Protege(85)
His hand, so gentle and reassuring, grazed her jaw. “Beautiful peach. Tonight I think I’d like to hold you. Slide your panties out from under your dress and give them to me.”
Anticipation filled her chest as she rose. Glancing around—what the f*ck?
Her eyes went wide as she stared at the wall of weapons and froze.
“Collette?”
It took manually forcing her muscles to move for her to turn back to Jude.
“Is everything okay?”
She swallowed thickly. Don’t you see it? Her tongue was filling her mouth, heavy and awkward, and her lips were numb. When she finally forced the words out, they came in a wheeze. “What are we doing here?”
He gave her a level stare, the sort that expressed his need for her to trust him. “Watching. Only watching.”
Watching what? Who? Why? She didn’t want to watch. All of those heavily braided tools and metal things—she knew they were supposed to be sexual—but to her they weren’t. She used to hate flipping through the channels and accidentally stumbling across a medical procedure. She’d rather watch open-heart surgery at the moment than see a live showing of those tools in action.
Disappointment filled her, not disappointment in herself, but in the possibility that Jude might be trying to tell her something. Did he want her to participate in something with things like that? The sudden urge to cry, not weep, but actually cry like a petulant child came over her out of nowhere.
Her head shook. “No.”
His brow slowly arched as if warning her to rephrase her word choice. She wasn’t telling him no, she was begging the forces of nature and whatever god listened to make this go away, to not let this happen. She liked how gentle he was. She didn’t want him to have a taste for darker tendencies, desires she couldn’t satisfy.
“Remove your panties and sit down, Collette. Damien’s eager to begin.”
Trembling, she reached under her flared skirt and slid her panties down her thighs. Folding them twice, she handed them to him, and he placed them in his pocket.
As she fit herself on his lap, her back to his chest and shoulder, his arms came around her front and her nerves slightly settled. But there was no tempering the worry in the front of her mind that he was trying to achieve something by being here.
His breath whispered over her ear as his voice pitched soft and low. “While you observe them, I’ll be observing you. That’s all this is, peach.”
His hand slid under her skirt as his knees hooked between hers and dragged them apart. His fingers dragged softly over her skin as he whispered in her ear again.
“Now, you will be very quiet as we have the privilege of watching Damien and Sadie. We’re not here to judge, only to learn. Damien’s an experienced sadist and Sadie has been his masochistic sub for almost a decade. Watching them scene, the way they communicate flawlessly with their eyes, it’s like watching two lovers reconnect after a lifetime at war and finding reason to hope again.”
Sadie walked out to the open area before the wall of torture devices and lowered herself to the floor. Her palms never dropped below her shoulders as she held her arms extended with the long strap folded in two.
Her body folded into a child’s pose and those palms remained extended. It had to hurt. The muscles in her narrow back showed with knots of tension as she waited. There was no music, no talking, just them on a chair in the corner, watching, as Sadie bowed.
Jude’s fingers continued to drift up her leg as they waited. His hand followed the crease of her thigh and hip until it rested over her sex. He left it there, just holding her, and she didn’t know why. It felt nice, his hand possessively cupping her delicate folds. But her mind was too worried about what would happen in this room to focus on much more beyond Sadie’s willowy form.
The door opened and closed and Collette’s breath hitched as Damien stepped into the room. Jude had warned her not to judge, but it was difficult. She was quickly settling on not liking Damien, despite his hospitality and pleasant manners at dinner.
He walked to the stage—it wasn’t actually a stage, but it might as well have been. It was impossible to look anywhere else, much like it was impossible to ignore the presence of a man like Damien.
Jude wasn’t like that. He was quiet and gentle, yet demanding and threatening in a subtle way, perhaps more threatening than Damien because it took a lot to get him heated.
Damien stood in front of Sadie and said something Collette couldn’t make out. The woman slowly rose and presented the long strap. Damien took the strap, gave it a testing tug, and then let it unravel. Collette’s eyes stopped blinking. Not a strap, a leash.
Holding the fastening of the leash, he walked behind his wife and grabbed a handful of her hair, jerking her head back. Collette gasped and Jude gave a warning squeeze to her hip. “Try to stay quiet, peach,” he murmured.
Damien attached the leash to Sadie’s collar and gave it a sharp tug, dragging her to her hands and knees. He walked along the wall, Sadie trailing behind in a crawl, as he perused the items on the wall.
Collette’s dislike for the man grew, as she felt humiliated for his poor wife. No judging. She tried to not to form opinions, but it was impossible. She didn’t like the sight of a woman—the man’s wife—being led around like a dog.
Her brow furrowed as he selected various items from the wall, showing them to Sadie and sometimes brushing them across her cheek in a way that gave Collette the chills. He laid them out with care on a long wooden slab of a table that looked like it belonged in the basement of a sixteenth-century castle.