Leah Braemel - Personal Protection

She let his evasion slide-maybe taking her there was one of those Freudian things that he’d avoided telling her but knew she’d find out…it was all too complicated. “If I do go to this place, would you expect me to have sex with you out in full view of everyone? Or with another guy at the same time as you?” Damn it, there had to be something wrong with her to be so intrigued by the idea. She thought back to the party, and all the leather pants and…Tawny’s collar, and Sam’s joke about not needing collars and leashes to get him hard. “You’re not going to expect me to parade around on a leash like a dog, are you? Because I have to tell you, I’m not willing to debase myself like that.”

“The Rouge isn’t strictly for Dominants and subs,” he explained patiently. “It can be whatever a member wants it to be. Yes, you’ll see submissives being led around on a leash by their Dominant. Yes, you’ll see public displays of sex, oral and otherwise. But some couples just use it as a way to get away from the kids, the in-laws, you know? They keep what goes on between them behind closed doors.

“And the singles, well, it gets all that will-she-or-won’t-she out of the way. When a member walks in those big red front doors, it’s a given they’re looking for a partner for the night. They can hook up at the public areas just like any bar in D.C.” He paused and she got the feeling he was censoring himself. So what wasn’t he telling her this time? “There are a few rules but mainly as long as it follows the Safe, Sane and Consensual rule, anything goes.”

“So there’s all sorts of kinky stuff going on. Fetish stuff? Like guys who want to lick your feet? Or drip hot wax on you so they can get off?”

He nodded.

Images of Sam wearing the black leather chaps she’d seen him wearing when riding his motorcycle haunted her. What she’d give to see him wear them and nothing else. To feel the cool leather against the back of her thighs while he bent her over a table in front of Thalia or Cooper or… She exhaled slowly, pressing her thighs together to ease the throb in her pussy.

“How does someone even start a club like that? Do you put an ad in the paper or post something on the net saying ‘Hey I like threesomes, let’s meet, we’ll do lunch then we can fuck each other senseless?’ ”

He snorted. “Not exactly.”

Her curiosity got the better of her. “So how did you end up being a founding member?”

“Shit, you want the whole story?”

She nodded and rolled off him, snuggling under his arm.

“Okay.” He scrubbed his hands across his face. “A little over eight years ago, while I was still with the FBI, the Bureau had been tracking a serial killer who targeted members of the scene. It started with two separate incidents in California. The killer shot his victims then ritually mutilated their bodies. When it made the news, police departments in Miami and Chicago realized they’d had similar cases over the previous couple of years. A couple months later, a group were killed in a dungeon scene in Houston that had the same markers. They had a general description of the suspect, and a credible tip that he’d headed here to D.C. The Porte didn’t exist at that time, but there was a fairly active Dungeon scene. Back then there was no membership vetting as such. Anyone could show up at a couple of munches, talk the talk, get an invite to the scene and they’d be let in. No one knew your background or if you were there for the scene or to blackmail someone.

“I remember reading about it in the news. I was in college at the time so I didn’t pay much attention, but I remember being surprised that someone hadn’t been hurt before.”

“These groups are usually pretty good at sniffing out anyone who might cause problems, and they let other groups know of any nutjobs to be wary of. Anyway, Chad was the Supervisory Special Agent in Charge; he decided to send a team in undercover in hopes that we’d find the killer before he struck again.”

“How did they choose you? Or were you already part of the scene?”

“I wasn’t into the scene at the time, but when you apply to the FBI they do a full background check and I guess they learned a few things from a couple old girlfriends. As you’ve already figured out, I was-am-more liberal about sex than most.”

“I imagine going to a place where women are required to treat you like you’re their lord and master was a huge sacrifice,” she said drily.

Irritation radiated off him as he shoved himself off the bed and began pacing. “When you start off in the scene, even if you’re a Dominant, especially if you’re a Dominant, you undergo training to learn how to properly handle a sub. Not all clubs work that way, but this one did.”

“Let me guess, Leash Handling 101? How about Flogging for Dummies?” He’d stopped pacing, his back turned to her, the muscles on his arms bulging as he tensed. She shook her head, “It was a joke. I’m sorry. I’ll stop being such a smart ass. Go on.”

“In order to be a good Master, you have to learn what you’re asking of your slaves. So you start off as a sub.”

She couldn’t stop her laughter and quickly clamped her hand over her mouth at the mental picture of Sam wearing a leather dog collar while meekly being led around on a leash. More likely he’d rip the leash out of the person’s hands and drag them behind him. “I’m sorry. I just can’t picture you submitting to anyone.”

After he’d shot her another look sideways, he continued, “I had to serve a mistress who acted as my mentor and taught me techniques that would help me be a good Dominant while-” he hesitated, swallowing hard, “-the other agent who volunteered pretended to be my girlfriend who wanted to learn how to be a good sub.”

“And this was with the FBI’s blessing?” What the hell type of report would have to be filed?

“We had to give reports to our supervisor regularly, yes.”

“But no one in the club knew you were there as spies though?”

He scratched the long scar down the middle of his chest. “Cooper was in charge of the scene even back then, so he knew who we were, but he thought it best if no one else knew. Thalia is Chad’s sister. At the time she knew he was sending someone in, but not exactly who. Since she was the most experienced Domme, we were assigned her as our trainer. I guess she suspected that we weren’t who we said we were, but since there’d been a lot of emails flying around the scene about the murders, she wasn’t sure if we were the killers or her brother’s agents. So she questioned us.”

Something about the way he said it told her the questioning was more than a standard interrogation. “What happened?”

There was a long silence but whether he was lost in his memories or trying to decide just how much information she could handle, she couldn’t tell. He finally settled for “Unless you’ve been part of the scene, you couldn’t understand, but there are techniques a Dom can use to scramble a sub’s circuits so they’ll not be able to dissemble. Neither of us broke cover but Thalia deduced enough to realize we’re the good guys.”

There was more to the story, but she didn’t want him to lose momentum, so she decided to jump ahead. “Did you ever catch the killer?”

His hand drifted to the star-shaped bullet wound and his expression hardened. “Eventually.”

Her breath drew in sharply. “Is that how you got shot?”

“Yeah.” His pacing started again. “We’d met the guy before; he didn’t set off any alarms with either of us. He was just a guy you’d wave to if you saw him washing his car in his driveway down the street. The other members said he’d been there quite a few times before we’d joined and taken part in a couple scenes. We figured that’s when he was scoping out the place, picking his targets. Then when he felt secure that no one was suspicious of him, he came back.”