receiving?"
Ellen
widened her eyes even further. "Pain?"
He
snorted back his laughter. "No, silly. Pleasure. You said she wants to
receive… you think she'd be happy to reciprocate at all?"
Tossing
her hair over her shoulder, the girl had winked at him. "Let's just say, I
don't think she'd take a lot of convincing. Let me know when you have some free
time and I'll arrange the rest."
Unfortunately,
the auction preparations and Christmas had made it impossible for Dominick to
set aside a big enough slot of time until almost a full week after his chat
with Ellen.
All good , he told himself, squirting on just the
tiniest spritz of his favourite cologne. The
best things come… and all that. At least the delay had given him plenty of
time to prepare. It was all he could do not to rub his hands together gleefully
at the thought of finally indulging his own desires once more.
At
first he'd worried that she'd be excruciatingly unattractive, but a couple of
days after their little chat Ellen had pointed her out, surreptitiously, in the
canteen, and to his amazed joy, Janice was anything but. Not the fake,
glamorous type of woman who turns heads everywhere she goes… instead she had a
natural, understated beauty. As he headed down to the dungeon to set up,
Dominick cracked his knuckles. He couldn't wait to see a whole lot more of
Janice close up.
***
Her
heart was pounding so fast she could almost hear it. Despite the fact that
she'd only recently showered, Janice could already feel the sweat beginning to
bead on her forehead. She was still reeling from the events of the past two
hours. Damn Ellen. Damn her to hell and
back for putting me through this.
At
first she'd thought her friend had been joking when she'd told her to get ready
for a blind date. "Pick something sexy to wear," Ellen had said,
breezily. "Then come see me and I'll do your hair and make-up."
"You
didn't."
"I
didn't what?"
"You
did not tell Master D… Master
D"—damnit, she was never able to say his name out loud—" him what I told you the other day, did
you? In the strictest confidence ?"
Janice was so angry she could barely breathe. But underneath her outrage, there
was something else. A thick, steady thumping between her thighs she couldn't
deny.
"Just
call me your fairy godmother," Ellen had said, with a wink. "You,
too, shall go to the ball, Cinderella. Although," she surveyed her friend's
comfortable clothing with a critical eye, "I can't help you with the ball gown.
That's your department. Go pick something sexy. Black. And heels."
"Are
you kidding me? There's no way I would ever, ever go through with this! I don't
even know what you've told him, for fuck's sake!"
"The
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." Ellen reached out and
took Janice's suddenly clammy palms. "You think he'd hurt you?"
Despite
herself, Janice giggled.
"You
know what I mean. In a bad way?"
"No.
And besides, that's what safewords are for."
"Trust
me, honey. If you don't do this, you are gonna regret it forever . Besides. It took so much planning, not to mention
co-ordinating his schedule with your day off! You really wanna be the one to go
down there and tell him the whole thing isn't going to happen?" Her eyes
narrowed. "He'd be so upset."
Ellen
always did have a tendency to be melodramatic, but Janice found herself
trotting obediently to Wardrobe all the same… this time to dress herself. She
didn't think for one cotton-picking minute that the Master Gaoler would give
two hoots whether or not she showed up, but that insistent hum between her legs
was making it clear that perhaps she ought to at least go down and see him. And
if she was going to go down and call it off, she might as well look her best.
And
so it came to pass that, two hours later, with her auburn curls straightened to
fall, sleek and glossy, down her back, wearing a rather tight black silk
negligee and patent black platform heels, her face perfectly made up and every
inch of her body