“Beautiful,” he murmured reverently, his gaze dropping to her mouth.
She knew that reverence, having a headstrong sub offer obedience through clenched teeth.
It was transcendent.
Oh God.
Another orgasm loomed.
Fortunately, she was successful at beating it back.
He held her gaze, and she didn’t know if she missed him being remote and detached or if she’d instantly become addicted to him being everything but.
Then he let her go, settled back in his chair, and reached for his Scotch.
Sixx had to take several deep breaths to steady herself before she reached for her own drink.
And when she took it to her lips, she sucked back half of it.
Stellan chuckled when she did.
Seriously.
What was happening?
She sat there, staring at the now empty mats before her, trying to understand what was going on, how things had changed so quickly, and how she’d let it get so out of hand.
Before she got close to getting anywhere with any of that, she found her fingers captured, and along with her arm, her hand was pulled Stellan’s way. He rested it held in his on the arm of his chair, his fingers curled around the back of her hand, his thumb caressing the inside of her wrist.
As heavenly as that felt, in an effort to wrest some control over the situation, she started to remove it from his hold, but the instant she did, his grasp intensified, the pads of his fingers biting in.
She let her hand relax.
“You never pull away from me,” he said softly, easing his hold and again caressing her wrist with his thumb.
She stared at the mats.
“Assure me I’m heard, Simone.”
“How do you know my name?” she asked.
“I’ll answer that when you assure me I’m heard, darling.”
She turned her head to look at him, seeing she already had his attention, loving and hating having his beautiful eyes in his handsome face aimed her way with that kind of extreme focus where she knew he didn’t miss anything.
Not a thing.
“You’re heard.”
“This once, I’ll allow you to get away with not giving me the word that should conclude that statement,” he murmured.
She knew how he expected it to conclude. He was a stickler with his slaves.
They referred to him only as Master.
However, she was not his slave.
She was a Mistress.
And yet she’d just become his slave.
Oh yes, most definitely yes, things were precarious.
Cataclysmically so.
“My name?” she prompted.
“I’m assuming, considering I went to the trouble of establishing a gladiator pit for your amusement, that you’re aware of my interest in you. Taking that further, it wasn’t very difficult to ascertain your name.”
“So you looked into me,” she stated blankly, not about to share that over a year earlier, she’d seen him in D.C., done the same, and had the skills to do that thoroughly.
Skills he probably knew she had.
And more chaos infested her brain.
“We’ll talk more Saturday evening,” he replied.
“And should I tell you to go fuck yourself, get up and walk out of here, and there is no Saturday evening?” she inquired.
“You have no intention of telling me to go fuck myself, sweetheart.”
Her breath caught in an odd way, a way she’d never felt, this coming from his tone, the look on his face and his endearment.
All of a sudden this was not Master Stellan expending an overwhelming amount of effort to flip a certain kind of switch on Mistress Sixx.
This was Stellan talking to the woman at his side, a woman only two people in her life—him now being one of them, the other one appropriately rotting in prison—knew as Simone.
Okay, okay, okay.
What was happening?
“There are things—” she started on a rush.
“We’ll speak Saturday.”
“Stellan—”
Again he was in her face, his palm in hers, his fingers holding her hand steady and warm.
“Honey, I’ve waited a long time to give this to you, so please, enjoy this evening, and we’ll speak Saturday.”
She knew this side of him too. The charmer who slides in after the tyrant, assessing the challenge he was facing with a recalcitrant sub and doing what he must to assure he got exactly what he wanted.
He could be affectionate, demonstrative, even tender and gallant with his subs.
Although she’d rarely heard him speak to them inside a playroom, she’d been in booths with him when he had one close, or booths around him where she could overhear, and she’d never heard him use a single endearment except softening the term “slave” with a “my” or an additional “beautiful” or something akin to that.
“Yes?” he prompted.
“Yes,” she agreed.
Still facing her, he turned his head to look over his shoulder, and when he turned back to her, he was smiling.
Nope, not wanting the blank back.
Yep, instantly addicted.
And yep times two, her situation was cataclysmically precarious.
In the extreme.
“Your gift arrives,” he declared.
She stared.
He sat back.
And she saw that two men were walking in at the narrow part of the oval, and like the last two combatants, they were tall, large, powerfully built, and although one wasn’t difficult to look at, the other, bald, taller than his opponent but leaner to his adversary’s stocky, was very handsome in a harsh, rough, craggy way.
They hit the edge of the pit, jumped down, and the mildly attractive one moved in the opposite direction.
The bald, craggy, handsome one moved their way.
“His name, for the purpose of these proceedings, is Flamma.”
“Flamma?” she asked as the man’s gaze swung from Stellan to Sixx, back to Stellan, then settling on Sixx as he continued toward them.
“Considered second only to Spartacus as the fiercest gladiator in history,” Stellan explained. “As the tale is told, he was apparently awarded his freedom four times due to his popularity, skill and success in the arena. He declined, continuing to fight until his death in the Colosseum at age thirty.”
Whoa.
Choosing Spartacus was way too obvious.
So good choice in name.
The man stopped in front of them, dipped his head to Stellan, then looked to her.
“Your assumption is correct,” Stellan said, and Sixx looked at him to see he was addressing the warrior. “You’re finally meeting your Mistress.”
Oh God.
Her gift.
She fought her eyes rounding as Flamma nodded to Stellan before he shifted only a foot to the side so he was positioned directly in front of her. He then dropped right to his knees, bowed his head, his hand going directly to his flaccid cock, and he started pumping.
She’d missed this part before.
She hoped she didn’t miss it again.
Stellan’s thumb was back to stroking the inside of her wrist, undoubtedly feeling her response through her pulse.
At the sight before her, she was way beyond caring.
“Do you like your gift, my darling?”
Sixx tore her eyes from the masturbating gladiator in front of her and aimed them at Stellan.
“He trains for you. He fights for you. He fucks for you,” he carried on.
And yet again, she couldn’t stop herself from squirming in her throne.
Stellan smiled. “I see I don’t need an answer to my question.”
She looked back to the gladiator who was now hard but still stroking, and what he was stroking had grown highly impressive.
“He never loses, so when he wins, he’ll come to you, give you his harness, and you’ll tell him how you wish him to celebrate his victory,” Stellan explained. “You also need to tell him when he’s ready to fight, Simone. Or he’ll come on the mat at your feet.”
She was very good at sensing when enough was enough with a sub. It was integral for every Domme to have a precise handle on sensing just that.
But she’d never met this man, was not all that close to him in terms of proximity. She couldn’t see his face, hear his breath, and he was so built she couldn’t tell if the tension in his body was due to excitement at what was happening between his legs or he was just made that way.
However, he had a physical battle on his hands, and that was imminent.
She couldn’t have him making an offering prior to that.
“Should I tell him to stop now?” she asked Stellan.