Branded Sanctuary (20 page)

“May I clean you with my mouth, Mistress? I‟ll be very gentle.”

“Oh God, Brendan.” She breathed it, but then reached for him with both hands, using his body to help shift her own as she lay down on the bench to gaze up at a million stars in the night sky. “Yes,” she whispered.

Her hands slid reluctantly off his shoulders to fall above her head, a fairy princess lying among the summer tree spirits. She realized she was right, that the gardens were punctuated by sounds of other guests taking pleasure with one another. Like her, they must have felt the need for a short tryst to release some pressure on their explosive desires before proceeding to the other carnival activities. It was a night literally filled with the sounds of passion, reminiscent of her own such that when he folded her skirt over his shoulders, and his breath touched her, she gave a new, soft cry, her own contribution.

Slowly, so slowly, his mouth descended, touching her labia in an almost reverent, chaste kiss. It made tears come to her eyes, her fingers curl into balls of need. One slow, dragging lick, then another, taking away her fluids, leaving only the dampness of his tongue, his sweet lips. She knew she would shudder from the memory of his mouth ever after, and if she found herself in her bed alone her fingers would become that mouth once more. She wanted to be sated, to go over again with hard, wild abandon.

But she wanted to be in charge. Needed to be, even though the thought gave the desire still simmering in her lower belly a hard twist.

It made her put a hand on his head, stilling him. When she folded her legs and turned to sit up, he helped her, moving his body back from where it had been between her knees. She felt that loss, but concentrated on something else. She remembered one of the booths she‟d helped set up, remembered what she‟d seen there. The auction was over, the carnival goers spreading out to those areas as well as in these gardens. Did she dare do what she wanted? If she couldn‟t here, where the hell could she? But it was one thing to do it in the quiet of this garden, a whole other to be public with her inexperienced game of control.

Rising, she trailed a hand along his shoulder, keeping him on his knees. She was barely five feet, and he was tall, so his head reached her throat, his eyes close as he tilted his head attentively to her. His mouth was moist from his cleaning, and she caught the scent of her climax. It made her heart trip. “Do all the things you wrote in your program apply to me?”

His hair curtained one side of his face except for the flashing gold-green eye. The thick heat of his voice reminded her she‟d never pushed a guy up to this level, where his cock was probably so hard he could barely walk. She‟d always felt his release was her obligation. But this environment said it was okay, right? She could keep pushing.

She‟d read all about safe words and such. Brendan could tell her no if she pushed too hard.

“It does. And then some.” Leaning forward, he pressed a kiss to her thigh through the thin fabric of her skirt. “Whatever you want. It‟s yours.” She took a step back from that touch which cracked open the Pandora‟s box of emotions swirling through her. “All right then. Follow me.” She hadn‟t realized how she‟d internalized so much of what she‟d seen so far, such that for one moment she toyed with having him leave the kilt, stride naked like some she‟d already seen here. It tightened in her gut, even as she wasn‟t sure she wanted so many ogling the gifts Brendan had to offer. In the end, she let it remain in her mind only, a particularly twisted fantasy. Turning on her heel, she moved away, not offering to walk with him this time.

Remarkably, he fell in several steps behind her, as if she had him on a tether in truth. As they emerged from the gardens, headed for the tents and rides of the carnival area, she began to see the guests in their varied groupings. Slaves manacled at the ankles or wrists, tethered at the throat, a heady environment of those willingly being subjugated to whatever dark pleasures the Masters or Mistresses here desired.

She realized she could stroll through the sights without hurry, or concern that he was behind her, though she did glance back several times to confirm it, and for her own pleasure. He didn‟t look at all the distractions around him. His entire focus was on her, his eyes watching her feet, occasionally sweeping over the rest of her, attuned to where she was going, prepared for whatever she might say or need. He was her devoted slave in truth, and the power of it thrilled, frightened and dug into her with angry, needy claws.

