N is for... (Checklist Book 14) by L DuBois (best classic books TXT) 📕

and dynamic version of herself that rarely saw the light of day anymore.

“Autumn.”

His voice was low and rang with command. Stiffly, she returned her gaze to the man, the stranger, across from her. Flirting didn’t make him any less a stranger, and she needed to remember that.

His gaze bore into hers, but his body was relaxed—a king totally in control, and confident on his throne. “I will presume to do far more to you than just lecture.”

Chapter 3

Damn he was a lucky Dom. His partner was hot and sassy and how the fuck had he never seen her before?

Daniel watched Autumn’s body language, loving the way her shoulders squared even as she uncrossed and then re-crossed her legs. She was the very picture of pissed off, but also aroused, submissive.

She’d taken him by surprise with the ‘bat-shit’ comment, and just kept surprising him, in the best possible ways.

The announcement of the checklist game had certainly shocked the hell out of him. Assigned partners, assigned letters, all because the club overseers thought they’d gotten complacent? He didn’t need his sex life shaken up. BDSM was his outlet for a desperate, dark need for control. Anything that fucked with his ability to use BDSM as an outlet was risky.

The checklist game was wild and dramatic and he’d heard plenty of grumbling from among the Owners, Doms, and Masters who’d been standing near him during the all-club meeting.

He, it appeared, had gotten very lucky with Autumn.

They had chemistry. That had been apparent from the first words they exchanged, and he knew she felt it too.

Well, that was hardly some great insight on his part. Her damn it, I’m attracted to you comment made it pretty plain.

“You’ll presume to do absolutely nothing without my consent.” She notched her chin up in challenge.

“Of course not,” he agreed.

She relaxed a little.

“Our letter is ’N’ not ‘R’,” he teased, trying to get them back on their previous conversational footing.

“R? Wait, let me guess. Rape fantasy?”

“Yes.” He tapped the papers.

“Well, ’n’ could be for non-consent.”

“You mean CNC?” Consensual non-consent was a more modern, and more current term than ‘rape fantasy,’ but the overseers were from an older generation of kinksters.

“You don’t read much dark erotica do you?” She made an exaggerated sad face.

“No.” He didn’t bother to hide his grin. “I can’t say I do.”

“Well then, you’re really missing out. Maybe I’ll let you join my book club.”

“You have a book club that reads non-consent dark erotica?”

“No, but I’m going to start one just so you can join,” she assured him with mock solemnity.

Daniel let his head fall back and laughed. Damn, this was fun. Fun in a totally different way than the ‘fun’ he was used to having at Las Palmas. Fun wasn’t something that had ever played a big part in his life.

When he finished laughing and glanced at her, the small smile she was struggling to hide was enchanting. Nearly as enchanting as the soft, bronzed mounds of her breasts plumped and lifted by her corset.

It had taken a fair amount of self control to stop himself from spinning her around and burying his face in her cleavage after he’d finished adjusting her corset.

Needing something to do other than look at her pretty tits, Daniel picked up her checklist. It was already flipped to the page that had the items for the letter N on it.

The list of items for N was distressingly small and rather vanilla compared to some of what the other letters were going to deal with.

“We’ll start with reviewing our checklist items, then we’ll discuss,” he declared.

“You already told me—it’s nipple play, right?”

“Actually the phrase ‘nipple play’ isn’t on here. We’ll make that the implied fifth item. The first is actually ‘name change’.”

Autumn paused, the glass halfway to her mouth. “What?”

“That’s actually what you put on the list.” He tapped the page, where a bold hand had written what? next to “name change.”

“You wrote ‘what’ with a question mark and then didn’t actually check a box. The overseers said that for any unchecked or ‘no comment’ items, we could assume those were ‘willing to try’ or default to our own list.”

For each item on the checklist there were four possible responses—“yes”, “no”, and “willing to try” were available options for each item on the list. The fourth response was to not answer, as she’d essentially done with name change.

“That’s an…odd one.” She rolled her wine glass against her lower lip. “I guess you could call me ‘Fall’ or something.”

“You think you would get to choose the name change?” He sank a little steel into the words.

She stiffened, as he’d expected. He’d never had a sub be simultaneously easygoing and defensive. An odd, but compelling, combination for a submissive.

Though he was hardly a typical member of Las Palmas.

Daniel pushed those thoughts away. “The other three items are all nipple related. Nipple clamps, nipple piercing, and nipple weights.”

Autumn waved one hand dismissively. “We can knock this out in five minutes. My nipples are pierced, so we switch to rings, add weights, then remove both for a few minutes to use the clamps, and you can call me ‘Fall’ or ‘Spring’ or something.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

She jerked a little in clear shock. She hadn’t expected him to agree to that. And did she look a little disappointed? Maybe that was wishful thinking.

“You’re right that we could do what you just outlined. We’d be the first pairing to start, and the first pairing to finish.” He gestured around the still empty dining room.

He hadn’t been the first person to receive his assignment packet, but he’d been the first person to walk out of the Conclave in search of his sub. He’d been planning to go the Den and use the intercom system to call for Autumn to meet him somewhere else in the club.

But he’d walked faster than planned, and caught up with the subs. The very sexy woman in the red corset with glossy gold-streaked dark hair had drawn his attention