Chapter Eight
Later that evening, Marcus wandered through the club, checking on his trainees. Two of the newer doms had requested Sally. Marcus had hoped two doms might intimidate her a tad, but she was topping from the bottom as always, telling them what to do, what they messed up. Damn.
A young dom-sub couple had Tanner for a flogging scene, and the young man not only looked fit to burst but grinned between each stroke. Having already done scenes, Dara, Austin, and Uzuri now served drinks. Dara"s session had lasted awhile, and Marcus smiled at the pink stripes running up the back of her thighs.
He headed toward the stocks to check on Gabrielle. Marcus had wanted to see how she handled a new dom and mild erotic pain, so he"d agreed to let Holt, a dom in his late twenties, switch her.
After that, he might nab one of the free subs for a playtime of his own. The battle with Gabrielle earlier and her climax under his hands had left him hard as a rock—but f*cking her during this constant defiance stage of hers wouldn"t be wise.
At the stocks, the blond dom wore a black jacket and leather pants. After her introduction to Holt, Gabrielle had eyed his biker jacket, which apparently matched her conception of a dom"s proper attire, and smirked at Marcus. Marcus chuckled.
She might drive him crazy, but the little redhead certainly didn"t bore him.
He chose a seat at an angle to the play area. Holt had secured her well, with her head and hands restrained in the wooden bar and her yellow hot pants pulled down to bare her ass.
The little sub was quite a colorful sight. Pale, pale skin. A yellow top that barely contained her pretty breasts. The three yellow earrings in her right ear matched her clothing, two blue ones in the left to match her dyed locks, and a curling vine tattoo on her arm duplicated the colors. In the brighter light of the scene area, her hair glinted in a myriad of reds and golds—and blue. Odd how he"d only thought her pretty at first, but she truly was a lovely sub.
As Holt walked in a slow circle around her, Gabrielle"s face flushed, her hands clenching. Her weight shifted from leg to leg as if she realized how vulnerable her ass was in that position. Nervous. Excited. Very nice.
Taking his time, Holt played with her p-ssy and breasts to increase her arousal. Marcus had watched the dom work before. He did a fine job, although Marcus wanted to be the one with his hands running over her soft ass and teasing her pale pink nipples to stand erect.
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Holt started to switch her lightly, watching her reactions.
After a few gentle swats, Gabrielle fisted her hands, and her mouth tightened—not in pain, but as if she struggled with herself. Here we go, Marcus thought, not sure whether to laugh or curse.
“Is this all you got?” she asked loudly. “Hey, even that stuffy trainer hits harder.”
Stuffy trainer. Well, damn.
In a tuneful voice, she sang, “Anything you can do, he can do better…”
Marcus smothered a smile.
Holt tapped the switch on his palm, then tossed it aside, obviously deciding to see why she deliberately provoked him. He sauntered around the stocks and fisted his hand in her hair. The music from the dance floor drowned out whatever he said to her. Then he walked back and picked up the switch. Marcus assessed him—still in control. No anger. Good enough.
Turning his attention to Gabrielle, Marcus stiffened. Her face had turned dead white and expressionless, her eyes blank. What the hell had Holt said to her? Even as Marcus rose, Holt swung, caught her abnormally still body language, and pulled the blow. He tossed the switch aside again and reached her head just as Marcus got to the ropes.
“Marcus, help me get her loose. She"s frozen up.” With one hand, Holt rubbed Gabrielle"s back; with the other, he unlatched the bar. He crooned, “It"s all right, sweetheart. You"re safe.” He flipped back the upper bar that trapped her neck and wrists. “Gabrielle. Look at me, Gabrielle.” He shook his head at Marcus. “She"s out of it, dammit.”
But her legs hadn"t buckled, Marcus realized as he pulled her shorts up and helped move her out of the stocks. His gut tightened. This wasn"t a normal reaction at all. Holt wrapped an arm around her, holding her up, still in charge of the scene.
When her legs buckled, Marcus forced himself not to reach for her, but God, he wanted to—to snatch her away, to hold her, to see what was wrong.
Holt looked up. “I"m still a stranger to her, and I"m not going to play pissing games with a terrified sub. Take her.”
Marcus gave him a grateful nod and swung her into his arms. “Sugar, you"re safe. Relax now. You"re safe.” He stepped out of the roped-off area.
Olivia in a dungeon monitor vest waited nearby to see if they needed help.
“We got it,” he murmured to her and settled onto a couch, Holt dropping down beside them. With an arm behind her back, Marcus leaned Gabrielle against his chest, then cupped her cheek. “Gabrielle, I need for you to look at me now,” he said gently.
