Keeping hold of Ellie’s hand, Michael led her over to the table where everyone was talking. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her shooting him little glances and biting her lip. She was highly aroused and not too happy about having to wait… and yet even more turned on because he was denying her the orgasm she so desperately wanted. Ah, the dichotomy of being a submissive masochist.

Tonight he didn’t give her a choice about sitting away from him. He kept his hold on her hand as he pulled up another bar stool with his free hand, placing it between the only open stool still at the table and Olivia’s seat. Ellie sat down without protest, gingerly sliding onto the stool so as not to jostle the plug too much. She gently tugged at his hand, as if testing to see whether or not he would let go.

He didn’t.

Olivia smiled at them, the happy, easy smile of a well-satisfied Domme. Her red hair was pulled back in a bun, but it was slightly tousled, and the laces on her leather bustier weren’t done up quite as tightly as they had been when Michael had seen her earlier in the evening.

“Hello Ellie, how are you doing?” she asked.

“Good, Mistress Olivia,” Ellie said, her smile much more strained than Olivia’s.

Across the table, Patrick’s lips twitched. Lexie looked at Ellie with sympathy, obviously recognizing the signs of a subbie who desperately wanted more than she was getting. Dressed in a black t-shirt that practically swallowed her up, she was sitting so close to Patrick she was practically in his lap, his arm curved around her waist and resting on her thigh. Next to them, her brother Jake pretended there was nothing odd about his sister’s attire as he sipped his beer. Unlike the Doms in their leathers, he was dressed in jeans and a grey t-shirt, but his casual attire didn’t stop any of the subs from checking him out. He still had his army crew cut, but even the small amount of black hair made his blue eyes stand out, the same way his sister’s did, and his muscles filled out the shirt in a way that made even Michael a little envious. It also always amused him to see the subbies staring blatantly at Jake. They wouldn’t dare to stare so brazenly with a real Dom, but since Jake was vanilla and didn’t really know how to handle it – since he wasn’t interested in the kinds of things which would satisfy the subs of Stronghold – he just tried to ignore them, with varying degrees of success. Sometimes Michael thought the subs might be making a game out of seeing whether or not they could make the man blush.