Black Light: The Menagerie
Excerpt By Maren Smith
Available at: Amazon (and on Kindle Unlimited!)
"Nervous?” Garreth asked as she hopped into the passenger seat of his Charger, wearing something completely different than what she’d been in when he came out to the garage to warm up the car.
What was this now? The fifth change of clothes she’d tried since this morning? Probably, but she’d found an issue with every outfit. Her first attempt had been a thigh length, baby doll cut, black dress.
That hadn’t felt right. She was pretty sure the last outfit he’d seen had been a sequined, sparkling, rainbow-colored cocktail dress, tight-fitting enough to amplify the luscious curves she was still off and on dieting to combat. It was wrong, too. Now, she was in white jeans and a soft pink sweater, and she still wasn’t happy about it. He always insisted she looked beautiful in anything, but he was biased.
“Are you nervous?” he repeated, not even reaching for the steering wheel as he watched her.
“No,” she lied, which earned a disbelieving chuckle from him.
“No?” he countered, giving her a stern look.
She dropped her stare to her lap, then quickly looked out the window. They were still sitting in the garage, but even with the door wide open, the only view she had was of the pegboard where his tools were hanging.
“Hadlee,” he warned when she didn’t answer.
She looked at her hands again before finally looking at him. “Yes, sir,” she said, her resignation weighting her soft voice.
“Do you want to talk before we go?”
She sighed. “No. We’ll be late if we do. We can’t be late.”
“Do you need a spanking before you’ll calm down?”
She blanched, and eventually held up her finger. “For clarification, is this...”
“Not one of the fun ones,” he finished for her.
Damn it. She winced, and quickly looked away again. Did she need a spanking? She wanted to say no; his not-fun ones weren’t the sort she craved. When he was being playful or sexy, God yes. Those spankings were everything she ached for. Never the other kind, although she was usually the first to admit they did work. Not as punishment so much as simply the physical act that finished whatever he saw need to scold her for and got her past the ugly feelings of being ‘in trouble.’
Those made her feel close to him and forgiven once more. They also left her bottom sore as hell. The last thing she wanted her Menagerie sisters to notice at lunch today was how tenderly she was sitting down.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I-I’ll be fine.”
Garreth studied her silently, before nodding. “All right. Here we go, then.”
Her nerves got the best of her. “Wait, I—just let me change my shirt. This one makes me look—”
“Don’t say it,” Garreth warned.
“—too big.”
“That’s it.” Shutting off the car, he shouldered open the driver’s door and she felt her stomach clench tight.
“No, no.” Throwing up her hands, Hadlee begged for him to get back in the car. “I didn’t mean it that way! I just meant—”
But he was already coming around the car, pocketing the keys as he reached her door and opened it.
She tried to put her seatbelt on, but he immediately pulled it off again and took that by now familiar no-nonsense hold on her wrist.
“How did you mean it?” he asked as he drew her out.
That was a trap if ever she’d heard one. After all, how many different ways could a person mean it when they referred to themselves as too big? Especially when she wasn’t. Her weight was normal —not too thin, but definitely not fat, and she knew that. But for all that she’d been out of Ethen’s control for what… two and a half years now? Sometimes it was still hard to get his voice out of her head. And she had always—always!—been bigger than any of the others. That’s why he’d named her Piggy. Even after all this time, when she looked in the mirror, she still saw what her old master had insisted she was—his Piggy-girl. His fat little porker. The one he put on her knees in the pig wallow outside by the barn whenever she did anything bad.
Garreth shut the car door behind her, dragging her around to the back of their silver, four-door muscle car before closing the garage with a tap of the button on the wall. “Pants down. Assume the position.”
Wincing, she did as he told her. The only thing that got her spanked harder and faster than a careless insinuation about her weight was defiance while she was in trouble. Bending forward, she braced her hands on the trunk and reluctantly pushed her panty-clad bottom out. After all, he’d said pants down, not pants and underwear. It was probably too much to hope that he’d let her keep her panties on.
