B is for… (15 page)

“Don’t even think about it, Red.”

She could tell he was tense, that he didn’t really like being chained up, or she suspected, not having his mask on.

“You want a sub who’s obedient.” Mae inched back toward the controls.

“Yes.”

“And doesn’t backtalk? Or speak unless spoken to?”

“Yes.” Now he sounded wary.

“Then maybe this is the perfect time for me…” Mae tapped the buttons until she put a few feet of slack in each of the chains holding up his arms. When she had them where she wanted them, she locked the controls. Xavier growled and folded his still-chained arms. “To be the kind of sub you don’t want.”

“Right now you’re not being submissive at all.”

“Oh I am, because I know that when you do get free I’m going to be in trouble, but between now and then you’re mine.” She found a chair and dragged it over in front of him.

“You’re mine,” he countered.

“Then maybe we should belong to each other.”

They stared at one another, tension taking the place of teasing. When he didn’t say anything, Mae took a seat and forced herself to ignore the way her heart was breaking. She leaned back and braced her bare feet on his chest.

“You brought me my shoes.”

“You keep leaving them. Like Cinderella.” He grabbed her ankles, jerking her forward until her ass was on the edge of the chair.

“I don’t mean to.” Mae inched her feet apart and his gaze dropped to the apex of her thighs. She may have set up the positions, have made it clear what she wanted, but she wasn’t brave enough to order him to pleasure her.

Luckily, she didn’t have to.

Xavier knelt, the slack she’d put in the chain enough that he could do so, but now his arms were slightly raised, wrists by his ears, meaning he couldn’t use his hands for much.

“Come closer, Cinderella,” he whispered in that deep voice. For a moment Mae was frozen, unable to reconcile her mental picture of him, which included the mask, with the face looking back at her. Then their gazes met, and his green eyes were the same. Mae hooked one leg behind his neck, pulling him toward her.

“Why don’t you come here?”

Xavier lowered his face between her legs and Mae stopped thinking.

*****

“Undo the cuffs, Red.”

In a post-orgasmic stupor, Mae reached out and undid the clip on one cuff, her body reacting to her Master’s command. The sound of chain rattling as it swung free was enough to snap her back into focus.

“Uh oh.”

Mae looked at Xavier’s free hand and scrambled to get away, but it was too late. Her Master caught her, dragging her to the ground and pinning her down with a knee over her legs while he unfastened his other hand. He hauled her up, holding her tight around the waist with one arm as he freed his legs, then pulled her to her feet.

“How many times did you come, Mae?”

“I lost count, Master.”

He jerked her head back by the hair. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Lost count?”

He growled, but there was a hint of amusement in it. “No, used me for oral sex.”

“I’m…not even a little bit sorry, Master.”

He dragged her back to their little room, and spent the next few hours reminding her who was in charge.

They didn’t speak about the future, or about their relationship.

*****

“I want you to wait for me.” Xavier stroked Mae’s thigh. She was cuddling on his lap, her worn-out body seemingly boneless against him. It was nearing dawn Monday morning.

“Did we finish all the items on our list?”

“No. Not yet.” They could have. They’d spent all day together, but Xavier hadn’t wanted to focus on anyone’s agenda but his own.

“So next weekend?”

Xavier stroked her hair. “No. I might not be back for at least two weeks.”

“Oh, that’s not too bad.”

“If not it will be nine months. Maybe a year.”

“Oh.” Mae sat up. “You mean you want me to wait for you…for months? I come here almost every weekend.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t ask me not to play with anyone else when you’ve said that you won’t commit to me.”

“I don’t want anyone else touching you.”

She was tense for a moment, fighting his hold, but then she relented, resting against him once more. “I can’t imagine being with anyone else. And I don’t just mean for BDSM play.” There was a hint of a question in her voice.

Hating himself, he said, “You’ll have to remember this can’t mean we have a formal relationship.”

“You mean as a Dom and sub.”

