Knowing the Ropes Read online

  And if Natalie wasn’t as tightly controlled as they thought…well, she’d call back, because what woman wouldn’t be curious to find out if her ex was actually boinking the ditzy college girl Selene was pretending to be?

  July passed into early August. The short summer semester was in full swing, and between that and her part-time job, Selene had been pretty busy. But she and Nick had managed to squeeze in a few more hot dates, a few more afternoons in Garth and Alison’s pool, and plenty more steamy phone-sex sessions.

  But no sex-toy shopping trip yet. It had never worked out. Okay, so two times when they’d meant to go, they’d met up at one of their houses first, taken one look at each other and ended up in bed, and the third time, they’d actually been on their way downtown on a particularly sweltering day when Alison called up and invited them to come use the pool.

  On a more worrisome note, there had been no calls—for either of them—from the elusive Natalie. It became obvious as the weeks went on that Nick was growing more anxious each day, and that, in turn, made Selene more anxious.

  Kind of crazy to worry so much about a woman she didn’t even know, but that was her training. Her calling. Her classes were showing that more and more, even though she hadn’t gotten involved with a hotline yet in Massachusetts—no time yet, between getting settled and the heady whirlwind of meeting Nick.

  Would a hotline still want her?

  She expressed that worry to Nick over the phone.

  “They don’t need to know you’re kinky, do they? Though it might be helpful you know the difference between fun rough stuff and real violence, and you might be able to help someone else sort it out.” He hesitated a minute. “This really means a lot to you, doesn’t it? Helping out women in trouble?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have seen a lot of it where you grew up. It sounds like…like America’s Heartland.”

  Selene gave a dry, sad laugh. “I wish. It happens everywhere. In places like Lodi, the isolation makes it easy, I think, and the whole no-sun-from-November-to-April thing makes people a little crazy. But for all we know, Garth and Alison’s neighbors in that big, gorgeous house are in trouble too.”

  His voice was gentle, nothing like his dom voice, when he said, “I guess what I mean is this sounds like more than a passion to do a generally good thing. Is there someone I need to track down and kill?”

  She took a deep breath, trying to fight past the lump forming in her throat because she had no doubt that he would go to bat for her, maybe in some ridiculous alpha-male way, just as he was for Natalie. “Not for me personally. My parents have a great marriage, and Mom’s parents are the poster couple for senior-citizen love. I’ve dated my share of jerks, but it was never like that. They weren’t abusive, just careless with my feelings.”

  “But there’s someone.”

  Not her memories. Not her story. Not Nick’s business.

  It had colored her life, but it seemed too soon to speak of it with him. Going into some of her worst, scariest memories, even if they were things she’d understood only imperfectly when they were going on, didn’t have much of a place in a casual friends-with-benefits relationship. Not on her planet.

  But it was still sweet he cared so much.

  “Persistent little bastard, aren’t you?” She tried to make light of the memories and of the way his concern was making her feel. Tried to ignore the warm blanket of protection his attention wrapped around her.

  “You can’t begin to know how persistent I can be.” His voice held an edge of the dominant, a hint of erotic threat that should have clashed with Warm-Nurturing-Guy, but oddly didn’t.

  She’d analyze that later.

  “Answer me, Selene. I’d really like to know.”

  Her tongue froze.

  Why was he prying so much? Why had she even brought it up in the first place?

  At her silence, Nick’s voice softened to an intimate whisper. As if he’d read her mind, he said, “I’m not just being nosy, although God knows I am a nosy bastard and I want to know what makes you tick, so I’ll ask you a lot of crazy questions. But in this case, I’m asking for specific reasons. One is that it’s important for me to know if you have any damage, physical or emotional, that might crop up while we’re playing. I don’t want to do something that triggers some kind of horrible memories for you, any more than I’d want to tie you up in a way that put stress on an old injury. We probably should have had this conversation a while ago.”

