Page 78 of At Her Pleasure

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Cyn wasn’t into excessive navel gazing, but as the clock ticked toward ten o’clock, her thoughts took her deep into her identity as a Domme. She thought about the things she’d found in that role, things she knew how to control.

What she could ask of herself was limitless. If she pushed herself until she broke, that was her choice, no guilt about it. Even after she broke, she could keep asking, telling herself to get up, refusing to shatter. If she ever couldn’t be put back together, it was because she was dead.

Mick had a lot of that to him as well. But something about it wasn’t working. And he wouldn’t share enough with her for her to know how to fix it.

Not that he’d asked her for that, goddamn it.

Mick tempted her to be kind. Softness could expand like a giant marshmallow and smother you. She’d stick with pain. Mick needed that.

Give me a fight I can win.

He liked the fight. He needed the pain. She needed to inflict it. Leave it there.

There was a reason the offerings tonight were being called public sessions, not demos. They were intended to allow the Domme and sub to focus fully on one another, their audience merely fortunate voyeurs.

Cyn had taken it a step further. Since she didn’t believe in time limits, she’d chosen a location that no one else had. If she went over fifty-five minutes, she wouldn’t be fucking with anyone else’s schedule.

The Pit was twenty feet in diameter, with a two-foot-tall black wall around it, like a circus ring. A silver chain border was painted on it. Inside the ring, the floor was a sleek epoxy in swirled gray, white and black, sloping toward a center drain.

As she stood outside the Pit, watching the staff anchor the metal cross, her body was tight as a drum. She’d already set out her tools on a table they’d provided and covered them. The act, the drama, mystery and anticipation of it, was for an audience of one. Her sub.

Someone entered her personal space, standing at her elbow. Vera. Her friend didn’t say anything. She just stood with her, watching.

Cyn put in her earbuds and switched her phone to the album she wanted.

The first track was “Where the Devil Don’t Go,” by Elle King. Closing her eyes, she let her body ease into the rhythm. It would be followed by “Exs and Ohs.” The roughness of Elle’s voice, the assertiveness, the raspy edge, took Cyn’s head where it needed to be.

She let the anticipation of having him under her control build. Along her skin, in her mind, against the inside of her eyelids, she absorbed his imagined reaction to what she would do to him. On her tongue, it was a taste she would savor, with every bite she took out of him. Literally and figuratively.

As the music filled her head, she banished the audience from her awareness. It was better that way.

Watching a hardcore sadist and a hardcore masochist go at it was unsettling. Potential triggers for viewers could cloud their recognition of the usual power exchange dynamics. Those dynamics were there, if a person set aside their personal shit to see them. Progeny had members who couldn’t do that, but they also couldn’t seem to make themselves not watch when it was going on.

She didn’t apologize for her preferences or justify them. She didn’t do cuddly aftercare for her subs or her audience.

The staff member in charge of setup looked her way quizzically. Everything was in place, so Cyn nodded. He was done.

She didn’t speak to Vera when she left her to step inside the circle, but she didn’t need to. Vera retreated to the seat Ros had saved her.

Once Cyn occupied the space, no one else would come into it without her permission. The only exception would be Olivia, the DM assigned to the station.

She’d requested Olivia, because Cyn respected her. With her experience level, and because of the type of Domme she was, Olivia could stay detached and critically evaluate what was happening in an edge scene. Cyn had used her as a spotter for her private sessions when she’d been trying more extreme things, where having a second set of eyes made practical sense.

Ros and the others respected Cyn’s needs and desires as a Domme, but they weren’t sadists. Watching her more experimental or extreme sessions was tough for them. They didn’t have to witness it.

Olivia was tall, a big-boned woman with bisque-colored skin, a shaved head and light brown eyes. She was seventy-one, but bore few lines on her don’t-fuck-with-me face. Her club clan included seven submissives under her protection and several Masters and Mistresses she’d mentored in her forty-two years as a Mistress herself.

Some members had club “families” or “clans,” in their account profile. Dominants, submissives or switches they deferred to, who knew their preferences and triggers. Who they played with, or to whom they could go for help and mentorship. Cyn didn’t put that info in her profile, but no one doubted who hers were. They were in the audience now.

Ros and Vera were at one of the rear tables, pushed back against the mezzanine railing. Lawrence stood to Ros’s right. Most subs would find a similar spot or sit on the floor in front, leaving the assembled rows of chairs for the Mistresses. As fast as they were filling up, Cyn knew there wouldn’t be any left.

Skye had chosen to stay on the mezzanine, above and to the right of Lawrence. She sat on a two-seat table, one foot braced on the railing, the other propped between Tiger’s spread knees as he sat in the chair next to her, his arm loosely around her hips.

Her friends enjoyed a high intensity scene as much as anyone, but that wasn’t why they were here. When she met Ros’s gaze, she knew they were a reminder of who Cyn was to them. Who they were to her. Who she was to herself.

They had her back. They knew her. And they’d known she’d needed that reminder for this scene, before she realized it herself.

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