Byron-4 (2 page)

The dress was a dark blue sheath that hugged her slim body tightly until it reached her knees, then flared out to twice the width. The top, or what there was of it, started at the top of her breasts and molded against her. The built in bustier, which lifted her breasts, held the dress up firmly and showed off her ample cleavage very nicely.

Turning slightly, she noticed that the back dipped dangerously low and showed the dimples of her ass when she moved. Frowning, she wondered if someone as tall as Jamie could see down the dress and get a view of her rump. Still trying to get a good look, the owner of the little shop came up to stand behind her.

“The dress was made for you, honey. Damn, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone fill it out quite the way you have.”

“Yeah, I have big boobs. Do you think my date will be able to get a nice peak of my ass crack when we dance? I mean, it looks really pretty and all, but I’m not into this guy that way and I’d just as soon keep my more prominent parts to myself.” The proprietor, Alice, threw back her head and laughed. Then she walked up to stand in front of Taylor, stood up on her tippy toe, and bent slightly to look. Catching Taylor’s gaze in the mirror, she winked.

“First of all, nope, no butt crack. Secondly, no one is going to notice your butt when they have a much nicer view from your front. Any man that dances with you is going to be hard pressed, if he isn’t already pressed hard, to see anything but the way the dress matches your eyes perfectly. Or that the light bouncing off your hair arches like dark moon beams. You look very beautiful, my dear. Where are you going, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“The annual charity thing his mother puts on at the Polaris Center. I guess it’s really fun. Have you ever been there?” When she didn’t answer, Taylor turned to look at her.

“You know the Grants? No, I’ve never...you came to my shop to get a dress for the biggest event of the season? I’m so...wow! No, I’ve never had that sort of money to go. I heard it’s like a thousand bucks a plate to go and the auction generates nearly a million dollars for whatever charity the mistress deems worthy. I think its child abuse again this year. Last year they raised nearly seven hundred fifty thousand to build a home for children to be safe. And you’re going. You’re very lucky.” Taylor didn’t think she was. So she just smiled at the woman and went to the changing room to take the dress off.

In the few years she had been friends with Jamie, she had managed to avoid his family completely. She knew all about them. Jamie was very close to them and he talked about them all the time. And he had on more than one occasion invited her to their outings and just for dinner, but she had never gone. And now, she thought, I’m trapped. Without a place to live and not a lot of money, she had agreed to go because he had asked her to after he had generously offered her a place to stay. Hanging up the dress, she stepped into the shop again.

“I’ll take it. And do you have a wrap that will go with it? It’s getting cold and I don’t think my coat will look very good with this.” Even with the purchase of the dress and wrap and then a bus ride to the mall for shoes, she was still under budget. Smiling and pretty proud of herself, Taylor decided to stop by the new club in the area that she had heard of.

Taylor opened the door to Jamie’s house several hours later than she had wanted.

She knew that she would never go back to that club. She hurt everywhere. Without stopping to look around, she went to her bedroom to take a much needed bath before bed.

~CHAPTER 2~

Byron saw a flash of someone running past the living room and then nothing. He had been waiting for the smart-assed woman to come back for almost three hours and he wasn’t getting any happier with each passing minute. He wanted to give her a piece of his mind, first for being smart, then for hanging up on him. He had already talked to Jamie, catching him at the University, and he had told him he wouldn’t be home until later.

When Byron had asked Jamie about the woman who answered the phone, Byron had nearly gone through the roof when he found out that she was now living with his brother.

“What are you going to tell Mom, huh? You just going to say ‘hey, Mom, meet the new squeeze?’ I’m sure that’ll go over great! She’s going to castrate you. You know that, don’t you?”

“You know, you really should mind your own business. I’m an adult and who I have staying in my own home is none of your fucking business. Let me handle Mom.”

“Handle Mom? Are you insane? She’ll handle you, young man.” Byron was only sixteen months older than Jamie, but he sometimes felt like he was decades.

Jamie hung up on him and Byron had gotten into his car and drove to Jamie’s house to have it out with the woman and throw her out if he didn’t like what he was seeing.

