Stronghold (Stronghold 1) (9 page)

In the middle were things like group sex
(which she'd always been curious about but felt kinda slutty for indicating an
interest) and double penetration, Shibari, electricity, and some of the heavy
toys that didn't seem quite so scary.  Clamps, paddles, a cane that didn't
look
too
 threatening, etc.

Bondage restraints, spanking, the Saint
Andrew's Cross, most of the anal toys (none of which were too big or
frightening), anal sex, vibrators, verbal orders, etc. were all on the
"yes please!" side.  In fact just checking those things off was
getting her hot and bothered.  

Feeling very daring, she clicked the 'submit'
button (giggling a little too herself as she thought "yes please!"
again).  A little notification popped up that said she'd be hearing back
from them within the week about her application. 

"Woo," she said, grinning.  

Okay, time to get off the computer.  She
needed to get some rest so that she could concentrate on sewing tomorrow.
 Maybe write a few proposals for some new locations for self-defense
classes.   Q had given her a pretty good template for churning those out,
since he was a proposal writer when he wasn't gaming, and she only turned to
him for edits now once she was done with a proposal.  And she liked to try
and keep a regular schedule so that she didn't end up sleeping too late.  
 It was too easy to waste time sleeping in.

Grabbing the book she was reading, she'd been
getting into Steampunk novels lately, she tossed it onto the bed before
stripping down and putting on her nightshirt.  The sounds of the guys
talking and laughing were faint enough that she could snuggle into her bed and
shut them out, diving into a world of alternate Victorian history with
automatons, wild inventions and vampires.

Strumming his guitar, Adam absently went
through the fingering he'd memorized in high school for Scarborough Fair.
 It was his go-to song for when he wanted to just sit and think; it was a
soothing song to listen to and he'd played it so many times that his fingers
went through the motions without him having to pay attention to what he was
doing.  

His brother had been the one to teach him how
to play guitar.  Brian had been incredibly musically gifted; Adam knew
that his friends were impressed with his ear for music and his apparent ease
with stringed instruments, but he was nothing compared to how Brian had been.
 As he played, his eyes wandered around the den and over to the one family
picture that he kept up there.  That picture was the reason he hardly ever
went into this room.

It had been taken when he was seven and his
brother was ten, the year before their parents' bitter divorce.  At the
time he hadn't understood why his mother had left so abruptly, although he'd
completely understood his father's anger.  Eventually he realized that
he'd rarely seen his parents together during the last two years of their
marriage; his father had always remained shut up in the basement working while
his mother did her best to pretend that she wasn't lonely and didn't feel
neglected.  But the worst part of the divorce hadn’t been the separation,
it had been the way both parents had used him and Brian as weapons against each
other after the marriage had ended. 

For a long time after his brother had
overdosed on drugs, he'd blamed both of his parents for Brian's descent into
oblivion.  It was during that time that he'd started refusing to choose
between them for holidays.  In high school and college he'd gone to
friends' houses, and once he'd gotten old enough he'd started having his own
celebrations.  Ever since his brother had spiraled wildly out of control,
Adam's life had been focused on maintaining control.  In and out of bed. 

Sometimes he wondered if his parents'
influence was the reason he'd held off on having a real relationship for so
long.  Well, that wasn't entirely true.  He had really cared about
Brooke, the closest he'd ever come to falling in love with someone, and it
wasn't because of his parents that the relationship hadn't worked out.
 Actually it had been almost a relief to know that a relationship could
end on good terms, that he wasn't necessarily destined to crash and burn like
his parents had.  Then again, he and Brooke had both been honest enough to
know that they weren't meeting each other's needs.  Last he'd heard she
was very happy in a relationship with an accomplished sadist. 

And his parents weren't doing so badly
themselves anymore.  His dad had started dating a woman named Claire while
Adam was in high school and they had been living together since then, although
they didn't seem inclined to actually marry.  Last year his mother had
remarried, an Englishman named Sam who worshiped the ground she walked on and
made her blissfully happy.  

Maybe his parents’ ability to
move on was why he was finally feeling ready to have another go at a real
relationship.  

So why the obsession with
Mistress Angela?  A woman who obviously wasn't right for him.  All
week he'd been debating whether or not to go see the show that she was in.
 Last weekend at Chained the answer had seemed obvious, but the more he
thought about it the more he waffled.

And waffling was not something
Adam was used to.

