San Francisco: The Complete Trilogy Page 6

  “To new friends.” He held out a short cut-crystal glass filled with clear liquid and a slice of lime. Christiana touched her flute to his glass with a small clink.

  His gaze caught hers, held it as she raised the glass to take a sip. It was deliciously intimate.

  James sat beside her, twisted so one knee was on the seat and he was partially facing her. Christiana adjusted, turning so she could see him, though she stayed on the edge of the cushion.

  She took another sip. The champagne was icy-cold, crisp, and bubbly. She closed her eyes and savored the taste.

  “You tempt me, Christiana.”

  Her eyes popped open and she swallowed. “I don’t mean to.”

  “And that’s what makes it all the more intriguing.” He raised his glass to his mouth, but only tapped the rim against his bottom lip. He didn’t drink.

  “I’m not—”

  “Oh, I know.” He smiled. “You’re just here to watch. I’m looking forward to watching with you.”

  Christiana looked at the champagne, then back to him. “Why?”

  “Why am I looking forward to watching with you?”

  “And why do you say I tempt you?”

  “You’re lovely.”

  Christiana shook her head. “There are more beautiful women here.”

  “You are equally lovely to anyone—”

  She raised a hand. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I don’t want—need—you to tell me I’m pretty.”

  He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t speak.

  She chose her next words carefully. “I planned to stay out of the way, just watch. I didn’t do anything to draw attention to myself. What made you notice me? Is it because I’m new?”

  “Would you prefer an honest response or a kind one?”

  She braced herself. “Honest.”

  “I don’t know.”

  That wasn’t what she expected. “What?”

  “I don’t know. You’re not the most beautiful woman here, and probably not the only new member. I saw you, and something about you drew me.” He swirled whatever was in his glass. “I’m well aware that what I’m about to say next will make me sound like a jaded ass, but you asked for honesty. I haven’t been instantly interested in anyone, the way I am with you, in a very long time. I almost didn’t come, I was so bored at the last gathering.”

  “Bored?” She looked around pointedly.

  He smiled ruefully. “I warned you I’d sound like a jaded ass.”

  “You weren’t wrong.”

  That surprised a laugh out of him, a real laugh. More heads turned their way.

  “Shhh,” she whispered to him.

  James’s eyes darkened. “Are you shushing me?”

  Christiana froze, like a prey animal suddenly aware of a predator within pouncing range. She glanced at him, then hastily took a sip of champagne.

  “Oh yes, Christiana,” he murmured. “You intrigue me very much.”

  That sip of champagne emboldened her. “Are you going to ask me why I came with you?” He raised one brow. “Or have women always fallen all over themselves to be with you?”

  “Jealous?”

  “I have no right to be.”

  “But are you? Jealous?”

  “No.”

  “Liar.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Then why are your brows all scrunched up?” He reached out to touch the spot between her eyebrows.

  She forced her face to relax. “I’m just reminding myself that you’ve probably never had a woman say no to you.”

  “And that’s a problem?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it means that when you walked over, you knew I’d say yes. Knew I’d go with you.”

  He frowned. “I didn’t know. I hoped.”

  Christiana shrugged and took another sip.

  She needed to slow down on the champagne, yet the dry, crisp bubbles coating her tongue had emboldened her to speak to him this way, and she didn’t want to stop.

  She wanted to be the kind of woman who had witty conversations with men like James.

  It bothered him that she didn’t seem to understand how genuinely intrigued he was by her. He’d tried to tell her, but when she’d asked how many women had ever turned him down, and he’d had to dance around the fact that the answer to that question was zero, he’d realized that Christiana didn’t understand. Maybe she couldn’t.

  He was considering how to explain it to her, or how to take the conversation in an entirely new, and safer, direction when the first couple approached the stage.

  The woman was petite and blond, wearing a black waist trainer and stockings. She was barefoot and her breasts, ass, and sex were all bare and exposed. The man wore the de rigueur uniform of slacks and a shirt, though he had on a soft black leather belt that didn’t go with the outfit. James could tell from the muted shine that the belt was one that was kept supple and oiled for punishment and not a fashion accessory.

  Christiana watched the couple, and he watched her. Slender fingers twirled the champagne flute, but not in a slow, lazy way. She spun the glass quickly between her fingers, and her breathing sped up to match the pace. It would be so easy to reach out and slip the strap of that thin little dress off her shoulder. If he did, would the fabric slide down, exposing her breast, or would it cling to her full, firm flesh?

  He took another sip of his drink, sucking an ice cube into his mouth and crunching it. A clichéd sign of sexual frustration, but there was a reason it was a cliché.

  The Dom on stage knelt and opened his kit, which unrolled to expose a variety of toys tucked into custom pockets. James had a kit like that—last year one of the events had featured a sort of kink bazaar, where vendors brought one-of-a-kind toys. The most intriguing thing had been the glass blower who’d created lovely glass plugs and dildos to order, but the most useful had been the leather-worker who had these lovely kits, which she customized on site.

  James hadn’t brought his kit tonight. He’d had it sent to his hotel, because he hadn’t planned to play seriously. He hadn’t planned on meeting someone like Christiana.

