Sweet and Dirty (6 page)

When he pulled away she faced the promenade. There wasn’t even an opportunity to wipe her mouth. Ro stood scant yards away, watching.

Had he seen Ted kissing her? How much had he heard? Had she really said yes to Ted’s proposal? She hung her head, trying to gather her thoughts.

When she opened them, Ro was gone.

A crash made her turn around. Ted had backed up over his own chair, lost his balance, and fallen down. He’d pulled at the tablecloth in an effort to correct it, which brought with him most of their plates and glasses.

He groaned once, then didn’t move. Passed out.

She looked down at Ted in the middle of the mess. Then back to the sidewalk. Ro was nowhere to be seen.

The waiter wasn’t having any success in rousing Ted. Maybe he’d hit his head.

She forced back uncharitable thoughts.

But she did help the waiters wake Ted, slapping him a little harder and more rapidly than completely necessary.

Morning light flickered across Ted’s eyelids, but when he moved to drag the blanket over his eyes, a lightning strike of pain seemed to split his head open. Nausea rose, then fell.

Then rose again as he remembered.

Not the failure of his marriage proposal to Michelle—he wasn’t going to call her Lizbeth, that was ridiculous—and not the property damage he recalled causing at the restaurant.

No. Those were bad—Ted slit his eyes against the pain long enough to confirm he still miraculously resided at Michelle’s apartment, then closed them again—very bad, friendship-ending bad, perhaps. But as bad as those things were, worse existed.

Nausea rose higher in him and he crawled to his feet. His head shrieked protest and his eyes watered as he staggered through a beam of entirely too bright Southern California sunshine. The awful glare was only one of the many things wrong with the place. Los Angeles, especially its alternate lifestyles, frightened him.

It made him lust for things he had no business lusting for.

It was an unnatural place. A perverse place.

A seductive place.

He barely made it to the bathroom before he gagged, kneeling before the toilet.

He felt slightly more human later in the day. His grip on the plush dog toy, an Akita to remind Michelle of her old dog Sasquatch, tightened as Ted parked. He’d wasted the trip. Her car was missing from the small lot in front of the dog day care where she worked. So much for his gesture of apology.

Maybe he could leave it in her office. Did she even have an office? Ted was curious. Time he found out.

The door opened smoothly to the sound of dogs barking. A good-looking man stepped aside to let him pass, and Ted felt a surge of pleasure course through his body as they checked each other out.

Oh no. Not again
.

The man brushed by him with a wink and the scent of musk.

Ted felt clubbed.

It was the hangover, he told himself desperately. And the city. The festering, contagiously hedonistic vibe of Los Angeles.

Ted exhaled through his nose as he entered the facility, exasperated at the unpleasant odor of ammonia after the good musk. Michelle could live on easy street if she’d just agree to move back with him to Alabama. They would buy a huge house. They would have kids.

She hadn’t accepted his proposal. Michelle would rather disinfect dog-soiled surfaces. She’d rather stay in this infected city.

“Most people bring in a real dog.”

Ted flinched when he saw the imposing woman who strode to him. She fondled a leash. Ted had the bizarre thought that she would attach it to him. A residual headache thudded still, and he squinted against it. “You must be Posh.”

“Aren’t you in bad shape. Rough night?” Posh nodded to herself, circling him. “Let me guess. Pasty white under a brand new sunburn, wrinkled sweatshirt with an Alabama college drama club logo, hangover from hell. Michelle has a visiting boyfriend.” Her gaze sharpened suddenly, glancing at the entrance, then back to Ted. “Or does she?” Her eyes raked him up and down.

“Michelle warned me about you. A ball-buster.” Ted considered. “Those weren’t her exact words.”

“Mmm, no, but they’re yours, though, aren’t they. What an interesting choice of words.”

Their eyes locked, and Ted felt naked, but in a strangely nonsexual way. He couldn’t fathom why Michelle didn’t like Posh. He immediately felt comfortable with her.

“I brought this”—Ted made the dog toy dance—“for her. I was sort of a jerk last night. Desperation will make a person do crazy things.” He sighed, rubbed gently at his temples. “Where’s Michelle anyway? I expected her to be scrubbing on her hands and knees, maybe bruised from being kicked while she was down, the way she talks about you.”

“Really?” Posh looked proud. She fluffed her hair with quick, efficient fingertips. “She wants to be called Lizbeth now, you know.”

“Yeah, well. We don’t always get what we want,” Ted growled. “And maybe that’s for the best in some cases.”

“Mmm. Interesting. I sent her on an errand. She’s the best employee I have.” Posh tilted her head, thinking. “She’s the only employee I have. Why are you desperate?”

