AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Marguerite chuckled dryly. "You are very inappropriate, Lady Regina."
"But I am right." Regina grinned. "It's one of the few ways we other Dommes confirm you're human. You blush when you're teased about him. Not lobster or anything. More like light pink roses in your cheeks." She paused. "I followed him to one of his fights. Marius, that is."
"Oh?" Marguerite's gaze lighted with interest. "And how was that?"
"It was terrible, horrifying. Marius was both train and wreck. I've never seen anyone fight like that. In movies and professional sports, it's so choreographed. This was like watching a snuff film." Regina offered a grim smile. "Though my primal female side didn't care about my moral outrage. I was so turned on, I had a marathon evening with my Hitachi. Just imagining that amazing, powerful body wrestling, flexing, pounding..."
"We've had several members propose gladiator events at The Zone for just that reason." Marguerite's eyes gleamed. "The suggestion is still under review, but is receiving favorable reaction, so don't be too hard on yourself."
Regina sighed. "I've grilled myself as hard as any interrogation scene I've ever done, trying to figure out why I have my eyes wide open and I'm still walking right into a mine field. I've told myself I'm not in deep enough to worry about it yet, that I can stop it at any time, but I did stop, didn't I? And yet here I am." She drummed her fingers on the table. "Give me a sanity check. Am I addicted or on a mission? Even if it's a mission, is that the right reason to pursue this?"
"Perhaps it's neither. Perhaps it's something even more unsettling." Marguerite gestured with her tea cup. "When I said you're formidable, it's not because you are a formidable Mistress, though you are. You are a formidable woman, probably the most balanced one I've met within The Zone walls. You said yourself you're going into this with your eyes open. You won't allow anyone to destroy your sense of self. If that becomes a danger, you will drop him immediately. But someone that can add to your sense of self, that challenges you to grow and welcome a man into your heart? You'll embrace that, and not fear the cost or the fight to make it happen. You also won't mistake the conflict for something negative."
"Wow." Putting another cake on her plate, Regina stepped off the subject long enough to scowl at the three pieces of cookie on Marguerite's, still untouched. "Will you please put that in your skinny body before I jump over there and force feed you? It's rude not to eat with a guest. What is it with white girls and being thin? Don't you know how much men like having an actual ass to grab?"
Marguerite's expression flickered with surprise, then amusement again. Picking up one of the pieces, she put it in her mouth, chewed and swallowed. "Better?"
"Tons," Regina said dryly, then returned to topic. "You're right. That is a scarier proposition than drug or calling. But I think there's an interim step before I get all googly-eyed. He's a puzzle I haven't been able to solve, and that drives me crazy. I know there's something more there, and it interests the hell out of me. When it doesn't, I'll back off, but right now it's in that nice zone of physical attraction, emotional interest and simple, 'man, I'd like to crack that fine ass and fuck him up until he begs for more.'"
"A goal understood and approved by Dommes everywhere," Marguerite agreed. Two more bites of the cookie had disappeared.
Regina looked beneath the table. "Do you have a dog that snuck through here so you could feed the rest of that cookie to him?"
"The hummingbird is trained to take morsels from my fingertips without being detected by the human eye."
Regina snorted. "Wise-ass." She settled back with a fond look at Marguerite. "Okay. So what do I do about that line in the sand I've drawn?"
"Erase it with the toe of one of your magnificent thigh high red boots. Then put that same boot up the orifice where it will do him the most good."
Regina appreciated the visual. "I don't feel approaching him again is the right thing. So he has to come to me, but it may take him a while. Tyler forbid him to do it, which won't stop Marius, but he'll need time to fight with himself over it."
"Maybe. But I think he will approach you for another chance, sooner rather than later. If he would with anyone, it would be with you."
That surprised Regina. "Why?"
Marguerite blinked. "I'm not in the habit of answering questions another Mistress already knows."
"Unless it's a request for a sanity check," Regina reminded her. "Which we've already established is why I'm here. And for the company and sweets."
Marguerite acknowledged that with an amiable nod. "You already understand him better than other Mistresses who have reached this stage. They figured out his game, and discarded him. You figured out his game, but you looked beyond the game to the reason he's playing it. He interests you, and not for the reasons he has interested others, which gives him no frame of reference for dealing with you. That's probably good, because he has no time to come up with a suave new routine. The broken part might be able to take the lead, which will be ugly, but honest."
Regina thought of the way he'd acted at Safe Word. Belligerent, petulant, angry. Very little evidence of the charm he used as his mask.
"Okay. That tracks for me."
"I should ask a different question, one that I'm sure you don't get asked any more often than I do, given the type of women we are, the personalities we project. What do you fear, Lady Regina?"
Regina cocked her head. "What do you mean?"
"To work with difficult subs, a Domme must have the right blend of self-confidence, creativity and arrogance. And the arrogance is a potent part of the recipe. Too much and you blind yourself to warning signs. Too little, and you won't risk enough to change anything. You'll question yourself, wonder if that's your role at all. It's a tough call, and it gets more difficult when your heart gets involved."
Marguerite adjusted the pot further to the right of her elbow and then folded her arms anew to square off with Regina. "You are not as in control as you wish to be. Not as detached."
"Yeah." The woman was good at hitting the nail on the head, Regina gave her that. "I've always been reasonably sure of who a sub is, and what I want from him." She shook her head. "With him? Soon as that energy starts to spin, I don't want to play it safe. I want to push, I want to challenge, I want to tear into him...and I want to let him tear into me. That's new."
She grimaced. "Good old-fashioned fear, that's what it is. Maybe he's drawing me into his fucked-up self deeper than I realize, but I'm usually not an easy mark. The alternative is I'm taking this path knowing it's going to get dark and twisty, and I'm worried about getting so carried away by it that I misstep...and he turns me into the final straw. The agent of his destruction. He gets pissed, out of control, runs off to one of his fights and ends up dead."
The silence drew out between them. Regina finished her cake, mentally computing how much she'd have to add to today's workout. It was a good distraction, helping her rein in the uneasiness that her own words had caused her, or handle how Marguerite was looking at her now.
