KING (Mistress & Master of Restraint) (19 page)

“That’s why you wanted to do this privately?”

“Yes,” Dalton breathes and his muscles relax in relief, thinking I’ll take him to my private room.

“Good to know,” I murmur.
“Too bad. We’re doing this out here. You need a reality check. You’re inside your mind too much. It’s hurting you.”

“It’s none of your business,” he hisses.

“It is now… you chose me, remember?”

Dalton stays stiff under my touch as my fingers devour his flesh. “Your skin is so soft,” I dreamily croon. “You’re the one who refuses to eat. If you don’t like
being skinny, then fix it- eat,” I command. “But I love you just the way you are.” My lips flutter kisses all over his bare chest. Dalton’s beating heart vibrates against the sensitive nerve-endings of my lips.

“Daniel
,” he moans, finally falling under my spell.

“Your scars are p
roof of how strong you are. It’s a history on your skin, no different than the stories your tattoos tell. You already know how I feel about ink. I want to use your whole entire body as my living canvas.”

“I want that too,” Dalton
whimpers and I know I have him forever. My gentle coaxing could be perceived as false because it is a form of manipulation. But I meant every touch, every word, and every kiss.

“Right here,” I kiss Dalton
shoulder and he quivers. “I want to start right here.” I lick his neck. “Dalton,” I purr, “Say oui,” I murmur with a smile in my voice.

“Oui,” Dalton moans, having
no idea what he’s just agreed to. “Please.”

“So eager to please.
I like that… I like that very much,” I purr, keeping him under my spell as I reach for the silk rope. Dalton jumps when it comes into contact with his arm, but he tries to maintain his breathing to calm himself.

“I’m going to decorate you. How d
oes that sound?” I purr into Dalton’s ear and he shakes his head yes. “This will take a while. I’m going to create a harness around your chest and shoulders and underneath your thighs. Can I do this for you?”

“Oui,” he breathes.

“I have to make you naked,” I warn as my fingers skim the elastic of his waistband.

“I… no…” Dalton
tries to be defiant, but his voice is soft and passive.

“I’m going to do it anyway, but tell
me why you’re so upset.” I crouch down by Dalton’s hip and slide his pants down his legs. I caress his thigh with my cheek. Good God, he smells fantastic.

“I don’t fit right,” he whimpers. “I don’t like
it
.”

“What?” My ha
nds still when I realize what Dalton’s saying. “Why? I adore that part of you.”

“It’s ghastly. I’ll never be able to use it, not that you’ll let me anyway. It hurts whoever I have sex with. It’
s embarrassing how people stare.”

“Let them stare. We’ve seen them all in compromising positions. You have nothing to be ashamed of.” I reveal him to the membersh
ip for the very first time. Dalton always dressed in oversized clothing and no one ever saw his cock, even when he was using it on them. It took a lot of work on my part to get a peek. It wasn’t until we were in Dalton’s apartment before I saw his magnificent, androgynous form in the nude.

I brush a kiss to
the tip of his flaccid penis. Dalton doesn’t even rouse. Fear and shame mute his sensitivity.  Clouded green eyes stare blindly at nothing. I fear Dalton is spending time with the past inside his mind.

“I’m going to start at your shoulders and work my way down. I promise your limbs will be free. I’m just going to knot the silk rope into a harness. Just breathe and enjoy the softness sliding over your skin. Watch my hands working the rope- fall into the rhythm with me.”

Dalton falls into a trancelike state. His breathing is regulated by the flex of my fingers. It’s where I want him to be, connected to me- in the here and now, not inside his head reliving some torturous memory.

“May we join you,” Ezra whispers from the edge of the dais. His expression is difficult to
read, but if I had to guess, Ezra’s need to fix Dalton is what’s compelling him to join us.

“Our pleasure,” I politely say in response and go about my knot work. “Would you like to hear something interesting,” I lull Dalton with m
y voice. He’s still with me. Dalton’s eyes track Ezra’s movements as he settles into the chair I’d latched him into earlier.

