Safeword Interrupted (The Cattail Club Book 1) (6 page)

“Fine.” With a flounce he admired, but would later result in his hand swiping across her luscious backside, Bethany stomped off into the bathroom. As soon as the door shut, he jerked out the nearest drawer and began yanking his own clothing out. His little hellion wouldn’t let him live it down if he wasn’t ready by the time she reappeared.

Chapter Eight

“Oh, my God.” Bethany squealed in the seat next to him, as Deacon turned into the massive parking lot outside the gift shop and tram-station that lead down to
Parque de las Cavernas del Río Camuy.
Situated about an hour and half west of their bungalow, he was sure it was the last place she’d expected him to take her.

“Excited?” He began to hunt for a parking spot.

“Yes.” She literally seemed to bounce in her seat. “I read about the caverns, but didn’t want to make the drive alone. They say there are over two hundred caves and even an underground river.” She placed her hand on his arm. “Thank you for bringing me. I know caves really aren’t your thing.”

Spotting a car backing out, he braked. “You’re welcome. But just remember there’s a cost to this trip.”

“Cost?” The sensual cadence to her question raked over him, making him wish they were back at the bungalow.

“Not that…naughty little girl.” He shook his head as he eased the car into the now vacant spot. “Before we go through the caves, we’re going to have a nice little talk.”

“A talk?” She nibbled on her lower lip.

“Yeah. One that we should’ve had earlier – one that won’t end up with me pinning you to the bed.” He shoved the transmission into park and shut off the car. “The publicness will keep me in line.” He raked a hand through his hair. “We need limits – something I should’ve seen to before we fell into bed together.”

“I see.” She shifted in her seat while staring out the windshield. “So you regret—”

“Never.” He covered her thigh. “But as a good Dom I shouldn’t have delayed this discussion. Believe it or not, I want to learn more about what attracts you to the lifestyle than just your submissive side.”

A giggle that sounded forced, escaped her. “Who says I’m submissive?” She fidgeted with her seat belt. “I mean, what we have going on is fun, but I’m the least submissive person you’ll ever know.”

Twisting in his seat, he slipped his hand under her loose t-shirt. He cupped the gentle swell of her belly, covering the tattoo that represented more than just pretty art. “This begs to differ.”

She stilled under his touch. “It was a whim…in college. A former boy-friend spurred me to get the ink.”

He caught her gaze, torn between wanting to let it drop at that, and the burning need to know who had introduced his lovely sub to the lifestyle. The latter won. “Because he introduced you to your submissive side?”

She shook her head. “No, not even close. Ryan was very vanilla.”

He searched her expression. “Yet you got a permanent mark denoting the lifestyle for him?”

She shrugged. “Not for him, because of him.” She tipped her head back. “I suppose you’re not going to let this drop?”

He shook his head. “I can’t force you to tell me, but it might help me understand the submissive side of you a bit better.”

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, her indecision apparent on her face. Then she sighed.

He drew circles around her silky navel, and patiently waited for her to explain. It would be up to her or not if she shared. Unlike an orgasm, he couldn’t force this.

She rolled her shoulders before she began to explain. “Ryan and I had been dating for nearly a year. Things were getting serious. We’d even talked about moving in together. However, our love life…well it was rather bland. Other than talking.” She sighed. “Ryan was a good talker when it came to sex. He could talk the panties off a girl, but when it came time to deliver…well, let’s just say the only fireworks I saw were duds.” She rolled her shoulders. “So, in my infinite wisdom, I tried to interject a bit of spontaneity into our sex life. It was an effort to jump start it, before I made the ultimate commitment and moved in with him. I wasn’t about to shack up with some guy without getting everything I deserved.”

Deacon nodded. Her words didn’t surprise him. As long as he’d known Bethany she’d never had a live-in lover. But he was getting off track – he needed to know more about what happened with her ex. “Go on.”

“Well, since I’d always been intrigued by BDSM, I thought it would be a perfect way to spice up things. The idea of a power exchange, of giving over control to another – what can I say? It really gets me going. I thought if I set the scene perfectly – offered myself up on a silver platter, he’d understand what I needed and take over.”

