Ice Queen (4 page)

“Our fear of some awful disease drives us to that untenable situation.” 23

Joey W. Hill

“Sounds more like our fear of being vulnerable.” Tyler leaned forward, clasped his hand over hers on the table and deliberately slid her teacup and saucer away from her, to his side.

“What are you doing?”

“Making a point about the nature of a submissive. You were saying?” She stared at him, those pale blue eyes so focused in their frost he expected to feel a sheen of ice form across his face. “Give me back my cup. Please.” She issued the courtesy like a threat.

“No. Tell me what your point was.”

She sat back in her chair, a pose of ease but every movement was calculated as she removed her hand from beneath his and laid it in her lap with the other hand atop it, those nails curved into a loose claw.

“We go around in our SUVs, pay our taxes, mow our lawns. But underneath every person’s veneer lies the Trail of Tears, the Holocaust, the atom bomb, the massacre of Christians in the Sudan. Lurking in the shadows of our darkest motivations is the eighty-year-old homeless woman raped by bored teenagers, the child who huddles alone, afraid of attracting attention. The baby who gives up crying because no one ever comes. Then there are the animals who suffer in labs from our fear of death, who are hunted for sport and captured for amusement as if we have the right to confine life just because we’re bigger and stronger. All the while the land is raped and poisoned by our greed and selfishness. Every event in our lives is a chance for the civilized to be stripped away, exposing the darkest side of who we are. Our veneer is our only hope of maintaining the illusion that we can be something better.” Tyler noted she now had one hand gripping the other tightly, nails digging into her flesh. “My point…” she said quietly.

Her leg uncrossed, a simple, pleasurable act to watch. A blink too late, he recognized the diatribe and sexual tease for the distractions they were. Surging forward, she clasped the handle of the cake knife in her hand, flipped her grip on it and planted the blade in the narrow space between the third and fourth fingers of his left hand resting on the table. She sunk it clean and deep, cutting through tablecloth and solidly into the wood itself so the knife stood on its own, the blade quivering.

Tyler maintained his stillness, even as every muscle tensed in readiness. He’d been in circumstances before where his life depended on razor-sharp intuition, on knowing exactly how to react. Even so, he felt the fury simmer in him at the challenge he would have met equally if he sat across from a man.

“Do you want my violence, Marguerite? Am I that much of a threat to you?” She stared at him a long moment, her delicate nostrils flaring, her face inches from his. “My point—” she repeated in measured tones, though he almost felt the vibration from her body, an overwhelming tension she was not permitting to become trembling,

“—is that savagery is our true nature, Tyler. Like this cake knife, created for such a 24

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lovely purpose, to share an elegant dessert. It’s a killing instrument, able to be something else only until someone’s veneer cracks.” Leaving the knife, she found her teacup without looking for it, tenting her fingers over it like a spider. “Don’t fuck with mine.” Deliberately, Tyler pulled his hand free of the restriction of the knife. Covering her tense hand on the teacup, he pushed it, with her hand still atop, back to her side of the table, easing her back to her chair.

She resisted each inch. Not a fight, but enough so that he had to exert pressure.

Their eyes remained locked together until she reached the point where she would need to slide her hips, and then suddenly she gave way, gracefully easing back from his touch. Settling into the chair as if he had simply held it out for her as was her due. It was impressive, but he was logging other signals. The pounding pulse in her throat, the intensity of her gaze. The fact that she, who had so many carefully cherished items in her shop, had so brutally and quickly destroyed the top of a valuable antique table.

“Marguerite.” He rose, removing the knife. Holding her gaze, he lifted one of her hands and laid the handle of the knife in her palm, closing her fingers over it. “I’ll take you through the sub requirement if you choose to accept me. But I won’t lie for you.

You decide what’s more important. Your veneer, or what The Zone provides for you.

You’re not a coward. Don’t act like one.”

She didn’t look at him. Merely sat motionless and focused on the scene outside the picture window. The gathering night, a bird taking her last sip of water from the lap of a stone Indian goddess. The light flutter of the leaves of a silver green eucalyptus tree from an unseen breeze.

Marguerite didn’t have to look at Tyler to feel his movements, the impact of his expression. She’d faced dangerous situations before but suddenly antagonizing him seemed one of her more foolish calculated risks. Perhaps because she’d not calculated at all, simply reacted. Compelled past control, which had never before been a problem for her.

He released her, moved past her chair. Leaving. She watched the bird move to the ground to scavenge what could be found there. She tried hard to concentrate on that, the mental reminder to replenish the feeder, instead of trying to see Tyler’s reflection in the glass, ashamedly hungry to see his form.