“Yes,” Dalton
absentmindedly replies, eying Ezra with curiosity.

“I excelled in this,” I say of my ability to create art out of rope.

“Why am I not surprised,” he teases. “I thought you were great at everything.”

“True,” I snort. “You should have seen me in the impact room. I had the sweats. I just couldn’t do it. The only way I managed was because Cort would piss me off and I’d want to
smack
him.” As I speak of the devil, he appears. Cort is slinking over to his master and sitting by his feet.

“I thought you were tying them down and working out your frustrations,” I
say to Ezra as I start on Dalton’s chest.

“There’s no
contest between me and introduction to whipping one oh one,” Ezra scoffs at his wife’s rebuke. “Cort’s jealous right now and I’m going to use it to my advantage.”

“Why’s he jealous?” Dalton asks Ezra.

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” Ezra stalls the inevitable, uncomfortable truth. “I want the rest of Pretty Boy’s story. Why is it so interesting that you’re good with ropes? Tying people in knots is what you’re known for,” he taunts.

“Because,” I start chuckling, the rope slipping between my fingers making me miss a knot. “The one thing I excelled at someone else failed and vice versa. I was surprised we were complete opposites.”

“Regina was atrocious with the ropes. She just couldn’t do it. Our limbs were going numb.” Cortez chortles and gets beamed in the head with a shoe. “Hey!”

“Don’t make me tell your shortcomings. We’d be here all damn night,
stud.” Regina says from front and center. “It’s no surprise I sucked, it was artistic. Blah!”

“I want to know
more about this jealousy,” Dalton says to Ezra, picking up the hesitant vibes. Dalton glares at Regina, and she looks at him in surprise. The two of them have always gotten along. When Dalton was the standoffish asshole, he was still affectionate with her. He’d even had sex with her without too much difficulty, but I attribute that to Sebastian.

I smirk to myself, dropping down on my hunches so I can attach the last of the rope harness. He’s jealous- possessive- I like that.

“I’m teaching your man how to be gay,” Ezra says without a lick of remorse. The second he says that a few different reactions occur: Cort practically crawls into Ezra’s lap out of a jealous sense of possession, the crowd gasps, and Dalton defends me.

“There is no need for th
at, I assure you,” Dalton bites out.

“Isn’t jealousy grand,” Ezra sings. “You tell one little white lie and everything changes. I was proud of you, Dalton, and surprised. I decided to use your approach. I told my reluctant partner that I was finding a man who was okay with being gay, who’d be okay with me being bi. That’s all it took. It’s no secret that all you have to do is get Cort horny and jealous and he’ll eat out of
the palm of your hand. He’s chased me around all day.”

“You’re just going to let him talk about you like that,”
Dalton grumbles to Cort- baffled.

“Ah…” Cort sheepishly hides his face and shrugs.

“When Cort comes down from the lust, he’ll deny any of it ever happened. So what’s it matter if I use it to my advantage. Because going by Cortez’s rationale, it never happened in the first place. It’s nothing new. I’ve been dealing with this shit for almost twenty years. That’s why I’m helping Pretty Boy. He needs to know what not to do. I already heard something earlier that we need to work on.”

“You’re not fucking him,” Dalton hisses.

“Back up,” I cut in, and stand up. I swivel the hook that’s hanging from the ceiling around to where I need it, and slip the loop I created in the back of the harness over it. “What was this about a lie?”

“
I kissed your man and I made him cum,” Ezra goads Dalton, who lunges for Ezra but the harness holds him back. I quickly raise the hook, suspending a naked thrashing wild animal.

“Je vais vous tuer
!” Dalton screams, swinging from the ceiling as he tries to get to Ezra.

“Oh, please… stop hexing us in French. You’re not going to kill us. It’s your fault in the first place. That little white lie gave me an in. Pretty
Boy is loyal to a fault. Whitt held off on getting laid until he was twenty just so he could be with his Queen. Whitt only did Kristal because the whole thing made Regina uncomfortable. He wouldn’t have touched me… but see, you had to make Whitt jealous, didn’t you?”