Ted tried to avoid the question. “Nice place you have here.”

“I hate it. Why are you desperate?”

“It’s a long story.”

Posh took him by the arm. “Let’s go to West Hollywood. I know a great place; it has a bulletproof hangover remedy. You’ll tell me your long story. And you’ll like the clientele.”

“Why will I like the clientele?”

“I’ve been a fruit fly pretty much all my life, so don’t bother with the dissembling. Besides, this is as good an excuse as any to get out of this crap pit,” she added, dragging him toward the exit.

“Fruit fly?” Ted let himself be dragged. “Crap pit. But Michelle—”

“…will take care of the dogs when she gets back. She’s good at it.”

“Yes, she is. But I’m not dressed for meeting people,” Ted protested, plucking at his wrinkled shirt.

“You look adorably rumpled and corn fed; you’ll be a hit, trust me.”

Oddly, Ted did.

R
o went through the motions of directing the Slave Auction. His thoughts strayed. Even as he accepted the winning bid for an impressively endowed, double-jointed submissive who demonstrated she could individually control all the muscles of her right and left butt cheeks, part of him remained sunk in despondency.

It was slightly obscene, what he was doing. But was it pornography? Was this something he could look back on at the end of his life with pride? Titillating the masses? Deliberately, he juxtaposed his original concept for The Dungeon—creating a safe haven of fun, honesty, and freedom—with the current activity of Butt Cheeks being happily led from the stage by her new “owner.”

It was superficial. Even tacky, perhaps. But hardly pornographic.

He’d hoped that Lizbeth would arrive at the realization she was a born submissive, and come to him on those terms. He’d never seen someone drop down into subspace so quickly and completely. Her shudders of pleasure, her glazed eyes, were all clues to how the endorphins had suffused her sweet, submissive little body.

But instead, she’d accepted a marriage proposal from some drunken, effete-looking guy. Maybe because she thought Ro was a pornographer?

Without joy, Ro replaced the signs in preparation for his next show. His employees cleared the stage of Slave Auction accoutrements. He felt a flash of anger when Vivian finally strolled onstage to help, pulling on the studded hood that gave her eyes such a menacing, shadowed look. “Where have you been?” He glanced at the caged clock over the café. “For two hours?”

She unhooked the plastic
VIRGIN SLAVES FOR SALE
sign, rolled it up tight with more efficiency than he’d yet managed. “I’ve been meeting with a special friend of Lizbeth’s. Took him to WeHo where we had ourselves a
very
interesting afternoon and evening. Didn’t like that sign?”

Ro looked down at the stretched-out, totally destroyed sign in his hands. He threw it aside in disgust. Breathing slowly, he reclaimed control over himself.

Jealousy? He hadn’t realized how much Lizbeth had bewitched him. Not that it mattered. They might have had something special together. Now she was engaged. He’d probably never see her again.

“Take over while I change clothes. Keep an eye on the place.”

Ro waited until Vivian nodded, then went to change into his costume, an English judge’s uniform. Vivian, as herself, would be bailiff. The rest of the employees knew to be guards.

Just as Ro was adjusting his powdered wig, Vivian rushed in. “Got a problem. Chico was busted for letting in a couple of underage girls in exchange for sex. He used his call from the police station to give us the heads up that some plainclothes cops are already here and news crews’ll be showing up shortly.”

Ro stared. “Get on door duty. No one else comes in,” he instructed, and for a wonder, she actually obeyed immediately.

He strode in the opposite direction, his eagle eye taking in everything. He spared a brief moment to curse Chico in his mind for getting into trouble. But at least he’d called. News crews. What did they think they’d be filming? His instinct told him something was wrong. The club was packed, for a change—Crime and Punishment seemed to be a popular night—but that wasn’t newsworthy. And only a total shutdown of the club would gain their cameras access, if he didn’t want them inside.

What would shut down the club? He scanned, looking for an anomaly…and saw it. A paper screen covered one of the alcoves. But Ro’s Dungeon had no screens, permitted no screens. A small throng of onlookers bracketed it on either side, peering through the small openings to watch. A bright glow illuminated the screen, and suddenly Ro knew what was happening.

When he hurled the screen aside, the brightness of floodlights made him blink. “Get out,” he told the cameramen and the two naked, greased-up actors on the mattress. Ro kicked the mattress. He toppled a backdrop. “This is yours, too, take it with you. All of you, out. Now.” He batted at the cameras, menacing, until the floodlights were extinguished and the camera eyes covered.

