Chapter 2

The Library, beside the dining room, had a distinct lack of books. There were plenty of bookshelves, but no books. Instead the shelves were filled with BDSM toys and equipment. Some antique pieces were in glass cases, the built-in lighting glinting off timeworn metal and leather. The one she liked best was an early model manual vibrator, used in Victorian times to allow doctors to treat "hysterical" women. What they'd actually been doing was bringing the women to orgasm. The story went that the doctors who offered the treatment got so tired they invented the vibrators to save their hand and arm muscles from strain.

In the scope of human history, that hadn't been long ago, but medicine had changed. Drastically.

Don't think about work.

Sejal looked around the library. It had been a while since she'd been in here. Hach—no, Master Sato, she'd finally get to once again call him Master Sato—preferred playing out in public, in the open air courtyards, and they'd continued to play there, even when she was topping.

In addition to the bookcases there was an L-shaped bar, where subs and Doms alike took a hand at playing bartender. There were cocktail tables set up near it, the tables made out of old wine and whiskey barrels.

A massive fireplace, surrounded by tile that fit the mission style of the architecture, drew the eye. Rugs were laid out in front of it, and there were baskets of pillows waiting, to be used to ensure the comfort of subs who needed to kneel for long periods.

The library was fuller than she’d ever seen it, which made sense since almost the entire membership was at Las Palmas tonight. Couples sat at the cocktail tables with plates of food they’d brought in from the dining room next door.

Seeing it like this she was struck first by how many people were members. She'd never really thought about it before, but usually when they came to play there were no more than a dozen other people, spread out throughout the many rooms. The second thing she observed was the diversity of the members. Not only in their race or ethnicity, but also in how they played. An elegant Black Domme used her submissive as a footstool. One of the subs behind the bar wore a latex body suit that covered everything but her hands, and the other wore a rope dress that left her breasts exposed. A dark-skinned woman at the bar laughed, drawing Sejal’s attention. The woman shook out her braids, her breasts bouncing as she did—she was naked except for two sparkly pasties on her nipples.

Both women were submissives, but placed beside each other it served as a reminder that there were many different ways of submitting.

For her, submission mostly meant doing exactly what Hach said—pegging him, tying him up, sucking his cock for hours on end.

And most of the time she wasn’t even aroused. She certainly didn't orgasm. That was an uncharitable thought she pushed aside. She'd dedicated herself to learning to top Hach the way she'd dedicated herself to submitting to him at the beginning.

She scanned the room again, looking for him. Her gaze landed briefly on one of the other Indian members—Master Khan. They exchanged a few words in Hindi when their paths crossed in the dining room or when they were both watching a demonstration or scene in one of the courtyards.

Sitting beside Master Khan was another man, one she hadn't seen before.

He looked like her imaginary boyfriend. She blinked in surprise. She hadn't thought about John Washington, her imaginary American love interest, in twenty years, yet as soon as she saw the stranger, a vivid image of the magazine cutout she'd had taped inside the back of a book rose in her mind.

The picture had been from a cologne ad in an English magazine. The man in the photo had a lean face, dark hair, and piercing blue eyes. She'd liked that picture in particular because it had seemed like the man had been looking out of the paper, right at her. While her friends gushed over the latest Bollywood star, she'd been imagining John Washington. In part that was because, ever since she was a young girl, her parents had made clear their expectation that she do well in school, go to an American university, and make a better life for herself in America. That expectation had colored the way she’d grown up, and she'd always felt distant from her peers, as if knowing her future wasn't in Delhi, that her parents planned to break with tradition and not arrange a marriage for her, that she would, when she was seventeen or eighteen, have to go off on her own, find her own way in the world, put a thin sheet of glass between her and her childhood companions.

John Washington looked up, his gaze meeting hers. Sejal held his gaze for a moment, and then remembered that this weekend she was probably going to be submitting, and jerked her gaze away.

She looked around again. Where was Hach?

She was frowning, wondering if she'd heard the announcement correctly when Luscious, the other sub who'd been called at the same time as her, walked past her and directly to Master Khan. That drew her attention back to the couch. John Washington was gone.

No. John Washington was standing up. He was walking. Towards her.

For the first time in what felt like a very long time, she got butterflies in her stomach. Sejal pressed a hand to her abdomen willing the sensation away. He wasn't coming towards her, and even if he was, it didn't matter. She couldn't do anything with him.

