Jaid Black (3 page)

Maybe it was because she was plump and unattractive, the young Nikki had thought. Maybe her mother was disappointed by the fact that she wasn’t a part of the “in” crowd. She didn’t know. All she’d known at the time was that she ached for affection from a woman who was unable, for whatever reason, to bestow it upon her.

Nikki had loved her mother to her dying day—passionately, at that. Still did. And although she wasn’t the type to sit around and bemoan her upbringing—for as an adult she was able to realize that her mother loved her in her own way and had been dealing with problems of her own—the emotional neglect Nikki had experienced at her hands had left her feeling very lonely and isolated as a child. She couldn’t help but to wonder if that accounted, at least in part, for the types of all-consuming fantasies she now entertained.

Fantasies of being the sole recipient of one man’s undivided sensual attention. Fantasies of being longed for, desired . . .
wanted
.

D/s requires, by its very nature, for the Dominant to be in tune with the emotional and sexual needs of his or her submissive. It would be impossible, after all, to place enough trust in a person to permit them to handcuff you to a bed if you suspected they didn’t pay the proper amount of attention to the emotional and physical reactions elicited by their touch. It is crucial for the Dominant to be focused on the submissive’s needs at all stages of the game.

Or at least that’s how it was supposed to be, according to all the Domination/submission texts and fictional stories. Whether or not it actually played out like that in reality she hadn’t a clue.

But damn did she want to find out.

Nikki took a deep breath, realizing as she did that she was unlikely to ever get her answers firsthand. She wasn’t willing to chance something like
that
getting out about her, for if it did, her career would be irreparably damaged. She also didn’t want to live a D/s lifestyle twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. She only wanted to experience it behind the closed bedroom door. So, in the end, what were her fantasies worth to her?

She frowned. Unfortunately, a lot.

Perhaps if she could meet a like-minded professional . . .

She snorted at her thoughts. Yeah. As if a like-minded professional would advertise for a sexual submissive anywhere. He’d be just as afraid as she was of his own career being ruined by gossip!

Nikki sighed as she pulled up her web browser. If she couldn’t experience D/s firsthand, she could at least live vicariously by reading stories about fictional women who had.

Nikki squirmed in her chair, the e-book having a decidedly pronounced effect on her libido. “I’m pathetic,” she mused even as she drew her face closer to the screen. “Completely and utterly pathetic.”

She decided not to think too much on that admission lest she grow depressed.

An hour later the e-book had ended, the Master and the sex slave had fallen in love, gotten married, and the heroine was pregnant. A typical romance, if a bit more brazen than most. She loved it.

Curious about the author, she typed her name into the browser’s address space, added .com onto the end of it, and waited to see if she had her own site. Sure enough, she did. Nikki spent over an hour researching every title the author had written, for future reference, then clicked on the “Links” page, just to see what was there.

The author’s favorite authors. The author’s favorite vacation spots. The author’s favorite—

Whoa! What was this?

Her eyes wide, Nikki backtracked up the web page.

“Favorite alternative sites,” she murmured, reading the text aloud. Her wide green gaze zeroed in on one site in particular. “
Dom4me.com
,” she whispered.

She gulped, her heartbeat inexplicably racing as she clicked on the hyperlink.
You are pathetic,
she thought excitedly as the website loaded and displayed on her screen.
You find a place that specializes in D/s personal ads and your body reacts like a kid on Christmas Eve!

Nikki spent the next two hours giddily sifting through dozens upon dozens of ads. There were older men, younger men, short men, tall men, pudgy men, and muscular men—all of them Dominants, all of them looking for bedroom submissives.

She narrowed down her search to the five ads that appealed to her the most. None of the five had photographs attached to them, but all of the five were intelligent, well written, and posted by men who claimed to be professionals who, just like her, needed the utmost discretion concerning this part of their lives.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she grinned as she opened up a word-processing program and began to type out a brief description and bio of herself. She kept the biography very general, not wanting anything to be traced back to her.

