“Oh yeah, cuz you were so reluctant,” Sharon shot back, grinning.
“Well… thank you all for coming,” Ellie said, nervously rubbing her hands on the yoga pants she was wearing and hoping she didn’t sound as awkward as she felt. It was really nice of them to show up, but Ellie just… wasn’t used to this.
“We come bearing gifts and many opinions,” Angel said, holding up the bag she’d been carrying. “I brought a couple of corsets I think will look fabulous on you.”
Like Ellie, Angel worked from home for the most part, but her work was very different from Ellie’s. Angel had her own Etsy shop where she sold a lot of handmade pieces, although currently her business was really booming from the number of custom pieces subs and Dommes at Stronghold were commissioning from her. Ellie had actually designed the business cards Angel handed out there.
She was doing just fine with her graphic design freelancing, but she didn’t really have enough extra budget for the kind of corsets Angel made. Ellie got most of hers through clearance sales on big websites - 3 corsets for $100, that kind of thing. As far as she knew, Angel didn’t sell a single corset for under $100.
“Ummm…” Ellie tried to find the right words to say ‘that’s really sweet but there’s no way’.
Correctly interpreting the look on her face, Angel shook her head. “Oh no, no payment necessary. You’re finally scening with Mike, and that’s payment enough for me.”
Ellie knew Michael and Angel were good friends, but she didn’t really understand why Angel would consider that payment. Fortunately, Maria asked the question for her.
“How do you benefit from Michael scening with Ellie?” Maria asked, sounding amused. Even though they were all around the same age, Maria often seemed like the big sister of the group to Ellie.
“And why does that make me feel kind of like a prostitute?” Ellie muttered. Only Lexie seemed to hear her thankfully, and she snorted into her hand so as not to draw attention to Ellie’s comment.
“Because if Mike hooks up with Ellie, then Adam will stop being so overly possessive about Mike and me hanging out, because it’s obvious Mike’s really into Ellie,” Angel said gleefully.
Ellie opened her mouth and closed it again without saying a word, because she couldn’t really think of what to say. She wanted to protest that Michael didn’t like herthatmuch, but he obviously did like her enough to pursue her, and Angel would probably know better than Ellie exactly how much he liked her since they were good friends.
“It would also probably help if you stopped calling him ‘Pretty Boy’ and playing with his hair,” Leigh teased.
“Well, he is pretty and so is his hair. If Adam grew his hair out I would want to play with it more.”
“Then he’d really look like a Viking,” Sharon mused, her eyes going a little unfocused.
Angel elbowed Sharon in the side. “Hey, no fantasizing about my man while I’m present. You keep that shit to yourself.”
“Okay ladies, focus,” Maria said, cutting into the banter. She smiled at Ellie. “Let’s take this to the bedroom.”
“Hopefully that won’t be the last time Ellie hears that today,” Lexie joked as she grabbed Ellie’s hand and led the way down the hall.
This was not at all what Ellie had expected when she’d texted Lexie earlier… it was so much better. If this was what happened when she let people in a little, maybe dropping her guard wasn’t so bad.
******
Fuck me sideways.
Ellie looked like submissive sex on a stick. The violet and black corset she was wearing set off her creamy skin, black hair, and dark eyes, and pushed her breasts up like an offering platter. Black lace trimmed the top of the corset, matching the lacy, black mini-skirt she wore with it. Her legs were bare, pale against the dark skirt, and she was wearing strappy high heels which gave her several extra inches of height and added a seductive sway to her walk as she moved into the main room of Stronghold. Her hair was pulled back from her face but was otherwise down, curling around her shoulders, and her dark eyes looked huge in her pale face.
Trailing behind her, like a brood of ducklings, were Angel, Leigh, Sharon, Maria, and Lexie, all of them with excited expressions of expectation on their faces. Nosy little subs. They’d all dressed up for the club, but none of them were nearly as all-out dolled-up as Ellie. They waved at him and trotted over to the bar, with wide conspiratorial grins on their faces.
When another Dom, Leo, stepped in Ellie’s path to talk to her, Michael was moving before he could even think about it. Leo was another sadist, with a liking for wax play, and someone Michael knew Ellie had played with in the past, although not recently. Michael had planned to make Ellie come to him but…
Oh well. It wasn’t often Michael allowed his impulses to affect him so greatly, but he wasn’t about to miss out on his chance to play one-on-one with Ellie now that he’d finally gotten her to agree.
“I’m sorry, Master Leo, but I’ve already made plans to scene with Master Michael tonight,” Ellie said, with a smile on her face to soften the blow, just as Michael came up behind Leo. Gratification and relief slid through him; she wasn’t trying to run or use Leo’s advances as a shield. Her eyes flicked past Leo and she smiled, causing the other Dom to turn to see what she was looking at. With Michael only a few feet away from him, he nodded in greeting.
“Maybe some other time then,” Leo said to Ellie with a half-smile, stepping back and away, before pivoting to head towards the Lounge area where other unattached submissives gathered.
Michael’s acting skills came in handy, since he wanted to scowl at the other man’s comment. Of course the other man would assume Ellie would still be available to play on another night - she rarely scened with the same Dom twice in a row and she never made any kind of commitment, even in the club. He hoped to change that, but he wasn’t stupid enough to say so now, even if the idea of her going from playing with him to playing with Leo sent a hot, possessive feeling surging through his chest.
If he showed any of that, he was afraid Ellie would run again.
She was skittish, like a wild animal… while they hadn’t spent much time together, he’d spent enough time watching her to know that the sweet, generous, giving girl he’d protected had grown up into a sweet, generous, giving woman. She just nowalso had walls as big as the Great Wall of China, and he wanted to strip back those defenses and claim her. It was a primitive emotion and strange to him because he’d never felt like this before, and it didn’t make any logical sense since they hadn’t actually spent time together in over a decade… but there it was. The protective feelings she roused in him now weren’t nearly as innocentas they had been in high school. He’d known she’d had a crush on him then even though he’d never considered her anything more than a cute, sweet kid – and now he wanted to do terrible, perverse things to her until she was screaming his name and begging for more.
