Hard Limits Page 7

  She turned her head to look back at me, puzzled.

  “You need to shower off.”

  Wynonna was a small girl but she wasn’t petite like Skyler. I positioned her to face the shower spray, then rubbed a washcloth lathered with Dial soap onto her shoulders and down her arms. She had tats - a heart in memory of Granddad on one shoulder, a cross and John 3:16 on the other, and a red Harley on the left cheek of her ass. I turned her around. Water was falling over her face, beading on her skin, she had closed her eyes, and I knew this was the scene in the made-for-TV-movie where I was supposed to lean in and kiss her.

  But I was thinking again about Skyler. I was looking at Wyn and seeing Skyler, Skyler in my bathtub, Skyler standing naked in my towel. I was seeing Skyler. Why am I so obsessed with Skyler?

  Wynonna opened her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  I refocused.

  “Nothing,” I lied. “I was just enjoying the view.”

  Forget her. Forget Skyler.

  I touched Wynonna’s cheek then I kissed her hard, with all the passion I could find.

  It was a forty-minute drive in the dark back to my cabin. The first thing I did when I got home is turn on my computer. I opened my email and was disappointed to find no message from Skyler. But I saw that there was an email already from Wynonna. The subject line was “Wheredya go?”

  She woke up and I was gone, the email said. She was going to fix eggs and grits but since I snuck off early, that would have to happen next time. I didn’t reply.

  Instead, I logged onto Perv and went to Skyler’s page to check her Relationship status. Nothing had changed. I clicked over to Mistress Sinestra’s page. On the mistress’ wall I saw a message posted that morning to Skyler. It said, ‘Happy birthday, beautiful.’ Skyler had already responded, ‘And thank you, Mistress, for last night.’

  My stomach seized. So, that was the something that came up. That message at two in the morning that couldn’t wait. Lucy was back in Skyler’s life.

  Wynonna

  “Oh lord,” I heard myself say. “I can’t believe how good that feels.”

  Tanika looked up at me from the end of the bed. In one hand she was holding my right foot, her palm cupped beneath the heel. Her other hand was on my left calf, massaging the muscle. A few minutes before she’d finished washing my feet. Now she was giving me a luxurious foot rub.

  Almost as soon as she arrived at my hotel room she had told me to take off my clothes because she had a surprise for me. I did as I was told and sat at the edge of the bed on crisp, clean sheets while she busied herself with something in the bathroom. I looked at the luxurious white towel she had set on the carpet and wondered what she was up to.

  She returned, carrying a big plastic basin filled with warm, sudsy water. She set the basin on top of the towel. My feet went in next, one by one as she lifted each foot by the ankle.

  She’d thrown off her day clothes—including her fedora—and was down to her underthings, a lacy black bra and a sexy black thong. She was as gorgeous as ever.

  “Reflexology,” she told me. “It’s an ancient art. We have the Buddhists to thank.”

  She washed my feet carefully, giving each foot a gentle but firm massage. She worked the soles, kneading her thumbs into my sensitive flesh, lathering and massaging, working the pads, pulling the toes. After about twenty minutes had passed, she left me again and returned with clean water to rinse my pampered feet. She lifted them dripping and set them on the towel. She left me one more time to remove the basin and when she came back she had another towel in her hand. It felt incredibly soft against the clean skin of my soles.

  I was still sitting at the edge of the bed while she knelt before me. She stood suddenly and with a sly smile pushed me onto my back.

  “Move up,” she said, and I did until my head was on one of the oversized pillows.

  That put her at the other end of the bed. Lifting my right foot with one hand, she used her other hand to run a red nail along the instep of my foot. She lowered her face until her tongue rested on the top of my big toe. She blinked once, watching me. I saw seduction in her eyes and mischief. She stuck out her tongue and gave my toe a little flick. Reflexively, my foot jerked. She smiled in response and stuck out her tongue a little farther to press it flat against the sensitive underside of my foot. She licked my big toe before easing her lips down over it and drawing it into her mouth. She sucked. She sucked my big toe.

  “Wow,” I said. “No one’s ever done that to me.”

