The Greatest Risk by Kristen Ashley
Beyond that, the tall, wide, cream leather backs of the chairs obscured whatever was happening.
Stellan did not move them to the steps that led to the bleachers.
Of course not.
He led them around the side of one chair, and there she stopped so abruptly, Stellan stopped with her.
There was a sunken pit in front of her. Large. Oval. Lined at the sides and bottom in thick black mats that now shone in places.
With oil.
And probably sweat.
Good Lord.
It was a gladiator pit.
Quickly, her attention moved to the two men currently grappling in the pit not far away from where they stood, and she felt her legs start to tremble and they weren’t the only things on her body experiencing that sensation.
The men were glistening, muscled, (mostly) naked, magnificent, savage brutes that were locked in combat with their only adornment—outside a full-body oiling—a black leather belt around their waists.
This had a small leather triangle above the pubis from which led snapped straps that rounded their erect cocks and high, tight balls with another strap coming from the behind the balls, separating each testicle, snapped to the cock strap.
From the back of the belt, shanks of leather curved around the sides of their asses and under them, cupping them and drawing the cheeks up, with another thick strap cutting through the crevice, opening it, a wide silver ring placed precisely, highlighting their anuses.
“I knew you’d like it,” Stellan purred in her ear, and damn it all, her movement was jerky when she forced her head around and up to look at him.
He did not hide he was pleased.
Yes, he knew she liked it, he’d guessed how much, and he got off in a big way that she did.
Even so, she hid she liked how pleased he was.
Before she could say anything, he guided her to her chair, and before she fell down, she sat down as gracefully as she could, which fortunately was an effort that went smoothly.
He barely got his ass in the throne beside hers when, appearing at his side, there was a female server in nothing but another variety of black leather straps, clearly the theme, though hers covered her completely at strategic parts, leaving all the rest bare.
“Refreshments, Master Lange?” she asked.
“Scotch,” he said and turned to Sixx, raising his brows and remarking, “They don’t have a full bar, but they have most everything you might want.”
“Gordon’s cup,” she said.
That got an amused look from Stellan, something she had seen, but not much, since she’d been home.
She’d missed it.
Horribly.
She knew it before, but she knew it keener then.
She was in a dangerous place.
Very dangerous.
Precarious.
He turned to the server. “Can you manage that?”
“If we can’t, I’ll return,” she said, obviously having no idea what the drink was.
“A male slave serves this Mistress,” Stellan ordered before she left.
She nodded, bowed, and took off.
Stellan turned back to Sixx.
“I didn’t know there was a gladiator pit in Phoenix,” she remarked.
“It’s new,” he replied.
“How new?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Around four months.”
She turned her attention to the space, which had high bleachers going up behind a variety of double sets of thrones like the ones she and Stellan were in, all the thrones flanking the pit having the best views, sitting maybe only four feet from the edge.
She took it all in and noted there were a few thrones that were empty, not many, but most of the bleacher space was taken by bodies.
There had to be hundreds of people there.
Her eyes again caught Stellan’s, noting something further.
He was watching her, not the warriors in the pit.
Her.
Closely.
“You didn’t pay to get in,” she stated.
“Tickets need to be purchased in advance.”
“You didn’t hand a ticket to anyone,” she noted.
“No,” he looked to the pit, “I didn’t.”
Okay.
Um.
Okay.
Shit.
“You run this, don’t you?” she queried to his profile.
“I have a few other investors,” he answered, not taking his attention from the action. “But yes.”
But yes.
Trying not to appear dazed, she looked all around again.
This was a gift to her?
How?
Why?
She avoided the men in the pit, tuned out the cheering that was hitting extremes, and looked among the thrones.
All Doms, for certain, though she couldn’t know if they were the other investors. If they were, there were a number of them.
Some had two people sitting on the two chairs, men and/or women.
Some had only one.
Some had a sub sitting on the floor by their chairs.
Two had what obviously were gladiators defeated earlier. The defeated were on all fours at their Doms’ feet, still in their belts, but although one was too far away for her to see, another was just a few thrones down, and as it was pointed her way, she saw the raw red of his ass cheeks.
As well as the cream coming from it.
So there was a definite price to pay in losing.
My, my, my.
“Who gets the thrones?” Sixx inquired, turning back Stellan’s way.
“Owners,” he shared.
“Investors?” she pushed.
He looked to her again.
“No,” he said slowly. “Owners.”
Owners.
Of the warriors.
He knew she caught on, and she must have given something away, something that pleased him, because he didn’t hide it.
