Seducing Sandy Page 12

  Grabbing the front of his shirt, Reeve pulled him inside before Eric could let out all the heat. The second door was just as heavy as the first, but opening it brought a welcome gust of warm air billowing over them both.

  The Aviary was huge, the brightness of the daylight dimmed only a little by the buildup of snow all over the massive dome of windows that enclosed them. The artificial lights had kicked on. So had the heaters and the fans that kept the moist air circulating comfortably through a veritable jungle of tall trees, plentiful bushes and climbing ivy vines. The entirety of the aviary was alive with colorful birds and the cacophony of their singing.

  Even more astonished, Eric stepped through the door onto the pebbled path that wound its way through the foliage. “This can’t always have been here. This has to be a new addition, and I just never heard about it.”

  “It’s been here longer than we have,” Reeve told him drily. “If you’d bothered to read the employee manual…”

  “If they’d wanted me to read it, it would have come with pop-up pictures of women doing naughty things,” Eric replied in the same tone. “It didn’t. Instead, what was it? Three hundred some-odd white pages with a bazillion black words on them and a few sketchy pictures.”

  “One of those ‘sketchy pictures’ was a diagram of this place. It was in the section titled ‘Trauma Guests.’”

  Eric rolled his eyes. “My point is, nobody has read that manual cover to cover. Except you,” he amended. “And maybe one or two others, like Grimsley. Sam. Jackson can probably quote it. Marshall likely wrote the damn thing.”

  “You’re impossible.” Trusting Eric to follow, Reeve walked the path through the trees. Every few feet, they passed by specially placed nooks in the vegetation where benches overlooked a multitude of bird baths and nesting trees. Somewhere up ahead, there was a lorikeet feeding station where Reeve knew a Castle employee in slave-girl attire was almost always available to attend to both the needs of the birds or a visiting guest. The attendants in this room were some of the most highly paid at the Castle. They were also trained therapists. This wasn’t nicknamed the Trauma Room for nothing.

  “It’s warm in here,” Eric commented as they walked the winding dirt path through the foliage, past a low-hanging branch where a bright red macaw called out, ‘Hello!’ Eric gave the bird a second look. “Dude, that bird just talked to me.”

  “That’s Solly,” a woman’s voice spoke up. “She’s a rescue from the Avian Society. Not to burst your bubble, but she says hello to just about everyone.”

  Reeve had to hunt the dense brush before he found the owner of that voice. In the end, he only did because she voluntarily stepped out of the brush further up the path. A partial bag of millet seeds in one hand, she waved.

  “It’s been quiet down here for weeks,” she said with a smile, “and then—bam!—suddenly it’s Grand Central Station.”

  “I’m surprised it’s not Grand Central Station every day,” Eric said, eyeing the macaw that was making its way toward him along the low-hanging branch.

  “Hello,” it cooed, fluffing all its shortened head feathers until they stood upright.

  “Sorry,” Eric told it. “You’re not the redhead I’m looking for.”

  “You’re looking for a redhead?” the woman asked, perking slightly.

  “About this high,” Reeve estimated Sandy’s height to just under his chin. “Green eyes, dressed like a Little, about to be in more trouble than she knows what to do with.”

  “Feeding the Lorikeets, last I saw her,” the woman confirmed, and thumbed over her shoulder further up the path. “Been here about an hour.”

  “You could have said something,” Eric told her.

  “I did,” the woman said pointedly. “I said, hello, come on in, and then I said, stay as long as you like. I was doing my job. Getting her not to want to run away in the first place, that’s yours.”

  Ouch. If she wasn’t related to Marshall, she should have been. That smoothly dealt recrimination stung. The way Eric arched both eyebrows said it had hit home there too.

  Smiling, the woman shook her seed bag and headed for the next feeding station.

  “At least we found her,” Eric said.

  Yeah, now came the hard part—get the rest of it over with in a way that induced Sandy to continue with them as her doms and hopefully figure out exactly what she was digging for so he could throw as many monkey wrenches into her process as possible. Reeve continued up the path, first following the direction she’d pointed and then the Lorikeet signs until he glimpsed the white straight lines of a gazebo through the greenery.