  Her focus and mouth came off my toe as her tongue slid down my foot to my heel and back up to the arch. She looked at me again before taking each toe, one by one, into her mouth and sucking.

  Her eyes said, You like this, don’t you?

  Hell yeah. She was making me wet.

  Her gaze lowered to my pussy. After Brett, I never did let the hair grow back. I discovered I like it shaved. Somehow it felt cleaner. Tanika’s beautiful pink tongue found its slippery way up my calf to the inside of my knees. My clit began throbbing. I swear I could feel it swelling to double its size. Then she was on my thigh and I was ready to explode before she even reached my nub. When she did it took only a few flicks of her tongue before I was moaning and lifting my hips. She grabbed my ass cheeks with both hands and dove into my pussy. Her mouth pushed my lips apart as her tongue traced the labia, then dipped into my center. I screamed and arched my back. It took only a few more strokes of her tongue on my clit to push me over the edge.

  Professor Kate Lourdes didn’t look like the publicity photo on the dust jacket of WAKE Up, America: How Kink Culture Degrades Women and Desensitizes Men, her controversial best-seller on BDSM. She was sitting behind a wood desk stacked with papers and hard-cover books in the faculty office of Emory University’s Gender Studies Department, looking at me, waiting for me to begin. She was the reason I was back in Atlanta, although meeting Tanika at the Renaissance Hotel was an added incentive.

  I put Professor Lourdes at forty-something with wispy bangs and short brown hair, puppy-dog eyes, and a disarming smile. She wore no makeup at all and looked only slightly like the slim blonde with the tight-lipped frown staring at me from the back cover of her text. I looked at her, at it, and back at her again. Twenty pounds and ten years ago, was what I was thinking.

  “Take it, Sheriff,” Professor Lourdes said. “And read it. Please. A gift from me.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I will.”

  Professionally, I have no opinion on the subject of kink outside the law. Acts of BDSM are illegal in the U.S., at least for now. The courts have held that consent is not a defense against charges of assault or abduction or a whole bunch of common sexual activities. Personally, I think what goes on in the bedroom of consenting adults is nobody’s business but their own. But the higher courts of the land and the Great State of North Carolina do not agree with me.

  I had a Daddy myself awhile back—Jenna Edwards. We met in my motorcycle club, and we were together for almost three years before she rode off to Oregon, her home state. She never did get used to the way we do things around here.

  “We need more involvement from law enforcement,” Professor Lourdes said. “Kink culture is rape culture.”

  WAKE’s slogan. I read it on the Women Against Kink Everywhere website.

  “Which is why I’m here,” I said, opening my notepad. “Like I told you on the phone, I’m investigating the disappearance of Lucille Lyon, also known as Mistress Sinestra.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Mistress Sinestra. She’s in my book. Not by name, of course.”

  “She is?”

  “Yes, while I was doing research I had occasion to visit The Indulgence, the dungeon here in Atlanta.”

  “I’m familiar with the club,” I said.

  “While there I witnessed a demonstration by Mistress Sinestra on piss play.”

  “Piss play?” I repeated.

  “Urophilia. It’s a fetish involving urine.”


  “Spell it, please.”

  “U-r-o-p-h-i-l-i-a. We can thank the Greeks. Ouron—urine—and philia—love. Love of urine.”

  I tried to keep my expression steady and objective.

  “Tell me about this demonstration.”

  Professor Lourdes took a deep breath, causing her breasts to heave under a white scoop-neck sweater. They lowered as she exhaled. I tried not to watch. I didn’t want her to peg me as one of those women, the ones who objectify other females. Her breathing also caused the rise and fall of a pendant on a leather cord around her neck. I focused on that.

  “Pretty necklace,” I commented. “Does it have a meaning?”

  Absently, she touched the lines of the geometric shapes carved on the round, pewter pendant.

