The Compound Read online

  Romance Unbound Publishing

  Presents

  The Compound

  Claire Thompson

  Edited by

  Donna Fisk

  Jae Ashley

  Cover Art by Kelly Shorten

  Fine Line Edit by Kevin Gherlone

  Ebook ISBN 9781937337667

  Copyright 2013 Claire Thompson

  All rights reserved

  Chapter 1

  “Offer yourself. Stop holding back. Give it to me!” The flogger struck her body with so much force Alexis was knocked out of position. She stumbled forward into the two men standing just in front of her who were watching the scene with gaping mouths and visible erections.

  They both reached for her with hot hands, catching and steadying her. Alexis twisted back to face Arthur as she pulled away from the strangers. She was panting, her skin on fire, her nipples hard as cherry pits. She wrapped her arms around her torso and licked her lips, wishing the men clustered around them would disappear.

  “Focus,” Arthur snapped, his dark eyes blazing. “Nothing matters but you and me and this.” He held up the heavy-tressed leather flogger. “Get back in position. Now.”

  With a nod, Alexis turned again, facing the men whose eyes moved hungrily over her body, which was covered only by a pair of black silk bikini panties. She grasped her left wrist with her right hand, extending her arms high over her head. She planted her bare feet firmly on the floor, shoulder-width apart.

  Arthur came up close behind her and she had to resist a sudden impulse to lean back into him. He reached for her long ponytail, which he lifted and placed over her shoulder and out of the way. Alexis almost smiled—Arthur was always so thoughtful.

  The flogger struck her ass, a heavy, thudding thwack that made her tense her muscles in order to stay upright. Stinging ribbons of leather struck her back and shoulders. The burn on her skin was matched by the heat in her cunt, which was stoked by each stinging cut of the lash.

  She was close. She could feel it. She was almost there, almost to that point where she could let go and soar, becoming one with the leather, one with the pain, one with the pleasure of pure, sweet submission…

  “Jesus, she’s so fucking hot. What I wouldn’t give to bury my cock in that.”

  The words distracted her, uttered by one of the gawkers that always surrounded her at every scene. She felt herself being pulled back to earth by the snickers and muttered agreement of the spectators. She could smell their body odor—sweat, stale cigarette smoke and cheap cologne. She opened her eyes, glaring at them, twitching and jerking as the flogger thudded against her.

  Another hard blow made her stumble forward, her concentration shattered, her balance off. She jerked away from the greedy hands of the men waiting to catch her and whirled toward Arthur, her anger at herself misdirected toward him. “I can’t do this. I can’t!”

  “You won’t,” he retorted, frowning, but he put down the flogger and reached for her robe, which he draped around her shoulders.

  “Show’s over,” he said to the men still crowded around them. The group parted as he led Alexis past them toward the juice bar. She perched gingerly on the stool, her ass still stinging from the flogging.

  She sipped fresh grapefruit juice over crushed ice, watching Arthur out of the corner of her eye. He had ordered coffee, into which he was stirring several spoons of sugar. He was frowning into the cup.

  “What?” she demanded, feeling defensive.

  “You know what. That scene back there. When are you going to move past whatever it is that’s holding you back?”

  “Maybe I can’t.” Alexis snapped angrily. “Maybe I’m just a player, a masochistic exhibitionist with something to prove.”

  Arthur looked at her, his kind, hound dog eyes searching hers. “Do you really believe that?”

  Alexis shrugged miserably, looking away. “I don’t know. I’m starting to think so. I get to a certain point and I just, I don’t know, I shut down.”

  Arthur nodded. “It’s not so easy here in this public venue. Maybe we should…”

  Alexis shook her head firmly. It wasn’t the first time one or the other of them had entertained the idea of meeting at a motel to try their scenes in private. Alexis knew in her bones that would be a bad move for both of them, and she reminded Arthur of this now. “No. You know you would hate yourself if you did something behind Naomi’s back. And that would make you hate me, too. I couldn’t bear that, Arthur, losing what we have now.”

