Clifftop Fantasies [BDSM Menage Fantasies] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (18 page)

“I thought you said Jane was my father’s slave. Isn’t she acting more like a dominant tonight?”

Karl nodded. “Many people experiment with both sides, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In Jane’s case, it didn’t go so well. She didn’t respect her bottoms, and she tried things that she hadn’t been trained to do. A couple people actually got hurt during some of her scenes. That might have been salvageable, but she wouldn’t take responsibility for her own mistakes and blamed the problems on her partners. Things like that don’t sit well with the community.”

Allie fell silent. She had been concentrating on Karl’s words, but now she began to notice the scene around her, and thoughts about Jane dissolved into surprise.

The room was large, with a cement floor and a high ceiling. It looked like what it was, a warehouse, but not like any she’d ever seen or imagined before. Wooden furniture filled the room, and she suddenly realized what the massive covered shapes in her basement were. Karl named the various pieces of equipment as they passed— spanking bench, bondage tables, cage, suspension hook, needle station, and several of what he called St. Andrew’s Crosses, which looked like seven-foot-tall Xs made out of stout wooden beams. But the equipment, scary as it looked, did not hold Allie’s attention very long. There were naked people everywhere. They were tied to the crosses or on the bondage tables being flogged. Some were being led on leashes, one on hands and knees with a dog mask on, and one was having needles put into her back and shoulders in an intricate design. Toward the back of the room there was a woman standing still while her dominant bound her arms behind her. Karl nodded in passing but did not speak. He led Allie to the far corner then stopped her in front of something hanging on the wall.

“See that?” He pointed to the large wooden plaque. Allie leaned closer to read the writing.

“Presented to Master Walker June 1, 2008, for twenty years of dedicated leadership and service to the leather community.”

Allie frowned at it then turned to Karl. “Master Walker?” she asked. “My father?”

Karl nodded, his eyes still fixed on the plaque. He looked almost reverent, and Allie turned back to read it again in wonder. It was clear that her father had meant something to this community. Maybe his life really had been about more than dirty pictures.

“He was a very interesting person,” Karl told her, taking her arm again and leading her away. “He taught many of us, including Beth and most of the others in this room, what it means to be a dominant. He might not have been very good at managing his business or his money, and he had a tendency to give people more chances than they deserved. But he was a genuinely good man, Allie. Don’t believe anyone who tells you differently. He wanted to get to know you better, but he knew if your mother found out about his lifestyle she would keep you as far away from him as possible. Then when you were an adult and out on your own, he was starting to go through his own problems with Jane and didn’t want to drag you into it. Once you grew up and wouldn’t even talk to him about the modeling you’d done, he knew there wasn’t any point in explaining all this to you. But now I think you might be ready to learn a little bit about it for yourself.”

They had stopped about halfway back to the front of the room, and Karl pointed to two chairs against the wall.

“Let’s sit here for a little while,” he suggested, angling them toward the front slightly. “That way we can talk a little without interrupting any of the scenes.”

When Allie took one, she found herself facing a group in the far corner. At first it didn’t look like there was anything special going on. A woman sat in a chair with one foot propped up on a wooden box in front of her. She was wearing tall boots and a long leather skirt that zipped all the way up the sides of her thighs. Her corset was lying on the ground beside her, and a young man wearing nothing but leather pants and a chest harness made of chain knelt next to it, setting out some kind of supplies. Next to her stood another man. He, of course, was all in leather as well, and appeared to be about fifty years old. One of his hands was buried in the woman’s thick, dark hair, and he seemed to be pulling her head backward. As Allie watched, he leaned down and kissed her, caressing her bare breasts with his free hand.

“That’s Gary, with his submissive Katie and her slave tad. They were good friends of Allen’s.”

“So she’s a submissive, but she has her own slave?” Allie said.

“Yes. Remember I told you about switches? That’s what Katie is. She likes both dynamics, and tad fulfills different needs for her than Gary does. They all live together.”

