Mirabelle settled in and Amélie looked to Trey as he moved to stand at his Mistress’s side in the booth.
Unlike many clubs, the bar/social area just inside the front doors of the Honey, known affectionately by all the members as the “hunting ground,” was circumspect.
Another of Aryas’s rules.
There was a generous variety of choices of places to play beyond the hunting ground, privately, publicly, on display, and socially.
But in the hunting ground, members came dressed well. They behaved well. There were things you could do, things that were done, more than likely nightly, that were not flaunted. But Aryas had a definitive feel he wished to nurture in his establishments. You couldn’t even see any of the back playrooms from the hunting ground. There were no suggestive paintings or sculptures. And no one was wearing traditional BDSM or role-playing attire.
The walls were paneled in gleaming wood with beautifully designed light fixtures dripping with unpretentious crystals that sat over the booths and hung from the ceilings. At the back wall, there was a showstopper of a bar with beveled mirrors. And lining the other walls, semicircle booths upholstered in the deepest burgundy velvet.
It was an opulent but nevertheless relaxed and comfortable atmosphere where Doms could scrutinize and select which specimen suited their fancy.
Now, behind the doors leading off the hunting ground, the experience Aryas wished to provide (and succeeded in doing so) was a different story entirely.
Therefore, Trey was in a nice pair of dark slacks and a tailored shirt in light blue. His shock of thick ginger-blond hair was tamed. Amélie couldn’t see his shoes, but they were no doubt polished to perfection … and not by Trey.
He looked, as did Mirabelle and Amélie, as if they were out on the town at a fashionable watering hole having a cocktail before they were going to go out and drop five hundred dollars on a meal.
Regardless if the rules of circumspection in the hunting ground where adhered to, even there the rules of play were never to be ignored.
In this vein, when Trey felt Amélie’s attention, he did not lift his eyes to hers as he said, “Good evening, Mistress Amélie.”
“Trey,” she murmured, her gaze moving to her friend.
“Mistress Mirabelle, it would be my pleasure to get you a drink,” she heard Trey say.
“Vodka, rocks, my lovely,” Mirabelle replied, her eyes on Amélie. She tipped her head to the side. “Would you like Trey to get you a fresh drink?”
“Thank you, darling, I’m fine.”
Mirabelle nodded to Amélie. Given his unspoken order, Trey moved toward the bar.
He shifted away walking backward for a few steps so as not to show his Mistress disrespect by giving her his back, but as Mira’s attention was on Amélie, he eventually turned toward the bar.
When he was well away, Mirabelle’s attention turned to her toy.
Part of Amélie’s allure to a sub being that it was known widely in their circles that she’d gone above and beyond the traditional training, including painstaking hours manipulating devices, flogs, paddles, cats, switches, crops, straps, and so on, Amélie had also perfected the art that was, in her opinion, the single most crucial skill a Mistress or Master could hold.
Observation.
This being so, she easily saw that Mirabelle’s eyes were on Trey’s backside.
“Did you come with him or order him to meet you here?” she asked, and Mirabelle looked to Amélie.
“He’s been waiting for me in the foyer for twenty minutes,” she answered.
Amélie allowed her lips to curve in a small smile as she again lifted her drink.
Mirabelle, a large-chested, slim-hipped, dark-headed goddess with the dauntingly effusive and equally well tended beauty of a professional football team cheerleader, leaned forward and her eyes flashed with exhilaration, even in the subdued light.
“He’s exceptional,” she whispered.
Amélie felt something stir in the pit of her belly.
As mentioned, in the past, Mirabelle had fallen for many a sub, however one of those subs had gone very wrong. She’d come to the Honey in order to avoid him at the other clubs, only able to afford the membership at a pinch.
But regardless of this failed relationship, Mira had not lost hope.
It was certainly not unheard of that a Master or Mistress would enter in a lasting relationship with subs that would lead to them becoming spouses or life partners, including the minivan and the kids. In fact, it happened regularly.
Mirabelle wanted this.
As did Amélie.
Unlike her earlier reaction to understanding she was growing jaded in regards to pretty much all aspects of her life, the acknowledgment that she wished for a lasting union was not a shock to Amélie. She’d known it since she was a little girl. It had grown alongside her understanding of the side of her nature she would begin to research in her late teens. Find opportunities to observe. Form relationships where she would be afforded opportunities to train and gather experience.
Through this, she knew all along she held that delicate, pulsating hope many women nurtured that there was someone out there.
Someone you’d know you wanted to go to sleep next to every night. Argue with about whiskers in the sink. Plan vacations with. Have everything feel better when something terrible happened and his arms closed around you. Watch his features soften with delight when you told him you were carrying his child.
Someone you could tie to a bed and make perform for you, forcing mind-scrambling orgasm after orgasm, him needing that in all the forms you could imagine, unashamedly gifting you with the trust you’d give them to him.
And then the memory of each and every single one of those precious moments when time wore on and age made this no longer something you both could share.
Until you both quit breathing.
This was what Amélie was beginning to face with a sense a grief.
Grief for the loss of something she wanted desperately but was coming to terms with the fact that she would never have.
