NoBounds (6 page)

She’d get no argument from Cole about the
latter. Many times when he’d tended Amber’s brand, he had thought about killing
his father for having exiled the three together. Petrone should have been
executed or imprisoned for life on Earth as a common criminal, an outlaw
completely beyond redemption.

When Ciel, always mercurial, seemed to have
calmed down enough that Cole dared to loosen his grip on her, he persuaded her
to take her medicine and crawl back into bed. “Give it time, Ciel. If we work
together we can make Obsidion a paradise where Earthlings can come to indulge
their passions amongst all the luxuries of home.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yes I do. But we have to take it one step
at a time. Meanwhile, I need to go. It’s time we opened our doors to our first
customers.

“Rest now.” Bending, Cole kissed his
sister’s forehead. “I need you to get well, so you can show our club Dommes how
we treat our subs at No Bounds.” He had only a few minutes to tend his ravaged
cheek and change into the black leather chaps, vest and boots he was to wear in
the scene with Amber.

* * * * *

“Ciel was awake just now,” Cole whispered a
few minutes later when he joined Amber and clipped her leash to the thick
silver chain around his waist.

“I must go to her.” Amber made a move
toward the stairs but stopped cold when he didn’t lead the way. “Master.”

“Not now.”

“But Master…”

“I said not now. I gave her the medicine
Ulrica left for when she came to. By now she should be sleeping again. Besides,
we have a club to open.” If he could, he’d shield Amber forever from his
sister’s misplaced possessiveness. While he couldn’t manage that with them both
living in the quarters above No Bounds, he could and would postpone the
inevitable confrontation for as long as possible.

Amber reached a hand up to her throat,
fingered his collar. “Does she know you’re now my Master?”

“Yes. She knows. Did you think I’d keep
this from my own sister?” Cole traced the path his collar took, feeling a burst
of pride that Amber had chosen him. “I want the whole world to know you are my
slave, that you love me and I love you.”

Her eyes widened when she noticed the angry
scratches along his cheek. “She…why did she do this to you?” Very gently, she
traced the lines of the wounds.

“Hush. It’s nothing.”

Tears filled her eyes, caught on the thick
fringes of her eyelashes. “We were friends. Never more. Oh God, Master, she
must have thought—”

“That you were her slave. I assured her you
were not and never had been, that you were and are her friend, even though the
way she used you could easily have gotten you killed.” Cole used his thumb to
catch a tear on its way down Amber’s cheek, then rubbed the moisture over her
glistening lips. “Come, now—we must greet our guests.”

“She was to have been here too, taking part
in the opening ceremonies. Before we left Earth, she’d planned a scene…”

Amber’s hesitation told Cole that he didn’t
want to hear the details of what Ciel had planned. Not now, when all he wanted
to do was concentrate on Amber, on showing the guests he’d invited to No Bounds
on its opening night that he had taken a slave he loved dearly, one he would go
to any lengths to bring to pleasure. “All that’s in the past now, sweetheart.
Forget Ciel for now. That’s an order.” He shot her a smile, then tugged at her
leash as though he had to coax her to do his bidding.

Strobe lights played over the
silver-flecked walls, the colors blue, purple, red and gold moving in studied
dissonance, focusing first on one piece of chrome equipment then another,
showcasing the variety of devices a sexual Dominant might use in No Bounds to
subdue or pleasure his or her slave. Muted exclamations from the observers in
the glassed-in theater above the dungeon floated like disembodied voices in a
vacuum, reminding Amber that over a hundred pairs of eyes were looking down at
them, even though the owners of those eyes were cloaked in darkness.

In the center of the room now, she went
down on her knees, her head bowed respectfully, hands locked behind her back in
the classic pose of a submissive. Her master stood before her, his muscular
legs braced slightly apart, a flogger gripped in one powerful fist. Music,
muted until now, built to a crescendo, heightening her anticipation…her fear.

It wasn’t true fear because she trusted
Cole with her life, but more a pleasurable apprehension of the unknown, of how
he would overpower her, the places he would take her, places far beyond her
control. The fierce arousal that gripped her had begun the moment Cole had
tugged on her leash. Even before that.

The mere anticipation of this scene had
aroused her. By the time Mistress Magda had laced her into this sparkling
silver lamé corset so tightly that she could barely breathe, secured her hair
in a ponytail at the crown of her head and rouged her exposed nipples, her cunt
had been wet and swollen. Ready for her master.

“You may rise, slave. Have you prepared
yourself for me?”

