Tied Up and Twisted (3 page)

* * *

Watching twists Guy up inside. He was
with
her. He was her sub. What they had together fit for him. He still doesn’t understand why she left. He doesn’t care about Dean. It’s the way Hadley looks at Frost that makes Guy crazy. Guy was the one who brought Hadley into the gym—so that she could see him, so that she could remember what they had together. His plans rarely backfire. He’s always been good at setting a web.

What is wrong with her?

Dean switches over to a flogger, and Guy imagines what the tiny tails must feel like to Hadley. He’s been on the receiving end of those sorts of weapons so many times before. He loved when Hadley would make him stay in place without any bindings, make him hold his hands over his head while she used a cat-o’-nine-tails on his naked back. That was the most difficult for him—that and when she pegged him with the strap-on.

Now Hadley is the one being punished, and Guy can’t comprehend the range of emotions that swell up inside him.

“Twenty,” Dean says. “Count them out for me.”

Oh, so the dom wants Hadley to keep track. That was one of Hadley’s own tricks. Guy would try his best to count for her, but he would always fuck up, and she would start again at one. How many times did she chide him for losing his place? How many nights did she make him stand in the corner, his dick so hard, refusing to give him release because he had been a naughty boy?

Guy mentally counts the blows along with her. At seven, he starts to formulate an idea. He will invite Frost out for a drink to expose Hadley for who she truly is.

But he watches, first. He stares at Dean, seeing the man expertly deliver the pain that finally makes Hadley cry out.

Good, he thinks. Cry.

That doesn’t stop him from coming to the image when he gets home. We’re all mercurial at some point, he thinks. Desires slip and change, shift and glide. Pain is pain and pleasure is pleasure. For him, and for Hadley, the two sensations are entwined. Does it matter that she needs to be on the receiving end?

Guy uses a bottle of hand lotion this time; the honey-vanilla scent was Hadley’s favorite. He likes to smell like her. But as he jacks off, he can’t stop himself from envisioning Dean. Dean tying
him
up. Dean flogging
him
. Guy stares at his reflection in the mirror. He tries to make himself fantasize about Hadley whipping him, tries to force that image into his head.

Instead, he sees only Dean.

* * *

Frost receives the package at the gym. He laughs to himself when he sees what she’s sent him. She’s like a child, he thinks, begging so many different ways for a treat. He doesn’t know how he should respond, so he does nothing. There’s no need to rush.

If she wants something bad enough, she’ll tell him in person.

* * *

It’s been a week. Guy can’t function. He’s in charge of PR at the gym, and he does his job as if in a dream. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees himself up on stage at the club. Bound in place. Forced to take what he desires, what he deserves.

It’s Dean making him count now. Dean instructing him to behave, to be a good boy.

He runs a comb through his thick black hair, a soothing gesture. He tells himself that he still wants Hadley. At the end of the day, as he dials Frost’s number, he realizes that he almost believes the lie.

* * *

“She’s bad news,” Guy says to Frost as soon as the older man sits down.

“I haven’t even ordered a beer yet.”

Guy feels himself talking too fast. His face is hot. He wishes he had asked for ice water instead of vodka while he was waiting for Reed, wishes he hadn’t downed the drink so fast. “You should stay clear from her if you don’t want to get hurt.”

Frost enjoys talking with Guy. The boy is so immature. He’s good at his job. Public Relations requires someone slick like Guy. But the kid can’t see two weeks in front of him, let alone the rest of his life. Frost is not offended by Guy’s words. He finds himself entertained by their interaction. Nothing like this has happened to him for years. So long, he actually forgot what this part of his brain was for. He trains his athletes’ core—he’d left his own to decay.

He has no idea what he’ll get from the evening. But maybe he’ll learn a little more about the girl.

“How could she hurt me?” Frost is genuinely curious. A young waitress in a velvet catsuit delivers his Heineken. He cradles the green bottle in one of his large hands.

“She’ll get you all wrapped up, all twisted, and then she’ll leave.”

“Like she did to you.”

“I know her. She’s into stuff you won’t like.” He motions to the bartender for another vodka. He senses he’s going to get drunk, but he can’t seem to stop himself.

