Disciplined by the Dom (7 page)

“We begin with an interview,” he said, his expression returning to normal.

“An interview, or an interrogation?” she blurted out.

Now he smiled at her, his eyes still shining. He seemed entertained, leaning back in his chair with his shirt pulled across his chest. He looked up at the light and then down at the table. “Well, it’s not a subtle set-up, is it?”

Catie swallowed and tried not to look scared.

He leaned forward, watching her face carefully. “You know the club safewords, of course?”

She nodded. “Green, yellow, red. Like a traffic light.”

“And you were telling the truth when you said that you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then I wonder why you look frightened.”

He didn’t wait for an answer but got up and then, swiftly, walked somewhere behind her, into the dark. He didn’t explain what he was doing. He didn’t explain what he had meant. He just let her wait.

When he came back into the tent of light spilling down from the light hanging overhead, he carried two boxes—one black, one white—that he placed on the table in front of her. The white one was a leather chest with a lock large enough to be a suitcase. The black one was smaller, about the size of a shoebox.

“This interview has a purpose,” he said. “To train you, I have to know you. I have to know what you like, what you do not like, what you think you will hate but in fact love, and why. I have to come to know you better than you know yourself in some ways.”

Catie kept her expression carefully alert, maybe a little apprehensive. This was exactly what she feared: if Jake got to know her—really know her—and why she had come to Volare, she would lose everything. And yet, some part of her felt giddy, wanted to indulge in the fantasy that maybe he would get to know her,
and he’d like her
. The thought was like a little spark of warmth, flickering just out of reach. It was seductive. Tempting.

Fantasies are for children, Catie. You’ve got adult responsibilities.

She dragged her thoughts back to the present and shook off the comforting fantasy, reminding herself that she needed to live in reality. She needed to get biographical details about Jake, not give him her own.

“Do I get to know you?” she asked. “I mean, you brought it up. Sir.”

His head jerked up, his body paused in the act of sitting down in his chair. His brows were raised in one of those expressions of genuine surprise that leaves ripples along the whole forehead, but the sudden expressiveness of his face made him look younger. She suddenly wondered what he looked like when he really laughed.

The expression faded as he sat back in his chair, replaced by that twinkle in his eye.

“The interview has rules,” he continued. Apparently he would only answer her questions when he felt like it. “I will ask the questions. You will answer them with total, complete honesty. If you cannot answer a question, you will choose a card from this box.” He pointed to the black one.

 Catie looked at the box. It seemed somehow ominous.

“And if you do well,” he said, “perhaps I will let you come.”

It was the first time he’d mentioned sex. The word “come” penetrated right to her core, resurrecting the ghost of the last orgasm he’d given her. It hummed throughout her body in anticipation. He would touch her. He would do things to her. At any moment. She had to try to keep her head in the midst of all that.

“Yes, sir,” she said softly.

He smiled quickly, and then his face became grim, serious. He rose from his chair with the familiar athletic grace and shoved the table aside, leaving no barrier between them. The sound of the table sliding across the floor hung in the air as he stood over her.

“Grip the seat of your chair with your hands,” he said. “Do not let go unless I tell you to.”

Catie felt for the edge of her seat and squeezed. She kept her eyes locked on his face as he swung his arm down, almost carelessly, and flicked open the buttons of her button down shirt in one motion.

She had picked her outfit in a kind of panic, not knowing what the dress code for this sort of thing was, and in the end she had gone with a sexy business sort of look, thinking it made her look respectable. He’d just destroyed all pretense at respectability. She felt…despoiled.

Her body tensed for him.

“You were right to wear a bra that clasps in the front,” he said, looking down at her. “I would hate to cut something so fine.”

With the same ease, he snapped her bra open and pushed it aside, leaving her breasts exposed. She took a deep breath, her eyes locked on Jake as she felt her nipples tighten.

He took his fill of the sight of her, then turned and opened the white leather chest. She couldn’t see what was inside, but what he took out glinted in the harsh light.

“First question: do you have prior experience with BDSM?” he said.