“Yes, Master.” Amber made her voice quiver,
in accord with the script they’d rehearsed.

Cole reached out with his free hand and
examined her swollen slit. “You are wet. But I believe you forgot at least one
of my orders. Did you shave my cunt?”

“N-no, Master. I forgot. I am sorry.”

When he lifted the flogger, she braced for
the strike that never came. “I do not wish to mark my slave’s tender skin. Not
yet. Attendants! Prepare my slave for my attention.”

Mistress Magda and a naked male sub moved
out of the shadows, grasped Amber’s outstretched arms and lifted her onto a
chrome-plated table. They hadn’t rehearsed this. At the sparkle in Cole’s eyes,
she knew he had planned it for her pleasure, thinking of her even on this night
that was so important to him.

It underscored to her what she was
learning. That
she
was important to him. Perhaps, for once, she’d found
a relationship where her master cared for her as much as she adored him. And it
made her realize many things about herself, one of them being that she was
worthy of being loved that way, for she loved with her whole heart as well.

A delicious frisson of anticipation shot
through Amber as Magda clamped fur-lined handcuffs onto her wrists and
stretched her arms back, high over her head, immobilizing them by hooking the
cuffs over the pole at the end of the table. Her master arranged her legs in stirrups
before ordering the sub to secure them with Velcro fasteners around each thigh,
her knees and her calves.

“Shave her cunt. Nick it and I will flay
you within an inch of your life,” Cole told the sub.

“Yes, Master Cole.” Amber felt the warm wet
lather and then the scraping of an old-fashioned blade as the sub began to
shave her already aroused pussy lips.

Cole stepped up beside her and stroked her
cheek. He toyed with the sensitive skin of her earlobes, then started a sensual
massage that began on her throat and moved on into the exposed valley between
her breasts. “Slave, I order you not to come until I give you permission.”

He moved his hand to either side to caress
the swell of her naked breasts. “So soft. So beautiful. So
mine
.”

Her master’s most innocent caress aroused
her more than the sensual scraping of the sub’s razor over her mound, her pussy
lips and around her ass. She closed her eyes, let the music and Cole’s touch
carry her somewhere safe, somewhere only the two of them existed, apart from
the sub, Mistress Magda and the unseen audience in the theater above them.

By the time Cole found her nipples and
began teasing them to tight, hard points Amber was squirming. Pressure built in
her belly, her cunt, her ass. She had to come but she did not,
would
not
disobey her master’s order despite the burning need that intensified when he
threaded a long gold chain through her nipple rings and arranged the ends over
the lacings of her corset.

Bending, he kissed one taut nipple then the
other, before ordering the sub away and stroking her mound below the pointed
front of the corset. “Oh yeah, that’s the way I like my pussy.” Bending, he
tongued her where his hand had been, then moved lower to suck the rigid nub of
her clit between his teeth.

When he raised his head and looked up at
her, it was all she could do not to beg him to continue, to lick her cunt, suck
her clit and lap the honey from her pussy lips until she screamed for mercy.
Instead she managed a breathy, “Thank you, Master,” before he pinched her clit
between his thumb and middle finger and attached each end of the chain to the
small gold ring in the piercing she’d had done while her brand had still been
healing.

It felt…incredible. There was pain where
the weight of the chain dragged on her engorged flesh, but there was also
pleasure—incredibly arousing sensation that flowed throughout her body as her
master manipulated the chain.

Her breathing grew ragged. Her pulse raced.
Her cunt clenched and her juices flowed, turning her pussy lips wet and
slippery to her master’s touch. The gentle movement of the chain intensified
her arousal. God but she was desperate to come.

“Please, Master, fuck me now.” Her words
came out raw, ragged. She was barely able to speak as she struggled to hold
back her climax.

Cole tugged sharply on the chain that
connected her nipple rings with the one in her clit. “Not yet, my precious
slave.”

Bending, he brushed his lips across hers,
at the same time laying a hand over the lacings of her corset, tilting the
platform where she was bound until she lay upside-down, her face level with his
crotch. The bindings on her legs held her firmly in place. “Suck my cock.” His
hot breath tickled her freshly shaved cunt as he looked down between her legs.

He moved closer, his crotch in line with
her mouth. Greedy to taste him, she caught the hidden snaps that closed the
front seam of his leather jock with her teeth and tugged until it popped open.
No longer tightly confined, his gorgeous cock sprang through the opening.

It didn’t matter that the amphitheater was
full or that hordes of guests were watching. She needed to taste her master,
show him… She reached out with her tongue and caught the creamy drop of
lubrication that glistened in his slit, then opened her lips as he flexed his
hips and started to fuck her mouth.