  That made sense. He’d already asked her a ton of questions that first night—did she have any severe allergies, did she have back problems, stuff like that. Childhood traumas would also be important to know. “Although,” she said, continuing her thought aloud, “I probably wouldn’t be so interested in kink if someone had hurt me for real.”

  A dry chuckle, as humorless as hers had been earlier. “You might be surprised. The human brain’s weird, and for some people it’s helpful. Lets them face the bad stuff in a situation where they have choices and control or something. But I don’t know that I’m a good enough dom to guide someone through hell and back like that.”

  What Nick wanted from her now made sense. He wanted to make sure there was nothing haunting her in ways he might need to deal with later, ways that might crop up and spoil both their fun.

  And with that in mind, he deserved an outline of the truth. “When we were growing up, my friend Molly’s father was abusing her mother and the kids. They lived next door to us, but next door was about a mile, with a lot of vineyard in between. One night, Molly and her little brother showed up at our back door. They’d run through the vineyard to get help because they didn’t dare to use the phone where their dad might hear. It might make him even angrier.” She blinked away sudden, hot tears, remembering Molly’s white face and wide eyes staring up at her dad, hoping that another grown-up could help even though she had no reason to trust any man. Remembering Adam, the bruise across his face from when he’d tried to intervene, as if a seven-year-old could do against a grown man’s insane wrath.

  “What happened?”

  “Mom helped the kids call the police. My dad went over and intervened. He won’t talk about exactly what happened to this day, but when the police got there, Reverend Baker turned himself in.”

  Nick sputtered. “Reverend? That makes it suck even more. But it sounds like it had a happy ending in the long run.”

  “Mrs. Baker and the kids ended up living with us until she could get back on her feet. She’d been a full-time mom for years, and she didn’t have a lot of confidence after living with someone who treated her like shit, so it took her a while to get her head together, let alone find work. It came out all right in the end, but seeing that, and seeing how long it took all of them to get their lives back on track, made an impression on me.”

  “I bet Molly’s not a regular churchgoer.”

  Selene found herself smiling despite the sad aspects of the story. “Oddly, she’s a deacon in what used to be her father’s church. She plans to go to divinity school when her kids are older. She says she’s clear that it was her dad who was screwed up, not the church and certainly not God.”

  Hmm, come to think of it, she owed Molly a call. Not that the last couple of calls had been entirely easy. Molly, of course, wanted to know all about Nick, and Selene ended up having to gloss over a lot. Molly got the picture they spent a lot more time having wild sex than they did, oh, going to museums and movies, and she was quietly amused by that, but Selene got the feeling she knew a lot was being left out. “Selene?”

  Selene jumped. “Sorry, just woolgathering. Thinking I need to call Molly or at least pop her an e-mail.” She thought of something. “Hey, you said you had a couple of reasons for pushing me to talk about this. What was the other one?”

  Nick laughed. “Who’s being nosy now? Honestly, I can’t remember what I was going to say. Probably something about how it’s not good to have Big Honking Secrets”—she could hear th
e capital letters—”between a dom and a sub. Knowing all about you helps me get my claws in deeper and all that.”

  Then his tone changed. He chuckled evilly and said in that rich voice that sent shivers down her spine, “Speaking of claws, I found the most interesting toy online today—metal claws. I’m sending you the link right now. Let me know what you think.”

  The change of topic made Selene’s head spin, but she had to admit the claws sounded intriguing, and she fired up her laptop. “Ooh, pretty! Very Goth. They look dangerous, though.”

  “But sensual as well. I wouldn’t want to break skin, but imagine how they’d feel just trailing lightly over your skin, tracing your jugular vein or circling your nipple.”

  She shivered, a mix of apprehension and arousal. “Pinching, maybe?”

  “Oh yes, pinching. Scratching, digging into your glorious ass when you’re at the peak of arousal so that extra shock of pain pushes you over the edge.”

