“Not much to tell. She was one of Kingsley’s crew back then. That’s how I know him.”

  “True love?”

  “Yeah…for about six months. Loved her with all my cock and soul.”

  “How romantic.”

  Robert laughed at himself. “She was kinky as hell. Been in the scene since she was a teenager. Told me I couldn’t lay a hand on her without tying her up first. She gave me the basic tour of BDSM. After a couple nights, she called me a natural.”

  “I can see that. So Cock and Soul girl? She went by the wayside?”

  “Wasn’t meant to be. Met my Cara a few years later. Real true love. Married. One little one. Not so little really. He’s nine now.”

  “Hope he’s not home. I tend to scare children. On purpose.”

  “No, he’s not home. At his grandmother’s. Thursday night is our night. Cara and I always make sure we have our private time.”

  “You two are so damn cute. I can’t even guess what the problem is here. Is there really a problem, or are you just trying to trick me into participating in some sort of unholy threesome with whips and chains and butt-plugs as big as bugles? I’m fine with either really.”

  Robert chuckled again, nervously this time, and The Mistress heard a note of real distress in that too-casual laugh.

  “There’s a problem, I promise.”

  They took the elevator in Robert’s building up to a pleasantly understated penthouse apartment (or as understated as a two-million-dollar penthouse apartment could be). The Mistress watched as Robert took off his shoes and sat them on a bench by the door. The furniture, plush and monochromatic, sat arrayed in symmetrical lines. Nothing seemed out of place. She’d never seen a home more scrupulously tidy before. Not even a stray shoe littered the floor.

  “Your wife is either OCD or some sort of serial killer. I can’t wait to meet her.” The Mistress hoisted her toy bag high on her shoulder.

  “The wife can’t wait to meet you either,” came a voice from the kitchen.

  A lovely woman of about thirty-five emerged from an open doorway and smiled blankly toward Nora’s voice. She had sleek red hair cut into a simple bob and wore no makeup other than a splash of pale pink lip-gloss.

  “I promise the wife is neither OCD nor a serial killer,” Cara—the wife—said, holding out her hand in The Mistress’s general direction. Her eyes looked past, not at, The Mistress’s face. “In fact, the wife is…”

  “The wife is blind,” The Mistress said, shaking hands with the woman.

  “That she is,” Cara said with a wide grin.

  Robert put his arm around Cara’s shoulder. “Now do you see the problem?”

  The Mistress looked Cara up and down. Beautiful woman—pale skin, ample curves, a beauty mark at the corner of her mouth…and pale hazel eyes that stared unseeing at nothing and no one.

  “Nope. I don’t see a problem at all,” said The Mistress.

  “I definitely don’t see a problem,” Cara added.

  “Funny and blind. I like this wife of yours. Now…is there any booze in this house?”

  Robert led them into the kitchen and told The Mistress to have a seat. Once the wine was poured, an awkward silence descended over the three of them. The Mistress loved awkward silences. She liked to create them on purpose sometimes, just to see who would break the silence first. Tonight she put her mental money on Cara.

  Cara was smart money.

  “He worries too much about me. That’s the real problem.” Cara took a sip of her wine only after speaking, as if to prove she didn’t need the liquid courage.

  Robert laid his large hand on his wife’s thin forearm before reaching up to touch her face. The Mistress noted the gesture. He’d done the same thing earlier before putting his arm around her. He must touch her arm first to give her fair warning of his proximity before touching more of her. Over-protective indeed.

  “Cara, you’re blind,” he said. “I feel like I have to remind you of this more often than I should.”

  “I wasn’t born blind,” Cara said, turning her head, if not her eyes, toward The Mistress.

  “What happened?” The Mistress asked, and Robert shifted in his chair.

  “Accident,” Cara explained. “I was nineteen. Standing on a street corner—”

  “Hooking. Got it.”

  “Hey—” Robert interrupted angrily, but Cara only laughed and patted Robert’s hand.

  “Yes. I was turning tricks on the way to class,” Cara continued with a grin. “And someone bumped into me. Just an accident. No malice. Went down and hit the back of my head on the curb. Slammed my occipital lobe. The lights went out and they never came back on again.”