Frost drinks his beer slowly. He wants Guy to try to tell him what he won’t like. If Frost chooses to drink more, he can do so at home. His feet up on his coffee table. His apartment, even stark and bare, is a comfort.

“You should look into the club she goes to. You’ll find out for yourself what she’s into.”

“That’s not a bad idea.”

So Frost is ready when Hadley calls him.

* * *

“I want to do another scene.”

“We work well together,” Dean says, pleased that a woman like Hadley continues to choose him.

“This time is different,” Hadley explains. “I want to put on a show for someone else.”

She is honest about the whole situation when she explains her desires. Dean is game. He’s always up for a performance with a beautiful sub. He’ll spank her and humiliate her and make her beg anytime she wants. But they don’t have a deeper bond. They go through the motions and everyone gets off, but there’s no desire to wrap her arms around him and stay sealed to his body. All she wants afterward is a shower.

What she wants with Reed Frost is forever.

She invites Frost to meet her. She tells him the time. She has no idea if he will do what she requests. There’s no worldly reason to believe that he will—except for the connection, except for the fact that when she pictures him, her breathing quickens. When she visualizes his face, her pussy clenches.

She thinks about all those chick flicks she’s managed to see over the years. The ones with the cute meets between hero and heroine. The scenes in which one of the players finally realizes he or she has true feelings for the other.

Have any similar meets occurred in a BDSM club? she wonders.

* * *

When she meets eyes with Frost this time, she expects him to be ill at ease. He doesn’t run this spot. He’s not Coach here and he’s not Dom. But he doesn’t leave.

Dean has her bent over the leather horse. She knows there’s a similar piece of furniture at the gym. That one is for vaulting. This is for spanking. Frost stands ten feet away and watches. He has on a scarlet T-shirt, so visible in a sea of black. Don’t leave, she thinks. Don’t leave. She’s begging him with her eyes.

He wouldn’t have come if he didn’t want to know more.

That gives her a small spark of power. One that lets her last longer than she might otherwise have. Dean stops before she has to give her safe word.

* * *

Frost is waiting for her in the parking lot.

He drives an old truck. A beater. What her dad would lovingly have referred to as a hooptie. Hadley grew up with men who drove trucks like this one. Then one day she woke up and found herself in a world of Guys, where men used product and spent more time primping in the bathroom than she did. Maybe she was born into the wrong era. Not only doesn’t she want a metrosexual; she doesn’t even want to date someone who uses the word.

Frost is leaning against his truck in a pose straight out of a ‘50s cowboy flick. She knows somehow that he’ll use two wires to make the engine catch.

“Do you want to go somewhere and have a drink?” she asks.

“You think you can sit down after being punished like that?”

“I’m tough.”

“I’m starting to get that feeling.”

“Why did you come?”

“Why did you ask me?”

Oh, fuck, they’re so much alike. The only difference is that she’s making the moves. Otherwise, they might be lost forever—both wanting, but neither taking the step forward. Topping from below. That’s what she’s doing. She would smile at the thought that he wouldn’t understand what she was talking about—if this felt like a situation in which to smile.

“I asked you,” she says, “because you can give me what I need.” She wants to tell him more. That if he tried, he could cross her wires and start her engine. She knows this about him. She doesn’t know how she does, but she does. Like the man in Albuquerque who slid his wheelchair over by her chair and spoke to her in that low whiskey tone all night. Unraveling her fantasies until she was naked and exposed. He mindfucked her, and it was the best sex she’d had in years.

Reed Frost looks her up and down. She believes he could make her come by looking at her like that. In his eyes is ownership. She would wear his name tattooed on her skin. “Why would you think that?”

“I have a good sense for people.”

“Like Guy?”

“I was wrong about Guy.”

“Maybe you’re wrong about me.”

“Am I?”

