Tempting the Domme Read online

  Chuckling, Patrick came to stand next to Luke as Lexie pirouetted and posed, winking and preening for every single member of her ‘audience.’

  “She’s excited now, but just wait till she finds out what I have planned for our first show.” His voice was deep, heavy with amusement and indulgence as he watched his girlfriend dance around the stage.

  “You haven’t told her yet?”

  “No, it’s going to be a surprise.” The smug satisfaction laced through Patrick’s voice seemed to hint at something deeper in his words, but Luke had no idea what.

  He leaned forward to look at the woman standing on the other side of Patrick, who so far had yet to acknowledge his presence. “Hello Olivia.”

  “Luke.” The sternly clipped way she said his name probably shouldn’t have turned him on, but it did. He’d been reading up on BDSM and had decided he was probably a bit of a brat. Especially when it came to Olivia.

  “What do you think?” he asked her, smiling wider as Patrick moved away, obviously feeling his presence wasn’t needed.

  Olivia shot a dark look at the other man’s back as he walked towards Lexie, and Luke suppressed a smile. That was one of the things he liked about Olivia. Some men might be put off by her disdain, but Luke appreciated her lack of pretense. She didn’t trust him, wasn’t sure she liked him, and she didn’t hesitate to make it known. While she was never outright rude, she sometimes pushed the bounds of being civil.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said shortly, turning back to him. “But you already knew that.”

  “I still like hearing you say it,” he responded flirtatiously, sidling a little closer to her.

  A tiny spark flared in her gray eyes, but he wasn’t sure if it was ire or interest on her part. She looked amazing, as she always did, in a green button down shirt, fitted slacks, and red hair coiled in a neat bun on the top of her head. Professional, but in a manner that reminded him of the naughty librarian fantasies he’d had as a teenager. If she ever wore a pencil skirt and glasses in front of him, he’d probably fall to his knees right then and there.

  Her lips pursed as she looked at him, openly studying him. Luke could practically hear the gears working in her head.

  A month ago, at their friends’ Adam and Angel’s wedding, he’d managed to get her in his arms for a dance.

  One dance.

  Mostly thanks to Sharon, another of her friends, literally drunkenly knocking Olivia into his arms. By the end of it, Luke had thought she was softening up towards him, but the next time they’d seen each other—when she’d been visiting to view the construction progress on the club—she’d been back to being coolly, civilly professional. Not at all the type of relationship she had with his two partners.

  Patrick and Michael, she treated like a pair of brothers—bossing them around when she could, respecting them when she couldn’t, mindful of the fact that they were owners but also being their friend. With Luke, she was pure business.

  “I hope you’re not going to flirt like that with all your employees.” Her tone was severe.

  Luke’s grin widened. “Just you, Scarlet.”

  Olivia scowled and his balls tightened, his heart rate picking up with excited interest. He was a sick, sick man. “Do not call me that.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her lips pressed together again, because it wasn’t like she could complain about him calling her ma’am. In fact, he was pretty sure she liked it when he did.

  But she didn’t want to like it.

  Which only made him want to do it more.

  He honestly wasn’t too sure how he’d feel about receiving a spanking—the whole being dominated thing appealed to him but he wasn’t sure if pain in the bedroom would—but lately a lot of his fantasies had involved Olivia and a crop in her hand.

  Since the new submissives class started tonight, he supposed he was about to find out.

  ******

  Being attracted to a man who was basically her boss really, really sucked.

  Especially because he was exactly the kind of man she liked. Taller, bigger, and stronger than her. The kind of man she loved to put on his knees and reduce to a quivering mess who begged to pleasure her. Every time he called her ma’am, the word she heard in her head was Mistress.

  Not a good place to be.

  “Hey Luke, can we get a look at the upstairs rooms?” asked Michael, grinning from ear to ear. He was obviously excited and Olivia didn’t blame him. Although he, Patrick, and Luke were pretty close to being equal partners in the club, Michael had the largest interest and was going to be the one mostly running things along with Olivia and her two assistant managers once the club opened. Their security managers, Trey and Camilla, would also be involved. In a lot of ways, this was more Michael’s baby than anyone else’s. He’d invested a big chunk of the money, come up with a lot of the design and ideas for how the club would be run, and had quit his day job to be involved in running it.

  Luke had just come in to do the contracting thing and somehow ended up being part-owner.

  Realizing she was starting to scowl again, Olivia smoothed out her brow. It’s not that she thought Patrick and Michael had done a bad job of picking a third owner, if they had to have one, it was just that she hadn’t liked being left out of the conversation. Even though she wasn’t an owner, only Michael was going to be more involved than her in the actual day-to-day running of Marquis. At least, unless Luke decided to stick his nose into things.

  That was what she didn’t like. Not having control over the situation. With Michael, she knew he would listen to any concerns or ideas she had and the same with Patrick. Luke, on the other hand, flirted with her and she wasn’t sure he would give her the same respect Patrick and Michael did. She could fight the battle, but she didn’t want to. That was why she’d left her last job; the new head of her department had been a complete dick who didn’t believe women could really bring anything to the table. Olivia hadn’t even been considered for important projects, which should have gone to her because of her seniority and track record, and they’d instead been given to male colleagues who were left to flounder.