"Sejal." A familiar hand slid against the bare skin of her back.

She turned, smiling up at her old friend and lover. Hach was smiling.

She blinked. He rarely smiled. On the surface, Hachiro was classically Japanese in his facial mannerisms, including a usually inscrutable expression. It was a little alarming to see him smiling.

“Hach?” she asked quietly.

“Come,” he said in that easy tone of command that had made it so easy for her to submit to him in the beginning.

With his hand on her bare lower back, Hach lead her deeper into the room. She looked ahead, and realized they were on a collision course with John Washington.

She really had to stop thinking of him by that name, or she might accidentally use that name aloud.

Sejal expected Hach to steer them around the man, or for him to move, but instead they met in the center of the room. Both Hach and real-person-who-wasn’t-her-imaginary-boyfriend stopped.

“You have it?” Not-John-Washington asked.

“I do.”

“We should go someplace more private.”

Hach shook his head. “Here would be fine. Then we can retire to the playroom. You can have the one I reserved for the evening.”

The dark-haired man nodded, but didn’t look pleased.

They turned and walked back towards the couch, a mystified Sejal trying to catch Hach’s eye, but failing to do so. Or maybe he was purposefully ignoring the glances she was giving him.

The other man sat down beside Master Khan. Luscious was sitting on a pillow at his feet, leaning against his lower legs. Hach took his hand off her, leaving her standing awkwardly by the end of the couch, close to the dark-haired Dom.

He grabbed two pillows, tossing them on the floor in front of the couch.

“Kneel,” he said to her.

Sejal sank onto the pillow closest to her, which put her directly in front of not-John, though she wasn’t facing him; rather her side was to him. After several years in the BDSM community she rarely felt exposed wearing a bra and underwear set like she was now. After all, people wore less on the beach. But kneeling there side-on to not-John, she was highly aware of the way the panties left the lower curves of her ass exposed. She thought about sucking in her stomach, but she was a healthy weight, and it was perfectly natural to have a little "pooch" on her lower abdomen. Still, the urge took her by surprise.

She was a mature, successful adult, yet seeing a man who looked like someone from her past, even if that someone had been nothing more than a picture in a magazine, brought back old insecurities.

Hach reached into his pocket and pulled out a collar. Her collar. It had been nearly a year since she seen it, let alone worn it. Her breath released on a long, happy sigh. She was going to get to submit today. Good.

The collar was pink faux-leather—not something she would have chosen for herself, but Hach had picked it out, and seemed pleased with it. He’d first chosen real cow leather, and she had to remind him she would prefer it be made of something else. He’d quickly replaced it with this one.

"Hold your hair," Hach—no, Master Sato—said.

Sejal gathered up her hair, which she left unbound only here. Normally she wore it in a simple, no-nonsense bun. Only here did she allow it to fall down her back in its natural waves. Master Sato slid the collar around her neck, buckling it. It felt cool and foreign. Then he took a leash from his pocket. It was a woven nylon leash. A dog leash. Sejal released her hair, forcing her hands down to her sides, forcing herself not to move or object as he clipped the dog leash to her collar. He'd never used a leash with her before, and she didn't like it.

This was probably part of the game. She relaxed. Leash—maybe they had the letter L. Or the letter P and this was puppy play. Ugh. Surely she hadn't agreed to that?

"We have the letter G," Master Sato said. For a moment she was relieved. At least it wasn't P.

"And that is why," he continued. "I'm giving you away."

"Pardon me?" Sejal asked. Her voice had slipped from the soft, calm tones she tried to use here to the hard, slightly accusatory tone she used at work. If she'd been at work and said "pardon me”—which was her polite I-learned-English-from-a-British-person way of saying "What the fuck?”—people would have gone scrambling.

Here those words, and the tone, had no effect. Hach stared down at her, that unreadable expression on his face. She too rarely showed emotions, so she was comfortable with his inscrutable nature. Usually.

Right now he seemed like a stranger.

You are strangers. You have been for nearly a year.

"One of the items that begins with the letter G is 'given away to another Dom.'"

"I agreed to this?" Sejal asked, still in that hard tone of voice.

"You marked it as willing to try."

She had no idea what she'd been thinking when she filled that out. Then again, that had been before they were bonded. Before she'd really understood. That thought lead to another.