“I mean in any way.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“To be bonded is an emotional commitment, not just a physical one. That I can’t give.”

She sighed. “You’re married.”

Married people were allowed to join Las Palmas, but their spouses, assuming they were not members, had to sign legal acknowledgements. The process was designed to ensure not only that members had clear understandings with their husbands and wives, but also kept Las Palmas’s secrets from being dragged into the light as part of divorce proceedings.

“No, Red. I’m not married. I won’t get married for the same reason I won’t collar you.”

He felt her surprise, but she didn’t say anything. It would be better, for both of them, if he kept quiet, but he couldn’t stop himself from adding, “There are reasons I’ve chosen to live my life this way, but if I could change for anyone it would be you.”

They were quiet, but it was not the easy silence of a moment ago. After a few minutes the tension eased, the physical closeness helping to push away negative feelings.

“It’s only been three days,” she whispered. “How can everything have changed in three days?”

“I wish I knew.” He took a breath, let it out. “Wait for me, Mae.”

“Yes, Master.”

Two hours later Xavier was gone from Las Palmas and Mae was getting dressed. He’d ordered her to wait for him.

So she would wait.

It was cold in D.C. He missed California weather. He missed
her
.

The senator’s son stepped off the train, laptop bag over his shoulder, tie in place. He expertly ignored the looks his ruined face got him—the long looks followed by a quick jerk of the head when they looked away. His appearance was just another tool in his arsenal. When he testified before government bodies, as he was here to do today, he carried not only the weight of his mother’s name, but his own professional accomplishments and the very visible reminder of what he and others like him were fighting for.

“Dr. Xavier?” An anxious-looking aide with two cellphones and a clunky ID badge holder waved at him.

“That’s me.”

“Right this way. The chairperson wanted me to thank you for coming.”

“Of course. Anything I can do to help maintain or increase funding for these programs.”

Three hours later he read from his prepared statement, making sure to catch the eye of each congressperson on the panel. When the hearing was done he had lunch with his mother, one of the most powerful women in Washington even in her sixties, then headed for the offices of a national radio station to give an interview about the emerging health crises in Latin America.

*****

The afternoon sun poured in the windows, making her office a well decorated sauna. She longed for the cool of the evening. She longed for
him.

The owner of MissyMaven, a clothing and accessory brand that specialized in non-traditional sexy attire and lingerie, female-focused toys, and gothic and punk accessories with a sexy-cute spin, stood from her desk. The small offices were above the flagship brick and mortar store on a trendy street in Santa Monica. Below, her shoppers browsed the array of Rainbow Bright inspired thigh highs, princess dog collars, frilly panties, and white leather restraints embossed with black hearts. The rapidly growing empire drew a wide variety of buyers, from those steeped in the “Daddy/little” subculture where it had first started to tweens who had no idea why there were steel rings in the “chokers” they bought. They’d recently branched out into Goth attire, adding black to the color palette for the first time, but ensuring that all the Goth-style accessories featured plenty of bows and ribbons. In the spring they’d launch a line of steampunk wear and accessories, attracting an even broader client base.

Maven Block slipped out of her office and into the small kitchen area to grab a bottle of water. There were seven staff in this office, another ten in office space above the East L.A. factory where eighty skilled artisans made the bulk of their products, and two employees in a new satellite office in London, there to help the attempted expansion into an international market.
Forbes.com
had carried an article on the company last year, extolling the virtues of identifying a niche market and providing high-quality specialized products. And somehow she was in charge of it all—over 100 people who depended on her and the decisions she made for their livelihood. The business had grown from her making ruffled underwear on her grandmother’s old sewing machine and selling it to other “littles,” into a recognized brand and soon to be international company.

“Is it hot in your office again?” Her assistant looked up, tapping a button on the keyboard to turn down the sound of the news radio show she was streaming. “I’ll call about getting the AC repair person out here again.”

“Don’t bother. The air works fine, the sun is just at the wrong angle.” Maven adjusted the neckline of her rockabilly style dress. “What are you listening to?” For one insane moment she thought she’d heard a voice she recognized.

