Bait & Switch

by Kendall Ryan

  Panic hit me like a smack to the face. “No, it’s nothing like that.” Of course not . . . right?

  My palms started to sweat. I was never supposed to give Nolan my heart. But somewhere between the moonlit walks, drinks, waltzing, and kissing, I had fallen for him. Completely. Overhearing him with Daniella last night only confirmed what I already knew. My heart wasn’t just a little involved; it beat only for him.

  Followed by that realization was the crushing guilt that slammed into me over everything I’d been hiding from him.

  Drawing a shaky breath, I met Horace’s eyes.

  “Been in love a time or two myself.” He nodded. “I know the look.”

  “Excuse me,” I muttered, brushing past him.

  I pushed my way out the big metal door at the end of the hall, gulping down deep lungfuls of the fresh air outside. The smells were only slightly improved out here, since I was standing next to the dog run.

  I thought about calling Brynn for advice. But what would she tell me that I didn’t already know? That I was being an idiot? That a relationship built on deceit was doomed to fail?

  Hearing those things out loud would make them more real, so I left my phone in my pocket. Brynn had always been pragmatic and straitlaced, every bit a daddy’s girl. The last thing I needed to hear was the bitter disappointment in my sister’s voice. I was disgusted enough with myself already. Thank you very much.

  As I sank down into the dirt, I tried to remember that there was a method to my madness.

  But once I’d actually met Nolan and stared up into his handsome blue eyes, it wasn’t hard to feel something stir inside me. He was a protector, through and through. It didn’t hurt how attractive he was with that strong, angular jawline, full lips, rugged muscles, and a filthy mouth too. I’d fallen hard and fast.

  Even on that first night we talked, I knew this wasn’t going to be cut and dried. I’d worn a polite smile and nodded along to his stories about leaving the Navy, moving back home to Texas to be near his mom, and working at a private security firm.

  But when the conversation had turned to his fallen friend, the look in his eyes had darkened, and a knot of unease had settled in my stomach. What had started as a game or a silly dare had become very real.

  In my mind, Nolan Maxwell had been a one-dimensional ex-Navy SEAL badass who could offer me the protection I needed. The reality was that he was a real human being with battle wounds, hidden depths, and a soft side for women. He had invited me into his life, a life he already shared with another. And now I wanted more.

  He’d been nothing but forthcoming, all while I dodged questions about my past and hid the truth from him.

  So here I was, sitting in the dirt, fearful of what was to come. Once he knew my secret, that would be the end of it. He’d go back to his quiet, happy life with Daniella. But didn’t he deserve more? And didn’t I?

  Thinking about the times we’d spent together, gazing into his handsome face, his eyes as deep and blue as the ocean . . . God, it was all burned into my brain. Every erotic moment replayed like an old movie I’d memorized from watching too many times.

  It seemed that massaging Nolan’s tight, weary muscles had made all my feelings rush to the surface. He’d seemed in awe of me, as if he’d never had a woman care for him that way. And the tender way we’d touched and caressed each other’s flesh until we came together . . . it was indescribable. The most sensual thing I’d ever done by far. I had no regrets about that.

  I wanted to care for this man, including all his broken bits. Nurse his wounded heart back to life. It had lain dormant for so long.

  Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but I had the inkling that Daniella’s presence in his life was a Band-Aid, a sorry excuse for the real thing. She didn’t love him. Not if she was okay sharing him. If Daniella truly cared for him the way he deserved, she’d never be okay with my presence in his life, another woman’s perfume on his skin or name on his lips.

  I sure as hell wasn’t—and I’d known him mere weeks, not years like her.

  “Lacey?” Horace poked his head out the door to peer down on me. “You okay?”

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. Stupid tears.

  “Just a sec,” I called. It wasn’t fair to hide out here.

  Horace nodded once. A moment later, the big door thudded shut.

  I pushed my hands into my hair and hung my head between my knees. Fuck. What was I thinking?