Seeking a way of centering herself, she turned to her surroundings as she wandered through the offerings. There was a shooting gallery, where the ducks were submissives who‟d been lined up with protective blindfolds, their hands chained over their heads.

The guns were loaded with pellet rounds that stung, but did no real injury. Another submissive knelt below the firing line in front of each “target”, suckling at cocks or tonguing the wet pussies, so that the bound submissive was hard put to stay still while the Masters or Mistresses were firing. Prizes, amusingly, were the same types she‟d see at any fair. Kaleidoscopes, cheap necklaces, and colorful stuffed animals of all sizes, like the teddy bears she‟d helped Marcia set out.

Cirque du Soleil styled players wandered the grounds in provocative costumes, performing tumbling feats, juggling, eating fire and blowing it out in dramatic plumes.

Athletic dancers, with long ribbons twining around their otherwise naked bodies, entertained small groups of passersby. Chloe reflected a person could sit down somewhere and be dazzled for hours by everything they were seeing.

Another booth had eating contests, where food was of course being devoured off the bodies of submissives stretched out and chained on the boards. An apparently famous erotic food expert, Chef Rayne Davidson, used volunteers to decorate submissives in artistic food renderings for display at Master and Mistress social gatherings. Next to that area were advanced demonstrations of whip use. Chloe flinched at the pop of the single tail along a woman‟s nipple. Her dress was pulled down to her waist, and she realized it was the woman in the white sheath. The male in the tux was doing the whipping while the football player was watching, already quite visibly aroused. It made Chloe realize they were both Doms, and the woman was their shared submissive. The strike made her cry out, though her chest was already flushed with post-climactic bliss, and her eyes lingered hungrily on her two Masters.

Her breath even shorter, steps a little more unsteady, such that she felt Brendan‟s heat pressing closer behind her, she turned her attention elsewhere. Vendors sold food and drink, the offerings expected at a carnival. Pink and purple cotton candy, popcorn, funnel cakes, the smell of them filling the air. Masters and Mistresses offered such treats from their hands, not allowing their slaves to feed themselves. She saw a Master who had scattered popcorn across the ground. Using a quirt, he was guiding his male slave to eat each piece he indicated.

The slave seemed subdued, though there was some of Caleb to him, in the way he watched his Master like a dangerous dog would, waiting for his chance. At least that was what Chloe thought, but then he lifted his head, holding several pieces between his lips. The Master gestured to a female slave, apparently another he‟d bought or brought with him. She moved forward, unashamedly naked, and knelt before the male. Going to her hands and knees, her back arched so her buttocks were high and breasts thrust in a tempting display, she stretched out toward the male submissive, like a poodle before a hulking mastiff. Chloe held her breath as she delicately took the popcorn from his lips.

The Master‟s hand fell on his slave‟s nape, caressing the thick collar he wore.

“I don‟t really get the ones who want that,” she said.

Brendan was close enough his thigh brushed the back of hers. When she curled her fingers, she touched the hem of the chain mail.

“The hardcore pain and humiliation?”

“And being treated…I want to say like an animal, but you shouldn‟t treat an animal like that, either.”

“Like a slave.” His breath teased her ear, made her shiver.

She lifted a shoulder, didn‟t look at him yet, though she wasn‟t sure why. “I guess so. A lot of them here are called slaves, but they‟re treated differently. There was one guy who was letting his „slave‟ sit on his coat on the grass, even though it was probably a pretty expensive coat.”

He nodded. “Masters and Mistresses can be vastly different, just as submissives are.

They‟re all unique.”

“You understand it,” she realized, looking up at his face. “You understand why Caleb, or this guy, gets off on the extreme stuff.”

Before Brendan could reply, a sharp crack rent the air. Snapping her attention back, she found that the male sub had incurred a punishment. His Master had his booted foot on the slave‟s neck, forcing his face to the ground, his ass high in the air. The crack came again, from a paddle hitting the man‟s buttocks hard enough it drove him forward. The first strike was already welling up like the brand of an iron.

