Bodhi Read online

  Kate shrugged, keeping her eyes on the musician. Audrey didn’t miss her friend’s wicked smile. She dragged her focus back to the screen. His question was inappropriate. Right?

  They were at a market in St. Pete. She was with her boys. But then Audrey realized if she continued this line of thinking, she would become a self-fulfilled prophecy.

  Audrey’s job was to please her Master. Not nag him. Not doubt him. She needed to respond as she would naturally.

  Gavin: You're hesitating.

  Audrey: Yes, sir. I’m wearing them.

  Gavin: Good girl.

  Audrey chewed on a fingernail. Gavin had retreated to the rear of the tent, his vision on the phone or the woman working at his side. Never on Audrey. And still, he owned her no matter where he was or what he was doing, those damn blue eyes guiding her path.

  The musician finished, people clapped, and then he addressed Rick into the microphone. “What song would you like to hear, young man?”

  Audrey nodded. “Go on, baby, pick a song.”

  “Go talk to him,” Kate said as Ricki made his way to the singer’s table.

  “Talk to who?” Bryson looked around.

  “No one, Bry,” Audrey said, and her son rolled his eyes.

  Gavin: You want to ask me questions?

  Audrey: Yes.

  She glanced at Gavin, trying to hide her smile from Bryson.

  Gavin: They’re more than I could’ve imagined.

  Their eyes met. She fought tears. He looked away and appeared to be typing.

  Gavin: I donate my bread here.

  Audrey looked up at the sign.

  Bread for Wonder Women.

  All profits benefit the St. Petersburg Women’s Shelter and The Center for Victims of Domestic Violence.

  Audrey noticed Bryson had followed her eyeline, and her son stared at Gavin, squinting.

  Gavin: Come to me.

  Hands shaking, Audrey slid her phone into her purse. Again, her inclination was to deny him. Maybe real life squashed the submission she’d promised him just as she’d predicted it might.

  Gavin knew her too well. He would sense her hesitation. He would know she was a poser. A little girl who could only play at Bodhi. She wanted him in her life, yet if she couldn't prove she could maintain the dynamic even in the face of “reality,” what hope would they have of ever being partners outside the dungeon? Would she ever brave wearing his collar 24/7?

  Her neck felt bare.

  “Jesus, Audr,” Kate said, “your cheeks.” She placed the back of her hand against Audrey's heated face. “Go.” Kate nodded. “I'll take the boys around a bit. Text me.”

  “Bry. Rick. I'll be back in a few minutes. Stay with Katy.”

  “He hasn’t finished the song,” Rick said.

  Bryson’s eyes — still narrowed and intense — were on Gavin’s biceps.

  “Auntie Kate will get you some kettle corn.”

  Audrey grabbed Bryson’s shoulders and met her son’s pensive green eyes. He was beginning to look more and more like his father. Kate and Rick stood a few feet away, listening to the man singing Rick’s selection. One of Dell’s favorites. “Yesterday”.

  “He’s my friend,” Audrey said only to Bryson on an exhale.

  “The one you see in Tampa?”

  “Yes, buddy.” Young and pensive and intuitive.

  “Why haven’t we met him?”

  “It’s—”

  “Complicated,” Bryson interjected, rolling those eyes again.

  Audrey smiled at her son while imagining another kind of Saturday morning...

  Hand in hand with Gavin, the boys beside them, frustrated at accepting a man into her life but trying and adapting. Gavin holding her submission in the palm of his hand. A Master in every sense of the word.

  No doubting. Only trusting. No anxiety. Only hope.

  The four of them strolling the market. A normal day with normal people. But the breeze would tickle her partially bare cunt, reminding her she would obey him in all things — and the anticipation of how he’d bind her and gag her later that night in their home would light a fire in her mind, burning through the ordinary trees, singeing the vanilla leaves.

  Audrey was his.

  He was hers.

  The boys would come around.

  She would wear the necklace proudly.

  Two worlds would not only collide — they’d blend.

  26

  “I don’t know if you’re a badass or a pain in the ass,” Darcy said as she winked. Today, Darcy’s hair had green streaks through the blonde. She’d had this color for at least two weeks. A record.

