Page 19 of The Sadist and the Brat

“I keep hearing that,” she drawled, her lips turning up in a smile that matched the gleam in her eyes. “But everybody around here seems to be all hat and no cattle.”

His lips twitched at the phrase. He would’ve been happy to show her just what kind of trouble she was courting, but time was running short. He gathered up her clothes and tucked them under the edge of the table with his toy bag. “One of these days,” he warned again, and held out a hand. “Ready?”

She nodded, the ends of her braids brushing against her breasts. “Ready, boss,” she said with an impish twinkle in her eye and slipped her hand into his.

He led her to the edge of the roped-off section. The crowd immediately began to quiet, the folks that had been milling around returning to their chairs, and within thirty seconds everyone was seated, their attention squarely on him.

“Wow,” Sadie breathed. “I gotta learn how to do that.”

He gave her hand a warning squeeze. “Welcome, everyone,” he said, pitching his voice to the last row. “My name is Jack, and I’ll be giving tonight’s presentation. The lovely woman next to me is Sadie, and it’s her I’ll be presenting on.”

Laughter ran through the crowd, and Sadie curtseyed with a smile and a rapid flutter of eyelashes.

“This demo is about pervertables—those everyday objects and items that can be repurposed for kinky fun. BDSM toys and equipment can be expensive, and while there are definitely areas where you should make sure to buy quality, dedicated equipment, everything I’ll be using today was purchased from grocery stores, all-purpose retailers like Walmart or Target, hardware stores, and even the dollar store. You can have a lot of fun without spending a fortune, and that’s what this demo is about. So let’s get started.”

With Sadie’s hand still in his, he turned to walk to the center of the platform, pleased when she allowed him to lead her into position under the dangling cuffs, facing away from the audience. “Arms up, please, Sadie.”

She obeyed, and he buckled first one cuff then the other around her wrists. As he’d suspected, there was too much slack in the rope, so he gathered up the slack and tied it off few inches above her wrists. She still had enough room to bend her elbows and rest her arms, but her wrists weren’t sitting on her head anymore.

He ran a finger between the cuff and her soft skin. “Cuffs feel okay?”

She flexed her arms and wiggled her fingers, testing the restraints. “They’re good.”

“All right. Let me know if anything starts to pinch, or if your arms need a break.”

“Yes, Boss,” she quipped.

“Brat,” he shot back, but he was smiling when he turned back to the audience.

“First up,” he announced. “Impact toys.”

Sadie lost track of the number of things he hit her with. Rulers, wooden spoons, spatulas, belts, cutting boards, a shoe—she was pretty sure she’d be sporting the tread from his size twelves on her ass for the next few days—and a miniature souvenir St. Louis Cardinals baseball bat were on the list. He used a handful of zip ties as a makeshift cat-o’-nine-tails on the backs of her thighs, and an electric fly swatter on her ass. The sting from that had put her on her toes, squealing and dancing to escape the biting sparks. The audience had laughed along with Jack, and his deep rumble had launched a fleet of butterflies in her belly.

He tickled the sensitive skin on the backs of her knees with a feather duster, then rubbed the coarse bristles of a dollar-store hairbrush against her skin for contrast. He put a plastic chair mat on the floor upside down and made her stand on the little plastic spikes. She cursed at him when he did that, because he’d put a sleep mask over her eyes first so she couldn’t see it coming, and the ‘you bastard’ just slipped out. But he’d just laughed, the rich chuckle sending the butterflies dancing again. Even his declaration that the mat would remain as punishment for her insolence had been delivered with amusement, throwing her so off balance she’d almost forgotten to curse him again.

By the time he turned her around to face the audience, she was floating on a sea of endorphins. Even the plastic spikes under her feet weren’t awful, and she normallyhatedhaving her feet played with. In fact, she was a little disappointed when Jack knelt in front of her to remove it.

He glanced up at her, his dark eyes assessing, and after a moment a little smile curled his lips. “Step wide,” he told her, and she obeyed, adjusting her stance so he could pull the mat from between her feet. But when she started to bring her feet together again, he tapped her leg.

“Stay put,” he ordered, then stood and grabbed something long and black from his prop table.

“This isn’t something I picked up at Walmart,” he began, holding the object up for the audience. She squinted, trying to see what it was, but the light was in her eyes. “But all the components—except for the cuffs—were sourced at the hardware store. PVC pipe, a length of chain, and two carabiners. There are other ways to make a spreader bar, and a lot of commercially available ones that are very reasonably priced. But this is simple to put together, and I don’t know about you, but I like to hear the rattle of chains.”

The audience laughed, but Sadie’s eyes were locked on Jack as he knelt in front of her again, the spreader bar in one hand and a set of thick cuffs in the other. He dropped the bar between her feet and wrapped her right ankle in the soft, supple leather, thickly padded to provide ample cushion between her skin and the hard edge of the PVC. He checked the fit and gave the D-ring a testing tug before moving on to her left ankle. With the second cuff secured, he lifted the pipe and snapped the carabiners into the D-rings.

“Anything pinching, pulling, uncomfortable?”

She took her eyes off the bar, which looked impossibly sexy between her widespread bare feet, and looked at him. He was still kneeling, a traditionally submissive position that didn’t detract at all from the aura of power he wore like skin. He’d tied his hair back and opened a few more buttons on his shirt, and the medallion he wore around his neck glinted dully against the bronze skin of his chest.

He had no business looking that good on his knees, and she had no business noticing that he looked that good.

“Sadie?” he prompted, and she refocused on his face, his forehead furrowed in concern. “How does it feel?”

Sexy, she thought.

“Suspicious,” she said.

Amusement lit his eyes, and his low chuckle mingled with the laughter from the audience.

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