Tiffany Reisz - The Queen

She would have written porn.

Elle wiped her sweaty forehead off on his shoulder.

“See?” she asked, smiling up at him. “I can be taught.”

He looked down at the wet smudge she’d left on his pristine shirt and back at her.

“I could have you flogged for that.”

“I’m not a submissive anymore, remember?”

“I’m glad you’re starting to realize that,” he said and then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Finally.”

“I know I’m a dominant. I know I am.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I’m sure.”

“Then you aren’t sure. Elle, what we’re doing here... I need all of you for it. Your heart, your soul, your strength, your guts. All of you. If you can’t give me all of you, then you are, yet again, wasting everyone’s time. Now tell me...do you want this? Do you want to be my Queen?”

“I want it.”

“It? What is it you want? Money?”

“Yes,” she admitted without shame. She needed a good job that didn’t take up all her time if she were going to do something with her writing.

“Power?”

“Definitely.”

“Me?” he asked.

“You did say you’d be my first client,” she reminded him.

“I will be.”

“You said I won’t be having sex with my clients.”

“Are you asking me if we’re going to have sex again?”

“Yes,” she said without shame or apology. She wanted him. She knew he wanted her. Why hadn’t they fucked yet?

“Would you like to?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it.”

“Prove it? How?”

“By acting like the domme I know you are. Once you are a domme, I will be your client, and you can do anything you want to me.”

“Anything?”

Kingsley met her eyes and whispered, “Anything.”

“You’re going to regret that.”

“I can’t wait to regret it.”

“This is a test, isn’t it? You’re testing me?”

“Of course I am.”

“And if I pass this test, what do I win?”

“Me.”

“Good prize.”

“When I am done with you,” he said, taking her face in his hands, “there will not be a man in the world who wouldn’t take a bullet to lick your boots.”

“It’s not my boots that need licking right now.”

Kingsley smiled at her, a sensual, mysterious smile. It did not bode well.

“I’ll give you a hint about how to win your prize. Do you know a woman by the name of Theresa Berkley?” he asked.

“If I met her I don’t remember.”

“You’ve never met her. She died in the 1830s. But before she died she worked as a dominatrix. I doubt she used that term, but that’s what she was. She invented a sort of standing table she called a chevelet. It was used to torture men on one side of their bodies while another woman could sexually stimulate them on the other side. We have the freestanding St. Andrew’s Cross for that now, but it was quite an ingenious bit of furniture.”

“Sounds like my kind of girl.”

“A client coming to London wrote a letter to her once requesting a session on her chevelet. These were the conditions he offered. He would pay her ‘a pound sterling for the first blood drawn, two pounds sterling if the blood runs down to my heels, three pounds sterling if my heels are bathed in blood, four pounds sterling if the blood reaches the floor, and five pounds sterling if you succeed in making me lose consciousness.’ His words, chérie .”

“Lose consciousness? Jesus.”

“Don’t be vanilla,” he said. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We masochists love our beatings. But that’s not the moral of this story.”

“Then what is the moral, King?”

“The moral is that if you want my pounds sterling or any other sort of pounds, you’ll have to earn it.”

Kingsley turned his back on her to leave and without thinking she raised the flogger over her head. She threw it across his back hoping to impress him with one hard hit. But Kingsley turned at the last second and caught the tails in his hand. She’d put the handle strap around her wrist thus making it all too easy for him to yank her to him and shove her back against the wall.

“What the fuck was that?” he demanded, squeezing her wrist to the point of pain. “Don’t put the fucking cord of the fucking flogger on your fucking wrist. That’s how you fucking hang the flogger on the fucking wall. And if you fucking put it on your fucking wrist, someone like me can fucking grab you and fucking fuck you up, you fucking rookie.”

He ripped the flogger off her wrist and tossed it aside.

“King, sorry—”

Kingsley cut off her apology with a hand over her mouth. Elle started, heart racing in pure fear.

“Shut up,” he said. “You fucked up, and you will be disciplined.”

He dragged her bodily to the bed and threw her down onto it. No amount of pushing and fighting could force him off her.

With knees and feet and arms and hands, Kingsley pinned her down to the bed. He had sixty pounds on her at least and was unbelievably strong. Finally she gave up her struggle. She was flat on her back on the bed and going nowhere until Kingsley let her go.

“This is what is known as a reality check, Elle. Repeat after me,” Kingsley said. “I am a bad dominant.”

A furious growl rose in the back of her throat.

“Say it,” Kingsley said.

“I am a bad dominant.”

“Good dominants do not hit people without their permission. Say it.”

“Good dominants do not hit people without their permission.”

“Are you a good dominant?” he asked.

“I want to be.”

“Let’s find out,” Kingsley said, his face a mask of steely resolve. He might be a masochist, he might be a switch, but right now he was all dom and all terrifying.

Kingsley released one wrist and unzipped her jeans.

“Safe out right now,” he said. “Right fucking now.”

“Or what? You’ll fuck me? Go ahead.”

“You’d like that too much,” he said, pushing his hand into her jeans. “And you haven’t even come close to earning my cock yet.”

He shoved a finger inside her and Elle cried out, not in pain but in pleasure.

“Thought so,” he said.

“What?” She tried squirming away from him but couldn’t move. He had her riveted to the bed.

“You’re dripping wet. So much for being a domme.”

“I haven’t gotten fucked in over a year.”

“That’s your problem, not mine.”

He pulled his hand out of her pants and pushed her onto her stomach. With his mouth at her ear he whispered a warning.

“There’s one man in the world who cares about you more than I do,” Kingsley said. “Just imagine what a man who doesn’t give a fuck about you would do if you fucked up during a session as badly as you fucked up with me.”

“I fucked up,” she said.

“You did.”

“I won’t do it again.”

“We won’t have to have this talk again, will we?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No, Kingsley.”

“You aren’t going to call me ‘sir’?” he asked, his voice cold but teasing.

“No,” she said.

“And why not?”

“Because I’m not a submissive anymore. I don’t call anyone ‘sir.’”

Kingsley leaned in even closer, pressed his lips to the back of her neck and kissed her.

“Glad you finally are realizing this,” he said. “It’s about fucking time.”

6

A Special Delivery

ALONE IN HER bedroom Elle stripped out of her clothes—her favorite old Pearl Jam concert T-shirt she’d had since 1994 and a ratty pair of cutoff denim shorts. They’d been her comfort clothes, her lazy-day uniform, when she’d lived here at Kingsley’s before she’d gone to the convent. There she’d had to wear black tights and long skirts and buttoned-up blouses. It had been like wearing a costume every day so it should have been nice to wear her own clothes again. Although they didn’t feel like hers. They felt like a different sort of costume. They belonged to Eleanor. His Eleanor. But if she wasn’t his anymore, was she even Eleanor? Kingsley said he would change her name. She almost didn’t care what he changed it to as long as she could be someone who wasn’t Eleanor anymore. Eleanor was tired. Eleanor was scared. Eleanor missed her priest.