Bound and Freed Boxed Set (16 page)

Kelly Flynn was back on the emotional roller coaster ride
from hell, only it was twice as high and three times as heart-stopping and
terrifying. Not only that, the lows were much worse than before.

What a terrible evening.

After talking to the Manager of the Basement, and finding
out how wrong she had been about John, she went to the sub's gallery and hoped
to see him. Various friends had come over to chat with her, but she was too
preoccupied to listen. Even Master Ron's perfect off-beat humor had failed to
engage her - she was just too bummed. Kelly didn't explain her mood to anyone.
They probably all figured she had PMS.

Master Ron, a really great guy, clearly had a crush on
her, but she had a crush on John. Why was life always so complicated? More than
anything she wanted to talk to someone about what had happened.

No,
she thought.
I opened my
mouth and put my foot in it already this week. Once was enough. Colin was right
to not want to get involved. It isn't his business, and it isn't anyone else's
business either. I'll just shut up and wait until I can talk to John.

The resolution to keep her mouth closed was against
Kelly's character, because she liked to talk. For Kelly, talking was like
breathing, easy, natural and automatic. What had finally settled the matter was
imagining what John would want. John wouldn’t want her gossiping about him, and
about the time they had spent together. John was too private a person for that.

When Kelly first saw John Tuesday night at the club,
after running out on him on Sunday, it was like getting a fist slammed right
into her chest. Kelly just sucked in a deep breath and stared. John was wearing
his standard black leather pants that showed his utterly built, male body.
Black swat boots, and black leather vest, his beautiful torso was exposed as he
wore nothing other than his vest top. The magnificent virile Dom had
a
flawless, smoking hot, sculpted body. Broad shoulders, cut abs, thin hipped,
great ass.

And he could fuck all night long.

Kelly subdued the sudden impulse to fan herself. Jesus
John made her hot. Yet it wasn't just the sex. What was the inexplicable pull
of the man? It wasn't the fact that he was simply gorgeous either, although
that was a serious draw card. Now that Kelly knew him better from that one
night with him, she wasn't in love with just a fine body.

No, John knew her, or at least he seemed to be able to
read her mind. Kelly had adored every single thing about John, and had felt
comfortable and able to tell him anything. The intimate moments they had spent
together had been powerful, passionate and overwhelming. Kelly really missed
that connection.

Kelly stood up and tried to get John's attention, but he
didn't seem to see her. On the pretense of going to the toilet she quickly moved
down the sub gallery ramp and walked by him. With a strong, graceful, stride,
he was going the opposite way. To her utter mortification John's eyes slid
right past her without apparent recognition.

When she had impulsively called his name out, he had turned
with that implacable, dark, sexy gaze. She had been pinned then, unable to move
from his piercing look. With the smallest of shake of his head, he had
indicated 'no,' and then continued walking away from her.

The harsh, detached expression on John's handsome face
was agonizing and beyond any pain Kelly had known before or could imagine. He
didn't want to acknowledge her. John had refused to even talk to her.

Kelly thought her heart would break into a million pieces
just from that.

Seeing John so changed from the smiling happy lover she
had known so intimately hurt as much as a knife in the chest. Why had he done
it? Was this a test he had set for her? To prove that she deserved him? Or was
he simply punishing her for using her safe word and running? And was this
painful impasse temporary or permanent?

Kelly had gone into the change room and just kept on
going after that, running home to the sanctuary of her apartment.

After her train wreck of an evening at the Basement,
Kelly decided to write a letter. It was after midnight, but she didn’t think
she was going to get much sleep anyway. Saturday night she had known the most
awe inspiring connection with another person in her life – and now it was gone.
She had bought and worn the new bustier to please John. It was in the same
colors as his bedroom, and looked good against her fair skin and orange hair.
Kelly sighed. Now her credit card was maxed out and he hadn't even noticed.

Friend, savior and amazing lover, John Taylor radiated a
palpable energy and devastating seductive appeal. Kelly missed him so much. She
missed his body with his raw, intense sexual need, not to mention his
fascinating, ever erect cock. It was insane. Kelly would do anything to get
John back, even for one night. She wanted a re-do. Why had she run off like
that on Sunday? So stupid. She felt like wringing her own neck.

Kelly was unhappy and horny and didn’t want to cry again.
She had cried too much already. It wouldn't surprise her if her eyes fell out
from already shedding an ocean of tears, but she simply felt so sad.

Kelly made herself a hot chocolate, with no marshmallows
this time. The last time she had hot chocolate was with John and that thought
gave her another painful pang. John was punishing her and teaching her a
lesson. That was the only explanation. Surely he missed her as much as she
missed him? He
must
have had the same feeling of bonding and union that
she had. It hadn't been an illusion – it had been real.

