The Exhibitionist

  “Do you think that’s funny, Abby?” he asked. “To make the Dom you’re in a scene with look like an idiot?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “So why would you do that?”

  “I was trying to follow your directions, Sir, and to follow Master’s at the same time.”

  “Did your idea of following my directions make you feel better?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “And you know what else?” he asked.

  I was afraid to ask. I simply shook my head.

  His lips curved up in an evil, wicked grin. “You’re sitting in the chair Master West specifically told you not to sit in.”

  Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn.

  He straightened up. “Fortunately, I wore the appropriate outfit for a discipline session.”

  Discipline? Nathaniel was going to allow this? I tried to catch his eye in the crowd, but Cole was in the way and I couldn’t see around him.

  My heart pounded in my throat, but I told myself if Nathaniel had a problem, he would put a stop to it. Cole hesitated, maybe waiting for me to safe-word, but when I didn’t, he took a blindfold from his jacket pocket.

  “I don’t normally blindfold submissives for this, but in your case I think I will.” He stepped back. “Stand up and hold on to the back of the chair.”

  I stood and quickly slid to stand behind the chair so I could hold the top of it with both hands. Within seconds, Cole had secured the blindfold around my head, covering everything in darkness.

  With my sight gone, I strained my ears as hard as possible to hear something, anything that would give me a clue as to what was happening or what he had planned. There was a shuffling sound and two soft thumps behind me as if something was being dropped to the floor. Toy bags?

  “Master West,” Cole said. “Hand me the cane we discussed earlier.”

  Nathaniel didn’t say anything, but Cole’s simple request told me everything I needed to know. Whatever he was getting ready to do, he’d already cleared it with Nathaniel. I hated being punished with a cane, but this was for the demo and I’d been caned before. I knew I could handle it.

  Though something told me it would be an entirely different thing being caned by Cole.

  And there would be people watching and I wanted to make Nathaniel proud. Plus—and I knew it was crazy—it turned me on a bit to know I was being observed.

  The crowd was so silent. I heard Nathaniel bring the cane to Cole and then the sound of Cole’s footsteps returning to where I stood.

  “I’ll only do two. Hard and fast,” Cole said. “This is for your disobedience.”

  I tensed my body for a second, then forced my muscles to relax. It hurt less that way. Cole whipped the cane through the air a few times. Damn evil Doms. I thought they did that just to get inside a submissive’s head.

  “No need to count,” he said.

  I curled my fingers, gripping the back of the chair as hard as I could.

  I heard him take a step back. The cane whistled as he pulled back and then sang louder as it cut through the air on its downward path. I held my breath, waiting for impact.

  It landed with a vicious-sounding strike and I grunted before realizing it hadn’t touched me. Instead it had hit something slightly to my right.

  What the hell?

  I didn’t have time to think anything else because it landed again with a hard smack to my left and I squealed.

  I held perfectly still. That was two, but they hadn’t landed on me. I didn’t know if they counted or if he was simply warming up. At that moment in time, I didn’t know much of anything. I wasn’t sure I could speak my own name. Nothing made sense.

  Cole lightly touched my shoulder. “Stand up and take the blindfold off, Abby. It’s over. You did a beautiful job.”

  My hands trembled as I attempted to untie the blindfold, but my fingers fumbled and I couldn’t get them to do what I wanted.

  “Nathaniel,” Cole said in a low voice.

  Within seconds, familiar arms held me and ever so slowly the blindfold fell away. Nathaniel’s warm eyes were the first things I saw and I smiled in spite of the conflicting emotions swirling around inside me.

  “Can you make it down the stairs?” he asked, and I nodded.

  Once we’d made it down, he led me out the door to a side room. He sat down on a plush couch and pulled me into his lap. I rested my head against his chest and closed my eyes. When I started feeling more like myself, I looked up at him and asked, “What was that?”

  “That, my lovely, was a mind-fuck.”

  I opened my mouth to ask him more, but he placed a finger over my lips. “I want Cole to join us before we discuss.”

  I nodded. “Is he coming in here?”

  “Yes, he wanted to give us a few minutes alone.” He reached for a robe beside him. “Want to put this on?”