“Nice try,” he said, hooking his fingers in the waistband and drawing them and her bunched jeans down to her knees.
The garage was so much cooler when she didn’t have pants on. Of course, every room was cooler once Garreth stripped her for a spanking.
“Please not hard,” she whimpered. “Please?”
She’d called herself fat, giving affirmation to all the awful things Ethen had ever said. She was lucky Garreth wasn’t taking off his--
That by now familiar clink when he grabbed his belt buckle sent a wave of goosebumps racing up the backs of her thighs, over her bottom, and even her back, although he’d never hit her there with anything but a flogger.
“Oh no,” she begged. “Please, sir, not the belt!”
The worn leather slid from his pant loops with a single pull and a leathery hiss. It would make a completely different sound when he brought it lashing down on her bare skin.
“Not today,” he told her. “Not on any day. You don’t get to say unkind things about the woman I love, and you know that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Relax your bottom.”
She was cringing. She hated when he used the belt for punishment reasons. Garreth was always fair when he took it off. It was only ever used severely when she violated Ethen-based rules and for that he always used it long enough and hard enough to leave her backside scalded, swollen, and welted. She wasn’t going to be able to sit for the reunion with her Menagerie sisters.
Hadlee burst into tears, but she also put herself into the proper position. She bent almost straight at the hips, hands braced on the trunk, feet shoulder-width apart, and willed herself to relax her clenching backside.
“I’m so sorry,” she wept.
He moved to her side with the belt doubled over in his hand, the buckle always palmed to keep it from accidentally striking her, as he caressed her back. “I know, honey. But I’m all done giving that man access to continue hurting you. I’ve told you three times now and I’m saying it again. That man doesn’t live in our house, not now, not ever. Every time you perpetuate the ugly things he told you, I will take off my belt and use it. Do you have anything you want to say before we get started?”
“I’m sorry,” she bawled. “I’m just so nervous.”
“I know. What about?”
“Everything. Why am I going at all? They probably only invited me because they felt they had to. I was the last girl he brought into the Menagerie, and I ran away within months. I was barely there. They probably don’t even like me. I’m the outsider. I’ve always been the outsider.”
Tsking, he put the belt down on top of the trunk and caught her shoulder. She let him draw her up and turned when he pulled her.
Hiding her face in her hands, she even let him pull her in for a comforting hug. She didn’t return it. Everything she’d just said was every worst fear she’d harbored since Garreth had come home from Black Light with that invitation, given to him by Puppy’s dom, Carlson. She’d wanted to attend this reunion with everything she had. Just the thought of it had lit her soul with such happiness, and yet the ugly thoughts had come in anyway.
“Hadlee, honey,” Garreth said against the top of her head. “I love you to pieces.”
She loved him to pieces too. She couldn’t imagine her life without him in it. She’d gotten so lucky. From the moment she’d called him, half-naked that dark winter night, dressed in only her piggy harness and covered in mud from the wallow, he’d been in her life. She’d moved in with him for crying out loud. Right from the start, he’d insisted she live with him because he wanted to make sure she was safe from Ethen. And after that, it was supposed to be just until she had a job and saved enough money to move into her own place. But that flimsy excuse had only lasted until the night he came home from Black Light with ‘that’ look in his eyes. The one that had burned through her chest all the way down to her belly, heating her up from the inside out.
She’d made dinner. He’d ignored it and come straight at her instead.
“I’ve been waiting all day for this,” he’d said, right before he grabbed her, spun her around, yanked her up against his chest and wrapped his arms around her. His kiss on the side of her neck had made her melt and burn all the hotter. He’d kissed her shoulder, her back, swept her hair out of his way and actually nipped the nape of her neck with his teeth.
She’d shivered then. Her nipples had strained, tightening into stiff little peaks when he caught the hem of her shirt and swept it up over her head. His hands on her breasts had transferred the focus of all that heat inside straight to her pussy. He made her clit throb like no one ever had. He made her skin burn.