Kelly, to a large degree, was experienced in love. She
knew the deep feelings she had for her big brother and her father, and she
loved all of her family – even her tiresome mother. As annoying as her mom was,
Kelly knew that her mother wanted her to be happy. The occasional crushes Kelly
had experienced with the opposite sex had easily worn off, and Kelly knew the
difference now between actual love and infatuation. While love of family
members didn't in actual fact compare, she could recognize the honest, genuine
feeling. Love as a concept was not foreign to Kelly.

What she felt toward John, after that one night
together…. Well. At first, before she knew him, it had been infatuation. But
now it could only be love.

Sex with John was one thing – a wow, huge, never
experienced before ultimate high, but it wasn't just that. Never had Kelly felt
so 'herself' with another person. She and John had talked and laughed and
reveled in each other's company. They had completely connected. This was the
real deal. In her little heart of hearts she was certain of that – if of
nothing else.

So Kelly sat at the kitchen table and composed a letter
to John Taylor.

Dear John,

(OMG a 'Dear John' letter,
Kelly
thought
.)
I wanted to write and thank you for your help on Saturday
night. I honestly think I might have died, or gone insane if you hadn't been
there to save me when I was trapped in that elevator. I owe you. A lot
.
(Okay.
Pretty good. So far so good.)

John I had the best time last Saturday night in your
lovely home, particularly your lovely bedroom.
(No,
can't write that! That sounds bad. Start again.)

John, I had the BEST time Saturday night.
(True, but this could be expanded.)
I have never felt such a
wonderful connection with anyone.
(Too cheesy? Maybe, but it's true.)
I am so sorry I spoiled it all Sunday morning. Will you please forgive me?
Can we start again?
(Pitiful, but I think it works.)

I was really freaked out by finding that file on me on
your desk when I left the bathroom. I wasn't snooping I swear – my name just
jumped out at me. Your manager Colin explained why it was there, but quite
honestly I simply panicked.
(Actually I assumed he
was a lying, sneaky, wacko pervert and was afraid for my life. Shit. I don’t
have to tell him that, do I? Jesus I know he'll get that out of me, he soooo
always finds the truth. Shit, shit, shit.)

(Okay, what next? Oh yeah.)
So
I think I have learned my lesson. I will not jump to conclusions, particularly
about you. I will not use my safe word when I don't need to. I know you would
have simply talked to me about it. At least what I know of you makes me think
that.
(Jesus, I'm rambling.)

John I really miss you and I'm thinking about you all the
time. Will you please call me? Can we meet?
(
Really
pathetic
.)
I spoke to my brother Richard about you. He remembers you
from grade school, and when we started talking, I remembered, too.

Kelly sat back, and bits and pieces came back to her.
John had been a strange sort of shadow in her childhood, but he had been a
friend. Once he had found her crying out in the back of the school. She had
been perhaps eleven years old. The other kids had been teasing her about her
orange hair, and she had taken it to heart.

Without even a hello, John had walked up to her and
peremptorily demanded, "Why are you crying?" It was just like him to
accost her in that odd, frank way of his. Kelly had explained that all of the
kids had been calling her 'carrot top.' She had rambled on and on, pacing back
and forth with anxious, restless energy. John had stood perfectly still and
silently watched her with his dark, solemn eyes.

When all of Kelly's ranting had finally run out, and she
had sat down dejectedly on some steps, John spoke. "They are all
stupid," he had pronounced with authoritative contempt. "A carrot has
a green top." At that she had laughed and laughed and laughed. And she had
instantly felt much better.

Looking back, even then the young man, who was two years
older than she was, had displayed dominant behavior. Was that what had
attracted them to each other? Her budding submissive personality and his
dominance?

John had watched her when she practiced and played Annie.
Kelly knew he loved to hear her sing. The older boy had been consistently
quiet, yet always there in the background. John had been a really strange kid
from her perspective now. Why couldn’t she see it then? But she had been only a
child. John had been sad and lonely, already inherently alone and separate from
everyone else, yet he had been unequivocally on her side. At the time he had
felt similar to Richard, like a big, older, protective brother.

Now he was anything but.

Kelly took a deep fortifying breath and continued
writing.

John, I remember now. We were friends when we were
children. I'd like to talk with you about that sometime.
(
That was true
.)

I miss you John. Will you call me please?
(
pathetic again, but there you are
).

I think I'm in love with you,

Kelly Flynn.

Kelly finished by writing her phone number on
the bottom of the page.

Now,
she thought after re-reading it twice.
I'm seriously baring my
heart and soul here.
What if John doesn't respond? Or worse, what if he
says he doesn't want to see me? God.
Can I really give this letter to John?

The answer was a definite yes.

Wednesday morning Kelly drove to John's home.
He either wasn't there, or he didn’t answer the doorbell. She considered the
mailbox, but then slipped her letter under his kitchen door and left. Wednesday
night she worked, and Thursday she went to the Basement and once more spent the
entire evening in the sub's gallery, hoping for John to relent and speak to
her.