She loved showing the world he was her
master, giving him pleasure in every way he might demand of her. His flesh felt
smooth and slick on her tongue as she swirled it all around his massive cock
head. Greedy for more, she took him deep down her throat, swallowing
convulsively around his rock-hard flesh.

Most of all, she loved listening to him
groan when she serviced him this way, a primal blend of agony and ecstasy. When
she felt a tremor in his massive thighs, she realized he was close to
climaxing, that holding back cost him tremendous effort. It gave her a sense of
power, of worth, that she was able to effect such a strong reaction in her
powerful master.

Oh gods above. She was going to come. There
wasn’t a thing she could do to hold back, even though when she came she knew
he’d punish her.

He had bent his head and was licking her
pussy, tugging with his teeth at the ring in her clit. His chest brushed
against her nipples when he moved. When he sank two fingers into her pussy and
another into her ass, she couldn’t hold back any longer. She swallowed
convulsively around his cock, took him deeper.

She sucked him hard, as though she could
consume him. She loved his taste and texture and what he was doing to her.

She loved him and the sensations he’d
aroused until it felt…

Incredible. Her cunt and ass clamped down
on his fingers. It all felt so good she hurt, as wave after wave of ecstasy
flowed through her. Limp, half-conscious now, she only vaguely registered the
fact that he’d turned the platform, until he flexed his knees and impaled her.

“I’m tired of gentle. I know you are too.”
His hands easily spanning her corseted waist, Cole steadied her. With every
thrust of his hips, each hard stroke of his cock within her swollen cunt, she
came again. And again. Finally, when she thought she couldn’t come again, he
came in her pussy, those hot bursts of life taking her to yet another climax.

She went limp, her eyes closed as she
concentrated on the sensation of his cock inside her, still trembling in the
aftermath of his climax. It was as though there were only the two of them,
alone despite the observers looking on.

“Look at me,” he ordered quietly.

When she did, she saw incredible tenderness
in his expression. She had to answer his unspoken words, so she raised his palm
and kissed it. She loved tasting the clean, salty essence of his sweat.

“Master, I—”

A shouted warning invaded their private
moment. Then came an otherworldly shriek followed by sounds of fighting in the
hallway outside the door. “Master, that sounds like Mistress Ciel.”

“Stay here.” Cole strode toward the door.
“I’ll take care of this.”

“Amber!”

She heard Ciel’s voice, somewhere between a
plaintive wail and a threatening roar, the Mistress warring with the pathetic
soul she’d become. “You’re mine. You’re…”

“No, Ms. Ciel, you can’t go in there.”

“Fuck you.” A whip cracked. Somebody
screamed. Another crack. Feet pounded on the marble floor as people got scared
and started running. “My brother betrayed me, and now I’m going to make both of
them pay.”

Quickly, Cole loosened Amber’s bonds and
lifted her off the modified cross. “Stay here.” He shoved her into a darkened
corner of the dungeon and strode to the door.

Fuck it all. He’d have the head of the club
employee he’d set to watching Ciel. Damn it, he had personally given her enough
medication that she should have slept through the night. She must have gotten
hold of something from Ulrica’s bag, something that had her wired tighter than
a guitar string.

It was clear that his sister had completely
lost it, but there was no way he was going to let her injure Amber. He opened
the door to the dungeon, stepped out into the hall. “Ciel, put the whip down.”

“You…” She lifted the whip, cracked it,
flicked it with her wrist and wrapped the last three feet or so of its
five-foot length around Cole’s bare legs. While he struggled to get free, she
dropped the whip and fled, her long black hair snarling around her like
Medusa’s. The expression in her eyes in the split second she looked at him
would have curdled the blood of a zombie.

“Show’s over,” Cole shouted to the audience
as he came back into the observation room. “Welcome to No Bounds. Follow the
rules and have fun. The dungeon mistress tonight is Mistress Magda.”

He stepped back into the shadows and took
Amber in his arms. “Ciel has lost it, sweetheart. We have to go find her.”

* * * * *

Three moons shone in the night sky. Three.

Where the fuck am I going
?

Disoriented, Ciel whirled first one way,
then the other. The neon lights of bars and clubs along the Street of Pleasure
blinked, blinding her to everything but her quest.

Kill. Gonna kill Dax. He tricked me.
Wanted Amber. Not me. Amber was my friend. Now gone. Now Cole’s slave. Wrong
.

Ciel raised the dagger she’d taken from the
equipment room, waved it at a couple of passersby.

