This beautiful, magnificent, dark version of my father has me squeezing my fingernails into my palms so hard, blood is seeping through my skin. The urge I have to reach out and grab him is the only thing being controlled by this stupid arm bar.
So much of my life has been about control. Being perfect. And now, standing here in the middle of this club, I'm giving it all up. And I feel like I've taken my first deep breath in as long as I can remember.
I'm supposed to be the one holding everything together. But all I want to do right now is beg this man to explore parts of me that have never been explored. I want him to go full Lewis and Clark on my untouched territory. Plant his flag and lay claim to my continent.
Oh my God. This collar must be cutting off circulation to my brain.
There arethings going on inside my head that would make our future family holiday get togethers rather awkward.
Not to mentionwhat's going on inside my body. Everything feels like it's been turned up to ten. My hearing. The smells. His familiar cologne.
I bite down on my bottom lip and consider using my safe word, because my knees feel like Jello. So many years of perfect movement on stage, and right now I don't even feel like I can bear my own weight.
Is Rye just keeping me safe because I'm his niece? Or are those raspy inhales coming from beside me evidence that he's also struggling with whatever this pulsing sensation is between us?
“What are you thinking?” Rye’s chest brushes my shoulder blade as we watch several of the other newbies that were fully dressed when they came in with us are now in various states of undress taking on their kinks and dares.
A curvy blonde woman is in a black leather sort of dress, but the bodice is cut under the her breasts so they are fully exposed, swaying and moving as her ‘mentor-slash-guide’ attaches a glinting silver clip to each nipple, then adds grape-sized weights to the ends, drawing her nipples longer and longer as she shudders and gasps, her hands locked together in front of her by red rope laced multiple times around each wrist.
“I’m thinking…Mom would come ten kinds of undone if she knew my stand-in father has me at a kink club, introducing me to all the sinful, naughty things a prima ballerina should not know about. The underbelly of the world she’d call it, I’m sure.”
Without turning my head, I catch Rye’s nod in my peripheral vision, the slight pressure of his chest against my back incredibly comforting as I take in the circus of experiences happening around me.
“It’s not an underbelly, Dautie.” I suck in a quick breath. He hasn’t called me that in years. The nickname he gave me the night my mother married his brother. Something to welcome me to the family he’d said. “It’s society’s puritanical judgment that drives people into the shadows. There’s nothing inherently wrong with what they want or need or desire. Sex, pleasure, and sensation are natural. Tell me right now that you are not experiencing a sense of freedom and euphoria from being restrained?”
I think for a moment, the knots tighten low in my belly coiling as Rye shifts behind me, his masculine, spicy scent swirling in my nose as his hip presses against my ass.
Part of me wants to be snotty and bratty and angry that he’s in this place with all these women who willingly would do probably anything he wants.
He’s clearly comfortable here. He knows people. He has respect here, I sense it.
But I can’t deny the floaty sense of freedom the collar and restrictions have created since he put them on me.
My pulse hammers between my thighs. I’m salivating. Freedom and euphoria… I guess that about sums it up.
I try to nod, then realize that’s not an option. The top of the leather cutting into the soft flesh at the apex of my throat. “Yes,” I manage as a screech of pleasure, pain, or both comes from somewhere behind us. “I feel…calm.”
“Good girl,” he says, low and steady, and those two words send a wild wave of heat and excitement through me.
We stand and watch a few of the other newbies’ names being called. Several staff members now move through the attendees, handing out their little scraps of paper, the little black experiences they're all going to have. Round two will be up soon.
I'm trying to remember my safe word. What if I need it?
Watermelon.
That was the word I chose when I filled out my release form.
I smile, remembering all the summers Rye would bring watermelon to Fourth of July barbecues and teach me how to spit the seeds as my mother reminded us that we did not live in a trailer park.
Rye is so close his body heat wraps around me like a blanket. None of the other men in the club has cast a glance my way since he dragged me away. I don't know who he is to them, but if there’s a pecking order, he’s clearly at the top of it.
I have so many questions, and somehow none of them seem important right now. I'm completely at his mercy and more peaceful than I ever knew I could be.
"You doing okay, baby?" He leans toward my ear, his breath scented lightly with scotch. His favorite.
Ironic, right? My father's name is Scotch, his name is Rye.
Apparently, my grandparents enjoyed their amber liquid back in Scotland where my father and uncle were born. They moved to Michigan when they were both toddlers. Rye and my dad tell stories about their parents a lot.