  “Holy crap, it’s a bat,” Eric said, pointing straight up.

  “Fruit bat,” Reeve told him.

  “It’s Wild Freakin’ Kingdom in here.” Eric eyeballed the bushes around him. “I see one camel spider or snake and I’m done.”

  Leaving him to keep an eye on the bat, Reeve closed in on the gazebo. It was covered in colorful lorikeets, all of them intent on sipping nectar from the dozens of feeding dishes hanging from hooks along the gazebo walls and beams. The wood benches for guests were every bit as clean as one would expect seats inside a high-traffic feeding station might be, but Sandy was sitting on one anyway. She had a small paper cup in her hand and two lorikeets perched on her fingers and thumb, each in a mildly competitive race against the other to drink as much as she had to offer.

  His boots were not quiet coming up the wooden gazebo steps, but she neither looked up nor seemed to care that she wasn’t alone.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he said, because he had to say something. Marshall had told him to apologize. He probably owed her one, too, but considering all that he knew about her, he wasn’t about to give her one.

  “I’ve been trying not to look for you too,” she said, and quite neatly decapitated his last internal argument regarding whether or not he should apologize.

  “Really?” He tried not to bristle, but if she noticed the change in his tone, she didn’t show it.

  “Yes.” Hesitating, she put the cup of nectar aside and brushed off her hands as soon as the lorikeets abandoned her to chase after it. “I shouldn’t have done what I did.”

  In the time that he’d spent in the Castle, Reeve had heard his share of insincere apologies, and then some. Most came from brats in a sub-frenzy to win as many spankings as they could, but then halfway through their prize decided it wasn’t really what they wanted after all—brats were the kings and queens of insincere apologies. Worse were the drama llamas and those ‘princesses’ who liked to believe they belonged in the costumes they wore. A professional dom should not wear his buttons for everyone to push; Sam was always saying that. A professional dom at the Castle should not have buttons at all; that was Marshall’s opinion. Reeve had more buttons than most and he knew it. Sandy must know it too, because she was pushing each one just as fast as she discovered them.

  He tried not to give her any more. “What exactly should you not have done?”

  Staring at her hands in her lap so she wouldn’t have to look at him, she haltingly confessed, “I said the Castle safeword when I shouldn’t have. I wasn’t really mad. I… I don’t really know what I was, but I shouldn’t have done it and I’m sorry.”

  “Sounds like she’s fishing for a spanking,” Eric said, reaching the gazebo at last. The bat must have moved on.

  “No!” Her head snapped up. She looked appalled, which was really too bad because Reeve couldn’t help thinking she’d look adorable getting her ass blistered in that dress, right here among the lorikeets. “I just… I’m trying to be sincere, here.”

  “All right.” Marshall had ordered them to apologize, but Reeve assumed a magnanimous role instead. Pretending to be forgiving, he walked closer. “How do you think we ought to proceed?”

  “I don’t know.” Shifting on the bench, she eyed his approach. “Maybe I was a little hasty.”

  “In what way?” The bench was long enough to accommodate three people
with ease and yet, when Reeve sat down, he sat right up against her, giving her not an inch of space between them. Hands folded in his lap, he pretended he didn’t notice the way she eyed them now too.

  He saw her swallow. “I-I don’t know.”

  “Were you too hasty when you said you wanted to remove us as your Doms?”

  She looked at her hands again. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I think you need to stand up for this,” Eric interjected, giving Reeve an odd look.

  Sandy looked from him to Reeve, her wide eyes searching his. They were the eyes of a submissive asking her dom for direction. Did she even know she was doing that? Reeve barely caught himself before fisting his hand in that tangle of red hair at the back of her neck and ‘helping’ her right off the bench onto her knees. At his feet. His chest tightened at the thought of seeing her there.

  “You heard what your Daddy told you,” Reeve said gruffly. His pulse was in his throat and in his temple. A surge of authority rocketed through his veins when she tightened her fists in the folds of her short babydoll skirt and a glimmer of uncertainty flushed her cheeks. Sandy stood up.

