“To be fair, I don’t really deal with this all the time. The kind of press I’ve been getting has changed since the lovely Lady Elena came into my life.”
“So what you’re saying is I’m serving my purpose?”
“I wouldn’t put it like that…”
Someone with a headset came to escort us backstage. Through the walls and backdrop of the set, I caught glimpses of the audience and the bright lights of the stage.
“It takes all this setup and equipment just to produce a talk show?” Elena whispered, looking around in awe.
“You should see the set of a big budget action flick.”
I could hear Zuri giving the intro setup for our segment.
“Please welcome Alex Chase and Lady Elena!”
Before Elena had time to overthink it, I tugged her out and we were striding towards the couch. She held my hand the entire way without argument and let me keep holding it once we’d settled on the guest couch. The audience cheered and screamed.
Over all the noise, we could hear a chorus of, “Step on me, Mistress! Please step on me!”
Zuri raised her eyebrows and pretended to look shocked. “Now that’s one we haven’t heard on the show before.”
The audience roared with laughter and Elena gave them a sly wink.
Zuri greeted us, then said, “All right, let’s address the elephant in the room. You two are an item. You were out at dinner and things got a little dicey with the paparazzi. The story going around is that Lady Elena was wasted and had to be carried out and Alex got unnecessarily aggressive with some photographers…but we’ve got some video here that paints a different picture.”
She showed the video on a giant screen behind us, and the audience gasped and booed when the photographers surrounded Elena and she fell. She was sitting rigid next to me on the couch, but she smiled sheepishly when the audience made it abundantly clear they had her back. Then, when I went on my little rampage, they cheered with delight. When I finally swept her into my arms and carried her to the car, the screams from the audience were deafening.
Zuri was fanning herself when the video ended. She said, “And once more with music…”
They’d set the video to my brother’s current hit song and it was hilarious. As Elena laughed along with the audience, she relaxed against me, so I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.
When the video ended, Zuri looked at her. “So what’s it like to be rescued by this hunk of a man?”
Elena smiled coyly. “I was a little distracted at the time, but I might be watching that again a few times when I get home.” She fanned herself the same way Zuri had, giving me a flirty smile. Everyone laughed. “Next time, it might be nice to be the one doing the rescuing, though.”
Zuri took the cue. “So let’s talk about that. You’re used to being the one in charge…can you tell us about your job?”
“I’m a professional dominatrix.” The audience whistled and cheered.
Zuri asked, “So you hurt people for a living?”
It’s funny how just a few weeks earlier, I would’ve automatically associated her job with pain, but I was coming to understand just how small a piece of it the pain really was.
Elena laughed lightly. “Sometimes. It’s mostly playing out fantasies that many people wouldn’t consider normal, giving people a safe space to explore their desires without fear of judgment. Sometimes, that involves pain, but more often than not, it doesn’t.”
“What kinds of things are people into then?”
“Oh gosh, anything from elaborate role-play to bondage to wild stuff you would never think of as someone’s fantasy—dancing in raincoats, standing on blueberries, wiping a chalkboard clean—you name it, someone is probably into it.”
Zuri looked between us with a mischievous smile. “So…how did you two meet?”
I let out a bark of laughter and shook my head while the audience giggled hysterically at what she was implying. If only they knew.
Elena grinned and waved her hands dismissively. “He’s not a client if that’s what you’re getting at…”
Zuri said, “There’s a rumor going around that you may have met because Alex here will be playing Lucas Steel. Any truth to that rumor?”
Elena was a born actress. She looked at me with a naughty grin and said, “Should we tell them?” I would’ve believed she was deciding this spur-of-the-moment. I shrugged and glanced at the audience with my eyebrows raised in question.