  I knew exactly what I’d been thinking. That I was in trouble back home, and Nolan was the man who could keep me safe.

  If I’d known then just how dangerous this whole thing would become, I might have gotten into my car and driven straight back to Oklahoma. Instead, I picked myself up from the ground, dusted off my jeans, and headed back inside to finish my shift with the nosy but well-meaning Horace.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nolan

  Things were beginning to feel more strained than ever between Daniella and me, and I was no closer to figuring out what was going on with Lacey and me. Getting shit-faced with Grey hadn’t helped, either. I just wasn’t ready to think about changing my future. Every scenario twisted my stomach with unease.

  And then I’d spent that incredible evening with Lacey. Watching her attempt to waltz, feeling her warm mouth on me . . .

  If I turned my life upside-down for her, what then? End up just like the others I’d watched crash and burn as they sought their happily-ever-after? Fuck that.

  Still, the harder I tried to hold on to the way things had always been, the more uneasy I felt. I couldn’t deny any longer that Daniella and I were drifting apart. While I’d fulfilled my obligation by taking her to the Nurses’ Ball, we hadn’t hung out in a long time, and I hadn’t played with her in even longer.

  Our once-tranquil relationship was starting to fray at the edges. She needed release, and even though she was trying to give me space, she probably felt snubbed. Ignored—and ultimately replaced with a younger woman. Just like her last Dom had done.

  Even if her body didn’t excite me anymore, I still had a sense of loyalty toward her. And Daniella had always given me what I needed; I couldn’t desert her just because someone new had come into my life. It wasn’t like I was ready to commit to Lacey and be monogamous. Was I? But if this tension kept up, I might lose my mind.

  “Have you seen my Navy sweatshirt?” I asked Daniella as she passed by my door. I’d just spent fifteen minutes tearing my room apart looking for the damn thing.

  “Yeah, in my closet, I think,” she said, heading toward the living room with a book in hand.

  I should have known. The sweatshirt was a good ten years old, soft and thin from so many washings. It was my—and Daniella’s—favorite thing to wear in the fall.

  Stalking into her room, I found it on the floor of her closet underneath a heap of dirty clothes. Wow, real fucking nice, Dani.

  “It smells like girly shit,” I complained loud enough for her to hear. I took the shirt back to my room, threw it in the hamper, and grabbed another from my closet.

  “Geez, what crawled up your ass?”

  “Nothing, all right? Everything’s fine.” It was a lie. Nothing was fine right now.

  “I’m going to make beef stew for dinner.”

  “Okay.” My tone softened. Her homemade stew was my favorite thing that Daniella made. She was trying to smooth over this growing weirdness between us. That was more than I could say for myself.

  “Dinner will be in about an hour,” she added.

  “Sounds good.”

  I headed back to my room, deciding a hot shower might calm my frayed nerves. I stripped and turned on the water, feeling impatient and restless. I’d always been a fixer. It was how I ended up with Daniella—and Sutton, for that matter—but it sounded more chivalrous then it was.

  I was no one’s hero. I’d always known that the second you let your guard down and did something stupid like fall in love, you got fucked, your world ripped out from underneath

you. Like what happened to Marcus. Daniella. My mom.

  Shit, maybe lack of sex was clouding my brain. I wasn’t fucking Dani, and I sure as shit wasn’t fucking Lacey.

  Lacey. The new woman who’d waltzed in and taken my life by storm. Or, if you listened to the way Grey told it, the woman who had me by the balls.

  As I waited for the water to heat, it occurred to me that I knew next to nothing about Lacey. Her background, her family, why she moved out of state just to work part-time at an animal shelter. But I knew exactly what she tasted like. How she felt moving on top of me. The noises she made when she came.

  Fuck.

  Something was starting to pick at me about this whole situation, but I couldn’t pinpoint what, and my mind raced with unanswered questions.

  • • •

  After dinner, I was still no closer to an answer. As I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and a whiskey, Sutton snoring lightly at my feet, I heard a low moan come from Daniella’s bedroom.