  “Don’t look at me.” Eric twirled his finger at her. “Turn around. He’s the one you’re apologizing to. We got our ass reamed because of you. What are you doing, hm?” Coming up behind her, Eric let his larger size be felt at her back and his feigned disapproval be heard in his voice. It was good that she was facing Reeve. The look Eric shot him over Sandy’s head was nothing short of, Holy shit, is she buying this?

  “I wasn’t trying to get you in trouble. I just thought I’d… go off on my own… for a while.”

  “Why would you want to?” Reeve challenged, just to see if she’d confess it. Flustered as she was, she might.

  “I don’t know.” She wrung her hands. “Look, can’t we just start over? Pretend this is our first time meeting and just go fresh from here?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Eric countered. “Until you decide you don’t want to do what we ask of you and call the Castle safeword again.” He laughed, a low chuckle that made her flinch.

  “I said I was sorry.” An edge of temper crept into her apology.

  Eric swatted her, hard enough to jolt her hips, arching her onto her tiptoes in surprise.

  “Yes, you did,” Reeve acknowledged, catching her startled attention before her temper recovered and she turned on Eric. With slow, deliberate movements, he turned his slightly splayed knees into a lap ready to spank over. Her gaze locked on it when he let his hands come to rest upon his thighs. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re really sorry for?”

  Her stare shot from his hands to his eyes. A trembling hitch caught at her breathing. When it resumed, it was just a little too fast for normal. Too fast, and too shallow. “I’m not a Little.”

  “I know,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “But you are still in that dress until we say differently, and he is still your Daddy.” He arched a knowing eyebrow. “You are asking him to come be your Daddy again, aren’t you?”

  She jumped all over again when Eric gave her another swat. This clap was louder than the first. She almost mouthed ‘ouch’. Almost. Was there anything more alluring than a submissive who thought her will stronger than theirs? And was there anything more erotic than proving her wrong?

  “What about you?” she all but whispered.

  “By now I think you should know that.” He stood for the sole pleasure of watching uncertainty take hold of her. “I am your Master, Sandy. You don’t get to decide when I let you go. That’s my choice to make, just like it’s my choice to decide when and how to punish you when you misbehave. Like in the library.”

  He let her think about that, a tactic that backfired because now he was thinking about it too. The way she had looked—head on the ground, ass in the air, her slit sopping because she needed him so desperately. The hours he’d just spent trying to find her and every good intention he’d nursed along the way vanished as if it had never been.

  Her nipples were standing straight out, tenting the front of her dress. He hadn’t even started playing with them yet.

  “Like your disobedience when Marshall told you to stay.” He circled behind her, letting her think about that too. Her shoulders were tense, but so were his. He barely even looked at Eric, but his friend—wearing the oddest expression—willingly stepped out of his way. It made it so much easier to sidle up behind her and lean down, letting his chest warm her back, letting his cock feel the promise of her ass, letting the softness of her cheek seek out the touch of his as he lowered his voice to a husky murmur, “Do you remember what I told you in the library?”

  Her trembling intensified. “You’re my Master, not my Daddy.”

  “What does that mean?” Fingers slipping over the curves of her hips, his hands began to knead her.

  “You don’t want to be gentle.” Her unsteady breath kept breaking.

  Reeve fought himself not to turn his head that last centimeter or two that kept him from smelling her hair, kissing her ear. “Tell me, woman. How wet did that just make you?”

  She shuddered, and then she melted against him. “Very,” she whispered.

  He breathed deep. He could almost smell it, and the headiness of her damn near made him shudder too. He bit the side of her neck. Not hard, really. Just hard enough for her to feel the points of his teeth. Because a man should mark his territory.

  “You don’t have to be a Little anymore,” he promised her. “Not for me. Not ever again.”

  There were a hundred other ways for a woman to show her submission to a man. He was going to teach her each and every one of them.