  Arthur nodded, unconsciously playing with his wedding ring. His wife of twenty-six years was not at all into the BDSM scene, but understood Arthur’s need to explore his dominant side. After years of failed experimentation, and Arthur sneaking around to get his needs met, they’d come to a compromise that he could scene all he wanted at the BDSM clubs, as long as he kept it there, and kept his cock in his pants.

  Though twenty-five years Alexis’s senior, Arthur was still a handsome man, in a grizzled, rough sort of way, and she found it romantic that he was so obviously still in love with his wife, despite their sexual differences. Alexis never wanted to be the one to come between them, no matter how attracted she might be to her favorite scene partner.

  The scene, as much as she hated to admit it, was getting old. But what was left?

  Maybe it was because she was about to turn thirty, and she’d recently been taking stock of her life. On the surface she looked like a Manhattan success story—already a junior partner at a top CPA firm, making good money in a job she found both challenging and satisfying. She had a great apartment in a good neighborhood near Central Park, where she jogged each morning before work to keep herself fit and toned.

  She’d had several serious relationships in her twenties, the first two vanilla, the last one this past year with a dominant man she thought she might be in love with, but it had fizzled out. She’d met him at this very BDSM club, and had been excited by the promise of a 24/7 D/s relationship, but their ideas of what that entailed hadn't matched.

  Alexis longed to connect with what she believed was her inner submissive core, while James, it turned out, was more into the trappings of the scene—like having her wear a collar and meet him naked in the foyer when he got home from work. He wanted her to call him Master, and wake him up with a blow job each morning. He was good with a whip, but somehow always seemed to stop just before she reached that place that she felt, in her bones, would somehow set her free.

  She had come to realize it was more of a sexy game for him than anything. She rarely felt that tremor of fear and desire that infused her sexual fantasies with a blaze of erotic heat. She never truly submitted to him, not with her heart and soul, as she dreamed of doing with the right man, if such a man existed. In the end, she realized she had wanted more than he could give. Yet when he’d gone she was lonelier than ever, left to wonder if what she craved was unattainable.

  “Earth to Alexis.” Arthur was regarding her with a quizzical smile.

  “Oh, sorry. I was drifting.”

  Arthur studied her a moment and then said, “You’re sad.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement, and Alexis nodded, surprised to find a tear rolling down her cheek. She wiped it away, annoyed with herself. She was at the club to have fun, to forget, not to wallow in her misery.

  As if sensing her embarrassment, Arthur turned back to his coffee. He lifted the cup and took a long sip. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been thinking for a while now that you need more than you can get at a club like this. You need someone who can break past those barriers you place in your own way.”

  “Tell me about it,” she agreed morosely. “You saw how great things worked out with James.”

  Arthur smiled kindly. “James isn’t the only dominant fish in the
sea, my dear. In fact, between you and me, I’m not sure he’s dominant at all. He’s more of a slap and tickle kind of guy. I never thought he was right for you.”

  “Ha.” Alexis grinned in spite of herself. “Well, thanks for the heads up on that one.”

  “Like you would have listened to me,” he rejoined. “You were sure you’d found ‘the one’, remember?” He used his fingers to put quotations around the words.

  “Yeah,” she admitted with a sigh. “I don’t know if such a person exists, to tell you the truth. At least not for me. I’m scared to admit it, but I think I’m the problem, and that really sucks, you know?”

  “I might have a solution for your problem,” Arthur said slowly, turning on his stool to face her. “There’s a place I heard about recently, located upstate. It’s a BDSM training facility. It’s pretty intense, from what I understand. The primary focus is on slave training. Maybe the trainers there could help you get past whatever it is that’s holding you back.”

  Alexis felt a chill move down her spine, part fear, part thrill. Just the words slave training sent a tremor of excitement and longing through her entire being. “Tell me more,” she urged, leaning toward him. “Is there a website?”