Brendan‟s hand had closed on her arm, making her realize she‟d started to move forward. “Does he… Are you sure?”

“I‟m sure. Don‟t worry. I‟ll try to explain it, though sometimes explanations don‟t help.”

She wasn‟t sure she could handle watching more of the violence in that demonstration area, so she turned her back to it to face him. She much preferred Brendan‟s handsome face. “What do you mean?”

Intuitively, he drew her away from the area. It loosened her shoulders a bit, but his words didn‟t give her much ease.

“If it‟s entirely foreign to someone, no frame of reference, inside or out, then he or she can hear the explanation, but it doesn‟t change their thinking on it.”
A hard world to understand to those not in it…
She uncomfortably recalled Marguerite‟s words. “It still gives them a different perspective.”

“To be given something, you have to take it, or accept it. If you reject it, then it served no purpose.”

“Do you think I‟m that closed-minded?”

“No.” Chagrin crossed his expression at the coldness she couldn‟t keep out of her tone. “I didn‟t mean it that way. It‟s not a matter of being closed-minded or intolerant.

There are plenty of people who live and let live, as long as what their neighbor is doing is consensual and no one‟s being hurt, technically. But they still have no clue why their neighbor does the things he does.”

The look in his eyes made her uneasy. Fortunately, she‟d reached her intended destination, a welcome distraction.

The innocuous building materials, ones she‟d seen brought in straight from the area hardware store, had been arranged for an erotic purpose she couldn‟t have imagined.

Three male slaves had already been bound, their arms restrained to the horizontal bar, their feet spread and manacled to the platform, which was set with spaced cuffs for that purpose. As she and Brendan approached, she saw Master Luke and Caleb were there.

Master Luke had an enormous dildo in hand, one that had been liberally lubricated by a guest attendant. The slave was still wearing a cock harness, and the straps had been tightened such that those hooks in the rear area bit with cruel barbs, spreading his buttocks wide, revealing the glistening anus that had obviously also been well lubed.

Caleb snarled against the scold harness, his impressive muscles bunched, but as intimidating as he was physically, there was something even more terrifying in the calm of Master Luke. An aura of pure psychological dominance emanated from him. He set the head of that monstrous phallus to the slave‟s anus with strong and capable fingers, and began to ease it inward. Putting his hand on the man‟s shoulder, he gripped the juncture at the neck.

“Better stop your growling, Caleb, and breathe. Push out, or this will hurt more than you‟d like. I won‟t be taking it out until you come, you know. And that‟s going to be a very, very long time.”

Amazingly, she saw the man respond, not to the meaning of the words, but the tone, the touch, both containing a hint of…gentleness. Caleb obeyed it. “They fit,” she wondered. “It doesn‟t make sense.”

“It‟s like that, a lot of times,” Brendan agreed. Her shoulder blade brushed his bare chest when she took a steadying breath, reached back and let herself cup his jaw, finger his hair. “Some submissives need a particular type of act or device, or regimen, if you will. A few just need to find the right Dom, and then nothing else is that important, because they‟re wired into one another. What one wants, the other can give, and it‟s a two-way street, no real planning or thought to it.”

Chloe was conscious of being watched. Other Mistresses and Masters, watching the dynamic between her and Brendan. Was it her imagination or did she see a trace of pity in the eyes of the Amazon, as if she already knew that whatever she thought she could give Brendan, it wouldn‟t be enough?

“Does that happen often?” she asked, struggling to push it away, telling herself her insecurities were playing with her imagination.

“It‟s rare,” Brendan said. An upward glance showed his focus was on Master Luke, watching how he held Caleb still with a mere word, calming him with a touch. “You can find that, or something close to it, when you work with a Master or Mistress regularly, but what you‟re seeing is a Master/sub‟s version of falling in love at first sight. Doesn‟t mean the working-at-it kind of love isn‟t as deep and special in time.

Sometimes you have to get some other baggage out of the way, or the timing isn‟t right.”

“Sounds like most relationships.”