Red Handed (5 page)

Danielle sat beside her. “Um, right.” Did all women speak so freely about sex? “Do you, um, get paid for being a slave?”

“Not officially, but the members' fees pay for my weekly stipend plus my living expenses, which remain low since my room and board are both covered. It's structured similarly to your trainee agreement.” Gracie slid her a quizzical glance. “You did read your agreement, didn't you?”

“Of course. So what do you do for him?” Hating all the lies that were piling up, she nibbled on her thumbnail.

“Master tries to give me more of the social responsibilities in Benediction, like greeting the guests and taking their coats. Has he given you your first service requirement yet?”

Danielle ripped her thumb from her mouth and laced her fingers together to keep from biting on them. “I don't think so. What is that?”

“The trainees are responsible for cooking, cleaning, running errands, and anything else Master needs to run the house and club. It's kind of like working in the mailroom of a large corporation. You have to start at the bottom and work your way up.”

“So I won't be expected to have sex?” Her stomach dropped, and she wasn't sure if the cause was relief or disappointment.

Gracie shrugged. “It depends. I was ready on my first day because I'd been coming to Benediction for seven years. A membership was the first thing I bought with the money I got from my trust fund on my eighteenth birthday.”

“Eighteen?” On Danielle's eighteenth birthday, she'd had no idea what to register for in her first semester of college, much less know her sexual preferences. “How did you know you were . . . ?”

“Submissive? Kinky? It's something I was born with. I've known since puberty. While other girls fantasized about kisses and getting felt up by thirteen-year-old boys, I was dreaming about adult men tying me up and spanking me. I never felt like I fit in with the rest of the vanilla world. It took a lot of energy to fake it. What about you?”

Although Danielle was here under deceptive circumstances, she'd felt as though she'd been a fraud her entire life. Being overweight and shy had prevented her from making a lot of friends, and other than Roman, when an occasional someone had broken through her shell and befriended her, she'd kept walls up, never allowing herself to grow close to anyone. “I've never fit in either.”

“That's one of the things I love about kink,” Gracie said, wrapping an arm around Danielle. “The community. We're all freaks in our own ways, and we don't pass judgment on one another. Okay, maybe a few of us do, like Cassandra, who unfortunately you'll meet soon.” She patted Danielle's thigh as if reassuring her. “But you can finally be who you are inside without fear of recrimination.”

Danielle exhaled. “What if I don't know who I am?”

“Don't worry your pretty head about it. Master will help you find out. Just enjoy the ride, and everything will fall into place. I take it you don't have a lot of experience in BDSM.” At the knock of the door, Gracie jumped up from the bed and skipped across the floor. “That should be your new wardrobe!”

She flung open the door. Holding several hangers of clothing, a tall redhead strutted into the room like a model on a runway.

“I have the clothes Master ordered.” The redhead stopped in front of the bed and glared at Danielle in disdain, pursing her lips as though she'd eaten a lemon. “Hm. I don't think Master gave me the correct size. I doubt any of these will fit you.”

Although Gracie had warned her about Cassandra, the words still stung, and the bit of confidence she'd acquired from her short time here dissipated.

Gracie rolled her eyes. “Danielle, this is Cassandra. She's a bitch. Don't pay her any attention.” She plucked the clothes from Cassandra's hands and gave Danielle a wink before hanging them up in the closet. “I think you'll look hot in these.”

“Already hitting on the new girl?” Cassandra placed a perfectly manicured hand on her bony hip and smirked like a stereotypical high school bully.

Gracie twirled on her heels and stomped to the door, pointing her finger to the hallway. “Get out, Cassandra. You're just jealous because Master let me go to the freeway last night while Sir Logan used you in his
Shibari
demonstration and didn't get you off.”

“Even without an orgasm, I'd rather have Logan Bradford's undivided attention than an orgy with a room full of strangers.”

“Sir Logan isn't going to fall for your innocent act, Cassandra. Now, why don't you crawl back into the hole where you came from?”

Cassandra tossed her hair over her shoulder as she sashayed across the room and out the door. “One day I'm going to make you sorry. You can count on it.”