After creating a special account for D/s email, she put a few polishing touches on the bio, then copied and pasted it into five separate emails and whizzed it off to the recipients she’d carefully chosen. That accomplished, she sat back in her chair and took a deep breath.

She had done it. She had actually replied to five D/s ads.

She sighed, convinced nothing would come of it.

“They’re probably a bunch of phonies,” she muttered, standing up.

She switched off the computer screen, doubting she’d hear a word back from any of them.

And if she did, she mused, all five of them would be fat, bald, ugly men who still lived at home with their mommies.

Chapter 3

Monday, June 9 11:17 A.M.

“Agreed,” Nikki cheerfully concurred around a mouthful of strawberry jam and butter crème crêpe. She chewed the bite and swallowed. “The best I’ve ever had. Bar none.”

Kim smiled absently.

Nikki stilled, her eyebrows drawing together quizzically. “What’s wrong, hon?” She set down her fork. “You sounded weird on the phone last night, too. What is it?”

Kim closed her eyes briefly, rubbing her temples as she sighed. There were visible bags under her eyes, Nikki noticed for the first time. As though she hadn’t slept in days. “Kim?” she quietly prodded, worried.

“It’s happening again,” Kim murmured. She opened her eyes and found her best friend’s gaze. “Just like last time. Only worse.”

Nikki’s eyes widened. “You mean . . .”

“Yeah. That.” Kim snorted, glancing away. “God, I’m a freak,” she mumbled.

“That’s not true,” Nikki said softly, her gaze gentling. “You are . . . gifted.”

Kim half smiled and half groaned. “I’m just lucky I have you to talk to. Can you imagine me confiding this . . . this . . . mess to anyone other than you?”

No, Nikki couldn’t. But she didn’t say as much.

She couldn’t blame Kim for keeping that aspect of herself a secret. Admitting that one had visions, premonitions, ESP—whatever you wanted to label it—might go over well in some New Age artsy circles, but you might as well wear a tattoo on your head that said “Looney Tune” if admitting to it in theirs. They lived in the heart of Ohio, for goodness sake.

Nikki hated conceding to a prejudice, but if anyone
except
Kim had confided their psychic abilities to her, she wouldn’t have believed them. She didn’t know why she felt that way—such occurrences were very possible from a physiological standpoint. Possible, just not probable, as humans tend to utilize a very small portion of the brain.

But Kim . . . how could she not believe studious, upright Kim? A teacher of physics at the prestigious Eastern Academy, an elite boarding school in Hudson, her best friend was as sensible and logical as people come.

“You said the occurrences have gotten worse.” Nikki thought back on the last time, the time when Kim had been able to locate a missing bracelet in an area she’d never before been to or even heard of. Not a big deal, really. Just kind of neat. She cleared her throat, then lowered her voice, not wanting anyone to overhear their conversation. “How so?”

“They’ve become clearer, crisper. It’s hard to explain. . . .” She sighed as she ran a punishing hand through her blonde hair. “And darker.”

“Darker?” Nikki murmured. “What do you mean?”

Kim’s eyes were intense, her expression pained. “I’m envisioning awful things, Nik. Stuff worse than you can even begin to imagine.” She shook her head slightly. “I don’t know what to do, don’t know how to turn it off. It’s awful. Awful!”

Nikki blew out a breath, uncertain as to what she could possibly say to put her friend’s mind at ease. Then again, she conceded, sometimes there wasn’t anything that could be said. Sometimes the best therapy was simply to listen, to allow your friend to vent. “Go on,” she said encouragingly.

“In my dreams,” Kim whispered. “It’s awful. The images of blood and screams . . .” She let her sentence trail off as she took a deep breath. Nikki’s eyes widened.

Kim smiled softly. “You’re a terrific friend, Nik. I feel better having told you even that much. But I came here to forget. Let’s just eat our crêpes, okay?”

