Those two words churned and tightened his gut. He felt weak as he asked it. “What, exactly, do you have them do together?”
“For starters, he provides her aftercare in Tilly’s absence. Skye is not attracted to him romantically, and he doesn’t participate in my scenes with her other than as an observer or fetching me anything I cannot reach without leaving her side. I felt it was a better alternative than myself or Cris doing it, or having to coordinate schedules with Cali when Tilly isn’t home. Far less chance of any messy, accidental attraction on anyone’s part. Obviously, in the case of myself or Cris, it’d be one-sided, because we are committed to each other and Tilly.
“Unfortunately, not everyone is so readily able to separate what happens within a scene, or a more overarching BDSM dynamic, from romance and love. Which is why we are always very careful with whom we scene. Since Skye and Bob are both in training under me, they have a more sibling kind of bond. Friendship.”
Landry smiled and it reminded Axel of a predator. “Fellow slaves.” His smile faded. “I felt it also wise…just in case.”
“Just in case?”
“In case you cannot, as my sweetly vicious firebrand phrases it, pry your head out of your fucking ass and step up to own Skye the way she truly deserves.”
His body felt numb. “You just said she’s not attracted to him.”
“She’s not. Not like that. And while he is quite dominant in his career, outside of work, he wishes nothing more than to be a cherished slave. But if things go off the rails between you and Skye, it’d be cruel of me to shun her and leave her emotionally twisting in the wind. Bob can be a friend and comforter to her without being sexual with her. He is no stranger to having what seems like perfection cruelly wrenched from under him just when it feels within reach. Not once, but multiple times.”
His expression turned…regretful? “Unfortunately, I unintentionally created one such void in his life. I, therefore, feel responsible for helping him out, as it were. He’s a good man, an honorable man I’m proud to call a friend and adopted family, even outside of what it is that we do. Rest assured, if I felt he would come between what you and Skye have, or if I could not trust him, he would not be here in the first place, much less be wearing my collar.”
“Okay. So…he’s not mad at me?”
Landry smiled and laced his fingers behind his head. “Oh, he’s quite upset with you. I never thought he’d ever want to hit someone more than he wanted to go after my Cristo upon their very first meeting, but there you have it. Believe you me that says a lot.”
His smile faded. “Another reason he’s under orders not to speak tonight. He’s only allowed to speak to Skye, or obviously if there’s some sort of emergency. But unless I or Cris ask him to directly answer a question that cannot be answered with a simple gesture, he’s not allowed to speak unless I give him leave to do so. Especially to you.”
“Why?”
Landry’s eyebrow arched skyward. “Did you not just hear what I said? He’s angry at you.”
“For freaking out?”
“Yes, for freaking out. The interesting dynamic there is that not only does his anger stem from you upsetting Skye with your behavior, you did something much, much worse, in his mind.”
He swallowed. “What did I do?”
“You pissed off Tilly. He is every bit as devoted to her as his Mistress as Skye is to you as her potential Master. He’s very protective. Since Skye is under the protection of this house, by extension, your actions impact him.”
“Tilly’s not going to be here tonight?” He was almost glad she wasn’t, even though he felt more comfortable talking to her than Landry about all of this.
This was obviously the chink in the sadist’s armor. His expression grew wistful. “No, she and our daughter flew out of Orlando this morning for London with Lucas, to deal with a production problem at the studio. I expect she’ll likely be gone a couple of weeks, at least. I asked her to take KC with her this trip. Bob drove them over there early this morning in our minivan, and then picked up Skye on his way back, at my instruction.”
Landry’s gaze lengthened, focusing on a distant point that was nowhere near being located in that office with Axel. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with how we adopted our daughter. Unfortunately, with Tilly’s duties at the production company, her work frequently takes her on location where it’s neither safe nor desirable to take a young child. She’ll be in the UK for this trip. It won’t be long before KC is old enough to attend pre-school and I want Tilly to have as much time with her as possible. Cris and I shall fly over the Monday after next for a stay with them. I was hoping to go next weekend, but I suspect I’ll still be dealing with the fallout from this disaster.”
