The Queen, Page 32

  Boyfriend Experience than I do.”

  Nora sat back against the bedpost. Boyfriend? Wasn’t she just wishing the other day for a boyfriend? A real boyfriend. Not an owner like Søren. Not a slave, either. An actual boyfriend. Someone to share her life with, not just her bed.

  “When we’re done will you help me strip the sheets and fold them after they’re dry?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. I can never get my sheets folded right without someone helping me. I like to help around the house. It’s fun playing normal sometimes. You wanna play with me?”

  “It’s very hard to say no to a sexy silver fox with a brain tumor.”

  “It’s not a—”

  She slapped her hand over his mouth. “No quoting dumb movies in my dungeon. I get enough of that from Griffin.”

  “Mess, Mus-muss.”

  She lowered her hand.

  “What was that?”

  “Yes, Mistress.”

  “Do you really want to have sex with me or are you just trying to distract yourself from this?” Now she tapped his forehead.

  “Yeah, I want to have sex with you because I have an aneurysm. That’s the only reason. Or maybe I want to have sex with you because you’re the most famous dominatrix in town, I love being flogged, oh, and you’re so hot ‘Wicked Game’ plays spontaneously when you walk into a room.”

  Nora gave him credit. He knew how to hit on a woman.

  “How about this...” she said. “We’ll go to my house. I’ll give you the flogging of your dreams. If we end up having sex, great. If not, no harm, no foul. We still had a nice evening together. Good enough?”

  “More than good enough. I want to seduce you, however. So, you know, watch your back.”

  “Ass man, are you?”

  “I’m every kind of man.”

  Nora smiled. Every kind of man was her kind of guy.

  “Let’s go to my place.”

  “So it’s a yes?”

  Nora leaned in and kissed him. He kissed her back and as they kissed she saw a volcano in the rearview mirror of her mind, receding into the distance. She felt safer already.

  “Yes,” she said against his lips. “Why not?”

  “Yes, excellent,” he said. He seemed more than happy. More like...relieved. Did he need a flogging from her that bad?

  “Don’t die in my house,” Nora said as she found her keys to lock up the dungeon. “My neighbors think I’m weird enough as it is without a bunch of ambulances showing up to cart your beautiful corpse out of my house.”

  “I’d rather come in your bed than go in your bed. You know I’m hypersexual, right? I can get off about eight times a day.”

  “Eight?”

  “My cock isn’t huge but it’s tenacious.”

  “I’ve never met a tenacious cock before. I look forward to making its acquaintance.”

  “You’re going to beat me up first, right?”

  “Oh, Thorny,” she said as she locked the dungeon behind them and they walked down the hall arm in arm. “I’m going to do such things to you...”

  “Good things? Bad things?”

  Nora smiled at him.

  “Good bad things.”

  Thorny kissed her again right in the hallway.

  “My favorite things.”

  He abruptly stopped kissing her and took a step back.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You’re not going to get in trouble with Kingsley for this, are you?”

  “No, of course not. As long as he doesn’t find out.”

  “Good. Just checking.”

  “I’ll tell you what Kingsley told me once when he and I did something we weren’t supposed to do—what he doesn’t know won’t hurt us.”

  “What if he finds out?”

  “He’ll hurt us.”

  “Can I ask one more question, Mistress?” Thorny said as they headed to the exit.

  “Sure thing. What’s the question?”

  “Why do you have a coffin in your dungeon?”

  28

  A Mirror Image

  NORA PICKED UP her Lexus at Kingsley’s and drove her and Thorny to her house in Connecticut. The dog days of August were earning their bad reputation today. The clouds hung in the sky heavy, dark and low and the air simmered with heat. The electricity in the atmosphere made the hair stand up on her arms. Her clothes clung to her skin and it seemed everyone, herself included, wanted nothing more than to be naked inside an air-conditioned room. A few drops of rain fell presaging the coming summer storm, the sky heady and swollen but waiting to burst open. Even the sidewalks steamed.

  When they arrived at Nora’s house, Thorny whistled his appreciation while Nora turned off her cell phone. Last thing she wanted was Kingsley calling and interrupting her night off.

  “Looks like the kink trade pays better than the flesh trade,” Thorny said.

  “You know what they say—if you want to afford a house in New York City, you move out of New York City.”

  She let him in and took him up to her bedroom. Luckily her cleaning lady came on Fridays and the house looked and smelled clean and pleasant. Thorny looked around appreciatively. She liked this, bringing guys home to her place. It would be a crime to have such a nice house and no one to share it with.

