Nothing Less Read online

  “Phillip, I need to be fucked before we get there.”

  Phillip, a reasonably sane man in his early forties, looked across at her, eyes peering gently above the rim of very expensive sunglasses. “We’d be late,” he commented, selecting from a wide range of possible objections, not least of which was the sacrilege involved in fornicating before a funeral.

  K’s hand strayed between her legs, up under the black silk of the decently cut funeral dress he’d picked for her. “Phillip, I know. But I never ask for anything and you said, under the circumstances, I could. Ask for things, I mean.”

  “Take your hand out of your cunt,” he said mildly, keeping focus on the road, a twisting and dingy back road in her native state, northeastern and perfectly generic.

  K was panting. She needed to be put in line and fast, or was she merely manipulating him into doing so? She’d been treated to long lectures on the subject of domination from the ‘bottom up’ as Phillip called it, in which slaves try to orchestrate the circumstances of their own slavery. Phillip’s favorite way to instruct was while K was on the rack, or otherwise bound and gagged. It was sort of a running joke between them that she was the perfect audience for him that way.

  Honestly, she never found him longwinded, and she loved him, adored him, all the more so for his utter control over her. She was a wreck when he found her, drowning in a BDSM chat room. She didn’t even know what BDSM was—she’d thought it was some kind of new support group, of which she belonged to dozens. Adult children of alcohols. Co-dependants Anonymous. Overeater’s Anonymous. Sexaholics Anonymous. Anonymous Anonymous.

  She’d never forget the color her face turned in front of her monitor when Phillip, who was acting as the chat room moderator, defined for her in concise terms what sexual domination and submission was. She was revolted, of course, but she also hung around. He was her big brother, keeping the sharks off her back, and in a few weeks they were thick as thieves. And then came the fateful day when he said they should meet.

  She’d panicked. Over the internet she was bold, sassy, coquettish. But in person? She hated how she looked. Was obsessed with the thirty extra pounds she couldn’t fight, and with the low self-esteem, she was forever dragging. Stephen told her looks didn’t matter. Character did. Well that was easy for him to say; he turned out to be gorgeous. Five-foot-ten, clean lined, with the build of a dancer, elegant, yet well muscled. His angular cheekbones and haunting amber eyes didn’t hurt either, or his silver gray hair, only slightly thinning. She wanted to turn and run when she first saw him sporting the red carnation that was their mutual identification sign. With his slacks and Armani jacket, she was ‘way out of her league.

  Luckily he’d spotted her turning tail, about to make a hasty getaway, and had promptly called her cell phone. Their first date was spent at separate tables of an outdoor cafe, the entire conversation being wireless. Graciously, he’d picked up her tab and her cell phone bill. Eventually, she was able to talk to him face to face, and she quickly discovered he really did care about her soul.

  Besides which, she really did end up believing he found her attractive just as she was. In fact, when it came time for her to move in, he told her that he was putting her on a diet for her sake and not his. Phillip’s regimen was brutal. She was to be up at five each morning and all her exercise—in his custom-made workout room, of course—was to be done naked. Very quickly she was forced to confront her physical self.

  In six months, she was a changed woman. Svelte, positively gorgeous. And utterly owned. K—who’d been Katherine before Phillip renamed her—was proud of her ability to give pleasure and to absorb pain. Her man was fond of his toys, including a full range of whips, floggers and other instruments that he kept hanging on the wall of their bedroom. It never failed to give her a thrill, deep and erotic, every time she passed them by, especially when she was nude.

  Phillip was very straightforward about his passions, though, and he detested the little games and gimmicks, as he called them, which are popularized in the scene. He didn’t like to be called master, nor did he refer to her as a slave. K was a nickname, a term of affection. She never even called him “sir,” which he thought was another burlesque rendering of power- exchange relationships.

  In the beginning, when K was really into the literature and websites, she used to whine to

  him about submission ceremonies and being branded and so on. “You know who you are,” he’d said dismissively. “I know who I am. We’re grownups. We don’t need to play dress up.”