“Disaster? You mean me and Skye?”
Now Landry laughed, his hands slapping his knees. “How adorably egotistical, self-absorbed, and short-sighted of you, but no. I was referring to work. That co-lo being off-line will potentially cost my company over a million dollars a day.”
Axel’s face heated. “Oh,” he quietly said.
Of course this was far bigger than him.
He had never felt more out of his league than he did at that moment. Not just with BDSM stuff, but with life in general. Tilly worked for a movie production company, for chrissake. Landry and Cris ran a successful IT company. They were fucking loaded.
Why would Skye ever be happy with someone like him?
Landry tipped his head to the side, studying Axel’s face. “Skye loves you, you bloody idiot. She spent fifteen years with a man who treated her like garbage, and yet she still wants to submit to you. Wants to be owned by you. Tilly mentioned us possibly collaring Skye ourselves, if necessary, to protect her. So I suggest if you wish to be a part of Skye’s life that you step up before Tilly sets the Frightful Five on Skye to find her someone who will appreciate her gifts.”
“That’s spooky.”
Landry shrugged. “It’s a Dom thing.” He smiled. “Learn to pay attention to your girl’s body cues, and it’ll feel like mental telepathy to you after a while. It’s not difficult. Let her be who she is utterly perfect to be.”
“Isn’t the Master supposed to be in charge?”
Landry leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “The Master absolutely is in charge. That doesn’t equate to simply barking orders. What I learned the hard way is that while the Master is in charge, that doesn’t mean running roughshod over the property. It means giving the property what they need, when they need it, and how they need it.
“My Cristo, for example. When I discovered Tilly, Cristo’s secret life outside of me while we were apart, one he did not disclose to me upon his return, he spent a considerable amount of time being treated by me in a manner which some would find distasteful at best, abusive at worst. Yes, in part, I needed it for myself because I also felt guilty both that I’d pulled him from a woman he’d so obviously loved, as well as I pulled a Master from the side of a very vulnerable slave who might possibly have lost her life by me doing so.
“But I knew my Cristo. I knew he hated himself for what he’d done. He told me he hated himself. He was raised in a strict Catholic family and while he’s not practicing, I never could train unnecessary guilt out of him. He felt a need to atone for what he felt amounted to years of happiness on his part while Tilly suffered, alone. I punished him not just because he violated my rules by not being completely honest, but because I knew if I did not give him that…context, as it were, the chance to have it beaten out of his flesh, he would never forgive himself.
“And he was given the offer to leave. I did not force him to stay. He was not helpless or forcibly kept beholden to me. He’d walked away from me before. He walked away from his life with Tilly. He was no stranger to starting over. But he felt guilty. He wasn’t just a slave who’d failed his Master—he was also a Master who’d failed his slave.
“Despite all of this, our Tilly did eventually forgive him. Once she did that, instead of
him vapor-locking with guilt for earning her forgiveness rather quickly, he was able to release that, set it aside having paid his penance, and move along with our lives together. It also gave my Tilly a chance to see an extreme end of the scale of me and my ethos, and helped her rediscover her compassion and love for Cris.”
Landry examined his fingernails for a long moment and Axel wasn’t stupid enough to interrupt him, sensing the man had far more to say.
“It also has allowed them to find a level of healing together which satisfies me and my…future plans,” he quietly said. “I know that, one day hopefully in the distant future, when nature catches up to me and I unwillingly am parted from their sides, they will be able to lean on each other and survive.”
“With Bob’s help?”
Axel knew he was an asshole for saying it, but there it was.
Landry surprised him by smiling. “Bob, and other friends. Ross and Loren, Abbey and Gilo, and Lucas, Leigh, and Nick, and others we’re close to.” He tapped his temple. “I have finally reached that point in my life where I’m wise enough to plan for the future.”
