Breath on the Wind (15 page)

“So, the prodigal returns!”

Fletch’s rough, low bass was the first voice Chiz heard.  The old man was sitting at the bar, and the carafe of coffee was at his elbow.  Chiz knew that facing things head-on was the only way to go, but he’d have been lying if he’d have said the caffeine didn’t play any part in his choice of direction.

“Hey, grandpa.”

“Didn’t lose your smart mouth wherever you’ve been then?”  One of those bushy eyebrows rose a full inch.

“Nah.  Just rechargin’, brother.”

“Rechargin’ my ass.  You look like you got hit by a Mack truck.”  Kong’s booming voice and his hearty clap on Chiz’s shoulder doubled the tempo of the drums in Chiz’s head.

Chiz nodded to Morse, who was on a stool on the other side of Fletch, and received an acknowledging nod in return.

Scrat was behind the bar.  He slid a mug along the bar to Chiz.  Chiz caught it and poured himself some liquid energy.  The coffee was lukewarm, but it was strong.  He downed half the mug in one gulp and refilled it.

Chiz tried to slip back into his personality.  He called over to Sinatra, who was a pale shade of green, and slumped at a table with his head resting on his folded arms.  “Hey, ol’ blue eyes.  I hear you’re ready to take me on.  Wanna jump in the ring?”

He got a long, pained moan in answer.  Chiz was surprised when he heard himself laugh.

“You should be worried, brother.  He’s lookin’ sharp.”  Shark had come to his side and was accepting a fresh jug of coffee from Scrat, who also poured a hefty slug of whiskey into Shark’s waiting mug.

“I ain’t been sat on my ass for a week, brother.  As soon as he can hit the canvas without pukin’, we can find out how well you’ve been trainin’ him.”

“Where’ve you been workin’ out, brother?  You go to Vegas?  Train with Mayweather maybe?”  Ahh, that was Terry fishing for some answers.

“No.”

Chiz could tell his VP was displeased by his short answer. But when Chiz glanced up at Samuel, his president nodded his approval.

“We’re hurt, brother.  You didn’t even send us a postcard.”  Kong clearly thought his hangover made him a comedian.

“Didn’t have time,” Chiz muttered into his mug.

Sinatra, obviously still riding a wave of alcohol-induced bravado, raised his head long enough to call, “Couldn’t get your dick out of whatever pussy it was in long enough to pick one out?”

Chiz fought down the urge to walk over and knock the younger man out of his seat.  Today it would be like shooting fish in a barrel, but he would make damn sure to meet him in the ring soon.  “Your momma just didn’t want to let me go, brother.  What can I say?  I made her scream like a cheerleader.”

Sinatra grunted as he dropped his head back down onto his arms.

Chiz felt a small, light touch, a feminine hand, on his shoulder.  He half turned, swallowing his heart as he did so.  But it was Ashleigh standing behind him.  Shark was already slinging his arm around his wife’s shoulders.  Ashleigh was fairly big now, not enough to make her look awkward, but enough that there was no room for doubt about her condition.

“Glad you’re back safe, Chiz.”

“Sure you are, Tink.  You’ve been wantin’ to ride off into the sunset with me for years.”

Shark’s face was carefully impassive, but Ashleigh smiled.  “You know it, Chiz.  Tell me where and when.  ‘Cept I’m gonna struggle to ride bitch with this belly.”

“You look beautiful, darlin’.  You really do.”  Chiz tried to return her smile, but he knew the expression hadn’t reached his eyes.

“I’m gonna take my old lady home now, before you sweep her off her feet with that silver tongue of yours.” 

Shark’s eyes were promising a bout in the ring soon, too.  Chiz didn’t mind having a full dance card.  It’d be a good distraction.  As Shark escorted Ashleigh out of the building, Fletch eased off his stool to hit up the john.  Chiz was mostly alone at the bar, and had no enthusiasm for seeking out company, but he didn’t move when Crash slid onto Fletch’s stool.

“I know where you were, brother, but I didn’t tell no one but the pres.”  Crash’s voice was low, only for Chiz’s ears.