That had been two hours and fifty-three minutes ago. He stalked up the stairs and was just about ready to just start yelling her name at the top of his lungs when he heard the music coming from one of the bedrooms down the long hallway.

Walking through the bedroom, he glanced at the dress bag on the bed and a backpack on the chair and little else. Steam billowed out from the bathroom door as he turned the knob, and he was surprised to feel it turn easily. Stupid woman, he thought, she didn’t even lock the door. She was probably hoping for Jamie to come home and join her in the tub and trap him. Before he could push it open, the door was jerked from his hand and opened.

He didn’t know who was more shocked, her or him. She stood there with her dark hair down and a towel draped around her front, staring at him. He really couldn’t see her face well with the lighting from the bathroom behind her and no lights in the bedroom on, but he could see enough to know she wasn’t anything like he had thought.

Before him stood the bane of his horrible day. But he had to hand it to her; she didn’t scream or go into hysterics like he thought she would when confronted by a stranger.

“What the fuck are you doing in my room? And where is Jamie? Get out!” She took a step toward him when he glanced in the mirror behind her.

“Christ! Who did that to you?” She turned to see what he meant, saw her own reflection, and turned back to look at him. His breath caught.

She was beautiful. Her hair wasn’t just dark, but almost a blue-black. Eyes the deepest blue that made him think of the Caribbean ocean. She wasn’t overly tall, but stood around five foot nine inches in her bare feet. Skin the color of fresh baked biscuits his mother’s cook made for Sunday dinners looked soft and warm, touchable and fresh.

The way the towel draped over her breasts, he imagined them to be full and heavy, and he found himself suddenly wondering if her nipples were large as well. He started toward her when she suddenly backed up again and slammed the door in his face. He heard the lock click.

“Now you lock the door? I’m not leaving until you...come out of there right now. I want to have a look at your back.” Byron suddenly knew what had happened to her.

There were perhaps twenty welts across her back that he could see clearly, red and angry-looking. He was sure had he been able to look at her chest there would have been similar marks there as well. He knew there would be a red place at both of her ankles and around each wrist and probably around her throat. He knew without a doubt that Ms. Taylor Bennett had been tied to a St. Andrews Cross and beaten probably as recently as today.

“I know you’re Jamie’s brother, but I don’t know which one. I don’t give a rat’s ass either. I want you to leave right now. He said that I would have privacy and this is an invasion of it. Go away, now,” she said to him through the door.

“I don’t think so. I said to come out so that I can have a look at those marks. Some of them are too raw, which means that whoever you’re playing with got too rough.

Christ, did Jamie do that to you? Damn it, come out right now!”

“No! I said to go the fuck away. Are you deaf? I’m going to call the police.” He looked at the bed when the house phone went off. Smiling, he knew he was safe from that threat.

“Byron? What the...what are you yelling about? Taylor? Are you...what’s going on here?” Byron leaned his head against the bathroom door. Jamie would pick now to come home. He chuckled when he heard the woman on the other side of the door begin to cuss like a sailor.

“I was just asking your...girlfriend?”

The door flew open so quickly, he nearly fell on top of her. As it was, he had to grab her to steady himself. Her hiss had him jumping back away from her quickly.

“Jamie, could you please take this...this uncivilized barbarian downstairs? I want to go to bed.”

“Uncivilized bar...oh no, you don’t. I asked you a question. Who did...” He stopped when she shook her head at him. It was a small shake, but enough to tell him that Jamie hadn’t hurt her, but that he also knew nothing about the marks. There was also the terror in her eyes.

Jamie must have sensed her distress, because he came over and hugged her to him.

When Taylor moaned and paled, Byron wanted to tell him to let her go, but with a short kiss, Jamie stepped away from her. Taylor grabbed the door jamb for support but said nothing. No one said anything for several moments then Jamie moved toward the door and said good night to Taylor. Byron had no choice but to follow.

After getting two beers, Jamie joined Byron in the living room. When he started in on his new office and promotion, Byron only listened with half an ear. He couldn’t wrap his mind around Jamie’s girlfriend. She liked to play. When there was a lull in the conversation, Byron decided to get some information.

