RecipeforSubmission (6 page)

“Last time I checked.”

“I mean, hello.” She glanced down at the sidewalk, then back
up. “It’s nice to see you.”

“Thank you. Hi. You’re looking mighty easy on the eyes
yourself. You going to the club?” Now that he was closer, he could see that she
was wearing a black bra underneath her shirt. She had to be aware it was
obvious—and sexy. So this time she’d dressed up some, and she didn’t look Domme
at all.

“I had been thinking about it,” Kyra said. “You look like
you’re just leaving.”

“I can go back, if you want to go back. I’d even be your
escort.” He grinned at her, turned and offered his arm.

She hooked her arm around his elbow and smiled at him.
“Thank you.” She bit her lip. “But I’m still not sure I want to go. I came
because I thought I—”

“You thought what?”

“I owed you something. For last time.”

He smiled and shook his head but didn’t dislodge her arm.
She wasn’t walking forward, so he didn’t move either. “You don’t owe me
anything. It was my pleasure, totally.”

“Where were you going?”

“Home. To cook. I wasn’t in the mood for Carpe Noctem this
evening.” He mentally added
without you
, but he wasn’t about to admit
that to any woman.
It’s a phase. It will pass.

She looked at him oddly for a moment. “Take me with you?”

“Home?”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t as if he’d never taken someone from the club to
his house before. For all the wildness that went on at Carpe Noctem, one could
have more fun in private. He wasn’t sure why taking Kyra to his house seemed
like a big deal. He wasn’t worried about her being a stalker. The look of
indecision he’d seen on her face before she noticed him gave him a sense of
comfort there.
So what’s my hang-up?
He trusted his instincts, though.
Mostly. “You know it’s not safe to go home with strange men. We barely know one
another, really.”

“I’m not entirely sure it’s safe walking these streets by
myself either. Or parking my car in this neighborhood. Heck, crossing the
street anywhere is pretty dangerous, driving is an invitation to death, and
flying isn’t much better.” She shrugged. “I’m willing to take this particular
risk.”

“An invitation to death?”

“Perhaps I was being overdramatic.”

“It sounds like the title to a book.”

“It does. It is.”

He laughed. “Sweet.” He could offer to take her back to the
club, if he really didn’t want her in his home. He could simply
tell
her
they were going to the club, that might work. Might scare her off too. He
wanted to have her again, to hear her breath grow heavy and feel her pulse
quicken. Home was the right place for that.

He wanted to see her taste his food.

He blinked. He took his dates to Ryan’s and let Pierre do
the cooking, usually. He always enjoyed it when a woman chose to eat something
that was his invention rather than Pierre’s, but he didn’t make a habit of
telling them. Tell a woman he could cook gourmet food and they’d want to set up
a very different arrangement than an occasional kinky date. So as good an angle
as it was for seduction, he’d always forgone it. But then, he’d already told
her he was going home to cook. He supposed most people didn’t do that at nearly
ten in the evening.

“Home then?” she asked hopefully, interrupting his thoughts.

He was going to say no.

“Please?” she added.

Fuck.
He couldn’t help himself. “That’s ‘please,
Sir’.”

She hesitated a moment. “Please, Sir?” Some submissives
would have averted their eyes with those words, but she looked straight into
his. And reached up and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, revealing a
hint of cleavage. It wasn’t the slightest bit indecent, and he could walk past
a woman on the street displaying more flesh without even taking a second look.
But his heart sped up. He took a deep breath.

I am so screwed.

“My car is this way.” He steered her into a turn and started
walking toward Belsan Street again. The side of her breast bumped against his
arm and set his pulse racing again.

“Yes Sir.”

“Are you doing research again?”

She blinked. The question had caught her off guard, which
had been his intention. She had been wrapping him around her little finger and
he didn’t like that one bit.

“Yes,” she said at last. “Just research.”

Her walking got more stiff and her breast didn’t brush
against him again. Had she really come down to repay him for the orgasm he’d
given her before? That story he didn’t buy. Research, now that was plausible.
Except that from the look on her face she’d forgotten it until he brought it
up.