  “This is my bedroom,” Nora said. Sunlight streamed in through the sides of Roman blinds against the window.

  “Sexy,” Thorny said. “Nice bed.”

  Nora patted the iron footboard. The bed was a bit medieval-looking, and anyone who’d been in Søren’s dungeon would see it looked a bit like his. She had such good memories of that bed...

  “You’re not the first client who offered me something in trade for my kink. One of my boys owns the largest furniture store on the Eastern Seaboard. He told me if I could beat him until he passed out, he’d let me have the pick of his showroom. Voilà.”

  “Passed out? Jesus,” Thorny said, tugging off his jacket. “That’s too rough for my blood.”

  “Don’t worry. I only hit as hard as my boys want to be hit. You like floggings, right, but hate whips? They feel too much like switches?”

  “You remember that?” He grinned, obviously pleased.

  “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” She walked to him where he stood at the foot of her bed, leaning against the post. She put her hands on his chest and kissed him again. He wasn’t nearly as tall as Søren. She guessed his height at about five-ten. In her three-inch heels she could easily reach his lips. His kisses were sweet and gentle, affectionate, but with a hint of the passion she knew he hid within him. She could taste it on her tongue. Copper. The same taste as the electricity in the humid August air.

  “So you’re going to give me the Boyfriend Experience?” Nora asked.

  “I am.”

  “Then I will give you the Submissive Experience. How does that sound?”

  “Does it involve you putting me into subspace and getting me off so hard I can taste music and smell stars?”

  “Yes.”

  “That sounds perfect. But...we’re doing this in here?” he asked.

  “Why not?”

  “Well...it’s a bedroom. Just a bedroom.” He glanced around the room and she saw what he saw—a spacious bedroom with a recessed sitting area, an iron bed, a few novels on the nightstand and a lamp, and not much else but an ornately carved cheval mirror standing in the corner. Apart from two potted plants hanging from the ceiling by the mirror, there was not much else...

  Or was there?

  “Looks, my boy, can be deceiving.” She winked at him and pulled away. On her way to her closet she glanced back over her shoulder. “You should be taking your clothes off right now. In case you didn’t know.”

  “Yes, Mistress.” He yanked his shirt off and she saw both of his nipples were pierced with silver hoops. Lovely. She did her best to ignore his body while she set up the room. From her closet she took out a black step stool and two lengths of rope. She threw
a two-foot chrome spreader bar on the bed and found her favorite fawn-colored wrist and ankle cuffs. They were padded with soft faux fur on the inside. She wanted Thorny to feel coddled and comfortable, even in bondage.

  “I’m only going to flog you, but you’ll be cuffed so you won’t be able to move much until I let you out. I’ll monitor your pain. If it’s good you say green. If you need me to back off a notch or slow down, say yellow. If it’s bad say red. Red won’t stop the scene. It’ll just stop the flogging until you’re ready again. Your safe word will end everything. What’s your safe word?”

  “Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second.”

  Nora looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Thorny aimed at her one of the sexier grins that had ever been aimed at a woman in the history of sexy grinning.

  “I don’t safe out often,” he said.

  “Queen Liz it is then.”

  From the top of her closet, Nora pulled out a black bag. She tossed it onto the bed and unzipped it. Thorny wasn’t naked yet. He still wore black boxer briefs but she didn’t scold him. His interest in stripping had no doubt been diverted by what Nora took out of her bag.

  “Suede,” Nora said, pulling out the first flogger. It had fourteen-inch scarlet-red tails. “Very soft and sensual. The bright blue is next. It’s deer-hide. The leather is buttery. Feel?”

  She held it out and Thorny ran his fingers over the tails.

  “Nice. Very smooth,” he said.

  “This black one is bull-hide. Much sharper edges. The yellow-and-black one is rubber. It’s stingy like a bee so we’ll leave that one alone. It would feel a little like a whipping. But this one...” She held up a hunter-green-and-black flogger. “This one’s elk. Heavy and thuddy.”

  “I like thuddy.”

  “I thought you would.” She pulled out one last flogger but didn’t remove it from its red leather case. “This one’s special. I’ll save it for last.”

  She lined them up on the bed in order of lightest and softest to heaviest and hardest. Thorny gazed at them with heat in his eyes.

  “Why do you like floggings?” Nora came to him and ran her hands over his chest, shoulders and arms.

