by Lexi Blake
Just not all the way back. She still didn’t write a damn word.
“Maybe it would be good if you did go with me,” Erin said, moving back. She turned and faced the mirror, grimacing slightly at the way her mascara had run. “Stupid makeup. Why do I bother?”
Kori could handle that. “There’s a box of makeup removing wipes and some little samplers in the drawer.”
Erin chuckled as she found them. “You’re very prepared, K.”
“I’m lost on this place. Most of the patients are men,” Kori admitted. “Some of them still sneak in here. I think they heard I keep a stash of granola bars and snacks in the other drawer. Not to mention the fact that some of those dudes believe in a skin care regime, and I say good for them. I go to department stores and ask for samples. Most of the time I get turned away, but every now and then someone will stock a sister up. Especially when they hear what we do.”
Erin opened the second drawer and pulled out a protein bar. “Thank god. I’m starving. How can I throw up one minute and want to eat my own arm the next?”
“I think that’s the fun part of pregnancy,” Kori admitted.
“What’s the shitty part?”
“When you have to push a baby head through your lady bits. I’ve heard that sucks.”
Erin laughed and ran one of the towelettes over her face. “Yeah, it sounds that way. You know you’re the only one who treats me like I’m still Erin.”
“You are and you aren’t. You’re never going to be the same. I should know.” It was time to impart a little truth since Erin had opened up. “I wasn’t after what happened with my dad. I started living in this fantasy world in my head and I didn’t come out of it for a very long time.”
Erin turned, leaning on the vanity. “Fantasy world?”
She’d never told anyone with the singular exception of her best friend, Sarah. Sarah was the only person who knew who Kori had been. “I wrote a lot. I wrote in a journal, but I would make up stories. I didn’t write down feelings, but they came out anyway. I had my first play produced when I was sixteen. It was about teen suicide.”
“Wow. I bet that got your mom nervous.”
“Oh, yes. She had to figure out that writing that dumb play was my way of not killing myself. It felt good. It’s still used in a couple of school systems as an educational tool to prevent suicide. From there I wrote some plays and screenplays and some seriously kinky Doctor Who fan fiction. I think it was a lot easier to live in the world in my head than it was to face the fact that my dad was gone.”
“Why did you stop? Writing, I mean.” Erin frowned when she didn’t answer. “Don’t hold out on me, K. You’re the one who initiated this session. Or did Kai send you in here for vagina talk?”
“Of course he sent me in here and I won’t tell him shit if you don’t want me to. Also, I wanted to come and talk to you. I know Faith is your bestie and all, but she’s not here right now so you can count on me. As to why I stopped writing. Ugh, I don’t even like talking about it.”
“Well, I live to talk about Theo’s murder and my pop-up pregnancy.”
The woman had a point. If she was going to dish it out, she better be able to take it. “Okay. Sanctum wasn’t my first club.”
Erin snorted a little. “No shit. Sorry, but if you were trying to play the newbie sub, you shouldn’t jump into suspension every time there’s a training session. Most newbs are afraid of being suspended ten feet off the ground and having their nipples tortured.”
She liked what she liked. She actually forced herself to pull back from most of what she truly craved. Submission, she’d found, was like her drug. She tended to make poor choices when she fully invested in it. And yet she couldn’t completely stay away. “I got into the lifestyle young. My boyfriend became my Master and then he turned into a total prick who stole my every idea, turned it into his own, and shut me out. He took other subs and I stayed. He cheated on me and I told myself it was all right. He gave my best screenplay to another woman, who ripped it apart and turned it into dreck, and that was when I finally left.”
“Wow. Should I kill him? Because that might actually make me feel better. Don’t worry about the baby. I can totally snipe him from afar. No danger to the fetus.”
Kori had to smile because Erin might not be joking. “It was years ago. I’m good. I made my choices and I walked away. All I’m trying to tell you is that you might never be normal again, but you find a new normal. You find a…what should I call it? Peace. I’m at peace.”