“You can try.” Gracie slammed the door, then rested her back against it. “Don't let her scare you. She thinks she's a lioness, but she's really a declawed alley cat. Lots of noise but totally harmless.”

Danielle hoped her path wouldn't cross much with Cassandra's during her stay. She had enough to worry about. “I have to be honest. A lot of what you were talking about went over my head. It's like listening to a foreign language.”

“I'll try and explain it in vanilla terms.” Gracie pushed off the door and resumed her spot on the bed next to Danielle. “Last night, Master assigned Cassandra to help one of the members with his demonstration.
Shibari
is a form of bondage, and one of its multitude of perks is the unique placement of the knots.” She emphasized the word “unique
,
” but Danielle still had no clue what it meant. “Master requested that Sir Logan leave Cassandra unsatisfied.”

It may have been petty, but hearing it made Danielle smile. “Why would he do that?”

“Who knows?” Gracie shrugged. “Master always has his reasons. My guess is she needed a reminder we slaves are here to serve our Master. We're like nuns, only we wear less clothes and get to have sex.” She skipped to the dresser and lifted a silver wristband with a key attached to it. “This is your trainee bracelet and your room key. Wear it at all times.” She slipped it over Danielle's wrist. “It lets the patrons know to keep their hands off unless Master says otherwise. Your training classes begin at nine every morning, Monday through Friday, and the club opens nightly at eight.”

“Classes?” Danielle swallowed hard, the subtle weight of the band around her wrist making everything more real. She was really going to train as a sex slave.

“First thing you've got to learn is safety. No one goes on the floor without that first class.” Gracie's voice went from playful to serious before Danielle could blink. “You'd be surprised how much there is to learn about what makes up the requirements of ‘Safe, Sane, Consensual.' You'll get enough tomorrow morning to enter the club tomorrow night, but the class runs through your three-month-long training program. Then you'll get classes on protocol, technique, and of course the labs, which are where you get to try out everything.”

Danielle reached behind her, grabbing the items she'd acquired from Cole. “I'm supposed to redo my questionnaire, and to be honest, I don't know how I feel about some of these things.” She motioned to the form. “There's a few obvious ones I know I won't try, but others . . . ”

Gracie plucked the form from her hand. “The ones you refuse to do are your hard limits, and the ones you're not sure of are your soft limits. For example, fire play and anything to do with bodily fluids are a couple of my hard limits. Needles have always terrified me, but not enough to keep them off my list, so when I first got into the lifestyle, I checked them as a soft limit. Now needle play is a favorite of mine.”

She winced at the idea. “Needle” and “play” were two words she never thought would go together. Definitely a hard limit. Perusing the rest of the questionnaire, she stopped on some of the more confusing items. She couldn't help lowering her voice to a whisper. “What about . . . same sex? How do I know?”

Gracie curled her hand around the back of Danielle's nape. “Only one way to find out.” She leaned in and pressed her soft lips against Danielle's, giving her a moment to process before intensifying the kiss. Danielle found herself responding, parting her lips and sighing into Gracie's open mouth. She tasted like banana. And chocolate. Milk chocolate if she wasn't mistaken. Danielle wondered where she could find some more of that chocolate in this place, because the apple had done nothing to diminish her appetite.

Gracie abruptly ended the kiss. “Anything?”

No racing heart. No throb between her thighs. No desire to do it again. Kissing a woman hadn't nauseated her, but it did nothing for her other than make her crave a candy bar. “Not really. I mean, it's not that you're not attractive—”

“If your Master wanted you to do it, would you?” Still smiling, Gracie didn't seem to take offense. “I can't tell you how to answer, but it's something to think about as you complete your questionnaire. Remember, it's our role to serve our Master, but not at our own expense. It's like a mirror. Our happiness reflects on him, and his on us.”

Danielle felt as though Gracie was talking in riddles. If kissing a woman didn't excite her sexually, why would she do it for her Master? “I don't understand.”