  Arthur shook his head. “No website. It’s a very private place. Word of mouth only. Off the grid, I guess you’d say. You need a referral. I know someone who knows someone. If you were interested, I could probably get an email address for you to at least start the process.”

  “It sounds intriguing. But upstate? How far? I don’t have a car, you know. Not to mention I work sixty hours a week.”

  “Well, if you were serious about it, you’d have to take off from work. It’s not some part time commitment, Alexis. You live there during the training. We’re talking full immersion, 24/7. I believe the initial commitment is a month.”

  “A month? How could I ever take a month off work?” Even as she said this, she knew she could get a month if she wanted. In fact, just the week before, Jenny Olsen, her friend in human resources, had called Alexis into her office, handing her a printout of her accrued vacation time. “I wanted to give you the heads up. You have six unused weeks of vacation time. There’s a new policy coming down the pike—starting next year, whatever you don’t use, you lose. My advice is to take your time now. You know the senior guys will get priority once word’s out about the change.”

  Arthur raised his eyebrows. “When was the last time you took a vacation? I mean a real vacation, not a long weekend? Tax season is over.” He shrugged. “Maybe you should find out more about it before you make a decision. Maybe it’s more than you could handle anyway.”

  “Get me the email address,” she snapped. Arthur grinned and she grinned back, aware he’d set her up. The minute he’d suggested it was more than she could handle, she’d bristled, taking the challenge.

  Later that night alone in bed, Alexis reached for her trusty vibrator. She squeezed a dollop of lubricant onto the head and nestled the phallus between her labia. Flicking it to a low setting, she closed her eyes, surrendering herself to her favorite fantasies of being bound and controlled by a strong, sexy guy who took her past her limits with his touch, his words, his whip, his kiss…

  She is tied with strips of red silk, knotted around her wrists and ankles, pulling her into a human X. Her body is bathed in sweat, her dark hair flying as she twists and moans with each cutting kiss of the single tail he is flicking over her body. She is panting, nearly crying, biting her lip to keep from begging. “Stop, don’t stop, never stop…” Dropping the whip at last, he moves to stand in front of her, taking her face in his hands and kissing her lips, slipping his tongue into her mouth, while his hard, insistent fingers push into her wetness.

  She is on his bed, a large bed with soft sheets. He looms over her, his body hard and strong as he eases his huge cock inside her. “What are you?”

  “The place where your cock goes, Sir.”

  “I own you.”

  “Yesssss…”

  She flicked the vibrator to high and slid it inside herself. The vibrations whirred against her engorged clit, the phallus throbbing inside her. As his hard cock pummeled her to orgasm, Alexis tried to see the man’s face in her fantasy, but there was only shadow, and then even that slipped away.

  With a sigh, she turned off the toy and eased it from her pussy, dropping it onto the small towel by her bed so she’d remember to wash it in the morning. She closed her eyes and sighed, waiting for sleep to claim her.

  But instead of slipping into dreams, her conversation with Arthur kept coming back to her. The Compound. It sounded sexy and a little dangerous.

  Without realizing what she was doing, Alexis found her fingers had slipped back between her legs, sliding into the wetness still left from the lubricant and her own lust. She rubbed herself, imagining her breasts pressed against rough stone as a whip struck her again and again. Her wrists were cuffed into manacles set into the stone, her legs stretched wide and secured at the ankle.

  The man drops his whip at last and presses his hard body against her flayed, stinging back. She feels his hands spreading her ass, and then the press of his impossibly hard cock against her nether entrance. He eases himself inside her, moving slowly, but still she feels as if she’s being split in two by his girth. His fingers dig into her hips as he begins to thrust in and out of her ass. “Someday,” he murmurs, his lips touching her ear, “I will fuck your cunt. When you prove yourself worthy, when you submit without reservation, when you give of yourself completely.”

  Alexis moaned aloud, arching her hips, her fingers a flurry as she brought herself to a second orgasm, more powerful than the first. She lay still, a light sweat cooling on her skin, until the rapid tapping of her heart slowly subsided.

