Naughty Wishes 4: Soul (19 page)

The area where they stood was a large foyer open to the stage area, allowing plenty of room to mingle before the performances began. She saw plenty of leather, lace and metal mixed with fancy, sexy club wear made of silk and rhinestones. More than one Master or Mistress had their submissive on a leash, and a couple had head masks shaped like canines, submissives who enjoyed puppy play. There was also a good mix of people she could tell were new to all this but fascinated by those around them who weren’t. They held their wineglasses and smiled and talked, even as their eyes darted here and there, taking it all in.

Her own eye was attracted by a Master who had a whip tucked into his boot, ready in an instant to hand out discipline to his submissive, a black woman with doe-like eyes, full moist lips and dressed in a transparent silver shift with nothing under it. She knelt at his side as he spoke to several other people.

Sam’s hand crept into Geoff’s on one side, into Chris’s in the other. It wasn’t that she was afraid . . . just somewhat overwhelmed. A quick glance at Chris suggested he might be in a similar boat, since he was looking around like some of the others who were obviously less experienced with the BDSM lifestyle. He’d said he’d gone with Geoff to some of his club visits, but she wasn’t sure he’d ever been exposed to this size of a crowd or this mix of fetishes before. Geoff seemed less off balance, though from his frequent glances over the two of them, gauging their reaction, and the protective energy vibrating from him, she expected it was the first time he’d brought his own submissive.

She also saw he was right about her getting a lot of admiring looks. She still thought the main reason for it was the corset and mask, because they were a striking combination no matter who was wearing them. But she had to admit she’d never felt so sexy in her entire life.

The old building had been decorated for the event. Madison had draped the beams laced across the high ceiling in shimmering fabrics and hung erotic artwork on the cracked plaster walls. Some pieces Sam recognized from the Naughty Bits store. Heavier drapes had been hung in key places to dampen the white noise in the foyer gathering space and increase the sense of an intimate party, no matter that over two hundred people were present.

“Why don’t you go change before the show starts?” Geoff said to Chris then. “You have ten minutes.”

“I can do it afterward.”

Since one of Chris’s hands was on her other shoulder, she tilted her head in that direction, rubbing the smooth feathered front of the bird mask against Chris’s knuckles and finding them with her mouth, caressing flesh with tongue and lips. He let out a muttered, amused oath as she lifted her eyes to him. “May I speak freely again, Master?” she asked.

“You may.” It was Geoff who answered, probably because she’d never called Chris
Master
directly that way, and even more likely because he knew what she was going to do.

“Please,” she said to Chris. “I would love to see you wear Geoff’s gift. I know he would, too. Please?”

He ran his thumb over her lips, sighed and shouldered the tote. “Back in a minute,” he told Geoff. “And for the record, you’re both pains in my ass.”

“Glad to serve a purpose,” Geoff rejoined, grinning.

As she’d noted when Geoff first removed the eye coverings, the foyer was open to the performance area, where the graduated seating arranged in a crescent shape around the stage down front ensured no one’s view would be blocked. Since the seating was already filling up, Geoff directed her to an aisle spot. Many of those seated nearby looked in their direction, studying Sam and her Master. In an environment like this, everyone would be curious about everyone else, and since she was looking just as intently, she couldn’t feel self-conscious. Plus, Geoff’s hand never left her elbow. She was sure he was gauging everything about her state of mind through that grip. Whether she was cold, afraid, nervous.

Nervous, yes, but she wasn’t afraid or cold. Heat shimmered off her skin and she felt like a wild creature, ready to fly and play under his and Chris’s control.

Geoff took the aisle seat, leaving one seat between them to hold a place for Chris, but he kept her hand firmly in his grip, his thumb sliding along her pulse. She could feel his eyes upon her and she lifted her own. What she saw in his face made her wet her lips. “What are you thinking?” she asked, bemused to hear that little break in her voice again.

He leaned over the empty seat to caress her masked cheek. His face was very close, and what was in his eyes infused his quiet words with a power that made her shudder. “Nothing proper. Nothing sane or civilized.”

“Say it anyway,” she whispered.