  Phillip was that very rare bird in the leather world, a totally self-made man. He eschewed parties, clubs and all the rest of the group lingo. The only reason he’d been hosting the chat room where they met, in fact, was as a favor to a friend. K was only the second woman he’d ever had a BDSM relationship with. The first was a fiery redhead whom he mentioned very seldom.

  “If I fuck you, K, it’s going to have be out here on the road,” Phillip was saying now, having lifted K by the hair off his trousered cock where she’d tried to suction herself.

  She looked at him longingly. She really was being naughty, and if it weren’t for her brother’s funeral today, she was pretty sure he would be pulling over not to copulate but to take his belt to her. Actually, that would be fine, too. Unlike novel heroines, K didn’t actually crave pain, but it was something she needed to go through. And there was an afterglow, especially when followed up with rough sex and that would be just the fix to get her through this afternoon.

  Phillip did stop the car. With a very rare sigh, he said, “Baby, you really are out of sorts, aren’t you?”

  “Uh huh.” She nuzzled the hand he ran over her short hair and round her cheek. K’s hair had always been long, but Phillip had changed that. He was right, too, and once she got over the fear that no one would ever want to see her face, she was convinced herself.

  “Go around the back then. Raise your skirt, lay across the trunk, pull down your panties and wait for me.”

  K nearly came right there and then. She could just kiss him. The whole remark about fucking her on the road had been sarcastic, meant to put her off. Really, public humiliation wasn’t his thing at all. Phillip considered it a sign of weakness to be motivated by the attentions and reactions of others, even when it came to sex. So this was for her. All for her. Because she did get off on being debased, pushed to the limits of shame and paradoxically, she needed that now to gird her ego for the afternoon ahead.

  It wasn’t saying goodbye to Jimmy. No, she’d done that a long time ago. It was the survivors. Her flesh and blood. They were the ones who could still suck her dry if she didn’t stand up to them, for her sake, for her brother’s sake.

  The gravel crunched under K’s heels. She was supposed to feel somber in black, but it only made her feel sexier. Kinky. The disadvantage of being leather folk, she supposed. It was still so quiet out here, like when she was a girl, riding her bike for miles and miles into the country, pretending it was a rocket, to transport her to some other solar system or at least into a home where scotch bottles weren’t smashed on tables and where frying pans were used for frying and not for the back of people’s heads.

  To this day, K hated to have her head or neck touched. The day she could finally wear a collar for Phillip, she cried. Again, it was more for her than for him. “B and D isn’t about jewelry, K, it’s a state of mind, an opening of the heart.”

  “But women like jewelry,” she’d countered. “It’s important to them.” That was something she’d taught him in their time together.

  Each footstep to the trunk seemed to last forever. It was like that whenever she was moving toward certain punishment. Eternal. Surreal. Like being in the land of God.

  Whatever that meant.

  K laid herself lovingly over the powder blue automobile. As with everything of Phillip’s, she treasured the tiny automobile. It was painstakingly chosen and cared for, like her, and it reflected important things about the man. She’d met some other subs
online and as far as she was concerned, they’d been from some other planet.

  “Your dom lets you wear clothes around the house?” one had asked her. “And he lets you have your own e-mail account, too?”

  Phillip had laughed when she told him. “Some men are insecure, baby,” he’d tousled her hair. “They don’t know how to dominate, so they settle for control.”

  She tried to go to school on that subtle difference every day of her life. Phillip wouldn’t even take her on as a sub until she learned to dominate myself. Only then, he told her, could she give him the gift of submission she wanted.

  “None of us control anything in this world, K,” he’d told her. “There’s too much outside of our power. But when we express ourselves fully, then we imprint the environment, leave a signature. Nothing abusive, mind you, but still definite domination.”

  “You’re trembling,” said Phillip now as he laid his hand on her velvet-covered back.

