Dark Rooms

By Sionna Fox

NO SAFE WORDS

Women beg Wes Oliver to dominate them in darkness. In the light, he’s finally getting his life back on track. College is priority number one—until he finds his new professor is the delicious Sub who ran out on him last weekend, a brilliant and mature beauty nothing like the girls who usually kneel before him. Suddenly, this is no longer just about pleasure. This is about his heart.

Aimee Eastman has rules. Rules for herself. Rules for her college photography students. Rules for the partners she submits to at private BDSM house parties. Then the hot young Dom who topped her last weekend walks into her classroom and all boundaries fly out the window—or would if she could just give up control. Like she wants. Like she needs. Then she and Wes might share forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Boroughs Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781944262822

Sionna Fox

Sionna Fox is an author of sweet/hot HEAs, die-hard romance fan, and lover of things nerdy and twee. She drinks too much coffee, has a minor issue with washi tape and planner stickers, and tagging her in anything involving llamas, foxes, or women in suits is a surefire way to her heart. She lives in New Hampshire with her very patient husband and very put-upon dog.

Book preview

NO SAFE WORDS

Women beg Wes Oliver to dominate them in darkness. In the light, he’s finally getting his life back on track. College is priority number one—until he finds his new professor is the delicious Sub who ran out on him last weekend, a brilliant and mature beauty nothing like the girls who usually kneel before him. Suddenly, this is no longer just about pleasure. This is about his heart.

Aimee Eastman has rules. Rules for herself. Rules for her college photography students. Rules for the partners she submits to at private BDSM house parties. Then the hot young Dom who topped her last weekend walks into her classroom and all boundaries fly out the window—or would if she could just give up control. Like she wants. Like she needs. Then she and Wes might share forever.

DARK ROOMS

Sionna Fox

www.BOROUGHSPUBLISHINGGROUP.com

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Boroughs Publishing Group does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their content.

DARK ROOMS

Copyright © 2017 Emily Kilduff

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. Unless specifically noted, no part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Boroughs Publishing Group. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the permission of Boroughs Publishing Group is illegal and punishable by law. Participation in the piracy of copyrighted materials violates the author’s rights.

ISBN 978-1-944262-82-2

E-book formatting by Maureen Cutajar

www.gopublished.com

For Bear, always.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While the first draft of anything is often a solitary pursuit involving me in my pajamas, squawking at my husband and my dog to Leave me alone and don’t you dare look over my shoulder, the rest of the process involves a lot of people.

To the team at Boroughs Publishing, thank you for giving Wes and Aimee a home.

To the authors and writers I’ve met through Passionate Ink and NECRWA, I’m lucky to call you my friends and colleagues.

To Team Lu, for continuing to be the badasses you all are, supporting me, and keeping me in peanut butter smoothies.

To Karin, for excellence in cheerleading and catching the mistakes and nonsense in my early drafts.

To my family, I love you guys, don’t make it weird.

To Brady, you’re a dog, but let’s pretend you can read this. Bringing your weird, fuzzy self home from the shelter was one of the best decisions I ever made. Love you, fuzzbutt.

Lastly, and most importantly, to my husband. You’re my person, and I wouldn’t be here without you.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

About the Author

DARK ROOMS

CHAPTER ONE

Wes was back in the game. He’d arrived early and helped his hosts and the monitors set up for the night. Going through the familiar motions of preparing for a party made him feel at home for the first time in ages. The place and the people were new, but the light snacks and coolers of water and juice they spread out, the chatter about new favorite toys, the smell of leather and the snapping, smacking sounds it made filled Wes with a curious mixture of calm and anticipation, belonging and arousal, that he had come to crave. He had offers for introductions to likely partners, but he chose to wait and watch. He would approach in his own time, if it felt right. It was possible the whole night would be a bust, at least as far as his dick was concerned. Maybe then he would ask for introductions, but not yet.

As people claimed rooms and toys, and scenes began, Wes moved through the house. He stopped for a few minutes here, a few minutes there, watching as various scenes played out. A group of spectators gathered around a sturdy farmhouse-style table while a chubby redhead, tied down with her ass in the air, gleefully received a caning from a tall, thin man who growled at her to stop fucking giggling, while he struggled to keep a straight face himself.

Wes’s cock was half-hard seeing deep cherry-colored welts rise on the redhead’s ass and down the backs of her thighs. He always did love a pain slut. He loved to watch colors bloom across skin, to watch brains and bodies scramble to cope with the sensations. He loved seeing her reach the point where she couldn’t figure out whether to laugh, cry, or come, and did all three at once. He loved the obvious, easy affection between partners in sync with each other’s wants and needs and desires. The redhead struggled and giggled and taunted her partner with the moving, wiggling target of her butt because it amused them both. He pinned her down and striped her ass because it made her toes curl. She was tied down, and he was in control, but the scene was theirs, together.

