Willing Sacrifice (Knights of the Board Room) (34 page)

“Peter calls me the cause of original sin. He’s so sweet.” Dana unwrapped one of the chocolates and extended another to Janet. Deciding to roll with it, Janet took the candy, enjoyed the taste in companionable silence. Dana didn’t make a habit of wasting anyone’s time, so Janet expected there was more she wanted to say. While the woman was mulling it over, she decided to take advantage of the information source.

“Max has been volunteering at your church, hasn’t he?”

“He’s a godsend. Does a lot of heavy lifting, maintenance, plays basketball with the boys. They love him, though they’ve nicknamed him White Boy Can’t Jump. CJ for short. I tell them to give him a break, because they know they have a genetic advantage on him. He claims that’s racial profiling. I tell him it’s just the sad fact of why black people have taken over professional contact sports.” Dana smirked, but then sobered. “I love him to death, Janet. He’s tough as nails, but try not to pulverize his heart. I don’t think he’s offered it to a lot of women in his life. If he has a mind to give it to you, treat it with care, even if you decide to give it back.”

“He wants me to take him to the club on Friday night. As mine.”

Dana, about to rise, shifted into Janet’s guest chair with a decided thump. “Say again?”

“Yes.” Noting the concern on Dana’s face, Janet settled her hands on her desk, clasped them. “Do you think that will be a problem?”

She hadn’t intended the cool edge, but it was there. Dana didn’t take offense. “I wasn’t meaning anything against you, Janet. I just…he’s not a sub.”

“No, he’s not. I do know that. But he wants to show that he trusts me, and he wants to experience that side of me. It’s a gift, but I intend for it not to be one-sided.” She couldn’t really explain something so complex further, but fortunately, it seemed to make sense to Dana. She was as much a part of that world as Janet, only on the submissive side.

“That fits him. And you.” She hesitated. “Are you looking for advice?”

Janet felt her hackles ease. “I would welcome any, yes.”

“All right. I have a friend who’s married to a SEAL. She says the best way to turn them into basket cases is park them at a table in the center of a place that has about a dozen different exit and entry points. It’s like watching a bunch of cats in a roomful of rockers. Doesn’t matter that they know they’re on civilian ground. They’re trained and trained and trained until these things are like breathing to them.”

“So what would you suggest?”

Dana’s full, moist lips pressed together, considering. “Do your session in a private room. Let him see it before you blindfold him. If it’s at Progeny, the rooms only have one exit and entry point. Show him that it’s coded so that he knows once the door’s locked, the only one who can come in is a staff member with a master key override, and that only happens if there’s a safety issue. Even so, he’s not going to be able to handle being restrained to the point he can’t get loose. I know nothing’s more tempting to a Domme than seeing a man that fine bound and helpless, but it will make him edgy, nervous, and you don’t want to put a SEAL in that state.”

“Do you think he would do it, if I asked, despite that?”

“Yes,” Dana answered her bluntly. “But don’t make him do that, Janet. Please.”

She reached over the candy bowl and found Janet’s knuckles, tapped them. It was a plea and admonishment both.

“BDSM is so intense, it’s kind of crazy to call it a game, but it is, at one level, where the pleasure comes into it. Tying him up so he can’t get loose…that won’t be a game to him, and there’s no way you’ll be able to make it one. From what I understand from Peter, I think he’d pretty much do anything you wanted him to do at this point. Until he realized it was a mistake.”

Max had told her he loved her, which had been a shock to her system. She knew Max well enough to know he wouldn’t have shared that with anyone else, so hearing that the men she worked for had already detected his feelings was an additional surprise. Not necessarily unpleasant but…unsettling.

“No unexpected loud noises. We all hate those. I still can’t stand hearing kids play those dumbass war video games. If you go the way of blindfolds and light restraint, do a lot of physical contact. Keep connected to him by voice or touch, so he knows where you are in the room. You’d be amazed at how much control a SEAL has. He could pull up the nose of a gun a hair before a civilian pops out of the woodwork in front of his target, but he’s still trained to be a deadly force weapon. He wouldn’t be willing to do this unless he trusts you and himself enough to keep things safe, but you can help him do that.”