Yeah right. I’m crazy. Crazy, you got it
.

“What’s with you, lady?”

“Moons. Three of them.”

The taller of the two men laughed. “Yeah,
Obsidion’s got three moons. Weird when you first go out at night, until you get
used to it.”

Ask him
.

“Jail. I want to find the jail.”

“That way, lady. Take a right once you get
past Pierced Princes and you’ll see it at the end of the street. Convenient,
since half the Prince’s customers end up there at one time or another.”

Almost there
.

Tucking her dagger into the belt of her
robe, she took off for the blinking Pierced Princes sign.

“You could have managed a thank you, lady.”

The man’s sarcasm was lost on the wind.

Outside the jail, Ciel paused. Had to collect
herself. Couldn’t rouse suspicion. She paused and smoothed her hair. Couldn’t
look like a madwoman.

She straightened the folds of the white
silk robe she’d snatched along with the dagger and schooled her expression into
one of sublime composure as she opened the jail door and stepped inside. “I
want to visit with Dax Petrone,” she said, making sure she sounded not like a
furious Domme but like a sweet, compliant little sub. Like Amber.

* * * * *

They’d lost precious minutes, but they’d
have ended up thrown in jail if they’d gone out into the street in the clothes
they’d worn for their BDSM scene. Cole and Amber paused outside No Bounds,
looked in both directions. A drunk stumbled out of one of the bars. A pair of
tourists embraced outside a sex toy shop, their faces made surreal by the light
of the neon signs.

Not a sign of Ciel. Anywhere. Amber tugged
at Cole’s sleeve. “Would she have gone to one of the other clubs, Master?”

“Not likely.”

“Why don’t you ask those guys if they saw
her? They look as though they’re still reasonably sober.”

Cole followed Amber’s gaze to the men
outside the toy store. “All right. Let’s do that.” Hurrying now, he dragged
Amber along, stopping to scoop her up and toss her over one shoulder when he
realized she couldn’t keep up his pace. “Sirs,” he yelled as the two men
started to amble toward the Leather Gallery.

They paused at the sound of Cole’s voice.
One of them turned “Yeah?”

“We’re looking for a woman—”

“Did she have wild black hair? A white
dress? Was she actin’ crazy?”

That sounded like Ciel, all right. “Where
did you see her?”

“Right outside the new club. She wanted to
know where the jail is. When I told her, she took off in that direction like a
bat out of hell. Bitch didn’t even say ‘thanks’. Hey, don’t anybody around here
know how to say ‘thank you’?”

“Sorry, man,” Cole yelled. “Got to
hurry—trying to prevent a murder.”

A little winded after the three-block
sprint, Cole set Amber on her feet outside the jail door. “Wait here,” he
ordered, but as he swung the door open, a body came through it, almost like a
flying missile.

“My God, what’s going on in there?”

Cole tore his gaze from the living
missile—a guard from the look of his uniform—and looked at Amber. “I’m afraid
it’s Ciel.”

He was more certain than ever that his
sister had taken something—probably more of the stimulants Ulrica had been
giving her to break her out of the coma. Ordinarily Ciel would have been no
match for a burly prison guard like the one he’d just seen flying out the door.

“I’m going in there. She’ll listen to me.”
Amber stepped into the jail, certain Cole would stop her if she gave him half a
chance. She followed the sounds into a cell block whose door had been left
ajar.

There was Ciel, standing over a bloody
body, her black hair in wild disarray. A madwoman who had once been Amber’s
best childhood friend.

“All the gods damn your black heart,” Ciel
screamed, not at Amber but toward the prone body on the floor. A body that was
obviously beyond response.

The scene before Amber made her stagger back
into the security of Cole’s arms. Over and over, like one possessed, Ciel
plunged a dagger into the bloodied body of Dax Petrone. She stabbed wildly at
any of the guards who gathered the courage to try to stop her.

“Ciel, listen to me.” Amber worked hard to
keep her tone mild, soothing. She hoped her friend had retained enough of her
sanity to listen.

Ciel whirled, madness in her eyes. Her
hands were bloody. Fresh blood dotted the pristine silk of her gown. “I’ll kill
you too,” she spat, lunging not toward Amber but around her, toward Cole.

“No, Ciel. You’re sick. Give me the
dagger.” Cole looked desperate, sounded tortured, but he moved forward and
caught the wrist of Ciel’s hand that held the dagger. “Please.”