  Audrey would drink to Darcy’s wild consistency.

  “Just provide the glass, please. And the key.”

  Audrey swung her feet from the seat while holding the neck of the bottle — a pinot noir she’d brought from the outside she had decided to open here. She didn’t care if it was only two in the afternoon. Darcy said Gavin had gone out and hadn’t said when he’d return. The two-drink maximum wouldn’t apply to her this afternoon because the wine was hers. Except, she wore the necklace, the collar, the symbol declaring to their world that she did as he wished — and she knew he wouldn’t wish for this.

  And for that reason alone, she would drink. She would drink for reasons she couldn’t ascertain.

  “Will you join me, Darc?” Audrey asked while raising the full glass of red in the air.

  “No, love. I don’t drink.”

  “Never?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why does he keep the bar?”

  “It came with the place.” She shrugged. “He likes the look of the thing. It’s part of the character.”

  So much underappreciated liquor. People were too busy getting stoned on bruises and burns. They didn’t need alcohol with a place catering to freedom, arousal, and anticipation.

  Laughter interrupted the girls’ conversation. Manly laughter. Loud and deep and full of mischievous wonder. The two of them must’ve come in another door.

  Darcy buried her face in her laptop at the other end of the bar as Audrey took her time entertaining the bottle of red. The vanilla and spice and cherry flavors slid through her veins like lava coursing its way down a mountain. She enjoyed the burn.

  She tried to tell herself she’d just been really thirsty as she finished off her fourth and final glass … and where were those happy, laughing men?

  She’d “spoken” too soon.

  The two of them, both in tight shirts, Peyton in shorts, Gavin in dark jeans, were heading down the hallway. Once Peyton caught her eye, he smirked then retreated the way he’d come. Gavin, however, didn’t pull out from anything. He continued to walk toward the bar, his feet bare, his expression unyielding.

  His face told her what she needed to know: she’d displeased him.

  She’d come to Bodhi on a whim and without telling him. An absolute no-no. And she’d drunk an entire fucking bottle of wine. Today, she wasn’t feeling very submissive. She was feeling testy — tired of playing games and not enjoying the other parts of an adult relationship.

  “I wanted to surprise you,” Audrey said, planting an elbow on the counter and her chin in her palm, her other hand fingered the collar. She smiled through the hazy glow of her buzz, relishing it before he killed it.

  Gavin glanced at Darc, then at Audrey, then he shook the bottle.

  “Uh, uh, uh,” Audrey said, grinning like a cat full of lascivious cream. “That’s mine.” She tapped the side with her fingernail. “I drank it … all.”

  “Darcy,” Gavin barked.

  “She brought it with her, sir.”

  Audrey covered her mouth and let out a tiny squeak.

  “Fuck me,” Gavin hissed, palms splayed on the counter, head dropped between his shoulders.

  Walking her fingers up her favorite biceps, Audrey hiccupped and said, “I’d love to.”

  Jerking his face toward Audrey, he scowled, lifted her from her seat, and threw her over h
is shoulder. He smacked her ass and told her to be quiet, and then he shook his index finger at Darcy and gave her orders too.

  “She can never drink like this again. In fact, she can’t drink.”

  Fucking asshole is what he is, she thought, her head bouncing, her legs dangling, her stomach contents gurgling as he carried her through the gym and into his studio and dropped her on the bed.

  “What’s that smell?” Audrey asked, overexaggerating her nostrils and sniffing the air. “Were you burning incense?”

  Don’t ask Gavin questions… Darcy had always said. Too late. The alcohol made it impossible for Audrey to control her tongue. Maybe the laughter and the smells were part of his Peyton secrets. One of the puzzle pieces he left on the floor.

  “Take off your jeans,” he commanded.

  Audrey looked around. The room wasn’t so much messy as it was tattered, a little more disheveled than she’d ever seen before. The sheets were rumpled. Did he think he could just bring her in here and she wouldn’t ask questions?

  “Darcy said you were out.”

  “I was. Take off your fucking jeans right the fuck now.”

  She stood and wiggled out of them.

  “You know I forbid pants here.”