Janet digested that. “Understood. How about anal?”

“Hmm. A strap-on might not be out of the question. You’ll have to figure that one out. Hasn’t come up in our daily conversation.” She gave Janet a cheeky grin. “But I can tell you right off, don’t touch him with an actual cock. That boy’s as straight as Pat Buchanan on a holy roller tour. Some poor guy would lose their most vital appendage.”

Janet chuckled at the image, even as she remembered how he’d handled Thor, so casually intimate, but firmly distancing himself from any sexual implications to it. “All right. Anything else?”

An expression of feline pleasure wreathed Dana’s face. “Yeah. I’d probably sell my soul to be able to see this go down. You’re one lucky woman. Why don’t you plan to come to our girls’ night this month? I bet everyone would be willing to offer major bribes to hear you rattle off a play-by-play.”

“I’m never averse to bribes.”

* * * * *

For the third time, Max checked himself in the mirror. This was getting ridiculous. He wore a belted pair of stressed jeans and a black dress shirt. He’d seen the things Janet did with her subs, and he was starting to think he was crazy, imagining himself in similar positions. One night, she’d led a poor bastard around the club on hands and knees. He’d been buck-naked, except for a cage-like thing around his cock. What if any of the K&A men were there? He cut the vision of Matt seeing his limo driver being led around by a cock leash right out of his head, because the mere thought would make Max break out in hives. It would probably make Matt break out in hives as well.

He hadn’t thought about any of that when he offered this. He’d had some vague sense of her hand upon him, him being on his knees, close enough to put his mouth on her sweet-smelling skin, rub his cheek against whatever sexy concoction she’d wear to drive him crazy. So basically his brain had disengaged and his cock had done his thinking.

Except it hadn’t been his cock leading him, but his heart. He should have remembered his heart had no more of a brain than his cock did, and they’d both left his head out of it. Idiots.

Okay, he was turning his internal organs into a community forum, so he was not in a good head space right now. His date was waiting on him. If he waited five more minutes to leave, he’d run the risk of being late, not a good start to the night. Fuck it.

No. He drew a deep breath. It wasn’t his date waiting for him, but his Mistress. He liked the way she reacted to that, her eyes sharpening but her mouth getting a little softer, the silky brows arching in an interested way. It would be all right. Either way, he’d agreed to do it and he wasn’t backing out. No sense chewing on it any more. Grabbing his keys, he headed out.

She’d told him she wanted to meet him at the club, not be picked up, so as he drove that way, he wondered what she’d choose to wear. Leather, corset…those awesome boots and gloves that fit like a second skin. No, he bet she was going to be more unpredictable tonight, though if she showed up in sweats and running shoes he’d still be hard as a rock for it. Yeah, he had it bad.

His mind moved to thoughts of their day together with Amanda, then to what Janet had done when they left the facility, guiding him into the garden and putting herself in his lap. She hadn’t coaxed or chased his emotional reaction. She’d demanded it, in a way that had resulted in a purging of the pain. He’d broken down after his mom, sure, but by himself. In the early days of dealing with it, he’d almost lost it a couple times in Dale’s company, or with the other guys, but their way of handling it was letting him walk it off, protecting him from interruption until he collected his shit.

Maybe it just wasn’t in his makeup to accept from a guy what Janet had offered. When she took charge, instead of swallowing it down, he’d let it swallow him up. Everything he’d needed to do since he first saw his mother’s body had risen out of his heart and taken over. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried about anything, but if a man couldn’t cry about losing his mother and the death of his sister’s future, then he supposed he had no tears for anything.