“Don't worry. By the time you finish your training, you won't remember a time you didn't understand. Just keep an open mind and an open heart, and you'll find answers to questions you didn't even know you sought.” Gracie hopped up from the bed. “I'll let you get settled, and then I'll come by later so we can have dinner together. If you need anything, press one on the phone to call my cell, two for Adrian, or zero for Master Cole.” She threw her arms around Danielle and hugged her tight. “I'm glad you're here. I've been waiting to meet you—I mean, someone like you—for a long time. I have a feeling we're going to be good friends.”

After Gracie left the room, Danielle removed her coat, lay back, and stared at the chandelier. Everything here was so confusing. She rubbed her temples. Her vision blurred from exhaustion, and her head ached slightly from lack of sleep, food, and the stress of knowing her stepmother's life was at risk.

In her purse, her cell phone rang. With dread, she retrieved it, then answered the unlisted number. Her stomach plummeted, and her pulse went into overdrive. “Hello?”

“You've been a good girl and followed my directions,” said a voice she recognized as the man who'd been in her bedroom last night. “I can't wait to reward you. But first things first. You need to get into DeMarco's private residence. The only way to get to it is through a secret room, which is behind the bookcase in his office. The password to enter that room is ‘benediction.' From there you'll need a key to get upstairs to his residence, and DeMarco is the only one who has it. Once you get in, you'll need to find a jewelry box. Your locket will open that box, and inside you'll find a trust document in your name, along with information on an offshore bank account. When you get it, you'll call me at 313-555-2468, and I'll give you further instructions. So far, Tasha is safe. It's up to you to keep her that way.
Tick-tock
, Danielle.”

Chapter Five

S
HE SHOT FROM
the bed, her gaze darting around the room and the nape of her neck prickling. Despite Cole's assertion there were no cameras in the bedrooms, Danielle couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.

Nothing made sense. Why was there a trust in her name hidden in Cole's residence in a box that only her locket could open?

Danielle had very few items of her mother's, which was why the locket had meant so much to her when her father had given it to her on her thirteenth birthday. She'd worn her mother's locket every day since, only removing it to bathe.

Clutching the locket in her hand, she caught her reflection in the dresser mirror, ensnared by the image of her corseted body and the wildness of her brown eyes. In less than twenty-four hours, how did a woman like her go from the quiet solitude of her desert home to kissing a female slave in a sex club?

The reflection staring back at her wasn't someone she recognized. Sensuality radiated from her like a halo, from the flush of her cheeks to the unruly obsidian curls spilling down her shoulders. It was as if her arrival here had been a spark to kindling, igniting something in her she hadn't known existed. As if she'd been holding her breath, waiting for her life to begin, and it finally had.

Only she'd never imagined it would take her stepmother's kidnapping to do it.

Danielle had never been special. She didn't have a particularly outstanding singing voice. Her grades at school had been decent, but she'd been far from an A student. And although she'd loved art, she couldn't draw or paint anything worthy. She conceded she had a pretty face, but at a size sixteen, no one would ever call her beautiful.

Danielle's throat clogged with unshed tears, and she took a deep breath to keep them at bay. She'd spent her life being invisible, watching from the shadows, observing like a ghost. But with all the cameras set up in Benediction, slinking around wouldn't go unnoticed.

To get into his residence, she could either steal Cole's key or convince him to bring her there willingly. In both situations, she'd have to get close to him, and there was only one way do that with an owner of a sex club.

She'd have to
seduce
him.

It wasn't going to be easy. He already doubted her sincerity and questioned her motives. What would it take to get a man like him to lower his guard? Everything she'd read about BDSM in the last twenty-four hours stressed the importance of trust. Yet Cole had dozens of people literally bowing at his feet, and he still relied on cameras in almost every area of his club.

She shuffled across the room to the window and rested her forehead against the cold glass. Her room faced the back of the mansion, where Cole's property seemed to stretch for miles. As far as she could see, white snow blanketed everything. Still, she made out the pattern of a kidney-shaped swimming pool and a basketball court off to its left. In the distance, she spotted a gazebo.