, instead focusing on the grand opening details from home. A side benefit of that was she didn’t have to worry about Logan cornering her to find out if she’d done what he suggested with that wooden box. When he’d called the house, responding to her second early morning message about her schedule, she’d let it go to voicemail. He’d thanked her for letting him know her schedule and told her to give him a call if she needed anything. Very cordial.

Don’t forget about Friday. I could use an assistant. The boy can be a handful.

She’d spent the interim days doing this and that, but she still couldn’t bring herself to do much in the Wonderland room. She did have her coffee in there Friday morning, looking at the assortment of outfits like a museum display as she thought about the past . . . the future.

Truth, it had helped harden her resolve about Friday. If she couldn’t go through the contents of that room, how could she possibly handle going through Alice’s inventory, figuring out what would work best with the customers? Friday would help her do it. She’d face it just like a dental appointment. It was a necessary cleaning of plaque build-up, a mental block preventing her from shining the way she could.

When she arrived at the store and let herself in through her back entrance, she saw Logan had left the connecting door between her storeroom and his wide open, a clear invitation.
Focus. No sentiment. No Alice memories. Just sex, whips, and chains tonight.

Peering through the curtain to the main area of the store, she saw it was quiet and dark, only the dim security lights illuminating it. She felt a moment of uneasiness. “Hello?”

“Sorry. Here I am.” At the muffled bump, muttered curse, she relaxed, hearing Troy’s voice, his feet hurrying toward her down one of the aisles. When he turned the corner, she was confronted with a lot of firm male flesh. All he was wearing was a pair of drawstring pants. A light sheen of sweat made his muscles above them gleam.

“I’m so sorry, Madison. I was finishing up my workout in the glass cutting area and time got away from me. Master Logan told me to be at the storeroom door so you wouldn’t think you were walking into a horror movie set.”

“The one where two charismatic men lure an unsuspecting woman into their shop after hours to chop up her body with power tools and compost her?”

“You have Alice’s sense of humor. A bit more dry and edgy, but still.” Troy grinned. Taking her hand like a high school kid latching onto his girlfriend, he drew her through the storeroom, toward the annex door. She didn’t mind him holding her hand.

Why couldn’t she be like other women her age? The ones who said “who needs them?” when it came to men. The self-sufficient females who were content to have their girls’ night out with wine and lots of male bashing. She couldn’t seem to stop wanting a man.
The
man. The one she was always hoping she’d find, but who apparently didn’t exist for her.

Two years ago she thought she’d overcome the weakness. After seven relationships, it was clear she needed to focus on her career and stay away from temptation. She’d chosen a career that paid well but didn’t engage her passions. Staying on an even keel had seemed safer, at all levels of her life.

Alice had called it self-euthanizing. Making herself numb. Madison had hung up on her during that phone call.

Stay away from men
. It was a simple enough rule. Yet here she was. She was an idiot.

“What kind of workout do you do around sharp glass?”

“Yoga. I used to be a gym freak, and then Shale, that’s my Mistress, showed me yoga is just as strenuous, but less hard on the joints. My first session made me a believer. I couldn’t walk the next day.” That quick grin again. “And the glass cutting area has pretty clear floor space, so it’s good for doing the positions. No chance of being cut, unless I don’t sweep it the way I should.”