Naughty Wishes 4: Soul (22 page)

Quiet chuckles went through the audience, and he gave them all a warm smile. “We both thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you for coming tonight.”

The crowd honored his request as he bent, scooped Madison off the floor and carried her offstage, cradling her in her arms. But once he did that, applause began, and built to a congratulatory cheer. Sam saw Troy whooping by the side of the stage, and he grabbed his Mistress for a kiss, who likewise looked delighted by the announcement.

Once she was willing to extricate herself from that enthusiastic embrace, she moved to the steps and mounted the stage, lifting her hands to quiet everyone down before she spoke. Troy followed her, taking up a position behind her and to the left.

“I’m Mistress Shale, for those who don’t know me,” she said. “And I know everyone here knows Troy. My boy is a big flirt, which is why I have to beat his ass all the damn time.”

Laughter and catcalls answered that, and she grinned as Troy dropped to a knee in courtly apology. The handsomeness of the gesture so underscored Shale’s point it incited another wave of mirth. Rolling her eyes at him, she turned back to the audience.

“Logan and Madison provided a very fitting end to tonight’s performances,” she said. “When this becomes an erotic performance theater, it will continually reinforce how we integrate erotic expression into our relationships with one another, whether it’s kink, vanilla, Tantra or Baptist.” She grinned at the laughter. “Yep, thought our Baptists would appreciate that. You guys know how to get your freak on like nobody’s business. Now, even though the performances are over, feel free to socialize and mingle. And please, give yourself a treat and visit our sponsoring vendors for the evening. They’ve brought a lot of lovely things for sale and will be doing demos with any willing Doms or subs. No hard pressure tactics. They’re just as happy to give you their business cards so you can consider future purchases as they are to get a sale tonight. Of course, knowing some of you as I do, I’m sure many of you will find things you can’t resist.”

She winked, concluding her speech with a short bow. Troy jumped offstage and put his hands up to grasp her waist and lift her down. They exchanged another heated kiss that captivated Sam, watching the formidable Mistress melt in his arms. Troy obviously had the same knee-weakening powers in his lips that Chris and Geoff did.

Glancing at Chris under her lashes, Sam saw he was studying them with a curious expression. Was it intriguing to him that while Troy was a sub who enjoyed restraint and punishment from his Mistress’s hand, it didn’t stop him from lifting her down from a stage or capturing her mouth with possessive demand? Much as Chris did with her, even as Geoff was deep inside his ass, demanding the same kind of surrender from him.

“It never has to be one thing,” Sam said. “Does it?”

When she looked toward Geoff, his hazel eyes were approving. People were making their way out of the theater, but as she started to get up, Geoff kept her in her seat by closing his hand on her thigh, holding her in place.

“Chris has more he wants to say to you,” he advised.

She turned toward him and her vision was filled with Chris’s brown eyes as he put his mouth on hers. While she made a little mewling sound of surprise against his lips, he ravished her mouth, eclipsing the heat of the kiss she’d just witnessed with Troy and Shale. Chris was kissing her in a way that told her how he was going to have her tonight. Hard, often and thoroughly.

She let out another whimper as Geoff occupied himself between her legs again, so that her thighs trembled and her toes pressed hard into the concrete floor beneath her. Waves of response rippled up her body. She was going to climax right here. Knowing the house lights were up and anyone was able to see them doing this to her just made it all the more certain. She gasped against Chris’s lips, a warning, and Geoff eased up, though it immediately made her wish she’d kept quiet.

As Chris drew back, her head was lying on the back of the seat, and she was fully in surrender mode, her body open to them in all ways. Geoff threaded his hand into Chris’s hair, tugging at the thick locks. Chris glanced at him, then back at her. “I get it now,” he said. “I’ve wanted to hold you like a bird in my hand from the first day, Sam.” His gaze slid over the mask, lips quirking. “I thought that was just about being protective, in love with you. It was, but these other feelings . . . aren’t gentle in the least.”

She didn’t know where she found the ability to speak, but she did. “I’m glad. But I’m okay with however, whatever you need to be with me, with us. You loving me, that’s what matters.”