“Thanks, brother.  I owe you.  I might have a little somethin’ for you to look into for me in a couple of days.  It’s ain’t club stuff, though.”  Chiz cursed the absence of his brain to mouth link, even as he was speaking.

“Does it affect the club?”

“No. It ain’t the missin’ persons list, so forget about the smart ass remarks you were puttin’ together.  I’ll let you know.”

“Okay, bro.  S’good to have you back.”

Crash disappeared as unobtrusively as he’d arrived.  Chiz concentrated on letting the coffee work its magic in his blood for a while, before he turned around and faced the room.  Looking at all his brothers, aged by the ravages of their partying, the thought occurred to Chiz that it was time to speak to Samuel about looking at the hangarounds to see who was worth bringing on as a Prospect.  The Charter had lost three members, Dizzy to Texas, Dean and Tag both dead, in the space of a year.  It was time to shore up their table, and new blood would be good for the club.

There was no sign of Moira and Dolly.  They were probably still sleeping their hangovers off.  Neither of them would appear without their outfits and makeup done to precision.

Chiz tried to keep up with the banter and made a heroic effort to fend off his hangover with food and coffee, more coffee than food, and as soon as he thought his stomach wouldn’t violently reject it, some hair of the dog.  He thought he’d made a good show of being himself, but by the end of the day, he was ready to go to sleep and never wake up.

Chapter Thirteen

He’d gone.  She’d told him to go, of course, but he’d actually gone.  After promising that he wouldn’t, he’d upped and left in the night like the worst kind of pussy.

At first, Andy had thought Chiz might have been in the living room watching the TV, or in the kitchen making coffee.  It hadn’t taken her long at all to figure out that Chiz was nowhere in her house, and neither were his clothes.  His bike was missing from her driveway.

Her stomach rolled at the smell of the stale takeout in her living room.  She threw the remnants of their meal into the trash, and then she showered.  She used every exfoliating lotion and scrub that she had.  Her skin was fragrant, but tender, by the time she was finished.  Andy dressed in jeans and the biggest, sloppiest sweatshirt that she owned.  It was a tattered thing that bore the remnants of the logo of her college football team.  It might have belonged to an old boyfriend; she couldn’t remember any more.  She intended to make herself a nutritious breakfast, but somehow she found herself at her breakfast bar sipping coffee with no plate or bowl in front of her.

Going against any rational thought, she drove over to the motel.  His bike wasn’t outside his room.  She was about to leave her car and ask the clerk whether Chiz had checked out, when she saw the cleaning service exit the room.  The wheels on the rickety cart squeaked mournfully as the bored maid pushed it along to her next job.

Although he’d always kept his room neat and tidy, not once, in the week that she’d known him, had he allowed the room to be cleaned by a stranger.  It was all the confirmation she needed.  Not only had he left her bed, he’d left town.

~o0o~

Andy existed in a weird state of automation for the rest of the day.  She was due at the club, but thankfully did not have any clients booked for a couple of days.  Mostly she was covering Jackie’s role while her right hand took a break.  She dressed in her smart outfit, she styled her hair, she applied her makeup, but she knew that her coworkers could see the mask for what it was.  They didn’t pry, but she felt their concern in the way their eyes followed her constantly.

Only after the club had closed, when she was ensconced in the silence of her house, curled on her sofa, wrapped in her fluffy robe, and the better part of halfway through a bottle of top-shelf vodka, did Andy allow her mind to wander back to Chiz. 

The edge play itself had not been the problem.  It wasn’t her favorite thing to do, and because of the amount of trust involved, it was rarely on her sexual menu, but she had done it before, and she knew the rush was worth the risk.  The problem had been the moment that she had seen the Devil take Chiz.  For that moment, she had meant nothing to him.  She had not been a person, only a being, a thing, something for him to toy with, to control, to demonstrate his authority over. 

In itself, that had been scary enough, but that feeling of being an inconsequential participant, nothing but a sack of responsive skin, coupled with his tenderness and care afterwards, had caused some very unpleasant memories to surface.

She hadn’t lied to Chiz at all about her history, but she had omitted a reasonably major period, a period that she didn’t like to revisit if she could help it.  There was no helping it now, though; the memories were too fresh to ignore.