  Good grief, how had she gone so quickly from all serious, almost teary-eyed to getting wet and having the most interesting, sexy ideas?

  She’d needed the distraction so she didn’t get maudlin. And Nick was just that good.

  “All my mental images are kind of vampiric and Gothy right now. I see myself in a corset and black velvet.”

  “Bet you’d look great in a corset, and it would push up your breasts nicely so I could run the claws across them.”

  She chuckled throatily. “I do look pretty good in a corset, if I do say so myself.”

  “You own one?”

  “Just something from one of those mall-Goth stores, not a real one. I haven’t worn it in a few years, but I found it and the skirt that went with it when I was unpacking the other day. I can’t imagine why I even kept them. It was a Halloween costume.”

  “Wear it on Friday. I like the idea of you all gothed out. And I want to take you out to dinner because I think that’s the only way we’re ever going to make it to the toy store.”

  “Do you have any idea how hot velvet and a corset is?” People had assured her that this summer was unusual for Boston, but the heat had continued unabated ever since she’d moved. The few cloudbursts had just served to make it steamier.

  “Yeah. That’s why I want you to wear it.” He chuckled deep in his throat. “But, yeah, I guess the velvet skirt might be too much. Got anything else that might go with the corset?”

  She mentally scanned her wardrobe and said, “Probably.” And if she didn’t, a little shopping wouldn’t be the end of the world. Life as an IT administrator at a college in western New York had left her with a wardrobe best described as functional.

  “Too bad I won’t have the claws yet,” Nick mused. “I bet if you stick those in the freezer, they’d feel really interesting on hot skin.”

  Selene’s breath caught, thinking about something sharp and bladelike and icy cold caressing her. “Wow,” was all she could get out.

  “We’ll have to stick to ice for now.” Nick’s voice was elaborately casual. “Of course that’s not a bad thing. Ice can go places I wouldn’t want to put those claws. Speaking of which, go get an ice cube.”

  And Selene was lost.

  Nick hung up the phone and took a deep, jagged breath. Guiding Selene through orgasm after shattering orgasm over the phone was proving addictive, and the way he came knowing that she was under his hand even when he wasn’t physically present was damn addictive as well.

  Masturbation was usually a stopgap for him, no comparison to being with a woman. Controlling a woman. So much of sex for him was about the control, the connection, the power exchange, that the pure physical sensation of stroking his own cock didn’t do a lot.

  Selene could make him feel that power exchange over the phone—her excitement, her yielding, her pleasure in temporarily giving him the reins.

  And she was open to so much. The way she’d responded just to the idea of the claws—not to mention to pushing ice inside her as she made herself come—was incredible.

  A hot woman with a good heart and a sharp mind.

  But as his head cleared, he wondered at himself. What in the world had prompted him to go from talking about domestic violence, a serious and seriously unsexy topic if he’d ever heard of one, to heavy phone sex? Sure, they’d needed to lighten the mood, but something had thrown him, had prompted him to make the transition a little awkwardly. He’d meant to save the link with the claws for when they were together, so he could watch her reactions. Had really just meant to talk with her this evening, find out a little more about what made her tick. How had he gotten sidetracked?

  Then it came to him.

  She’d been asking him for the “other” reason he’d been so adamant about finding out why she felt so strongly about domestic violence work, and he’d had to change the subject quickly before he tried to explain it.

  Tried to explain that at the very thought that she might have been abused, he felt a surge of red rage. Not the urge to help a friend in trouble, like with Natalie, not the “someone needs to do something and since I’m here, it might as well be me” reaction he’d probably get if he realized anyone, even a complete stranger, was being abused. It was something far more primitive and possessive, an urge to eliminate anyone or anything that threatened what was his. Never mind that he was a mild-mannered, civilized Bostonian code monkey better suited to wars of words; the images that came to mind were decidedly caveman.