But she clung to him tightly when they turned down Belsan
Street. He steered her around a knocked-over trash can.

“This isn’t a very safe neighborhood,” Kyra said.

“It’s not bad, but no, I wouldn’t want to go walking long
distances if I was a single woman. And that pausing and looking back and forth
bit you were doing definitely makes you look like a target. These people aren’t
very well off, but there’s not that much crime. It’s well patrolled—a couple of
the cops poke their nose into Carpe Noctem now and then.”

“Does that bother people?”

Drew shrugged. “Some, maybe. But it reminds people that what
we’re doing is legal, even if society doesn’t approve of us, so Ken—that’s the
owner—welcomes the police. And they’d come whether they were welcome or not, so
being friendly would be the best policy anyway.”

“Interesting.”

He glanced at her but couldn’t get anything from her face.
Research
mode.
It was a safe place for her to be, for both of them.

He opened the door of his pickup. It was a climb to get into
the front seat, and he gave her rear a boost to help her in.

She frowned at him. “I could have made it.”

“Sure.” He knew that. “But then I would have missed out on
the chance to put my hand on your lovely ass.” He closed the door and walked
around to the other side. He didn’t know whether he was flirting with her or
trying to chase her away, but he knew he had a grin on his face when he got
into the truck.

“You always help ladies into your truck that way?”

He started the engine. He wasn’t going to brag about his
conquests, not to her. She said always, so he could tell the truth. “Nope.” He
let in the clutch and eased his truck down the narrow alley.

“You’re a sexist pig, aren’t you?”

“Nah. I respect equal relationships, or ones where the women
are in charge. I’ve got some good friends who are Dommes—that’s with an extra m
and an e—and I couldn’t imagine them any other way, really. One thing I’ve
learned, and you see it nice and clear if you hang around kinky folks, is that
people aren’t all made to be any one way.”

“But you like to be top dog.”

He chuckled. “Yeah.”

“Hmm.” She sat back and got that unreadable expression on
her face. He glanced at her a couple of times after he finished negotiating the
traffic circle he’d been in, but she didn’t get any more transparent. He was
used to sensing the moods of the women he played with. He’d been accused of
being psychic more than once. And he’d been able to read Kyra fine a week ago,
in the club, but not now. He wasn’t sure he liked it, but it was certainly a
challenge.

What she had said the week before about the submissive being
in control was true in a way. Usually Drew could pick up on things before his
play partner voiced them. He watched and he listened, and then he gave out
orders. But if he couldn’t manage to get Kyra to tell him what she wanted, and
couldn’t get her to betray it with her gestures or her face, he’d have to
guess. Or he’d have to do what he wanted, and hope it worked for her too.

Chapter Four

Kyra looked around the old house. Drew lived in the Kalorama
neighborhood in a brownstone row house. Inside, the little irregularities of
the plaster walls made the rooms look both softer and colder, which wasn’t a
bad thing after a summer’s day. A black leather couch was the only thing that
looked remotely kinky, and even that was an everyday item.

She wasn’t precisely sure what she wanted. More information,
sure. Whether it was for her book or because she found Drew fascinating, she
hadn’t decided yet. Maybe both. She had the intention of presenting it to him
as a simple proposition, to give him as much pleasure as he’d given her the
week before so they could call it quits. She wasn’t sure she wanted to quit,
yet. She had more research to do.

She grinned.

“You like something you see. Tell me.” His voice was soft
but it was a demand. And he certainly hadn’t said please.

“That picture. The landscape. It’s not what I expected.”

“You thought that my walls would be full of bondage
photographs or something?”

“Something like that.”

“I have a friend, one of the Dommes I mentioned earlier
actually, who takes bondage photographs. Very artistic, actually. She does
lovely things with light and shadow. There are a couple in the bedroom, if
you’d like a look.” He nodded toward the stairs. “Second door on the right.”

She smiled at him. “Is that where you want me? I thought you
were going to cook.”

“Did you have dinner?”

“A salad.” It hadn’t been much, but she was trying to lose a
few pounds and her evenings usually didn’t require her to have a lot of energy.
And men usually liked to hear that women were trying to look better, as if it
was all for them.