“Oh, let them finish.” The speaker’s plain, buttoned-up shirt and khaki pants would’ve identified the policeman, even if he hadn’t been the very same officer who’d once called Ro’s Dungeon a titty bar.

Ro ensured that the offending cameramen and actors and all the equipment was headed to the exit. Then he turned his attention to the cop. “Did you arrange this?” Ro approached him, throttling back his rage.

The man fingered his cell phone. “What’s a little porn shoot to someone like you?”

“This club does not allow pornography. It does not allow filming. It respects the privacy of—”

“Oh, stick a sock in it, ya damn pimp.”

Pimp? Ro stared at the man. Mustached and belligerent and sporting the squinty, yellowed eyes and reddened nose of an alcoholic-to-be. Yet he exuded self-righteousness. He wouldn’t hear anything Ro had to say, and certainly wouldn’t believe him, not if Ro lived to be a thousand. “Please leave,” he told the cop with calm dignity, even as he beckoned to two of his largest, meanest employees in case the additional muscle proved to be necessary.

With only another contemptuous glance at Ro, the cop moved toward the front door, already dialing his cell phone. Canceling the raid, Ro was sure.

He grit his teeth. Harassment of this kind was illegal, if he could prove it. And if he wanted to bother filing a lawsuit. Which he didn’t. He’d left lawyering, despite his father’s wishes, and he wasn’t going to be dragged back into it.

He took a deep breath.

The show must go on.

He strode onto the stage, pitching his voice to carry: “And now, what you’ve all been waiting for! The Crime and—”

Lizbeth walked in.

She wore her black latex playclothes. Very unlike her sedate ensemble of a few days before. She’d gotten engaged, and now she was clearly here, at his invitation, to play some more. “—Punishment Party,” he finished in a deeper, ominous voice that served the announcement well. Cheering and applause rumbled through the packed club.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was dressed like a dominatrix. She still didn’t get it, he thought, even as the cheering died down. Vivian tugged on his black robe. She was trying to tell him something, but Ro shook her off. He took his place at the judge’s bench.

Ro ran through his rehearsed speech. “Here’s how to play. Register at the café by stating your crime: bad boy, bad girl, disobedient slave, etc. You will be called before the judge for a public hearing. A jury of your peers will hand down judgment. If the verdict is guilty, the judge will pass the sentence. Possible sentences include, but are not limited to, public humiliation, hand spanking, paddling, restrictive bondage, and/or more additional punishment, at the discretion of the judge.”

He smiled without humor. “You will address me as Your Honor. I will tolerate no contempt. And, to give fair warning, you may expect little in the way of leniency. Proceed.”

The self-indicted criminals appeared before him, one after another. Vivian announced each crime in her loud, sure voice. Ro wrung the details from these self-accused, then asked the audience, the “peers,” to hand down judgment. Gleeful shouts of “guilty!” always thundered back, and Ro passed sentences of public hand spanking and paddling and, once, for an unrepentant escaped slave, a full-suspension rope bondage, administered by a pro dom that Ro had hired especially for his intricate knotwork. Other doms helped with the spankings and paddlings. Ro had almost forgotten about Lizbeth when Vivian’s voice cut through the murmurs of conversation.

“This criminal is Lizbeth! Her crime is…lying to a master.” A hush descended on the audience. It was a grievous crime.

But Vivian wasn’t finished. “There’s more!” She kept reading. “Her additional crimes are leaving a master unsatisfied, letting a master think she preferred another partner, and insisting on topping before she’d learned how to bottom.” At this, Vivian made a strange sound that might have been a laugh, but the outraged roar of the crowd drowned her out.

The roar spoke Ro’s feelings for him. Though at first surprised at her stunt, he wasn’t the tiniest bit pacified. Still wound up from the earlier confrontation, and still frustrated with Lizbeth’s acceptance of that dweeb’s proposal, this insinuation of herself into his life only stoked his ire. She thought to use his club against him, did she? To manipulate him into another session where she’d lock him up again, from the way she was dressed. Well, it wouldn’t go her way.

She still had a lot to learn.

He would be delighted to punish her, if the jury of her peers handed down a guilty judgment.

They were doing more than handing it down. They were yelling at her, cursing her with an inventiveness that pleased him.

They demanded her torture.

Ro’s mouth quirked into a half grin. He felt affection for them, his created family. Sadism and masochism were coming together in a feeding frenzy, with Lizbeth the stoic self-sacrifice. He had to admire the way she stood still for it, her bearing aloof, her stance slightly apart and her wrists handcuffed behind at the small of her back. He wished the swells of her up-thrust breasts, and that eye-catching peek of that red lace bra, weren’t so distracting. He wondered if she wore panties.