  First of all, Selene might laugh at cracks about “someone needing to die”, might even make them herself but probably wouldn’t be thrilled with actual violent instincts, especially not after what he now knew she’d witnessed.

  And she didn’t need to know that his inner caveman, the part that lurked in the deep recesses of his hindbrain and occasionally made trouble for the civilized, evolved guy, had decided that Selene was his personal possession.

  They were supposed to be taking it slowly, just having fun. It was too soon for reasonable adults to have such crazy ideas. Especially when he knew damn well that if things did get serious between him and Selene, the caveman and the civilized guy would end up at war over how to treat “his woman”—and everyone would lose, just like with Natalie.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Thunderstorms were rumbling over Boston by Friday evening. They still hadn’t hit, but a slight breeze with a green hint of rain had taken the temperature from sweltering down to mere sultry by seven o’clock when Selene met up with Nick at an Ethiopian restaurant in Boston’s South End.

  As Nick had requested—okay, ordered—she was wearing her pseudocorset. It was too hot for the sweeping velvet skirt that went with it, but it looked good with a black silk broomstick skirt with narrow lace insets, and she could get away with wearing cute flats. If you looked closely at the corset, you could see it was shoddy velvet and the kind of satin better used for linings. But the looks she was getting as she walked from the South Station T stop to the restaurant suggested that male people, at least, were primarily noticing its flattering burgundy color, its figure-enhancing properties and the way her breasts seemingly attempted to escape. It made her self-conscious, and she was glad that a few blocks from South Station, more and more of the male passersby seemed to be with each other, and not just in the going-out-for-drinks-with-the-guys sense. The neighborhood was an arty one with a big gay population, and if a lot of these guys stared, it was either critiquing her fashion sense or wondering if they could find something similar in their size.

  At least no one could tell she wasn’t wearing panties.

  Normally, the attention would make her feel like her skin didn’t fit quite right. But today, while it did make her self-conscious, it was in a good way, warming her up for the scrutiny she knew she’d be getting from Nick.

  Even with the bit of breeze, she was sweating by the time she arrived at the restaurant, the silk skirt clinging to her legs. A hostess in what she assumed to be traditional Ethiopian clothes smiled graciously and led her down a flight of stairs to a bl
essedly cool room where Nick was waiting for her.

  Oh no. Nick was waiting for her.

  He rose when she came in—the seating was low to the ground here, at small round tables made of wicker—buried his hands in her hair and kissed her, heedless of the hostess and the other guests, heedless of the dark lipstick she was wearing, the closest she could get to a Goth look with the makeup she had on hand.

  Fever from her lips down to her toes.

  And something pressing on the back of her neck, something cold and metallic.

  Not sharp, but definitely cold and metallic. Had he gotten those claws already, had them Fed Exed or something? Or did he have something else devious in mind to torture her with?

  The mystery, as much as the sensation, made her shiver.

  When he pulled away from the kiss, his face was stern, although the effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact he was wearing some of her lipstick, making him look disturbingly pretty.

  “You look beautiful,” he said in a voice that rumbled against her clit. “Go into the bathroom and put these on.”

  He palmed something to her. She uncurled her hand, glanced down nervously. Nipple clips, or maybe tit-jewelry designed to slip around the nipples, adorned with delicate dangling faux rubies.

  She let out a soft meep. “Am I in trouble? I know the train was slow, but I didn’t think I was late enough I needed to call.”

  He smiled and brushed his fingers over her curled ones that concealed the clips. “These are just to get you in the right mood for shopping. Don’t make them too tight. I want you hot but not bothered.”

  Instead of a dreadful, frightening weight in her hand, they felt like gems. She walked to the bathroom with a spring in her step.

  Dinner passed in a blur, a wet, horny, very fun blur. At one point, she found herself asking, “Can we come back here sometime without nipple clips?”

  “Don’t like the clips?”

  “Love the clips. But I think I’d love the food, too, if I wasn’t so distracted!”