Free Totlandia: Summer by Josie Brown

but cry and sleep.
    Finally, just after nightfall she made her way to her new kitchen. The smell of meat loaf and rosemary mashed potatoes was simply too good to ignore.
    Reggie didn’t speak when he saw her. Instead, he shoved a steaming wedge of the meat loaf onto a plate, along with a full ladle’s worth of potatoes.
    She took a spoonful. Wow, not bad, she thought. In the middle of her fifth bite, she grumbled, “Where did you learn to cook?”
    “My dorm, at Berkeley. Communal living means pulling your weight.” He stared down at the ladle. “Sadly it’s also where I learned to drink like a fish. Hence, a good deal of upchucking. I was the best cook in the place. Otherwise, I would have been relegated to scrubbing my own vomit off the toilets after our weekend parties.”
    She shrugged. “We all have our vices.”
    “Frankly, you’ve taught me it’s the other way around. Our vices have us.” He poured her a glass of water. “You gave me a new start, Jade. I’ll always remember that.”
    She turned so that he could see her blushing.
    He hesitated, then added, “Maybe being out from under Brady’s roof will give you a new start as well.”
    Yeah, she thought. Brady is my crack.
    She shoved her plate away. “This is a temporary arrangement, for both of us. Nothing more.”
    “I hear you loud and clear,” he murmured.
    She could barely hear him, she was already halfway up the stairs.
    When she reached her bedroom, the crying started all over again.
     
    9:41 p.m.
    A good night’s flogging was doing Bettina a world of good.
    She had no doubt that Art’s night was just as satisfying, if his squirming on their new spanking bench was any indication.
    The paddle did double duty when he had the audacity to suggest that they consider joining a local S and M club.
    “It’s called Incognito, because everyone wears masks. You know, to spice things up,” was how he put it.
    “Why?” she asked as she placed a butt plug into his bottom. “This isn’t spicy enough for you?”
    His scream had her wishing she’d shoved the plug into his mouth instead.
    To remind him that the downstairs neighbor in their condo building was a former Secretary of State, she lashed a cat-o’-nine-tails across his back.
    “Ouch! My God, Bettina! It’s just that…well…I’d never want to disappoint you…Ouch! Because…Ouch! Ouch! I know how much you like to hone your technique… Ouch! But I only suggested it because I want to live long enough to see our daughter graduate from college someday… PRINCE VSEVOLOD! ”
    What a wuss, she thought. She lowered the whip, but kept him shackled to the bench. Better he should wonder about the extent of her disappointment over his use of their safety word so early in the evening.
    Frankly, she hated to admit it, but his suggestion had some merit.
    In all those years in which she only emotionally abused him, they had practically no sex life at all. When she discovered his craving for physical punishment—and her desire to give it—their sex life had flourished.
    For a while, anyway. True, abusing him gave her another outlet for her own emotional pain. But lately it had begun to bore her. Unshackling him, then telling him the how/what/where of making her orgasm, seemed redundant.
    Besides, it bothered her that his orgasms were obviously more intense than hers.
    To hell with that.
    She tried to keep her tone nonchalant as she asked, “How do you know about these S and M clubs?”
    “Oh, you know. I heard about them from some guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy—”
    She put her mouth close to his ear and hissed, “No, I don’t know. Do you mean ‘some guy who knows a guy who knows a guy—who knows some girl who looks better than me in leather’? Are you trying to tell me that you’ve already checked this place out?”
    “No! No, Bettina, I swear I haven’t! On—on Prince Vsevolod’s life!”
    “Don’t you ever take his name in vain!” To make her point, she crammed the