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*
"There are like two hundred outfits in here," Madison teased her sister. "You're a hoarder."
Alice gave her a lofty look from the other side of the room. She
was wearing a Marie Antoinette costume, complete with corset and long white-blond wig. The skirt stuck out on either side like a broomstick was beneath it. "This from a hooker."
"I'm not a hooker. I'm a high class escort, versed in every form of sexual pleasure, called to service the world's most powerful men. They give me diamonds." Madison stretched out an arm loaded up with sparkly bangle bracelets, and crossed her legs in the micro-miniskirt that showed off the mesh stockings and stiletto heels. "I earn ten thousand dollars an hour."
"Great. You can take care of us both when we're old and gray and our boobs sag."
"I'll buy us plastic surgery so we'll never look older. We'll never get old and gray."
*
Sighing, Madison left the room behind and descended the stairs. A shower seemed the most neutral decision. She stayed in there awhile, leaning against the wall, letting the spray roll over her. When at last she reached for the soap, lathered it up and ran it over her skin, her mind went to Logan's hands. Resting on her lower back, closed over her wrist . . . her throat. She laid her fingers in the same place and closed her eyes. With the water drumming in her ears, it seemed safe, isolated, to think about it. To want his hands on her again. He surrounded a woman with his presence, his strength, those penetrating eyes. All the things she'd sampled from the Master with Vanessa, Logan offered as a full course meal.
She thought about the box she'd left on the kitchen table. In an uncertain mood when she arrived last night, she'd lifted the lid only long enough to fish out the key and drop it in a filled ice tray, telling herself that didn't commit her to anything. Would he ask her about it, next time she came into the shop? She didn't like feeling obligated. But he'd offered it to her as a way to help her. What else was she going to do today?
Dressed in a terry cloth robe, running her hands through her damp hair, she went to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. As she added sugar and cream, she studied the box, then propped her hips against the counter, sipping from the mug. After a few moments, she sidled over to the box and folded back the lid. The cuffs were on top of the card deck. Noticing a folded note in between the two, she put her cup down.
Opening it, she saw what she assumed was Logan's unexpectedly neat, even handwriting. Just like an old-fashioned schoolmaster. It was insanely easy to envision him with queued hair, tight breeches and a long coat. Take away the fancy computer at the front of his store, and she could see him standing in the same spot three hundred years ago, behind an antique register and a carved wooden counter. His woodworking shop had possessed power tools, but also a lot of hand tools, so she thought he wouldn't feel out of place at all.
She'd be the student sneaking glances at his groin in the snug breeches and getting her knuckles rapped. Or kept after school and held firmly around the waist, clinging to his side as he applied that ruler to her backside. He'd make her pull up her skirt so it marked her skin through the thin drawers . . .
Thinking of her room upstairs, she wondered if Logan liked to play dress up. Did he wear leather and chains at his club? A pirate shirt and boots? The ridiculous thought intrigued her far more than it should. She turned her attention to the note.
Relinquish control--on your own terms.
Relinquishing control made her feel like she was trapped in a bucket, waiting for the bottom to drop out. A counselor who treated her for depression in her teens suggested she try to make a B instead of an A, saying she needed to stop trying to control everything, be a perfectionist in all she did. Fortunately, her mother had decided that was an asinine idea, but in this case, Logan wasn't advising loss of control through a lower level of performance. He was presenting her with a way to see the store differently, help her excel with it. A pretty unorthodox way, granted, but as she'd realized yesterday, her traditional sales experience didn't mean squat there. It was an erotica shop, not Radio Shack.
Still, she hedged. She should return the box to him, say thanks but no thanks.
She left it there and went into Alice's home office. For the next few minutes, she riffled through some estate paperwork. The idea of doing that repulsed her, so she wandered back into the bedroom.
She'd returned to Boston after Alice's death long enough to hire a company to pack up her belongings and ship them here. Now she stared at some of those boxes, stacked against the lavender painted wall. Most of what she'd brought here had remained unopened, except for her clothes and essentials. What was in the bulk of them was impersonal to her, stuff she was likely to donate anyhow. Alice had a fully stocked kitchen of brightly colored, mismatched dishes. Why would Madison unpack her practical designer china, a set of six she'd never used, since she mostly ate out of reusable plastic frozen food trays?
Even with the logical explanations for it all, it was still surreal to her, how she'd simply walked away from everything. It was as if Alice's summons had been the completion of one book of her life and the opening of this new one. Perhaps she'd been ready for a huge change, everything in Boston a reminder of what she didn't have. Or what she'd been there.
Now she found the box with her few pieces of intimate wear and jewelry. Sure enough, she found the choker. And a black lace thong.
She'd never worn them together for a lover, but what was interesting was how often she'd imagined doing so. She'd envision the faceless male hooking his finger under the choker to pull her up off her knees and capture her mouth in a kiss. His hands would drop to grip her bare breasts, squeeze and pinch as she writhed under his commanding touch. She was always on her knees when he did that. He would blindfold her, so she could feel everything even more intensely.
She'd never had a lover she'd trusted enough to blindfold her, or restrain her in a way she couldn't remove herself. Her spotty Dom/sub attempts with lovers had been very low-key. Even when she'd dared to invite one of her relationship partners, like Gerald, into that dark part of her head, she hadn't trusted any of them to treat her like one of the submissives she'd seen on her adventures with Alice. But that hunger when she watched them be blindfolded, chained, was a dragon, gnawing on her soul.
A form of magic. Chains on the body become a way to free the soul . . .
For heaven's sake, it was just her alone here. Dropping the robe on the bed, she stepped into the lace thong. The friction of the back strap against her rim, the way the rest hugged the labia, made her aware she wore a garment that only had two purposes--arousing herself and a lover. When she lifted the choker in front of the mirror and put it on, she watched her nipples tighten, felt a similar reaction between her legs.
She hadn't opened the curtains in the living area, so she didn't have to don the robe to move back through the house. It felt decadent, walking down the hallways and through the rooms that way. She pretended her Master had commanded her to wear only this until he came home from work. Such secret 24/7 Dom/sub fantasies usually featured her Master as a man in a suit, his clean-shaven jaw strong, his lips firm with authoritative resolve. She'd kneel by the door, her eyes down as he came home from a day at the office.
Now instead of seeing creased slacks and shiny shoes in her mind's eye, she saw heavy work shoes beneath the cuffs of jeans. When Logan squatted, tipped up her chin to give her a heated, approving kiss, his warm brown eyes took her over, the rasp of his five o'clock shadow a welcome abrasion to her fair skin.
Okay, Logan could be today's fantasy. That didn't mean anything. Logan was a charismatic man and very self-assured. Dominant. Master. She rolled the words over in her mind. She'd always told herself it was a title those in the D/s community gave themselves, like an adult calling himself Captain Kirk because he donned a Star Trek uniform for a sci-fi con. It didn't translate outside the mass delusion of that exclusive community. Logan was the first Dom she'd met who clearly emanated what he was outside a club environment. He'd affect a ninety-year-old grandmother, let alone her.
Since she didn't care to dwell on the fantasies he likely inspired in all those female gardening customers, ninety-year-olds or otherwise, she re
trieved the box from the table and the ice tray from the freezer. Snagging a dish towel to fold beneath it, she brought all of it back into the living room.