He made every waking nerve in her body shiver and sparkle, and riot.
She almost came just from the magic of his hands and the heat of his mouth caressing her.
She almost came again when he yanked his shirt off and she felt the real heat of him wrapping her from behind. He shoved his pants down and her pussy gushed as she felt the hard press of his cock nestling into the crack of her ass.
She didn’t need him to tell her to take her pants off. Hands trembling, she’d scrambled to get them off, kicking free of the denim leggings just as he shoved her up against the kitchen counter.
The sex that night had been amazing, and his touch had been burned into her body and soul from that moment on. He was her best friend, her lover, her Dom… even when he had his belt in his hand and her bottom bared to receive its painful sting.
The chill of the garage made her shiver again.
Loosening his grip on her, Garreth pulled back far enough to look at her. After a moment, he handed her his belt. “Hold this for me.”
She took it, holding onto it as if it were a snake about to strike.
He’d never had her hold his belt right before a spanking. The urge to throw it was incredible, but she wasn’t a brat and that would absolutely make her spanking worse. More than that, it would make him disappointed in her, and she hated whenever she did that. She’d rather take a thousand spankings than ever disappoint him again.
HIDDEN FOR SPOILERS
Tipping his head, Garreth held out his hand for the belt. Yep. He was absolutely still going to spank her. Now she did groan as she reached down to pluck it from the garage floor and hand it over.
“This is so unfair,” she grumbled, turning back to face the rear of the vehicle. Bending, she braced her hands against the cool metal.
“It is unfair,” he agreed as she braced herself for the first hard impact. “It’s unfair when you continue to take his word as the truth and completely ignore mine. I understand why it happens. Like I said, no one gets over the shit you’ve been through at the drop of a hat. But it’s been long enough now, and I’m not willing to sit by and do nothing while you continue his habit of constantly cutting you down. You’re mine, Hadlee, not his. My word, and what I have to say about you, matters more than anything he ever said. Got it?”
Her stomach was a weird amalgamation of butterflies, knots, erotic warmth, and happiness. At any other time, she’d have listened to that scolding with a sense of doom and sorrow, but not right now.
“Got it,” she said, unable to help smiling.
That smile only lasted until he brought the belt swiping down with a crack across her naked ass. She ducked her head, clamping her lips tight against an involuntary yelp. The belt was bad. It was always bad, but when she was getting it for punishment, Garreth didn’t pull his punches.
Two... three...
Hadlee bent her head all the way down, leaning into the car to keep from jumping up. She squeaked when the next stroke wrapped the very top of her thighs, lashing its stinging fury directly onto her sit spot. The intensity of hurt spread, covering not only the whole of her backside now, but the tops of her tingling legs and even her sex.
She squeezed her thighs together. It was all she could do to help prevent the belt from hitting her pussy. Garreth never aimed for that when the spanking was real, but there was always a chance for accidentally hitting the wrong way. Ethen had frequently done that, although part of her always wondered if he’d done it intentionally. So far, Garreth never had, but there was always a first time, right? That’s why the word accident existed? Even for someone like Garreth who, every single week without fail, put in at least an hour of target practice with things like canes, floggers, and even his belt. Not folded over, like he wielded it now, but with the buckle wrapped only once around his hand and the remainder left hanging free. Four good feet of merciless leather that he was slowly, but surely training himself to use at full whipping potential.
“God!” she gasped as he struck again, hitting that same damn spot.
Right at the crease where bottom met thighs and the flesh was so sensitive that every stroke felt like she was being cut. The raw pain of it burst into overwhelming, smarting stings, followed by burning heat so fiery that it felt as if she were sitting directly on a campfire. “Stop!”
“Stop clenching,” he replied. “Stick that bottom out.”
Snap!