  There was no doubt she was submissive—he’d felt it in the way she responded to him, but she was also straightforward and direct. He usually gravitated toward women who were incredibly powerful and successful in their daily lives, and who needed submission as a way of relaxing, a chance to let someone else be in control.

  He understood those women—knew the pressure they were under, because they were his peers. They usually either fought, needing to be “forced” to submit—though everything was always consensual—or they collapsed gratefully into submission the moment the scene started, hyper obedient and willing.

  He had a feeling Christiana would be different. She wasn’t giving off the confident sure-of-her-place-in-the-world sense he was used to getting from his female companions.

  On stage, the Dom had the blond sub hold the dangling wrist restraints, step back away from the St. Andrew’s Cross, and then bend forward. From where James and Christiana sat, they had a good view of the woman’s ass, and when she spread her legs, the glint of metal from her pussy.

  “She has piercings,” Christiana whispered. She sounded almost scandalized.

  “Do you?” he asked

  “Have piercings? Only my ears.”

  He considered her. “Is this your first time seeing someone with them?”

  “Of course not.”

  A lie? Maybe he’d asked the wrong question.

  “Is it your first time seeing someone with them in real life, as opposed to still images?

  She hesitated before saying, “No.”

  Lie. That was a lie.

  “Honesty,” he reminded her. “You asked it of me, so I’ll expect it from you in return.”

  She looked down at her champagne glass and didn’t say anything.

  “Are you embarrassed?” he asked.

  “If I was, you pointin
g it out wouldn’t make it any better,” she whispered.

  The hint of exasperation in her voice made him laugh, but he made sure to keep it quiet out of respect for the performers. “Fair enough. If this is your first time at our gathering, I expect you’ll see many new things. Even the best of the clubs in well-respected kink locales like here in San Francisco can’t hold a candle to the Orchid Club. That’s what we’re paying for, after all.”

  “That’s what we’re paying for?” She stressed the first word.

  “Very well, we’re paying for the exclusivity. The pageantry. The clandestine nature of the gatherings.” He leaned forward and touched the back of her hand. “At least that’s why I joined. Why did you?”

  She looked down at where his fingers rested on hers. “I wanted to be Alice.” She turned her hand under his, exposing the soft, vulnerable skin of her palm and inner wrist.

  James’s body thrummed with satisfaction at the small show of submission.

  “Through the looking glass?” he asked. “Into a world where we’re all mad?” He slid his fingers from her palm to her wrist, stroking the delicate skin there. Goose bumps appeared on her arm.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  James closed his fingers around her wrist, holding her firmly. Christiana sighed, her eyes fluttering closed.

  James wanted to roar in triumph—a base urge that was practically foreign to him. He didn’t roar and beat his chest, yet that’s what Christiana made him want to do.

  Onstage, the Dom picked up a multi-tailed flogger. Deerskin, if James had to guess.

  He rubbed his sub’s ass with it as he bent and spoke to her. Now that he was about to start in earnest, the people who’d been milling around, chatting, and getting drinks took their seats on the couches behind and beside him and Christiana, or wandered to the far side of the upper floor where they could continue their conversations without distracting the performers.

  Christiana leaned toward him. “Is that a…cat-o-nine?”

  “Certainly now. It’s a multi-tailed flogger. Custom-made and carefully maintained. It will hurt, as a good flogging should, but it won’t break her skin. A cat-o-nine usually refers to a maritime punishment tool, meant to terrify hardened sailors into obedience. No one would use such a thing on delicate female skin.” He rubbed his thumb on her wrist.

  “It will hurt?”

  It was such an innocent question that for a moment he was sure she was playing a game—perhaps her particular kink was in hearing a Dom describe a punishment, a sort of BDSM-specific dirty talk. One look at her told him that wasn’t it. She was both worried and, by the state of her nipples, intrigued. Perhaps the club she’d been a member of didn’t allow for heavy-impact implements. An improperly used flogger, or a cheap flogger, could do real damage. Depending on the legal structure of the club she was a part of, there were good reasons to disallow the use of that and other more intense forms of play. Even here, where there were hardly any rules beyond consent, some things like breath play were discouraged. Still, if she was a serious enough player to have membership, it seemed odd that she wouldn’t know that an actual cat-o-nine was not used by any respectable BDSM players.

  “It will.” His voice had lowered as his arousal rose.

  She looked over at him. “She wants it to hurt.”

  “Or perhaps she just wants to obey.”

  She looked back to the stage. The Dom straightened, shook out the flogger, and then snapped it against his sub’s exposed ass. She tensed, then relaxed. The sound wasn’t the sharp crack of a bullwhip, but more of a soft thunk, almost like someone dropping a bolt of fabric. Christiana leaned forward, gaze rapt.

  The Dom raised the flogger and again brought it down on his sub’s ass. A few more single strikes like that and then he found a rhythm, twisting his wrist so the flogger was always in motion in a fluctuating circular and figure eight pattern. With each forward swing, the tails of the flogger snapped against the sub’s bottom or thighs. Her Dom moved around the stage, never hitting the same place twice in a row, until the sub’s ass was a nice, nearly uniform pink and she was whimpering and twitching after each strike.