  Since Olivia didn’t like to see anyone struggling, she’d helped them out. Then she’d gone to both HR and upper management about her supervisor, but since the projects had come out just fine they didn’t see anything wrong. The men she’d helped tried to speak up when they found out what had happened, but they were just told to be proud of the work they’d done.

  Olivia had left rather than having to choose between letting someone else have the credit for her work or watching them drown.

  Even now she cringed inwardly, thinking about what must be happening at Boyds without her there to help them along. She didn’t care about the projects failing—served the uppers right—but she didn’t like to think of the coworkers she’d left behind being defeated by work they couldn’t, and shouldn’t have had, to do.

  “Olivia?” Luke’s deep voice interrupted her thoughts and she blinked, suddenly realizing everyone else had already started up the stairs to the third floor. Luke was standing in the doorway, holding the door open and looking at her. “Are you coming up?”

  “Yes,” she said, pretending she wasn’t bothered at all about being so lost in her thoughts she hadn’t even noticed everyone leaving the room. Since she prided herself on being observant, it actually bothered her quite a bit. The job change and the addition of Luke to the club was not helping her mental equilibrium.

  At least she had a group of new subbies to look forward to tormenting tonight. That always helped.

  “Are the rooms ready for the classes?” she asked Luke, ignoring the little tingle through her right side as she brushed by him. Once they’d had Luke’s influx of cash to play with, Patrick and Michael had decided to rush construction so they could have a soft open before the New Year’s Eve official opening gala. Part of the soft open included the new class of submissives getting their introduction here rather than at Stronghold, which wo
uld give Olivia and her helpers a chance to test out the new private rooms and give feedback. She was using her Baby Doms as helpers; they’d all recently passed the new Dom class and she’d told them all that the best way to prove they’d learned everything was to use it for teaching. Under her watchful eye.

  “Completely finished and stocked,” Luke said, and even though she was walking up the stairs ahead of him she could hear the smile in his voice.

  Even as she tried not to think about whether or not he was staring at her ass, she could feel her hips giving a little extra swing to her step.

  “Good.” She cleared her throat, realizing she was venturing a little too close to sounding completely unfriendly. “Thank you.”

  “Anything for you, ma’am.”

  If only he knew how close she was to ordering him to his knees and demanding he do everything.

  “Olivia stop being so slow! You have to come see this room, it’s amazing!” Lexie popped her head out of the first door on the right in the hall, blue eyes bright with anticipation. “The little girls and their Bigs are going to love this!”

  “The room across the hall is for the little boys and their Bigs,” Luke said easily from behind Olivia, sounding only a little awkward with the terminology for the age-play kinksters.

  “Let me guess, one is blue and one is pink,” she said, torn between amusement and resignation. Part of her wanted to insist blue didn’t have to be for boys and some girls didn’t liked pink, but she knew most of the age players liked to play heavily into gender stereotypes. Those that liked to cross them would just choose the room they preferred. Having strongly stereotyped rooms would actually make them all pretty happy, and that was what was important.

  Stepping into the little girls’ room, she almost came to a full stop, blinking.

  It really was a dream come true for the Baby Girls in the club and their mommies or daddies; a naughty, perverted, frilly, pink dream come true. Even Olivia got a little nostalgic pain. When she was eight, she would have killed for this room—without all the naughty extras and the baby themed stuff.

  Set up as a child’s playroom, the walls were a light rose pink, the trim was a duskier rose, and every bit of furniture and frills was a creamy white. There was a small table with cushions set around it for seats already set with a tea party, a canopy bed with a comforter made entirely of lacy ruffles (which helped to hide the restraints), a huge dollhouse in the corner with dolls to play with, shelves full of bright books and crayons, even a large television fully stocked with kids movies. There was also a rocking horse, although the saddle looked a little different from a regular rocking horse saddle. Olivia had the feeling it came with… attachments. Along one wall was all the baby equipment, easy to use or easily ignored depending on a couple’s preference, including an adult sized changing table (with all the necessary accoutrements), crib, and highchair. She was sure the wardrobe was fully stocked as well as the cabinet next to it; one with clothes, the other with everything a Big might need to discipline their naughty little.

  Lexie and Ellie were already cooing over one of the dolls, which was gorgeous. They ignored the looks the men were exchanging.

  “The bedroom is back here,” Luke said, walking past everyone. Michael and Patrick both looked uncomfortable in this space, which Olivia found a little hilarious. Daddy Doms they were not. She bet their friend Jared would be just fine in this room though, even though he wasn’t a full on Daddy Dom.

  All of the rooms were set up in this configuration, according to the floor plan drawn up by the three men. The front part of each small suite held a play room with all the necessary items to indulge heavily in a fetish, while the back part had the ‘hotel’ portion of the room where the actual bed for sleeping was, as well as a full bathroom. Although, of course, the bedrooms weren’t kink-free.