“God!” She tried to lock her lips against it, but still the shout escaped. It hurt so much. Every thought in her head reverberated around just how much. “Please, Garreth!”
“I love you too much to let you off easy.”
What was this now? The fifth change of clothes she’d tried since this morning? Probably, but she’d found an issue with every outfit. Her first attempt had been a thigh length, baby doll cut, black dress.
That hadn’t felt right. She was pretty sure the last outfit he’d seen had been a sequined, sparkling, rainbow-colored cocktail dress, tight-fitting enough to amplify the luscious curves she was still off and on dieting to combat. It was wrong, too. Now, she was in white jeans and a soft pink sweater, and she still wasn’t happy about it. He always insisted she looked beautiful in anything, but he was biased.
“Are you nervous?” he repeated, not even reaching for the steering wheel as he watched her.
“No,” she lied, which earned a disbelieving chuckle from him.
“No?” he countered, giving her a stern look.
She dropped her stare to her lap, then quickly looked out the window. They were still sitting in the garage, but even with the door wide open, the only view she had was of the pegboard where his tools were hanging.
“Hadlee,” he warned when she didn’t answer.
She looked at her hands again before finally looking at him. “Yes, sir,” she said, her resignation weighting her soft voice.
“Do you want to talk before we go?”
She sighed. “No. We’ll be late if we do. We can’t be late.”
“Do you need a spanking before you’ll calm down?”
She blanched, and eventually held up her finger. “For clarification, is this...”
“Not one of the fun ones,” he finished for her.
Damn it. She winced, and quickly looked away again. Did she need a spanking? She wanted to say no; his not-fun ones weren’t the sort she craved. When he was being playful or sexy, God yes. Those spankings were everything she ached for. Never the other kind, although she was usually the first to admit they did work. Not as punishment so much as simply the physical act that finished whatever he saw need to scold her for and got her past the ugly feelings of being ‘in trouble.’
Those made her feel close to him and forgiven once more. They also left her bottom sore as hell. The last thing she wanted her Menagerie sisters to notice at lunch today was how tenderly she was sitting down.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I-I’ll be fine.”
Garreth studied her silently, before nodding. “All right. Here we go, then.”
Her nerves got the best of her. “Wait, I—just let me change my shirt. This one makes me look—”
“Don’t say it,” Garreth warned.
“—too big.”
“That’s it.” Shutting off the car, he shouldered open the driver’s door and she felt her stomach clench tight.
“No, no.” Throwing up her hands, Hadlee begged for him to get back in the car. “I didn’t mean it that way! I just meant—”
But he was already coming around the car, pocketing the keys as he reached her door and opened it.
She tried to put her seatbelt on, but he immediately pulled it off again and took that by now familiar no-nonsense hold on her wrist.
“How did you mean it?” he asked as he drew her out.
That was a trap if ever she’d heard one. After all, how many different ways could a person mean it when they referred to themselves as too big? Especially when she wasn’t. Her weight was normal —not too thin, but definitely not fat, and she knew that. But for all that she’d been out of Ethen’s control for what… two and a half years now? Sometimes it was still hard to get his voice out of her head. And she had always—always!—been bigger than any of the others. That’s why he’d named her Piggy. Even after all this time, when she looked in the mirror, she still saw what her old master had insisted she was—his Piggy-girl. His fat little porker. The one he put on her knees in the pig wallow outside by the barn whenever she did anything bad.
Garreth shut the car door behind her, dragging her around to the back of their silver, four-door muscle car before closing the garage with a tap of the button on the wall. “Pants down. Assume the position.”
Wincing, she did as he told her. The only thing that got her spanked harder and faster than a careless insinuation about her weight was defiance while she was in trouble. Bending forward, she braced her hands on the trunk and reluctantly pushed her panty-clad bottom out. After all, he’d said pants down, not pants and underwear. It was probably too much to hope that he’d let her keep her panties on.
“Nice try,” he said, hooking his fingers in the waistband and drawing them and her bunched jeans down to her knees.
