In the short while that we’d been in the antechamber, the room had been completely transformed. Now, the couches and separate sitting areas were gone. Any illusion of civilization was stripped away and what was left was raw carnal desire.
A drumbeat played through the speakers. Cages hung from the ceilings and in them, women danced, gyrated and beckoned. St. Andrews Crosses were set up throughout the space with bodies already strapped in. From the sounds of their moans, barely heard over the pulsing music, they were willing participants as they were punished and pleasured for the entertainment of all.
Men and women knelt at the legs of their Masters and Mistresses, held in place by leashes.
A line of six naked women were bent over spanking benches. Floggers caressed their skin, wielded by hooded, muscled bare-chested men. Their whimpers and wriggles drew the eyes of everyone in the room.
Waitresses threaded their way through the large space, carrying trays of wine and champagne, wearing short skirts and nothing else, their nipples pinched by bell-tipped clamps. Chiming followed their every footstep. Passing hands groped at their bodies while reaching for a glass of champagne, causing the trays to wobble and the girls to giggle and shriek.
The sounds and sights and smells of sex were everywhere.
Yet he was there and I had eyes only for him. Marc. Alexander. Whoever he really was.
His eyes flickered over me and there was appreciation there but no recognition. Despite everything, my heart broke. I wanted to yell and rail at myself. Alexander Hamilton was a dangerous man. One of the very few people who was always allowed access into Dylan McAllister’s compound, which made him a player of note in the shadowy world of sexual slavery and human trafficking. And he’d kissed Sylvia and I couldn’t wipe that image out of my mind.
I couldn’t wipe any of the images out of my mind. That was my problem. Try though I might, I couldn’t forget that night in Paris when his body had ground against mine and he brought me the deepest of pleasures, over and over again.
There was a brief ceremony. Each Master and Mistress held a narrow leather collar in their hands and each of them collared their kneeling slaves. When Alexander’s hands closed around my neck, my body trembled. It too remembered that night. It remembered his touch.
“Jenny from Cleveland.” He looked down at me, kneeling in front of him. “Get up. Come with me.”
It was beginning.
***
Alexander:
She remembered me, my bright star. I saw it in the flash of recognition in her eyes when our gazes connected, then a carefully blank expression replaced it.
She’d lost weight. In Paris, she’d been lush. Real and alive. Here, she was like a pale shadow of herself. The flaming red hair was gone, to be replaced by a flatter brown. She looked like a different person. Except for her eyes. Those sparkling green eyes had haunted my dreams.
Had she not mattered as much, I might not have remembered her. But she had been impossible to forget.
Of course, I wanted her. Anton and I got into a bidding war, but at the million mark, he gave up with an amused chuckle. “At that price, I could get two,” he said with a grin. “I didn’t think you particularly wanted a pain slut.”
“She isn’t one,” I replied. “We’ve met before.” Had Anton not been a friend and a good one, I wouldn’t have volunteered the information. I might have also been staking my claim, though I would have never admitted that to myself.
Curiosity radiated from him. “A former lover?” He looked intrigued. “And from your expression, one that was important. I thought you don’t get involved.”
“I’m not getting involved,” I said. “It’s a three month term. That’s all. I just want to renew an old one-night stand.”
“Really?” Anton raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Then you don’t mind sharing? I noticed Sylvia looking quite intrigued. She’s always wanted one of Lorraine’s submissives, hasn’t she?”
My hands clenched into fists. “I wouldn’t let Sylvia close to her,” I ground out.
Anton laughed. “Already more involved than you would admit, Alexander,” he said. “Still, I’m glad this auction has been more fruitful to you than it has to me.”
“You didn’t bid on anyone else?” I hadn’t been paying attention to much more than Rachel. Or Jenny, as she now called herself. “Couldn’t find a single woman here you wanted?”
“There are many beautiful women here,” he agreed. “But as always, the gap between what I want and what I can have is insurmountably large.”
Anton was a romantic. And his life was complicated. It didn’t lend itself to long-term relationships. Just like mine. I had to keep reminding myself of that fact.
***
I’d fastened a collar around the neck of a submissive at Lori’s auctions twice before. I’d never been as keenly aware of the significance of the act as I was in this moment.