  He twisted her body around until her shins hit the bedframe. He caught her fall, but shoved her down anyway, pushing her face into the mattress, holding her neck by the loop on the back of her collar. Then he swatted her ass hard.

  “You’re not a brat. You’re defying me. Why?”

  Fuck… He hit her again and again and again. Maybe ten times. Maybe twenty. With a faultless rhythm. A fantastic motion.

  She breathed through each strike. The combination of alcohol and pain finally made sense. It was dangerous. Deadly. Because she could take so much more, wanted so much more. And she couldn’t go home in the worst fucking shape of her life.

  Trailing a finger up her crack, he then circled it over the stinging sensations he’d gifted her ass. “Why did you come here without telling me? Wear jeans and drink an entire bottle of wine?”

  “Why are you burning incense? Tell me, who does the pitching? You or him?”

  “Do you really think you’re ready to know things about me?” he asked with an edge to his voice as he squeezed her cheeks, clawing at the tender skin … until she wiggled and squirmed and bit back sobs from her throat.

  “Yes,” she choked out.

  He ripped the chalk of his nails across the fleshy blackboard of her ass, causing her to scream. He raked them forward, back and forth until he broke her wide open.

  “Stop!” she cried and sniffled. “Stop!”

  “Say king and it ends, but then I won’t let you see more of my story. Say king, baby girl. So precious,” he said with an ache, swirling his fingertips over her again, coming close to her cunt but never touching it. His hands either swords or plowshares, spears or pruninghooks.

  She smacked the bed with a fist. “Do you fuck him?”

  “I can fuck whomever I please,” he whispered into her ear. “But you know I’m only fucking you. I’m only inside your cunt. Your ass.” Each word was a taunt. His voice hissed. She could no longer tell truth from lies. “If you don’t trust me, we can’t play. If you disobeyed me today because you decided this is not the life for you…”

  “Gavin, I—”

  “You’ll take everything I give you. Stand and face the wall.”

  The flogger hit her back. It was almost a relief to feel nerve endings come alive in a different location. She sighed. The leather tickled her skin as he alternated between swatting then stroking her with the strands.

  “Please,” she begged.

  Gavin didn’t reply with words. He continued to strike her skin until he must’ve created marks.

  “Sir … please … tell … me.” Her voice and lips and thighs trembled as each word fell between the lashes.

  “You know Peyton dominates me.”

  Her eyes closed. She saw images flash behind her lids. She swallowed the lump that had taken up residency in her throat. She did know Peyton dominated him. But Gavin had once said he wasn’t a switch. Yet, she’d seen the marks and bruises.

  There was more between them.

  “You will watch.”

  “No.”

  “The alcohol does make you bold, Audrey. We will play now, and you aren’t supposed to be here, so you’ll watch.”

  “I’ll go home.”

  “You’re in my collar. You’ll safe out to go home. It’s not weak to say your word. I push you on purpose, Audrey, but the trust works both ways. I trust you to use the word when you really need to.”

  “You … you won’t give me another choice?”

  He shook his head. “It’s time you see who I am. Fully.”

  Moments later, Audrey lay handcuffed to the bed, blindfolded, while Gavin prepared the room. She could hear him milling about. Smelled matches. Heard drawers opening and closing.

  After what felt like hours, Gavin removed the blindfold, undid her binds, braided her hair, and instructed her to wait on the bed.

  Candles filled the room, alight atop the dresser, the desk, the bathroom counter, the nightstand. Every surface was covered with a variety of shapes and sizes and colors. Incense burned too, from somewhere she couldn’t ascertain, as though it came from heaven itself.

  The shadows climbing the walls from the glow were as intimidating as the two men themselves.

  Two. Men.

  Peyton had entered and stood only a few feet away, dressed in a dark-brown cloak with a hood covering his sun-kissed locks.

  Audrey’s stomach shrank to the size of a raisin, but she couldn’t speak. Earlier, when Gavin had cuffed her, he’d asked her not to. Demanded her silence. This was his scene, and she was a spectator. He’d told her she should feel privileged to have received the invitation. Because others knew or suspected but they’d never witnessed it. They didn’t know the extent of his kinks or fetishes. Only Peyton, Kate, and now Audrey.

