Ice Queen (29 page)

He’d opened her dress like he had every right to do so. Like a Master who wanted to fuck his slave. His hands, capable of sending currents of pleasure up and down her nervous system, were pulling up the skirt on either side of her hips. She heard him mutter a sensual expletive, an explosion of breath as he saw the garters, the thong underwear. What he might have commanded her to wear when she was under his mentoring. A mentoring that was supposed to be over. A lie that apparently was fooling no one, not even herself.

“Why did you dress this way?”

She wanted to deny it. His breath was hot on her skin at the point of her neck again.

And oh, God, his teeth were lightly holding her, his tongue now stroking the sensitive bone.

“Speak to me.”

“I…liked putting it on, thinking about you seeing it.” She’d been her own worst enemy, increasing her sexual frustration by doing things that only reminded her of how much she wanted to be near him. Then he had to appear and discover this.

His thumb slid under the thong, caressing her anus as his other finger gently dipped into slippery heat between her legs. He rubbed his knuckle through her wetness, apparently enjoying the feel of it. She shuddered, her hips rocking.

“Be still. Be very, very still. You’re a statue in my garden, every curve kissed by sun and moonlight.” His lips followed the crescent line of her shoulder. Her hands were clenched on either side of the English teapot with yellow daffodil patterns and she could not let go, could not move. All her senses were riveted to his voice, every muscle aware that it existed to serve his Will. Her logical mind and her control were both gone as if they’d never been. In the space of a heartbeat, she’d given everything to him.

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All great Masters and Mistresses knew instinctively when the gates fell. When they held in their palm the most fragile part of the sub’s soul, beating frantically like a heart.

She now understood the look she’d always been unable to fathom in his eye at The Zone, why she’d always avoided him. He’d known he could have this from her.

“Think about those bronze sculptures…” His voice soothed her surge of panic.

“How the artists focused on the lines of the body, keeping the lines simple to bring out the life in the art. It’s in their very stillness they burst with the power of sensuality. Like you, Marguerite. Absolutely still like this, by my command, you’re a Goddess.” He caught the teapot trembling in her wet hand with one of his, eased it down to the counter. Then he brought the skirt up, bunching it at her waist. When he unfastened his trousers, he gave her no time to think before he tore the tiny strap at the leg of her panties, making them drop uselessly to the floor. Cupping his hand over her front, over her mound, he pushed her back into him, into a cock that eased as naturally into her as the knife had sunk into Natalie’s moist birthday cake.

“Caress your cunt around my cock, Marguerite. I want to suck your taste off your fingertips.”

She reached down, found her wetness between his fingers, the wonder of the velvet hardness of him penetrating her body. When she caressed them both, she heard his groan against her neck, felt the eager shove of him deeper into her body.

She couldn’t help the guttural sound of pleasure from her own lips, the admission that her body ached for him. Clamping down on his cock, drawing him in, she welcomed each stroke as he slowly drove into her, withdrew, drove in again. His hand over her mound stroked her clit while the other glided up her body. Palm flattened against her sternum, his thumb traced the crease beneath one breast that felt heavy with need in his hand. Two fingers played in the tender pocket at the base of her throat. His thighs were hard and sure against the back of hers, lean muscle and heat pressed from her ass to her shoulders.

When she reached up, his mouth seized her fingers, sucking the arousal off them.

Once he freed her fingers, she caught his shirt at the shoulder, her other hand around the side of his neck. She felt the rasp of his jaw against the baby-soft skin on the inside of her forearm as he bowed his head alongside hers. His breath was hot on her shoulder, her neck, the upper slope of her breast. His fingers and cock worked together in single purpose so she could not deny the man that commanded them. Commanded her.

“Come for me, angel.”

As soon as the words came forth, before she could thrust him away, her body exploded, the climax tearing through her, relieving the ache of not having him for the past several days, the thing Chloe had described as summer love. This felt more like fulfillment for all the seasons, including something to warm her in winter.

