Chapter 21

Three figures were tangled on the bed, one was obviously female and all of them were more or less clothed. She writhed and giggled in the arms of two ripped men who were ~tickling~ her. Mercilessly, too, from the looks of it. One was Rick, but the other—

I expelled a sharp breath when the other man’s face turned toward the camera and I recognized Max. He had a delighted grin on his face that completely disarmed me.

“Oh, God,” I said, before I could stop myself.

The beer bottle came around in front of me and I took it without looking back at Rick. I could feel him bracing his hands on the back of the sofa behind me.

“Let me know if this is too much for you and I’ll stop it.”

Always considerate to a fault, I thought. Max was that way, too, and had been all my life.

“No, I want to watch,” I said. “She looks so happy.” ~And beautiful, ~I thought, watching the slender brunette wiggle under their attention. She was in a black lace negligee with matching panties and her dark hair flowed in tendrils across the red pillow.

“That was her thing,” Rick said. “Everyone has something I guess. Tickling was what got her going.”

In the middle of the writhing limbs and the infectious laughter things changed. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen now. The men exchanged a glance and while Max continued the tickle torture, Rick stripped her bare, leaving a twisting shape of naked legs and torso and breasts. She undulated under their continued torture, obviously enjoying every touch.

Then the ropes came out and my entire body tingled in recognition of them. The slide of the silk cords over my skin was emblazoned on my memory. Max continued tickling Aurora while Rick went to work. It couldn’t have been easy considering how much she wiggled, but her movements and laughter transformed before my eyes into soft moans of pleasure accompanied by more twists of her shapely body.

Instead of tickling, Max was now sliding his hands over her limbs, gently urging her into a face-down position for Rick to wrap her wrists and ankles with the ropes. Aurora’s arms stretched wide when Rick tethered them to the steel rings in the headboard of the bed. Max gripped her ankles and yanked them down, spreading her legs wide and holding them for Rick to tie them, too. Then Max slid his hands back up her legs slowly, pausing to massage her ass and dipping his face between her legs as though to taste her. He left the frame after that, and all I could see was Rick and Aurora, with his deft hands tying knots and pausing every so often to caress her skin.

“Not my best work, but I always tended to save the fancy stuff for the real show. That was all I needed for her.” Rick’s breath puffed at the back of my head, making my scalp tingle.

I opened and closed my mouth. If what I saw wasn’t “the fancy stuff” then what did my own tiedown mean? I’d been cocooned in ropes, but Aurora only had them around her wrists and ankles.

“Pay attention, you can learn something here. Particularly how different she is from you, and why you’re a better fit for us,” Rick said. His weight left the back of the sofa and I craned my neck around.

“Spoiler much?” I shot at him, then turned back to the screen, irritated, but secretly excited to know he thought I was a good fit—and for ~them~.

Rick laughed and leaned back down behind me. One of his hands brushed my shoulder. I tensed and shifted away. We shouldn’t touch, even as much as I wanted him to touch me just now, I knew better, and so did he.

His hand disappeared and he moved away. The image on the screen monopolized my attention.

Aurora was blindfolded and bound, and both men hovered over her with different implements of torture. Rick held a large plume-like feather, while Max wielded a leather thing that looked like it might feel soft until he reached back and let it slap against Aurora’s ass with a smack. The broom-like tendrils of leather slid along her ass, caressing and making her twitch and moan. He lifted his hand and brought the whip down again, this time hard enough to leave red marks on her ass.

I hadn’t seen Max’s face the night before when he spanked me. Seeing it now, while he dealt steady, stinging blows to Aurora’s ass, was like seeing him for the first time. He was younger, and more ~there~. Every single movement he made was calculated to evoke a reaction from her. And every strike he landed did exactly what he hoped it would.

He always prefaced the strike with a steady tickle that made Aurora moan and twitch, while Rick steadily teased the feather all over her.

I wished I was her. The realization astounded me when it rushed into my head. God, I wished like hell I was her right now. I’d ~been~ her for a little while, the day before. Now with Max’s silence I worried all my dreams were up in the air. My stomach knotted again and a chill raced over my skin.

“I can’t watch the rest,” I said, standing up and turning away from the TV to find the remote.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s ~him.~ It’s you. And I want so bad to be her, but I’m not and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to be. God, do you have any idea what the last two days have meant to me? I’ve been so damn confused for so long about these things I want. Now that I’ve actually gotten a taste, I don’t want to stop. But I know Max probably won’t ever touch me again and it fucking ~kills~ me. And now you won’t touch me either out of loyalty to him. It makes me feel like I’m—I don’t know—flawed somehow because you don’t want me.”

Rick stood behind the sofa still, a pace back, with the remote control in his hand. “Watch it,” he said. “Just let it play out, so you can understand us better.”

I watched, my gaze fixed on Max’s fingers plunging lewdly into Aurora’s wet, pink snatch. Her hips bucked back against him and he smacked her with the leather tendrils.

~“Aurora, you know the rules of the show, no coming until I say so.”~

~“Fuck you, Max. I’m gonna…”~

She cried out and her hips bucked with her orgasm. Max cursed and Rick laughed. He untied Aurora’s bindings, continuing to laugh the entire time. Aurora joined in a moment later, but Max scowled furiously.

~“That’s it, Aurora. I’m done with you.”~

She giggled and wrapped her arms around him from behind, cooing in his ear. ~“Aw, Max, lighten up. It was good for me.”~

~“No good for the club, though. We’re entertainers, not your personal sex toys. If you can’t take this seriously we can’t work together.”~

“I don’t understand,” I said, staring at the screen.

“It was her prerogative to end the scene, but it was our livelihood at the time. She never quite fit our style as Doms, especially Max’s, because she had real problems with authority. She needed a Dom who could work with someone like her. Max needed her full attention and respect to perform well. Chloe gave us an ultimatum—if we couldn’t get Aurora to perform we had to find a new sub. We never did find another woman we could work with. I think you’re that woman now. I hope so, anyway.”

My stomach lurched. “You want me to…perform?”

Rick’s eyes widened and he raised his hands. “No! It’s not about that at all. Not unless you want that. You represent a lot for us, though…a way to make up for failing Aurora. She wasn’t the right sub for us, but she needed more guidance than we gave her. And you’re the first woman who’s made complete sense with us.”

The sound of a car door closing outside distracted Rick’s attention. He paused the video and walked to the front door.