Branded Sanctuary (19 page)

The woman nodded to her. “Master Tyler has indicated he will secure your payment, since you are staying as his personal guest. Would you like to pick out the collar for your slave? You may also choose a leash if you wish. They are available for loan or purchase.”

She gestured to a board behind her, outlined in tiny blue lights, the selection against a backboard of green velvet draping. Chloe saw everything from a standard thick leather studded dog collar—wryly, she wondered if it was considered a “classic” by the BDSM crowd—to what she was alarmingly sure was a choker of real diamonds, since there was a certificate of authenticity from the diamond company attached to it. There were collars obviously meant for other parts of the anatomy, even though some were cruelly spiked or—she swallowed—set with electrodes. When she saw several plain neck collars, she imagined buckling them around Brendan‟s neck, making her claim of ownership in a way that, up until now, had been a foreign concept to her.

She‟d let intuition guide her to make the bid, not thought. Since she was already treading, it was a little too late to think about how deep the water was, or how far she might be from shore already. She took the satin blue ribbon she‟d tied around her head to keep her front curls back from her face. “I‟d like to use this instead,” she said. “If that‟s okay.”

“Your Mistress gifts you with a symbol of ownership from her own wardrobe. You are most fortunate.” The woman nodded and withdrew, her attention on the two men now coming down the steps, their large cocks moving in a most distracting way. Chloe cleared her throat, cheeks flaming again when she could tell from the flicker of Brendan‟s lashes he‟d noticed her looking.

“Not thinking of trading up already, are you?” he murmured.

At the sound of his voice, the familiar dry humor, some of the anxiety loosened in her belly. “I guess I‟ll settle for you. I‟m tapped out of funds, you know.” But despite their banter, when she threaded the ribbon around his right biceps, tying it there like a knight‟s favor, she noted the quiver in the firm muscle. She remembered how the audience had responded when Slave Number Two had trembled under a Master‟s touch. While she hadn‟t entirely understood why they‟d considered that shudder a gift to them all, a part of her had. Her own hand wasn‟t steady. She knew why she was rattled. What bemused her was him. He‟d obviously done this before, with women far more demanding than her, she was sure. So why would he tremble, if not at her touch?

“Look at me,” she whispered.

He obeyed instantly, so instantly it reminded her he was hers to command for the next twelve or so hours. Literally. This wasn‟t some play auction like “Win a Date for Charity”, where‟d they go to dinner, make small talk. Within the bounds of that brochure, he would be and do whatever she wanted.
Holy God.
And she didn‟t have to feel guilty, because it was what he wanted and craved. The unknown variable wasn‟t him. It was her.

Her fingers were twined in the ribbon, pressed against hard flesh. “I want to go somewhere to be alone with you. How about the gardens?”

No.
She corrected herself. “I want to go to the gardens.” She‟d been adventurous once, sexually and in myriad other ways. She was safe here, so she‟d try it out, see the way it felt to be in control. Though as he rose, his greater height taking him above her, the way his eyes held her, she thought it might not be as simple as all that. His desire was an overwhelming force of its own. In fact, there was a plausible argument that, with that intense stare over the audience, he‟d chosen
her.

“Yes, Mistress,” he said. She knew she could tell him to call her Chloe, but it was a peculiar feeling, the way he was waiting on her to make that determination.

“I like you looking at my face,” she said as she drew them away from the group.

“I‟d prefer that, instead of you looking down like some of the other…others.” She still had her fingers coiled in the ribbon, worrying the silk as well as rubbing him with her knuckles. She hadn‟t seen him in three days, but it felt so much longer. If she thought about it too much, she might let it overwhelm her.

“I like looking at your face too.” His voice was low, as if he felt the weight of the physical and emotional need bottled between them. He covered her hand on his biceps with his other one, steadying her as they walked over uneven ground. “You look incredible,” he said. “The sexiest woman here.”

“Yeah, right.” But when she met his gaze briefly, she almost believed he meant it.

“You look pretty mouthwatering yourself.”