Her eyes were wide, unfocused, much like a sub in endorphin overload, but her stiff body, pale face, and clammy skin indicated something else. Worry deepened and sharpened his voice. “Gabrielle. Look. At. Me.”
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She jerked as if he"d slapped her. Some of the blankness receded from her gaze. She blinked and stared at him, then around, obviously not remembering how she"d ended up on his lap. When she shivered, he wrapped his arms around her.
Holt fetched a fluffy subbie blanket and tucked it over the girl.
“Thank you,” she whispered and frowned at the young dom. “I was with you, wasn"t I? The stocks?”
“You were, Gabrielle.” Holt took her hand and watched her reaction carefully.
She didn"t jerk away. “Can you tell me what happened? What scared you?”
She shook her head, her brows together.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.” Her smile wavered a little. “I don"t…” Her muscles tightened.
“Easy, sugar,” Marcus murmured.
She glanced up at him. “Marcus?” Her body relaxed, melting into him.
He kissed the top of her head. She trusted him, and the knowledge warmed him. Relieved him. To see the feisty little sub reduced to frozen fear had worried the hell out of him.
“You smarted off to Holt,” Marcus said. “Do you remember?”
She nodded, glanced under her lashes at the dom. “Um. Yeah. Sorry.”
“You tried to get a rise out of me,” Holt said. “Did you really want me to switch you harder?”
Tensing again, she shook her head. “Uh-uh.”
Marcus frowned. One more time where her insolent behavior didn"t make sense. She didn"t like pain. Sometimes a sub wanted a dom"s attention, but Gabrielle already had that.
He shook his head. Analyze later, Atherton. Right now, he needed to know what had caused her response, and since she didn"t remember, they"d go through it step-by-step. “Holt grabbed your hair,” Marcus said. Moving slowly, he curled his fingers into her hair and pulled.
If anything, she softened against him.
Holt grinned. “Well, that certainly wasn"t it.”
“Then Holt said something to you. Do you remember what, darlin"?”
“He did?” She bit her lip and frowned at the younger dom. “You grabbed my hair, and you bent over and—” Her muscles started to tense.
“Gabrielle,” Marcus snapped.
She jerked and looked up.
“There we go. Stay with me, darlin".” He stroked her shaggy hair, and she eased back with a tired sigh. “Holt, can you give it to her piece by piece?”
Holt"s mouth flattened, and he squeezed Gabrielle"s hand. “I don"t want to scare you again, sweetheart, but we need to find out what did this. Do you understand?”
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She nodded, but her body stilled. She might not consciously remember the cause, but something inside her did.
“You little brat,” Holt said.
Gabrielle"s exhalation was almost a laugh.
Smiling, Marcus rubbed his chin across her head. Nothing kept this spitfire down long, did it? The knot in his stomach loosened.
“Guess it wasn"t that.” Holt smiled and fed her the next part: “You obviously want to be beaten hard…”
A tiny flinch from her, but no fear.
Holt nodded. “…or maybe you"re a dirty slut who—”
Gabrielle"s body turned rigid. Her eyes went blank.
“That"s it.” Marcus lifted her chin again. “Gabrielle, look at me. Now!” he snapped.
The bond he"d established with her reached deep, and she shuddered. Her eyes focused on his.
“Good girl,” he murmured. “You"re a very good girl. Stay with me, darlin".”
Because you’re scaring the hell out of me when you don’t.
She sighed and leaned into him again.
Marcus glanced at Holt. The dom"s face tightened with unhappiness and guilt.
“I wanted to find out if she liked being called names.”
Quite a few subs got off on a dom calling them slut or whore or dirty. “You weren"t out of line, Holt. I"ve never seen such an extreme reaction to verbal humiliation. This is something from the past.”
“Yeah, well.” The dom ran a hand through his hair. “You going to work on this with her?”
“Definitely.”
“All right then.” His expression turned harsh. “If you discover who taught her that kind of fear…I"d enjoy giving him a lesson in manners.”
Marcus nodded. So would I. As the other dom walked away, Marcus stroked Gabrielle"s pale cheek and studied on the matter.
“Dirty slut.” Some women might be disgusted, some affronted, some turned on.
But Gabrielle"s reaction seemed closer to a catatonic flashback. What could have happened in her past to set such a trigger? The most likely cause would be…
His arms felt so good, and he shed heat like the sun on a summer day. Gabi pressed her cheek against the smooth shirt covering his muscular chest. She should get back to playing decoy, but her body didn"t want to move. She stared at the stocks. They"d released her, carried her here, and she didn"t remember. How could she have blanked out? As fear spiraled up her spine, she took a death grip on Marcus"s suit. Don’t let go.
