“Relax, Maddie,” Serena said, her voice matching the meaning of her name. Calm. Peaceful. Serene.
Maddie felt a little like her own nickname. Angry. Not angry, exactly, but frustrated and self-conscious. “Do you want me to relax or to sit up straight?”
A low chuckle came from Serena. “You’re going to have to learn how to do both and how to moderate your tone unless you like being spanked.”
Maddie stopped and looked up at her new mentor. “He’s not going to spank me.”
She had a hard time believing that Deke spanked women. He wasn’t like that. He was normal. Except she could see it in her head. When she’d first started researching D/s, she’d been able to close her eyes and see Deke staring down at a woman’s bare ass draped over his lap. He would touch her, stroking the cheeks before he brought his hand down.
The woman was always her.
A brow cocked over Serena’s eyes. There was nothing about the beautiful woman’s stance that told Maddie she held an ounce of self-consciousness. She wore an emerald green corset and what was probably considered proper underwear for the fet set—a teeny, tiny thong that proved Serena Dean-Miles believed in a certain grooming routine that Maddie needed to get on board with if she was going to wear anything close to that thong. “So you’re going to hang out with a guy who is into the lifestyle and will probably want to watch the two of you practice, and you’re not going to be spanked? Because that part isn’t always about punishment. It’s actually rarely about punishment at Sanctum. It’s play. You’re not planning on playing?”
Maddie didn’t like the fact that she was challenged at every turn here. Every time she opened her mouth someone pointed out that she was a dumbass and all her plans were stupid. Not in an impolite way, but that was how it felt. “I guess I didn’t really think about the physical part. Nolan is more of an intellectual person. We talk about D/s.”
“Yes, that’s usually the first step. There’s a lot of talking in D/s, but at the heart it’s a physical thing,” Serena said. “Why do you think he’s interested in the lifestyle?”
“There’s a woman he likes, and she’s involved in D/s.” He’d talked about his relationship with someone named Jane. “She apparently wants a Dom, and she won’t have a relationship with him until he’s been cleared by a trusted top. It seems weird to me, but he’s weird, so it tracks.”
It was obvious Nolan was deeply involved with this woman, so involved he would do almost anything to be with her. That was when she’d realized she could use her fake D/s status to get into Nolan’s inner circle and have a shot at figuring out what happened to her coworkers.
“So this guy wants to learn how to have a D/s relationship from you and your Dom, and you don’t think he’ll want to study you? You don’t think you’ll have to scene for him?”
She wanted to growl. She hadn’t thought at all. She’d fallen down a rabbit hole with no plans about how she would get out, and now she was here and Deke was still so delicious it hurt to look at him and she was in panties never meant for the masculine gaze. And she’d told her boss that she liked a good spanking. For that alone she could be fired, much less actually getting spanked in front of the man. No. There had been no thinking on her part, and it wouldn’t do any good to take it out on the woman who was trying to help her. She settled back on her heels and drew her shoulders straight, lengthening her spine. “I will most likely have to do that, so I’m going to stop fighting.”
“Oh, I doubt that very much,” a deep voice said.
A deep, rich as sin, masculine voice that practically stroked against her skin. She closed her eyes because Deke was behind her, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see him in a set of leathers. Somehow she got the feeling he wouldn’t be wearing the male equivalent of her granny panties.
“You will probably fight me the whole damn time,” Deke said with a chuckle. “It’s all right. I like a good fight. Serena, you look lovely and do your Masters proud. I appreciate you working with my submissive.”
That sounded formal. She forced herself to open her eyes. She noticed Serena’s head had dropped as though she was following some sort of protocol. Yeah. She knew about protocol, and her brain was on the fritz. She’d studied for months but was finding the practical application of all that reading and watching a bit hard. She lowered her head, trying to keep her spine straight and her hands on her thighs.
“I’m enjoying spending time with her, Master Deke,” Serena replied. “We were going over proper form when greeting one’s Master in a formal setting.”
“You should have gone over proper presentation in a formal setting. The corset is lovely, but what the hell, Maddie?” He’d dropped the deep tone and sounded more like the Deke she knew.
She brought her head up now because no amount of protocol would stop her from defending her sad-sack undies. “I wasn’t planning on getting half naked and…”
Yup. She shouldn’t have looked. She should have kept her head down, eyes closed, and then she wouldn’t have the sight of Deke Murphy—former high school goofy jock—looking like a decadent sex god in leather pants and a vest with no shirt on. It showed off his chest. The man had not let himself go. Not in any way. She’d been in love with the boy.
The man was even more devastating.
“And?” He stared down at her.
She’d been saying something. “And I hadn’t done laundry in a long time.”
His lips quirked up in a smirk that shouldn’t be so freaking appealing. “So you have a bunch of sexy underwear at home?”
He would probably look through her drawers. He seemed way more nosy than he’d been before. “Not really.”
“You will when I’m done. I understand you want to be comfortable in the normal course of your day, but when we’re playing, I dress you. You’ll be dressed to please me, to show off every inch of your beauty.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m not…”
Serena hissed in a way that told her not to finish that sentence.
She didn’t. Just sat there and tried to figure out what the hell to do next. The lifestyle was pretty clear on one thing. Every body was welcome. Slim, fat, disabled, scars, or perfect skin. They were all to be considered beautiful and worthy of worship and pleasure. It was one thing she wanted to actually take away from this. “I’m sorry, Sir. I was about to say something I shouldn’t. I’m trying to wrap my brain around the fact that my body is beautiful, but I’ve got a couple of decades of societal norms pressing down on me.”
“Your boyfriend doesn’t tell you how gorgeous you are?” The deep voice returned.
He kept going back to her not-exactly boyfriend, who she hadn’t even kissed yet and never would now. “We haven’t slept together. He doesn’t know.”
Deke knelt down, his hand going to her chin, lifting it so she had to look him right in his gorgeous eyes. “You look amazing, Madeline. You’re sexier than you were in high school, and I thought you were the sexiest, most beautiful thing I’d ever seen back then.” He let the moment hold, their eyes locked on each other before that smirk was back. “But the panties are going to go as soon as possible.”