As her pussy rippled along him, she felt his own release. His fingers dug into her, his strokes sure and strong, driving her down to her elbows on the counter. His body 189

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bent over hers, covering her, holding her as his hips pumped against her sensitive buttocks. Her thighs widened, soft whimpers coming from her lips as aftershock after aftershock drove her hips up against him.

At length he slowed but he did not pull away or out. His large hand brushed over her damp back. Stroking her hair off her left shoulder, he laid his lips on that spot.

Tasted her, caressed her with his mouth, his hands running down her sides over her bare hips and breasts, their tops unencumbered by the bra. When he drew out, the pressure of his hand brought her up with him. She felt him fasten his trousers before he took the damp cloth from the counter sink, pressing it between her legs before she could protest.

“Ssshhh,” he said. “Just be still and lean back against me.” Her arms somehow found themselves back up around his neck as he stroked between her legs, cleaning his seed and her climax off her thighs and the smooth folds of her sex. She pressed her face against his throat, watching him bend his head to the task, the facets of his burnished gold eyes, the sensual set of his mouth.

“I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

“Haven’t you?”

She hadn’t even realized she’d spoken aloud. “Well, I mean, a lover.”

“Mmm.” He laid the cloth on the counter again and moved her back a step with him, helping her skirt fall back into place. Bringing the bodice back up, he kept her turned away from him as he re-fastened each frog, adjusted the shoulder seams and smoothed the fabric over the curves of her breasts. When he turned her in his arms, desire still glowed in his eyes. “Well, I think you do now.” Glancing toward the floor, he bent and retrieved her torn panties, put them in his pocket before she could take them.

“I owe you a pair,” he said.

“So you owe me a shopping trip.”

“That sounds suspiciously like you just invited me on a date, angel.” He smiled at her discomfiture, stroked a wisp of her hair over her ear. “Tuesday night, eight o’clock.

Anything special I should do to prepare? Which room?”

“I’ll leave instruction with The Zone staff as to how I want you prepared and where. I typically don’t tell my subs what to expect. It’s none of their business what I’m planning, just that they be there on time and submit to it.” Why were the words making her shake, as if the ground were about to open up beneath her under that unreadable gaze? “The rest is a surprise.”

He nodded. Before he could step back, she caught the front of his ironed shirt and yanked hard. Buttons clattered across the floor. He made an involuntary movement toward her but otherwise held his stance as her gaze coursed down over the muscled chest, the fine mat of hair, the tapered waist.

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“Now we’re even, on clothing at least.” The physical act helped her find her Mistress voice. Deliberately she raised her gaze back to his face, taking time to enjoy the territory in between. “All you owe me is Tuesday.”

“A promise that’s a privilege to pay.” His eyes burning, he took her hand in a firm grip, raised it to his lips and turned it so they brushed her palm. “I’ll see you then, Mistress Marguerite. Don’t forget me. I’ll be waiting for you.” She watched him move out the kitchen side door, which would allow him safe passage to the parking area without the children seeing his state of dishabille. It intrigued her that he’d scoped out her exits in so little time. Then she discovered that the other entries to the kitchen, the one to the garden and the swinging door, had been quietly secured when he came in. Even the blinds on the garden door were closed so no little people could have surprised them in their very adult moment.

He was considerate, giving and courteous in all the important ways. Passionate, demanding and ruthless about getting what he wanted, also in all the important ways.

She bent and picked up every button, lined them up on the counter, stared at them as if they were jewels that had fallen into her lap. She had no idea what she was doing anymore. For some reason, that didn’t really matter at the moment.

Placing the tip of each of her fingers on five of the buttons, she moved them across the counter idly as if they were tiny skates, making patterns. Spoke his words aloud, thinking about them.

“A thousand tiny imperfections can make a perfect life.” 191

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The purple light of The Zone’s gold-edged neon marquee threw a wash of surreal light over the parking area. It was a good crowd for a Tuesday night. Marguerite sat in her car, watched the security patrol make its second lap since she’d pulled in ten minutes ago. Apparently the ownership of the club had taken prompt steps to ensure there would be no repeat of her unpleasant experience.

