But she visited the social playroom on occasion, and when she did, she brought along a toy. She did this to show off that toy. She very rarely allowed touch or others to play. If she did, there was a point. Not for those who she allowed such privileges. A lesson that needed to be learned or an experience that she could gift to her sub that she knew he desired.
“Mirabelle,” she called when her friend had no response.
Mirabelle continued to regard her but she said nothing.
“I just want you to be careful,” she explained.
“Once burned…” Mirabelle stated.
Amélie nodded and grinned. “… twice shy. I get it. But I urge you to be three times shy. Or four. Or allow me to have a few quiet words.”
It went without saying that confidentiality at the club was paramount.
In reality, the fourteen-page contract she’d had to sign that she’d given her attorney for his perusal (something he’d done and two months after, his application had been accepted at the club) had elicited him saying, “Memorize this, Amélie. If you don’t and you breach even a sub-clause to a sub-clause, if you were a man, Aryas Weathers would have your balls in a vise, and not the way this type of club plays that. As you’re a woman, you’ll be homeless and cleaning his toilets with a toothbrush for the scraps his dog won’t eat.”
She didn’t need to memorize the contract.
Even so, she’d read it three times.
So outside these walls, talk was forbidden. If you saw a member in public that was not a good acquaintance, if given the signal, you proceeded cautiously. Normally, you ignored them altogether.
On the other hand, as was human nature, inside the club, talk, and even gossip among members, was rampant, and for their play, essential. Who liked what. Who’d done who. The ones who’d left the blinds open on the playrooms you needed to be sure to take the opportunity to watch.
The ones who lived the life and left it at the club’s door.
Amélie did not fancy Trey so she hadn’t been paying close attention. She knew no Master had had him. She also knew, outside Mirabelle and Romy, he’d serviced Mistresses Felicia and Pasquel.
All of them repeatedly.
And all of them both Mirabelle and Amélie were friendly with for more than the book club they all belonged to.
“Let me think about that, okay?” Mirabelle answered Amélie’s offer. “He showed no hesitation when I required him to wait for me in the foyer.” She grinned a calendar girl grin. “Of course, he’d just ejaculated a parcel that would make a horse feel envy, but he knows what that means. He knows a note will be put in his file. And he could have balked, talked to me outside, or not shown up.”
This was all true.
“If he doesn’t broach it, ask me out, meet me in the humdrum, maybe I’ll get you to snoop around before I ask him,” she finished.
“I approve of your plan,” Amélie remarked.
“I don’t need your approval, Mistress,” Mirabelle returned, still grinning.
Without taking her attention from her friend, she noted, “He’s returning.”
“Caught that, but thanks,” Mirabelle murmured, her gaze shifting to the hunting ground.
Trey returned and set her drink in front of her, taking his position standing outside the booth like he was her bodyguard, saying in a deep, pleasing, quiet voice, “I hope your drink pleases you, Mistress.”
“My gratitude, slave, I’m sure it will,” Mirabelle replied just as quietly, taking up the drink, her eyes still wandering, but not to Trey.
He settled in, leaning his ass against the side of the booth, her protector, her servant.
Amélie had had that, subs she’d decided to own for a spell in the club. Subs who had waited for her in the foyer and entered with her. Subs that stood sentry while she sat with her friends, sipping and chatting. Subs that, in their profile, staff made notes that they were not to be approached unless she gave permission.
“Slim pickins for you, dearest heart,” Mira, who knew her well, noted after she’d done her sweep. “Though, Mistress Delia is here and I know that not only because I’ve seen her but because from the minute I walked in, my flesh felt like it was crawling.”
Amélie searched for and found the Domme in question.
Delia, like Amélie, was in her early thirties. Unlike Amélie, she had a beautiful but cold face, an icy, black-haired beauty, and mean in her eyes.
She’d moved from New York City to Phoenix, coming to the club with the requisite for Masters or Mistresses—four references, two from Dominants, two from subs. Aryas had shared with Amélie that he knew the Master and Mistress who’d made the references. They were lukewarm, and as was his policy, he’d followed up on them. He then had, in a rare move, decided to accept her regardless of his tendency toward safety.
He’d shared his reasoning for this too.
There were no real reasons the New York Dominants could give for the fact that their references were unenthusiastic. She was a known player. There had been no incidents they knew of that would mark her as unwelcome.
They just didn’t like her.
Amélie understood that.
In a world that was roundly judged, Aryas or any of them were not fans of judging one of their own.
Even with all of that, he’d regretted his decision immediately.
“Just a feeling, my sweet,” he’d muttered, sitting with her, sipping his Hennessy and watching Delia work the room.