Grief for something she saw as hope that was budding that she’d found in Mirabelle’s eyes.
The sub who had shattered her heart wanted Mirabelle to force mind-scrambling orgasms from his ringed cock and strapped balls.
What he didn’t want, and shared with her with some revulsion, was to spend his life and make children with a woman who could do that to him.
Trey, Amélie could not read for certain. She’d not played with him. He’d also not accepted even club ownership from a Mistress in his tenure at the Honey. He wasn’t a submissive whore (not that there was anything wrong with that), bouncing without any real connection from Master to Mistress thoughtlessly. But what he wanted, Amélie couldn’t fathom.
She just hoped it was what Mirabelle could offer.
But more, if he wanted that, he could offer exactly what Mirabelle wanted in return.
“Mistress Romy had shared he was unusually enjoyable,” Amélie noted cautiously in response to Mirabelle’s assertion of Trey’s talent.
She watched her friend’s face carefully.
What she expected to see, she saw.
The slight tightening of her perfectly lined and filled lips.
Jealousy.
This happened.
Most checked it at the door. It was their world.
In play, subs were frequently shared, borrowed, ordered to serve another, and Doms, as was their nature, partook of whatever they fancied (if a toy was owned, for the night or longer, they did this with the Master’s or Mistress’s permission, of course).
Mirabelle’s reaction was thus telling.
If this happened for her and Trey, she would not share. It was even doubtful she’d do so in social play. Exhibiting him, undoubtedly. Allowing touch or further, not a chance.
This, too, happened.
And this, too, was something Amélie craved to call her own.
It was, in fact, already part of her
repertoire.
Not jealousy. Alas, she’d never felt that.
But she visited the social playroom on occasion, and when she did, she brought along a toy. She did this to show off that toy. She very rarely allowed touch or others to play. If she did, there was a point. Not for those who she allowed such privileges. A lesson that needed to be learned or an experience that she could gift to her sub that she knew he desired.
“Mirabelle,” she called when her friend had no response.
Mirabelle continued to regard her but she said nothing.
“I just want you to be careful,” she explained.
“Once burned…” Mirabelle stated.
Amélie nodded and grinned. “… twice shy. I get it. But I urge you to be three times shy. Or four. Or allow me to have a few quiet words.”
It went without saying that confidentiality at the club was paramount.
In reality, the fourteen-page contract she’d had to sign that she’d given her attorney for his perusal (something he’d done and two months after, his application had been accepted at the club) had elicited him saying, “Memorize this, Amélie. If you don’t and you breach even a sub-clause to a sub-clause, if you were a man, Aryas Weathers would have your balls in a vise, and not the way this type of club plays that. As you’re a woman, you’ll be homeless and cleaning his toilets with a toothbrush for the scraps his dog won’t eat.”
She didn’t need to memorize the contract.
Even so, she’d read it three times.
So outside these walls, talk was forbidden. If you saw a member in public that was not a good acquaintance, if given the signal, you proceeded cautiously. Normally, you ignored them altogether.
On the other hand, as was human nature, inside the club, talk, and even gossip among members, was rampant, and for their play, essential. Who liked what. Who’d done who. The ones who’d left the blinds open on the playrooms you needed to be sure to take the opportunity to watch.
The ones who lived the life and left it at the club’s door.
Amélie did not fancy Trey so she hadn’t been paying close attention. She knew no Master had had him. She also knew, outside Mirabelle and Romy, he’d serviced Mistresses Felicia and Pasquel.
All of them repeatedly.
And all of them both Mirabelle and Amélie were friendly with for more than the book club they all belonged to.
“Let me think about that, okay?” Mirabelle answered Amélie’s offer. “He showed no hesitation when I required him to wait for me in the foyer.” She grinned a calendar girl grin. “Of course, he’d just ejaculated a parcel that would make a horse feel envy, but he knows what that means. He knows a note will be put in his file. And he could have balked, talked to me outside, or not shown up.”
This was all true.
“If he doesn’t broach it, ask me out, meet me in the humdrum, maybe I’ll get you to snoop around before I ask him,” she finished.
“I approve of your plan,” Amélie remarked.
“I don’t need your approval, Mistress,” Mirabelle returned, still grinning.
Without taking her attention from her friend, she noted, “He’s returning.”
“Caught that, but thanks,” Mirabelle murmured, her gaze shifting to the hunting ground.
Trey returned and set her drink in front of her, taking his position standing outside the booth like he was her bodyguard, saying in a deep, pleasing, quiet voice, “I hope your drink pleases you, Mistress.”
“My gratitude, slave, I’m sure it will,” Mirabelle replied just as quietly, taking up the drink, her eyes still wandering, but not to Trey.
He settled in, leaning his ass against the side of the booth, her protector, her servant.
Amélie had had that, subs she’d decided to own for a spell in the club. Subs who had waited for her in the foyer and entered with her. Subs that stood sentry while she sat with her friends, sipping and chatting. Subs that, in their profile, staff made notes that they were not to be approached unless she gave permission.