Why were those guards just standing there? Amber
grabbed for Ciel’s free hand but found herself slammed against a wall as though
she weighed no more than a baby. “Help. Help Cole. Can’t you see she’s going to
kill him?”

“She already got one of us. No way we’re
gonna invite the crazy woman to kill us too.”

Amber saw that Cole now had Ciel pinned to
the floor, but she was stabbing wildly at him, her strength apparently
increased exponentially by madness. Desperate to do something, Amber turned
back to the jail guards. “Then use your guns.”

Her pulse raced with fear as Cole continued
to struggle for control of the dagger.

One of the guards shrugged. “Don’t have
any. The constable doesn’t allow weapons in the jail.”

Amber tried to get close enough to snatch
the dagger from Ciel, but she felt a guard’s hands at her waist, setting her
out of harm’s way.

“Get out of the way and let us deal with
this.” A guard moved in, grabbing Ciel around the knees to stop her from
bucking. The other one grabbed her arm and held it for long enough for Cole to
knock the dagger from his sister’s hand. He caught her shoulders then and
forced her facedown on the floor.

“Quick. Snap those irons on her before she
breaks away. Fuck, the woman’s got the strength of two grown men.” The guard
who was restraining Ciel’s legs swore as he dodged a series of vicious kicks.
Cole managed to hold her down only by pressing his substantial weight on her
chest while keeping her arms pinned over her head. Even after the guard snapped
handcuffs and leg shackles onto her wrists and ankles, Ciel kept striking out,
screaming obscenities and threatening to kill them all.

This blood-spattered woman who had lost her
last tenuous grip on reality wasn’t the Ciel Amber knew. She wasn’t the friend
who’d become Amber’s anchor after her close-knit family had been wrenched away.

Still, she couldn’t help seeing remnants of
that friend. It was Ciel’s high cheekbones, her regal-looking nose, that
dimpled chin and the slender neck that Amber had always thought should wear the
right Dom’s collar of possession. But the eyes—wild eyes full of hate that
watched every move as the guards zipped the man she had killed into a body
bag—those eyes didn’t belong to the Ciel she’d known.

Or maybe they did. Maybe this unrestrained
violence had been part of Ciel’s nature for a long time and had worsened little
by little, the way an addict’s need for drugs grew exponentially over time.
Amber had been drawn into that violent lifestyle, sucked in by her own
vulnerability and her belief that she had to do something—anything—to deserve love.

“Come,” Cole said after he’d talked to the
head guard at the jail. When Amber hesitated, he took her hand and spoke as
softly as if he were calming a frightened child. “There’s no more we can do
now. Ciel will have to stay.”

Of course Ciel would have to stay here. She
had killed a man. Never mind that Amber couldn’t think of one human being who’d
deserved more richly than Dax Petrone to die. “Wha—what will happen to her?”

Sadness filled her heart as she watched the
two guards pick Ciel up and drag her away. Thoughts of how the woman had
befriended her at a terrible time in her life slammed back into Amber’s mind
and made her sick that she hadn’t been able to help to prevent… She didn’t want
to imagine how Ciel’s life would be, but she had to know.

Cole drew Amber close, obviously feeling
her distress. “I imagine they’ll order that she be institutionalized. There’s
no way anyone could say she’s sane. I’ll send word to my father about what’s
happened and ask him to get a lawyer up here to defend her. In the meantime,
she’ll be safe in jail, where she can’t harm herself or anybody else.”

They stepped outside, into the eerie light
of Obsidion’s multicolored moons, and Amber took Cole’s hand. Guilt overcame
her and she started to tremble. “This wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been
for us.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. I
forbid it.” Cole stopped, drew Amber into his arms again and stroked her the
way a father might to reassure a child.

“My sister has always had a tenuous hold on
reality. We—everyone in the family—have always done our best to see that she
didn’t lose that hold. If what happened back there is anyone’s fault, it’s
mine. I knew this afternoon when she finally woke that the news about us would
set her off. I didn’t realize how badly she’d react. At the time she seemed to
take it extremely well, for Ciel.

“Sweetheart, don’t cry. I know Ciel’s your
friend. We’ll get her the treatment she should have had years ago and she’ll be
all right.”

Amber looked up and saw the caring in
Cole’s dark eyes, eyes so much like Ciel’s except that, instead of hate, they
held all the love she’d ever wanted—love she’d found in his arms, his bed.
“Won’t she go to prison for killing Dax?”

“Not if there’s a God. In her madness, that
was the one sane thing my sister did—she got rid of the sadistic bastard who
hurt you. Because of her madness, she’ll be one of the few who gets away with
murder.”