She was successful enough that she jumped, unprepared when his hands came down on her shoulders. The fingers of his right hand curled in her braid, digging in so the tension tilted her head to the right and exposed her neck to the heat of his mouth closing over her jugular.

The power of the sensation exploded in her body with the violence of a grenade. It was something she’d never felt before. A man’s touch, uninvited and overpowering, had never felt like this. Never something she thought she’d welcome.

He’d chosen a method of retaliation to her mad act which simply swept the floor and the walls away, leaving just the magic of his lips on her skin.

25

Joey W. Hill

Suckling her, he scored her with his teeth. Muscles were drawing taut low in her belly, and she felt the amazing sensation of wetness on her thighs. Cupping the silk-clad curves of her shoulders in his large hands, he tightened his grip as his fervor increased, his lips moving up her throat to her jawline. She found herself leaning to the right and back, almost cradled in the curve of his right arm. Overwhelmed by this unexpected turn of events, she couldn’t grasp why she was allowing this or what was happening to her. Only when he moved from the line of her jaw to the corner of her mouth did fear and sanity return.

“No…no.” She struggled to get the words past her lips. Turning to press her head against her shoulder, it put her forehead against the heat of his hand, his hard knuckles.

He stopped, his lips at her ear, his breath caressing her. His left hand dropped down to where she clasped the knife in two tight fists. She hadn’t realized she’d brought her hands together in such a manner. When he closed his palm over the pointed end and bore down, she jerked as the blade punctured his flesh. He turned his palm up so she could see the blood well up from the Venus mound. It trickled along the life line as he tilted his palm and guided the slow, thin flow of blood down to his index finger. She inhaled sharply as he traced the line of her neck with the warm wetness.

“I’m not afraid to bleed for you, Marguerite.” His voice was a rough whisper against her ear. “I’ll tell The Zone you’re thinking it over. Don’t disappoint me. Or yourself.”

26

Ice Queen

His visit to the tearoom on Thursday had been an enlightening trip. Tyler had never been in Marguerite’s place. He supposed he’d been honoring an unspoken code not to come without invitation into the territory of a Zone Domme. He’d expected it to be a well-run establishment. He hadn’t expected the experience to include art, culture, spiritualism. A return to a time romanticized in memory that she’d made fact with the environment she provided, the knowledge she demonstrated, the offerings she had collected and shared. A complex and very intelligent woman.

He smiled at himself, at his infatuation with Marguerite Perruquet which had only increased the more aloof she made herself toward him. At times he thought she was doing it deliberately to goad his interest and perhaps she was, even if unconsciously.

For he knew without a doubt he had an effect on Marguerite, no matter her usual coolness toward him. He wouldn’t classify yesterday’s attempt to spear him to her table as dispassionate. Or her body’s reaction to his lips on her soft throat.

As he drove into The Zone parking lot on Tuesday, Tyler didn’t have to see her black BMW to know she was here. When he got inside, he didn’t even have to see the crowd of club attendees clustered around one portion of the glass floor. He felt her.

Marguerite had become his obsession. She couldn’t draw breath without him feeling the loss of oxygen in his own lungs.

He didn’t know how or when it had happened. He’d known her for some time, admired her techniques at The Zone. What had intrigued him first was the way she never met anyone’s eyes. Not as though she was avoiding confrontation. It was as if she perceived people with a sense other than sight, so sight was unnecessary to her to establish a connection, communication or acknowledgement.

Certainly the man in the room with her tonight, restrained in such a complex layer of straps that Tyler doubted there was any muscle capable of free movement, was not feeling neglected. Brendan had waited months for the pleasure of serving the Ice Queen for the second time, because she almost never took a sub to a private room twice.

Tyler fully expected she would break Brendan down until each cell of his body was attuned to her every movement, every blink or shift of her weight, every aspect of her existence. She was right, what she had said at her tearoom. In two hours she achieved more than most people might in a relationship in which they’d invested two years. For her subjects, he suspected she was the trip of a lifetime. They planned, hoped and dreamed for this short moment.

She would take them to a point where they would die for her, for the simple touch of her hand. When she was done with them, she would walk away without even a glance over her shoulder. He could count on one hand the number of times she’d 27

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allowed her subjects to believe they’d brought her to climax, one of the many reasons she’d earned her title. Never with their hands, definitely never with their cocks. Fully underscoring the slave’s status. Only with his mouth could a sub serve her. As he took a seat, Tyler recalled one of those rare times, when he’d considered himself fortunate to be present.

