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ONE
Shropshire wasone of the most beautiful places Jamison Croft had ever been to. The picturesque, rolling hills and verdant greenery of the countryside had the feeling of a bygone age. The land and its speckling of cottages and barns filled him with a sense of history and continuity. Every view as he drove along winding country roads was postcard perfect and about as English as it was possible to be.
Also as English as could be were the filthy, naughty things that were about to take place in the idyllic setting that weekend.
Jamie smiled and pulled his car off the main road and onto the drive that would take him to his destination. The grounds around the old estate of Hadnall Heath had been converted into a holiday camp, with a warren of quaint cottages tucked among the trees, giving each building a sense of much-needed privacy while still being part of a grander whole.
He reached the parking lot that was discreetly tucked at the edge of one row of cottages and cut his engine. Each cottage had been built to look like some Jane Austen approved gamekeeper’s home, with late-summer flowers blooming in lovingly tended gardens. Tidy, stone paths wound their way through the trees, from cabin to cabin, and on to the estate house, like treasure paths in a fairy tale.
It was the perfect location for The Brotherhood’s quarterly kink retreat.
Jamie exited his car, grinning to himself as he adjusted his glasses. He hoisted his rucksack over his shoulder, shut and locked the door of his Skoda, and took a breath to get himself into the mindset for a weekend of subby goodness.
He headed up to the house, wondering if any of the villagers in the surrounding area or any of the church groups who sometimes rented the cottages of Hadnall Heath had the first idea what The Brotherhood got up to at their relatively frequent retreats. If they did, they would probably call for some sort of government inquiry and strike against the place to have it shut down, or write someone a strongly-worded letter.
“What’s that smile for?”
Jamie turned his cheeky smile to his friend, and sometimes dom, Kit Courrier, as they met on the path leading from the parking lot at the base of the hill up to the main house.
“I was just contemplating what the Salvation Army, or whatever other religious groups that use Hadnall Heath when we’re not here, would think of us,” he said, falling into an easy stride by Kit’s side.
Kit laughed loudly. He was a loud, sometimes overbearing bear of a man, but Jamie supposed that was what made him such a good dom. He played hard, he laughed hard, and he enjoyed life immensely. No one would have guessed that the six-foot-three farmer who owned a sheep farm in Dorset and held a seat on his local town council was so handy with a flogger, or that he looked so appealing in leather.
“We’d best not tell them,” Kit said, thumping one of his large hands on Jamie’s back in a way that sent a preliminary rush of adrenaline and submission through him and made him need to readjust his glasses. “God only knows that people tend to condemn what they don’t understand.”
“They would argue that God was on their side and that He wouldn’t approve,” Jamie laughed.
Kit sent him a look of mock scandal. “God is most definitely one of us,” he said. “Bloody sadistic deity, asking everyone to call him ‘Daddy’ all the time.”
Jamie continued to chuckle. “‘Our Father’ is hardly the same as ‘Daddy’.”
“Isn’t it?” Kit teased.
Jamie shook his head as they reached the main house and headed into the front hall through the massive, open front door. Itwouldexplain a lot if God was a dom.
The interior of Hadnall Heath’s main house was a Georgian dream. Its white marble floors and huge, curving staircase conveyed the grandeur of the past as completely as the dozens of portraits of the estate’s former owners. The last remaining descendant of the Herrington family had bequeathed the estate to The Brotherhood after the war, and the cottages had been built in the seventies so that the expansive property could bring in a little income for the organization. It was used for more socially acceptable Brotherhood activities as well as kink weekends, so overall, it was one of the better bequests that had been made over the years.
As antiquated as the place was, Jamie always felt a sense of calm and comfort whenever he visited. It was satisfying to have a place where he could go to simply be who he was without anyone judging him for it. He’d had enough of other people’s judgment in his life. His family’s judgment, for example.
Although he’d long since passed the point of caring what the people who had struck his name from the family Bible thought, he did care about word getting around to the university staff. His position as a professor of Psychology at Royal University of London meant everything to him, and he only ever attended large kink events outside of the city, hoping that precaution would keep his colleagued from learning how bent he could be. Small munches in London were fine, but not large-scale events like this one.
Frankly, there was nothing quite as good for resetting the soul as spending a long weekend letting it all go and submitting his body and mind to whoever wanted to play with him and send his endorphins soaring.
“Are you looking forward to the new school year?” Kit asked as the two of them waited in the short line at the registration table.
“Very much so,” Jamie replied, tickled to be talking about such mundane things when he knew full well what the weekend was about to bring. “The university has me teaching a new class this semester, the Growth of the Mind. And I’m sure they’ll pair me with all sorts of nervous young people in need of an advisor for the year.”
Kit laughed. “The sub becomes the master?” he asked as they stepped up to the table.
“Hardly,” Jamie grinned in return. “Advising incoming freshmen is more like shepherding impressionable minds and sending them in the right direction than exercising any control over them. You should know you can’t tell anyone under the age of thirty a damn thing, you can only hold their hands and walk them through breathing exercises when the strain of being a newly-minted adult hits.”
“Don’t I know it,” Kit said with a sideways smile as the registrar searched for his packet. “Those sheep can be far harder to manage than the ones I manage on the farm.”
Jamie grinned at that, then turned his attention to the registrar. He was certain Kit was right. He’d had more than a few advisees in his day who had been in his office every other week with one problem or another. He was glad to give those students help.
He might have enjoyed going to his knees and having a cock shoved down his throat while his hands were tied behind his back now and then, but he also enjoyed paving the way for young men and women who were just starting out in life.
Oh, the paradoxes of the things that got people off and made them tick!