Chris shifted his attention back to Geoff, and she witnessed that fierce exchange of thoughts. While she still couldn’t always discern what was being communicated, she picked up the feelings well enough. And she’d have time to learn their special language, as much as they were learning hers. They already answered her different needs and desires, picking up on them so easily. Evidenced now by Geoff grasping her wrist, rubbing his fingers on her pulse, a Master’s demand, while Chris played with her fingertips like he was gliding his touch along meadow grass.

“Let’s go see some of the vendor stuff,” Geoff said.

As they helped her up and guided her back into the large foyer, they both stayed close. She was in a hazy cloud of arousal and sharp need, and hyperaware that the thong she wore had to be obviously wet with arousal. Fortunately, she saw the same evidence in other scantily clad audience members, though she wasn’t entirely sure it would have mattered to her regardless. Not in this state.

Some of the vendors were craftspeople whose wares Sam recognized from Madison’s shop, but there were others as well. She and Chris browsed a booth with boxes of vintage erotic postcards. The collections were sold by a wizened old man who told them stories about being part of the original Leatherman movement in the sixties. Chris bought a few he liked, adding in the several she wanted to purchase. From there, they wandered with Geoff past booths offering paraffin wax, restraint systems, handcrafted whips and impact play toys.

When they reached the table that advertised Logan’s custom BDSM furniture, there were pictures on display and a couple of actual pieces people could examine hands-on. Troy was manning the booth and gave Sam a grin, coupled with an appreciative look. He’d pulled on a pair of jeans but was still shirtless, so she couldn’t help but steal a reciprocating appraisal. Though she bit her lips against a smile as Chris’s hand slid along her waist, giving her ass a not-so-subtle reproving pinch.

“Just looking, not buying,” she muttered and stifled a yelp as Geoff gave her an even harder pinch on the other buttock.

“The mask and corset look gorgeous on you,” Troy said, either actually oblivious to the exchange or trying to save her from further retaliation. He slanted a glance at Geoff. “If you don’t mind me saying.”

“It’s only the truth,” Geoff said. He examined the large cross-shaped frame. “This says it unhinges for easy storage?”

“Way easy. It stays in one piece, but folds.” As Troy turned to show Geoff, Sam’s gaze slid over the faint red marks on his back, fading souvenirs from Shale’s whip play with him.

“Would you like to touch them?”

She turned to see Shale watching from a corner. She was sitting on a stool, sipping a canned soda. The Domme’s gaze was so direct, so unflinching, it added to her both intriguing and intimidating demeanor. She rose, passing her hand over Troy’s back. He instantly stilled at her touch, straightened. “It’s interesting,” Shale remarked to Geoff. “Subs often like to touch the marks on another sub, as if they can absorb the reaction.”

Geoff met Shale’s gaze, then shifted his attention to Sam. “You want to ask me for something, Sam?”

She bit her lip. Chris was a quiet presence to her left. “May I touch, Master? If it’s okay with . . . both of you.”

She wondered if she needed to explain that it wasn’t about touching another man. Shale couldn’t have described it more accurately. Her fingers were itching to touch evidence of a type of play that intrigued her, that she might want her Master to do to her.

Geoff glanced at Chris, but whatever he saw there satisfied him. He nodded. Sam slid her fingertips over the marks, just below where Shale kept her hand against Troy’s nape. When Troy turned his head to look at her, Sam had to ask, “Did it hurt?”

“In all good ways. It gets bad at a certain point, and I think I’m going to safe-word, but I break through that point. It’s like I’m channeling how she feels about it, which balances the pain. And then . . . I fly.”

Sam took her hand away and murmured her thanks. Geoff spoke to Troy another few minutes about the cross, then they left Troy and Shale to visit the next booth. The vendor there was a man whose short limbs and stature indicated dwarfism. When Sam met his steady blue eyes, she was intrigued. Studying his strong features and atypical stature, she wondered what his story was, how it had brought him here. From the quirk of his lips and gleam of appreciation in his gaze as he studied her, she was pretty sure he was a Dom. He had a square jaw and a tangled mop of dark hair, but the handsome face only contributed to the compelling attitude he projected.

His card read
Grant Juneau
. Grant was offering different strike-branding techniques. Electric, freeze branding, heat. Sam thought any of it would be terribly painful, but Grant explained that when being done for marking, the contact was quick. The mark would remain anywhere from six to eighteen months.

