The Exhibitionist

  Was he serious? He was pulling the jealous card? After Charlene?

  The nerve.

  “Only the Dominant ones, Master.”

  “Are you purposely trying to irritate me?”

  I put my hands on my hips. There was no way I was going to stand there and listen while he acted all jealous. I’d only been dancing. “You said I could dance, Master. You didn’t give me any restrictions or instructions. With all due respect, if you didn’t want me doing something, maybe you should have told me.”

  He lowered his voice. “With all due respect, my ass. I shouldn’t have to tell you I don’t want you dancing with half a dozen men at one time.”

  “Three is hardly half a dozen, Master.”

  He stared at me for a long minute, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Go kneel next to the willow tree in the far left corner,” he finally said.

  I huffed, but followed his command. Our confrontation had garnered some attention. And not the good kind. I walked quickly, but with enough attitude so he’d know I was pissed.

  He wasn’t far behind me and he stood over me almost as soon as I went down on my knees.

  “People are watching,” he said. “Not exactly the type of attention you like, is it?”

  “No, Master.”

  “Maybe you should have thought about what kind of attention you wanted before you got up and decided to dance with half the men at the party.”

  I really didn’t see what his problem was. He didn’t seem to have minded the night before when Julie was with me and we danced. But I had his collar on, I’d already been bratty, and it didn’t feel like the right time to point out how inconsistent he was being.

  I saw a pair of shoes walk up in my peripheral vision and stop nearby. Great, more onlookers. I enjoyed sexy times with people watching, but I didn’t enjoy sharing with them when I got in trouble.

  “You want to see what it’s like to be with another Dom?” Nathaniel asked. “Is that what this new fascination with playing in public is leading to?”

  “No, Master.” Where had that come from? How did he jump from playing in public to me being with another man? Surely he hadn’t got all that from my dancing.

  “I don’t know if I believe you.”

  “I don’t know how to prove it, Master.”

  “You there,” Nathaniel said, and I realized he was talking to the man who stood nearby. “Want to help out?”

  Oh my God, what is he doing?

  The stranger grunted and from the sound alone, I couldn’t tell if it was an affirmative reply or a negative one. His shoes came closer to me, which I took to mean he’d agreed to be part of the scene.

  “This is one of the men you were dancing with, Abigail.”

  I’d have to take his word for it. I hadn’t exactly been looking at the guys’ shoes when I was dancing.

  “I think he wanted to make sure you were okay. You have permission to speak to him.”

  I kept my gaze focused on the floor. “I’m very much okay, Sir. Thank you for checking.”

  “Is that your idea of thanks?” Nathaniel asked.

  What the hell did he want me to do? Kiss the guy’s feet in thanks? “How should I thank him, Master?”

  “Properly,” a gruff voice I recognized from the dance floor said.

  My heart pounded and the blood rushing through my body buzzed in my ears. Everything seemed to fog over.

  Did he mean what I thought he meant? And Nathaniel was going to allow it?

  Somewhere in front of me a zipper was being lowered.

  Though the fog that was still clearing in my brain, I suddenly became very aware of what and who was in front of me. It was a stranger and he was unbuttoning his pants. I didn’t want to look up and see him. I could do this, but I didn’t want to see his face. For whatever reason, that seemed important.

  Slowly, he took his jeans down and I focused on his cock. It was sizable, and very erect. And pierced.

  “You’re pierced.” I felt my cheeks flush as soon as the words left my mouth because of course he was. And of course he knew it.

  “The submissives at the club seem to like it,” he said in a matter-of-fact way. But he might as well have poured ice-cold water over me because that simple sentence brought the image of one specific submissive kneeling at a club.

  Charlene.

  And it wasn’t a stranger she knelt before in my mind. It was Nathaniel.

  Time stopped as I pictured him taking his pants down and her licking her lips, desperate for him. He stroked his cock. “Ready for a taste?”

  But when she opened her mouth to engulf his cock, it wasn’t Charlene. It was me. I was Charlene.

  The vision disappeared and the only thing in front of me was a cock that wasn’t Nathaniel’s.

  Oh my God. I was Charlene.

  “Stop. No! Red.”

  “What the hell, man?” the stranger asked, and I realized I hadn’t been the one to safe-word. Nathaniel had done it.

  “We’re leaving,” Nathaniel said, and his voice was shaky.

  So he was upset. Good. I would hate to be alone in my pissed-off state.

