A Lovely Shade of Ouch by Tymber Dalton
“You do, huh?”
“Uh-huh.” He arched his eyebrows at her. “Being a switch just means double the pleasure and double the fun. I can’t wait for the night I can stuff a butt plug up that sweet, gorgeous ass of yours and then tie you down and fuck you for hours without letting you come.”
She gasped, liking the sound of that.
A lot.
He grinned. “But you know what I’d really like now?”
“What?”
“Dinner. I’m starving.”
It was her turn to laugh. “Make you a sammich?”
“No, make me that roast or whatever it was that smelled so good when I walked in.”
At least pool sex meant she didn’t have to wash up. But he was a gentleman and went inside to bring her a towel so she didn’t have to shiver in the AC.
As he helped her out of the pool, he pulled her in close. “Promise me something.”
He sounded serious. “What?” she asked.
“If you think this is going off the rails, that we’re going off the rails, you’ll speak up and be honest with me so we can fix it. Because I damn sure don’t want to lose you now that I have you.”
She didn’t want to promise forever yet. Hell, he knew her views on marriage.
But she also knew she didn’t want to go anywhere, either.
“I promise. And ditto for you, too.”
He kissed her. “Absolutely.” Then he turned around and patted her on the ass. “Now get me my dinner, missy.”
“Missy?”
“Ma’am?”
He was so damn cute, she couldn’t help it. “I’ll go get your meat, buddy.”
“You already had my meat. Twice. Get me my dinner.”
He made her laugh. All the time. Unlike—
Stop thinking about Tom, dammit!
She blew him a kiss. “Yes, Sir. I did have your meat. And it was wonderful.”
“As good as you’d hoped?”
“Even better.”
Chapter Nineteen
Six weeks after Abbey’s surgery, it wasn’t pain in her back that had Abbey on edge as they headed for Sigalo’s on Saturday night. It’d be her first dinner back with the gang since her surgery. Despite frequent visitors at home, it’d be nice to get out, to see people.
To feel normal for a change.
And yet…things weren’t normal. Not at all. Publicly, she was now John’s Domme. After her surgery, they’d changed their FetLife profiles to reflect their new relationship statuses. Well, partially.
Privately…
Privately, tonight all she wanted to do was curl up with her head in John’s lap while he stroked her hair.
Called her his good girl.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that she was going stir-crazy and had missed their friends, she would have asked to stay home.
Two days earlier, she’d received a large envelope full of her mail from Tom, postmarked Dallas, that had accidentally been forwarded to him by the post office. Tony had dropped the house key off for her when Tom returned to do the move a few weeks earlier.
Not one of their friends helped Tom move.
Tilly had begged her to let her go take the key back, but as Abbey frequently reminded herself, prison orange wasn’t Tilly’s color.
Then, that morning while John was out mowing the grass, she’d made the mistake of logging onto FetLife to see who else had RSVP’d to go to Venture’s play session that night.
She had a private message there from an acquaintance who was also friends with Tom. They’d noted the relationship shuffle and asked if she was okay.
Her strong dominant headspace fizzled.
Maybe I should have taken a page from Tilly’s playbook and just reamed him a new asshole for what he did and I’d have felt better.
No, she wanted to be the bigger person. She didn’t want to be some raving bitch who aired her dirty laundry all over social media.
I have a great relationship now, and that’s all that matters.
Still, the sting remained. No, not nearly as bad as it had hit her at first when Tom dropped the bomb on her, but there just the same. The urge to rub Tom’s face in it. That not only was there a man who was willing to go the distance for her even just as friends, but who was twice the man—in some ways literally, not just metaphorically—than Tom could ever dream of being.
Then reality took over again and quashed those revenge fantasies.
She fully expected the doctor to clear her to return to work at the eight-week mark. Part of her couldn’t wait. She’d been handling e-mails and phone calls over the past couple of weeks, needing to stay busy or go stir-crazy.
After dinner, they all met up at Venture. She waited for John to get her implement bag and the cane and crop tube from the trunk before he opened her door and helped her out.
“Ready, Ma’am?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
She stroked his cheek. While at the club tonight, she’d be on top. Once they got home, however…
They’d developed a fun game of “flogger top.” When either of them could go either way, they grabbed a flogger like kids with a baseball bat, and whoever’s hand ended up at the end of the handle when it was over was “it” for the night.
It’d become a little code for them, a private game.
When they’d made the mistake of mentioning it at Tilly’s one night while eating dinner there, she made them fess up.
Upon hearing their explanation, she shook her head. “As long as it’s working for you two, whatever. I’ll never understand you switches.”
Landry cleared his throat. “Uh, love? You’re a switch.”
“Yeah, but not like that. I don’t switch with you.”
Cris cleared his throat.
She rolled her eyes. “That’s different. Duh.”
“How?” everyone else asked in unison.
Her face went red. “Give me a minute,” she said, “and I’ll think of something.”
Abbey pulled herself back to the present. “No flogger top later tonight,” she whispered. “I want Sir.”
He frowned. “Sweetheart, are you all right? We don’t have to play if you don’t feel up to it. We can just go in and chat with everyone and go home.”
