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Chuckles rippled through the women. Not for him, but for Regina, showing their Domme appreciation and understanding of what limits a Mistress might impose on how generous her submissive could be in his reparations.
"Yeah, you bitches don't get a blank check," Regina confirmed with good humor. "But this is a two-part apology. After the tea party, we'll be adjourning to The Zone for a private event before the club opens for the night. I believe what you're offered there will meet your approval."
That was also part of the reparation plan they'd discussed. He'd wanted to do something like this, the tea party, but he also wanted to offer something...more physical, to make amends. He hadn't known how to make that work, because he was in a situation now where he only wanted to serve one Mistress. And he definitely didn't want Regina thinking he felt differently about that. Fortunately, when she'd walked him through the quagmire of what he was trying to say, she'd understood. He wanted to offer something like what he should have given them before. Surrender to their demands; provide reparations in a way that matched the crime. She told him she would handle the second part.
"Will you accept what I decide?" she'd asked. "Without knowing what it will be until it's happening? No foreknowledge to prepare or shield yourself. Anticipation and dread should be part of the process."
"Yes, Mistress." Though now, at the glint in her eye, he had the good sense to feel a ripple of trepidation. No matter the purity of his intentions, his need to offer these Mistresses a sexual reparation meant his Mistress would take a pound of flesh in exchange for her permission to allow him to do so. A balance he'd need, so he was glad for it. Even as he dreaded the unknown.
The Dommes murmured their appreciation, and he was surprised to see some assessing looks of his person as they anticipated what might be offered. Most of them had had nothing but contempt for him for months. But many of these women were also Regina's friends or confidantes, so maybe she'd been letting them know how things were going.
As Chloe rolled out the first trolley of tea and hors d'oeuvres, he began to serve. He'd been a waiter before, not just at Tyler and Marguerite's Carnival, but at a couple different area restaurants, before he got into the fighting. He wasn't bad at it; had particularly liked waiting on the female customers. Big shock there. They'd appreciated him as well, though not for the same reasons that Regina or any of the ladies here would have. At least not consciously.
Today, no one offered him up any warm fuzzies, nor had he expected them to do so. Reparations didn't mean instant forgiveness. But they were cordial and spoke among themselves as he'd expect, Mistresses accepting a sub's service to them and reinforcing the role by seemingly ignoring him as long as he performed as he should. All while they tracked his every movement, that stirring duality. No one watched him more closely than his own Mistress, which stirred him up the most of all.
Mistress Tia asked for iced instead of hot tea. He lifted the pitcher and poured some into her glass, with a rattle of ice and smooth fountain sound. "Lemon?" he asked.
She picked up the tea, sipped it. Then her gaze lifted to his. He was a fighter. He could read the tells of an attack, a punch about to be thrown. Therefore he steeled himself as, in the next breath, she dashed the contents of the glass directly into his face with a shock of cold water and ice.
Gasps, a scraping back of chairs. Her table fortunately had three occupants, rather than five, and he'd stood before the two empty chairs, so the other Dommes had been mostly out of range of the fallout. The only one affected was him, her, the floor, and the section of the table nearest them. He understood and accepted why she'd done it--no matter the sick frog jump in his gut--but he thought it had been a rude thing to do in Marguerite's place.
That wasn't his call. As the tea dripped down his face, he pulled the towel off the cart and dropped to one knee before her, keeping his eyes down. "I apologize the tea wasn't to your liking, Mistress. You got some of it on your arm. May I dry that for you before it gets on your clothes?"
The stillness in the room had weight.
His unexpected reaction didn't seem to defuse her emotions, however. When his gaze flicked briefly to her face, he saw the cold anger.
"You aren't touching me. You're a useless mongrel who should have been put down."
Chloe approached with more towels, but at Tia's words, she came to a halt, her expression tightlipped. He saw her shoot a glance over her shoulder, and he expected she was looking to Marguerite for direction. Later, he would realize the expression on Chloe's face was akin to "Tell me I can put this bitch in her place," a championing he hadn't expected.