It took some effort, but Deacon kept his tone even. “Men aren’t mind readers. We sometimes need to be told.”

She shook her head. “I know that. Which is why I left a note taped to his door. I knew he’d read it before he came in.” Her cheeks grew red at the memory. “Ryan had a two bedroom just off campus and no roommate, so I put it where he couldn’t miss it. Then I stripped down to my underwear, presented myself much like I did yesterday for you. Can you believe I read every book I could find on High Protocol – only to be shot down?” She paused to chew on her lower lip

“Shhh. Don’t do that.” Deacon smoothed his thumb over her lip, freeing it from her teeth. “You have nothing to be embarrassed of. If I’d been in his shoes, you wouldn’t have escaped my clutches for hours. I’d have tied you to my bed and played with your body until you screamed for mercy.”

She gave him a rueful grin. “Because you’re into that kind of kink.” She straightened her shoulders. “With Ryan, however…well, let’s just say it wasn’t one of my finer moments.”

Deacon shifted uneasily. “He rejected you?”

She glanced away from him, but shook her head. “Not so much as rejected my offer, it was more along the lines that he wasn’t alone.”

“He had another girl with him. Oh, Bethany, I’m sorry…men who fuck around should be castrated. Want me to go do the honors?”

She suddenly burst out laughing, as if imagining him chasing down some now middle-aged business man to introduce him to the business end of Burdizzo pinchers. He wouldn’t even have to use the castration tool on Ryan. The man would probably die of fright. “Thanks for the offer, but Ryan wasn’t with another girl. No, I had the rotten luck of trying to seduce my boyfriend the same night he brought his mother home for dinner. His
very
‘Catholic, no sex before marriage’ mother.”

“
Oh, shit.”
A chuckle slipped free, even as he could only imagine the horror a younger Bethany had gone through.

“Yeah.” She glanced at him, mirth that only time and distance could bring in her gaze. “It was in that moment, as Ryan struggled to find an explanation to give his mom about why his very proper girlfriend was kneeling nearly naked in his front hall, that I realized that we would never be right together. He’d spend the rest of his life either apologizing for my actions, or I’d end up like a Stepford wife.” She placed her hand over his under her shirt. “I couldn’t live like that, so I broke up with him. Then a few months later I went and had the tattoo done – a reminder to myself that I didn’t have to settle for vanilla - that I would one day find the balance the triskelion represents.”

“Yet you claim you’re not submissive?” He shook his head. “It takes a very strong person to be submissive, little one. The fact you knew ten years ago that your ex couldn’t give you what you wanted, but still walked away with your head held high proves that. My only question is why I haven’t heard anything in the local scene about you. Surely you didn’t give up after one try? Not when there are clubs like Cattail around.”

Her cheeks flushed even more. “I…I toyed with the idea of joining, but the idea of putting myself out there, with people I might know from our area as a lone submissive, seemed pathetic. I didn’t want to be the poor sub girl in the corner begging for scraps.” She shook her head. “So I tried role-playing instead.”

And settled for half a loaf instead of a full measure.

He cocked his head. “And how did that work?”

She shrugged. “A couple of the guys I dated, flat out refused me, while a few others got into the swing of it, but usually fucked it up by apologizing to me if they thought I was hurting. My last boy-friend, he did okay until the day I came home to find him wearing my underwear and begging me to punish him because he was a naughty boy.”

Deacon actually sputtered. “Randall Duncan actually wanted you to punish him?” The thought of the staid banker dressed in one of Bethany’s skimpy thongs was almost too much. But the last time he’d run into Randy at the Co-op, the banker had been hanging with a known Domme. So maybe Bethany’s tale wasn’t so farfetched.

She shrugged. “I guess so. He didn’t stick around to see if I would, after I started giggling. I just couldn’t do it.” She shook her head. “So there you have it. My one sad attempt at sceneing.”

“Until our time in the office.” He growled, his body stirring at the memory of her going up in flames. “I bet you never realized you could come from a spanking.”