  “Whatever,” the stranger said. I kept my eyes on the floor as he zipped his pants back up and left.

  “Are you okay?” Nathaniel held out a hand to me, but I jerked away from him.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said. “You were trying to turn me into her.”

  “What? Who?” Nathaniel asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Charlene,” I said, putting as much disdain as possible in that one word.

  “What?” he asked again.

  “How long have you really known she was submissive? You’ve known all along, haven’t you? And I bet you thought that if you could convince me to do a threesome, I wouldn’t be able to say anything if you wanted to play with her.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Look at it from my perspective. If you allow me to play with other men and you even go so far as to introduce a third, is it so far out there that you would come to me and say, ‘I’m bringing another woman into the playroom. You shouldn’t have a problem with it, since I brought another man in it for you’?”

  “You’ve got it completely wrong. I don’t want Charlene. If I wanted to be with another woman, there are easier ways to go about doing it. And I don’t want to share you. I don’t want to bring anyone into our time. But I saw the look in your eyes. You needed more and more and soon you’d have wanted to try two men at a time and I was willing to do that for you. Not because I liked it. I hate it. I would do it for you!”

  “Excuse me,” a Dungeon Monitor said. “Is everything okay here?”

  Shit. I’d forgotten we were surrounded by people. The guy was looking at me, waiting for a response.

  Of course a DM would stop by. Someone had safe-worded and then we’d been arguing.

  “Everything’s fine.” I stood up. “We’re actually headed to our room.”

  I started walking toward the exit, not checking to see if Nathaniel followed. I heard him say something to the DM and then follow behind me. He didn’t say anything, though. In fact, there wasn’t a word said until we made it into our room. Then I finally turned to face him.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked once he had closed and locked the door.

  He turned around and I was momentarily stunned. He was so pale.

  “I’m so sorry, Abby.”

  He was sorry and I was fucking furious. “You should be. You had no idea who that man was. How dare you let him tell me to thank him properly!”

  “There’s no excuse for what I did. None.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what got into me. It was watching you dance with those men and they kept coming up to join in. And I knew you liked being watched and I thought since you were dancing maybe you wanted to try a threesome and the thought of it killed me.”

  “Because I enjoyed dancing, I obviously want to have sex with a str
anger? That doesn’t even make sense. I have no clue how you thought that because I was dancing with a man I also wanted his dick in my mouth.”

  “I know. You’re right.”

  “Damn straight, I’m right.” He walked to the couch and sat down. I kept standing. “And tell me one more time how you found out Charlene was a submissive.”

  He exhaled deeply. “The weekend we moved, I was meeting with her about the nonprofit. She asked if we could have dinner and I told her no. She kept asking. I finally let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I would be eating alone and to stop asking about it. She replied back with a ‘Yes, Sir’ that left me with no doubt she was submissive. Just as I’m sure she had no doubt I was a Dominant.”

  “If that’s the whole story, I still don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me.”

  “It seriously didn’t cross my mind. It was that unimportant to me.”

  “Then why were you staring at her scene like you were last night? That’s hardly the behavior of someone who finds the entire subject unimportant.”

  “I wanted to make sure it was her.”

  “And you didn’t want to wait until she wasn’t in the middle of a Dom sandwich?”

  “Like I said just now, I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  It would be so easy to forgive him. To say the words and go on with our weekend. Sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen. But I couldn’t do that. We’d worked too hard at our communication for me to let him go that easy. “You not thinking clearly could have put me in a dangerous position. What if I’d done it and he had a disease?”

  I didn’t think it was possible, but he went even paler. “I called a stop to it.”

  “I was seconds away from doing it myself. That’s beside the point.” I held a finger to his chest. “You’re the Dominant. It’s up to you to make sure we’re doing what we want to do, not just guess and throw something together at the last minute.”

  I’d rarely seen him so dejected and part of me hated it because I knew how deep his self-loathing could go. But the bigger part of me wanted him to hate what he’d done. What he’d almost had me do.

  “I don’t want anyone other than you. Ever,” I said. “I don’t want or need to experience a threesome. Yes, I enjoy playing in public, but that’s an entirely different thing and they are not related.”

  I wanted to tell him to grow his petty, jealous self up, but decided that would be pushing it since I didn’t handle Charlene all that well. He could, technically, tell me to do the same thing.

  “I’m taking a shower and going to bed,” I said, then left him with hands on his knees, looking as though his world had just fallen apart.