  “Yes,” she managed, scarcely able to speak. She tried to focus on the sexual heat to combat the welling tears. There was a lot to think about: She was in peril, her knickers down, arse exposed. Cars could pass. It happened all the time. She’d be seen. Her master was about to fuck her.

  God, she was horny. Why couldn’t that be enough?

  “Come here,” he told her as she began to shudder.

  The first teardrops fell on his shoulder, where they belonged.

  “I’ve never seen you cry,” he observed, which seemed strange on account of all the times he’d brought her to tears under the lash.

  When she reminded him of that he laughed. “Not like this, sweetheart.”

  K sucked in a ragged breath. Jimmy was too goddamned young. It wasn’t fair. He wasn’t the one who’d fucked up their childhood. Why did he have to be the sacrifice? The victim offered up to the almighty bottle? The last time K had seen him he’d picked her up at the airport. He must have stopped drinking just long enough so he could drive there and back sober. The shaking was so bad that he was pouring sweat. He tried to cover it with talk about the new restaurant he was opening.

  Forty-three fucking years old. That’s all he was. Meanwhile, their father was still alive. What gives him the right? At least the mother had the decency to die when they were in high school. She shouldn’t say though. She’s bad. She’s not worthy. Blah. Blah. Fucking blah.

  “K, there’s something I want to show you. I was saving it, but maybe the right time is now.”

  K sniffled, wiping away little girl tears. “Is it a hammer?” she quipped. “To knock some sense into me?”

  He winced just a little, like it hurt him, too. The sheer emotion of it surprised K. “Don’t talk that way,” he chided.

  In silence, she waited for him to pull out whatever it was he had in his pocket. It was a

  box, black, made of crushed velvet like her dress. She was trying desperately to think of something witty or sarcastic to say about it, but it was too late. He’d already opened it.

  The ring flashed in the sun.

  The next thing she knew, he was down on one knee. The gesture freaked her a little; she was the one who should kneel, always. She had to her hand on his shoulder for support.

  “K, I’d like us to make this arrangement permanent.”

  Her head swam. He could have told her he was gay and wanted to be her bitch and she’d have been less shocked. In all their conversations about the future he’d made it clear that, for him, true mastery was lived in the moment; a kind of Zen BDSM thing. If she so much as asked about tomorrow, let alone forever, he’d send her packing to stand in her punishment corner so fast it would make her head spin.

  “Phillip, I don’t understand.”

  “Conventional marriage won’t work, of course,” he was saying, her hand sandwiched between his two much larger ones. “Neither one of us wants a vanilla commitment. However, I do find myself exceedingly fond of you, K. A future without you, frankly, is unacceptable to me.”

  Her lower lip began to tremor. She couldn’t get any words out; her heart had swelled to the back of her throat and she was too full. All she could do was try to pull him up so he’d hold her. When the breath finally came to her, she screamed it, lifting both legs off the ground so he could be the only thing holding me up.

  “Yes!”

  How she loved him at that moment. His delicious body, how he worked it and mastered it so carefully, the way he sipped his tea—never coffee—made from mint leaves, and how he read only certain sections of the paper, folding it a million times to isolate each article. It was a habit, he’d said, acquired from years of commuting on the Long Island Railroad.

  That and a million other things: biceps and pipe tobacco, arse cheeks she loved to kiss, silver gray hair to stroke and recipes for frappes and boring stodgy old music and that look in his eye when she’d pushed it too far and even the way he tapped his fingers, waiting by the microwave—and of course there was the way he would hold her and tie her and punish her.

  “Oh God, Phillip. Can we tell everyone at the funeral? Oh, God. I haven’t even tried the ring on. Can you forgive me?”

  He took her finger, sliding the white gold diamond ring over it. “Of course, I will,” he smirked. “Right after I tan your hide in the hotel room tonight.”

  She thought of the new crop he’d picked up at the saddle shop on the way up. She started melting all over again. As for the ring, it was the most beautiful thing ever put on a girl’s finger. Simple, elegant, and—she was afraid—too expensive.

  “Phillip, I’d have settled for a simple band.”

