RecipeforSubmission (3 page)

Except for some reason his chest felt tight, as if that
wouldn’t be fine at all.

Kyra stared after Drew’s broad back. He was halfway across
the room before she made her legs move. She spent a moment watching the way his
butt curved in his tight black jeans, another at his muscled shoulders. Yep, he
was yummy all right. Seemed a waste that he was a perv.

He was expecting something erotic, kinky, and she could
already imagine the look on his face when she told him she just wanted to pump
him for information.
Maybe I should let him have some of what he wants
first.

The idea sent her pulse racing and she felt her nerves
awaken. Her body liked the idea, and that frightened her. Her body didn’t get
to be in charge. She started walking, trying to make it quiet down.

He stopped at a black leather sofa, sat and turned to face
her. Heat rose in her face as she strode toward him. She didn’t want to look
too eager, didn’t want her face to promise what she wasn’t prepared to give.
She sat on the end of the couch, almost on the maple arm, as far away from him
as possible. He swiveled slightly so he was facing her, not trying to close the
distance.

“So what do you want, Kyra?”

“Information. I’m writing a novel, I’m looking for
background.”

She expected Drew to back away or at least show
disappointment, but he chuckled. “Poor old Ken was afraid you were a reporter.
Novelist, eh? What kind of novels would make you come to a place like this for
research?”

“Mystery novel. The villain’s a sadist, like you, so—I just
want to ask you a few questions.” There. Nice and direct. Best to make clear
their real relationship straight up.

His eyes narrowed at her words before they assumed a bland
expression that could mean anything. “Fire away. But I might ask a few of my
own.”

Now that the moment was here, she couldn’t for the life of
her figure out what question to ask. The silence lengthened, uncomfortably for
her, although Drew seemed perfectly relaxed. “What is it you get out of beating
up women?” she blurted.

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Absolutely nothing. I’ve
never beaten up a woman in my life, and I never will. Why do you assume I’m a
sadist?”

“You said you were.”

“I said I was a Dominant, and there’s a difference. A sadist
likes to inflict pain. The flip side of that is a masochist, who likes to
receive pain. A Dominant simply enjoys taking the leading role in a
relationship.”

Maybe I should be talking to someone else.
“So you
don’t do any of that whipping stuff?”

“You’re pretty quick with the assumptions, aren’t you? No,
don’t answer, that was rhetorical. You’re making two assumptions here—one, that
all whippings are painful. The other is that pain has to be a goal. Sometimes
it’s merely a path to more pleasure. And pleasure is what
most
Dominants
want to give those who submit to them. It’s like cooking food together—some
people like it spicy, some people don’t. Each couple has to figure out a way to
modify the recipe and make it work for them.”

Her mind raced. She’d forgotten the number one rule for her villains,
which is that most of them feel perfectly justified in their own minds.
It’s
not really painful. The pain is pleasure. She wanted it. He had it coming to
him. Right.

He leaned forward. “Why do you enjoy judging people so
much?”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“It’s written on your face. What’s so fun about it? Is it a
power kick? Does it make you feel better than other people?”

Heat rose in her face and she’d started to get up when he
put a hand on her shoulder. She sat back down and was immediately annoyed at
herself for it. He hadn’t held her down, but she’d responded to his gesture as
if he was in control. “I don’t have to answer that.”

He smiled as if her angry words pleased him. “No, you don’t.
You’re not even meant to. I doubt very much that you enjoy anything of the
sort. But you’re doing it, just the same. There’s only one way to really know
something, Kyra. You can ask all the questions you want, and no matter what
answers you hear they’ll be slotted in to fit with your own preconceptions. You
won’t really understand without experience.”

No way.
“If you think I’m going to let you whip me,
you’re crazy.”

He nodded. “You decided we were all crazy before you ever
stepped through the door, didn’t you? But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll
let you do the whipping. I don’t think you’ll learn as much that way, but maybe
it will give you the courage to try it the other way around.”

“You like that sort of thing?”