The smile faded. “I’ve survived two bouts of cancer after a car wreck that rightfully should have ended my life. Luck will eventually run out. Life is one-hundred-percent fatal for one-hundred-percent of the population. The only question is when and how.
“This is one very roundabout way of answering your question. Isn’t a Master ‘in charge’? Absolutely, he is. Or, he should be. A true Master is also wise enough to know when things are beyond his control, and to prepare as best possible. Life is beyond my control.” He pointed at Axel. “Skye is not beyond your control. You have a choice to make—”
“If my fear of losing her is greater than my fear of hurting her.”
“Exactly.” He seemed to be waiting for Axel to continue.
“I get it,” he finally said. “My brain gets it. I get that she wants it and it’s not abuse. But it doesn’t stop my body from wanting to throw up when I think about putting a bruise on her, even if she wants it. Tilly told me that people who are determined to make it work usually quickly grow out of it, and I know she’s smart, but…” He struggled for words. “I wish it’d fucking kick in any time now.”
“My Redbird is quite the wise woman. Which is why I’m proud and humbled to be her husband, but even more proud and humbled that she chooses to submit to me. Willingly. Well, mostly.”
The smile returned. “Sometimes I aggravate her and it’s more a case of me taming her than it is her submitting to me. Not that I mind. That’s part of her charm and her strength. And it’s also why it damn well takes two or three of us to handle her, at times.”
“She scares me, honestly.”
Landry grinned. “Try being married to her or sharing a bed with her. And there are times she makes me look like a cuddly kitten in comparison.”
Chapter Eighteen
Skye knelt where she’d been told to on the yoga mat on the pool house floor. Heels neatly tucked under her butt, hands resting palms up on the tops of her thighs, shoulders back.
Naked.
Collared and cuffed.
Feeling no fear or anxiety over being naked in front of the clothed men, no worries about them or their motives. She had trust in them.
Completely.
Cris, dressed similarly to Bob in jeans, a button-up shirt, and barefoot, sat in a chair off to the side, thumbing through his phone and going through e-mail. He wore his leather formal collar. Bob stood at ease, hands clasped behind him, five feet in front of her and facing her, able to see her every movement and facial expression in case she needed anything.
On the coffee table sat a top-of-the-line baby monitor, turned on and receiving.
The base unit sat on Landry’s desk in the office, where it was currently broadcasting his end of the call to his California office to handle some sort of crisis out there.
Bob had left the room when the gate buzzer had sounded on the pool house’s intercom, presumably to let Axel in, even though she had not heard the doorbell ring before Bob returned and retook his position a few minutes later. She knew they’d set the baby monitor in the office because the house intercom system was two-way, and they wouldn’t be able to talk or make any noises in the pool room if the connection to the office was open.
After Skye had arrived a couple of hours ago, picked up by Bob, Landry had dropped her hard and fast into subspace. In the foyer, Landry had been waiting for her. She’d been ordered to strip right there, and he’d cuffed and collared her—which they provided tonight, not her old ones—and he’d grabbed her by the hair, put her on the floor in a formal bow, and spent the better part of twenty minutes talking to her, telling her what a good girl she was…
Bam. Subspace.
Under threat of death she couldn’t convey what else he’d said to her during that time, except that between the grip on her hair and his low, steady voice in her ear, she’d done a quick, head-first swan dive off that fucking cliff.
Freely.
Voluntarily.
From that point on, she’d been made to do poses, Landry’s particular choice of them that he used as part of his household, changing every ten minutes or so. Cris was in charge of that. Every second or third pose change, he would lean in, tightly fist her hair in his hand, and talk to her the way Landry had. He might not have been able to drop her as hard or deep into subspace as Landry initially did, but once she was already there, Cris could damn sure keep her there. There had been a break about an hour ago for dinner, where she’d been made to sit on the floor next to Bob’s chair while he hand-fed her and gave her sips of water from a glass while the three men had a pleasant dinner chat that she’d mostly ignored.
