The Pleasure Quartet by Vina Jackson Read Free Book Online Page B

with all manner of props.
    There were several St Andrew’s crosses: X-shaped, padded standing frames that subs could be strapped to, crucifixion-style, and whipped. Spanking benches which fitted the same purpose, but with the sub bending over at the hip, arse in the air. There were ornate thrones that dominatrices could sit on while being pleasured orally by a sub lying beneath, and faux walls complete with glory holes for anonymous pegging. Trolleys were located at intervals and set up with bottles of lube and glass sweet trays filled with condoms and latex gloves, along with trays of various implements. Paddles, a range of whips and floggers, pin-wheels, anal plugs and dildos. Staff would be on hand to refresh and monitor the equipment, and professional doms and dominatrices were available to train amateur attendees in any practice they deigned to learn, and to dish out pain and pleasure to a few lucky volunteers.
    The lighting was soft and low, and the space perfumed with a very mild spicy fragrance, akin to toasted chocolate and cardamom. Pots of lilies in water were situated in safe corners, away from the sharp end of a whiplash that might break the glass. Along the walls, low cushioned seats and beds were stationed, where onlookers could relax and watch the proceedings, or subs could curl up after a scene and be nurtured by their dominant.
    The dungeon was my pièce de résistance.
    Perhaps because it had been so long since I had been truly dominated, in any formal or deliberate way. Dominik, the man I still thought of as ‘my dom’, the man who had widened my eyes and my imagination to the wonders of sex and proven the love of my life, had been dead now for over three years. Long enough for me to grieve, and to move on, although he would always take up a space in my heart. Since then, I had no shortage of lovers. Most of them mere fucks, and some of them I no doubt would have been better off without, and had taken them or let them take me only as an attempt to blot Dominik out of my mind, to dull my pain. Others had been simple physical connections, men and sometimes women that I had met when I was horny and fallen into bed with, the same way that a hungry person might stop by the nearest fast-food joint. Convenience and filling a need, nothing more. Then there had been Antony, the playwright and theatre director whom I had fallen in with, my first proper relationship since Dominik’s death. He now worked with the Ball also, although he was working on the next Ball’s incarnation, scheduled to take place in Iceland in the future, so I had seen little of him recently despite our shared employer.
    But Antony was not a dominant by nature. We had fooled around with rope, silk scarves and the like, as lovers do, but he had never taken me to that brutal and blissful edge that I still longed for in my dreams. He was good in bed – great, even – but he did not want to hurt me, or to control me. And I had wanted him to want to hurt me. I had wanted to surrender to him, to feel the overwhelming sense of letting go and freedom that I found with Dominik, when I allowed him to do whatever he would with my mind and my body and I knew that he would keep me safe, despite the sometimes dangerous activities that we engaged in, because he knew me so well. Every iota of my thoughts, every inch of my body had been mapped against his heart. Since his death, no one had come close to freeing that part of me, that kernel of doubt and fear and lust and shame that I kept curled up tight in the deepest reaches of my soul, like a dark stone in a river bed, buried deep.
    That was what I wanted to give the Ball’s guests. A place to let their demons come out to play.
    Our vessel pulled into port with Aurelia at the helm. She was dressed all in white, a long flowing sheer dress that flew back in the wind, revealing every straight line and curve of her body. She was barefoot, and when she shifted her stance, squaring her shoulders with her