It had been about six months ago. She’d been straddling the chosen man’s face while he was restrained on a bench that had been tilted at a forty-five degree angle, his head toward the floor, his feet in the air to increase the sense of helplessness. She hadn’t removed her clothes; she rarely ever did. However the tight lace bodysuit in a shimmering black had allowed the sub ample ability to feel the soft lips of her pussy rubbing in slow circles against his mouth.

When she’d lifted her head, apparently in the throes of the climax, her gaze had locked with Tyler’s through the glass ceiling, where he sat in the upper mezzanine watching. She’d shuddered, fighting something, her head bowing back down so her face was in shadow. He’d watched a flush spread across her neck, the line of her cheek.

Something shattered, so distinctly he was surprised to still find his drink dangling loose in his fingers. The shattering was within himself. He couldn’t describe what he felt. He just knew something had happened between them in that brief eye contact. As surely as he knew that she’d been faking that orgasm until she looked up at him. Somehow that had pushed her into a place she hadn’t intended to go.

Look at me
.

He wanted to see it, wanted to see her lose control. She gave her subs mind-blowing orgasms, so totally focused on their pleasure they seemed to overlook that she herself remained cool and unflappable through the process. Like she was a guru guiding them to spiritual enlightenment. For spectators, it increased the sensual mystery, but he had sensed the heat beneath it, as if it were stifled and unable to find expression.

A compulsion he could only thank God for had made her look up at him again. As she fought to stay fully in control of the situation, of herself, barely moving, he’d formed the words with his lips, not thinking, just acting.

Come for me
.

A gasp broke from her lips. Despite the obvious struggles of her mind, so vibrant he could see the swords clashing in her eyes, her moist lips parted and a sound escaped.

The audio was not on but he guessed that sound would have been small, plaintive, like the cry of a dove cut short.

Triumph filled him, and more. Sudden, raging desire, so primitive that he did not have the rationality to question the fury that rose in him, wanting the sub’s lips off her cunt. He wanted his lips, hand or cock there.

Yes.
His lips moved again, his eyes burning.

When her lips drew back from her teeth, her throat contracting, he had a sudden uneasy moment, thinking her fight to deny the natural reaction of her body would cause her to go into a seizure. A hard convulsion jerked her on the man’s mouth, taking 28

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her to an almost painful culmination, everything in her resisting the pleasure, the inevitable.

As he returned to the present, Tyler acknowledged that it was problematic. The Ice Queen was a Dominant. No. THE Dominant, the Domme of all Dommes. She didn’t belong to anyone, though her lovers, temporary though they were, belonged to her for all time. He suspected that like a sorceress, after leaving her emotional mark on them, she could summon them back to her with a spell as an army to do her bidding.

Even more ironic to him was that the women who had always drawn him, intrigued him, were acknowledged submissives. But that one look, that one connection and he knew that he wanted Marguerite Perruquet with a hunger that couldn’t be called anything else or explained away.

He knew there was a whole spectrum of psychological analyses on the BDSM

culture and its adherents. Much of it judgmental, colored by the moral biases of the researchers and some abhorrent excesses of their complicated lifestyle. He had understood a long time ago that BDSM was a faith you had to feel to understand. Many of those who felt it even then denied its pull on their senses because it was so counter to what was considered normal sexuality and political correctness. He took pleasure in unexpected responses in himself but watching her climax had exceeded pleasure. It was pure, predatory need and it was growing stronger, telling him he had to have her.

He settled into his favored spot in the mezzanine where he would have the best view of the room she had reserved for the night and ordered a drink.

* * * * *

Marguerite stood in the corner, motionless. She was to Brendan’s right. He could see her with some eyestrain. For the moment she was letting him struggle for it, though she kept her own gaze forward, focused on the air, focused on her own breathing.

Nothing existed outside her and Brendan, just the heat and life of their two bodies. The glass above displayed Brendan well to a couple hundred attentive people, clustered around the opening. The Doms would watch from the upper mezzanine. Jeremy was in the room with her, The Zone employee and trained paramedic who was here to assist.

But all of that was just a buzz of blurry sensation around the sharp clarity of Brendan’s naked body, bound securely on his stomach on the spanking bench. His knees and calves were strapped to the floor so he couldn’t move, his muscular ass tense. The bare back gleamed, the canvas she would mark. A permanent reminder of her presence in his life for all time.

She wondered how many people carried similar brands inside where no one could see. At least this was a brand that would not be susceptible to infection forever, as some internal brands were. Wounds that never healed, that could always be torn by something as simple as the persuasion of a man with amber eyes. When he’d arrived she’d felt his presence through the glass as easily as if she could see him the way she saw Brendan now.