  “I wanted you to have this.”

  “Yes,” she smiled, the word sticking in her throat. “Phillip.”

  He smiled, like a wise grandfather looking on a precocious, but troubled, child. “You can use the word if you want, K.”

  She bit her lip. Could he be saying this, really?

  K got as far as the first sound. “Mmm...”

  “Master,” he completed, taking both her hands in his. “I’m your master, K, if you’ll have me.”

  No power on earth could keep her standing now. “It is you who must have me.” Her lips found his loafers, right here in the open air. “My master.”

  How the word rolled off her tongue. Indulgently, she licked at his shoes, cleaning the day’s dust.

  “Enough of that,” he growled not unkindly. “We have a funeral to go to.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Master.”

  And a good funeral it would be, too. Consider it a double celebration. Two had found freedom in the family. Jimmy through death, and she through a very special kind of love few can understand. K would never share the details with her father or the others. It would be overwhelming enough for them to see her happy.

  She hoped Jimmy would see her, too. Because this ring, this love was as much for him as it was for her.

  “I’m going to live, Jimmy,” she whispered just as she was about to get back into her master’s car. “For you, for me. For all of us.”

  Chapter Five

  Stacy and The Ranch Hand

  Stacy Rivers was a widow, though a young one. Barely twenty-five, she had a firm, ripe body and needs... peculiar to her sex ...secret needs, needs even her beloved husband had been unable to meet. Stacy had never dreamed of asking the noble and loving Hank Rivers for the kind of rough handling she craved. Nor had she let him think for a second he wasn’t satisfying her fully with his metronomic pounding, steady as the second hand of his grandfather’s railway watch and as uninspiring as the cattlemen’s magazines he was always reading at the dinner table.

  Who knew that a bull could gore a man like that, anyway? In thirteen seconds flat—a time confirmed accidentally by watch, just as he would have wanted it—her beloved Hank was history. A shadow in her mind, a name attached to hers.

  And now she was just plain Stacy again, hot and eager as a young girl. She hadn’t

  expected that. The sexual cravings, the tight, butterfly feelings
as she walked the range, sipping coffee at sunrise in her cotton dresses. And late at night, nude under the covers, her hand taking the pulse between her quivering legs. But what could she do, living all alone in the main house, overseeing the ranch hands at a distance, hiding behind her sewing? How could she find someone to take her in hand?

  Because that was exactly what she had to have now. It was inevitable.

  It started with a series of dreams, vivid as daylight. She, in a light summer dress, pink or yellow, out in the meadow, or by the corral; he in dusty jeans, chaps, western shirt insolently open to the third or even fourth pearl button.

  He has gloves, and a lariat and always there is a grin on his ruddy face. As he spins the lasso, her heart pounds. She tries to run, but he always manages to capture her and have his way. Each night, Stacy would awake in a cold sweat, her vagina dripping, her breasts swollen and needy. It wasn’t fair, she told herself. What good did it do to be tortured by needs she couldn’t fill?

  To combat the dreams, Stacy took long walks and horseback rides. But this only made her fantasize all the more, the scenario blossoming into a full-grown vision in the out of doors.

  In her mind’s eye, down every twisting, dust covered length of trail, she saw herself running, legs and arms pumping in her best girl fashion, and that lusty hunk of masculinity barreling down on her tail, on horseback. The lasso swings, whipping in the wind, and then it snakes down over her, drawing tight as she struggles, pinioning her arms to her sides.

  The ground is hard and dusty, and she is humiliated and furious to be brought down. Over and over she rolls, dirt and grass getting in her hair, the hem of her skirt riding higher and higher with each roll.

  He doesn’t seem the least bit concerned that she might get away. He maddeningly takes his time, looping the end of the rope over the saddle horn, dismounting when it suits him, taking long, lazy strides in his well-worn leather boots, till at long last, he’s standing over her exhausted, sweat covered body. The toes of the trail-kissed boots inches in front of her face—close enough for her to kiss, if he so chose to have her do this!