  “No. Or maybe it does. The design may have a meaning I’m not aware of. It was given to me by a young woman in India. I was there consulting with feminists organizing against sex trafficking.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Getting back to the demonstration…”

  “Yes. Well, it happened at twelve a.m. and was called, appropriately, Piss Play at Midnight. It was advertised as a demonstration given by Mistress Sinestra on golden showers. Mistress Sinestra guaranteed that golden showers would, and I’m quoting here, ‘send your submissive into subspace.’”

  “Subspace?”

  “Subspace is a term used by kinksters to refer to a euphoric state of mind that is desired by submissives.”

  “Um-hmm,” I said. “So, you’ve met Mistress Sinestra.”

  “No, I didn’t meet her. We weren’t introduced, and I didn’t introduce myself. I deliberately kept a low profile. I tried to blend in with the crowd of women. It was a woman-only event.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Well, Mistress Sinestra began by giving an overview of urophilia. She tried to make it sound respectable by name-dropping—saying that people like Havelock Ellis and Ricky Martin are known urophiliacs.”

  “Go on,” I prompted.

  “She talked about urophagia, the practice of drinking urine, saying that about ninety-five percent of urine is water and five percent solutes like sodium and potassium. She assured us that urine is safe to drink.”

  I tried to maintain my best sheriff-neutral face but I didn’t quite succeed. There’s kink, and then there’s kink.

  “I know,” Professor Lourdes stated, in response to my unintentional grimace.

  “She talked about the history of urophilia up to the present, then spent some time discussing various positions for watersports before she moved on to the actual demonstration. She introduced us to SlaveGrrl, her sex slave. SlaveGrrl kept her head down and her eyes on the floor, so I never did get a really good look at her. They made an odd couple, I have to say. SlaveGrrl looked to be about five ten in her heels and Mistress Sinestra is shorter than I am. SlaveGrrl is a full-figured woman while Mistress Sinestra is quite petite. They were both dressed in leather corsets and lacy black panties.”

  She paused, remembering.

  “This was happening in what they call The Shower Room, which is a space of about twenty by twenty feet. The floor and walls are tiled a yellow color, and there’s an oversized mirror on the ceiling. Mistress Sinestra commented that the mirror is there so the slave can watch ‘the perversion of her Mistress.’ Everyone laughed, appreciatively.”

  I got the feeling I would find this story in her book, probably word for word.

  “There is recessed lighting and everything appears very golden in The Shower Room. There’s a polished brass hand shower at the far end of the space over a drain. Next to it is the play toilet, which is a transparent toilet seat set over a sturdy metal frame,” Kate said or maybe she was quoting herself.

  “Mistress Sinestra instructed SlaveGrrl to lie on her back and maneuver herself to slide between the legs of the frame. She did as she was told and when her face was positioned directly under the toilet seat, Mistress Sinestra told her to stay where she was. Mistress Sinestra then began berating SlaveGrrl, calling her a slut and cocksucker and the like. She gave several examples of how SlaveGrrl had disappointed her recently, things she had done wrong. Like forgetting to set out Mistress Sinestra’s favorite flogger for the evening, for example.”

  I nodded to encourage her to continue.

  “At this point, SlaveGrrl began to whimper audibly. I was in the second row of chairs, and I could see that there were a few tears rolling down from the corners of her eyes. Mistress Sinestra noticed the tears as well and told SlaveGrrl, in a very firm voice, that she had been a bad slave. She said, ‘You’ve been such a bad slave, I’m just going to use you as a urinal.’ Mistress Sinestra then removed her own panties and sat down on the toilet seat. SlaveGrrl’s face was now directly beneath her exposed genitalia. ‘This is what bad slaves deserve,’” she said, more to us than to SlaveGrrl. Then she released her bladder. SlaveGrrl closed her eyes, and I have to admit that so did I. I couldn’t watch.”

  “I see,” I commented.

  “Mistress Sinestra epitomizes what is wrong with kink culture. It degrades women. It uses them as human urinals, for God’s sake.”

  “I respect your concern,” I said. “But I do have to check. Where were you on the night of October second?”

  Her expression changed from one of moral certainty to the raised eyebrows of slight offense.

  “I don’t know. What night of the week was that?”

  “It was a Wednesday.”