“Just a news show.”

“Turn it up.”

The program went to commercial break and Maven told herself to just go back to her office, but instead she waited, carefully wiping the condensation from her water bottle with a napkin. Her assistant was giving her a funny look, but she didn’t care.

“If you’re just joining us now, we have Doctor Solomon Xavier with us on the program. Dr. Xavier is the son of Senator Jane Xavier and you may remember him as the surgeon who was injured while volunteering at a clinic in Bangladesh several years ago. Since then he’s become an activist for world health and an ambassador for US-led international relief efforts. He has just returned from six months spent in South America. Dr. Xavier, thank you for being on the program.”

“Thank you for having me.”

Mae’s heart clenched at the sound of that voice.

“Maven are you oaky?”

“I’m fine. Fine.”

Locking herself in her office, she turned to her computer. A second later she was staring at the image of a blond doctor kneeling in the dirt, bent over a young woman, his hands pressed to her side. There was a stained rag tied over the side of his face. The scene around him was chaos, but the photographer had captured the shock and desperation of the moment.

Mae’s heart broke as she looked at the image. “Oh my poor Xavier.”

*****

Dr. Solomon Xavier picked up the magazine someone had left on the seat. He’d forgotten to take his phone charger with him when he went to the hospital and the battery had died at some point while he was in surgery. A young woman he’d aided in getting asylum in the US had undergone reconstructive surgery on her hands, which had been smashed by her “husband”—a term he used loosely because she’d been thirteen when she was married.

He still had admitting rights at major hospitals in D.C., Atlanta, and L.A. but rarely had opportunities like this to actually be a part of the surgeries he helped arrange. There were days he missed the simplicity of surgery—taking a problem and fixing it. After Bangladesh, his life had changed in more ways than he could count. The most visible was the scar on his face, but the most meaningful was him walking away from a promising career as a transplant surgeon. He’d gone from having complete control over his professional environment to facing issues and situations that he was nearly powerless to fix.

He flipped through the glossy magazine out of boredom as the train took him to his hotel. He’d be in D.C. for another day, then he was off to U.N. headquarters in New York for a fundraiser and some meetings, before returning to the Philippines to do an assessment of the medical facilities and infrastructure that the U.N. had helped put in place after the floods.

Frowning, Solomon—Sol to his friends and family—flipped back a few pages to one of the ads.

A well-endowed blonde was posed with her ass to the camera as she twisted to look over her shoulder. She was naked except for a pair of pale green lace panties with a ridiculous bow on the butt and gold heels with bondage-style lacings up the back. The caption read “these are my big girl panties.” There was a small logo in the bottom corner of the page—the stylized outline of a red-headed woman with the name “MissyMaven” under it.

Solomon laughed softly and traced his finger over the logo. “Hello, Red.”

*****

“Dr. Xavier, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Solomon picked his whiskey up off the table and followed the trim young staffer from the sponsoring organization. At the moment, he couldn’t even recall what group was putting on the gala fundraiser, but the beneficiary of the proceeds was a health organization that set up vaccine clinics in rural areas around the world. He’d worked with them in the past, and agreed to attend the fundraiser. He was both cynical enough to know that his “tragic” past, coupled with his family connections, made him an excellent spokesperson for health issues, and pragmatic enough to not care that he was being used. As long as the money got where it needed to go he’d do whatever was needed.

“Who is it?” he asked, experience having taught him it was better to know who he was about to meet so he could tailor his response.

“A new donor. Her contribution was unsolicited, but big enough that we made sure to rush her an invitation to this event. She asked specifically to meet you. I think she heard that radio piece you did last week.”

They approached an elegant woman in a floor-length white gown. Most of the women here tonight were in black, while the men wore tuxedos. She was a dove among ravens. There was almost no fabric along her back, the garment instead held together by dozens of small gold chains, a hint that there was more to her. Ruby-red hair lay loose over one shoulder.