He decided he wouldn’t wonder for long.

In his judge’s voice, Ro intoned, “Lizbeth. The severity of your crimes merits the harshest possible sentence. I’m pleased the jury recognizes this.” He grinned at her, and was even more pleased to see her flinch.

The audience had hushed. Only the background beat of music accompanied his next words.

“In response to the jury’s guilty verdict, your sentence is to be public humiliation, paddling, torture…the works.”

Lizbeth felt the strength go out of her legs. She sagged, supported by two “guards” as if she truly were a criminal given some terrible sentence. Public humiliation? She’d envisioned a brief token paddling as the price for a much-needed private talk.

Almost in reflex she began to struggle, trying to free herself. “I don’t think—”

“Relax. It’ll be over with soon.”

Lizbeth met the sadistic gaze of the guard on her right, and swallowed. His smile reminded her of Ro’s. She struggled harder.

“You’d better stop that.”

Ro questioned the guard in a silky voice. “Is the convict giving you trouble?” He’d taken off his wig, she noticed. His dark hair was cut short enough not to look too rumpled, but the uncombed spikes of it made him look even more dangerous.

Feeling panic that sent a surge of adrenaline to her limbs, Lizbeth stomped on the guard’s foot and lunged from him. If her center of gravity weren’t shifted by her hands being locked behind her back she would have made it, but he just clutched her more tightly, cursing.

“For that escape attempt, I am adding a whipping to your sentence.” Ro stared down at her, frightening yet compelling in his dark robes.

“You can’t do that. I came here to explain—”

“Enough!” Ro stood. “You’ve been found guilty. Until your punishment is complete, you will say nothing, unless it is your safe word. ‘Collar,’ I believe it was? Nod if this is accurate.”

Lizbeth glared at him, but nodded.

“All you have to do is utter that word and you are free to leave. Alternatively, you can accept the punishment I wish you to endure. Stay, and you must do as you’re told, and keep silent. Nod if you understand.”

Oh, she understood. Ro was on a power trip. But the crazy part of it was that she was responding to his scornful treatment. She felt a sinking sort of desire propelling her toward the deeply sensual zone she’d experienced only with him. She laughed, strangling it in her throat before he could hear it and hand out further punishments. She’d been split into two people. One was terrified at being surrounded by individuals who wished her harm. That person wondered what the hell was keeping her from shouting her safe word at the top of her lungs. Not to mention keeping her from accepting Ted’s proposal and getting herself back to Alabama where she belonged.

But the other person was growing stronger by the second. It stirred to life and stretched like a satisfied kitten under the heat of his glare. It gloried in being roughly controlled, and hoped for more of the same.

“Nod if you understand!”

Lizbeth felt tears spring into her eyes. How could she be enjoying this? Ro’s anger was real. The torture would be too.

She shivered, anticipating. Her nipples were rock hard. She nodded.

“Put her in the stocks!”

“To the stocks!” the guards echoed, frog-marching her toward the large, hinged wooden boards in the middle of the stage.

The masked dominatrix suddenly replaced one of her guards. Lizbeth felt nails dig into her arm, and looked up into the dark pools of shadow where her eyes were shrouded. “You don’t have to do this,” the dom whispered in her ear. “Don’t do anything you don’t want to.” She contrived a delay, holding Lizbeth back, making the sadistic guard huff with impatience. She waited for Lizbeth’s reply.

“I know,” Lizbeth said. “I…I want to.”

She squeezed Lizbeth’s arm hard enough to leave imprints, but even as Lizbeth winced, the woman whispered, “You are superb. Go get him.” She backed two graceful steps.

She felt her sexual buzz increase as the guards lay rough hands on her. As they positioned her between the boards, a familiar masculine hand suddenly reached between them, pinched her nipples viciously, and pushed aside the cups of her red bra with two quick scratches of lace.

She was uncovered! “Hey!” she protested.

“Last warning,” Ro intoned. “Another word out of you and I’m going to place a gag in your mouth. You can give your safe word by giving a thumbs-down instead. I think I’d like to gag you. Say something else.”

Lizbeth looked at him stubbornly.

Ro shrugged. “Too bad. Your mouth would look good all stretched around…a gag.

“Back in the Cage Room, anything goes. With an audience, if I wish. Interested?”

She shook her head, feeling her breasts bounce. The cool, unfamiliar air on their tips brought moisture between her legs. They’d folded her in half, her ankles placed by the guards on the half circle. Ro gently brought her wrists forward to place them next to her ankles and a few inches to the outside. Then he lowered the top board, enclosing all four limbs. She was trapped.