“Is that all?” He looked dismayed. She’d seen colossal
salads, loaded with meat and all sorts of fat and calories, but he seemed to
assume the truth. He bent down and she tilted her face up for a kiss, but he moved
right past that and kissed her neck, sucking too gently to leave a mark. Her
neck tingled and she arched her back to press herself into his body. He nibbled
his way to below her ear, and by that time the tingles stretched all the way to
her core and she was feeling decidedly warm. He had wrapped his arm around her
back, holding her to him. “Are you hungry?”

She’d forgotten about her stomach, and it made a noise to
remind her, which she hoped he couldn’t hear. She pitched her voice low and
sultry. “Not for dinner, exactly.”

He chuckled. “Your stomach gave you away. Go on and look at
the photographs if you want to. For your research, of course. I have never left
a woman’s needs unmet in this house, and I don’t intend to start now.”

He let go of her and she barely kept her balance. Before she
could say a word he’d turned and headed for the kitchen.
Never left a
woman’s needs unmet, indeed. And you turn and leave me like this?

But she damned well wasn’t going to beg. She supposed going
up and looking at his “artistic” bondage pics would be just the thing. It would
be research, after all. And a little good-natured disgust would leave her less
turned-on and more in the mood to just have food.
Fine.
She stomped up
the stairs.

The first door on the right was a bathroom. It wasn’t
pristine but it was clean and it didn’t smell. Had he said second door? She
wasn’t sure. She didn’t intend to go snooping. The second door was the bedroom.
A queen-sized four-poster bed occupied the center of the room, with a black and
tan duvet over it.
He’s either a sprawler or he has company in that bed
often enough to get a large one.
A momentary jealousy washed over her but
she pushed it away.
I don’t have the right to judge. Maybe I wish my bed
were filled more often.
Clothes were piled in a large plastic basket in the
corner, and the large oak dresser had a few drawers that were open an inch.

She took a couple of steps in and looked around at the light
blue wall. There were two framed black-and-white photographs. One was of a nude
woman, in profile, reclining diagonally. She appeared to be lying on some
stairs, although a tarp or sheet was crumpled under her. Her arms were
stretched over her head and she looked relaxed. Comfortable, even. It took Kyra
a moment to notice that a rope was wrapped around the woman’s wrists three
times, binding them together.

The second picture took her longer to figure out. At first
it was only clear that there was a woman and a pier and some water, because the
angle was so unusual that it took a moment to resolve the patterns of light and
dark into objects. The woman was bending out over the water, her skirt
billowing up and displaying her bare ass. Her hands were bound behind her—no,
more accurately her arms were, as they were joined at the elbow in a way that
didn’t look comfortable to Kyra at all. She wasn’t even sure she could get her
elbows behind her like that. But nothing about the woman other than her arms
indicated any sort of strain at all.

She hadn’t expected pictures that needed to be stared at for
a while. She’d figured either his idea of “tasteful” would be a centerfold
spread or that the pictures would be tamer than a lingerie catalog. These
pictures were neither. She found herself sitting on the bed, wondering how the
women in them felt. She could only see the one face, and it was positively
serene. Was that a pose, something present for the moment the shutter blinked
and then gone again? She looked satisfied. Maybe she’d just been fucked. Maybe
she knew she was about to be. Or perhaps she’d surrendered to the moment.

Did she look like that after Drew had made her come in the
club? Maybe, for a moment, before the heat rose in her cheeks and she felt she
had to get out of there, had to get some fresh air. What would it have been
like if she’d been able to bathe in the sensation?

As a way of cooling off, this isn’t working.
She
breathed in. A lovely smell was wafting up the stairs, hinting at the sea and
lemons and reminding her that she was hungry. She lay back on the bed for a
moment to stretch and then stood. The sensitivity her skin had felt when he
kissed her was still there, and now she was salivating at the idea of such
good-smelling food. She used to joke she could go days without noticing her
body except for the annoying demands that it made on her, insisting on sleeping
and eating, stopping her from living in her world of words. Now she felt so
aware of it she could barely think.