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When his other hand came to rest on her hip, her breath started shortening. He was about half a foot taller than her, so he bent his head, close enough she felt his breath pass over her temple. "What are you doing?"
"Learning you. Watching you react. Watching the wheels spin in your fascinating mind. What do you think of this one?"
It was a short-legged, three-foot-long rectangular bench, with two round cutouts a third of the way along the horizontal surface. Beneath the center of the bench was a crescent-shaped support piece.
"The Master who wanted this specified the two round cut outs so when his slave is lying on her stomach on the bench, her breasts fit through the holes. It's low enough to the ground, her knees and palms can reach the floor. She has pierced nipples, so he'll run a chain between them so she's bound to the bench. The crescent piece beneath is high enough he can also have her lie on the floor on her back, and he can position the arch of that piece over her throat, without it pressing on her windpipe. We've designed a track system so he can lock the bench to the floor of the playroom. She won't be able to shift it or accidentally turn it over."
"Of course," she said. When she swayed, his hand tightened on her hip. He continued as if he hadn't noticed.
"Anything involving the throat requires critical safety precautions. I made this stool capable of holding over three hundred pounds. But no matter what I do, he has to care for her as well. Locked beneath it, she has no way to protect her face, making her very vulnerable."
Madison had a wholly different view of that vulnerability. She visualized herself beneath that bench, staring up into Logan's face, through his spread knees. He might blindfold her. Or perhaps he'd take his cock in hand and masturbate over her face until he came. The lock system would hold her there when he decided to get up, kneel between her legs, scoop up her hips and fuck her. Or eat her pussy. Or take her to climax over and over with a vibrator.
"Why would anyone trust someone that much?" she said, trying to pull herself out of her head.
"Perhaps they need to believe they can."
So many of her conversations with Alice about this type of thing had been about her, not Alice. Yet Alice had to have had a certain affinity for it, to sell BDSM materials as well as she did. "How did Alice . . . feel about things like this?"
"She wasn't in the lifestyle, if that's what you're asking. However, she was one of the few I was able to get to help me sand, and who did it properly."
When she glanced up at Logan, she saw that fond sadness, a ghost of a smile around his lips. "She did send me some business, but only a select few, because of how particular I am about it. I want to know my clientele. I don't do cash or anonymous. Nothing I spend hours creating is going to be used by some irresponsible novice or worse, a deranged sociopath who doesn't understand what Domination and submission is all about."
"And what is it all about?" She wanted to hear it from him, because it was different for everyone. "I'm not her, you know."
Suddenly that seemed not only a very important point, but the point, the one that had made this day take a turn for the worse and now made her wonder exactly why she was here, what Logan was seeking from her.
"I know you're not her, Madison." His countenance suggested he could tell everything she was thinking, which was too reassuring. She fea
red that familiarity. It could pull her under, take her where she'd fought going for so long. "Just as I know that you, even better than your sister, know what Domination and submission is all about. She knew it, too. No, wait. Don't withdraw. Just listen. It's not the technical stuff or the jargon, knowing whether this is a picnic table or spanking bench. It's an internal recognition, a call to something inside yourself you can't deny or shut down, not when faced with it like this."
"This is the conversation Alice always tried to have with me. I don't want to have it with you."
"Maybe she thought if you had the chance to have it with a more neutral party, you could figure some things out for yourself, at your own pace, rather than feeling like a trapped animal, being force-fed things."
She eyed him warily. "Are you offering to be my teacher? Is that what this is all about?"
He held her gaze. "That's one of the things I can be."
"What if it's the only thing I want from you? Or if I don't want anything at all."
"That will be your choice." He nodded. "But once you stop trying to shut it out, you'll find a wide range of things to explore. Endless spaces, like a honeycomb."
He didn't move any closer, but it felt that way, in how he looked at her. His tone became gentler once again. "What it's not about is harming someone. Not the absence of pain; there are good kinds of pain. I'm talking about damaging someone emotionally by betraying their trust, by not caring for them at the same time you demand their utter surrender."
He knew all the right things to say, all the right buttons to push. "Have you ever heard the best con man is the one who believes what he's saying?"
"Why do you need what I say to be a lie, Madison?"
"If you don't mind," she said tightly, "I'd like to skip the psych evaluation. We can do the store tour another time."
She turned away without waiting for his response and moved to the door. She was being rude again, but in all her relationships, she'd tried to be so accommodating, so pleasant. After lucky number seven, she'd finally decided her best dating strategy was not giving a shit about what was expected of her. Which, given that was almost physically impossible for her, meant not dating at all. She was reminded of that now, because a big part of her didn't want him to let her blow it off. Or let her go.
"I'd prefer to give you the full tour now."
Looking over her shoulder, she saw he was replacing the sides of the cage, transforming it into a chest again. When he straightened and turned toward her, he didn't look irritated. She wondered what it would take to rile him up, and whether she really wanted to go down that road. A part of her did. A very dangerous part.
He strode across the room to join her. She moved out of range, a pointed message that she didn't want to be touched. He respected it, though when he opened the door for her, he slid his fingertips along her lower back, an incidental touch that set off nerve receptors all around it. What was it about that guiding, protective hand that could wake up so many things inside a woman?
