paying for the room and what goes on inside is none of our business. Then we have all the various NDAs and consent forms.”
Carson rolled his eyes. “It’s so needlessly complicated. Anyway, that’s why private play spaces like the one Foster brought me to are so common and why The Church is the only BDSM club within two hundred miles of here.”
“Why do people have to make it so hard?”
Carson brushed his hand against my face. “Because people don’t want to face what they don’t understand.”
Nodding, I rested my head against him once more. “So, what happened at the shady place?”
He laughed. “I was surprised by how not shady it was on the inside. Everyone was friendly and Foster already knew a lot of people there, so it all seemed normal. You know, besides the fact everyone was in fetish gear, and people were crawling around on the floor.”
I giggled, imagining an innocent Carson trying not to look but looking anyway.
“I realized quite soon that I liked the control and the rules. That BDSM could give me the structure I’d been missing. And then I saw her.” His voice was soft.
I shifted in his lap so I could look up at him. “Her?”
“Her name was Lily, but I only learned that later on. She was skipping across the room, and she looked so out of place among all the leather and latex. She had pigtails in her hair, a summer dress that barely reached her knees, and pink sandals. She made her way toward this man who looked like someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. But he practically melted when he saw her, and then she called him Daddy.”
“It felt like a punch to the gut,” he said, slipping a hand between us and placing it on his stomach as if he could still feel it even after all these years. “I watched them all night. Not very good etiquette, I know, but there was just something about them I couldn’t look away from. He was in control of everything she did, but everything he did was for her, and I wanted that. I watched other scenes, but I found my eyes going back to them over and over again.”
He wrapped his arms around me and shifted me until I semi-straddled his lap. “She was sitting just like this,” he said as he pulled me in closer. “Then she asked her Daddy for a treat. He pulled a lollipop out of his pocket and handed it to her. She was happy, but then she started pouting around her candy. ‘Daddy,’ she said as she leaned into him, ‘that wasn’t the kind of treat I wanted.’ He took the lollipop from her mouth and popped it into his. Then he reached for his belt buckle as she slid to the floor. I wanted that.”
I wiggled against him, imagining the same scenario with Carson and me in their place.
“Not here,” he said, popped a hand against my thigh.
It wasn’t hard enough to hurt or even sting, just a gentle reminder of our location. Knowing he was right, I squirmed off his lap before I went any further and resumed my earlier position with my head resting on his leg.
“So, how did The Church happen?” I asked, trying to get the conversation back on track.
“After a few years, I graduated with a business degree. I got this awful job I hated, but it paid the big bucks, so I stayed for a while. One day out of the blue, Foster came to me with this wild fucking idea to open a club. I told him he was crazy, but he had everything fleshed out.”
“That must have been really expensive,” I said, then flushed. “I mean, not that that is any of my busi—”
“It’s no big deal,” he said, interrupting me. “I don’t mind talking about it. We worked really hard, and I’m proud of that. The money I’d saved through my job paid for about half of the opening costs while Foster footed the bill on the rest and everything else until we started turning a profit.”
“How?” I asked, intrigued.
Carson’s smile was mischievous as he answered. “He was a model in his younger days.”
“Really?”
“It’s true. It was mostly alternative stuff and would be hard to find these days, but he got a few bigger ad spreads in some fashion magazines. He told me he was big in Germany for a couple of years.” Carson shrugged.
“Wow, I know someone famous.”
He