The workmate who had tipped her off to the world of professional domination had worked at a local dungeon.  Andy hadn’t known anything about BDSM other that the nudge-nudge-wink-wink references that made their way into popular culture.  When she had decided to investigate the idea of becoming a dominatrix, her colleague had introduced her to the dungeon that she worked at herself.

Andy still remembered, with some shame and regret, her wide-eyed innocence of that day.  The Dungeon Mistress had shown her around the building, given her a tour of the various rooms, and explained many of the toys.  She’d even, having asked permission of those involved, allowed Andy to watch a couple of sessions in progress.  Andy had been fascinated and certain that, although she felt no personal inclination to the world as a lifestyle, that she could engage sufficiently to make a success of it as a job.

When she’d expressed an interest, the Mistress had explained that all dominants in training were expected to undergo an apprenticeship period as a submissive.  There wouldn’t be so much training involved, there was no right or wrong way to be a submissive, since one did exactly what a master expected of them, and every master was different.  It was, however, a way to find out what the various toys and techniques felt like, and how certain games were played safely.  That knowledge would vastly increase the expertise of a dominant, who would know more exactly what they were seeing in a submissive’s reaction. 

Once that initiation period was ended, if she still wanted to continue as a dominant, then Andy would be trained in the proper way to bind someone, the correct way to wield a paddle and a cane, and which toys should be used when and where for maximum efficiency, amongst other things.

All that had sounded completely reasonable to Andy.  It had made perfect sense, and, if she was honest, it was more than a little exciting.  She’d watched a scene during which a cuffed submissive had endured hot wax being trickled onto her nipples. Andy had realized, as she walked out of the room, that she was aroused in a way that she hadn’t thought she would be.

It had been terrifying to start her apprenticeship at the dungeon, but the people there seemed nice enough, at least in Andy’s limited sphere of experience.  But they had missed, or ignored, what Andy now knew to be a fairly common condition amongst submissives that were beginning to explore their tantalizing new world.  Andy had begun to fall into what she now knew to be an actual condition.  She had fallen into sub-frenzy. 

Such a euphoric state of mind occurred when a submissive, having their eyes opened to the potential of such new games, wanted to try everything, as soon as possible, with little regard for their physical or emotional safety.  Rather than pause and question whether they really wanted to take part in particular scene, or play with a particular toy, a sub in frenzy would throw themselves into the game, risking serious emotional overload afterwards as their expanding self-knowledge and existing belief systems were challenged too rapidly.

Almost every new practice and sensation that she experienced felt inconceivably wonderful.  To some degree it was the abdication of responsibility; for those hours she was not thinking about her studies, or her bills, or anything else other than what the dominant wished for her to be thinking about.  Some of it was the strength of the endorphin rush.  If someone had stopped her on the street and asked her if she would like to be whipped, Andy would have responded with an emphatic negative.  When she’d actually tried it, she experienced a powerful orgasm from being whipped with a riding crop over the mound of her pussy.

It was during that time that she’d met Erik Dubkova, a Russian-born dominant.  She was entranced by the man who was several decades older than she, and who always immaculately groomed, from his artfully cut grey hair and edgy stubble, to his designer suits.  He was tall and lean, and had icy blue eyes that gave nothing away.  The new and enthralling world that had opened up to Andy in the dungeon soon became a part of her personal life, too.

Erik had been an experienced and talented dominant, but he was also controlling and sadistic in a way that had nothing to do with the lifestyle that they were a part of.  What had started as a partnership based on Andy’s education, had become a romantic relationship, and from there, had become an abusive nightmare. 

In the beginning, they were simply an average couple who enjoyed their sex with some kink, where Andy was always the bottom, but it had changed and warped into something very different.  Andy had carried on in her studies at college, and at the dungeon, but she had found herself living the lifestyle of a slave when at home. 

As Erik had exerted more control over her, forbidding her from socializing with her friends, or even talking to them, monitoring her phone calls, managing her finances and instructing her diet, he had also changed in the way that he acted as her dominant.  He’d begun to ignore her when she called her safeword.  He pushed her limits dangerously, and had forced her to participate in scenes and practices that she had previously made the choice to avoid.