It was yet another of the many ways The Zone made it clear that the protection of their members was a number-one priority. But beyond admirable management style, it was a personal message from Tyler to her. A message she chose to push into a closet in her mind where she wouldn’t see it. She needed her focus tonight. She took a deep breath. One. Two. Three.

Tuesday nights were about finding and keeping the balance she needed to run the rest of her life. She harbored no illusion that this night would do that. She felt like a restless sea, waiting for the arrival of a storm to give her the fuel to explode with power and pounding fury. Ravage a coastline, demolish homes, stack up boats like a pile of children’s toys.

She’d taken his offer, recognizing it as a high compliment. Her pride wanted to show him what being under her Dominance would be like. And now she felt a way she’d never felt before. Always before, the moment she drove into the parking lot she’d feel a calmness settling on her shoulders, her mind centering on her intentions for the evening, on what she’d demand of the man she would choose.

Tonight she managed the ripples of unease by letting them pass around her like rush-hour traffic on the highway. She’d let them get by, then find her center as she always did. She’d know exactly what she wanted to extract from Tyler to feed her own soul.

Getting out of the car, she pulled the velvet cape around her body, her pale hair gleaming against the unrelieved black. She didn’t take anything else with her.

Everything she’d requested would be in the room. Just like Tyler.

She nodded to the doorman. From the barely restrained speculation in his eyes, she understood the reason for the crowd. She’d requested that the ceiling view screen be left open. The staff posted what groups and scenes would be available for viewing via email blasts sent out twenty-four hours before the session. She imagined such an unexpected face-off between the two most powerful Dominants at The Zone would create a standing-room-only crowd.

An audience didn’t faze her. In her mind it was always between her and her sub, but the ceiling view could rattle the chosen slave. Especially a private man like Tyler.

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Stepping inside, she went through the reception area and straight down the side hall to the private video rooms. As she’d requested, her tape was being queued up, by a Zone staff member named Stacey who’d likely been radioed by the doorman as Marguerite was crossing the parking lot.

“We just finished getting him ready, Mistress. He’s ready when you are.”

“How long is the tape?”

“About fifteen minutes.”

“All right. Please have someone stay in the room with him for the next twenty minutes. I’ll be down by then.”

The young woman nodded, turned for the door. Marguerite noticed the spots of color high on her cheeks, the averted eyes. “Stacey?”

“Yes, Mistress?”

She knew the girl to be an extremely capable staff member who often earned extra money as a hired submissive for those Masters and Mistresses who preferred a trained, known quantity in The Zone walls. She looked distinctly flustered tonight.

“Did you handle Tyler’s undressing?”

“I did, Mistress. A woman to undress him and two men to restrain him, just as you specified.”

“Did you enjoy that?”

Her response, though soft, was immediate. “I did, Mistress. Thank you.”

“Why did you like it so much? You see things like this every night.”

“Not a Master like Tyler. Not being bound, stripped.” She drew an unsteady breath, let out a nervous chuckle. “With respect, Mistress, there isn’t a woman here tonight who wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.” She slipped out.

Marguerite shook her head and settled in a chair. Curling her cold hand in the warm folds of the cloak, she let one leg emerge, cross over the other. She pressed the play button.

She’d thought about having one of the male staff do the undressing but realized that as a petty desire to irritate Tyler and discarded it. Then put it in anyway. Then took it out.

In the end, she’d opted for a woman for the very reason she’d almost decided against it. When she focused in on hands on that muscular body on the tape, she wanted to absorb herself enough in it to imagine it was her. Stacey didn’t know it but Marguerite would have given a lot to be in
her
shoes. Disrobing a submissive, unbuttoning shirt cuffs, sliding trousers down over a well-defined backside, seeing what type of underwear or socks they chose, those were intimacies she could not risk close-up, hands-on. But she could experience them this way.