There was a strange sound threaded
through the delicate fingering of the guitar and it took him a moment to
realize he was grinding his teeth.  With a sigh he leaned his head back,
resting his hand on the body of the guitar.  He was losing it over a
Domme.
 
How had his life to come to this?

Opening his eyes he looked up at the clock.

Damn.  He needed to get ready to go to
Stronghold.

Sighing, he set the guitar on its holder next
to the chair he was sitting in.  Patrick had decided the club needed more
unattached subs and was accepting applications from a few newbies to the scene,
which meant they needed Introduction Scenes.  Subs with more experience in
the lifestyle weren’t required to do the Introduction Scenes, although they
were offered to get them used to the space and give them a Dom to relate to,
but the newbies needed careful handling.  It was something that all of
their group of friends had occasionally done, but since Justin, Chris and Liam
were now all in serious relationships, Rick never came to Stronghold during the
week, and Jared and Marissa were back together, the duties were mostly falling
to Andrew, Olivia and Adam.

Tonight was his night. 

With a groan he got to his feet, trying to
convince himself that this was a good thing.  A good way to meet new subs
to the club and see if he had any chemistry with any of them.  In fact he
was really getting a jump start on the other Doms by doing the Introduction
Scenes.

He needed to be meeting and thinking about
submissives.  Not about Angela.

******

The club was pretty quiet when he first got
there, which is why Patrick chose Thursday nights for the Introduction Scenes.
 There were less people, less of them were wearing their more scandalous,
and overall it would be less intimidating for newbies.  Allison was at the
front desk, Jared at the door.  

"Intro scene tonight?"  Jared asked
after they greeted each other.

"Yeah."

Adam had read over the email that Patrick had
sent him before leaving his house; the sub was apparently interested in doing
everything
.
 She'd indicated that she thought she was both a masochist and submissive
but she had never tried anything so she was just going based off of what she
had read in books.  Something must have made Patrick think that she was
more than a tourist though - the club had gotten a lot of those when BDSM
erotica had first become big, but Patrick had weeded through them easily.
 Just in case, he still did interviews with each applicant before giving
them over to a Dom for an Intro Scene.  To tell the truth, Adam felt as
though he would have preferred to introduce another Dom to the club tonight
than a sub, then he could have just stepped back and monitored, maybe done a
little bit of teaching. 

"She's cute," Jared offered,
obviously seeing that Adam was less than thrilled about his duties for the
evening.  

"She won't be my type."

"You don't know that."

"Yeah I do, she thinks she's a
masochist."

Jared shrugged his big shoulders, before both
he and Adam nodded a greeting to a passing couple.  "She might be
wrong."

This time Adam just slanted a look at the big
man.  He expected Jared to grin at him, but Jared was looking in the other
direction, watching the main room of the club before the door closed after the
couple that had just entered.  Adam raised his eyebrow.

"Is Marissa here?"

The expression on Jared's face went stony.
 "Yeah."

"Do you want me to check on her?"

"No.  She'll do whatever it is she
wants to do." The bitterness in his friend's voice made Adam wince.  

He didn't completely understand how Marissa
continued to have such a hold on Jared, but he wished he knew how to break it.
 It was Jared's life though and so far everyone except Olivia had pretty
much stayed out of it.  The rest of them just did their best to be civil
to Marissa, although none of them managed to be actually friendly.  Adam
had had a few conversations with her over the years; she wasn't bad to talk to
when she was in the mood to be friendly, she was just an essentially selfish
person.  She could play the part of a submissive, but she was constantly
topping from the bottom and she was like a black hole for emotional investment.
 Which was probably what kept Jared around; he was the most giving person
Adam had ever known, his most base instincts insisting that he take care of the
people around him, and Marissa was the neediest and greediest.  She'd
latched onto Jared and was slowly sucking the life out of him.  And she
had a bad habit of flirting with his friends, which was why it had been a while
since Adam had tried to be friendly with her even for Jared’s sake.

"I'd better get in there before Patrick
thinks I've blown him off," he said non-committedly.  If he went in
there and Marissa was flirting with another Dom then he wasn't sure he'd be
able to stay out of it.  