“What am I going to do?” Erin asked, her voice so quiet.
It didn’t matter. Kori could still hear her. “The best you can. It’s all you can do.”
It was all any of them could do in the end.
Ten minutes later, she promised Erin she would send her all the information on Dr. Melinda Bates, including her first appointment time. She gave Erin a hug and turned to go into Kai’s office. She wasn’t going to tell him what Erin had said, merely that Erin was going to the doctor and she had everything well in hand.
A vision of Kai smiling and telling her she deserved a treat for a well-done job floated across her brain. He would thrust his hands in her hair and force her to her knees. He would offer her a choice. The cane or the whip. She loved the way the man held a whip. Once he’d warmed her up, ensured she would feel those stripes he would leave on her ass for days, then he would lay her out on his desk and shove his face in her…
Damn it. She couldn’t think of him that way. She couldn’t. He was her boss, and he was a fucking gloriously beautiful sadist.
Not again. Never again. She wasn’t going back into that particular part of the D/s world. No more serious sadists for her. She’d promised herself.
So why was it getting harder and harder to not think about Kai? To watch him with other subs?
She hated the thought, but it might be time to move on. He was too tempting. Maybe she was hormonal or something. She couldn’t leave now. Erin needed her.
She was about to walk into Kai’s office when she saw the door was open. Kai was talking to someone.
Her heart nearly stopped as she recognized Jared Johns. Flipping Jared Johns was standing in Kai’s office. He was older than she remembered, but time had done nothing to dilute that man’s hotness. He was roughly six three and had the body of a tank that had been designed by Michelangelo. When she’d met him he’d been a kid starting out in the television world. He’d been working on some Canadian soap when she’d told Morgan he would be perfect for Dart.
She might have sworn off going back into that world, but apparently she couldn’t stop it from invading.
Kai looked up. “Hey, Kori. Come on in. I’d like you to meet my brother.”
Brother? Jared Johns was her boss’s brother? She turned and walked away as fast as she could.
CHAPTER TWO
“I was expecting Squirrel.” Kai moved back behind his desk, putting some much needed distance between himself and his brother. Kori was apparently still in the lounge with Erin or she might have announced that they had a guest. He kind of hoped she stayed there for a while. Maybe if she stayed in the ladies’ room long enough, he could avoid introducing her. “Actually, I was surprised to hear his name. Wasn’t he your friend in high school? He’s still hanging around?”
Jared looked good. It was obvious he took his training very seriously. There wasn’t an ounce of fat left on his baby brother. Kai had been through the military, but Jared looked like a warrior with his close-cropped sandy hair and rigid jawline. It was easy to see why he was considered by millions of women to be the hottest man on the planet.
“I’m still friends with most of the guys I hung out with in high school, but Squirrel travels with me. He helps out around the set and does some stuff my personal assistant can’t do.” He was wearing a dark T-shirt and jeans, his shirt tucked in. Aviator sunglasses hung from the pocket of his T. Naturally it was V-neck. Wouldn’t want to hide skin when he could show it off. “Would you have bee
n here if you’d known it was me coming?”
“Of course.” This wasn’t family therapy. It was business and baby brother needed to know that now. “I agreed to the terms of the contract. For the time it takes to produce this film, I’ll meet with you whenever you need.”
Jared shook his head, an entirely unamused chuckle coming out of his mouth. “Contract. You like contracts. Don’t you, Kai?”
Were they going there? “I do indeed. Contracts lay out expectations and everyone knows how to behave. Speaking of contracts, have you looked over the one Wade Rycroft sent you? He’s the…”
Jared reached into the small crossbody bag he’d set down beside him when he’d walked in. He pulled out a stack of papers. He placed it on Kai’s desk and then took the seat previously occupied by Alex McKay. “Manager of Sanctum. I believe he also might be called one of the Doms in Residence. He was hired on a few months ago when the old manager left. From what I understand he’s in charge, though Ian Taggart calls the shots. Here’s the Sanctum contract and yes, I read it.”