“They live together?” Allie repeated in surprise.

“Yes. It’s called polyamory. It means ‘many loves,’ and a significant percentage of kinky people, although not all of them, are also polyamorous. It probably has to do with being willing to experiment with different relationship styles and sexual mores.”

tad seemed to have all of his implements organized now, and he leaned down to reverently kiss both of Katie’s boots. Then he began to clean them vigorously, soaping and wiping them down. His enjoyment of the work was evident, and Katie watched him in evident pleasure. Then Gary moved closer to her, and she looked up with a smile before reaching out a hand. Allie couldn’t see exactly what was going on, but she thought that Katie was unzipping Gary’s pants. She watched with wide eyes as Katie reached in and pulled out her dominant’s penis and began rubbing it over her face, flicking her tongue out to tease it and smiling as Gary’s grip on her hair seemed to tighten in anticipation. tad looked up and grinned as Katie took the cock into her mouth, eyes closed in concentration, slowly drawing back and away, and then pushing forward quickly to encase it again. Allie’s groin responded to the scene, making her even more aware of Karl’s masculine presence next to her. She shuddered a little in pleasure.

“What are they doing?” Allie whispered to Karl. She knew it was a stupid question. It was obvious that Katie was having her leather cleaned while giving a blow job to Gary. But it seemed to Allie, looking around the dungeon, that hot as it was, it was completely different than the other activities going on. Many of the women and men who were tied or chained to crosses or tables were moaning or screaming. One man in the far corner was using a long, loud whip on a woman who was yelping and dancing away from it.

“I explained to you about the uses of pain and intense stimulation,” Karl reminded her, following her gaze, and Allie nodded. “But there are a lot of levels of BDSM and hundreds of ways that it can be expressed. You see that Gary and his group aren’t causing each other pain. They’re expressing the hierarchy of their relationship in the fact that tad is servicing his mistress, Katie, by publicly cleaning her leather while she is sexually servicing Gary, her dominant. Not everything in the community is about pain. BDSM can be about bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism, and masochism, or a combination of any of them. It can also be about sensuality, the acceptance of our bodies, or just a celebration of sex. Close your eyes and see if you can feel the sexual energy in the room.”

Allie did as he instructed. She hadn’t considered herself particularly sensitive to energy before, but now she became aware of pulsations of something that radiated through the air, making her feel alive, invigorated, stimulated—and horny. It might have been watching the three in the opposite corner that was stimulating her, but she thought there was something more, an intensity that came from every direction at once. She swayed slightly, surprised at the palpability of it, and met a solid object.

Her eyes flew open to discover that she was leaning against Karl’s shoulder. He was looking down at her, not in surprise but with a smoldering look in his dark eyes. In the light they looked almost inhumanly black, and Allie found she was staring into them, unable to look away.

He moved enough to put an arm around her shoulders and hold her steady. “Are you all right?” he murmured in a low, silky voice, his head bending even closer. Allie had a panicked thought that he was going to kiss her, and then an even worse thought that he might not. She tried to lean closer without being too blatant, but he pulled away, disappointingly.

“It does give you ideas, doesn’t it?” he said, rubbing her shoulder lightly. Then, while Allie was beginning to wonder whether he was making fun of her, he stood up. “Come on,” he said, holding out a hand to her again. “Let’s go check out the snacks and see if Jane has left yet.”

Jane was just entering the dungeon as they approached the door. She was on the arm of a stout man who looked short next to her artificial height. He nodded stiffly to Karl, who returned his gesture, and they passed each other. Jane was either engrossed with her companion or determined to make them think she was.

They sat in the outer, or “social,” room as Allie found it was called, and chatted. Sometimes other groups or single people came over and Karl introduced Allie to them, and other times he answered Allie’s questions about the lifestyle or recounted stories about her father.