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At her movement, he ran his knuckles over her cheek and used his thumb under her chin to turn her face up. His intense scrutiny felt as if he could see through her clothing, even her body, all the way into her inner self. She couldn"t look away.
“You ever played out a rape scenario, sugar?” he asked in a rough voice, as if the ugly word had abraded away the smoothness.
As her skin turned cold, nausea wrung her stomach like a dirty washcloth. She dug her fingers into his forearm and encountered only rocklike muscles. “No.” No no no. “No, please, Sir.”
“I see.” He released her face and curled his strong fingers around hers, anchoring her in the present. “When were you raped?”
Her air disappeared as if he"d hit her in the solar plexus, and her next inhalation struggled against the constriction in her chest. “How…how did you know?”
His eyes stayed steady on hers. “I didn"t, darlin". But now I do. When?”
She swallowed. “Ten years ago. I got caught in a gang war.”
“Mmm.” The unemotional acknowledgement somehow let her breathe. She looked down, watching how his thumb traced small circles on the back of her hand.
Slowly her muscles unknotted.
“Does a man taking control bother you?”
“No. It all happened in the past, and I deal with it okay. That"s why I didn"t put anything down on the questionnaire as a problem.”
He made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “Don"t lie to me, darlin".
Look at me now.”
She tried not to flinch from the intensity of his blue gaze. I don’t want to talk about this; I just want you to hold me.
“When does being dominated cause problems?” And as if she couldn"t understand the question, he nodded toward the stocks.
Okay, so maybe sometimes she didn"t do so well. “I never thought about it.”
And I never want to.
Even as he kept her gaze trapped, he stroked her cheek gently, and as always when he mixed all that power with gentleness, everything in her melted. His eyes softened, and he murmured, “Little sub.” He kissed her forehead. “Think about what you felt in the stocks…and tell me about the last time you froze.”
She said lightly, “Well, seems like once—”
“Don"t be acting up, Gabrielle.” His fingers took her chin in an all-too-effective control. “I want to hear about the last time something made you sick and scared.”
No sidestepping would evade his insistence on answers. “I dated a guy for a while. He"d pull my hair and f*ck rough, and I liked it. A lot. But he called me names once…” Her hands turned clammy, and she tried to look away.
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His hand tightened on her face. “Stay with me here, Gabrielle.” His sharp eyes cut through her fear like a knife. “Tell me the words he used.”
“Slut.” The word reverberated in her skull, and her pulse filled her ears like breaking waves in a storm. She swallowed, forcing nausea back. “Whore. Cunt.
Stuff like that.”
“Ah, there we go. It"s all tied to the words.” He was silent a minute, thinking, then frowned at her. “You"re still shaking, darlin". We"re going to sit a piece while you take a bit of rest.” His hand slid to her nape and pressed her head against his shoulder. As the noise in her brain diminished, she could hear the slow beat of his heart, and each thud somehow settled her world.
She heard him speaking off and on… Coaxing the rough-voiced dom to give a construction job to a teen with a bad rep. Someone with a light Hispanic accent talked him into joining a poker night the following week. The techno music changed to classical—Rachmaninoff.
He held her firmly, his arms never loosening. Sometimes he"d drop a kiss on top of her head as if to let her know he hadn"t forgotten her. And she felt more content right there, right then, than in just about forever.
Eventually he sat her up, laughter in his voice. “You falling asleep there, sugar?”
She shook her head and remembered to answer. “No, Sir.” A second"s pause and she risked looking up. “Thank you.”
“You"re very welcome, but we"re not quite finished, darlin".”
Oh dear.
“First, and I mean for you to remember this: verbal humiliation is a hard limit for you. You tell any dom that before you start a scene. Do you understand me?”
A hard limit meant a definitely won’t do that. “Yes, Sir.”
“Good enough. Now I want to use a few of those words and see how you react.”
As he waited for her nod, he took her hand.
To brace herself, she gripped his wrist. “Okay.”
“Slut,” he said softly, his eyes watching her closely.
She winced, then took a breath.
“Dirty slut.”
Same reaction.
“Cunt. F*ckhole.”
She"d heard them before, could hear the nasty voice as—she pushed the memory aside. “I"m fine.”
“You"re brave, darlin", not fine. There"s a difference.” He kissed her forehead.
“So rough sex or force doesn"t bother you—only the words?”