He puts his hands on her arms and kisses her. The way his lips feel on hers resonates through her entire body. She is demolished by the kiss. He grips her in his arms, and she can feel that he’s hard through his Levi’s, and this delights her. He got hard watching another man whip her. If he’d been disgusted, he would already have torn out of the parking lot in a squeal of rubber. The throb of his cock through the denim is an unspoken promise. She loves the fact that he wore jeans and a scarlet T-shirt to a BDSM club, when every other player in the building wore black and leather. Through his truck window she can see the striped emerald athletic jacket he wears while coaching.

“Take me home,” she says.

He shakes his head. “I can’t wait that long.”

Oh, God, she thinks, it’s going to be good.

He gets her into the truck. They drive to a spot where they can see San Francisco—the whole twinkling fantasy of the city—spread out for them. But neither one has time for the view. Frost has a rough green army blanket in the back of his truck. He lays Hadley on the blanket in the truck bed, and he starts to touch her. His hands are so gentle. She’s surprised by the way he makes her feel.

She thinks of the man she met while on the road, the one who talked to her, his voice his instrument, telling her what she needed, getting her off with his words. That was the night she discovered who she really was. She wonders if she can help Frost discover the same thing about himself.

“Take off your clothes,” he says.

She unzips her shirt and peels off the shiny PVC. She undoes the three shiny chrome buckles of the skirt, and the fabric falls open. She now has on only a black satin bra and matching panties, thigh-high stockings, and her engineer boots. She’d be cold if not for the heat between the two of them.

“Roll over, baby. I want to see.”

Baby.

She does what he tells her, exposing the welts left by Dean’s crop on the backs of her thighs. Frost runs his hands over her skin. He pulls her bikinis down to see her ass. She moans as he traces each mark left by the crop. Her hips start to shimmy against the blanket.

“You like what he did to you?”

She looks over her shoulder at Frost and meets his eyes. She nods.

“Tell me why.”

“Tell me why you won’t be with anyone else.”

“I never said that.”

“You said you were happy with what you had. And what you had was nothing.” How odd to have this conversation while she can feel the rough blanket against her naked sex. He slides one hand under her, and he cups her pussy while they talk. The words flow over her, because she is focused on his fingers on her clit. He plays her magnificently, as if he’s always had one hand between her legs, as if he knows exactly how she touches herself when she’s all alone in bed.

“I never said I was happy.”

“You said you were—” she searches for the word in her mind as his finger strokes her “—accustomed.”

“Check your notes. I said I didn’t think I could do this again. You’ve filled in the rest.”

“What did you do before?”

His finger splits her nether lips and nestles between them. She feels as if she is balanced on his pointer, as if her whole body is suspended on his single digit. He rubs her clit. She knows she’s close.

“I got so tired of the games,” he says, and he bends and starts to kiss along her welts, his fingertip still spiraling over her clit. He adds another finger, and she sighs. He’s kissing the hot lines of her skin. She’s having a difficult time believing this is for real.

“I’m not in this for a game.”

“I’m satisfied with what I’ve got.” He licks along the crop marks, and she feels herself teetering right on the edge. He is going to make her come. She wants to ask what he’s doing to her, but she’s the one who started them on this ride. She’s the one who supposedly knows what she’s doing. Except she doesn’t. This is new to her. Being a sub is like wearing her insides on the outside. She knows only what she wants.

“You haven’t got anything.”

“
This
doesn’t feel like nothing.”

He’s right. This is something. Something big. If she could paint a picture of what they’re doing, she’d put fireworks in the sky. He knows how to take care of her. His fingers play her clit, while his mouth continues to kiss the marks of pain left by Dean. But suddenly she wants more. She wants him inside her. It’s bold and demanding, but she says, “Please fuck me.”

“Do I have to whip you first?” His fingers stop moving. There’s ice in his tone.

She wonders if it was a mistake to let him see another man touch her, see another man hurt her. She tries to be flippant. “Next time. Tonight, just fuck me.”

He rolls her over and he presses his mouth to her pussy. She starts to shake. He licks her slowly, using both hands to spread apart her pussy lips. The cool night air on her cunt makes her shiver. His tongue traces circles over and over, and she lifts her hips up and presses against him. She’s greedy and she knows it. She wants his cock, but she wants his tongue, and she can’t have both at the same time.