“Yes.” She was focused on his closed hand, the one that held whatever it was he’d taken out of the box.

He arched an eyebrow and circled in around her.

“I told you I required complete honesty,” he said. “Complete. Anything less will be punished.”

She shuddered. If he only knew. She opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her:

“
Complete
,” he said again.

What was he getting at? She had tried some stuff, but not…

“Not like this,” she said. Why was she breathing so hard? “I tried, with my ex, but he wasn’t…it wasn’t really his thing.”

Jake was silent. Then:

“I reviewed your application after our first meeting. My understanding was that you obtained a reference from a BDSM club in Chicago.”

Oh shit.
She had, sort of, in that when Master Roman called to check out her application, she’d paid Danny to pretend to be the owner of a small BDSM club, small enough that no one would have heard of it, and he’d flubbed his lines, like he always did, and said Chicago. She’d never even
been
to Chicago. She’d had to pretend she’d made a mistake on the application.

“Yes, sir,” she said, “I had an internship at a comedy theater that summer.” Please let it have been in summer. “But I didn’t really… I was never comfortable enough to fully participate, I guess.”

“Why not?”

“Because of what I said before. We weren’t a good fit.”

“Why not with anyone else?”

She stayed silent. There hadn’t been a BDSM club, of course. But it was true she’d only made half-hearted efforts. She didn’t have a ready explanation.

“Was there anyone you trusted?” he asked. “Think.”

Catie blinked, and told the truth, “No.”

Jake reached down with both hands, a chain glittering between them, and then there was something biting down on her nipples. She looked down and saw that he’d pinched each nipple with a shining metal clamp. His fingers remained poised on the levers, gradually letting them close ever tighter around her flesh. The pain shot through her in sudden, shocking spurts, each one terminating in the nexus of sensation between her legs, where it blossomed into pleasure.

“And yet you just allowed me to put metal clamps on your nipples, and you never once moved your hands from the seat,” he observed. “As ordered.”

Catie was having trouble breathing. She’d never felt anything like this. Her abdominal muscles contracted in time with her short, labored breaths, and she felt sweat begin to bead on her collarbone. Her mind raced to keep up with the physical sensations that tore through her body.

“What does that feel like, Catie?”

She licked her lips. “Good.”

“The pain?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me more.”

“Confusing. Like being tossed back and forth, and there’s no more…”

She had been about to say no more room for lies. It felt like it. If she let herself fall into the sensation completely, she’d lose the strength to keep up the façade, and then she’d just be herself—who knows what she’d say. She realized that part of her
wanted
to confess, wanted to be known for what she was, and it terrified her, but the added danger heightened the physical sensation. She shook her head and said only, “It feels good.”

She could feel him watching her. She kept her eyes half-lidded, trying to regain control of herself. Already she was becoming accustomed to the sensations, already she was learning to ride them, rather than be ridden by them.

“Catie,” he said, and she looked up. He was watching her. That look…it felt like he could see through her, every time.

He can’t, Catie. Get a grip.

“Clasp your hands behind the back of the chair.”

She released her grip on the bottom of the chair, surprised to find she’d been holding on to it so hard, and did as instructed. It stretched her back, moving her breasts a little and pulling at her nipples. She sighed, and she thought she saw him grin.

Jake moved over to the white box again, and this time came around behind her chair. She heard him come close, and then there was a swath of black across her eyes.

A blindfold.

“Where did you grow up?” he asked. He tied the blindfold tightly.

“California.”

“What did your parents do?”

“My dad is—was—a real estate agent.”

“Was?”

His questions were coming rapid fire, and it was hard to think about anything other than what he might be planning to do next—not being able to see put her on high physical alert, draining her mental defenses. She struggled.

“He doesn’t do that anymore.”

“What does he do now?”

Her tone grew sharp and brittle, like a blade of glass. “I don’t know.”

There was a pause. A silence, more like. She wondered if she could call “red” for the questions alone. She didn’t want to, she didn’t want the session to end, and yet she didn’t…

She didn’t want to be thinking about this.

When he finally spoke, his tone was gentler. “And your mother?”