He measured his pace to hers and she leaned into him, her hip brushing his, cotton against mail, feeling the shape and sense of his leg sliding against her thigh.

Tyler had a small forest of fruit and crepe myrtle trees. The fruit trees had a few unexpected fall blooms amid the green leaves. Their branches and those of the mature crepe myrtles framed winding brick paths that meandered through statuary, fountains and quiet pools, private nooks for reading or napping, or stolen moments, like this. If she had a choice of what Heaven could look like, she wanted it to look like Tyler‟s gardens. He‟d expanded it since he and Marguerite had married. There were times she believed Tyler pulled off his green thumb miracles in the salt-laden Florida climate all to create a Paradise on earth for his wife. Probably to make up for the dark shadows of hell that her early life had been, a life Chloe had seen first hand.

She pushed that away.
Not going there tonight.
Not here, not now. They‟d made it ten steps into the tree area when she turned into Brendan. Before he could touch her, she‟d caught both of his hands. Holding his gaze, she backed him up, one step, two steps, moving under a citrus tree. The green leaves closed in a curtain behind them, several of those late blossoms caught in his hair.

When she had him against the trunk, she guided his hands upward. Though she couldn‟t reach to the full length of his arms, her intentions were clear. Watching her the whole time, he curled his hands around the branch above him, leaving his body stretched and open to whatever she wanted to do to it. Her imagination caught fire and the desire rippled through her, almost paralyzing her at all she wanted to do.

He was taller, much stronger, and yet she held him with a word, a gesture. Because she‟d given him permission to look her in the eye, all that combustible desire was like a dangerous current rising between them, making her wonder how hard she could push before it would arc and snap, and he‟d take them both over. How far did his control go?

Would he beg? Did she want him to?

She put her hands on his chest. When she‟d finally dared a glance at his program page, it said he‟d take pain, pleasure, it didn‟t matter. His drug of choice was a Mistress‟s desire. She dug her nails in and his gaze darkened.

“Chloe—Mistress,” he corrected himself.

She kept digging, but moved her touch down, scoring red lines in his skin. Over the washboard abdomen, down to the belted mail tunic. She dropped one hand lower, came up under it, finding bare thigh. She hesitated, then a boldness gripped her, validated by the atmosphere, by the driving need inside her that had been growing for three days. She moved her stroking touch to the cock and balls he‟d displayed so temptingly when he‟d knelt toward that other Mistress. Heat and steel, the kiss of moisture at the tip. He groaned as she found he was quite aroused, just as she‟d expected. He‟d teased them with the weight of that mail, kept it hidden from view.

“Turn around,” she whispered. When he did, she indulged in cupping her hands over his ass under the tunic, watching the movement of the mail over the shape of her hands. She wondered abruptly what it was like to create welts on a man‟s broad back, his flexing buttocks, make him arch from the pain like they had Caleb.

Was the power she was feeling akin to violence? It wasn‟t a violence she‟d ever experienced before. This was hot and molten. She wanted to touch, bite, mark. She was dangerously out of control and she didn‟t care. He was hers. All hers. She‟d given everything for him. She recalled the brochure.
Will do anything to serve…

“Will you…” She stopped. “Get on your knees.”

As he went down, his gaze was down, probably watching where he was placing his knees. She saw the passion in his eyes, though, the building lust and something else, an emotional storm building with every order she issued. Was he responding to her specifically, or any Mistress who could press the right keys? She didn‟t care to tarry in those waters right now. It didn‟t matter. With that penetrating look from the stage, he‟d chosen her tonight. Impatience with her own insecurities flooded her, and a little bit of anger. Tonight, she wasn‟t tolerating anything but what she wanted, making apologies for none of it. Damn all of them, though she wasn‟t sure who “them” was.

She had no plan, no idea what she was doing, or even why she was doing it. Maybe it was like deciding to jump out of an airplane or parasail while on vacation in the Caribbean. Visiting a new place, where the chance existed to be a stranger to oneself, made it possible to explore and discover something entirely new.

