‘We’re waiting...’ she murmurs from behind me, so very close to my ear.
I try to breathe, to quash the flutters rising up in my gut, and I sense her step back. In her place comes the riding crop, its cool leather brushing against my nape as she sweeps my ponytail aside, and my body shivers anew. Not with the cold, but with the thrill.
‘Now...’ she trails the leather down my spine, oh-so-softly ‘...strip.’
Valentine
Don’t judge me. I’m already judging myself enough.
I was set on leaving. Just as soon as her legs disappeared up the stairs and I felt able. I say able because the moment her eyes connected with mine and I looked away I wanted to look back. Look back and stay fixed on her. Feeling trapped in a web of my own making.
Guilt that she should catch me here. Guilt that I’m scoping her out. Guilt that I feel more than is acceptable for a future professional relationship. Guilt that I should even want another woman.
Yeah, it’s all guilt, my body goads me. The tension, the heat, telling me it runs darker and deeper than that, and my grip on the sill of the two-way mirror before me tightens. My eyes lost in the sight of her, watching the scene unfold, just as she invited me to.
Jesus H Christ.
I shouldn’t be here.
But when the bartender reappeared and made a beeline straight for me to deliver her invitation, I followed him in some weird trance-like state. And when Electra, the woman now running the riding crop down Olivia’s spine, opened a concealed door and pulled me into this room by the collar of my jacket, not once shrinking from my size, I was too stunned to speak, or back out, or do anything but follow her instruction:
Sit. Stay. Watch. Enjoy.
Like some obedient dog.
‘Now strip.’
The command leaves her lips with the vaguest hint of warning and I watch Olivia, illuminated under the shaft of light, hesitate; her eyes connect with mine though she can’t see me. She knows I’m here. Electra’s made that clear. And I saw how it made her eyes flare, her throat bob and the quick flicker of her tongue over her lips as the idea brought with it an illicit buzz. A buzz I shouldn’t feel, I shouldn’t share.
Hell, I’ve gone without sex for four years. I’ve had zero interest, but this...it’s not some tame encounter. It’s dark, twisted and extreme. Profoundly erotic.
And she wants me here to watch.
No.
She wants some stranger in a bar to take on the role of voyeur. I could be anyone. Anyone at all. Some twisted fuck lying in wait. But I’m not. I’m no danger to her.
Someone else could be though.
And it’s another sign that she needs my intervention.
The intervention Alan and the board have in mind to stabilise her, to bring back the old Olivia, the responsible one, the one millions of women look up to, admire, dream to emulate...
Electra flicks her wrist, the riding crop cracking over the curve of Olivia’s clothed behind, and I flinch. The sound reverberates through the walls, through me, Olivia’s surprised yelp carrying with it.
‘I said...’ the woman walks around to her front, pauses and steps wide ‘...undress.’
Olivia nods quickly, slipping the dress from her shoulders, shimmying it down, down and... I can’t breathe. I can’t look away.
One second she’s clothed, the next she’s all black lace lingerie and naked curves. Slender, curvaceous in one.
She straightens. The dress pooling at her feet and her head turning to eye Electra as she waits for her next instruction.
‘And the rest...’
Olivia eyes the tip of the riding crop that Electra is running through her fingers and swallows. ‘Yes, Mistress.’
My gut clenches with need. The dormant sensation so fierce in its resurgence I can’t draw breath, I can only watch as she slips the straps of her lace bodysuit down and her beautiful breasts spill free. Their pink hearts are puckered, tight with obvious arousal. And then she bends forward, hooking her fingers into the fabric at her hips and smooths it down her legs, unveiling her womanhood, all bare, naked, no hair...fuck.
She straightens and Electra lowers the riding crop to her inner thigh, pressing it into her skin as Electra’s eyes take in the same exquisite sight, the hint of moisture glistening in the light. She slides the riding crop up, brushes it gently against her wet seam, and Olivia sways into the move, her teeth biting into her bottom lip, her body quivering.
‘Very nice,’ Electra murmurs, easing the riding crop back and forth, coating it with her need.
I watch the colour rise in Olivia’s cheeks, see the blatant hunger in every tense muscle of her body as she clenches her fists at her sides and rides the leather.
‘Enough.’ Electra snaps the riding crop away. ‘Pick up your clothing and place it on the table over there.’ She points to a solid wood table that is bare save for a small box. ‘There is something in the box I want you to wear.’
Olivia does as she’s told and, hesitant, opens the lid of the box. Her eyes flit back to Electra.
‘Put it on.’
She pulls it out. It’s a headband with two soft black triangles. What the fuck?
She slips it on—cat ears. Little Kitten. I get it and, hell, it should look ridiculous. It should make me want to laugh. Instead, I’m enraptured, hooked on every instruction and Olivia’s obedience. The Olivia Carmel—intelligent, stunningly sophisticated, empowered—willing to carry out every instruction Electra delivers.
‘You can leave your shoes there too.’
‘Yes, Mistress.’
She toes off one, then the other and looks back to Electra, the cat ears adorning her head, her eyes docile, her cheeks pink.
‘Every good Little Kitten needs a collar; come and kneel before me and I will give you yours.’
Oh, God, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have said yes. My body doesn’t rule me, but right now I’m fixed in place. Immobilised with