The years had given Jared some confidence. He sounded more polished than he had before, stronger, and it was obvious he’d done his homework. “Excellent. Then we can start tomorrow. I’ll expect you at the club at four p.m.”
“Why wait? The club is open tonight. I’ll be in the dungeon. According to that contract and the rather hefty fee I paid for a membership, I’m allowed in during club hours.” He crossed his left leg over his right, sitting back as though ready for a nice long chat.
“Don’t you mean the production company? They paid the fee to get you a temporary pass.”
Jared’s head cocked to the left and his lips ticked up in an arrogant grin. “No, I paid the membership fee and it’s not temporary. I understand that I still have to pass all of Taggart’s tests in order to have Masters rights, but I can come and go as I please for the next year.”
Shit. He’d been absolutely certain this was a six-week thing. Why the hell did Jared need an actual membership? “Won’t you have another movie to film after this? Why would you sink so much money into something you won’t need a few months down the line?”
Jared sighed. “You still have the sanctimonious big brother thing down. First, I’m not filming a movie. I’m filming the new season of Dart. Crescent City won’t save itself.”
“Yes, it needs a superhero who runs around killing bad guys with freaking darts. Guns aren’t good enough for you?”
Jared smiled, the expression lighting up his face. “I’m sure the producer would say it’s a metaphor or something. It looks cool. Who doesn’t want to be a billionaire who was kidnapped by aliens and sent back to his home planet with dart throwing abilities to save the world from criminals? Come on, Kai. You read the comic books, too. It’s fun.”
“I didn’t read them like you did. I had too much to take care of.” Including his younger brother.
Jared sobered, sitting back. “I know you did. And as for the membership, I will very likely need it. There are a bunch of books in this series and Pierce Craig is featured heavily in all of them. Given the strength of the box office from Fifty Shades of Grey, there’s no reason this can’t become a big franchise.”
Jesus, Ian was going to kill Serena at some point. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
There was a negligent shrug from Jared. “I think it’s important to get into character. I’ll be hanging around Sanctum and McKay-Taggart a lot.”
He was curious about a few things. Since he intended for all their interactions to be professional from now on, it was best to get curiosity out of the way up front. “How exactly did you figure out I could be your mentor? I don’t advertise my status. There’s no social media page proclaiming my sexual proclivities.”
“Because you hid them so well when we were kids? Yeah, not so much. I knew you were always interested in this kind of stuff. You kept bondage magazines under your bed. I never told Mom by the way. Was it Ms. Hanford who got you into it?”
He felt himself flush. Only his brother could do this to him. If anyone else had asked, he would have explained quite calmly that his first sexual experiences had been with the woman who lived next door. He’d been seventeen and Alicia Hanford had been twenty-one and fresh out of college. She’d rented the two-bedroom next door. Their mother had insisted they call her Ms. Hanford. It was only polite and she was an adult. Kai had called her hot. She’d been a stunning redhead and yes, she’d been the one to introduce him to D/s. She’d taken him to his first club and shown him that all those cravings he had could be put to proper use in the right setting. She and the rest of the lifestylers had made him feel like he wasn’t some freak for wanting what he’d wanted.
Still wanted.
Only his brother had the power to make him feel like a pervert. “Yes. She was a lovely young lady, but our interests diverged.”
“She was a top, too,” Jared surmised. “She’s still in the scene in Seattle. She’s married to her sub. They seem very happy. She speaks fondly of you.”
“Why the fuck would you talk to her about me?”
“I do it for the same reason I’ve kept up with you all along. Because you’re my brother. Well, after I had the money to do it, I kept up with you. You might not give a shit what happens to me, but I needed to know you were all right.”
“How can I not know what happens to you? I go to any grocery store and there you are on the cover of every magazine.”