He stood in the center of the observatory, her favorite Zone room. The lighting could be dimmed so only a glittering of stars were thrown out for light along the walls of the chamber. The lights rotated as if the bound sub were the center of a moving 193

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galaxy. The platform on which he was anchored could also be rotated, all of which helped disorient him while publicly displaying him from every angle. A spotlight would illuminate him but the Mistress could come and go out of the starlit shadows, all of her preparations and tools set up out of sight, increasing the trepidation.

She’d had him brought in blindfolded because she suspected he would look for the camera and gaze into it, guessing she might do this. She saw immediately that he’d dressed for her. Black slacks perfectly pressed, a pristine white shirt, silver cufflinks.

Black and white, which set off that raven and silver hair. The lights deepened the ebony shadow of his jawline that no amount of shaving could completely eliminate.

Stacey moved out of that darkness. Marguerite had commanded that no one was to speak to him unless necessary. He was simply to obey their physical nudges to move as they needed him to move. No distractions, nothing but what was in his head to keep him occupied. No attempts at banter to regain some control of the situation. If attempted, he was to be gagged. Since he had received a copy of the instructions, she wondered what his reaction had been to that.

When his nostrils flared as Stacey came near, Marguerite felt the jolt to her toes. He recognized her scent. She’d left some of her tea tree oill infused with lavender for Stacey to mist on her skin. To give him a moment of confusion and to see if he was that sensually aware.

Stacey’s fingers slipped the buttons down the front of his shirt, lifted his hands to undo the cuffs. She fumbled a little but then she took a closer hold of the shirt at the waistband of his slacks to free it, her thumbs brushing the well-defined lower abdomen just above the belt line.

Marguerite had seen his upper body during their partial weekend together but she’d been too often distracted by other factors to fully enjoy a perusal of it. She didn’t have to be distracted now. The curves of the pectorals, the sectioned stomach muscles were sculpted with the perfect imperfection of one of his bronze statues.

Stacey glanced up at his face. He hadn’t said a word but a slight smile played on his mouth. Not a smirk but a reassurance for Stacey. He knew the hands touching him were that of a submissive. The son of a bitch could tell the difference. Marguerite shook her head. Stacey was enjoying herself now, reaching up to push the shirt off his shoulders, her palms following the skin as the shirt peeled away and his arms drew back to let her get the shirt down them, the solid strength of his biceps and rounded points of his shoulders gleaming in the lighting. As she moved away to go hang up the shirt, the two men moved into the light. Three sets of manacles were lowered from the ceiling. They lifted Tyler’s well-defined arms to lock the cuffs at the wrists, just above the elbows and the final set right between the swell of the biceps and shoulders. The slack was drawn up to suspend the arms perpendicular from his body, a pose that would limit his upper torso movement far more than just drawing his arms over his head. The pose of DaVinci’s perfect Vitruvian man.

Pressing the zoom button, she went in on the chest area as she always did to closely examine every possible angle, to determine if there was an unacceptable level of 194

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discomfort to the restraint. There was a second screen and she turned it on now, for it showed a live view of her subject waiting for her. She compared, picked up the headset.

“Tony?”

“Yes, Mistress Marguerite? Always a pleasure to hear your lovely voice.”

“You and Eli did an excellent job. Would you please raise the biceps restraints an inch? I want a little more strain on the shoulders.”

“Right away, Mistress.”

“And please start him rotating so the audience may enjoy the view.” Tyler’s head had turned at Tony’s voice, his head cocking. She wondered if he could hear her voice coming through Tony’s earpiece.

She turned her attention back to the replay. No open cuts to concern herself with.

She saw the scars she’d remembered from his house, knew there might be more vulnerable joints there and made a mental note to take care in those areas. Then she zoomed out, watched Stacey loosen his belt, free the tongue, dropping the pants lower on his hips, revealing that V line of muscle on either side of his stomach disappearing beneath the waistband.

She wasn’t breathing as Stacey unhooked the trousers and took down the zipper.