When the vacationer finally came back, the adventure would be an amputated part put in a photo album, the memory like the occasional ache of the missing limb. Because that amputation was inevitable, a certain wild abandon to the adventure was acceptable. The thought gave her courage. That, and hazel eyes fixed on her face, watching her every move, demanding touch. Or permission to touch.

She cleared her throat. Tried a crazy, wild demand. “Kiss my feet.” He bent with such lithe male grace, bracing his knuckles on the outside of her bare feet. His hair fell forward, head turning as his lips brushed her instep, taking a teasing taste of the arch. Her body‟s response shot straight to the wetness between her legs.

And he took his blessed time on that one foot, nipping, suckling. She‟d never realized her foot was such an incredibly erotic zone. She wanted him to stay there for hours.

Sinking down on the decorative bench Tyler had wisely placed beneath the tree‟s shelter, she put her palm flat between his shoulder blades. It allowed her to touch him, to feel his heat and heartbeat, and also told him he was exactly where she wanted him to stay. Sliding her other foot up, she put her sole on his lower back, her toe tracing the belt, then the curve of his spine, sliding the drape of her skirt over his back.

Oh God. He hadn‟t moved above her ankle, but he didn‟t need to do so to get her writhing. He moved from the fragile bones of the ankle, teasing the anklet, down toward the toes again. Licking each one, he traced the lines between them, tickling the skin beneath the toe rings, then moved to the ball of the foot, caressing her with a brief touch of fingers before he continued.

Chloe let her other hand drift up his back, to his nape, then over his hair as she leaned back against the bench. Sliding her fingers down her body, she navigated under the skirt and found her pussy. Already stimulated by the evening‟s entertainment, she found her folds wet and needy. At the very first touch, she sucked in a breath, worrying her bottom lip as her fingers teased her own clit, the sensation now going between his mouth and her hand.

He brushed her ankle, his gaze flickering up so she saw burning hazel beneath the thick lashes. “Let me do that, Mistress. Let me put my head beneath your skirt and eat your pussy as long as you wish. Give me the gift of your sweet honey on my tongue, grinding yourself against my face.”

She spasmed, imagining him there. She was taken back to that first night, the phone call, his subtle ways of directing her into commanding him, taking control and giving her back power amid her fear of the dark. But something different was stirring in her now. She was used to being a generous lover. Though she knew how good he would feel, his mouth there, she wasn‟t ready for that now, didn‟t want that now. Cruel pleasure was what laced the air, and she was infected with it. “No. I want to make myself come while you stay at my feet.”

He grazed his temple against her ankle, an acknowledgment, and then he proceeded to prove what she was denying herself. Every sensitive curve and crevice of her feet was nibbled and teased. He stroked her with a tongue that, by the time she was rocking on the bench, her other hand braced on the concrete surface, was as responsible for her near climactic state as her own fingers. Her wrist trembled, starting to ache.

Though he continued to obey her, his mouth on her feet, suddenly his strong hand was there, closing over her wrist. Not to take control or guide her, but wrapping around the slim bone to steady it. His thumb teased her pulse. How had he known?

“Oh God.” That was it, all it took. Her fingers jerked over her clit as his thumb stroked that innocuous place. He bit down on her instep at the exact right moment. She used his hold on her wrist as a counterpoint to her fast pumping against her hand. The convulsive jerking was as hard and intense as any orgasm she‟d experienced, and yet she ached to be filled. Her hand wasn‟t him, his hard cock sliding inside her, but she couldn‟t bring herself to demand it when the world was fragmenting into twenty galaxies, and she was worried her cries were reaching the other guests. But it didn‟t matter, because she knew this weekend Tyler‟s garden would become an outdoor place of pleasure, filled with moans, breathless sighs, sounds of need and hunger like a forest of nocturnal animals on a mating hunt.

As she slowed down at last, his fingers loosened, even as her own fingertips found his head, stroked his hair, trembling, wanting to grip. He raised his head then, eyes full of such irresistible desire for something she felt she alone could give him.