It had taken Andy some time to see that she was in an abusive relationship rather than an extreme dominant/submissive partnership.  It had been some time more after that revelation that she had found the strength to leave.  After every session, no matter what had taken place, Erik had cradled Andy in his arms and assured her that he loved her, adored her, that she was his, and that she was the center of his universe.  He’d bandaged her, massaged ointment into her broken and bruised skin, had driven her to the ER, and all the while assured her that next time he wouldn’t get quite so carried away.  He’d often said it was the beauty of her total submission that made it so hard for him to control himself, which left Andy feeling like it was her fault, and that her fear was an overreaction.

It was after a private session at the dungeon, involving several employed submissives and paying dominants, where Erik had exhibited some of his true nature, that one of the male subs had taken Andy aside and insisted that what was happening to her was very, very wrong.

She’d found the will and the strength to leave Erik, eventually.  But it had taken a toll on her.  She had no desire to return to stripping, something about that seemed horrifically objectifying to her after her experiences, and she couldn’t afford to take a job as a waitress if she wanted to continue her degree, so she had decided to pursue the domination avenue.  She’d moved to a different dungeon to continue her training, and had found, to her chagrin, that they did not all operate in the same way. 

Seeing the cold arrogance in Chiz’s eyes, knowing that she was in real danger and feeling the rush of that fear, followed by his gentle and affectionate care of her, had reopened wounds that Andy had thought were long closed.

She squinted at the bottle, and realized that she had drunk half of it while she had sat and brooded in the darkening room.  She got up, stumbled and almost tripped into a small table, but managed to turn a lamp on.  She staggered back to the sofa and dropped heavily onto it, squirming when the thin padding provided insufficient cushioning for such a fall.

Nothing in the tiny box she lived in was truly comfortable, apart from her bed.  Andy refilled her glass and heaved herself off the sofa.  It was the work of minutes to lurch around the structure she called home, to really look at this place that she lived in.  Having made it back to the living room with some new bruises on her shins, she slumped back down onto the sofa.  She didn’t live in her own house. 

It was a house, barely even that.  It wasn’t a home.  It was tasteful, to her taste, but it wasn’t
her
.  It was aesthetically pleasing, yet completely soulless.  It only reflected the pictures she’d liked in the catalogue.  She hadn’t put her own stamp on anything.  And it was ridiculously fucking small.  And she hated her neighbors, pompous, self-serving, pious bunch of twats that they were.  They always fucking scowled if they saw her out in her Miata, like she was single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the ozone layer.

To a large extent, she was still hiding.  She was hiding herself, her true self, in fear of drawing Erik’s derisive attention, or offending him, even though she hadn’t seen him in at least a decade.  She was still hiding everything about herself for fear that someone would find it irritating or lacking.  She was still being so very careful.

Andy poured some more vodka into her glass and tossed it down her throat to toast that epiphany.

It was hardly surprising.  She had never allowed anyone to get close enough to break her out of her shell of self-protection.

It was minutes before Andy realized that she was crying, even though she was almost choking on the sobs that were at least fifty percent hiccups.  It wasn’t easy to accept that a significant proportion of her adult life had been given over, unknowingly and unwittingly, to a ghost that she thought she’d left far behind.

There was nothing to do about it now.  Well, there was.  She could give way to a drunken fit and rip and tear and smash.  But in the morning she would be without somewhere to sit and without something to pour her coffee into.  It was enough for tonight that she’d had the realization at all. 

She negotiated her way around the furniture until she was armed with a large glass of water and some Tylenol.  She took her booty into the bathroom.  There, with the aid of her toothbrush, she made herself sick, enough to bring up most of what she’d drunk that night.  She dropped her toothbrush into the waste basket, and retrieved a new one, still in its packaging, from the cabinet.  She brushed her teeth, then swallowed the Tylenol and drank all the water.  She refilled the glass from the basin faucet and, more steadily than before, shuffled into her bedroom.  She set the glass on the cabinet beside the bed and crept under the downy comforter.