And she liked that she’d pleased him.
But again she hid it.
“They pay an impressive sum for their warriors to play, so they pay for their seat to be unobstructed,” he shared. “But also, in the end, however way they wish to be, they’re part of the show.”
Obviously from her superior vantage point she could definitely see dipping into her painfully acquired and carefully attended stash of cash for such a show.
He turned back to the action.
Sixx did too.
The instant she did, the sexual savagery of it smacked her in the face, drove up between her thighs, throbbed through her nipples and shivered across her skin.
And once it caught her attention, she couldn’t look away. The beauty of it was too extreme.
She was captivated.
She wanted one, and she didn’t even know what it meant to own one.
But she wanted one.
She wanted her own gladiator to battle for her, earn the spoils of his victory for her, or take the punishment of defeat … for her.
Perhaps the only thing that could draw her attention did just that.
A tall, built, good-looking, well-endowed male slave appeared at her side. He had a black belt around his waist. Leading down from the center of the belt, his large cock was trapped in an upward position behind black leather laces surrounded by rivets, his impressive balls caged with it but bulging out the sides. He also had a cut crystal glass filled with ice and a slightly murky liquid with visible bits of pepper on a tray.
The bartender clearly knew what he was doing or had access to the Internet.
And Stellan clearly had someone who rocked in picking server attire.
The slave set the glass on the table by her side and backed away. After she lost sight of his attractive chastity cage and the meat it packed, she picked the glass up to take a drink before she set it aside, and she did all of this taking her attention from the pit as sparingly as she could.
And Sixx would discover all victory and defeat entailed whe
Sixx sat back, tucked her clutch in her lap and crossed her legs.
She did this because she knew very well it gave the appearance of being calm and collected.
It had the added benefit of tightening her flesh around her misbehaving clit and ending the quivers quaking up her inner thighs.
She’d already exposed to Stellan she liked what she’d seen, though he’d watched her in playrooms so he could hardly be in question that she would.
How much it affected her, she felt it paramount not to expose.
She felt heat in her legs that had nothing to do with the winner dragging the loser up to his knees by his hair, and she slanted her eyes sideways to find Stellan was not interested in the pit any longer (if he was at all—this was her scene, it was not his).
He was studying her legs.
Sixx instantly looked back to the pit.
The winner had thrown the straps in the loser’s face and was working the crowd, squatting and shouting, pumping his bent elbows into his body with fists clenched, circling the loser who was still on his knees, head bent, strapping himself back up.
The winner stopped in front of a man seated in one of the cream chairs who looked easily like he could be given his own belt, take his place in the pit, and win. The victor dropped to his knees, ripping his straps off his cock and balls and lifting them, head bowed, toward his Master.
She couldn’t hear what the Master said since he was on the curve of the oval, several sets of thrones down from her and Stellan. But whatever he said allowed the winning warrior to toss his straps up to the floor in front of his Master’s seat then take his feet and stalk to the loser.
Catching the losing warrior by the hair again, he took him unresisting to his back with a moist, resounding thud of slickened flesh on mat, and the crowd lost their minds.
The winner dropped to his knees again, jerked the loser’s legs up high, pressing them out. The loser held this position as the winner guided his cock where he intended it to be, dead center of that silver ring, and pounded in.
An answering pound rocked Sixx’s body.
God.
Glorious.
She did her best not to press her legs together because she knew Stellan would not miss it.
She also did her best not to come right on the spot. She had on a lace thong that in no way would absorb the slick she’d leave if she allowed herself what she needed very, very badly watching the winner take his reward and the loser give it.
Instead, she endeavored to watch the action like it was mildly entertaining and knew she failed at this. But at least she wasn’t staring in the open-mouthed, undoubtedly drooling awe she would have used if she’d let her true reaction free.
It became apparent that the triumphant warrior was gracious in victory when he started brutally fisting his opponent’s cock.
The loser came first.
The winner bellowed his climax minutes later.
The crowd went wild.
Although her seat was equal to none, mid-oval on the wide side, she was going to ask Stellan how to buy tickets in the bleachers because she’d attend again. That was for certain.
She just wouldn’t do it sitting beside Stellan.
After his recovery, the victorious warrior pulled out and took his feet, sauntering toward his master.
“There are female gladiators too,” Stellan said as Sixx watched the gladiator use his beefy arms to pull himself out of the pit, the sides of which came up to his chest, and he was not a small man by any account. “They usually open the night.”