“I want to put collars on you both and stamp them with my name. I want to have you both kneeling at my feet, so I can just put my hands on your faces, like I’m doing with yours now, have you looking up at me and know . . . that you willingly belong to me. That you’re as fully mine . . .”

She’d never seen his expression so open and raw, so savage and vulnerable at once. There was a heartbreaking beauty to it that stole her breath, stopped her heart. He paused, as if collecting himself. She tangled her fingers with his, and gave him the words that emotions had taken from him.

“As you are ours,” she finished. “We are, Master. Always.”

He put his mouth on hers, all demand and need. She surrendered all of herself to him through that kiss, so he’d know it wasn’t the heat of the moment. It was simply truth.

He lifted his head, stared at her. “I love you so fucking much,” he said. “I should have told you that the first second I met you, because I bet somewhere in my heart I already knew it was true.”

“That might have been a little scary,” she said with a tremulous smile. “You know, stalker stuff.”

His lips curved. A smattering of applause broke into their absorption with each other. Glancing toward the stage, Geoff reluctantly drew back, though he kept her hand as if he had no intention of ever relinquishing it back to her. “They must have some pre–main performance stuff. I didn’t know. Hopefully Chris will get back soon.”

“Hopefully Chris will leave the bathroom before the end of the evening,” she teased him. “He’s probably even now standing in front of the mirror, saying,
No fucking way
.”

Geoff chuckled and squeezed her hand. Then they both turned their attention to the stage.

Two Dommes, one in a sequined white sheath and black boots, the other her mirror image in black sheath and white boots, were executing a performance with a single-tail whip. As one Domme held up a board target with balloons shaped like a flower mounted on it, the other Domme burst all the balloons, one by one, with the throws of her whip. Letting her whip coil at her side, she produced another balloon, this one held up in her bare hand for the other Domme. That Mistress had a longer whip than the first Domme’s, yet she was just as proficient. She broke the balloon with a sharp, dramatic pop.

They bowed and exited the stage to applause. More people wandered in from the foyer. Sam thought it had been a smart tactic on Madison’s part, to offer a couple of mini-offerings onstage to bring in the foyer stragglers, getting everyone seated and quiet before the main performance.

The next to take the stage was a large man with mustache, shoulder-length brown hair and broad, handsome features that reminded her of Lee Horsley in
The Sword and the Sorcerer
. The movie was one of Geoff’s classic “geek” DVD collection, as Chris called it.

This man wore a vest over his bare upper torso and pantaloons. He twirled and tossed knives with firelit blades in an impressive display. As he did the traditional fire-eating trick, an Indian woman wearing no clothing at all, her head shaved to a pearlescent gleam, came and knelt before him. She put her forehead and elbows to the ground so the brown curve of her spine created a delicate bridge. Another woman, pale and also naked except for a glittering copper collar, stood at his side with further props.

He gave the knives to the helper, and Sam drew in a breath as the fire seemed to leap to his hands. He stroked the bowing woman in swift, graceful movements with the flame as she stayed docile and trusting under his touch. Over the curve of her back, to her nape, over her bare scalp, lingering over her raised buttocks. When he spoke a one-word command in a language Sam didn’t recognize, she stretched out on her back, gazing up at him.

Going to his knees beside her, he drizzled a fluid on her flesh that shaped the flame into a bluish zigzag pattern on her breasts, mons and thighs. When he stretched out on her as if he was going to take her right there onstage, the fire rippled in the space between their bodies. He quenched it by closing that gap, pressing tightly against her from breasts to hips. The crowd
oohed
and gasped; then, just as quickly and smoothly, he was next to her again, once more applying the flickering gold-and-blue heat to her skin with the bare palms of his hands.

He finished his performance with the woman coming up on her knees and pressing a kiss to either of his now doused hands, which he curved over her bare skull before kissing her forehead.

As the fire performers were exiting the stage to further applause, the house lights dimmed, indicating the main show was about to start. Geoff’s hand tightened on her, drawing her attention from the stage once more. She didn’t know if that was his intent, or if the flex of his fingers was purely in reaction to Chris, but after one look at Chris, she was pretty sure it was the latter. As for her, thought deserted her in favor of a pure surge of
I want that
.

