Playing Dom (5 page)

Chet glared daggers
at me as he struggled to get at me again. His face was an ugly red
mess of flushed skin and a blood trail leading from his nose. Some of
the blood was dripping off his chin, but most of it had ringed his
mouth. He was screaming all sorts of obscenities too, but I could
barely make them out.

It took several
seconds before we both cooled down enough to be released. I shrugged
out of the dungeon monitor's grasp, immediately focusing my attention
on Talia, who hadn't even bothered to turn around and see what was
going on. Poor thing. There was a third dungeon monitor unfastening
her fetters.

“
You
have to leave,” the dungeon monitor who had restrained me was
saying, but I wasn't listening.

I went to Talia's
side, and my heart ached at the broken exhausted look in her eyes.

“
Are
you alright?” I asked.

She nodded weakly,
glancing at me, and then past me to Chet. There was no question in my
mind what she was thinking. If Chet didn't blame her for this, he
would at least take it out on her.

“
You
rode here with Chet, right?” I tried to turn her attention back
to me.

She nodded again,
but still didn't look at me.

“
Let
me take you home.”

All it took was Chet
hearing my words to go ballistic again. He lurched at my backside,
but the dungeon monitors had been watching us closely, and one was
able to take hold of him before he could get a good punch in, though
he still managed to land a weak blow to my shoulder blade. While I
was pissed, I knew better than to retaliate. If the dungeon monitors
hadn't called the police yet, they were probably on the verge of it,
and the last thing I needed was for my already shitty night to end in
the back of a cop car.

“
Don't
you fucking touch her,” Chet screamed at me before looking at
Talia. “If you even think of going home with him, it's fucking
over. Do you hear me?”

“
Calm
down,” the dungeon monitor that held Chet was saying in his
ear, but the words weren't having any effect.

“
If
you go with him, you're just going to get it ten times worse,”
I reminded her.

“
I
don't care where you guys go as long as you leave here,” one of
the dungeon monitors said, nodding towards the door in indication
that we needed to get moving.

“
Are
you going with him or me?” I asked desperately, feeling like I
was fighting a losing battle. These women were trained to love abuse.
Not so much love it, but tolerate it. She was just like my mother.
There was no getting to her.

Talia lowered her
eyes and bit her bottom lip as if she actually had to think about her
answer. Then she surprised us all by softly saying, “I'll go
with you.”

Relief and disbelief
flooded through me. Half the battle was won, the other half was
leaving the premises without another fight.

“
Excuse
me.” I stepped up to one of the dungeon monitors. “If it
would be alright, I'd like to hang back for a few minutes, just long
enough to make sure he's left the parking lot. Otherwise, this is
going to just escalate once we get outside. I promise me won't cause
any trouble.”

The dungeon monitor
knitted his brows in frustration, looking at us like we were pests.
There was reasoning behind his hazel eyes though, and he was smart
enough to tell that Chet had no intention of letting this go.

“
That's
fine,” he said finally. “Gomez, escort that one out, make
sure he gets in his car and leaves, then come back in and let me know
so that these guys can go.”

The man who was
still holding onto Chet nodded, pulling him towards the door until
Chet surrendered with an angsty huff, grabbed the chain flogger and
his bag of toys, and followed the man out. To be honest, I was
surprised that he didn't try to attack me again. I held my breath
until they were halfway through the building. The tension in the air
began to dissipate the farther away he got, but I knew it wouldn't
completely disappear until we were safely in my truck.

“
Are
you alright?” I asked Talia while we waited.

In the time that I
had spent staring at Chet, she had already gotten dressed. Standing
there before me, she looked small and insecure, a broken thing barely
holding its pieces together. While I wasn't happy about what Chet had
done to her, I was glad that she had been pushed to the point of
leaving him. All I could hope for now was that she wouldn't
eventually go crawling back.

CHAPTER THREE

Pain. It's all I
felt, all I could think about, like a monster consuming every part of
me, my body and soul. It blazed through me, lashing across my back to
bruise, but it went deeper than that. I was in a room full of people,
but I was all alone. The world around me didn't care. They couldn't
see. This was all just a show to them, but it was very real to me—the
humiliation and the pain.

Chet had flogged me
before, but never like this. It was because he was there, the man
whom Chet hated so much. Micah Payton. The guy looked like an angel,
but the second I laid eyes on him, I knew he would draw the devil
out.

Please, don't see
him,
I silently begged when I first noticed Micah sitting in the
dining area. He was oblivious to our presence. It would have been
easy enough to go about our business and pretend like he wasn't even
there—to have a good time.

Chet's hatred burned
brighter than the sun though, and once he felt slighted by someone,
he never let it go. He charged straight at Micah's table like a bull
in a china shop, pushing past people without a second thought. His
vision was laser targeted. Everything else in the room disappeared to
him from that point on. All that mattered was getting under this
guy's skin.

Prior to that, I had
actually been looking forward to the night. I had never been to a
play party before, and my curiosity was piqued. Everything I knew
about them, I had read in books, but this was far from what I had
expected. Chet had warned me beforehand that this wouldn't be a
normal play party. Most play parties were small and intimate. This
one was all about commercializing BDSM. Either way it would be
something new to me. Something different.