Jared’s face lit up and for a second he was the same kid who’d begged and prayed for a bike at Christmas and cried when he’d gotten one.
Because Kai had told his mother to spend what she would have spent on him on Jared. Because he’d sacrificed for his brother.
“I know. Isn’t it cool?” Jared said with that sunny smile of his. “Not the tabloid crap. That’s all bullshit by the way. I did not almost break up Brad and Angelina in Cannes. I barely spoke to them. But the cover of Men’s Fitness was awesome. I had to do some serious work on my deltoids to make that happen.”
Kai nearly rolled his eyes. He somehow managed to maintain a bit of professionalism. “So did you hire a PI to track me?”
The smile faded. “I have someone give me an update on you from time to time. I think the work you’re doing here is amazing. I talked to Frank Cross and he says it helped him.”
“How the hell do you know Frank?” Frank was an Iraq war vet who had suffered from terrible PTSD and depression after he’d lost an arm to an IED. He’d been in Kai’s program for over a year and then moved back to his family in California.
“He works on the Dart set now. He’s a consultant.”
“That’s a big coincidence.”
“Not really. I offered him the job. I interviewed him because he knew you and then I offered him the job because he was a good man and he deserved good work. He’s consulting on weapons but he’s also learning how to film. We got him a camera set that doesn’t require two hands. You’re not the only one who can help.”
“Apparently.” What was his brother doing? He tried to look at the problem from an intellectual standpoint. It was time to take off his anger hat and remember what he did for a living. “You do understand why you’re doing this.”
“What? The film? Because they are paying me a mega shit ton of money, the script is good, and I’ve honestly been looking for a part that shows off my glutes. I’ve worked hard on them. I’m naked like half this film.”
Yep, his brother was an exhibitionist. “No, I meant stalking me.”
It was Jared’s turn to roll his eyes. “I’m not stalking you. I’m very reasonably checking in on my unreasonable asshole of a brother.”
“Yes, I’m the asshole. Of course. Look, this stems back to your childhood. You always got everything you wanted. I’ve walked away. I don’t give in to your demands. Naturally you want to control the one thing you couldn’t. Me. It was also why you slept with my fiancée.”
“Are you serious? I got everything I wanted? Do yo
u think I wanted to get the shit kicked out of me on a daily basis in high school? Do you think I wanted to be orphaned at the age of sixteen?”
This was what his brother did. He tried to one up everyone in terms of who had it worse or could do it better. His competitive streak had been obvious from childhood. “Of course. You had it worse than anyone.”
Jared stood, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “I didn’t. I know that but you won’t acknowledge that I have feelings at…I did not come here to fight with you. I thought it would be best if we sat down and talked so there’s not any awkwardness.”
Awkward didn’t begin to cover it. Still, he put on what he hoped was a placid smile. “There won’t be. Like I said, I signed the contract. I’ll be your mentor in all things BDSM. If you have any questions, ask me. I’m an open book.”
Jared’s green eyes narrowed. “All right. That’s an offer I won’t refuse. How about this one? Do you ever feel bad that you walked out on your younger brother because of a girl?”
And he was done. “I said I would answer your questions about BDSM.”
“Damn it, Kai. I want to talk. It’s been twelve years. Do you honestly intend to go the rest of your life without talking to me?”
“I can’t because I signed a contract. I can’t because once again, you shoved your way in and won’t leave until you get your way.”
“Still a hardass, huh?”
“Only if you’re still a dumbass.”
Jared growled and turned away, facing the door. Thank god. Maybe he would get the point that this wasn’t going to go his way. He’d picked up his bag and was almost to the door when he turned around.
“No, you know what, you’re not calling the shots this time. All my fucking life, you’ve been the one to set the rules, but I have some power now and I’m going to use it.”
“You already have. You’ve forced me into this position. You’ve got me as your mentor for this movie. I won’t be doing more.”