29

Joey W. Hill

She didn’t freeze up. Accepting that her clarity would include three rather than two tonight, she let the thoughts of him pass through and out her consciousness.

When she moved at last, she stepped out of the shadows in supple thigh-high white boots with lacings up the back and four-inch heels. She’d perfected the art of sauntering in them, heel, toe, heel, toe, pause, one heel digging into the floor as she idly let the toe rock back and forth in the air. She ran her hands over the grips of the three irons, resting at the moment in a bed of glowing briquettes. Lifting one iron, she noted the hue of the metal, set it back down. Not hot enough yet. The safest brands were ironically third-degree burns, because they cauterized the wound, deadened the nerves forever.

She would be doing a trio of brandings across the small of Brendan’s back, just above the rise of his buttocks, using strike irons not cautery pens for the maximum amount of pain. The design would be a fleur de lis with two decorative elements on either side of it.

“Not quite ready yet, Brendan.” She dipped her knees to trail her fingertips up the back of one of his thighs, felt his shudder. From talking to other Dommes who sought more real-life information from their subs than she did, she knew that he was an amateur swimmer who removed all his body hair when preparing to compete. Tonight he’d done it for her as well. It felt odd, the way his leg was smooth like a woman’s but so much harder from the lean muscle tone. She wondered what threading her fingers through the hair on Tyler’s leg would feel like, combing through the coarse strands, feeling his muscles shift under the heat of her palm.

Turning abruptly on her heel, she paced away. Became motionless once again just outside Brendan’s view. Breathed. Closed her eyes. Breathed. Yes, there it was. The center. And it again told her that the thoughts of Tyler must be accepted, allowed to flow and mingle with this moment’s impressions. By actively trying to shut them out, she would drain the energy she intended to provide to Brendan tonight, to make him capable of attaining a level of focused devotion that would cause any Domme to crave him for her own.

Of course any Domme would count herself fortunate for that privilege now.

Brendan was bisexual and beautiful, living with a male lover who was also into the submissive scene, was likely part of those in the audience tonight. With glossy dark hair that fell to tanned shoulders, Brendan had an ancient Greek athlete’s physique and green eyes so pure in color they were like smooth jade stones. His body was unmarked, not a single piercing or tattoo. But he wanted her mark. Had begged for it.

* * * * *

She’d had her night with him and she never went with a sub twice. Regardless, two months ago, he’d knelt before her, where she sat at a table at The Zone with two other Dommes.

He’d waited, kneeling at her side for a good ten minutes until she’d given him permission to address her. Brendan never crossed lines. His pleasure was in absolute 30

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service, not rebellion, so his manners were impeccable. She’d heard that he taught drama at the community college, which she suspected explained how effectively he adopted a courtly demeanor in all his interactions with Mistresses at The Zone.

“Please, Mistress Marguerite. I know your rules and I would never offer any disrespect to you, but I’ve thought about this long and hard since our night together.”

“And gotten long and hard while thinking, I’m sure,” one of the women said, observing the crotch of the gray dancer’s tights he wore. It was his only article of clothing except for a collar with several hooks in it to accommodate the tethers of a Dom or Domme who chose to seek him out this night. He was popular, so he’d come to her early, apparently to put in his plea before he was chosen for the evening’s games.

The Dommes watched him, their hungry gazes recognizing the precious treasure of devotion like pirates with a pleasure yacht in their sights. Marguerite knew that when he was done with his entreaty, one would likely choose him for her games that night.

“It’s difficult not to get hard when thinking about Mistress Marguerite.” He bowed his head. “I ask, if ever you would consider it… Please, I wish to be branded by you.

With the fleur de lis, the mark of a prisoner, for though I know I’m not your chosen, I would declare myself as yours whenever you desire me, even if that should be never.

Even if I’m just a worshipper at your temple who never gets to touch the Goddess or hear her sweet voice anywhere other than in my own mind again.”

“Goodness, Marguerite, you do make an impression,” the other Domme commented, the amusement in her voice not quite able to obliterate the not unpleasant expression of envy.

When Marguerite continued to say nothing, simply sipping her drink, he bowed his head even lower. “Why should you honor me with your mark when I’m undeserving even of putting my lips on the sole of your shoe? I’ve taken up enough of your time, Mistress, Mistresses. Forgive my presumption. I ask your leave to depart your company.”

“You don’t have it.” Marguerite made a noise in her throat as his surprised gaze almost lifted. He dropped it immediately. “I’ll determine if you’re deserving or undeserving, presumptuous or unpresumptuous.” Straightening her knee, she extended her foot gracefully. She left it in the shoe, no intentions of giving him the excessive liberty of touching her flesh.