Page 174 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection
Missing Ink
one
BRENNA
The world isn’tall sweetness and light. There are dark parts. Parts that leave scars. I should know. I’ve inked more than a few.
I might even have a couple of my own.
You’d never know there was any darkness in the world, though, watching the couple I’m watching. They’re lying on a bed a few feet from me, tangled in the aftermath of what looked like a seriously satisfying fuck. Logan’s lying on top, propped on his elbows so his two hundred pounds doesn’t crush the small woman under him. His submissive, Emily, is looking up at him like she’s watching the sun rise for the first time. He’s smiling down at her and the love in his eyes is so bright it could be that sun.
It would make me puke if they weren’t so genuine.
The man behind me, pounding into my hot, swollen ass, groans so loudly it echoes off the dungeon walls. I feel his cock jerk. He’ll only fuck me with a condom, even though I’ve offered him bareback more times than I can count, so there’s no warm spurt, just the little kick to let me know he’s done.
I squeeze down hard to milk him. A trick he taught me to please my Dom. And I do it now, even though I don’t feel much like pleasing my Dom at the moment.
Ten pulls out and I hear the rubber squelch as he ties off the condom. Logan’s still inside Emily, even though they finished several minutes ago. They’re still connected: body and spirit. The contrast makes me feel hollow. Ten doesn’t want any kind of connection with me. He’s given me two orgasms. That’s my lot. He’ll give me pleasure, and the kind of pain I want, but nothing more.
He pats my ass. “Your head wasn’t in that at the end. Where’d you go?”
I tip my chin toward the bed as much as the thick leather collar around my throat will allow. “Watching the show.”
Ten grunts. He hasn’t always been best buds with Logan, but they seem to have warmed to each other over the last couple of months. They’re friendly enough to scene together now at any rate.
“Fucking saccharine,” he mutters, keeping his voice low enough not to carry to the bed.
In the past, I’d have agreed with him. I’d have treated Logan and Emily’s gone-on-you kind of love with contempt.
Maybe I’m mellowing, or maybe I’ve just been hanging out with Emily too fucking much, but I don’t agree with him anymore.
“We done, sir?” I ask.
Ten comes around to stand in front of the bondage frame he’s got me locked into. He crosses his arms over his bare chest, flexing the heavy muscles of his biceps and pecs as he glowers down at me. He’s a big guy and he’s trying to intimidate me. It works. Sorta. I feel a flutter in my tummy. But it’s a cold, empty feeling and doesn’t translate into that electric rush through my veins that it used to.
I really have been hanging out with Emily too much if Ten’s patented Dom glower isn’t doing anything for me anymore.
“The fuck is up with you?” Ten asks.
I don’t shrug because he’s locked me into the bondage frame by my boobs and hell if I’m moving my shoulder and yanking my girls against the two metal bars sandwiching them. “Sorry, I guess my head’s not in the right place today.”
“You using your safe word?” Ten growls.
“No.”
I’m not at any kind of limit. I’m just not feeling the scene anymore. I figured he was done since he usually finishes a scene after he comes, and I’d kind of like to wash up and see if Emily will have a coffee with me. She’s a great listener and might help me make sense of my weird disinterest.
“Then we fucking continue,” he says.
He does, and both my tits and my ass are hotter, and a hell of a lot sorer, by the time he’s done. Emily and Logan leave while Ten’s still flogging my girls.
My mind follows them, and I never do get my head back in the scene.
I don’t usually stay for the weekend breakfast buffet at the club. I like to get into my shop early, make sure the ink and needle stations are clean and everything’s ready for when we open. Sometimes I get a quiet hour to sketch.
But part of my current weird headspace is an aversion to the shop I’ve worked like a dog for over five years to build. It doesn’t help that with the cold weather, everyone’s pulled on their sweats and coats and stopped getting ink. Business is down a third in a month; I don’t even have any bookings until Monday,although there are often walk-ins over the weekend. Being at the shop without a client to work on gives me too much time to think. So I hit the buffet, find a table, and ignore how high the sun is in the sky through the windows.
I’m alone at my table—by choice, thank you—for less than five minutes before a slim, sparkly-pink-manicured hand reaches across me, steals my coffee cup, and puts down a steaming cup of faintly-colored water in its place.