  Chapter 9

  Sam the Sham’s lasciviously crooned ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ kept running through Sandy’s mind in a never-ending loop. Her outfit wasn’t helping matters. It was the skimpiest Little Red dress she’d ever seen, complete with cape and basket. Not that anyone could see what she was wearing. Sitting in the back of an ornately sculpted wooden sled, sandwiched between Reeve and Eric, she was swaddled from chin to toes in the warmest, fake-fur-lined quilt she’d ever had the pleasure of cuddling into. She couldn’t have been more grateful, too. If it was more than ten degrees out here, she’d eat her basket. The whip of the wind cut against her face and the horses, also wearing blankets, weren’t even galloping. They were walking, though they seemed to want to trot; the driver kept a firm hand on the reins and he kept the pace of the sled at a rate that felt frigid, but safe as they travelled through three inches of packed ice and snow. Away from the castle, they traveled—over the lawn, past a garden of snow-buried hedges and frozen statues, and into the woods that bordered the property.

  The trees closed in around them like a shroud. Pretty soon, trees were all Sandy could see. Ahead, from both sides, she even rose up high enough to steal a peek over the back of the tall sled behind them. Her bottom must have brushed Reeve’s leg. Beneath the quilts, his hand found her knee and gave it a squeeze.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  “How far are we going?” She slid back down beneath the covers into the cozy warmth between them.

  “It’s not much farther,” Eric assured.

  She spotted the first dark cabin through the trees before he finished speaking. Like a crofter’s hut of old, it had rough stone walls and wood-slat shingles, and a man standing on the porch with his arms folded across his chest as he watched a blue-clad figure pick her way through the snow to shake the thin branches of a nearby tree.

  She stomped her foot and turned back around. “I can’t find any switches, and now I’m cold!”

  “Two switches,” he told her grimly. “If I have to come do it for you, it’ll be four. Your choice.”

  “Oh!” Stamping both feet now, she bounced in place and whined. “You’re the meanest person in the whole wide world.”

  To Sandy’s right, Eric chuckled.

  “Not even close,” Reeve agreed on her left.

  Sandy wasn’t sure she got t
he joke. She was even less sure she wanted to get it, but Reeve was inclined to share it with her anyway.

  He leaned sideways, the heat of his breath caressing her shoulder and ear as he said, “I’d have made her go out and cut them naked. Except for boots. I’m not a monster.”

  Sandy’s stomach twisted and her pussy clenched at the thought of dashing across the snowy yard in order to cut the switch that would then be used on her. And then she imagined a horse-drawn sled full of people rushing by. There was a curtain of thick trees between them, but it wasn’t thick enough to hide that other girl from view, so Sandy knew it wouldn’t hide her either. She shivered, but honestly, she didn’t know if it was due more to the dread of the punishment, the cold in the air, the thrill of other people knowing or, worse, the exhilaration of her own obedience when every other part of her thought she was crazy for going along with it.

  Following the winding trail through the trees, they passed another cabin. The ‘Abe Lincoln’ house, she nicknamed that rustic log house. This one was dark in all the windows and didn’t seem occupied. Neither did the hillbilly house beyond it, but at the next house in line—another crofter-style hut—the horses turned off the main trail, cutting through the curtain of trees and straight up to the front porch.

  “Whoa!” the driver called, heaving back on the reins. The snorts of the horses steamed the air as if they were dragons, but the sled came to a stop.

  Stepping down into the snow, Reeve steamed the air the same way. “Watch your step.”

  The little stone cabin was a one-room dwelling with a closet of a bathroom that could only be accessed off the back porch. The windows were very dark. Sandy didn’t realize that was because they were covered by black shades until she’d climbed the two porch steps. Someone must have come to prepare the cabin for them. As the sled and driver moved on, Reeve pulled his keycard from his pocket to open the door and a rush of warm air raced to greet them.

  Gas-fed flames danced upon their bed of fireproof logs in the hearth, providing both heat and light. Two baskets of fresh provisions waited on the table—artisan breads, cheeses, dried meat, fruit and jelly. Whoever had set this up for them must have known how many people to expect because an extra chair that did not quite match its mates had been provided. Just like back at the Castle, there was only one bed. Though it looked plenty big enough to sleep three adults, her cheeks still flushed and her stomach quivered. Just how much sleeping would they be doing? she wondered.