  Even though I wasn’t naked, I was still exposed more than I wanted to be after a scene was over. Especially if we were going to be talking about it. “Yes, Master.”

  I slipped the robe on, but returned to Nathaniel’s lap. My shelter.

  The door cracked open and Cole stuck his head in. “Mind if I come in?”

  “If you’re ready,” Nathaniel whispered.

  “Yes, Sir,” I said. “Please come in.”

  Cole made his way to where we were. He still had on his three-piece suit, but his easygoing smile was back. He sat down on the opposite end of the couch. Close but not touching.

  “I called Cole last week because I wanted to do a mentally challenging scene for the demo,” Nathaniel said.

  “Nathaniel told me the two of you haven’t done much in the way of mental play,” Cole added.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s intense, like a physical scene, but in a completely different way. I find it utterly fascinating. With all our science and research, there’s still so much of the human brain we don’t understand. All the tiny details we take in and what we do with them and how we think.”

  “Is that why you wore a three-piece suit?” I asked.

  “Partially,” he said. “I knew it would surprise you and I wanted you slightly off balance. Not knowing what to expect. But this is actually what I wear to discipline sessions.”

  “Seriously?” Who’d ever heard of that?

  “Seriously.” He smiled. “Assuming I have time to prepare us both and it’s not a matter of the submissive needing immediate correction.”

  I shivered as I tried to imagine one of his planned discipline sessions. There was no doubt in my mind it would be very calm, very controlled, and not easily forgotten by the submissive in question.

  “I assume you usually use a cane in these sessions?” I asked.

  “Yes, almost always.” He shifted forward, placing his arms on his knees. “I’ve found mental play is often more intense because it can force a submissive to think through her motivation.”

  “Like Master giving me a command and then you commanding me to go against it?”

  “Yes, rather like a catch-22. What command do you break? Which one would he want you to break?”

  “Or maybe he doesn’t care, because either way you’re going to mess up,” I added.

  “Almost makes your head hurt,” he said. “Of course, then you have the submissives who look for a loophole.”

  I’d been thinking about the commands and decided they had been carefully worded and stated a certain way on purpose. Cole made a living with words and if he’d helped plan the scene, only one thing made sense. “You knew I’d try to take the chair off the platform.”

  “I did. In fact, while you were in the side room before the scene, we told the group what we were doing and told them if you started to walk off the platform with a chair, they were to laugh.”

  “You guys planned that, too?” I asked, and behind me, Nathaniel chuckled.

  “Yes, Abby. We planned everything. I wasn’t completely certain you’d try to take the chair off the platform. I knew I would have to goad you a bit
.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “I forgot that part for a minute, when you told me I’d been a submissive long enough to know what to do?”

  “Mind-fuck disguised as humiliation.”

  “And you were never going to cane me?” I asked.

  “Of course not. If you’d done something horribly insulting or disrespectful, I’d have let Nathaniel deal with it.”

  I twisted in Nathaniel’s arms. “It seemed so real at the time.”

  “Ah,” Nathaniel said. “Now, there’s where you’re wrong. It didn’t just seem real. It was.”

  “Right now I feel like it was a play I wasn’t given the script for.”

  “Don’t you see?” Cole asked. “If you knew what was going to happen, that would have been an act.”

  “If you want,” Nathaniel said, “I can have you bend back over the chair. The cane’s still around here somewhere.”

  “No!” I held up a hand. “That’s okay.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “If you’re certain?”

  “Very, Master.”

  Cole checked his watch. “I have a call to make. Nathaniel, I’ll call you tomorrow. Abby, thank you. You did really well for someone not experienced with mental play.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  Nathaniel waited until the door closed behind Cole before talking again. “So, tell me, how was doing a mental scene in front of a group compared to a physical one?”

  “You mean, did the scene we just did turn me on like the ones we normally do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mmm.” I leaned farther into his arms. “I was turned on kneeling and waiting. And then again, just a little, when I was bent over the chair. Even though it was Cole and not you. But during the actual thinking part? No, that didn’t turn me on at all.”

  “Interesting. I wondered if it was enough to be in front of the group or if there had to be a physical or sexual component involved.”

  His words gave me momentary pause. He’d thought that much and that deep about what I needed and got out of a scene. But as soon as that thought popped into my head, it was replaced with of course he does.