  At least one of us is having fun.

  Half working, half surfing the web, I ignored her groans, trying to give her some privacy. Until I realized that if she’d left her bedroom door open, it was probably on purpose.

  Standing up from the table, I stretched and stepped around Sutton, headed down the hall that led to her room.

  Daniella was naked, kneeling in the center of her bedroom floor. Her hands were linked behind her back. She was presenting herself to me, offering her submission as a gift.

  I wondered how long she’d been waiting for me to find her. We’d finished dinner over an hour ago.

  Shit.

  I stepped forward, about to yank her up from her spot on the floor, tell her we couldn’t do this. Not when so much hung in the balance. Until I realized . . . I couldn’t. I didn’t have the heart.

  Her eyes found mine, and I could read everything in them as plain as day. In those soft hazel depths, I saw it clearly. If I denied her right now, it would crush her. And not just the sting of rejection that would fade in a day or two. Refusing her offering might mean her sinking back into the depression I’d barely pulled her out of two years ago.

  Fuck.

  I couldn’t do that to her. For now, at least, she was still my responsibility.

  “Eyes on the floor,” I ordered.

  Her shoulders relaxed, her spine dipping as if my words had caressed her.

  Bending down, I secured a blindfold over her eyes. I didn’t want to feel their penetrating gaze on me as I worked. Then I helped her stand and guided her to the bed.

  Once I bent her over my knee, I could feel the heat of her skin through my jeans. I noticed her fist was clenched around something.

  “Open your hand,” I ordered.

  She did. A small stainless steel butt plug rested in her palm. She wasn’t leaving much guessing room about what she wanted, or needed, tonight.

  “Look at you,” I growled. “Offering yourself to me. On display like this.”

  I took the plug from her and slowly stroked the cold steel down her spine, over the cleft of her ass, raising a trail of goose bumps.

  Daniella shuddered.

  Her biggest kink was bondage—exposure, helplessness, objectification—and I knew how to hit it hard. The sight of her presenting herself to me didn’t stir my cock like it used to, but I could still give her what she needed.

  I slowly pushed the plug into her ass, pausing whenever her breath caught, then easing forward again when she adjusted to the stretch. When I’d worked it in all the way to its flared base, I patted her hip in silent praise.

  I brought my hand down against her bare ass—soft taps at first and then harder, until my palm cracked against her skin. The forceful blows jostled the plug in her ass, sending sparks through her every nerve.

  Daniella cried out with each slap, a wild, shapeless noise of pure sensation, before whimpering out loud. Her voice grew fuzzier and her body relaxed as she sank further into subspace.

  I was concentrating so hard that I didn’t hear the knock at the front door. I didn’t hear the soft footsteps down the hall, the creak of the bedroom door swinging open.

  But I did hear the startled gasp.

  I whipped my head around to see Lacey frozen in the bedroom doorway. Her hand was clamped over her mouth. Her wide eyes darted back and forth over the lurid scene—me, a naked Daniella draped across my lap, spanking the shit out of her red ass.

  Lacey’s expression hit me like a gut punch; I could barely breathe. In her eyes, I saw pure horror and heartbreak. She was so scared, so disgusted—and it was all because of me. In that moment, I hated what I saw in her eyes.

  Then she ran, darting out of the room just as quickly as she’d appeared.

  I eased Daniella off my lap and onto the bed, and she gave a soft sigh. When I pulled off her blindfold, she looked drained, drowsy, as she rested her head on the pillow.

  Daniella was riding a serious endorphin high, swaddled in the warm fog of subspace. As badly as I wanted to go after Lacey, I knew I had to handle Daniella’s aftercare first.

  I brought her a mug of hot, sugary tea, sat with her while she drank it, and rubbed her back until she fell asleep.

  Then I wrote her a note—Let’s talk in the morning—and left it on her nightstand. It was kind of a cold move, but I had to do some damage control before Lacey freaked out even worse. Or called the police on me.