  “Floggers are beautiful. They can feel soft one second and hard as steel the next. Takes an expert to wield one the right way. And you can get hit with them all over your body. Arms, legs, feet, anywhere, without doing real damage. I don’t know. They’re just sexy and scary and sensual all at the same time. Just like you.”

  Nora kissed him again, slipping her tongue between his lips slowly as she eased her hands into his underwear and pushed them down. Her lips left his reluctantly, but she continued her downward trajectory as she dragged the boxers to the floor and bade Thorny step out of them. She stood up and took a step back.

  “Very nice,” she said of his body. He was hard already. All of him and not just his cock. He had a hard flat stomach, a hard V of muscle on each side of his torso, hard hipbones that jutted out, and two vertical hard lines of muscles in his thighs. “You run.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Even blindfolded I could recognize runner quads. You have a lovely body, Thorny. I can’t wait to use it and abuse it for my amusement and pleasure.”

  “That’s what it’s here for, Mistress.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is. And now to show you the secret of my bedroom. Go stand facing the mirror.”

  He did as ordered. Nora picked up her ropes and her step stool and carried them over to Thorny. Now there were two Thornys—the real one and the mirror one.

  She put the step stool by his left foot and climbed it.

  “Excuse me whilst I put my ferns away.”

  “I don’t think you get enough light in here for ferns, Mistress.”

  “It’s okay. They’re fake,” she said. “I had to tell the contractor something to get him to install two hooks in the ceiling of my bedroom, didn’t I?”

  Thorny glanced up at the J-shaped hooks screwed into the plaster above them.

  “I told the contractor I needed two hooks for my plants and that he should make sure they could hold two hundred pounds each.”

  “Those would be some big fucking plants, Mistress.”

  “That’s what the contractor said.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I like my plants the way I like my men—hanging from hooks on my bedroom ceiling. He didn’t ask any more questions after that.”

  Nora looped her rope over the hooks and came down from the stool. First, she buckled the padded cuffs on Thorny’s wrists, then she hoisted them above his head and secured them with the rope. Next she cuffed his ankles and bound them to the two-foot spreader bar. When she finished, Thorny stood immobile, naked and hard three feet from her mirror with his arms tied to the hooks on the ceiling and his feet rooted firmly to the floor.

  “Relax for me,” Nora ordered as she made a circuit around his body, dragging her fingernails lightly over his stomach, sides and the small of his back. “Go as limp as you can.”

  He closed his eyes, and she saw him sagging in the bonds.

  “This is as limp as I’m going to get,” he said and Nora paused in front of him, looking meaningfully at his erection. Only looking. Not touching. That would come later.

  “Excellent.” Even going limp, Thorny had barely moved. The spreader bar, rope, hooks and cuffs held him firmly and safely in place. Nora touched his face and let their eyes meet.

  “The name Thorny suits you. Like a hawthorn bush you’re a little dangerous to be around, but you are very lovely to look at.”

  “Thank you, Mistress.”

  “Are you blushing?” she asked, smiling at him. “Did I make a whore blush?”

  “You did. Can’t wait to make a domme beg.”

  “Wait your turn,” she teased. “You’re all mine now. You must spend a lot of time taking care of your clients. It’s good you’re taking some time to let someone else take care of you.”

  “Is that what you’re doing? Taking care of me?”

  He pushed his hips forward, but she didn’t scold him for it.

  “I want to take very good care of you,” she said, slipping a blindfold over his eyes. The mirror in front of him was for her, so she could watch his face and his reactions. She wanted him utterly lost in sensation, seeing nothing, feeling everything. “You’re in my hands now, in my bedroom. This is the safest room in the world right now. Nothing and no one will harm you here. Your body will be honored. Your desires will be honored. Your trust in me will be honored. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes, Mistress.” He whispered the words. Good. The spell was already taking effect. She ran her thumbs over the arch of his cheekbones, over his lips. She outlined his ears and caressed his collarbone with her fingertips.

  “I’m going to enjoy flogging you very much,” she said, running her hands up and down his sides, over and around his rib cage. “I love flogging beautiful men. Worse ways to spend a hot August afternoon, right?”

  “I can’t think of a better way, Mistress.”

  She took her suede flogger off the bed and combed her fingers through the velvety tails.

  “You’re with Mistress Nora now. Nothing bad ever happens when you’re with Mistress Nora. Only good things. Wonderful things.