"We're bonded," she pointed out. "Which means—”

"Which means you do not have the option of disobeying me."

Perverse creature that she was, Hach's tone of command, the disapproval she sensed coming off him in waves, made her want to submit.

"I am your Dom." There was a pause before he added, "I have not served you well in that regard. I am giving you away for your own good."

Her parents had sent her away, for her own good.

Sejal closed her eyes. "You're giving me away, as part of the game."

There was a tug on the collar and she looked up to see Hach stepping up to the couch, reaching out, and offering the leash to...

...to not-John.

Of course it was him. Sejal blinked to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.

"This is Master Dowell. He was also assigned to the letter G, and has agreed to take you for the duration of the game."

Sejal turned on the pillow so she was facing Master Dowell. For the second time their gazes met. He leaned forward, and she was struck by the intensity of his regard. He was looking at her as if he could look into her. With Hach, there had always been a barrier, one that she was comfortable with, that she knew they both were comfortable with.

"No," Master Dowell said, “I’m lucky to dominate such a lovely woman."

The hurt Hach's words had caused—“agreed to take you" as if she were an unwanted pet—melted away when Master Dowell spoke.

Without planning to, Sejal lowered her eyes, staring at his feet. He wore expensive, but slightly scuffed boots.

While the default Dom uniform at Las Palmas was slacks and a dress shirt, Master Dowell wore leathers—leather pants with lacings instead of a zipper at the crotch, and leather boots. He looked like the Doms she saw photos of in erotic movies. His impressively muscled chest and arms were bare.

Fingers touched her chin, raising her face. That slight contact, only two fingertips on the underside of her jaw, should not have made her nipples hard, her breath catch. But it did.

He was touching her with his left hand; with his right, he reached out and took the leash from Hach.

When Master Dowell rose, Sejal moved her head to keep her eyes on him. He held her leash—her leash—loosely, but he held it.

"Let's go someplace more private."

She couldn't stop herself from looking at Hach. To her confusion, he'd taken the second pillow, placed it on the floor in front of Master Khan, and was kneeling.

"Sejal?" Master Dowell asked softly.

She jerked her attention back to Master Dowell. "I'm sorry, Sir." She crawled off the pillow, hair falling alongside her head, effectively creating blinders that made sure she couldn't see much beyond the floor directly in front of her.

"Stand, please. I have no desire to make you crawl all that way."

It was with some relief that she climbed to her feet. She ignored the strange little voice inside that was howling with disappointment. That was the voice of her most submissive desires. The voice that took over when she was at her most vulnerable and sexually submissive. That voice—that part of her—wanted to crawl behind him as he led her by a leash.

He walked out of the library, his pace reasonable, but his long legs meant she had to hurry to keep up, as his stride was longer than hers.

Once out of the library, he led her away from the public rooms, through the Sub Rosa court with its beautiful flowers, and the Constellation Court, which had the most versatile playground, to the Iron Court.

The Iron Court was Spartan, without the lush flowers and comfort-centric seating. Instead there was a statuary garden, with metal and stone figures of naked men and women, each shown in some sort of bondage—a naked stone woman wrapped in bands of steel, a bronze male figure with chain wrapped both around and through his arms and legs. These playrooms were focused on the more base and brutal aesthetics of BDSM. Some were outfitted to look like dungeons, other had cages, tanks for water play, and more severe restraint systems.

Sejal's hesitated, pausing long enough that the leash pulled taut. Master Dowell stopped and looked at her over his shoulder, face expressionless. "Is there a problem?"

"No, Sir."

She'd played here before. Several of the rooms had very nice spanking benches, which Hach had liked to be strapped to when she pegged him. But coming to the Iron Court and knowing she'd be topping, and coming here when she'd be subbing, were two very different things.

They went to one of the six doors that opened onto the covered hall that ringed the courtyard and its occupants of beautiful, unsettling statues. Master Dowell entered the code. The door clicked open.

He entered, and again she hesitated long enough for the leash to pull taut. This time he didn't turn, didn't ask if she was okay. He gave one gentle but firm tug.

Sejal considered leaving. Just turning and walking away. This wasn't what she'd signed up for. Wasn't what she'd agreed to, no matter what it said on her checklist.

If she went in, she'd have to submit to this stranger. This large, strong man with the handsome face and piercing eyes.

Sejal stepped into the room.