  James saw all this out of the corner of his eye, because while Christiana watched the scene, he watched her. He saw the conflict, the mingling of fear and arousal, rejection and need. Her breathing was fast, her nipples hard under her thin dress, and one hand clenched and unclenched around the stem of her glass—her other hand, the one attached to the wrist he held, lay peaceful on her thigh.

  “Do you wonder what it would feel like, to be in her place?” he asked softly.

  “Yes. But I’m scared.”

  “It would be frightening,” he agreed. “But she trusts him. She has to.”

  “Trust and communication are key to any good Master-submissive relationship.” It sounded almost as if she were reciting something she’d read, or perhaps it had been the creed of her club.

  “True,” he said. “And she trusts that he won’t hurt her, but also that he will.”

  Now she looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “We avoid pain. It’s human nature. Yet pain is life, pain can be pleasure, and pain and pleasure, mingled, can be ecstasy.”

  “But she must be a masochist.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Christiana looked at him. “If she doesn’t have a fetish for pain, why would she let him do that?”

  James squeezed her wrist gently. “Do you have a fetish for pain?”

  “No.” Her reply was hesitant, nearly a question.

  “For the sake of understanding, let’s say you, like most people, don’t seek out pain.”

  “Because I’m rational,” she quipped.

  He raised a brow and she nervously drank the last of her champagne. He balanced his own drink on the flat arm of the couch, then used his now-free hand to pluck her empty glass from her fingers and set it on the floor, all without letting go of the wrist he held.

  “What do you do for exercise?”

  She blinked in surprise. “Um, I bike.”

  “And you live here in San Francisco?”

  She hesitated a moment, then said, “Yes.”

  “I imagine those hills are quite challenging on a bicycle.”

  “They are.”

  “At the end of a bike ride, what do you feel?”

  “Tired, sweaty. My legs hurt.” She looked at him. “I get where you’re going with this. You’re talking about an endorphin high.”

  “Yes.”

  “But the fact that my thighs burn after a good ride isn’t the point. The point is the ride, not the muscle burn.”

  James raised an eyebrow. “And for her, the point is the submission, not the pain.”

  Christiana’s mouth opened, and she looked from him back to the stage. The Dom was now striking her shoulders and inner thighs, the flogger still in constant motion.

  “Oh,” Christiana said quietly.

  “I must say, whoever introduced you to the lifestyle wasn’t particularly thorough.”

  Christiana jumped as if he’d struck her, and for the first time she tried to pull her wrist away. He held her for a moment, fighting his own reluctance to let her go, then released his grip.

  She crossed her arms under her breasts, tucking her hands against her sides. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.”

  “It’s not your fault.” A brief, false smile touched her face. “You’re just saying what anyone would.”

  “I didn’t say you shouldn’t be here.” He put steel into his words. “Do not tell me what I said.”

  Her gazed jumped to his face, then skittered away.

  “There are as many ways to practice BDSM as there are people in the world. Even here not everyone has the same philosophy. I’m guessing your teacher preferred a more rule-oriented, less physical approach. I should not have implied you shouldn’t be here.” He leaned forward, dipping his head so he could c
atch her eye. “I would be bereft if you were not here.”

  “Bereft?” she asked.

  “Indeed.”

  “Sometimes you sound like the hero in a Jane Austen novel.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  She cast him a wry glance. “I think you know it’s not.”

  James chuckled and held up a hand. “You’re right, I do know it’s not. Blame my very British tutor.”

  She looked at him. “Where are you from?”

  “I’m a citizen of the world.”

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “I mean that quite literally. I’ve lived all over the world, but I grew up mostly in Britain and France. My mother is from the UAE. My father is half British, half French, but more British.”

  “Ah, that explains the accent.”

  “It’s a bit of a hodgepodge,” he admitted.

  “That must have been an amazing way to grow up.”

  “It was, if a bit confusing. My mother’s family lived on a massive estate in the UAE and we lived like royalty when there, but when in Britain we lived in a four-bedroom row house in Kensington.”

  Technically his mother was royalty, but he didn’t say that, since he was well aware how ridiculous it sounded to say he was the son of an Arab princess.

  “Four bedrooms? Barbaric.” She pressed her lips together as if holding something in and then started to smile.

  It was an enchanting expression, and James couldn’t help but smile in return. “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Not at all, I’m sure it was very challenging.”

  “The estate in the UAE had thirty bedrooms. Comparatively, the house in London was tiny.” He mock-pouted, more than willing to make fun of himself.

  “If there were only four bedrooms, where did the servants live?”

  “They didn’t live in. They only came during the day.”

  “You poor thing.” Christiana raised a hand, laying the back of her wrist against her head. “You’re like the young hero prince, cast out and suffering.”

  He couldn’t stop the laugh, though he tried to keep it quiet. “Don’t call me prince,” he mock scolded. There was quite enough of that in the tabloids.

  “Yes, your highness.”