That was why she preferred particularly in this case to view this in privacy. He wore dark gray underwear beneath the slacks, the snug stretch boxer shorts that hugged the ass and crotch, the upper part of the thighs. Stacey had the trousers halfway down his legs before she remembered the shoes. She tapped on one dress shoe with a finger, a silent direction to toe the shoes off. The trousers were loose at the upper part of his thighs, enhancing the artistic display of grace and beauty in his upper body as he complied.

Marguerite was throbbing. Throbbing. She didn’t throb, didn’t have this uncontrolled pulsing in her cunt keening for fulfillment when she looked at her subs.

There was a deep sexuality to their interactions but she was able to keep it locked in a contained space, relieving it in her own way with her own private ritual when she got home at the end of the night. She wanted satisfaction now and all she’d done so far was watch him get undressed, like a peeping Tomasina in a boy’s locker room.

Stacey’s slender hands were at the band of those gray boxers. Hooking it, she took the underwear down, cupping her hands so she’d be able to feel the curve of his buttocks whisper under her fingertips. Marguerite could hardly blame her. Tyler’s head was still. She’d made a calculated error with the blindfold. She wanted to see what was going on in his eyes. But his stillness suggested tension, wary alertness, waiting for the next move.

She told herself this wasn’t about payback, though she could feel a beast in her wanting to tear him down, open him up, make him bleed for disturbing her world, for asking more of her than she’d wanted to give. And she knew he had the audacity to want ten times more than even that from her.

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When Stacey got the fabric of his underwear past the curve of the buttocks, she had to bring her hands forward to peel the fabric back and free his cock. It was a mouthwatering size. Marguerite was sure the opportunity to see it for the first time was causing a stir on the main floor among those who’d come to see this show. Somehow the word “show” created a tightness in her body, a moment of sick nausea. She pushed it away, breathed. No. She’d never made her interactions with a sub about a performance, but she’d always made them public because she’d seen no need to do otherwise. Had no desire for the intimacy that privacy could bring.

Tyler said he was honoring the Mistress in her. Giving her the chance to what? To even the playing field, to apologize, or to simply manipulate her?

She rose, not wanting to see Stacey rub the warm oill on her hands and begin to stroke it on Tyler’s cock as she’d required. She hadn’t wanted the rest of him oiled.

Actually she didn’t necessarily need that part of him done but she’d wanted him handled by strange hands while restrained to disturb him. Watching his quiet features she realized she was the only one who could accomplish that. He was waiting for her.

For her to prove she could take him down as easily as he had taken her.

She put her hand on the stop button but could not bring herself to press it yet as Stacey’s hands rubbed that impressive shaft, back, forth, oiling it as it rose under her touch, as she palmed his balls and got them glistening. She would put him in a cock harness, attach it to nipple clamps, make him feel pain, the type of pain that was in her head now, becoming a pounding headache. She wished she had amputated Tim’s genitals. If she had, she would not only have a sense of satisfied completion, she’d be in a safe, quiet cell now where these things didn’t matter.

She hit the stop button, removed the tape and dropped it in The Zone secure return box so it would be re-filed in the main office. Gathering her cloak about her, she yanked open the door to come face-to-face with Mistress Violet, leaning against the rich wallpaper of the opposite wall.

Violet did not come to The Zone as often as she had before she married Mac, but Marguerite knew they still came a couple days of the month. Usually in the company of friends like Tyler to take advantage of The Zone’s topnotch amenities for play. While Violet was barely tall enough for the top of her head to reach Marguerite’s chin, Marguerite did not underestimate her.

“Something I can do for you, Mistress Violet?” It was an effort to put courtesy in her voice but she managed it.

As a result of the exposure created by the bust of the S&M killer, Violet no longer bothered with the long black wig and contacts that used to alter her appearance at The Zone. Her shoulder-length curly auburn hair and Caribbean blue eyes were a tempting match for the body she displayed in a black corset. It pushed her small breasts out and nearly over, the garment a complement to the snug purple satin skirt with black filmy overlay that flirted just above mid-thigh. Marguerite suspected that she had made Mac lace the corset, tightening it until she was satisfied with the view. Despite that intimacy, Violet likely wouldn’t have given him permission to touch anything yet, wanting to 196