Then Micah ended up
being there, and it ruined everything. I didn't know the guy, but I
couldn't help but hate him for existing. The last time we had
encountered him, I had gotten a beating for it. This time probably
wouldn't be any different. But it was different. It was so much
worse.

Chet had planned to
do a scene with me from the beginning, though I doubted this level of
intensity had been in the cards. Knowing he was angry made me
hesitant to let him strap me into the Saint Andrews Cross, but all I
kept thinking was that there were so many people around, surely he
wouldn't give it to me as bad as he did at his house. I was wrong
though. The first strike across my back with the chain flogger took
my breath away, and by about the fifth one I didn't think I could
handle it anymore. All of my trust in him dissolved into a puddle of
desperation pooling into the pit of my stomach, but all I could do
was scream and cry. There was no safety word to free me, and even if
there had been, I doubt he would have listened to it. Chet was in the
zone, the zone that he got in when he was pissed at the world and
wanted to take it out on me. But this was the zone times ten.

Knowing that people
were watching made it even worse. I fell out of subspace and into a
realm where I was a slave, and he was a tormentor. Spectators watched
my punishment for amusement, and the only release felt like death.
Part of me wanted to scream for help, but I bit my tongue, knowing
that would only make him hit me harder. I would have to ride this out
or let it kill me, one or the other, and it certainly felt like the
later of the two was more realistic. The man was brutal, and no one
was going to stop him.

Every time the
flogger cracked across my back, pain consumed me. I felt pulverized,
as if the bones in my spine were splintering and the flesh beneath
was turning to mush. If a person could bleed to death from
superficial bruises, I was pretty sure my time was limited. All I
could hope for was that I would pass out from the pain.

I was almost there
when the flogging finally stopped. Sounds were growing fainter. There
was a white light taking over my eyes. Nausea rose up in my stomach
to help distract me from the agonizing pain in my back. In a few more
minutes, I would have slipped into sweet unconsciousness. But then
the yelling brought me back. Chet yelling. And someone else yelling.
Maybe a dungeon monitor. I was in too much pain to turn around, and I
didn't have enough hope left in me to care. Soon, Chet would return
to torture me for things I'd never done.

Moments later, more
masculine voices were thrown into the mix. Angry voices. And then my
restraints were being unfastened, and I finally found the will to
turn and gaze into the face of a man who was unknown to me. He looked
like a bulkier BDSM version of Mister Clean, with serious blue eyes
trained on the task at hand. In that moment, he was my savior, my
angel, but also just the calm before an even bigger storm that would
bloom into a hurricane once Chet got me back home.

For the first time
ever, I didn't think I could handle it. Being Chet's submissive was
hard, but he had gone too far. My pride of being the only one extreme
enough to handle him had faded into dull hatred, but more than that,
I was afraid. What if he sent me to the hospital? Being flogged until
you were unconscious wasn't acceptable behavior in any of the BDSM
books I had ever read. Maybe everyone was right. Perhaps Chet wasn't
a real Dom. Perhaps he only used the lifestyle to fulfill his
sadistic desires.

When Micah asked me
if I wanted him to drive me home, I was a bit reluctant. The look in
Chet's eyes screamed in warning rage, but his threat of it being
over, the thought of him ending it himself, was so sweet. Despite all
that, there was a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, not from the
beating or thoughts of Chet's retaliation, but from the fact that I
was giving up on him. I would be just another page in the history
book of submissives that couldn't handle him. What was more important
though, my pride or my life?

I swallowed my pride
and made my decision, taking the easy way out. My physical pain mixed
with emotional pain, and it took everything to hold myself together.
People spoke all around me, and I just stood there in shock, staring
blankly at the floor until one of the dungeon monitors announced that
Chet had left the parking lot, and it was now our turn to depart.

Micah gently touched
the back of my shoulder to get me moving, and I shrugged away from
him, which only made pain shoot through me. A soft cry escaped my
lips, and all I could think about was going home and taking a nice
warm shower, though I knew it wouldn't cleanse me of the pain that I
was feeling both inside and out. It would be a long time before I
healed from this.

As we walked towards
the front of the building, I was ever aware of the eyes upon me. What
did these women think now that they had seen how bad things could
get? Were they judging me? Did this ruin them from ever wanting to
try the lifestyle? If I had witnessed such a display, my interest in
it would have quickly diminished. I wished I had seen something like
this before I had offered Chet my submission. Then I would have known
better. Then I never would have gotten into the lifestyle.

When we got outside,
Micah directed me toward his truck. Looking at it, my mind was
finally drawn away from the events that had transpired and snapped
into the reality that I didn't know this guy very well. Was getting
into a vehicle with him really the best idea? Perhaps I'd be better
off calling a taxi.

He unlocked the
passenger door and held it open for me, gazing at me with a strange
sorrow in his gorgeous green eyes. For as battered as my body felt,
there were parts of me that still stirred with interest. This man
wouldn't harm me. He saved me. He had come to my rescue when no one
else would, and for that reason, I decided to trust him.

Thankfully, he
seemed genuine in his intentions. When he climbed into the driver's
side, he asked for my address, plugged it into the GPS, and then
drove me back to my apartment, staying awkwardly quiet the entire
way.

“
Thanks
for the ride,” I told him when he pulled up in front of my
complex.

“
Are
you sure you're alright?” he asked, his voice oddly strained.