He had to leave before they were finished. In the kitchen, he pulled a bottle of water from a cooler and took a deep swig. He wasn’t about to come in his pants like a teenager from watching. He needed to have some self-control or he was going to throw himself at the first available-looking woman there and make a fool of himself. Or he’d go find a bathroom to jerk off in, which would be equally humiliating if he was caught. He probably should have done it before he left his apartment, not that it would have helped. Not when he was watching his fantasies live and in person, and it had been over a year since he’d last had any kind of sex—kinky, vanilla, or otherwise. Ethics aside, his grandfather’s home health aides and the visiting nurses from the VA hadn’t exactly been the stuff of naughty nurse fantasies.

He fixed a plate of cheese and crackers, grabbed another bottle of water, and went into the small sitting room off the kitchen that had been set aside for socializing and negotiation. He sat at one end of a low-slung leather couch with his food and his water and toed the razor-thin line between imposing enough to read as dominant and approachable enough that potential subs wouldn’t be scared to talk to him. That fine line was the reason he avoided the jeans, black t-shirt, and motorcycle boots look. He definitely didn’t wear leather. He was six foot three and solid as a brick wall to begin with; no need to make it worse. Or to attract the kind of sub who wanted to be beaten into submission by a snarling muscleman. Not his style. He preferred a softer approach: more praise, less punishment, though he wielded a whip all the same.

He sat there and closed his eyes. He was new here; expecting to hook up at his first party was a recipe for disappointment. He should wait, watch, and go home. Next time, maybe he would play. Making the mental recalibration from might get laid tonight to here to make friends still took some doing.

Wes polished off his food and water, and went back out into the party. The redhead and her partner were gone from the table, replaced by a Domme in full, shiny red latex regalia swatting at her sub’s cock and balls with a heart-shaped crop while she berated him. He admired her skill, even if the dynamic wasn’t for him. Her aim was impeccable, and Wes flinched right along with her willing victim when she landed a particularly sharp blow to the underside of his cock.

Wes kept wandering, a shark that couldn’t stop moving in pursuit of its prey. So much for that mental reset.

There was a St. Andrew’s cross in the basement, bathed in a pool of stark light from a single, bare bulb. A broad-shouldered man was bound to it, naked but for his black briefs, taking a flogging from another man who was smaller and leaner and fully clothed in jeans and a gray t-shirt. It took Wes a minute to recognize the pair as their hosts, Hank and Ed. The knot of spectators watched the two men in near perfect silence. The swish and slap of leather on skin and tiny, quiet grunts and whimpers were the only sounds in the room. Between volleys, the top whispered in his partner’s ear, stroked his arms, petted his hair, and Wes flinched with the pain of recognition.

He wanted that bond. He thought he’d had it, once. But then Rebecca had told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t what she wanted anymore. He wasn’t enough. He could never be enough. It hurt to stay and watch, remembering how everything had fallen apart, but he couldn’t force his feet to move.

He told himself it would be rude to walk out and risk breaking the spell, but he didn’t believe his own lie. They were beautiful. Wes was rooted in place, taking in their exchange until the broad shoulders were suffused with pink and red marks, until the top’s t-shirt was damp with the sweat of his exertions and he dropped the flogger, untied his lover’s arms and wrapped them around his own shoulders, supporting his weak-kneed partner to a corner to recover. Even then, when he should have known better than to stare, Wes couldn’t look away. They were oblivious to the attention.

As people started moving around the room, Wes broke his gaze, chest aching with a kind of jealousy, and watched another couple move forward to wipe down the cross and take their own places. He was about to make his escape from the room when he saw her standing at the front inside the circle of light cast by the bulb above the cross, chatting with the woman standing next to her.

Her dark blonde hair was pinned up, tendrils escaping to frame her heart-shaped face with a few more escapees curled at the nape of her neck. She had round cheeks and a button nose with bowed lips painted dark red. Her lingerie peeked out of her crisp, white shirt, unbuttoned to the point where it was tucked into a tight, black pencil skirt. The skirt emphasized the breadth of her hips, the fullness of her thighs, and the rounded shape of her stocking-clad calves before her legs disappeared into a pair of platform heels. She was narrower up top, though her tits looked plush enough nestled in the cups of her bustier. He couldn’t stop imagining what her full hips must look like from behind, with her skirt shoved up around her waist and her panties around her knees while he bent her over, spanked her ass, and fucked her.

Wes swallowed hard. She was a fucking wet dream come to life. She was probably with someone. To be fair, she could be uninterested in him even if she were single. They could be incompatible even if she were single and attracted to him. Or she could be exactly what he was looking for. She disappeared up the stairs before he had a chance to find out.

***

Aimee went upstairs and found Kristin and Alex snuggled on the couch in the living room; she had already missed their habitual show, but she could see the red stripes across the backs of Kristin’s thighs peeking out from under the blanket she was bundled in. Her heart gave a kick every time she watched them, so fucking happy. She clenched her fists and turned on her heel. The last thing she needed was anyone to see her staring at her ex and his new partner. She wasn’t jealous. Kristin was easy to love and Aimee was, well, Aimee. She didn’t