There was so much to see, so much she didn’t understand, and so much she couldn’t wait to try.
A crowd began to gather in the back of the room around a woman wearing leather hot pants and a see-through bra being undressed by a man wearing light-gray, wide-legged pants that reminded her of what a Buddhist or martial artist might wear.
Jenna glanced down at her Oscar de la Renta fashion statement. “I’m starting to feel a little overdressed,” she whispered as Warren took her hand and led her toward the action.
“Some of the Doms like to show off their submissives,” Warren whispered back, guiding her to the edge of the growing crowd.
“And you don’t?” she asked.
“No.” He maneuvered her around a small group of people in various states of undress. “I think it’s more exciting to leave something to the imagination, don’t you?” He pointedly looked at her, and she got the distinct impression he was referring to the mask he was wearing to prevent her from seeing his face.
Her gaze traveled over the simple black mask. She couldn’t deny that the mystery intrigued her and gave her something to look forward to. Something to aspire to. A reason to “behave,” because if she pleased him, he would reward her by letting her see his face. And, yes, that was exciting. Very exciting.
“Besides,” he said, looking away, “I enjoy undressing a woman too much to want her to parade around without her clothes on. For me, undressing a woman is part of the fun. It’s like unwrapping a Christmas present.”
“Even if you’ve already unwrapped it before?”
He grinned. “Every time I undress a woman, no matter how many times I have, it’s always a gift, especially when the wrapping paper changes.”
In other words, the clothes that a woman wore—her wrapping paper—added to Warren’s excitement. Which was probably why he liked choosing her wardrobe. Because at the end of the night, he knew he would be the one taking it off.
She got the sense that he reaped great satisfaction in seeing a woman wear the clothes he’d chosen for her, and even greater satisfaction in peeling her out of them. She was his real-life, living, breathing Barbie doll, and he was playing an adult game of dress-up.
And when she thought of it that way, it wasn’t hard to imagine that the dress he’d bought for her to wear tonight had been as much a gift for himself as it had been for her. He probably got off on seeing her styled how he’d fantasized. Which might explain why he’d been disappointed that she’d put up her hair. Maybe he’d envisioned her with her hair down, and she had taken that away from him by doing her own thing.
Next time, she would leave her hair down to make up for it.
Either way, she couldn’t help thinking that Warren was the type of man who would make her wear a corset just so he could unlace it. Slowly and methodically, of course, drawing out the suspense for them both.
“Let me guess,” she said, as he continued guiding her toward the wall, “you were one of those kids who carefully removed every bow and piece of tape from your Christmas presents, then removed the wrapping paper just as carefully so it didn’t tear.”
He chuckled. “Actually, no. I was an overexcited kid who tore through the paper . . . then sat back a little disappointed when there was nothing left to unwrap.”
“So you learned to take your time as you got older? Is that it?”
“Something like that.” He stopped in an opening and directed her attention toward what everyone else was looking at. “Let’s just say I’ve come to appreciate taking my time at”—his gaze raked her appreciatively from head to toe—“unwrapping beautiful things.”
An irresistible smile broke over her face as warmth filled her cheeks and flutters erupted inside her belly. Warren sure knew how to pour on the flattery.
His arm wound around her waist, and he bobbed his chin toward the front of the room. “Now, watch. I want you to see this.”
She turned her attention to what was going on in front of the crowd. The man had finished undressing his submissive and was now deftly winding and tying a long red rope around her as she knelt on the floor in front of him. The rope crisscrossed in intricate designs and held her arms behind her back with complex knots that looked like it would take a week to untangle.
“That’s Cujo,” Warren whispered. “Not his real name, of course, but that’s what we all call him.”
“Why?”
“Because once he starts a scene, he becomes laser-focused on seeing it to completion, building the intensity moment by moment until . . .”
“He comes?” she whispered, looking up at him.
He shrugged as if to say that was one possible outcome. “Or until she does . . . or they both do . . . whatever his goal happens to be.”
She looked back at the scene unfolding in front of her. Cujo tossed the end of another rope over a thick wooden rod suspended over the woman, then pulled it down and wrapped, tucked, and knotted it to the ropes already binding her, creating a handle.
Within minutes, he had the woman’s ankles bound in such a way that all he had to do was pull on one of the ropes to open and close her legs, and another to lift her off the floor completely.
Gagged and suspended in the air with her legs parted, the woman was helpless. She couldn’t escape, couldn’t move, couldn’t even say, “No, I don’t want to.”
But then, consent had already been given, or she wouldn’t have been where she was. She was a silent but equal part of the scene Cujo was creating.
Actually, no, she wasn’t just a costar and equal participant. She was the star. At first glance, it was easy to think Cujo was the main character in this scene, but that wasn’t the case at all. He was merely the makeup artist who made the star