  Rings for attaching restraints or chains were tucked into the bed decorations so neatly only someone who knew what to look for would spot them. The furniture was heavier, darker, than that of the other room—this was definitely the Big’s space—but there was still a water color of flowers on the wall, a small stool in a corner meant for time-outs, and a teddy bear propped up against the pillows on the bed. The bathroom had a gorgeous tub for two, with jets, as well as a hook for an enema bag between the tub and the toilet. The shower curtain rod was made of steel and Olivia knew it could hold up to three hundred pounds before buckling or damaging the walls. All of the bathrooms were equipped in basically the same way, although the decorations would be different.

  This particular bathroom also came with scented bubble bath and bath bombs. Olivia eyed a glittery pink one, her lips quirking when she saw Patrick eyeing the same one warily. Yeah… he was still occasionally finding pink glitter in random places after the glitter bomb Lexie had booby-trapped his office door with. It was the gift that kept on giving.

  The rest of the rooms upstairs were similar. The little boy’s room was set up just like the little girls, but with dinosaurs, robots, and no glitter bath bombs. Just past the pet play and pony play rooms (the pony room had honest-to-God hay bales in it), there was also a teenager room for littles who were too old for the younger rooms. The medical room was the closest to being the same as Stronghold’s doctor’s office, but even there the finishes felt higher end and there were extras like a tens unit setup, strait-jackets, and a much larger selection of enema instruments than any of the other rooms in either club. Across from the medical room was the Foot Fetish room, which almost made the top of her list just because of all the gorgeous shoes and pedicure station set up in it.

  But Olivia’s favorite room was the Medieval dungeon across from the teen room; the wallpaper actually looked like rough-hewn stone and there were electric torches with fake flames, the bathroom looked almost entirely wood (it was all false wood, but it still looked great) and there were all sorts of fun torture implements in the play room. Not just the usual St. Andrew’s Cross, although that was there too, but an actual rack, stocks, and the walls were lined with all the implements of torture a sadistic BDSM player required. She saw Luke eyeing the selection of crops and had to turn away to shut down her brain’s immediate fantasies of using one on him.

  Stupid brain.

  The last room in the hall was for the staff and security teams, and included both a break area and a small room full of televisions so they could monitor the rooms without actually having to go in them. They’d decided to make security even tighter because overnights could make things more dangerous for some of the attendees if they didn’t know what they were getting into. Every Dom and sub who entered Marquis would be given both a written and verbal rundown of the safewords, be informed of the video and sound being monitored (but not recorded) 24/7, so that no matter when a sub said their safeword, the DMs would hear it. The DMs would also have a list of each submissive’s hard limits and keep an eye on what was happening in the rooms. Gags were forbidden.

  Downstairs it wouldn’t be as much a problem, although there would still be Dungeon Monitors stationed around the room and there was also a small break room and security office on either side at the bottom of the stairwell.

  It was an amazing club and, even being smaller and much pricier than Stronghold, it was going to make the guys a hell of a lot of money and be a place to be proud of.

  ******

  Several hours later, Olivia was standing on the first floor of Marquis, in the restaurant area (which she thankfully wouldn’t have to manage at all, it was being kept almost entirely separate from the club upstairs unless someone ordered room service), trying to hide her proud smile as she looked over her group of Baby Doms. They were all lined up along the bar, confident and self-assured, and already making the new subbies nervous.

  Olivia only counted four new subbies, which meant they were still missing one for the class. Patrick had sent her a message only fifteen minutes ago saying there was a last minute addition, but he hadn’t provided a name. It didn’t really matter, since they weren�
�t going to be doing anything too crazy tonight; showing them around the club, going over soft and hard limits, safewords, and maybe starting just the bare beginnings of dominance.

  That way if any of them decided to chicken out after seeing more of what was involved, they’d do so before any clothes needed to come off. Olivia couldn’t help but wonder if all five would come back on Thursday.

  This was the first time they were doing a subbie class instead of Introduction Scenes and then hooking the submissive up with mentors if it was necessary, but all five of the new submissives were completely new to the scene and Patrick was running low on instructors for the Intro Scenes. His trusted dominants were all getting into serious, monogamous (or committed poly in one case) relationships and preferred not to do scenes with others even if sex wasn’t involved.

  Besides, this way the Baby Doms got to play mentors in a controlled situation and Olivia could see how much they’d really learned.

  She smiled at the group of women huddled at one booth in the back of the restaurant, giving them a little wave, which only one of them returned nervously. Despite their chosen seating arrangement, Olivia doubted they all knew each other. They were like a small herd of prey, feeling there was safety in numbers when there were predators nearby.

  The predators in question were Olivia’s Baby Doms. Personally, Olivia didn’t find them particularly threatening, but the new subbies definitely did and her boys were getting off on it. Which made her smile. She loved seeing her students enjoying themselves.

  “Hello, ma’am,” Kincaid said, the moment she reached the men. All of them had straightened up as she approached, which was even more gratifying that she still had that effect on them. Especially because it obviously made the little group of submissives even more nervous when they realized the men they all considered the predators were now making way for her.