“Slim pickins for you, dearest heart,” Mira, who knew her well, noted after she’d done her sweep. “Though, Mistress Delia is here and I know that not only because I’ve seen her but because from the minute I walked in, my flesh felt like it was crawling.”
Amélie searched for and found the Domme in question.
Delia, like Amélie, was in her early thirties. Unlike Amélie, she had a beautiful but cold face, an icy, black-haired beauty, and mean in her eyes.
She’d moved from New York City to Phoenix, coming to the club with the requisite for Masters or Mistresses—four references, two from Dominants, two from subs. Aryas had shared with Amélie that he knew the Master and Mistress who’d made the references. They were lukewarm, and as was his policy, he’d followed up on them. He then had, in a rare move, decided to accept her regardless of his tendency toward safety.
He’d shared his reasoning for this too.
There were no real reasons the New York Dominants could give for the fact that their references were unenthusiastic. She was a known player. There had been no incidents they knew of that would mark her as unwelcome.
They just didn’t like her.
Amélie understood that.
In a world that was roundly judged, Aryas or any of them were not fans of judging one of their own.
Even with all of that, he’d regretted his decision immediately.
“Just a feeling, my sweet,” he’d muttered, sitting with her, sipping his Hennessy and watching Delia work the room.
She was being given her head. If she overstepped any boundaries, it would be reported.
But Amélie knew he was hoping for any small infraction so he could bounce her. Even if she left a tuna sandwich unattended in her locker in the Dominant lounge, he’d get rid of her.
Amélie had this information because they were very close and she was Aryas’s top Domme. He knew her discretion.
He also knew she’d keep an eye.
And that she did right then, seeing Delia move in front of the bar with the pretty, young sub named Tiffany dogging her steps.
It was Tiffany Amélie studied.
In her mid-twenties, Tiffany was the daughter of friends of Amélie’s family. As any Dominant would do with any submissive, toys were looked after, even if they weren’t yours.
But knowing Tiffany in the outside world before she’d entered Amélie’s domain, knowing her parents would excommunicate her with extreme prejudice if they knew about this part of her life, she’d kept a closer eye.
And now Tiffany looked pale even in the dim light.
And afraid.
This could be for a variety of reasons, most of them acceptable.
It could be something far darker.
The entire club had tight security and even playrooms were monitored. Cameras caught everything. This served many purposes, including a means to assure confidentiality, a threat Aryas had rarely used and wouldn’t unless given no alternative.
It also kept the subs safe.
Delia’s ministrations would be watched, likely with Aryas’s concerns, closely.
“We all must have a care,” Amélie said to Mirabelle.
“Always,” Mirabelle replied.
Taking a sip of her drink, Mirabelle’s attention focused on Bryan.
As did Amélie’s.
When it did, he swiftly lowered his gaze and turned his head away.
He’d been watching her.
“You could give that a go again,” Mirabelle suggested.
“He called Mistress Marisol ‘Mommy.’”
The smooth, sultry voice came from behind Amélie and she turned to see Mistress Talia there, her lips curved in a cat’s smile, her brown eyes lit with their usual good humor, her wild, wide orb of soft-curled, café-au-lait-with-bronzed-tips Afro adding to an overall exotic look of exquisite African-American beauty.
Her slender neck, Amélie noted not for the first time, was a tempting vulnerability. A vulnerability th
at Amélie knew Aryas found tremendously tempting. So much so, he’d agreed for the first time in what Amélie thought was at least three years to mentor her into the Dominant role personally.
Her training had been long and thorough.
He’d let her loose two months ago.
She was unsurprisingly very popular.
What she was not was a submissive. A capable, if rookie, Domme. Amélie had observed her in training and had observed her when she was set free to go it alone—and it was clear she had one bent.
Which meant Aryas would not go there for he had the same bent, and in that case, outside some interaction during social play, the twain didn’t meet.
Trey making a noise that could be taken as amused disgust (or disgusted amusement) took Amélie out of her contemplation of the new Domme. Trey doing this was something not surprising from an alpha-sub.
“Seriously?” Mirabelle asked as Talia leaned the side of a hip against the side of the booth by where Amélie was sitting.
“Yep,” Talia answered, still grinning wickedly.
Mirabelle looked to Amélie. “Is Mari into that?”
“Nope,” Talia answered for Amélie. “Pretty sure that Latino lovely isn’t gonna go for seconds.”
Amélie wasn’t surprised this had slipped from Bryan. However, it did mean he was forevermore out of the question for her.
“What a waste,” Mirabelle murmured, her head turned, her eyes trained on Bryan.
But Amélie looked to Trey.
Mirabelle’s comment was not meant to be insulting. Her words were meant for Amélie, who she knew would no longer have interest in Bryan for she didn’t share the inclination he clearly had in order to give him what he needed.
Trey obviously did not know this.
He’d been leaning hips to the side of the booth, unlike Talia, facing the room straight on. His pose had been relaxed.
He was now tensed.
She observed his jaw.
It was tight.
Her lips curved.
Trey did not like his Mistress thinking Bryan was a waste.
Interesting.
She turned her regard to Bryan, and as if he felt her eyes, he looked to their booth.
His expression took on surprise as his focus shifted up over Amélie’s shoulder.