“What the hell is this about?” I shout, looking between Dalton and Ezra. Cort’s on his knees with the same expression on his face as mine. Dalton is silent and
stationary in his suspension. He looks at me with huge green eyes, imploring me with his innocence.

“Do you want to touch me again?” Ezra asks me.

“Yeah, I’m not going to lie. It was hotter than fuck.” I shift around hiding my instant reaction. “I was going to tell Dalton about it tonight. I didn’t want to be dishonest.”

“Would you have ever touched me if Dalton hadn’t let Roman fuck him?”
Ezra spins some weird therapy web I don’t understand.

“Probably not-
unless we talked about it first. Not that I haven’t thought about it- a lot. I just never thought it would be an option.”

“You gonna tell him or should I?”
Ezra has a devious gleam in his eye. It’s the one that Regina often talked about- the one that means Ezra’s directing you down a path you wish didn’t exist, but you can’t escape. This is the shit he dreams of doing in his therapy room down the hall. I watched him twist Regina’s mind time and time again. Ezra makes me look like an amateur. 

“
I lied,” Dalton’s voice cracks. He reaches a hand out to me, but lets it drop to his side. I grab it anyway and lace our fingers together. “Jealousy was making me crazy,” he whimpers.

“What?”

“We haven’t been together long, but I could see that you weren’t ever going to leave Regina. I was so jealous, and I knew how awful it made me feel. I wanted to see what you’d do. If you were unaffected, I’d just leave you alone. If it bothered you, then I’d see where we were headed. I was pleasantly surprised by what you did. I won’t lie, I was fucking glad. Well… not about Ezra, but I understand why he would tempt you. Ezra was the only guy you knew that was like us. But her,” Dalton points at Regina and growls, “She doesn’t make any sense to me at all.”

“This is all about Regina. What the fuck? I finally got on board the incest express
and you go unhinged. What was this lie?”

“I… I didn’t do it.
I made it all up. Roman didn’t fuck me.”

“Christ,” I growl under my breath. I drop Dalton’s hand and pace around the small space, stepping over Cort’s feet on my way by. “You really have that big of a problem with Regina.”

“Should we do a show of hands?” Dalton asks our voyeurs. “You’re gay. As in, only loves cock, gay. No bi in you at all. The Kris stuff was to make
her
happy. All roads lead back to
her
. I don’t understand what it is about Regina. I like her. She’s a great person- a great mom. She’s probably the strongest dominant I know. She’s a fucking genius. She has enough. She has Marcus and your dad. She can’t have you, too. I want you, dammit! I want you for myself. I don’t care if
we
play around with some guys. But a girl? What the hell, Daniel? It’s… it’s worse than cheating. It makes me sick.”

“Sorry,” I despondently whimper. “I didn’t realize t
hat it bothered you that much. You know we’re getting a divorce.”

“I know and I’m thrilled. But I’m not stupid. You’re connected in some perverse way that’s unbreakable. You’ll draw her back or she’ll draw you back. I guess I just have to fucking deal with it. At least now I know you give a shit about me enough to divorce her.
That… that will have to be enough for me.”

“Where do we go from here?”
I whimper. Pacing the small area, my mind furiously spins. I realize that we have a captive audience. Every member of Restraint is watching us like we’re a live reality show. Regina is shocked, and I try to ignore her. Not daring to look directly at her since Dalton is watching me. The majority is shocked, but a few people look amazed. Marcus look relieved or proud, or maybe a combination of both. Roman… Roman looks fucking pissed. I guess he doesn’t like being the center of a lie.

Dalton growls,
“First: I want out of this contraption. You’re good, I’ll give you that. But get me the fuck down. Second: this is private and none of their goddamned business. Third: Ezra can teach you about this because we’re rocky right now. But if he fucks you, I
will
kill him. Fourth: I may submit to you because I’m a switch. But I’m one of the strongest dominants here. Don’t fuck with me!”