The garage was so much cooler when she didn’t have pants on. Of course, every room was cooler once Garreth stripped her for a spanking.
“Please not hard,” she whimpered. “Please?”
She’d called herself fat, giving affirmation to all the awful things Ethen had ever said. She was lucky Garreth wasn’t taking off his--
That by now familiar clink when he grabbed his belt buckle sent a wave of goosebumps racing up the backs of her thighs, over her bottom, and even her back, although he’d never hit her there with anything but a flogger.
“Oh no,” she begged. “Please, sir, not the belt!”
The worn leather slid from his pant loops with a single pull and a leathery hiss. It would make a completely different sound when he brought it lashing down on her bare skin.
“Not today,” he told her. “Not on any day. You don’t get to say unkind things about the woman I love, and you know that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Relax your bottom.”
She was cringing. She hated when he used the belt for punishment reasons. Garreth was always fair when he took it off. It was only ever used severely when she violated Ethen-based rules and for that he always used it long enough and hard enough to leave her backside scalded, swollen, and welted. She wasn’t going to be able to sit for the reunion with her Menagerie sisters.
Hadlee burst into tears, but she also put herself into the proper position. She bent almost straight at the hips, hands braced on the trunk, feet shoulder-width apart, and willed herself to relax her clenching backside.
“I’m so sorry,” she wept.
He moved to her side with the belt doubled over in his hand, the buckle always palmed to keep it from accidentally striking her, as he caressed her back. “I know, honey. But I’m all done giving that man access to continue hurting you. I’ve told you three times now and I’m saying it again. That man doesn’t live in our house, not now, not ever. Every time you perpetuate the ugly things he told you, I will take off my belt and use it. Do you have anything you want to say before we get started?”
“I’m sorry,” she bawled. “I’m just so nervous.”
“I know. What about?”
“Everything. Why am I going at all? They probably only invited me because they felt they had to. I was the last girl he brought into the Menagerie, and I ran away within months. I was barely there. They probably don’t even like me. I’m the outsider. I’ve always been the outsider.”
Tsking, he put the belt down on top of the trunk and caught her shoulder. She let him draw her up and turned when he pulled her.
Hiding her face in her hands, she even let him pull her in for a comforting hug. She didn’t return it. Everything she’d just said was every worst fear she’d harbored since Garreth had come home from Black Light with that invitation, given to him by Puppy’s dom, Carlson. She’d wanted to attend this reunion with everything she had. Just the thought of it had lit her soul with such happiness, and yet the ugly thoughts had come in anyway.
“Hadlee, honey,” Garreth said against the top of her head. “I love you to pieces.”
She loved him to pieces too. She couldn’t imagine her life without him in it. She’d gotten so lucky. From the moment she’d called him, half-naked that dark winter night, dressed in only her piggy harness and covered in mud from the wallow, he’d been in her life. She’d moved in with him for crying out loud. Right from the start, he’d insisted she live with him because he wanted to make sure she was safe from Ethen. And after that, it was supposed to be just until she had a job and saved enough money to move into her own place. But that flimsy excuse had only lasted until the night he came home from Black Light with ‘that’ look in his eyes. The one that had burned through her chest all the way down to her belly, heating her up from the inside out.
She’d made dinner. He’d ignored it and come straight at her instead.
“I’ve been waiting all day for this,” he’d said, right before he grabbed her, spun her around, yanked her up against his chest and wrapped his arms around her. His kiss on the side of her neck had made her melt and burn all the hotter. He’d kissed her shoulder, her back, swept her hair out of his way and actually nipped the nape of her neck with his teeth.
She’d shivered then. Her nipples had strained, tightening into stiff little peaks when he caught the hem of her shirt and swept it up over her head. His hands on her breasts had transferred the focus of all that heat inside straight to her pussy. He made her clit throb like no one ever had. He made her skin burn.