  Chapter Fourteen

  NATHANIEL

  I didn’t sleep that night. For a long time I sat on the couch, thinking about how badly I’d fucked up. Abby had been having fun and dancing. If I hadn’t still been irritated over Charlene, I’d have joined her. As it was, I stood watching her dance with other men and grew more and more agitated by the second.

  Abby was a beautiful woman. Of course she’d captured the attention of the crowd. And yes, her dancing had been on the risqué side, but hell, we were at a BDSM club and people were having sex not twenty feet away.

  I’d acted out of anger and that was something I should never do. Abby’s trust in me was far too important and precious for me to jeopardize it with anything less than my full self-control. I’d gone too far tonight and I didn’t know how to make up for it.

  After a while I went into the bedroom. She hadn’t closed the door, so I peeked in and saw she was sleeping. But it was more than that—she was sleeping in one of my white dress shirts. The sight of her in bed, in my shirt, with the knowledge of what I’d almost had her do, struck my heart as if someone had stabbed me.

  I knew she loved me. We’d had difficult times in the past and we’d always worked through them. I just wasn’t sure she liked me very much at the moment. I didn’t like myself very much.

  I knew all too well that it took only a mere whisper of doubt to bring down something it had taken years of trust to build. My heart ached with the knowledge that there might be a whisper of doubt in Abby’s trust in me now. I only hoped I could make it right before it did irreversible damage to what we’d spent years building together.

  When she’d first left me right after our relationship had started, it crippled me. But now, if anything happened to us, it would do more than cripple me. It would destroy me completely. Before I’d only been with her for a few months. Now we had years of shared experiences, heartaches, and joys. And I’d been a damn fool to risk all that for nothing. Nothing.

  When it became too much to think about, I turned my focus to the upcoming meeting with Daniel. The Partners in Play group trusted me, too. And though Abby was far more important, I’d made a commitment to them and I needed to be prepared.

  I’d told Daniel I had my list of suggestions ready and we’d planned to spend an hour or so going over them. We’d originally thought to have both Julie and Abby with us. Their thoughts and ideas as submissives—one newer in her journey and one with more experience—were needed on all accounts. Abby knew my suggestions; she’d helped me with them. Together, we’d talked about what we needed to put in place to make group members feel safe and secure. I pushed aside the thought that maybe the group needed to get rid of me. After all, who really wanted to listen to me after what I’d put Abby through hours earlier?

  The list of my suggestions blurred before me, and my stomach hurt. It was impossible to concentrate on anything other than Abby. With a sigh, I put the list down and picked up my speech. I stared at it for thirty minutes before I realized I hadn’t read a single word. I wasn’t even sure how I’d be able to face the gathering tomorrow, much less give a speech.

  The clock said it was four o’clock. Years ago, before Abby entered my life, it was nothing for me to be awake at this time of morning. But when she moved in with me, I’d grown used to going to bed with her and falling asleep listening to her breathe and with her soft warmth surrounding me. The nights became more than a time to sleep or work; they’d become a time to reconnect and revive.

  Now the night was lonely and without her in my arms, it was only dark.

  I put the speech away. That wasn’t going to be worked on, either.

  I went back into the bedroom and knelt beside the bed where she slept. Careful not to wake her, I gently lifted the hair that had fallen across her face.

  “I love you,” I whispered. “And no matter what it takes, I’ll make this right.”

  She sighed in her sleep. And while I realized that, though there were many things I could put into place or change, there was one item I could take care of right away.

  “Where’s Abby?” Daniel asked the next morning. He and Julie had met me in the courtyard where it was quiet. The play equipment had been put away and the only music was the occasional sound of a bird chirping.

  “She’s talking with Lynne and the kids.” Much easier to say that than to tell him the whole truth. I fucked up last night and Abby isn’t talking to me. “Julie, if you’d like to see her, why don’t you go on up to our room? She’ll let you in.”

  Julie nodded and gave Daniel a kiss before heading upstairs.

  “Is she coming down when she finishes?” Daniel asked.

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  He leaned back in his chair and his eyebrows furrowed. “You don’t look like you slept last night. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really. No.”

  “Offer stands.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  This morning had been hell. She’d spoken to me only to say she wasn’t ready to talk about anything and that she would let me know when she was. I didn’t have a chance to reply before she pulled out her laptop, slipped on her headphones, and started writing.

  And I stood there ready to discuss what I’d done wrong and the decisions I’d made in the early-morning
hours, and simply nodded.