“Dead.”

“Ah.”

‘Ah?’ ‘Ah?’ What the hell did that mean? Catie felt the first stirrings of anger. She was sitting blindfolded in a chair with her chest exposed, her nipples clamped, her hands clasped behind her back, and Jake was—

His voice split her thoughts.

He said, “Spread your legs.”

Her belly tightened involuntarily, and her mind stopped thinking about anything other than what was coming next. Slowly, she remembered it had been a command. She spread her legs, blind to what was in front of her. All she could hear was her own rapid breathing.

Then she felt him—more than heard him—kneel between her legs. She couldn’t be certain until his hands came to rest on her knees and began to push slowly up her thighs. Her mind went right back into overdrive, and for a moment, she panicked that she would lose control.

“Sir—”

His hands stopped and squeezed her legs gently.

“You do not have to be afraid. I will take care of you, if you will let me.”

But that was the problem: she did have to be afraid. She had to be terrified. She couldn’t let him take care of her, not without feeling terrible, not without betraying him even more completely, and not without risking…

“Just tell me the truth.”

And his hands resumed their advance up the length of her legs, scrambling her thoughts once again.

“What did you want to be when you grew up?”

“What?”

“You heard me,” he said, and his thumbs reached down the insides of her thighs and hooked under the hem of her skirt. “What did you dream of being when you were little?”

Each beat of her heart, perfectly in time as his hands slipped a little farther, pushing her skirt up her legs and defining a new border—a border she desperately wanted him to cross.

“A Roman general,” she said, blushing immediately. She hadn’t meant to say that. It was completely, one hundred percent true, but it was also so ridiculous that she had never told anyone.

There was a pause.

“Really?” he said. “Why?”

She nodded, blushing furiously. “Yes. I read about them. In my dad’s study, there were these fake leather bound books. I mean the leather was fake, not…They were always so smart and wily, and then they came home, and they were heroes, even if only for a little while. They’d
earned
it. At least the ones who made it into the books.”

“Well,” he said, pushing her skirt up to her waist, “some of them. The Romans didn’t necessarily share all of our values, but they believed in rewards and punishment. As do I.”

Catie had been prepared to feel completely humiliated by that admission, by that profoundly weird insight into her strange mind and lonely childhood, and waited for it to arrive. When it didn’t—when no embarrassment was forthcoming, when she didn’t feel completely foolish—she realized it was because he’d made it seem…interesting.

She was on the verge of thanking him when she felt his hands on her thighs again. She stopped breathing when she felt him pull her underwear away and heard the
snip
of a pair of scissors. He was cutting her underwear off of her. Soon she’d be completely helpless, completely unable to hide, and then she might lose everything. And she didn’t have the strength to tell him to stop, because she wanted him, again, wanted whatever he wanted to do to her.

“Please,” she said, and it sounded almost like she might cry. “Please, no more questions.”

His hands gripped the back of her buttocks and pulled her suddenly forward, near the edge of the seat.

“You’re afraid,” he said. “I told you not to be afraid.”

“I can’t help it.”

“What are you afraid of?”

She felt his lips on the skin of her inner thigh. She’d never had a man talk to her while he was down there, never even imagined how that would be, had always just closed her eyes and took the physical sensation for what it was. It had never been so intimate as it was in a fake interrogation room with a man who had blindfolded her. A man who she had to hide from. A man whose last name she didn’t even know.

“I’m afraid if you know me, you won’t…”

But she couldn’t finish.

“Tell me your name,” she begged.

He didn’t speak, but covered her clit with his mouth. She recoiled from the sudden intensity, overwhelmed, her circuits blown. He held on to her and pulled her closer, and with a jerk, he pushed her chair back until it was balanced on two legs, angling her up to him, his one hand holding it steady in the back. How strong was he? His questions had come fast and hard, had been meant to disorient her, knock the truth out of her, and now his tongue came slow and strong, meant to coax…what? The question rose to the surface in her mind, fringed with panic, and then was sucked back down, obliterated by the sensation of his tongue lathing in tender circles around the border of her most sensitive area.