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Julie chuckled. Billie was right. That thorn was being a pain in her ass and interfering with a simple request. "Yeah, yeah. I've noticed most people in the BDSM world are happy to see anyone get naked I think we'll all keep our clothes on, especially if we're going to get any work done today."
"Wanting to see naked folk isn't a kink thing, honey-chile." Billie snorted. "That's anywhere there's a human with a pulse. Rabbits got nothing on us."
"Okay." Julie made her decision. "We're talking what, about ten minutes?"
"Maybe twenty. I've got to get you set up..." Pablo launched into some rope intricacies that mostly went over her head.
She remembered Des's hands moving over her, his fingers and the rope moving together like an erotic dance on her skin. Today she'd worn a long T-shirt over leggings, with a sports bra beneath, so it would be easy enough to strip the T-shirt off and fit the parameters of what Des had suggested as proper "rope bunny" wear if she'd not wanted to remove all her clothes.
What was it about men, that they liked terminology that melded rabbits and women? Badge bunny, rope bunny, Playboy bunny... Well, rabbits were soft and furry. Who didn't like rabbits?
As she followed Pablo back to the stage, Billie and Harris following, she took off the long T-shirt. She told herself not to be self-conscious. As Pablo had said, she and Sandy were the same body type, about twenty pounds over what Hollywood thought was ideal for women.
Well, these days they did. She remembered the temporary tattoos on Des's arms, the lush Marilyn and Betty. She recalled Des standing between her spread legs, heated palms sliding up them. What I could do with these thighs...
Had she really let him do that on their very first meeting? It had to be the carrot sticks. It was a subliminal message, the carrot stick to get a mule moving forward.
She snorted at herself as she joined Pablo on center stage. The collapsible frame he used had been set up, locked down on tracks. At his direction, she moved inside of it and lifted her arms to her sides.
Within a few moments, it was clear Pablo was not as confident and smooth as Des, which suggested why his video had started with his sub already suspended. At the time, she'd thought it was because he'd wanted to emphasize the non-rigging aspects of his performance.
However, he shook out his lines and had her in a decent harness fairly quickly, handling the positioning around and over her breasts in a functional and not inappropriate way. He worked other lines in an intricate net over shoulders, head and beneath her thighs as he prepared to suspend her. He was talking to Harris and the lighting guys at the same time, explaining his intent in a roundabout way. Some of the students and other stage hands had paused to watch him, probably intrigued seeing the managing director as his subject. She thought he seemed rushed, nervous at having to do all this on the fly in front of them. Or maybe he was nervous about using her, too, and didn't want her getting impatient. Hoping to relax him, she stayed quiet and gave him reassuring looks as he did what he needed to do.
Yet she also found herself counting the minutes until he was done. The rope was putting uncomfortable pressure on the inside of her thigh, enough that she'd decided to tell him that when he turned and hoisted her off her feet. He did it while still talking to Harris and the other crew, not giving her warning, so it jerked her off her feet precipitously.
She could have adjusted to that, but something wasn't right. As she was dipped backward, the discomfort went to pain almost immediately, and the binding around her arm pulled her shoulder at an odd angle. Things felt unbalanced.
The frame was steel and one of the larger props they would be using for the show, but when he hoisted her, it shuddered. As she tried to adjust and began to speak, the scaffold swayed alarmingly. With a sharp pop and plink, two pins fell out of metal joining pieces.
"Oh, shit." Pablo cursed and dove for that section of the frame, just as the scaffold started to go over.
Up until that moment, Julie hadn't felt fear, just irritation, but suddenly everything was going wrong. More screws pulling loose, a screech of metal as the legs gave way. She suddenly realized how helpless she was. She had no way to protect herself as the rope in which he had bound her rolled, pinching her in several places. Her leg was throbbing painfully. But it wasn't that which catapulted her from fear into gut wrenching terror.
The harness he'd worked around her shoulders shifted. A loop of rope constricted around her windpipe. As the structure began to collapse, her head was jerked back in a harrowing snap.
She had a blink to think--my head's going to hit the stage--but she had no air to cry out at the certainty she was about to be seriously hurt.
Her body did land hard, metal jabbing into her back, but her head didn't bounce off the stage floor. It was caught in a very capable and unexpectedly familiar palm. She was staring up into Desmond's face, which would have been a very welcome visage to see, except she couldn't breathe. Her head was starting to swim and her leg and shoulder hurt, blood damming up with nowhere to go.
Des was snapping out orders and people were scrambling, pulling at the broken frame, but someone stepped on something that jabbed one of those fallen metal pieces into her leg. When she choked on another painful cry, his snarl sent them all skittering back like a startled flock of birds. He yanked out a knife sheathed at his belt, something that looked much sharper than what he'd used to scrape wax off of her. The flicked out blade flashed like a prop in West Side Story.
"Sorry for this, love."
He forced his fingers roughly under the noose at her throat, slid the flat of the blade in the space and cut through it. A light burning sensation told her he'd had to make a shallow cut in her skin, but she had no complaints because she could breathe again, a relief so overwhelming she hyperventilated, trying to pull in too much breath at once.
Billie was at her head, kneeling, saying things in a soothing voice, stroking her shoulders as Des sliced the rest of her rope off her. As he moved her off the wreckage and to the floor next to it, putting her on a folded blanket someone had produced to cushion her, he rubbed her inner thigh briskly. It eased the sudden painful rush of blood and re-established its flow.
He checked her arm, which was tender but had full mobility. She hadn't dislocated it. "Easy," Des said. His touch was so gentle. Since she was shaking like a reed in a typhoon--the aftereffect of realizing she'd just had a damn close call--she needed it. When someone tried to approach he held up a warning hand, backing everyone out of her line of sight but him. She was glad for it. Though she wasn't having fuzzy feelings for Pablo right now, she liked these people. Some of them, like Billie, she liked immensely. However, while she tried to pull herself together, she just wanted Des, not a bunch of people staring at her.
He had come from a job, because he was wearing his stained dark jeans and a T-shirt frayed at the collar. A bill cap was pulled down over his brow, his hair bound back in a short tail. He had dirt in the creases of his neck and elbow, and the combination of sweat, shingles and other construction odors was stronger than that first day, but it was all welcome. He was giving her a more thorough examination now, his penetrating eyes covering every inch of her face and body, his fingertips performing the same thorough appraisal. She was able to move or rotate everything he asked her to do, which relieved her as much as it seemed to do him.
"You might have some nasty bruises here," he said, hands settling on her throat, stroking her as if he was also monitoring her pulse. She lifted her chin, needing to feel his touch there, his hold. His eyes darkened, as if she'd said something meaningful to him with the gesture, and she supposed she had.
"We're getting you to an urgent care. You need to be checked out."
She shook her head. She was fine, she was sure of it. Bruised and battered maybe, but nothing broken. She gripped his arm, indicating she wanted to sit up. He didn't deny her, thankfully, lifting her into a sitting position and adjusting so she was leaning against his kneeling body, her back against his one propped
leg.
