How to Discipline Your Vampire(26)

            Whack. Whack.

            She brought the leather belt down on me.

            Whack. Snap.

            She hissed as the buckle flew off and hit her in the neck. She wound up and spanked me with her hand rather than the broken belt.

            Then she howled in pain and brought her hand to her chest, cradling it.

            Then she asked what the hell was wrong with me. I looked at her, eyes wide, pulling up my pants.

            She shook her head and began to walk back inside. She muttered something about freaks and then was gone.

            I think I know what I feel, now.

            Humiliation.

            While this sort of pain is close to what I was hoping to feel, it just leaves me hollow and embarrassed. But I know I can’t stop now. The feeling of that belt and the look in her eyes as she was about to control me is something that I need.

            I will continue my search.

            Defeated but not broken,

            William

            I snapped the journal shut and tried desperately to absorb the tear that was threatening to fall down my cheek. It ended up drying in the duct because I told myself this was just a story; it wasn’t real.

            It was time to go to bed, so I lifted the books from the gray comforter and toted them over to my bureau. Just as I was putting the last pile down, a CD slipped from one of the journals.

            FOR MISTRESS CHERRY it read in William’s cursive script. I had become very familiar with his handwriting in the past few hours.

            Oh God, I realized, those really are in his handwriting . . .

            I pulled the CD out of the case and placed it in my laptop, which was sitting on my end table. I liked to record my dreams in the morning, so the first thing I usually did when I got up was type. My laptop was a Dell and had a coffee ring in the dead center. Techies would weep at my indiscretion.

            Music poured out. Piano. Passion. I listened to the tune with my head in my hand, trying to place it.

            It was sad, but beautiful. It was ferociously emotional and bordered on sounding obsessive, but full of longing.

            I simply had to ask William about it tomorrow. The prompt for tomorrow was “piano player and his muse,” so while the CD wasn’t a huge surprise, the song was.

            I checked my e-mail while the computer was still open, and found a simple note from William: “Hope you’re enjoying listening to your hint.”



            Okay, so I have a confession—I brought two things into school today that I probably shouldn’t have.

            One—my headphones. I ripped William’s song and had been listening to it on loop during my free periods while I graded some multiple-choice tests the teacher had left for me.

            Two—I just lied about grading. During my free periods, I read his journals.

            Apparently, finally, after a complete dry spell in the 1960s, William sort of got a taste of what he was looking for in the early seventies. I mean, if this were really William. But it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been.

            January 24, 1972

            Dear Journal,

            Her name rhymes with pain for a good reason. Today, for the first time, I truly felt the pain of submitting to a sadistic Domme.

            She is like me—vampire—and her name is Laine.

            I am not attracted to her. Her body was strangely pear-shaped and I didn’t like the smell of her.