“Hurts less than tattooing,” he said to Geoff. “And a lot less expensive way to put a mark of ownership on your sub or slave.”

Geoff glanced at Chris quizzically. Chris lifted a shoulder. “I don’t really want to mark her skin that way.”

“How about me marking yours?”

Chris blinked. Geoff’s hazel eyes were sharp. “You remember that blood oath we made?”

“A blood oath?” Sam asked.

Chris grimaced, with humor. But she noticed his brown eyes were bemused, showing how very aware he was of Geoff as he shifted behind Chris, stroking his back around and beneath the hold of the harness straps. He tugged on a metal link hard enough to make Chris brace himself against the pull before Geoff dropped lower, fondling the curve of Chris’s ass in the formfitting pants. Chris’s head tilted as Geoff tucked fingertips beneath the waistband, caressing the dip between his buttocks.

“Watch her breathing, Chris. She gets so turned on when I touch you. Think she’d get even hotter if I branded my initial into your shoulder, here?” He traced the spot as Chris’s eyes moved to Sam’s entranced face.

Geoff lifted his gaze to Sam. “We’d just turned twelve. The oath was a promise to never let women come between us, inspired by the sudden loss of three of our friends who’d fallen under their diabolical spell. It ruined our afternoon baseball games, because those guys wanted to hang out with icky girls instead of meeting up to play.”

Sam smiled but the smile died as Geoff wrapped his fingers around the base of Chris’s throat on one side. When Chris’s muscles tensed, Geoff soothed him by sliding the other hand back down his arm, threading it between elbow and back to put him in a light restraint hold. Chris could throw him off, but when Geoff tightened his grip, Chris went more still.

“His pulse is hammering.” Geoff pressed against Chris’s back. “You feel my cock? I plan to have it in both of you tonight. I like the idea of branding your flesh, Chris. I like it a whole fucking lot. What do you think?”

Chris was silent for a moment, then Sam saw him curl the fingers behind his back into Geoff’s shirt, as much as the position allowed. “I want that,” Chris said. His gaze met hers, and suddenly an erotic moment opened up into something far more, bringing forth everything that had led to this moment. Chris’s expression became brilliant with emotions that tied her heart up in a dozen ways, all of them connected to her two men.

“I want you both to know I’m yours,” he murmured. “Every part of me. If I could figure out a way to brand it on my heart and soul, I would. You can destroy me with nothing but a word. It fucking scares me like nothing else, and it makes me happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

He’d mesmerized her, drawing her closer with every word. She gripped the straps of the harness as Geoff slid an arm over his chest, overlapping her tight fingers. He pressed a hard kiss on Chris’s shoulder and Chris brushed his head against Geoff, a fierce gesture of tenderness.

“Sam, go pick out a
G
,” Geoff ordered roughly. “And one you’d like him to have.”

There was no shame and definitely no choice in her need to collect and compose herself before approaching the vendor. Grant had busied himself in his booth, but Sam knew he’d stayed tuned in to them, and not just because he was a smart man who understood when he was close to making a sale. When she stepped up to his table, his expression was warm and knowing, as if he understood just what kind of feelings she was experiencing from Chris’s unexpected declaration. “These two,” she said quietly, touching a brand shaped like a bird and the
G
brand next to it.

Grant’s blue eyes passed over her outfit, the bird mask, and he nodded with a faint smile. “The
G
is a freeze brand, and the bird is a heat brand.” He quoted the price to her as Geoff and Chris drew closer, standing shoulder to shoulder again. Geoff handed her the money. After pocketing it, the vendor motioned to Chris to come around into his application space. Gauging Chris’s height, he pulled over his taller stepping stool. “You sit on this. I’ll step on the other so I can get the right angle to apply them evenly.”

Chris complied. Sam shifted so she and Geoff could face him together. Geoff took her hand. “Breathe,” he said. “If you pass out, I’ll make fun of you.”

She rolled her eyes at him. Grant had said it wasn’t any worse than getting a tattoo, but she still held her breath a little bit. Sensing her trepidation, Chris grasped her other hand and smiled. It was quick, no more than a blink, and Chris didn’t even flinch. She came around at Grant’s gesture so she could see the new imprints.