They were full of Scottish grit and stubbornness but they loved their boys. They were both gone by the time my mom married Scotch and it’s a shame I didn’t get the opportunity to meet them.
I've never seen Rye overindulge in alcohol, though. He’ll pour one finger of scotch, finish it, and that's it. My father, on the other hand, enjoys his scotch, his rye, white wine, beer, margaritas on Taco Tuesday. He has been known to numb himself.
"I'm fine," I answer, swallowing against the dryness in my mouth, shifting my weight back and forth on my heels, my back pinned straight. The way he keeps checking in with me is sexier than I could have ever imagined. His interest in what I’m thinking, and how I’m feeling, is erotic in a whole other way.
The posture collar feels natural. I've been holding my neck like this since I was a toddler. How do I feel so at home in this dark, edgy, wrong-side-of-the-tracks club? Mom would curl up in a ball, have an aneurysm, a heart attack, and God knows what else, seeing her daughter like this.
"You're up for your next kink or dare after this person is done," Rye rasps against my ear. "Do you want to call your safe word, or do you want to keep going?"
A sticky stream of wetness answers him silently from between my legs. The urge to reach down and rub myself is all-consuming. Having my hands bound and immobilized only makes the desire multiply a hundred-fold.
This giant man next to me with the face of the man who raised me has my heart bouncing around in my chest. But before I answer him, the man with the slicked-back hair turns our way.
"Allegra, ready for round two, or are you tapping out?"
"I'm not tapping anything," I reply with a smile, first at him, then at Rye, who has stepped around from behind me. I add a wink, unsure where my sudden boldness is coming from. "I'll take dare this time."
The helmet-haired man nods, motioning to a young woman dressed in a frilly pink dress and knee socks, her bottom exposed under the hem to display frilly white panties. She approaches with another box, this one gold. He reaches in and pulls out a golden slip of paper.
"Now, Allegra chooses dare. What do we have here?" He pauses, dramatic tension building in the room, though most people are otherwise occupied at this point.
I did catch a glimpse of Anna earlier. She shot me a wink while a very handsome salt-and-pepper-haired man led her around the room by a leash and collar. And Jeremy looked like a pig in shit as a muscular bald man with tattoos down both arms wrapped him in Saran Wrap against a red pole, then proceeded to blindfold him.
The man's voice cuts through.
"Well. This should be interesting." He looks up, catching Rye’s eye, then mine. "We dare you to treat your guide like your Daddy, and you do anything and everything you are told as his little girl. Everything, Allegra. No exceptions. Quite daring to be under someone else’s control. What do you say? Yes or just say your safeword and you’re free to go…"
I catch Anna staring at me from the other side of the room, smiling with a little head nod of encouragement. Jeremy is standing a few feet to her left, a red ball gag in his mouth with black leather straps holding it in place.
He just winks.
Daddy.
Rye.
Identical twin of my father.
“I’ll go with yes.”’ I announce toward the man with the black hair. The crowd offering murmurs and controlled applause as my uncle pinches the top of my ear between his teeth.
I tense, my spine goes stick straight as his lips brush lower and he releases an exhale, then, “Good girl. We’re going to have some fun.
Shit.
I think I just came a little bit.
“You are fuckinglucky I was here tonight.” Rye turns as the man running the evening moves on to the next name. My uncle’s, voice takes on a harder, stern edge as he steps in front of me. His body blocking my visual field as I squeeze my core muscles, the slick warmth down low a constant reminder of the secret fantasies playing out in vivid Technicolor in my head. “What were you thinking coming here?”
“I wasn’t. This was Anna’s idea. It’s her bachelorette party.”
“You could have refused.”
“You try refusing Anna and Jeremy. Anyway, maybe I’m tired of thinking everything through, ad nauseam. Maybe it was a chance for me to not be Little Miss Perfect for once.”
I visualize my life, summed up in a series of perfect pliés and straight A’s. The sudden hardness of my answer is not necessarily directed at him, but this strange and unusual place has given me a dark freedom that emboldens me.
Rye rakes his open hand down the front of his face, his eyes eating me from my head down to my feet, then back up. “I don't think you understand what a girl like you looks like to some of these men.”
“What do you mean, ‘what I look like’?”