He pulled up to Club Progeny. Fortunately, Matt and his guys mostly preferred the slower weeknights. Since that meant they likely weren’t here, that was a plus, but seeing the profusion of people coming and going, Max felt an unfamiliar shot of uneasiness through his vitals, something perilously close to unmanly fear. He was familiar enough with this stuff to know there were safe words, limits. He could tell Janet what was a no-go for him. But of course that caught in his craw, because it clashed with his determination to be the big alpha guy who could handle anything.

“Fuck it. Get the hell out of the truck and do it.”
Trust her. That’s what this is about, remember?

As he strode up to the club, he was aware of calculated glances. When he brought the limo, he had an obvious role as a staff person delivering a club member. Tonight his status was up for speculation, an unknown quantity. Dom? Sub? Curious voyeur?

Trinity was the hostess on shift tonight. She was a gorgeous blonde with glossy pink lips and a lot of soft white breast displayed up high in a blue satin corset with black lacings. He’d had cordial dealings with her before, had even brought her a cup of coffee one night when she couldn’t get away from the desk and he was waiting on Ben and Marcie to finish their session.

“Mistress Janet told me you’d be coming as her guest,” she said with a smile. “Glad to have you with us as a player tonight, Max. Will you give me your wrist, please?”

When he complied, she put a rubber bracelet on him. It had been stamped with dark letters.
Exclusive property of Mistress Janet.

“No one will offer you any proposals while wearing that,” she said as he studied it. “She said you’d be most comfortable that way.”

When he glanced up, Trinity gave his hand a quick squeeze, fingers whispering over his palm. “Don’t worry. They’re just people. No one’s going to try to eat you alive, though we can’t keep people from fantasizing about it.” She chuckled. “She’s waiting for you in room D, second level. That’s a private room.”

Though he should be embarrassed that his anxiety was that obvious, some of it eased at the information. It underlined what he’d thought when he got out of the truck.

Janet knows you. You can trust her.

The club really was hopping tonight, music booming on the dance floor, the bass accompanied by the bounce and twist of a lot of bodies showing plenty of bare skin. In the public play rooms, several scenes were happening on the suspension beams, with the St. Andrew’s Crosses and spanking benches at full occupancy. Though he usually enjoyed watching from the safety of his coffee spot, he decided keeping his eyes averted tonight was the wise move. On the first HALO jump, he’d found it was better not to lean out of the plane and see how fast and far the guy who’d jumped ahead of him was falling. But he remembered the rush of adrenaline when he followed him, the
oh fuck, what the hell did I do
, followed by the glorious sense of
I’m fucking flying. When can I go on this ride again?

This was going to be like that, because that’s what he wanted to happen, and it was what she wanted to happen. They were in it together. He was being a fucking pussy. He’d gone through buildings that were a maze of blind turns obscured by concrete dust and darkness, fire crackling at his heels, the possibility of an insurgent’s gun or an explosive device directly ahead. He could handle one D/s session with a petite, beautiful Dominatrix who already had most of his heart in her hands.

Room D. He started to turn the door handle, then stopped, knocked. The security light over the door turned from red to green, a beep inviting him to enter. He noted a security card was needed to get in, unless the person already inside unlatched the door. Secure and ultra private.

Out of habit, he glanced through the crack as he opened the door, checking behind it, and then his gaze swept the room as he stepped inside.

It was a simple rectangle with a lavatory closet built into the far left corner, that door open to show a polished silver sink, commode. A built-in cabinet along the same wall displayed an array of items assembled on the counter’s surface. Velcro cuffs, a flogger and a sturdy cloth bag whose contents were concealed, but he expected there was more of the same inside it, since he’d seen Janet bring it to her sessions before. The floor was painted with concentric circles, a chair bolted on the bull’s-eye. One wall had several different options for restraining a body against it. The opposite wall had some of those options as well, but they were obscured by an image being projected from the video equipment embedded in the ceiling.

It was the ocean. Just a continuous, panoramic view of a mild surf breaking and then rushing to shore. The sky was a pre-dawn marmalade. The projector provided sound, matching the image flowing from the wall onto a foot of the floor. He digested all of it in a second, and then found his Mistress. She was leaning against the opposite wall, watching him.