He made every waking nerve in her body shiver and sparkle, and riot.
She almost came just from the magic of his hands and the heat of his mouth caressing her.
She almost came again when he yanked his shirt off and she felt the real heat of him wrapping her from behind. He shoved his pants down and her pussy gushed as she felt the hard press of his cock nestling into the crack of her ass.
She didn’t need him to tell her to take her pants off. Hands trembling, she’d scrambled to get them off, kicking free of the denim leggings just as he shoved her up against the kitchen counter.
The sex that night had been amazing, and his touch had been burned into her body and soul from that moment on. He was her best friend, her lover, her Dom… even when he had his belt in his hand and her bottom bared to receive its painful sting.
The chill of the garage made her shiver again.
Loosening his grip on her, Garreth pulled back far enough to look at her. After a moment, he handed her his belt. “Hold this for me.”
She took it, holding onto it as if it were a snake about to strike.
He’d never had her hold his belt right before a spanking. The urge to throw it was incredible, but she wasn’t a brat and that would absolutely make her spanking worse. More than that, it would make him disappointed in her, and she hated whenever she did that. She’d rather take a thousand spankings than ever disappoint him again.
HIDDEN FOR SPOILERS
Tipping his head, Garreth held out his hand for the belt. Yep. He was absolutely still going to spank her. Now she did groan as she reached down to pluck it from the garage floor and hand it over.
“This is so unfair,” she grumbled, turning back to face the rear of the vehicle. Bending, she braced her hands against the cool metal.
“It is unfair,” he agreed as she braced herself for the first hard impact. “It’s unfair when you continue to take his word as the truth and completely ignore mine. I understand why it happens. Like I said, no one gets over the shit you’ve been through at the drop of a hat. But it’s been long enough now, and I’m not willing to sit by and do nothing while you continue his habit of constantly cutting you down. You’re mine, Hadlee, not his. My word, and what I have to say about you, matters more than anything he ever said. Got it?”
Her stomach was a weird amalgamation of butterflies, knots, erotic warmth, and happiness. At any other time, she’d have listened to that scolding with a sense of doom and sorrow, but not right now.
“Got it,” she said, unable to help smiling.
That smile only lasted until he brought the belt swiping down with a crack across her naked ass. She ducked her head, clamping her lips tight against an involuntary yelp. The belt was bad. It was always bad, but when she was getting it for punishment, Garreth didn’t pull his punches.
Two... three...
Hadlee bent her head all the way down, leaning into the car to keep from jumping up. She squeaked when the next stroke wrapped the very top of her thighs, lashing its stinging fury directly onto her sit spot. The intensity of hurt spread, covering not only the whole of her backside now, but the tops of her tingling legs and even her sex.
She squeezed her thighs together. It was all she could do to help prevent the belt from hitting her pussy. Garreth never aimed for that when the spanking was real, but there was always a chance for accidentally hitting the wrong way. Ethen had frequently done that, although part of her always wondered if he’d done it intentionally. So far, Garreth never had, but there was always a first time, right? That’s why the word accident existed? Even for someone like Garreth who, every single week without fail, put in at least an hour of target practice with things like canes, floggers, and even his belt. Not folded over, like he wielded it now, but with the buckle wrapped only once around his hand and the remainder left hanging free. Four good feet of merciless leather that he was slowly, but surely training himself to use at full whipping potential.
“God!” she gasped as he struck again, hitting that same damn spot.
Right at the crease where bottom met thighs and the flesh was so sensitive that every stroke felt like she was being cut. The raw pain of it burst into overwhelming, smarting stings, followed by burning heat so fiery that it felt as if she were sitting directly on a campfire. “Stop!”
“Stop clenching,” he replied. “Stick that bottom out.”
Snap!
“God!” She tried to lock her lips against it, but still the shout escaped. It hurt so much. Every thought in her head reverberated around just how much. “Please, Garreth!”
“I love you too much to let you off easy.”