ICE QUEEN (Part 2)

 “Marguerite?” It was Chloe who spoke. “Is this guy some kind of trouble you need me to get rid of? I could tell him you had to go early, let you slip out the back.”

 

There was no running from this. Maybe that was good. Yes, she decided. It was good. Time to face up to it, destroy the illusion that her mind had created around Tyler that had made her avoid him for nearly two years. Maybe that was the true motive she’d had, inviting him here. Facing this task with him would uncover the man behind the myth to her, and then she could firmly place him on the shelf with other bedtime stories.

“This isn’t one of your extreme tests for yourself, is it? Marguerite, you’ve actually gotten paler.”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a man, not a leap from an airplane at ten thousand feet.” Though suddenly, the first time she had done the latter seemed less daunting than this situation.

 

“Need a chair or a whip to meet your tiger, then?” Genevieve dispelled the moment with a twinkle in her eyes.

 

Marguerite rose. “With my two circus clowns in the wings, I feel fully protected from any wild beast.”

 

“Cute.” Chloe smiled then, though Marguerite felt their attention following her tidely out of the kitchen. Her voice had come out oddly, and Marguerite Perruquet’s voice never came out oddly.

 

She looked back, summoned the cool, tranquil expression they knew. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

Courtesy wanted she knows his presence, even if she couldn’t meet with him for the next thirty minutes. But perhaps courtesy was not what was called for here.

 

She didn’t notice men the way Chloe did. When she allowed herself to notice them as sexual beings, it was in the boundaries of The Zone, the BDSM club she frequented usually no more than once a week, an outing Chloe and Gen knew nothing about. In choosing her submissive for the night, she focused on his eyes, looking for signs of a need that she could not describe in words but she recognized. And they recognized her as the Mistress that could fill that need. She never lacked for a partner.

 

But Tyler she noticed, despite the fact that she didn’t see that type of need in his eyes. Tyler Winterman was not a submissive. He was well acknowledged as one of the most powerful and sought-after Masters at The Zone by the female submissives who frequented it.

 

Whenever she was close enough to feel the heat of his energy, which seemed to be whenever they were under the same roof, even at a club as large as The Zone, she felt his dangerous edge, the ruthlessness and resolution moving like an intriguing shadow just beneath the surface. Something in his eyes made her feel she could need him, and he would take care of those needs, of anything she needed.

 

As she moved out onto the floor, she saw him right away. He wore tan slacks and a perfectly ironed and fitted cream colored Oxford shirt, open at the throat. His jacket was hooked on the point of the chair, and he wore brown, polished dress shoes, the casual elegance suiting Tea Leaves.

 

He didn’t blend though. Instead, he looked like an intrigued, benevolent god that walked among men. He emanated difference and yet something so familiar, as if she knew him like the touch of the sun.

 

She had tried to describe him in her mind before, as if using words would somehow sculpt a definitive closed boundary around him, something that would keep the essence of him from escaping the edges and touching her identity, altering it somehow. Her failure to do so forced her to acknowledge that the way she recognized him, was captivated by him, had less to do with his physical features and more with how her body reacted to his presence, the sound of his voice, his scent. There were times she would pass an area at The Zone, catch that scent, and know he had been there only a moment before.

 

His physical features were nothing to scoff at, however. Dark hair, kept cropped smoothly short on his nape and around his ears. Just enough feathering on top to draw attention to the way it scattered carelessly across his high forehead. He was in his forties, so she suspected if he let it grow longer, the peppering of gray would become silver streaks. A tall man, probably six foot five, his shoulders coaxed a woman’s fingertips to trace their breadth. And then those fingertips might tremble off the edge, slide down the curve of hard biceps, linger on a forearm, find themselves captured by a large hand that looked capable and confident of handling something fragile without damaging it, much as he handled the whimsical sample cup now.

 

In short, he exuded the confidence of a man in the prime of his life, where the physical and mental abilities were at once together, a man who understood what he wanted. And whatever that was, it created a restless force to him that had the ability to reach out and physically touch her whenever they had the slightest proximity to one another, like now.

 

She’d never had to deal with him out of The Zone, and suddenly, as she crossed the floor, it felt as if they were all alone. Her heart rate sped up, nearly deafening her with its roar of panic.

 

Stop. It’s bad enough you have this reaction to him. You don’t know why, which makes it irrational. Stupid, even. You invited him here. Remember?

With the expression of the pleasant proprietress firmly in place, she moved toward him, giving him a slight nod to let him know she was on her way, a courtesy. However, she stopped to pay attention to her customers, an unspoken reprimand to him for coming before the closing time she’d specified.

“Mrs. Allen.” The lady she addressed was approaching eighty, an age at which Marguerite would expect that a woman could safely allow one’s looks and appearance to lapse, but on the contrary, most of her senior citizen clientele came in better put together than women half their age. Nails neatly manicured, silk blouses and suits with a tasteful pin on the lapel, sturdy but stylish shoes, and legs always, always clad in silky hose, never a run to be seen. Sometimes the perfume might be a bit cloying, as older faculties had difficulty judging the amount, but Marguerite found it comfortable, the smell of older Southern women, the scents of their powder and papery skin mingling with White Diamonds or Chanel #5.