“What’s the relationship between you and Ms. Bennett? I mean, you said she lived here. What are your living arrangements?” Byron asked him.

“She is living here until she gets back up on her feet. She’s had some financial difficulties lately and I’m just helping her out. Stay out of it, Byr. Taylor would do the same for me.” That told him nothing, but when Jamie yawned for the third time in as many minutes, Byron left.

He was suddenly sure they were not sleeping together. She would be hard pressed to explain the marks if he was seeing her naked. And Byron was reasonably sure that his little brother didn’t swing that way. Smiling to himself, he was also reasonably sure that no one would peg him for a player either.

Byron had never told anyone, especially not his family, that he was a Dom. And not only was he a Dom, but he was a very good one. Early in his sexual experimentations, he had discovered that he enjoyed dominating his sexual partner and over the years had developed a taste for all sorts of different ways to make someone yield. He enjoyed what he liked to call vanilla sex, and his partners never knew that he was anything but a considerate and consummate lover. Only once in all his years had he ever tried anything with someone outside of the clubs he went to and that had turned out badly.

Her name had been Dawn Miller. She had worked for him for a few months as a clay assistant and they had gotten along well. After a few dates, he had gone back to her place and they had spent the entire night making love and talking. When she brought up that she wanted to be tied to the bed and spanked, he said he would do it.

He was new to the world of Dom/Sub and had made several mistakes that night.

Mostly it wasn’t noticing that she was very experienced. Also, and most importantly, how eager she had been to be flogged. Byron had whipped her several times, leaving marks all over her back and her lovely ass. Two mornings later, he was being asked to come downtown to answer a few questions about abuse to the woman. He was lucky in that his brother’s friends had come to get him and that they didn’t think he’d done anything to the girl. Dawn was claiming that he had beaten and raped her.

He had no more gotten to the jail when she called him on his cell phone to tell him what she had done. Byron, thinking fast, had put the phone on speaker and let the cops listen in on what she said.

She told him how she had done this sort of thing before and that if he paid up now, she would leave him alone and drop the charges. He played along with the encouragement of the officers and told her he would give her anything she wanted. She demanded thirty thousand dollars for now, and more later, and told him where to meet her. He did his part and she went off to jail for blackmail. After that, he was more careful.

~~~

Taylor was sitting at her desk the next morning when Jamie called to tell her he was leaving for his mom’s.

“Are you sure you can’t get off work and come with me? I can’t believe you have to work tomorrow. Doesn’t your boss have any kind of heart?”

“I doubt it, but no, I can’t get off. They seem to think there will be a mad rush of deep fried turkey lawsuits and they don’t want to miss a one. You have fun. You know I don’t care for this sort of thing anyway. Call me tonight and give me the scoop on the big announcement.”

His brother, Spencer, who got married in July, said he had an announcement to make. Jamie was pretty sure it was that his wife was pregnant and he was excited about the prospect of being an uncle again. Taylor was just glad not to be a part of the whole thing. She was also glad to be away from his brother, Byron. Taylor was pretty sure he wasn’t going to let go what he had seen in the mirror. She shifted in her chair and thought about what he hadn’t seen in her reflection.

The Dom at the club had hurt her—badly. And no matter how many times she had said her safe word, he wouldn’t stop. The wound on her thigh was the most painful. He had bitten her hard enough to leave deep teeth marks in several other places as well as the one on her thigh. Thankfully, he hadn’t drawn blood. Then there were the lacerations on her belly too. And the wounds on the backs of her thighs made it extremely difficult to sit for very long. Two of them, made from the leather whip he had produced from a closest and not on her approved list of things he could use, were deep enough that she feared she might need stitches.

It never entered her mind to go to the police. She knew what they would say, that she had given him permission to do those things to her simply by being the sort of deviant that she was. She felt tears threaten to spill and wiped at them furiously. She had to work, not mull over something she couldn’t change. After hanging up with Jamie making arrangements for him to pick her up on Friday night, she started inputting the clients’ payments into their files.