  “Then I was in class. I have a graduate seminar on Wednesday evenings from seven o’clock until nine forty-five. Thinking Sexually Beyond Consent.”

  I closed my pad, put away my pen, and stood.

  “That’s all I need,” I say, giving her my business card. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful. Please call me if you think of anything else.”

  It took me fifteen minutes to drive from the Emory campus to The Indulgence. I timed the trip after I left Professor Lourdes. Lady Lustitia said Lucy left the dungeon sometime after ten o’clock on the night of the second. That would have given Kate Lourdes just enough time to drive from campus to the dungeon and make Lucy disappear.

  Brett

  “And thank you, Mistress, for last night.”

  The words were stuck in my head, going round and round like an old phonograph record. Her June fifteenth birthday present was a weekend of being flogged by Mistress Sinestra.

  Of course, I heard nothing from Skyler. I checked her Perv page obsessively and saw that she’d visited The Indulgence, playing with Lucy. She posted respectful thanks after each scene, adding, “I belong to you, Mistress, only you—body, heart, and soul.” It took all my will power to keep from posting, “I remember when you said the same thing to me.”

  Maybe I was wrong about her, I began to think. Maybe she wasn’t the innocent BDSM virgin she seemed to be. Maybe she had been waiting for someone like Lucy to come into her life. Maybe she and Lucy deserved each other.

  I tried to work on Sappho’s Revenge. I was behind on my deadline, and Judith was nagging, reminding me that the publisher wanted this book in print in time for holiday sales. Wynonna and I talked. I told her about Skyler and Lucy and how I felt. She said she understood. She suggested we try being ‘Friends with Benefits’. I said I’d try. But I was too distracted. Every morning when I logged onto Perv, before I checked my own page, I checked Skyler’s.

  Then one day at the end of June when I looked again, I saw something new. Her Relationship Status had changed. Before under Seeking she had listed Friends, Events, Play Partners. Now she was seeking none of these. Instead, her Status says only: Slave. Slave. And that was all.

  I saw that her former profile description was gone as well. In its place I read:

  This slave is honored to have been collared by Mistress Sinestra. This slave is now the property of its Mistress. It is hers to do with as She wishes. It gives all rights over its body to its Mistress. It will do whatever Mistress wants, whenever She wants it, however She wants it
. It will like it because its Mistress likes it.

  That was the whole of it, the entire profile. The Skyler I knew, the Classic Submissive, the classy Romantic who loved theatre and fashion and food was gone. That Skyler has been stolen away, replaced by this zombie who called herself this slave or it.

  It.

  Skyler didn’t answer my emails and when I gave in and used my landline to call her, I went straight to voice mail.

  “Skyler,” I said. “It’s Brett. I just want to make sure you’re all right. That’s all. And then if you tell me to stay away, I will. But I’m not going to stop until you tell me to stop. Until you say red.”

  I gave Skyler a few more days and when I didn’t hear back, I did something impulsive. I’m not an impulsive personality type. I’m slow to act, methodical, deliberate. Acting on impulse is out of character for me.

  I emailed Wynonna and cancelled our hook-up date. Instead, I drove south. Skyler lived in Willardville, a small city at the north end of The Perimeter, in a secure building downtown. There was a private code required to enter that Skyler gave me in a generous moment. She used her birthday, of all things, the number everybody is always warned not to use. I input it when I arrived and was in.

  She lived in a sixth-floor condo with a view of Midtown, Downtown, and a red smear of sun going down most evenings over the cityscape. It was late, after eleven, when I knocked on her unit. Despite my best efforts at self-control, my hands were shaking. I forced myself to take a deep breath. No response. I knocked again. Nothing. Once more. That time the door swung open. It wasn’t Skyler.

  Lucy was shorter than I had imagined. For some reason I’d expected her to be tall. But she was short, a full head shorter than me. Illogically, this made her presence all the more insulting. I heard myself writing her in my head, playing a role in my personal Greek drama. She was a small woman, small of stature and small of character.

  She was wearing a lacy black nightgown that made her look as if she just stepped out of a B-movie that had tried to elevate itself to film noir.