Behind the railing up in the sub's gallery,
Kelly felt like an unwanted puppy, forlornly waiting for someone to buy her and
take her home. But she didn’t want just any owner. Kelly wanted to belong to
John Taylor. Kelly's friend Rosslyn sat with her, cheerfully watching the
adventurous members in the BDSM world of the Basement go by.

"Hot damn," Rosslyn said.
"Check out Mistress Cheryl."

Kelly's eyes obediently roamed to where
Rosslyn had nodded. Mistress Cheryl had a red, skintight cat-womanish latex
outfit on, and sexy thigh-high black boots with 'I'm sooo going to fuck you'
wicked stiletto heels. Wielding a black riding crop with one hand and a black
leash attached to her sub in the other, she looked dangerous. The intense
commanding dominance of the woman even gave Kelly, a confirmed heterosexual, a
little sexual buzz.
Wow.

"She looks fantastic," Kelly
murmured, awed because Mistress Cheryl was probably fifty but looked much
younger. Her sub had on a black leather mask. Lots of people wore full masks
around here. The Basement was a private club, expensive and extremely selective
because people with high profile jobs needed to protect their identity.
Intricate, difficult to meet membership standards, combined with a high price
helped ensure privacy.

Mistress Cheryl's sub was on his knees, his masked face
turned up reverently toward his mistress. The man had nipple
piercings, and cock and ball rings all in red, matching
her outfit. His jutting shaft was fully erect and wearing a condom, no doubt so
he didn't drip pre-cum everywhere they went. Mistress Cheryl's submissive was
clearly enjoying himself, and that made Kelly smile. Good for him. At least
someone was happy.

Kelly felt sorry for male subs because of the
stigma against them. So stupid to think less of a man for having submissive
sexual needs. Why was it more acceptable for a woman to do so? One thing Kelly had
discovered was that many powerful men outside these walls, men holding
extremely key positions in society, were actually submissive sexually. Who
knew? That man on his knees could be the chief of police, or the CEO of a
multinational company.

The same was true for women of course.
Confident, successful and dominant women outside the bedroom often wanted their
partners to be in-charge during sex. There was no all-encompassing stereotype.
People needed what they needed. Mind you, BDSM itself was such a societal
taboo. For a moment, Kelly imagined her family finding out about her own sexual
desires and cringed.

"Yep," Rosslyn said after careful
scrutiny. "That outfit is tailor made and brand new. I bet her sub has a
latex fetish and she got it especially for him, lucky guy. What an incredible
figure. I think she must have had breast augmentation. What do you think?"

"I dunno," Kelly said doubtfully.
"They look real to me."

Forty years old,
Rosslyn
Walker had recently divorced her vanilla husband that she had married at
nineteen. The split was as amicable as could be, and unfortunately unavoidable.
At Rosslyn's age she was apparently at her sexual height, and vanilla just
didn’t cut it for her and never had. Few women understood their sexuality when
they were nineteen. Kelly was just glad she had worked out what she, in
general, needed in order to be fulfilled.

As for the specifics, well, John Taylor fit the bill
perfectly.

Rosslyn's blonde bob was, as usual, a faultless coiffure,
and her thin shapely blonde brows were amazingly expressive. Having her around
cheered Kelly up. This was the fourth day of her trials of living without the
utter bliss and heaven she had experienced from just one night with John on
Saturday.

As if thinking of him caused him to appear, John Taylor
himself began the walk up the ramp to the sub's gallery. His face was
implacable, his firm lips set, and he walked with purposeful male animal grace.

Jesus
, Kelly thought, her pulse
kicking up and pounding loudly in her ears.
He must be coming to Top me,
because he had Rosslyn recently, and everyone knows that John never takes the
same sub twice unless there were months between scenes.
Kelly felt her
face, neck and breasts flush red with heat.
Thank you, Lord! John has to be
coming for me.
Could she even stand up? Kelly didn’t think so, her knees
felt so weak.

John stood in front of both of them for a
moment, staring intently.

Kelly could feel the dominant power of the
man palpably radiating from him. John Taylor was a tremendous force of edgy,
barely-contained, male sexual energy. Shit, just being this near to him gave
her goose bumps.

Then John focused solely on Rosslyn, and gave
her a curt nod.

Rosslyn blinked from that unexpected
bombshell, and trembled. At once she put her shaking wrists out to John. John
tied them and pulled her to her feet. Then he turned and strode away, certain
that Rosslyn would obediently follow. Rosslyn looked back at Kelly with a WTF?
shrug of shock, nervous anxiety, lust, and astonishment. And then they were both
gone.

The world dropped away from under Kelly's
feet.