After a while Gary, Katie, and tad came in and got drinks and snacks. On their way past, Katie gave Karl a hug and Gary shook his hand, while tad stood behind them, smiling but making no motion forward. Allie introduced herself, letting them infer her identity, which they did with quickly suppressed raised eyebrows. They didn’t stay to chat, however. They went to the other couch, where Katie lay down with her head in Gary’s lap while tad positioned himself on the floor next to her on a cushion and leaned on her legs. Katie’s boots were on the floor next to him, and he began to massage her feet.

Allie tried not to stare, but there was something incredibly intriguing about the energy between and around the trio across the room that her eyes kept drifting back. They were chatting lazily amongst themselves and occasionally with other people. They seemed completely at home. Katie’s eyes were closed much of the time, although she still laughed and talked. Gary’s hand wound its way over her face, throat, and chest, and through her hair, stroking and caressing in a way that made Allie want to beg Karl to let her lie down and be petted. She couldn’t imagine Brad in that position, or being in the club at all. It just wasn’t his thing, she thought.

“Would you like to have someone to massage your feet like that?” Karl murmured, following the direction of her gaze.

Allie jumped convulsively and turned back to him, flushing bright red.

“I don’t know,” she stammered. “Brad used to do that for me sometimes.” It was a stupid thing to say, and she knew it. But it brought back a memory of when they were first together, her on the couch and Brad sitting on the floor next to her, giving her a long, delicious foot massage while they discussed the day. That had been a nice time, before all the stress about the house and running their own business. Her eyes teared up a little, remembering.

Karl was watching her. “You could have both, you know,” he said softly, turning back to the other group.

His words frightened her, even though she wasn’t completely sure what he was talking about. “I don’t know how any of that could work.”

He nodded. “You have a lot of things to decide before you can seriously consider it,” he agreed. “But could you see yourself in Katie’s position?”

She looked back and considered. The woman looked blissfully happy, being attended to by two very attractive men.
Who wouldn’t enjoy that?
Allie thought. Obviously Gary was the leader of the group, the strong, commanding dominant. She could imagine what it would be like to have someone to lean on, to look up to for help with the hard decisions. Neither she nor Brad had really been able to take control of their situation with the house, or their relationship, for that matter. Maybe that was what was wrong with them. She needed someone who was actually willing to be responsible, to take all of the pieces of her life and put them in order.

But if she did let Brad take charge, she reflected, then they would just move back to Kansas City. She didn’t want that kind of leadership, she knew. Brad obviously didn’t want to be the one to be in charge of running the house and making it successful. But if she couldn’t make it successful either, where did that leave them?

Chapter 16

Saturday morning Allie woke up with a confused feeling that it was a very important day, although she couldn’t immediately remember why. While she showered and dressed, she thought about what she had seen at the club the previous night. It had been so different from anything she’d ever experienced before, even when she worked with Charlie. She had been accustomed to thinking of that as a humiliating, depraved time of her life, but now she saw it in a completely different perspective. People like Brad’s family were so afraid of sex that they tried to avoid anything that would remind them of it. Society itself, at least since the Victorians and the Puritans, had assumed that the acknowledgement of sensuality was sinful. But sex is a life force, she considered as she brushed her teeth.
It isn’t going to go away just because some people are uncomfortable with it
.

And these people were very comfortable with it. They didn’t content themselves with sitting at home watching people be sexy on television. They got dressed up, or rather undressed, and went to places where they could express their sexuality openly, without being judged or belittled because their bodies weren’t perfect or their fetishes were unusual.

It wasn’t until she was on her way downstairs to make breakfast that she remembered what was special about the day. Brad was coming back to give her his decision. Her relationship might end today. She stopped in midstride, breathless with a sense of foreboding. Strangely, she found as she forced herself to continue calmly toward the kitchen she was more worried about what would happen if Brad wanted to stay than if he had decided to leave. How could she explain Karl’s ideas to him? And not just the ideas but the fact that they were beginning to appeal strongly to her?