“Oh sure,” Nikki said dryly, trying to lighten the mood a bit. “Drop a bomb like that and then leave me hanging.” She smiled as though teasing, but she was serious. Kim had never dreamt morbid things before. That she did now was a bit unsettling.

Nikki had known Kim since their undergrad days at Youngstown, the mental click between them instant and strong. If one were to judge solely by outward appearances, they would have seemed ill-suited as best friends back in those days. Kim heralded from an extremely affluent family, while Nikki’s upbringing had been lower middle class at best. Kim was tall, blonde, and fashionable, while Nikki had been a shy, plain Jane of a bookworm with almost no fashion sense.

And yet, surprising as it was to the superficially minded, they had hit it off from the moment they’d met in English Lit and had been all but inseparable ever since. What the superficially minded hadn’t realized, of course, was how much Nikki and Kim had in common on the inside—everything from emotionally vacant parents to a love of French bistros to a disdain of shopping.

Their personalities went together like red beans and rice, like peanut butter and jelly, or as the running joke had been a few years later thanks to MTV, like Beavis and Butthead. Nikki had been shy and socially awkward, never feeling as though she fit in anywhere. Kim had felt much the same way; she’d just done a better job at hiding it. “Always smile,” had been Kim’s motto. “Never let the ass-holes get you down.”

At any rate, they had both been enrolled in the same pre-med accelerated program and had finished their bachelors’ in two years’ time. Whereas Nikki had continued on, enrolling in medical school at nineteen, Kim had decided against it, physics by then her raison d’etre.

After leaving the accelerated Northeastern Ohio University College of Medicine (NEOUCOM) program behind, both women had headed for Harvard, allowing their friendship to further grow and strengthen. Nikki had been in medical school, Kim in the physics department, but they had spent time together every night after classes let out, having decided prior to arriving in Cambridge to share an apartment.

They had struck up a deal from the beginning. Because Nikki had come from such humble beginnings and possessed little money, rather than getting further in debt and taking out loans to pay for her share of an apartment in Cambridge, Kim covered all the bills. In exchange, Nikki had done all the cooking, which she loved to do anyway while Kim had never taken to it.

Those years had been a blast. They had grown up together, become women together, taught each other, and learned from one another. Kim had given Nikki fashion sense, and Nikki had given Kim the security of knowing she was loved not for how much money she’d inherited but simply because she was Kim.

They had watched each other fall in love for the first time, and then held each other when their hearts had been broken for the first time. They had shared each other’s victories and felt each other’s disappointments. That Kim was purposely withholding information from her now, after their long and meaningful history, was disturbing.

“I’m sorry,” Kim said. “I’ll confide more in you when I feel up to recounting it, okay?”

Silence.

“Kim . . .” Nikki sighed. “I don’t want to press you—really, I don’t.” She ran her hands through her hair as she expelled a breath of air. “But you didn’t ask me to meet you today just to eat crêpes, and we both know it.”

“I don’t want to be a burden, Nik. I know things at work are crazy for you right now. Dr. Sorenson has it out for you and—”

Nikki waved that away. “I can handle Dr. Sorenson. He’s such a whiner that the chief of staff doesn’t put any stock into what he groans about anyway. Honestly.” She gave her friend a level look. “Besides, Kimmie, you are my best friend. If you can’t unload on me, then what kind of a friend am I?”

Kim considered that for a moment. “Okay, fair enough. But I have to warn you . . .” She sighed. “Nikki, these images are not pleasant.”

“I’m a surgeon. There is little I haven’t seen.”

“Touché.”

Nikki offered her an encouraging smile. She lowered her voice. “Go on, sweetheart. Tell me. You need to get this off your chest.”

Kim was quiet for a prolonged moment. Eventually, however, she made eye contact and lowered her voice to the same hush as her friend’s. “There is this woman . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t know who she is, or even what she looks like. The image of her face in my dreams is so muted as to be nonexistent.”