  “In your position, Audrey,” Gavin said, and then he seemed ready to take his own.

  She kneeled on the painted concrete floor a few feet from the two men. At no time was she to move unless instructed, unless given a direct command, or she used her safe word. Her skin would tingle, her limbs would turn numb, before she disobeyed him.

  Peyton raised two fingers, apparently indicating Gavin obey some preconceived order. Kneeling with one foot on the floor and one knee bent, Gavin bowed his head as Peyton touched his forehead, then his cheeks.

  “You wish to have your slave with us tonight?” Peyton asked. Gavin only nodded, keeping his head bowed. “I won’t touch her unless you tell me to. Understood?”

  Gavin nodded again.

  Audrey thought her heart might burst. The two of them shared a heady dominance even when Gavin kneeled. She had imagined them together but still sometimes denied it. Still, she had no expectations. Everything here, in this building, in this extravagant world of kink, always surprised her.

  People on the outside might’ve said what was done at the dungeon didn’t constitute “normal,” but what they failed to realize was that whatever anyone did here was automatically normal once done.

  Actually, Gavin hadn’t denied being a switch. He’d skirted the question and said he couldn’t be defined. Darcy was the one who’d labeled him. It didn’t matter. All Audrey wondered was …

  …what were the two of them going to do?

  After stroking Gavin’s head, Peyton fed him a wafer — the Eucharist? — and a sip of what looked like red wine. The men stared into each other’s eyes as Peyton whispered blessings and praise. Then he slipped off his hood, untied and removed his robe, ready to begin the rest of what was to follow.

  “Show her what I offer to you.” Peyton peered down at Gavin. “Show her what you suck and take up the ass.”

  Audrey inhaled sharply, and Peyton silenced her with a look. She had to concentrate to steady herself. Her knees had begun to wobble. He
r chest ached. The scene was something she felt she should stop or participate in or only continue watching. It was a car wreck on the side of the highway.

  Who was she?

  The doctor or the victim or the passerby?

  Her Master’s eyes were in a trance. Audrey fought the urge to clap a hand over her mouth and stifled a gasp as the men’s eyes locked again, profoundly seeking something from each other she knew she couldn’t provide.

  Peyton held the base of his shaft as an offering and said, “Make me hard,” as Gavin readily took it.

  Peyton’s head fell back as Gavin began to pump his friend and redeemer. Gavin gripped him, stroked him for an excruciatingly long time, and then, without warning, Peyton put a hand on Gavin’s shoulder, and cried, “Stop.”

  Gavin sat back on his heels, licked his lips, and gazed up at Peyton — lean and long and completely naked, his sunset-burned highlights framing his face and touching his shoulders — seeming to wait for another command. Peyton cupped Gavin’s chin as he stared at Audrey, but Gavin wouldn’t follow his friend’s eyeline. Audrey knew he wouldn’t move unless ordered.

  Grabbing ahold of the back of Gavin’s neck, Peyton thrust into his mouth and fucked him with a force Audrey felt in her loins, but there was no gagging, no retching as he slid in, then out, while caressing Gavin’s face.

  “So, so good,” Peyton said with an ache. “Sucking me off like a good little slave.”

  The two men enjoyed themselves as though Audrey weren’t present. Or maybe they enjoyed themselves more because of it. Gavin looked younger than his forty-one years, his mouth full of a man’s cock, his grunting a turn-on, his body a vessel, his fears and grief disappearing and sliding off his skin into a puddle on the floor.

  Audrey had no doubt what Gavin felt: the spiritual entanglement, the enlightenment here and now during what might’ve appeared to be an act of depravity to others.

  “You please me,” Peyton said, his hand still possessing Gavin’s neck, holding his face to his groin. “You please me, Rabboni.”

  After shoving his cock into her Master’s mouth a few more times, Peyton pulled out, put a heel on Gavin’s back, and pushed him to the floor. He circled Gavin several times, tapping the tips of his toes to Gavin’s body as he did, inspecting him like he was only a piece of meat, making him wait for the next command.