  “Incredible…” The Mistress exhaled. “One question.”

  “Of course.”

  “Did that help or hinder your prostitution career?”

  Cara burst out laughing as Robert buried his head on his wife’s shoulder.

  “She’s fun, Robert,” Cara said. “Let’s keep her.”

  “She’s a little out of our price range for full-time employment.” Robert kissed Cara quick on the cheek.

  “Is she pretty?” Cara asked Robert. “She sounds pretty.”

  “I’m hideous. I look like a shaved Muppet.”

  “Robert?” Cara prompted.

  “She’s the second most beautiful woman in the entire city,” Robert said. “White girl. Long black hair. Wavy. She’s got part of it pulled back but it still looks a little messy—sexy and wild. She’s short, although her boots put a few inches on her. Curvy but muscular. Fantastic breasts especially in that corset. Green eyes. About…thirty. Total goddess.”

  “Thank you, darling,” Cara said.

  “Wait. This is your husband’s job?” The Mistress asked. “To describe women to you? This is a damn good gig.”

  “Since I wasn’t blind from birth, I can still visualize people. Old habits die hard.” Cara turned her head to Robert. “I try to guess what people look like by their voices and personalities. Then Robert tells me if I’m right or not.”

  “He probably lies to you constantly,” The Mistress said before taking another sip of her wine. “I would.”

  “I do,” Robert admitted. “She doesn’t even know I’m Black.”

  “Great. Now she does.” The Mistress rolled her eyes.

  “My parents are going to be shocked,” Cara said, trying to keep a straight face. “What will we tell the children?”

  “We have more than one child?”

  “You’re not the only one with secrets, dear.”

  The Mistress sat back in her chair and studied the playfully bickering spouses. Rarely had she seen a couple so comfortably in love with each other. Something ached inside her at the sight of such easy affection. She’d had this once, this kind of perfect peace. A name she tried to never speak echoed in the empty parts of her, reverberating off the hollow walls of her heart.

  “Yes, well,” The Mistress said when the cuteness had reached its zenith. “This is all well and good, but if I’m here, then someone has got to get their ass kicked tonight. Do we have any volunteers?”

  Cara’s hand shot up straight in the air. Robert reached up, gently clasped her wrist, and pulled her hand back down.

  The Mistress shook her head in disgust. “Now that was uncalled for.”

  “Mistress, Cara is blind. Completely. You don’t go around beating up blind women. Especially not when the blind woman happens to be my wife.”

  “Your wife clearly wants to be beaten,” The Mistress reminded him. “Remember this?” The Mistress threw her arm up in the air and waved it eagerly. “You should. It happened like seven seconds ago.”

  “Yes, you should, Robert,” Cara said, an edge of irritation in her voice. “I want it.”

  “You only you think you want it. You’re just curious because we ran into Toni last week.”

  “Toni was your kinky ex-girlfriend?” The Mistress’s ears perked up at that. “Not the Toni? Toni the sexy masochist who used to sleep with Kingsley? And by ‘sleep,’ I mean anything but sleep?”

  “She also used to sleep with me,” Robert admitted with a sheepish shrug of his broad shoulders. “And we did actually sleep sometimes.”

  “God. Damn. You used fuck Toni the Tiger. That girl scared half the sadists in The Underground. I saw her play human pincushion during an erotic acupuncture play scene once. She didn’t even bleed. You must be even more hardcore than I pegged you for.”

  The Mistress turned to Cara: “I mean ‘pegged’ metaphorically. I haven’t pegged your husband. That costs extra.”

  “Understandably,” Cara said, nodding. “Here’s the thing, Mistress. He is hardcore. We ran into this Toni woman and I could hear her drooling over him. I grilled him that night. I wanted to know everything. I’m not jealous at all. Really.”

  The Mistress raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

  “Fine. I am jealous. Not that he had a relationship with her, but that he had that kind of relationship with her, and he won’t have it with me.”

  “And you want something like that too?” The Mistress finished for her.

  Robert groaned.

