Page 28 of The Holiday

Ira rubbed her face with the back of her hand. “You are the definition of a pain in my ass.”

Kathleen opened her mouth but was once again cut off by the rudest sound imaginable.

This time it wasn’t ghost moans. It was a name. As shouted by a woman on the verge of sheer ecstasy.

“Helen!”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Aren’t they way down on the other end of the hall?”

“I swear, Jem needs to look into the insulation around here.”

“Jem needs to look at their calendar more often!”

“Helen!”

Kathleen buried her face in Ira’s chest. “I guess Monique didn’t want to be outdone by her friend Jamie.”

“More like she didn’t want to be outdone by her ex-girlfriend’s new squeeze.”

“I forgot about that.”

“Ah…” Ira wrapped both hands behind her head. “What a threesome that would be.”

“Is your mind so in the gutter today that you can’t stop thinking about other people having sex?”

“Why stop thinking about it? We can hear it all over this house.”

“This was after you made me come on Jem’s couch.”

“Which I’m sure Etta Coleman took over after we were done.”

“This is one fucked-up group of people.”

As the sounds of crazed sex continued down the hall, Ira sighed. “That’s what happens when you put a bunch of Dommes in a house together like that. They’re gonna outdo each other. This isn’t the club where you can leave your ego behindorblow it up to Mars… honor is on the line here.”

“I’m a Domme and I think that’s bullshit.”

“Lovely, you’re a femme. This is a masc thing.”

“Excuse me? Helen Warner is not masc. She’s as femme as me.” Kathleen would categorize Etta as “masc,” though. The woman definitely wasn’t femme, and nobody mistook her for anything but “fairly butch,” whatever that meant these days. “Until a few months ago, Helen and I would be on thesamewavelength everywhere we went.”

“Helen only takes female partners, unlike you.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You travel in different worlds. I think I understand her mindset more than you.”

“Oh, and you would know about that?”

Ira lowered one hand to stroke Kathleen’s shoulder. “You give me too much credit if you think I’ve been sitting herenotfantasizing about dragging you out in front of those people and fucking you until they understand I’m the top Domme around here.”

On one hand, Kathleen wanted to roll her eyes at how silly that was. On the other? She understood. Ira wasn’t like other dominant types who strutted their stuff around. She didn’t overpower rooms or take over small groups. Ira was the kind of person who worked behind the scenes and let her reputation speak for itself. Ira Mathison cared most about what her girlfriend thought, and Kathleen thought she was very,verymuch the prince of the surrounding jungle.There’s a reason she’s my prince and no other is.

“Good God, they’re still going. How much can one woman take?”

Kathleen couldn’t answer Ira’s question. Somewhere, on the other end of the hall, one woman was single-handedly taking the fuck of her life.I can admire that. She could also admire the person on the other end of it. It took someone with great staminaand strength to put an experienced sub like Monique through the wringer. Then again, Kathleen knew firsthand how intense those two were.I saw them perform one night. It may or may not have been the hottest show I’ve ever seen at the club.

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