More blissful subspace, able to keep her brain shut down and focusing only on what she was told to focus on.
After dinner, they’d moved to the pool house, except for Landry.
The closer they grew to the time of them actually scening, the more her pulse raced. She longed to feel his cane across her ass, the sting of the paddle and the sharp crack echoing through the room as it made contact, nails raked down her back, fists pummeling tight muscles.
She wanted to feel a singletail striping her back, the heavy thud of a flogger pounding into her.
The tip of a knife tracing across her flesh.
She wanted to be one large, lumpy mass of bruises tomorrow morning.
She did not, however, want to contemplate that tonight was make-or-break.
If Axel could not deal with this—and her—she might have to force herself to say good-bye to him. Some people could make this a side journey in their lives, an occasional mini vacay from normalcy.
She needed this. Not even the impact play, although that was nice.
She needed the control.
She needed her thinking brain periodically shut down by a trusted someone strong and sure enough to master that mental switch in her brain and who was confident enough in themselves to know when to step in and forcibly activate it for her.
Landry, Cris, and Bob could not be those men.
It also wasn’t fair of her to demand Axel be someone he wasn’t or couldn’t be, no matter how much she loved him.
Tilly had called her last night and talked to her briefly. She’d put forward the offer and promise that, if things didn’t work out between her and Axel, they would absolutely collar her to them, non-sexually, until Skye could find someone they’d sign off on. As long as she didn’t mind it not being a romantic situation between them.
A safety net, and she damn well knew it. They wanted her to make relationship decisions not out of desperation to hold on to a tiny part of something not right for her. They wanted her to know she had options.
Except…she loved Axel, and even with that safety net in place to cushion her fall, she wasn’t sure she could make herself walk away from him now.
When Landry and Axel started talking, she tried to remain perfectly still and not move, to keep her mind where
it had been ordered to be, on the poses.
One thing that became crystal clear to her was Axel, for some reason, didn’t feel like he measured up.
Desperately, she searched through their time together to see if there was something she’d done to make him feel that way, or things she could have done better to build his self-esteem. Had she failed him?
“…In case you cannot, as my sweetly vicious firebrand phrases it, pry your head out of your fucking ass and step up to own Skye the way she truly deserves.”
Her face flamed as Landry’s words echoed through the room.
Axel sounded…nearly despondent, if she had to label it. She choked back tears as she listened.
“Two,” Cris said without looking up from his phone.
She smoothly bowed, deeply, back rounded, forehead touching the mat, arms stretched out in front of her, thumbs touching. She felt vaguely uncomfortable that they’d talked about Bob, knowing Bob would hear every word.
That discomfort grew as Landry started talking about Cris.
Cris set his phone down and stood, walking over to her, standing directly in front of her, her fingers almost touching his toes. He squatted in front of her and reached out, gently fisting her ponytail.
“Every word he speaks is the truth,” he softly said. “Don’t feel uncomfortable on my account. He’s not saying anything we haven’t already discussed privately multiple times.”
“Skye is not beyond your control,” Landry said. “You have a choice to make—”
“If my fear of losing her is greater than my fear of hurting her.”
Cris released her hair. “Three.”
Skye didn’t have time to process Axel’s comment. She rose to her knees, sitting up, hands laced behind her head, shoulders back and breasts out. They didn’t make her spread her legs wide the way Bob had to when he was put through poses, just wide enough she could maintain her balance. Landry had told her he didn’t want her to be sexually conditioned to their play.
The pose did put her eye-to-eye with Cris’ brown gaze. “At some point tonight, hopefully, Landry will swap himself or me for Axel. If this goes according to plan. Landry’s smart, but no guarantees Axel won’t get squirrelly again. If you feel sexual contact, it’s Axel, not us. Understand?”