  “None of that,” The Mistress waved her hand at him in a scolding. “The Mistress is talking to the sub in the room right now. You just sit there and look pretty. Cara, why do you want that kind of relationship? Just curiosity?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I mean, yes I’m curious. I’ve never done it before. But I’ve had fantasies about it since I was a teenager and found my mom’s stash of smut.”

  “God, I love smut. Let me guess…the Sleeping Beauty trilogy?”

  Cara’s mouth fell open just slightly. “Yes! How did you—”

  “Seriously, I should start sending a cut of my checks to Anne Rice. I owe that woman half my clients. But come on now. Surely it’s more than that.”

  Cara exhaled heavily and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s more than that. Robert…he takes such good care of me. So protective. I swear he’d lay down his jacket over mud puddles I have to cross if I’d let him. Just once in a while, I wish he wasn’t so protective of me. He loves me like a wife, yes. But sometimes he treats me like a child.”

  “I have heard this story before,” The Mistress said, smiling.

  “And maybe if he treated me like he did Toni, if he saw me like he saw her…I don’t know. I just want to try. I want to be a woman to him—a whole woman. A woman he’s not afraid to treat like a woman, and not like his fragile blind wife who needs saved.”

  “Robert, are you hearing all of this?” The Mistress asked, turning her attention to him.

  Robert looked up at the ceiling. “Yes, Mistress.”

  “Good man. Is any of this sinking in? Or at the very least, giving you a semi?”

  “Yes, Mistress.” He rubbed his face and laughed. “I want to make her happy.”

  “It can’t just be about her though. You have to want to do this. You have to want to top her. You can’t just go through the motions or she’ll know it. You enjoyed what you did with Toni, right?”

  Robert glanced at Cara, who clearly sensed his diffidence to answer even though she couldn’t see it.

  “It’s fine.” Cara found Robert’s hand and squeezed it. “I wasn’t a virgin when we met. I had boyfriends I loved being with before you. You’re allowed to have fond memories of ex-girlfriends.”

  Robert raised Cara’s hand and kissed it. “I wouldn’t trade a thousand nights with Toni for five minutes with you, my love.” He kissed her hand once more. “But yes, I loved topping Toni in the beginning. She loved pain, loved being used and abused. The sex was never rough enough for her. At first it’s a sexy challenge. But then it got old. I love playing Dom but not every night.”

  “I don’t want every night either,” Cara said. “I love our sex life. But I do want to do this tonight. And if we both enjoy it maybe again in a week or two.”

  “Do you want some help here?” The Mistress offered. The more they kept talking, the greater the risk Robert would chicken out. They needed to get started doing. “I can play wingman. The first scene’s always the hardest. I’ve got floggers with me, some cuffs and stuff. We can do this together.”

  Robert put his hand on Cara’s shoulder. “Would you be comfortable with The Mistress watching and helping?”

  “She’ll keep her clothes on, won’t she?” Cara asked Robert.

  “I’m already naked,” The Mistress said. “Bedroom, perverts. Now. I have an idea.”

  “I’m going to admit to being terrified by your idea,” Robert said as he ushered The Mistress and Cara into the master bedroom, which was perfectly named. Perhaps Robert hadn’t consciously decorated his bedroom to look like a dungeon, but it certainly gave off a darkly erotic air. The king-sized bed was draped in black and white linens. The four-poster bed frame was constructed of sturdy metal bars tailor-made for restraining a willing submissive. The walls were painted a deep red. Low leather chairs sat under the windows that overlooked the streets. The Mistress couldn’t help but picture a naked, helpless Cara with her legs draped over each chair arm, her owner violating her with his fingers and mouth as the whole city watched.

  “You should be terrified of my idea,” The Mistress said. “It’s pure evil genius, just like me. Now Cara…”

  The Mistress stood in front of Robert’s wife and took her hands. Cara had already begun to pant a little in both in nervousness and anticipation.

  The Mistress continued, “I’m going to talk Robert through this. You’re not going to hear a word I say. Once the scene starts, only he can hear my voice. You’ll just ignore it. It’s background music and that’s all. You’ll only listen to your husband. You’ll do everything he tells you to do without question. You’re his sexual property. Aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Mistress,” Cara whispered.