Jared waved him through and he could feel the
big man's eyes following him as he entered.  Fortunately for all of them
Marissa was in the lounge area with the one unattached submissive currently in
the club, chatting.  No wonder Jared was on edge though; just by being in
that area Marissa made herself approachable to other Doms.  It was a very
Marissa-move, just enough to make Jared anxious and upset while not pushing the
line so far that either he or anyone else could do anything about it.  If
questioned she'd just insist that she was keeping the other sub company and
become affronted at anyone suggesting that she shouldn't be in the lounge area.

As her Dom, Jared could insist on it, but
they all knew it wouldn't work because Marissa would lay on the guilt if he
tried to enforce it.  And anyone else trying to interfere would have to
deal with Jared's displeasure since no one but him had the right to give orders
to his sub.  Patrick might be able to get away with it, but Patrick was
busy with the sub that Adam was going to be working with. 

For a moment he thought about going over and
looming over the two of them, just to make his own displeasure with the
situation known, but he was supposed to be in Patrick's office by now.
 Waving to Andrew behind the bar, he headed over to the club's access to
Patrick's office and knocked on the door. 

******

"RED! RED!"

Adam sighed.  That was the fourth time
in the past hour that Stephanie had yelled out her safe word.  Immediately
he let the paddle drop to his side and knelt by her head where it was resting
on the spanking bench, cupping her face in his hand and lifting it slightly to
look at him.  Her eyes were wide and horrified, not at all turned
on. 

"Stephanie, I don't think you're a
masochist," he said in the most patient tone that he could, considering
that it was the sixth time he'd said that since they'd started playing with
equipment.   

The initial meeting had gone well enough.
 The pretty blonde was attractive and obviously eager to try things
out, but almost as soon as they'd gotten to the Dungeon it had gone downhill
from there.  She spent as much time trying to top from the bottom and
control the scene as she did actually trying something out.  At first
she'd wanted to try some bondage, so he'd used a Saint Andrew's cross to string
her up, but then she'd wanted to be let out of the bondage before trying
anything else.  Frowning, Adam had told her that she needed to let go and
submit if she was going to be submissive and give her bottom a sharp slap.

Which had initiated the first time she'd said
the safe word.  Apparently she hadn't been ready to be spanked.
 Although she'd obviously liked that he'd taken her control away from
her. 

It was quite possibly the most frustrating
Introduction Scene he'd ever done in his life because she kept insisting on
trying things that were painful and yet she couldn't take the slightest amount
of pain.  Eventually he'd taken complete control of the scene, put her
down on the spanking bench - although they'd compromised and he had only bound
her legs to it and not her arms - and smacked her with the paddle.  About
as hard as he'd done the first spank.  This time she'd gotten through
three sharp smacks before saying her safe word, but he could see the
disappointment in her eyes that her fantasy wasn't living up to reality. 

"But... I like it so much when I read
about it," she said, looking completely confused.  "That's what
gets me the hottest.  But this doesn't feel like pleasure-pain, it feels
like
pain
 pain."

Adam couldn't help but chuckle.  The
poor thing was definitely submissive, she'd responded very well when he'd
stopped letting her top from the bottom, but she was also very sensitive and
barely had a medium tolerance for pain.  Not the qualities a masochist was
made of.  Real pain didn't turn her on at all.   

"We're not all made the
same," he said.  "But a masochist would have loved what I just
did to you.  I can give you a spanking that
will
 feel like
pleasure pain, but I have to recommend that you absolutely not advertise to any
Doms that you're a masochist.  We have several Sadists here at Stronghold
that are looking for partners and would probably love to try you out, but I can
guarantee you wouldn't enjoy it."  He pressed his thumb against her lip as
she opened her mouth to give another protest.  "That doesn't mean
that you won't continue to enjoy your fantasies, but I think that you'll find a
lot more pleasure in submission than in attempting to force your fantasies onto
yourself."

The woman made a face that said
she didn't want to give up yet but that she was reluctant to let him near her
tender backside with another implement of pain.  "Can we try the
spanking that you think I'll enjoy?"

"Absolutely," Adam
said, grinning wickedly at her.  He ran his hand over her hair
approvingly, watching her face light up and her pupils dilate.  Definitely
submissive.  Not for him, but he could already think of several Doms
around the club who would be interested in her; she was adventurous and eager
to please, not everyone wanted a brat.  He certainly didn’t.  If he was
looking for a play partner instead of a real connection he might have suggested
to Stephanie that they do a few more scenes together, but he could tell that
she was definitely the kind of woman who would want a deeper connection pretty
quickly and he already knew that she wasn’t quite a match for what he
wanted.