“Little flame, you better decide soon, because there are some subs heading this way to beg to be of use to me for my demonstration.”
She followed his gaze and saw a tall and svelte redhead in what looked like a black leather gladiator outfit with the nipples cut out. Next to her, a buxom brunette in a silvery, sheer sarong approached Bryan with an equal look of hunger on her face. The redhead and brunette knelt in the small space by Bryan’s chair.
“Greetings, Master Bryan,” the brunette purred and looked at Bryan through her lashes. “Could I be of service to you this evening?”
Before Bryan could speak, the redhead parted her thighs, revealing that she wore nothing beneath the strips of leather that made up her skirt. Tanwen wanted to throw her napkin at her and tell her to cover up.
“Please allow me to serve you in any way that you wish, Master Bryan.”
He looked at Tanwen, and she blurted out, “I’ll do it.” It was either that or get into a very undignified slapping match with the other women.
His lips twitched in a suppressed smile, and he nodded at the kneeling subs. “Thank you, but I have what I need for the evening. Extend my thanks to your master and mistress for the offer.”
The subs both rose in a smooth and elegant motion. The redhead smiled and made her way back to her table, but the brunette gave Tanwen a dirty look. Before she could move, Bryan grabbed the brunette by the back of her neck and forced her to her knees. “Jasmine, did you just disrespect my sub?”
Jasmine’s lower lip trembled, and she whispered, “Yes, Master Bryan. I’m sorry.”
The woman’s obvious sorrow tugged at Tanwen’s heart, and she placed her hand on his wrist. “Really, Sir, you don’t—”
“Quiet,” Bryan ordered, and Tanwen snatched her hand back and stared at him. The anger in his gaze scared her, but it also made a rush of heat flash through her body.
“Jasmine, go to your master and tell him you are to be beaten for disrespecting my sub, but you aren’t allowed to orgasm.”
Jasmine gaped at him, then stood and hurried off. Bryan turned his attention fully on Tanwen. She tried to lift her chin and meet his gaze, but she couldn’t look him in the eye for more than five seconds before glancing away. The thought of the other woman being beaten because she gave Tanwen a dirty look gave her the courage to say, “Please, I don’t want her to be hurt, Sir.”
He sighed and gathered her hands in his. “Tanwen, Jasmine likes to be beaten. She enjoys the punishment her master gives her. She gave you that snotty look because she knew I would call her on it, and she knew I would order her punished. But I wasn’t going to let her use me to get what she wanted, so I forbade her any release from the beating.”
What he said made sense, in a very demented way. “So she acts out to get attention?”
He smiled, and some of the warmth came back to his eyes. “Yes. She and her master have been together for ten years. I’m sure he’s used to her antics by now and will give her exactly what she needs, even if it’s not what she wants. Jasmine is what is known as a brat, a sub who will act up, push her master to see how much he’ll let her get away with before bringing her back in line.”
Tanwen rolled this information around in her mind as he fed her a spoonful of rich ice cream. Anyone who had ever been a parent was familiar with negative attention, but the BDSM world gave it a whole new twist.
Bryan rubbed her knuckles in a soothing gesture and continued, “I don’t think I have to worry about that with you. You don’t strike me as the class troublemaker.”
She shook her head and laughed. “No, I was always the teacher’s pet.”
His eyes gleamed, and his smile took on a predatory tone. “Really? Interesting.” He glanced at his watch again and helped her to her feet. On the stage, a woman in a daring red leather gown and amazing sparkling red boots began to greet the crowd. Bryan drew her flush against him and she felt the hard planes of his body. “Are you ready to play with me, little flame?”
She cast a worried look around the room, at how many people there were, then at the stage behind Bryan’s back. A tremble shook her, and Bryan held her closer, enveloping her in the scent of his cologne. She couldn’t back out now, not after she’d made him send the other subs away. She rested her forehead against his shoulder and whispered against his chest, “I don’t know. What will we be doing?”
“Honest answer. Let me help you with your fear of the unknown a bit. Nothing will happen that you don’t want to happen. If it becomes too much, I will have no problem getting another sub to assist me. I will respect your hard limits from our time earlier together. At any point you can use your safe word and it will all stop. “ He traced his hand down her back, leaving behind a trail of tingles. “I will treat you with respect, like the lady you are. You will come away from this with a greater knowledge of your body and yourself.”
Since that was exactly what she came here for, she tilted her head up to meet his gaze. “I’ll give it my best.”
He brushed his lips over hers, a soft caress that filled her with longing for a deeper touch. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
Tanwen braced herself as Bryan—that is, Master Bryan—was introduced to the crowd. Instead of putting a dog collar on her or pulling her up by her hair, he merely took her shoes off and led her up on the stage by her hand. Thank goodness he was holding on tight or she might have made a run for the exit. Bryan’s presentation—she still had no idea what they were going to be doing—followed a tutorial on rope bondage and the danger signs to look for when the ropes were on too tight or for too long.
She’d only been able to halfway pay attention to the intricate knots and bindings that secured a pair of young male and female submissives on the stage. All she could think about was how humiliated she would be to have her body displayed like that, and how much older she was than the perfect gold-painted submissives still standing and posing beneath the bright lights of the stage with their flowers.
Bryan must have noticed because he kept stroking along her arm with a light touch. She found herself concentrating more on the feeling of his fingertips sending sparks through her body than the woman now tied up and suspended like a piñata on the stage. That demonstration had ended with the sub having a screaming orgasm that shook the very frame of the stage as she thrashed and contorted in her rope harness. Bryan caressed his hand up and down, finding erogenous zones on her skin. It was as if her arm had grown extra nerve endings that led directly to her pussy.
As she followed him up the steps, her panic rose until she was scarcely aware of what she was doing. All she could focus on was how many people watched them, how immense the crowd suddenly seemed. She wasn’t a hard-bodied eighteen-year-old. The crowd must be disappointed at how ordinary she looked. Then again, the female sub who had been used for the rope exhibition hadn’t been much younger than Tanwen, and she bore the telltale stretch marks on her stomach and breasts of having given birth.
She was glad Bryan had made her take her shoes off, because as much as she was shaking, she would have stumbled and fallen on her butt.
A giant gleaming black X-shaped contraption was wheeled out to the center of the stage. Shining silver cuffs lined with leather on the inside adorned the adjustable arms and legs, and she backed away from it. Surely he couldn’t mean to attach her to that. To do sexual things to her in front of the audience. That terrifying thought should have killed her arousal, but her pussy throbbed between her legs and her nipples felt hard enough to cut glass.