“No, I want to play. But dibs on Sir tonight.”
His frown meant he wasn’t convinced.
She leaned in and tugged on his earlobe. “Ma’am says she’s fine to play.”
A smile finally broke through. “If some shrink listened to us talk, they’d lock us up. You realize that, right?”
“As long as we’re locked up together, that’s fine with me.”
* * * *
Once they’d paid their entry fee and went inside, John headed into the bathroom to change outfits, put on the eyeliner he wore, and don his hood. Gilo had a certain look people expected. So as not to trigger more questions than they already suspected they’d get from some people, he opted to stick with his usual routine.
Abbey was scoping out equipment stations and got distracted watching a rope bondage suspension scene between Askel and Mallory. That was why she wasn’t expecting it when nosy Lydia tapped her on the shoulder and leaned in, her ample bust nearly spilling out the top of her tightly cinched leather corset and into Abbey’s face.
“I heard Gilo’s here tonight,” she said. “I was thinking about asking him to play. You want to help me co-Top him? Get you back into the swing of things, so to speak?”
She turned to face Lydia, forcing herself to smile and not reach out and slap the woman.
She doesn’t know. Remember that. She doesn’t know.
“Hate to break it to you, but Gilo’s not available to play tonight.”
“Since when? He’s like the house soccer ball. I’m sure if we ask him—”
“He’s here with me.” It took every ounce of control Abbey had to keep a catty tone out of her voice. “Sorry, but he’s off the market. He only plays with me now. Guess you haven’t been on Fet lately,
The thought of Lydia laying a finger on John sent creepy crawlies up Abbey’s spine.
“Oh.” At some point since the last time Abbey had seen her, Lydia had taken her closely cropped blonde hair into the platinum range, and it made her look older, more haggard despite her perfect nails and makeup. “Well, I never got that memo,” Lydia snarked. “Sorry.” She turned and stomped away before Abbey could answer.
Another sheer test of her will, to not go storming after the bitch and let her have it, to inform Lydia that sorry, she didn’t need to send out a fucking memo, and certainly not to her.
But at that point, John emerged from the bathroom, turning to look for her in the play space. After raising her hand so he’d spot her, he headed straight for her.
Around her neck she carried a braided leather leash, a six-footer, with snaps at both ends, allowing her to tether the pet on the other end to other items.
It had never been used on a bio-dog. Only on the two-legged kinds of pets.
When John reached her, she snapped her fingers and pointed at the floor in front of her. He dropped to his hands and knees, waiting. Tonight he wore a leather collar he’d had for years.
I need to get him a new one. She snapped the leash onto it, tugging a little.
He nuzzled her feet, clad in black ballet flats since she didn’t want to risk twisting an ankle and hurting her back in stilettos.
“Good boy.” She dipped her knees enough to stroke his head through his hood.
Tilly walked up, staring down at John. “Well, Lydia’s pissed off. That took less time than I thought it would.” She looked down. “Hey, John.”
He didn’t lift his head from Abbey’s feet, but he tipped her an index finger in greeting to acknowledge her.
“I forgot what a fantastic ass he has, Ab,” Tilly said, cocking her head to get a better look at said ass. “Nicely done, girl.” Tonight John wore his leather jock, leather cuffs at his wrists and ankles…and nothing else. Well, other than his hood and collar.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Abbey said, her voice low and trying to keep her tone light so John didn’t cue in, “Lydia can go fuck herself.”
John sat up. “What happened?”
Shit. She snapped her fingers and pointed at the floor.
He sat back on his heels, hands on his knees, and shook his head. “Nope. What happened, Abbey? Talk to me.”
Well, hell.
One of the things they’d discussed early on to keep things straight was that if either of them used the other’s real name during play, as opposed to a title, that brought things to a screeching halt.
She felt a little funny still holding the leash as she crooked a finger for him to stand. He sometimes had trouble hearing with the hood on, and she couldn’t easily bend over that far to talk to him. When he leaned in, her mouth close enough to his left ear that she could talk without yelling it to the whole club, she told him.
“Want me to go talk to her?” he asked.
“Nope. I handled it.”
Tilly laughed. “Come on, Ab. Let him go talk to her. This could get interesting.”
“You’re not allowed to throw him under the bus, Tilly.”
“No, that wasn’t the deal at all. The deal was that I wasn’t allowed to kill him. Nothing was ever said prohibiting me from inciting violence elsewhere.” She grinned.
John turned to her and shook his head.
“Oh, fine. You two are no fun now that you’re bumping uglies.” But she smiled. Then she hugged Abbey. After, she pointed at John and waited. Abbey nodded, belatedly realizing what she wanted.
Only after Abbey nodded, Tilly reached up and lightly noogied the top of his head. “Such a goood boy,” she said.
John gave her a playful shake of his ass.
I need to get him into puppy play. Then Abbey dragged herself back to reality. Focus. Lydia. Warpath.
“I handled it,” Abbey said. “Let’s face it, she won’t be the last person to not get the memo. I’ll deal with it.”
“Remind me when we get home,” John said, “to send messages via FetLife to the people I played with the most to update them.”