“I’m sure they’re quite popular,” she murmured, still watching as the winner grabbed what appeared to be a wet towel from the table beside his Dom and roughly wiped his cock clean.
She kept watching, now with some surprise, when a dominant sneer rolled over the champion’s face as he stared down at the man seated on the throne while that man stroked the back of his flank.
That was when she knew.
She knew who owned who.
And the crowd again lost their minds when the gladiator cupped the back of the man’s head in one mighty hand, wrapping his fingers around his still-hard dick with the other, and forced the man in the chair to take him deep into his mouth.
Oh yes.
She was not only buying tickets. When she found out the number to the box office, she was inquiring after season passes.
This was a reason to remain in Phoenix.
For certain.
“They’re both Doms,” Stellan told her. “They trade off who competes. And if one wins, the other submits to him. If he loses, he takes the winning gladiator’s cock, and then he submits to his partner. It seems to work for them, and their ensuing antics make them popular with the crowd.”
Pumping into his partner’s face and openly enjoying it with the audience cheering him on, Sixx would tend to agree.
“They’re bi,” Stellan continued. “They each also have female subs. I hear they have very interesting parties and also give intriguing demonstrations. They’re all for hire, but they cost a great deal.”
As if the gladiator felt her gaze, had seen her or could simply sense her reaction to the show he’d given, his head turned, and his flashing eyes locked on Sixx’s.
She felt her mouth get soft, her gaze open up, that dominant sneer shot her way, she accepted it, beginning to return his smile and then …
Her jaw was caught in a hard grip, and she saw nothing but Stellan’s handsome, hard face.
She went completely still.
She’d seen that look before too.
It was the one he assumed when he had a slave who was being a brat, testing his patience, and he had a lesson to teach.
There was no way to control the soak that drenched between her legs or the lean that automatically began toward him at his touch, the firmness of his hold, the look on his face.
And his touch and the words he next spoke caused a warm, slow, gorgeous ripple to course throughout her body. An orgasm, to be sure, beautiful and nuanced in feeling, truly the most exquisite climax she’d ever had, but indistinguishable by sight except for the soft parting of her lips.
“You sit here as mine, Simone,” he growled.
She started breathing heavily, feeling her eyes getting lazy in the languid throes of her silent orgasm, and worked hard to hide it, keeping her eyes wide and alert, forcing her breaths to steady.
He’d used her real name.
How did he know her real name?
And she sat there as his?
When?
How?
God.
“You can watch because I allow it,” he stated.
“Stell—”
His face came right to hers.
“Master,” he bit.
Oh God.
God.
God.
No hope for control, her breathing was now erratic, and her response was overpowering.
She eased in his grip, giving herself over.
Immediately.
Without thought.
Without hesitation.
Without a fight.
Good Lord.
What was happening?
“Soon, I’ll be giving you your gift,” he declared.
He’d be giving it to her?
Him bringing her here wasn’t her gift?
“After I do, and you have your time to enjoy it,” he went on, “I’ll be taking you back to the Honey. As you were on the way here, you’ll be silent on the return journey. You’ll use that time to think about how inappropriate you’ve just been and the measures you’ll take to make that up to me. In fact, you’ll have the rest of the week to think on this, so I’ll assume your apology,
“A deal?” she whispered.
“A deal,” he announced.
“I—”
She said no more because he moved in further, slanting his head at the last minute, tipping her head the opposite way at the same time, and a pulse of sheer splendor coursed through her and detonated between her legs as he sunk his teeth into the side of her neck, right at her jugular.
Deep, sharp …
Not breaking the skin, but she knew, absolutely leaving a mark.
As fast as he moved in, he was back in her face.
“A response is not required,” he shared.
She said nothing.
“This business you’re doing later, do you need someone with you?” he asked.
Oh God.
Why was he asking that?
“Simone, I asked you a question and your response is required for that,” he clipped.
“N-no,” she answered, stammering.
Her!
Mistress Sixx!
Stammering!
“Is it dangerous?” he queried tersely.
Again, why?
Why was he asking that?
How did he even know to ask?
Had Aryas…?
“Don’t try my patience further, my darling, by making me repeat myself,” he whispered silkily.
“It’s not dangerous,” she said quietly.
“If you’re lying, there will be consequences,” he told her.
How would he know if she was lying?
She didn’t ask.
She sat there in his grip, staring into his heated blue eyes, trying very hard not to come again, and this time do it bigger, louder and far more noticeably.
His head tipped to the side as he slid his grip from her jaw to the back of her neck.
The hold was gentler, but it was just as relentless.