He shook his head. “A lot of people like being on either
side equally well. And I’d say more masochists are capable of being sadists
than Dominants. It helps to understand what the other person is feeling. But
I’m afraid I’m hopelessly fixed on the Dominant side.”

Kyra shook her head, the anger forgotten. “So why would you
let me whip you?”

“Well, technically, flog. A whip is a nasty little thing,
capable of doing some serious damage—floggers, one of the many-tailed things
you’ll mostly find here, can vary a lot depending on what they’re made of, the
thickness of the tails, even the shape the ends of the tails are cut in. Like I
said, it helps to understand what the other person is feeling. A refresher
course won’t hurt me. It might teach you something, and I like to teach. But
the real reason?” He paused and grinned. “I’ve decided to seduce you. And I’ll
stop at nothing.”

You can’t seduce me unless I let you.
But she’d never
had a better-looking man show an interest in her, and he was charming. She knew
she was in trouble.

* * * * *

Kyra looked at the object Drew had placed in her right hand.
It fit perfectly in her hand, the soft leather of the handle helping her get a
firm grip. It looked nasty, its long black tails hanging ominously, a chrome
ring at the other end making her think of it hanging on the wall of a dark
dungeon. She ran her left hand through the tails and they felt soft and
sensuous, as if she were running her fingers through the tresses of long hair.
But if they were hair, they seemed to her something like the medusa’s—wide,
dangerous snakes rather than thousands of slender threads.

Drew pulled off his T-shirt and Kyra stared at six-pack abs
and well defined pecs. She could tell he was well built even with his shirt on,
but she hadn’t anticipated him looking quite so buff. She wondered what he’d
look like completely naked. Was his butt that firm? And what about his cock?
There were some things a man couldn’t get by working out in a gym that nature
had to give him, but anything less than extra-large would look incongruously
out of place.

Realizing what she was doing, she looked up and made the
mistake of meeting his gaze. He didn’t look embarrassed from her stare, or even
conceited. But obviously he wanted her to know that he’d seen her looking. They
locked gazes for a moment, and then she averted her eyes. “All right,” she
said. “Let’s do this thing.”

He chuckled and turned to face the cinder block wall. He
stretched out his massive arms and put each hand against the wall, fingers
spread wide. The muscles in his shoulders and back rippled with his movement.
If he hadn’t been so built and looked so goddamn invulnerable, she couldn’t
have gone through with it. Hell, she could probably punch him in the stomach
and he’d only smile as if to ask her if she couldn’t do better.

She lifted the whip—or flogger, as he’d called it—and swung
it forward experimentally. Its black tresses swished onto Drew’s bronze flesh
with a
splat
and then fell limply away. He didn’t twitch. There were no
red marks, or even pink ones. Obviously, she wasn’t doing it hard enough. She
gritted her teeth and got ready to try again.

She felt foolish. People were watching, she was sure of it,
if only to stare at the beautiful half-naked man. But they’d notice her too,
and think her awkward. The thought made her angry, and though she knew it was
irrational, she channeled that anger into her next swing. She’d been a softball
pitcher in high school, and while this was an overhand motion, it used a few of
the same muscles. She swung it through the air, hearing the wind whistle
through its tails until they smacked against his back with a satisfying crack.
There!

But despite the satisfying sound, there were no red lines.
The idea of leaving a mark both repelled her and pulled her. A little damage
would affirm all she believed about S&M. But if the skin even turned pink
it was only for a moment and then the color was gone.

“Isn’t he a Dom?” asked a voice behind her. She whirled to
look and saw the man wasn’t talking to her but to the woman next to him.

“Oh yeah. Don’t know who she is.”

“Don’t get distracted,” Drew said, turning his head sideways
so it wasn’t facing the wall. “Focus on you and me. And try again.”

“Didn’t that hurt?” asked Kyra.

“I wouldn’t call it that. More like a cup of coffee in the
morning. I’m awake now.”

What an odd way to put it.
“Should I do more?”