  She heard a pinging sound on her iPhone and reached for it from the nightstand beside her bed. She had an email from Arthur. The subject read: The Compound. The body of the email consisted of an email address: [email protected], along with a note from Arthur that she’d been cleared as a possible applicant. Just tell them the truth, he’d written, about what you’re looking for, and that you’d like more information about the program offered through The Compound. Don’t wuss out, Alexis. This is your chance. Take it. Good luck! Arthur.

  Before she could lose her resolve, Alexis copied the email address and pasted it into a new email.

  Dear Mistress Miriam,

  My name is Alexis Stewart…

  ~*~

  It had been two weeks since she first began her email correspondence with Mistress Miriam. The initial exchange had been conversational in tone, with Alexis being as honest as she could in expressing her needs, experience and goals. She’d been surprised but pleased to learn there was no cost to attend the program.

  Alexis had completed a lengthy questionnaire about her experience in the scene, likes, dislikes, goals, hard limits, etc. She’d undergone a complete physical and blood work to prove she was in good health and disease-free. She was impressed when Mistress Miriam told her all staff members at The Compound were held to the same high standards. Alexis had been thrilled when Mistress Miriam told her she appeared to be a good candidate for The Compound. She put in for and was approved for a full month’s vacation time at work.

  Arthur drove her the two hours from the city. As he pulled up in front of the large main building of what appeared to have once been a horse farm, Alexis experienced the same clutch of excitement and fear as when she’d been shipped off to sleep away camp as a child. Arthur gave her a quick farewell kiss on the cheek. “Good luck, kiddo.”

  There was still the face-to-face interview to undergo before she was formally accepted into the program. “If by some chance we decide you aren’t right for the program,” Mistress Miriam had assured her in her last email, “we have a driver who can give you a lift back to the city. No need to make your ride wait.”

  Alexis grabbed her bag and went up to the large front door. Before she could even lift the heavy brass
knocker, the door was opened by a tall young man dressed in only a black thong, a thick leather collar secured at his throat by a padlock. He didn’t speak, but only nodded toward her as he reached down to take her suitcase. He led her into a brightly lit office space with large bay windows that looked out over a huge swimming pool and beautiful flower gardens.

  An imposing woman in her late thirties stood as they entered, moving from behind her desk to take Alexis’s hand in hers. “Welcome, Alexis. I’m Mistress Miriam.” Her voice fit her perfectly, low and smooth, with just the hint of a British accent. She was a striking woman, with lustrous dark hair falling in waves to her shoulders and eyes a vivid blue. She wore a tailored red silk jacket that revealed a hint of bare nipple beneath, over red leather pants that looked soft as butter. She radiated confidence and power. She exuded raw sexuality, and for a nearly irresistible second, Alexis had the impulse to lean forward and kiss those full, sensuous lips.

  “You may wait outside, Josh,” Mistress Miriam said, turning her attention for a moment to the male slave. He nodded and stepped out, closing the door silently behind him.

  Mistress Miriam leaned against the edge of the desk and regarded Alexis with a cool gaze. Without any preamble, she said simply, “Take off your clothes, everything except panties.”

  Though she’d been expecting this, or something like it, Alexis’s mouth went suddenly dry. Under Mistress Miriam’s cool gaze, she stood and reached for the buttons of her blouse, praying her hands wouldn’t shake. Her eyes flicked toward a black leather flogger and a long, thin rattan cane that rested on the desk beside Mistress Miriam. Alexis let the blouse fall from her shoulders as she kicked off her sandals. She unbuckled her belt, opened her pants and slid them down her legs. Finally, taking a breath, she reached back and undid the clasps to her bra.

  “Fold your things and place them on the desk,” Mistress Miriam instructed. “Then stand at attention, hands behind your head.” Alexis reached for her things, placing them on the desk as instructed. Lifting her arms, she locked her fingers behind her head and waited, hoping she didn’t look as nervous as she felt.