“It’s fine. Seriously.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Because Lydia’s a bitch and took ’tude with me. Are we going to discuss this all night or get back to playing?”
Tilly’s right. He does have a nice ass.
“Okay, if you say so.”
“I do.”
Abbey was more than aware of how Lydia watched from across the club, venom in her eyes when Abbey and John started playing twenty minutes later. Abbey gagged and blindfolded him, clipping his wrist cuffs to a St. Andrew’s cross where she quickly stepped him up from warm-up into full-on heavy play with paddles and canes, culminating with a cane made out of a piece of Delrin hex rod with a golf club handle on the end.
She’d rarely used it on Tom.
It took two hard blows before it stood John up on his toes for a moment. She gave him time to breathe through it, waiting until he was flat-footed again to deliver a couple more strikes across his already tenderized ass with it.
This time, his fists clenched as he rose up on his toes.
She waited him out, stroking his ass until he was back on the soles of his feet again.
Then she laid one last, hard blow, right in the seam between where his ass cheeks met his upper thighs.
This time, she stepped behind him, pressing her body against his, wrapping her arms around him. “All done,” she said, kissing his back, waiting for him to recover from the last strokes before unclipping his wrist cuffs.
She had left his ankle cuffs unclipped, not wanting to try to get down and back up again, and not wanting anyone’s help, either. John had set her implement bag out on two chairs before she hooked him up, so she didn’t have to bend over to reach things.
When he started wiggling his ass against her, she knew he was okay. She unclipped his wrists, removed the blindfold and gag, and turned him around for a hug. Normally, she’d quickly pack up the bag before getting him down, and then go to sit with him on the floor while he zoned out for a little while, surfing his subspace high.
Tonight, she needed him to wrangle the implement bag and tube. He left them next to Tilly’s stuff along the wall before following Abbey to one of couches. There, Abbey took an end spot and handed him a towel to kneel on. Like that, he knelt on the floor with his head in her lap, one of her hands resting on his head, the other holding one of his.
When Lydia shot a glare at her from across the room, Abbey met it with an icy, stony gaze of her own until Lydia finally looked away and started talking to someone.
He’s. Mine.
And if that scene they’d just done didn’t prove it to everyone, the marks he’d be wearing on his ass for at least the next several days sure as hell did.
Abbey closed her eyes, peace filling her. It felt good to scene again. Especially with John.
I think I’ve finally got my groove back.
* * * *
John’s ass ached in direct proportion to how his heart and soul soared. He’d be feeling that beating for several days.
Especially every time he sat down at his desk.
Behind his hood, he smiled.
He’d likely spend the next several days with a semipermanent erection during work, unable to stop thinking about tonight.
He had to trust Abbey’s judgment. If she didn’t want him going and notifying everyone, he wouldn’t. Still, that protective part of him which would always be protective, whether in submissive or Dominant mode, wanted to have a few words with Lydia about keeping her nose out of everyone’s business.
They stayed for another hour once he was up and moving again. Before they left the club, he changed back into street clothes, using a makeup remover wipe to clean off the eyeliner and running a comb through his sweat-damp hood hair. Normally, he’d go home and jump in the pool for a few minutes after scening at th
That was before Abbey.
Once they said their good-byes and he got her out to the car, he felt the shift in her energy immediately, not needing any verbal cues from her to know she was ready for Sir to come out.
He pulled her in for a hug next to the car. “I’m going to take My girl home, and we’re going to have a nice soak in the hot tub before we go to bed and I make you come and then we go to sleep,” he whispered in her ear before opening the car door.
“Thank you, Sir,” she mumbled against his chest.
Confirmed.
What he wasn’t expecting, when he got her home and started undressing her in their bedroom, was to discover how wet she was.
Maybe they wouldn’t even make it to the hot tub.
He slowly fucked her pussy with two fingers. “Now, how did that happen, I wonder?” he teased.
She kept her face pressed against his shirt, holding on to him. “I can’t help it. I like beating your ass. Tilly’s right. You have a nice ass.”
He tipped her chin up to face him, kissing her, sucking on her lower lip, nibbling, making her gasp as he sped his hand up until he knew she was close to coming—
And then he stopped. She gasped, her eyes flying open. “No.”
There was his girl, in full submissive headspace.
He backed her toward the bed and nibbled on her earlobe. “Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of you.”
He lowered her to the bed, her ass at the edge, before gently pressing her legs apart with his. They’d experimented with a few positions that didn’t hurt her back, and like this, with him standing, he could hold on to her hips and fuck her almost as hard as she wanted him to without it hurting her.
He unfastened his belt and his slacks and shoved them and his briefs down his hips. His cock sprang free and he fed it into her pussy, slowly, knowing he wouldn’t take long to explode.
Something else he used to do after bottoming and springing up frisky on the other side of it, he’d come home and rub at least one, if not two out.
Before Abbey.
He took it slow, using a finger on her clit to build her back up again, wanting to time it as close as he could, wanting to come with her. When she let out a cry and he felt her pussy spasming around his cock, he quit holding back. With his hands on her hips, he fucked her, relishing the pleasant ache as his balls drew up tight against his body just before exploding and filling her with his cum.