He paused then nodded. “Yes. Several, quickly, in
succession. Put your back into it. Be careful not to hit my neck, or as low as
my kidneys, and you’ll be fine. I don’t think you’ve learned everything there
is to learn yet.”

She nodded back, which didn’t do him any good as he’d
already turned his face away.
“Put your back into it.”
That was another
way to say
is that the best you can do?
But he was right. One didn’t
just pitch with one’s arms, either. And while she didn’t think she could drive
with her legs, she could get more of her torso involved. She turned her left
shoulder toward him and swung, turning her torso as she did until her right
shoulder was leading as the flogger splatted against him. She was high this
time, getting his neck as well as his upper back.
Damn.
She moved back.

Drew didn’t flinch. “I’m fine, just aim better next time.”

Her weight shift had caused the flogger to hit earlier than
she’d intended, and that wouldn’t happen from where she was now standing. She
struck again, the same way, the black tails spreading themselves out across the
bronze flesh as they made the smacking sound that made her want to cringe. But
she didn’t. She brought it back down low, completing a circle, and struck again
and again, in a sort of reverse of the windmill motion she’d once used to
accelerate a softball.

Each motion made a bit of pink show on his back, and if she
managed to hit the same spot, it stayed for longer the second time. But she
couldn’t hit any harder. Nothing she could do with the black-tailed flogger was
going to convince him that people shouldn’t be hit by such things. And worse,
she was losing faith herself. Even at high speed, it was more like he was being
hit by the whirling flaps of an automatic car wash than by a dangerous tool of
violence.

She didn’t stop until her arm was getting sore and she could
feel the sweat making her shirt stick to her.

Drew turned his head, sneaked a peek, and then relaxed his
grip on the wall. He turned to face her. “Now, mystery girl, do you really
think that you’ve abused me?” He took the whip from her compliant hand and
hooked it to a snap on his belt without looking down.

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re so big, and—”

“And?”

“And it was your idea, anyway!”

“Exactly. I consented. And it was real consent, not just a
matter of going along with it because I don’t know what will happen if I say
no, or I’ve got to do this to keep my marriage together, or any of a number of
varieties of manipulated consent. I said yes, and I said it in a way that made
you believe it.”

Kyra shrugged. She wasn’t sure what he was getting at or how
it was going to help her with her book. “Yeah, like I said, it was your idea.”

“The strongest consent of all. Look over there, at Clyde and
Dora, the couple you were watching earlier.”

Kyra turned, expecting to see that they’d progressed to
something worse. Instead, Dora was down from the cross, although still naked,
and Clyde had her wrapped up in a warm hug. Other than the fact that it was in
public, and she was naked and he wasn’t, it looked as loving as two people
could possibly be.

“You almost wouldn’t believe he’d been beating her, would
you?” Kyra asked. Then the couple turned, rocking gently in their embrace, and
Kyra could see the pink stripes on Dora’s back and butt. “Almost.”

Drew put his hand on her shoulder. She could feel his
presence right behind her. She wanted to run her hands over his body, touch his
nipples with the tips of her fingers, trace every line of those muscles. He
even smelled good, damn him. “She too consented. If you ask around, you’ll find
that’s what this whole group of people here is about—consensuality. Submissives
are given safe words to say if at any time they wish to withdraw their consent.
And while there are always a few people in any group who can’t understand or
don’t want to obey the rules, a submissive who says her safe word can expect to
be supported by her Dom. If not, then she’ll be supported by the whole
community, including me. And Ken will bounce the Dom’s sorry ass out of here.”

Kyra turned her head to find his face right there at her
shoulder, close enough for kissing. “You’re trying to convince me that I
shouldn’t make a Dom the villain.”

“No. I’m trying to convince you that the villain isn’t
really a Dom. And that not all people who play the dominant role in a BDSM
relationship are villains.”

She knew it was dumb but she moved so that her face was even
closer to his. She could feel his breath across her lips. She hadn’t been
kissed in quite a while. “And how are you going to make me believe that, hmm?”
She tilted her nose and looked at his eyes, challenging him. Stupid
.
But
she did it anyway.