Now, though, he offered his hand towel to Chloe and took the ones for the floor from her. "So Mistress Tia doesn't have to suffer the offense of my touch," he said quietly.
Chloe passed the towel to the Mistress, but when she started to kneel to help with clean up, he made a sharp, quelling sound, and shook his head, reaching up from his half kneeling position to clasp her arm briefly, a way to keep her on her feet. "If you and Melissa would start pouring the tea so the ladies aren't waiting on me, I'll clean the floor."
He felt like every eye was upon him as he started mopping up the liquid. He wondered what his Mistress was thinking. His gut was cold, a lot of things buzzing in his head trying to drag him down into darkness. A mongrel who should be put down. Had Tia deliberately chosen an animal reference, or was it just fate that took him back to that part of his life? No, he wasn't going there right now. He couldn't. Yet he couldn't erase the overlapping of voices in his head, telling him he was nothing and she'd treated him just as he'd deserved.
Maybe he should take his self-flagellation as an improvement. Before, the darkness would have surged forward, compelling him to use anger and cruelty to hide his feelings. He was embarrassed she'd done this in front of his Mistress. He could tell himself that Regina saw all of him, dark and light, but in a moment like this, it didn't feel that way. He felt ugly before her, and since she was the only one in the room whose approval counted, it weighed him down, hurt his heart. He didn't want to put on a mask, but he wasn't sure how he was going to get up off the floor and do this without putting on a face not his own.
"That's more than enough." He saw her feet clad in the sexy strappy heels stop at his side, and inhaled her scent with a flood of relief. He was ashamed at how welcome her presence was, her touch, when her gloved fingertips grazed his back and bare shoulders.
He wanted to tell her not to interfere with this, that he'd prove he could handle anything they threw at him. He'd show her how much he'd changed, that he could do this. The slight tightening of her fingers on the back of his neck told him to be still. He didn't always obey her, but this time the pressure convinced him to stay silent, kneeling. When she'd touched him, he'd automatically assumed a submissive posture, hands flat on the tile, head bowed.
"He wants to show me he's changing, becoming a better person," Regina said. "I told him once that the most important thing to me was that he was trying to be the best person he could be with me. That's what this is about, even more than making amends to all of you."
He swallowed. It sounded kind of bad, put that way, but hearing it said straight out, he knew she was right.
"Because I think most of you understand the significance of that," she continued, "you know I don't bring it up as an ego stroke to me or a cut against any of you fine ladies. It's progress in the evolution of a human being, which I believe deserves a certain level of respect."
"I had--" Tia started to object.
"Shut up." Regina spoke in such a chilling voice that Marius himself froze under her hand. "You want to keep your nose in its current shape, I'll have my say, and then you will leave."
Tia wasn't all that physically imposing, and next to Regina, that difference would be enhanced. Especially with his Mistress emanating a low-level fury that did odd things to Marius's gut.
"I was not in time to stop Siren from what she did to him," she said, her tone sharp as a razor blade. "As Dominants, we are not immune to being fucked over and fucked up. But we appoint ourselves to a position of control, where we trust our instincts and our nature to dive deep into the mind of a submissive, figure out his twists and turns. There are risks to that, on both sides. But we're all big girls, aren't we? We wouldn't be Dommes if we didn't accept the consequences of taking that control.
"One of the gifts that comes with that risk is a sub like this." She stroked his hair, and he couldn't resist the desire to lean into her touch, shoulder pressed to her thigh as his head remained bowed. "We all know there are times a sub might need a light to guide him to the true expression of his submission, to bring him peace and pleasure as we bring it to ourselves. Sometimes he's too fucked up, and he needs a therapist to break some things up first. But if he's a true sub, once he finds that help, a Domme can help him get the rest of the way there."