* * * *

Bethany fought back the blush she could feel warming her cheeks. She had done nothing to be ashamed of – nothing wrong. She fidgeted in her seat, then realized he was waiting for an verbal answer, not just a shrug or blush.

“No, it was a first for me.” She wanted to groan as his fingers slipped under the waistband of the khaki shorts he’d picked out for their excursion.

“One of many.” He toyed with the band of delicate lace hiding her curls from his wandering digits. “I can’t wait until you bend over my lap of your own free will. There is something decidedly delicious when a submissive willing offers herself up to punishment.”

“As if.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “It will take an act of Congress to get that kind of submission out of me.”

She didn’t trust the sadistic grin that tugged his full lower lip up into a smile.

Ut-oh.

She recognized that look. She needed to change the subject ASAP before he proved her wrong. “So now that you know my first foray into the dark world of BDSM, what was your first time like? Did you fumble around or did you take to it like a duck to water?”

“Nice try, Bethany.” He lifted her chin with a finger. “I’ll answer your question, but don’t assume for a moment that I’ll forget the little gauntlet you just threw down. Before we leave Puerto Rico, you will offer your ass up for my hand.”

The sensual promise in his tone had lust pooling in her stomach. How would he convince her? What would he do or say, in order to convince her? Her nipples tightened against her short sleeved blouse.

“Now, for your question. Believe it or not, Uncle LeRoy recognized something in me just before I graduated. A kindred spirit you might say.”

“Really? LeRoy?” Bethany tried to wrap her mind around the idea of slender, soft-spoken LeRoy Willis, pharmacist extraordinaire, being a Dom. He always had a ready smile for Bethany when she went into his store. He was one of the nicest men she knew.

He nodded. “Yep. I remember it like yesterday. I was all hot and bothered by Jenny Nichols – you remember her?”

She nodded. “Yeah, you took her to prom, despite her being the high school tease of nighty-eight. Her antics of winding up a guy and then walking away - giving guys an unrelieved case of blue balls were legendary. Even two years behind you, I heard my friends talking about the poor saps that landed in her clutches. I think nearly every guy in your class tried at least once.”

He chuckled. “Yep, that was her. Anyway, someone must’ve told my uncle about my taking her to prom. I thought I would be the one to get her cherry – after all, we had been dating off and on for nearly six months. At the dance, she came on strong, promising me a taste of heaven. Of course, she didn’t deliver. Instead, she pulled her usual tricks – I didn’t get past second base. By the time I made it home, I was so horny and pissed off that I wanted to tie her ass to the closest tree, and give her a taste of her own medicine.”

She chuckled. “I’m sure you’re not the only guy who wanted to do that.”

He shook his head. “Probably not. But lucky for me my uncle was visiting. He took one look at me, asked my mom to give us a minute. Then he waited me out. Just sat with me at my momma’s kitchen table and waited, until I finally started talking. After I gave him the whole horrid tale about how for several split seconds I wanted to bend Jenny over my knee and teach her a lesson about being a prick tease, he asked if I had ever felt that way before – the need to show a lover who was in charge.”

“And let me guess, you had?”

He nodded. “Yeah. My ultimate jack off fantasy was of…taking a certain blonde in hand and showing her why wearing short-shorts to the county fair would only end up with her over my knee.”

She flushed as she remembered the ass-chewing he’d given the sixteen year old Bethany.

“That’s when he explained that while my urges weren’t unnatural, but until I came of age, I needed to keep them under control – he didn’t want me to end up on the wrong side of a trumped-up sex charge. But if I still felt the same way after graduation, at that time I needed to come to him, and he would teach me how to channel those needs.”

She rubbed her thumb over his hand. “So he trained you?”

He nodded. “After nearly six months of discussions. He wanted to make sure I knew myself before I ever set foot inside a club. Even after that he spent nearly a year beating the tenets of Safe, Sane, and Consensual into my thick head. He taught me the basic ties - how to throw a single tail, and more importantly, how vitally important it was to read a submissive. She is giving you the ultimate gift by placing herself in your hands. And like any gift it should be treasured, not abused. Then just before my twenty-first birthday, he took me to Cattail.”