Chris could have put on the pants but retained his T-shirt, keeping somewhat within his comfort zone, but he’d gratifyingly gone full out. He’d worn the upper-body harness. The straps and metal rings accentuated his impressive upper body just as she’d anticipated they would. As for the pants, they would have inspired a saint to dive right into a vat of sin and happily do the backstroke. They fit him like a second skin, his cock and balls mounded up against the fly in a way that made her fingers itch to touch. Since she had enough detail from the view to tell he was circumcised, she was sure his ass would be just as distracting.

She didn’t have long to wait to confirm that. When Geoff gestured to her to do so, she moved to the middle seat so Chris could take the seat on the other side of her. Since it was clear from his smirk that Geoff wasn’t relinquishing the aisle seat—probably for exactly the same reason she was thrilled to move to the middle seat—Chris had to turn sideways and sidle over Geoff and her to get to his chair.

There was no way she had the self-discipline not to take advantage of that up-close ogle of an ass so fine. Geoff didn’t even try, sliding his palm smoothly over it as Chris moved past him, so she did the same. The thinness of the material let her feel the heated skin beneath.

“Lot of sexual harassment in this row,” Chris muttered, making her giggle as he took the seat beside her. “You know, my legs are longer than yours,” he said across her to Geoff. Geoff lifted a shoulder.

“But my dick’s bigger.”

That carried enough to incite a wave of chuckles from the audience members around them. A middle-aged man in front of them, wearing a collar and no shirt, rolled his eyes toward her and Chris. “Damn Doms, right?”

The comment suggested he was a submissive, but the proprietary arm the large bald-headed man next to him had along the back of his chair, and the head slap and gimlet eye he earned from him, confirmed it. “Keep that up, dog,” the Master threatened with an amused twist to his lips. “I’ll make you lie on my feet and miss the performance.”

The sub gave Sam an affectionate, conspiratorial wink, but settled down. “Where did you get their outfits?” A woman behind them leaned forward to speak to Geoff, her long-nailed fingers curving over Sam’s seat at her shoulder. “Was it at Naughty Bits?”

Madison would be pleased at the plug. Geoff confirmed it and answered her additional questions with friendly warmth. A question about clothing from a woman would usually have been addressed to the woman in their party—Sam—but they were in a different world tonight. Here, it seemed a Dom was addressed first, by those familiar enough in the lifestyle to recognize the dynamic between them.

The innate qualities that had first stamped Geoff as a Dominant to her hungry submissive nature were pretty obvious in this environment. She wondered if Chris’s topping qualities not being so easily identified would bother him, but a glance at him reassured her. It didn’t seem to be on his mind at all. Instead, he took her hand with a mock-annoyed look. “You owe me for this,” he said. “Big-time.”

The ways she could beg to repay him unfurled like a Christmas list in her head. It must have shown in her face, because Chris shook his head and lightly bit her fingers. She stretched them out to graze his mostly bare chest, coming in contact with the intriguing contrast of snug straps and metal links. He gave her another reproving look. “Brat,” he muttered. As the lights started to come down, he leaned forward, looked over her at Geoff. “And you’re an asshole.”

She heard exasperated affection for both of them in his voice. Sam squeezed each of their hands.

A haunting flute piece filtered through the speaker system, quieting everyone and building the hushed sense of expectation. Sam’s heart tripped a beat. She had a feeling the things she was about to see would feel familiar, even if she’d never seen them before, and yet those elements might be presented in ways that she’d never imagined. Thrilling, like a darkly sensual circus.

Geoff whispered in her ear. “Put your hands flat on the chair arms and leave them there. Spread your knees so they’re at the corners of your seat. Stay that way unless I tell you otherwise.”

Though she hated letting go of them, she complied. As if the two men could communicate telepathically, their hands settled over her wrists, holding her arms to the chair with flesh-and-blood manacles. That heart-tripping thing accelerated.

The first performers took the stage. A man clad in nothing but a snug pair of shorts backed toward the audience from between the rear stage curtains. A spotlight followed him, the rest of the stage dark. Handsome and well muscled, he had silky blond hair and a sinuous masculinity that made him an excellent choice for stage performance. He knelt.