That didn"t make sense, did it? Staring at the scars on his knuckles, she tried to think. “I… When…it…happened, other stuff had happened first”— Danny and 78
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Rock dying. The slicing pain down her face, blood everywhere, and—“and I was numb, I guess. Not feeling anything at all, but…I couldn"t shut out the voices.”
“Voices.” He rasped the word, emphasizing the s that made it plural. Under her fingers, his wrist muscles flexed to iron.
If he had directed that icy fury toward her, her heart would have stopped—
instead his anger made her feel as if she wasn"t alone in an unpredictably violent world. She stroked her hand over his forearm, ruffling the golden hair.
After a few seconds, he took a long, slow breath and kissed the top of her head.
“All right. Just the words. I do like knowing you wouldn"t freeze if someone attacked you”—he smiled slightly—“so long as they didn"t call you names.”
Her laugh sounded like a hiccup, but better than nothing. “I can guarantee that.” A guy had jumped her three years ago, and she hadn"t frozen at all.
Apparently a man"s knees only bent one way.
“Good girl.” His brows drew together. “I do not like that a few words can paralyze you so badly. You didn"t even think about a safe word. What if you weren"t here but playing somewhere in private?”
“I…” She"d known from her date"s reaction that she"d scared him. The thought of blanking out like this terrified her. And all because of a few nasty words. “I didn"t lose it with you.”
“Little trainee, if you didn"t trust me with your body and with your emotions to some degree, you wouldn"t have returned after the first night.”
“Oh.” She"d have tried to return for Kim"s sake but might have failed if he"d truly scared her. Even now her body seemed to sing, safe, safe, safe. “Good point.”
“From your reaction to Holt, having someone else say the words is too risky.”
He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers absentmindedly. “But you don"t react enough if it"s me. Of course, you knew I"d say them. Maybe I should surprise you.”
She huffed a laugh. “I don"t think the other doms would like you ruining their scenes.”
“No. But we might could find a different method.” He frowned. “Still, you should get some professional help, Gabrielle. Talking through this with someone—”
“I did have counseling afterward,” she interrupted. “This didn"t come to light then.” Or during job evals. Of course, I didn’t want to believe I had a problem. “But now… Well, if I can"t fix it myself, I"ll get help, but there"s no way I can do that at this time.” Sorry, Agent Rhodes, but I need to visit a psychologist. I’ll go back to playing decoy later. Tempting. Nonetheless, she"d stay. For Kim.
But God, what if someone—a killer—called her names? Her skin chilled. She needed to get over this now. “You said ?a different method." What do you have in mind?”
He hesitated. “This might be too realistic, might raise more demons than we want to deal with right now.”
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His use of we wiped away the chill. She wouldn"t have to face her fear alone.
“Go on.”
“The Shadowlands has a yard for people who want to play outside. Sometimes Master Z closes it down and sets up”—she saw him reject the r word and choose another—“capture games. Submissives are given a head start and then chased by their doms. They might get punished for their escape or f*cked or both.”
Marcus grabbing her. Pushing her to the ground. Holding her hair and… Heat slid through her, hot enough to liquefy her lower half. Until she imagined a man—
any man—forcing her, and she chilled.
“I will be damned,” Marcus said slowly. “I wouldn"t have thought the idea would excite you, but it did. For a moment. Tell me what turned you off after that.”
The sharing came easier this time, maybe because he listened so carefully. “A stranger grabbing me and holding me down.”
His brows drew together. “What excited you?”
She looked away, a flush of embarrassment heating her face. Yeah, tell the nice dom that he turns you on.
His warm hand cupping her cheek, he forced her to look at him. “Talk to me, sugar.”
“You,” she whispered. “You grabbing me.”
“I see.” He stroked the underside of her jaw with his thumb. “Most women want to choose the man who stars in their fantasy, darlin". Especially ones with a history like yours. But acting out a capture fantasy wasn"t what I had in mind.”
“Then what?”
“A game of hide-and-seek. And when I catch you, I"ll call you nasty names.”
“Get real.”
“I am. The gardens feel dangerous, especially with others acting out their chase games. If you are sufficiently nervous…I think it might work. For tonight, all I want is for you to say a safe word rather than freeze. That will, at least, make you safer if you"re in a BDSM scene.”
Not a rape fantasy, just a children"s game. Her mouth still felt too dry, her heart too fast. “But only you?”
His eyes held complete understanding. “Me. I am the only one who will chase you. No one else.”
She nodded, feeling like a bobblehead doll she"d won at a carnival years before.
“Yes.”
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