  Out of the corner of her eyes, The Mistress saw Robert stand up straighter. “You love him. You trust him. You belong to him. He’s going to flog you and he’s going to fuck you. And you’re…?”

  Cara’s face broke into a wide grin. “Going to love it.”

  “Did you hear that, Robert?” The Mistress asked.

  “Oh, I heard that. Every part of my body heard that.”

  “I might help Robert. I might even touch you. But it’ll merely be an extension of him. Are you comfortable with that?”

  “Very, Mistress.”

  “Good. Now for Kink 101, Cara. You’re going to get a beating and it’s going to hurt. You’ll say ow and no and that’s fine. You’re getting flogged. It’s supposed to hurt. If you don’t want Robert to stop, you need a safe word so you can keep up with your ‘oh, ah, ow, shit, fuck, damn that hurts,’ and he’ll keep on flogging. So pick a word you’ll remember that wouldn’t possibly cross your lips unless you were one-hundred percent certain you wanted the scene to stop.”

  “Um…suggestions?”

  “What’s your favorite guilty pleasure food?”

  “I don’t know. Popcorn?”

  “Don’t insult me.”

  “Okay. Funyuns.”

  “Disgusting. And perfect. Funyuns it is. Let’s do this. Don’t be afraid. Just have fun.”

  “Having fun already.”

  “Now, Robert…what do you want Cara to call you? Sir? Master? Daddy?”

  “Daddy?” he asked with some horror.

  “Don’t judge.”

  “I think ‘sir’ has the least amount of baggage here.”

  “Good choice. ‘Sir’ is a classic. Let’s get started. Cara, take your clothes off and kneel on the bed. We’re going to leave the room while you undress. Robert will come back in and that’s when the scene will start. You’ll be safe. You’ll be protected. You’ll get your ass kicked. Sound good?”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  “This way, Sir,” The Mistress said as she took Robert by the arm and led him from the room.

  Once outside the bedroom, The Mistress closed the door to let Cara have a last moment of privacy, and also to give Robert a few extra minutes of mental preparation. “You can do this,” she told him.

  “I can do this. I can’t do this.”

  The Mistress slapped him hard on the side of the arm. Robert winced and mouthed an “ow.”

  “Did that hurt?” she asked.

  “Yes, it did.”

  “Is it going to kill you?”

  “No…”

  “There. That’s why you’re doing to Cara. Just giving her some thwaps. It’ll hurt. It won’t cause a bit of harm. If she ends up with even a bruise after this, I’ll be surprised. I’ve got light floggers great for beginners. You know what you’re doing. If you used to top Toni then I know you know what you’re doing.”

  “I know what I’m doing. It’s just…” Robert paused and took a deep breath. His face clouded over with both love and concern. “My wife is blind, Mistress. She is blind. She can’t see anything. She can’t protect herself. When she goes out alone, I’m a wreck until she gets back. She could get hurt so easily. Anything…a break in the concrete, a piece of trash on the ground, a dog off his leash…or worse. A mugger…a rapist…anything.”

  “But you let her go, right?”

  “Well, yeah. I can’t make her my prisoner. She’s an adult, after all. She’d divorce me if I treated her like a child in need of constant protection.”

  “You treat her like an adult outside the bedroom. Now you’re just going to do it inside the bedroom. And I have something that will help.”

  “More alcohol?”

  “Better. Let’s go. She should be naked by now.” The Mistress clapped her hands together and rubbed them with maniacal glee in the hopes of getting a laugh out of Robert. He did laugh, but he didn’t sound like he meant it.

  The Mistress put her hands on his face and forced him to meet her eyes. “Trust me, Robert. I know what I’m doing. Say that you trust me.”

  “I trust you, Mistress.”

  “Good. Now let’s go beat and fuck your wife.”

  The Mistress took Robert by the shoulders and spun him toward the bedroom door. When he touched the knob, The Mistress spoke one last word of warning to him.

  “Don’t be afraid. And if you are, don’t act like it. Got me?”