John doesn't want me anymore,
she thought with a silent, internal wail of pain. She was alone
again, her eyes stinging while she tried unsuccessfully to fight back tears.
Kelly was just one more unloved puppy, hoping, praying and waiting for her
master to come and take her home. But her master didn’t want her. What could
she do now?

With her mind reeling, Kelly zoned out
somehow. She wasn't aware of how long she sat there, trying to pull her shit
together enough to get up and leave the club. It could have been five minutes;
it could have been ten or even twenty. All Kelly knew was that she was looking
down and wiping her eyes when she abruptly became aware of John's familiar swat
boots in her line of sight. The man had returned to the sub's gallery suddenly,
completely taking her by surprise.

Kelly's head snapped up and she stared
uncomprehendingly at John. "Where's Rosslyn?" she shot out without
thinking. As per usual her mouth engaged before her brain did.

"I left her with Master T, not that it's
any concern of yours," he replied in a deceptively mild voice that was
filled with reproof.

"Oh. Sorry, John." After a long
pause where his eyes remained unrelentingly upon her and he said nothing, Kelly
finally murmured almost unintelligibly, "Did…did you get my letter?"

"Yes."

"Oh."
Jesus, I am so lame. Why
can't I talk?
It was just that there was so much she wanted to say to John,
and it was all bottled up inside her. It was as if the backlog of communication
was so large that only a trickle of incoherent sound was able to get through.
Kelly, the girl who always had something to say, that everyone agreed could
talk underwater, suddenly found she couldn’t speak at all.

Never had Kelly suffered as much agony as she
had these last few days, moving from joy and love and a sense of connection to
a completely black despair.

John stood in front of her, large, confident,
and utterly dominant. Fuck he was so beautiful, simply looking at him hurt.
Kelly's stomach knotted. John's handsome face appeared cold and merciless. The
way he was studying her seemed detached and possibly even disdainful. It was so
difficult to identify what he was feeling when he wore that impenetrable,
impassive mask.

Kelly simply couldn't bear his disapproval
and disappointment. Unable to stand the dangerous intensity of John's scrutiny,
Kelly's gaze lowered.

"Eyes up, Kelly," he ordered. Her
eyes flew to his face. "I'm a Dom that prefers to see my sub's eyes."

Kelly's gaze remained on his, but she felt
such joy at those words that her chest, which had felt so tight, loosened,
making it easier to breathe. Kelly's eyes welled and tears trailed silently down
her cheeks, but she ignored them. For the first time in days she felt a rush of
hope. John had said 'my sub's eyes,' had he intended to do that? Perhaps he
still considered her his?

Impulsively she blurted out, "Will you
forgive me, John?"

"When are you here next?"

"Saturday night."

"Good. I'll Top you Saturday night. Be
here at seven, I'll be at the ladies' change room door, so don’t be late. No
makeup, and have an enema before you arrive. Agreed?"

An enema?
she thought
. Really? Shit.

Kelly had never had anal play, except the
small amount she had experienced with John that one memorable night. Right now,
however, she would do anything to get back into his good graces.
She
recalled Rosslyn's words to her just last week: "You won't sing that tune
when you fall for someone. There's nothing you won't do for your Dom then.
You'll want to surrender any power you have completely, and let him do anything
- just to see him smile."

Wow. Were those words prophetic or what?
Now here she was, madly in love and willing to endure absolutely anything for
this man she was completely gone on.

M
otionless, John continued
to stare at her. Kelly felt utterly exposed by his piercing gaze. What did he
see when he looked at her? John was such a powerful Dom who seemed able to read
minds. Kelly had experienced that already. Did he have any idea how much he
meant to her? But John had told her he would Top her on Saturday, and that was
two days away. Two days to wait and to worry.

Kelly licked her lips and swallowed.
"Um, John, are we doing a, er, public scene?"

"I haven't decided, but that's none of
your business now, is it?" John's deep seductive voice was soft and
menacing.

Jesus.
Kelly cringed. Her womb tightened and gushed. Actually she had become
totally aroused the moment she had seen John, but that voice of his, and the
words he spoke. Wow. It was as if her body recognized him as the one who had
given her so much pleasure, and was instantly ready to go there again.

Kelly expelled a deep breath, wanting his
touch, aching for
him.
She knew that no matter how John Taylor wanted to
take her, she would submit to him. Kelly would be glad to have John's
attention, any attention, even if it involved public humiliation or pain. Freely,
willingly and more than anything else in the world, Kelly wanted to give
herself completely to John Taylor. She knew she was due for some discipline,
but exactly how much did he intend to hurt her?

She cleared her throat. "May I ask, John,
um, are you going to use your bullwhip?"

"Again, that's up to me isn’t it, little
sub?"

"Yes," she whispered with her heart
pounding loudly in her ears. "Alright, John. I'll be there at seven."

John gave her a brusque nod, and without
another word, he turned and left.