  I cleared my throat. “What do you think it means that the mental play in front of others didn’t turn me on like the physical?”

  “First of all, I’m not surprised that’s how you feel.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No, remember the day in Wilmington when I had you be, what were your words, a coffee table?”

  I’d been horribly bored, I remembered that. In my mind, I’d sat on the couch for hours balancing two glasses on my legs. Then when Nathaniel mentioned it was time for something else, I’d snorted. He hadn’t been amused.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that day.”

  “There was mental play in that scene, too, and you weren’t excited or turned on by it.” He smiled, faintly, but still a smile. “In fact, I believe your exact words were ‘What’s hot about a coffee table?’”

  “Nothing,” I answered. “There’s nothing hot about a coffee table. But you didn’t answer the part about what it means.”

  He framed my face with his hands, making sure I kept my eyes on his. “It means mental play in front of people doesn’t turn you on. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just how you’re wired.”

  I stroked his hand, touched by his words, and thankful that it did help me realize there wasn’t anything abnormal about me. “You always know how to make me feel better. Thank you.”

  He shifted me so I could snuggle against his chest, and rested his chin on my head. “Every part of you, no matter how small or big or how it’s wired, is what makes you the person you are. And that’s the person I love. I won’t have you thinking negative things about her.”

  I lifted my head for a kiss. “I love you, too.”

  Chapter Eleven

  NATHANIEL

  Abby didn’t speak much on the drive back to Wilmington. Normally after a scene, she grew tired and would sleep, but apparently that was not the case when the scene was totally mental. It was almost as if I could see her brain working, still trying to process her time with Cole.

  We had never done very many mental scenes. I thought to do one with the Partners in Play Dominants because it was different from what was normally demoed and I thought it would appeal to Abby’s intellectual side. And, if I was being honest with myself, I was starting to grow a bit concerned about her seemingly increasing need for public displays. Would it stop, or would it keep escalating? What if one day being with me suddenly wasn’t enough?

  And what did it mean that she was turned on when she bent over for Cole? Did she want to be with another Dom?

  I couldn’t even think about that. I didn’t know how I would handle it.

  “Are you okay?” I asked when I heard her sigh deeply.

  “Yes, Master,” she said. “I’m still just thinking.”

  “Not tired?”

  “No, Master. My mind is going in so many directions it won’t calm down long enough to get tired. It’s different this time from how it is after a physical scene. After being flogged or something, my mind is still in that fuzzy subspace hangover for a while. This mind stuff isn’t the same.”

  “Was it something you wouldn’t want to do again or that you might not mind doing again?”

  “I wouldn’t say I hated it. It’s just so different.” She laughed. “It’s like my brain’s been flogged.”

  “I think that’s a very accurate description.”

  She looked out the passenger-side window as we approached our house. Still thinking, it appeared. And while I loved her intellect, I wanted to play with other parts of her tonight.

  I pulled into the garage and told her, “Upstairs in the playroom. Naked. I’ll let Apollo out and then I’ll meet you there.”

  She looked sharply at me, obviously not expecting another scene. I didn’t have any plans to go crazy tonight, but I needed her. Needed to control her pleasure. Needed her waiting for my commands.

  She must have sensed how I felt because even though she pressed her lips together and seemed to want to argue or suggest something else, she nodded. “Yes, Master.”

  I took my time letting Apollo out and climbing the stairs, wanting to allow her time to prepare mentally.

  She was waiting in the middle of the room for me and I let that sink in. For me. She was waiting for me. No one else. No people to watch. No demos to teach. This was her and me. Dominant and submissive. Coming together because it was what we wanted and what we needed from each other.

  There was no other submissive, no other woman, who could affect me the way Abby did. There was something about her that made me calm and complete and I didn’t know who I would have become without her in my life. She had given me so much, and I knew as sure as I was breathing that whatever she needed, if it was within my power, she would have it.

  But for tonight, it would only be us. If I was craving having her at my command, more than likely she craved being under my control. I took a deep breath as I settled into my headspace and when I opened my eyes, I was ready.

  Tonight I would once more take her to those places we only found together, in this room, and with her in my collar.

  “Abigail.” It was the only word I spoke, but it was the only one needed.

  “Master.”