  I had no idea what she could be thinking. What she’d just witnessed had obviously confused and frightened her. I thought I’d made Daniella’s kinky desires clear before . . . but evidently, being aware of BDSM was different from stumbling into a scene up close.

  Did Lacey think I was a monster now? How much of our relationship could I salvage?

  Hardly daring to hope, I hurried outside toward my truck, hell bent on getting to her apartment.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lacey

  Uncontrollable shaking racked my body. Anger. Fear. Disappointment. Confusion. Jealousy. The sheer number of emotions warring for my attention were overwhelming.

  I paced my living room, my hands still trembling. It was a miracle I’d driven home without crashing. Tonight, on my way home from work, I’d spotted that same white sedan in my rearview mirror, and I panicked.

  Instead of leading him to my home, I’d driven straight to Nolan’s. I heard the TV playing inside and let myself in when there was no answer at the door. The last thing I expected was to interrupt a scene between him and Daniella.

  The scent of sex was burned into my nostrils. As was the sight of Daniella, bound and blindfolded, her ass splotchy with large red handprints. Nolan’s handprints.

  Chills swept down my spine as I leaned against the dining room table for support, unable to banish the vision from my brain. My fingers curled around the edge of the table and I drew a few deep breaths, trying to calm my rioting heartbeat.

  My own visceral reaction to seeing them startled me with its intensity. I’d told myself all along that I didn’t care what they did in bed, but now I knew that had been a bald-faced lie.

  The reason it mattered so much? The reason my heart felt like it had just been ripped in two?

  Horace had been right—I was falling in love with Nolan. And seeing him with Daniella not only hurt like a bitch, but it made me panic about losing him. They obviously shared something that he and I never would.

  One thing that was odd . . . I suddenly realized Nolan had been fully clothed.

  Before I had time to dissect that, a series of knocks rained against my door. Startled and still shaking, I hazarded a glance out the peephole.

  It was Nolan. Veins stood out against his neck, and his blue eyes were so dark, they looked almost black.

  “I know you’re in there,” he said. “Let me in. We need to talk.”

  Shit. I wasn’t sure I could face him right now, but I had no choice.

  I unbolted the lock and opened the door.

  “Are you okay?”

  The first words out of his mouth caught me off guard. I’d expected some backlash over me just wandering inside his house, or a lecture about how I knew the score all along and had no right to be mad. Instead he seemed genuinely concerned. For me.

  I shoved a hand against his chest, pushing him back a step. “No, I’m not okay.”

  Unable to meet his dark eyes, I turned away and stalked over to the window, where I looked down at the parking lot. Watching the old lady from unit 6D take out her trash was better than letting Nolan see me cry.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  He crossed the room to sink down on the couch. He looked so out of place on the dainty, floral-patterned thing, I would have laughed if my stomach weren’t tied in knots. His large frame, muscular build, and strong jaw dusted with a five o’clock shadow was at odds with my feminine apartment, with its splashes of purple and cream everywhere.

  I turned to face him, my hands on my hips. “It’s stupid, right? I knew from the beginning that you’d never be mine. But silly me, somewhere along the way, I started to think maybe, just maybe you’d want more . . . with me. But now I see that—”

  “You see what?”

  My eyes flared on his. “That if those are the kinds of things you’re into, I’ll never be able to give you what you need.”

  “Damn it, Lacey. I’d never make you feel like you had to do those things.”

  Something between a gasp and a forced laugh escaped my throat. “You’re an asshole, Nolan.”

  “I need to explain some things to you. Will you sit down?”

  I was so angry that my skin felt hot all over, but something inside me needed to hear whatever asinine excuse he was about to come up with.

  “Fine.” I sank onto the couch beside him.

  He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Daniella’s a submissive.”

  “You already told me that.” My voice was flat and emotionless. If he was going to rehash this shit, I was going to kick him out on his ass.

  “Yes, but what that means is that she needs discipline, punishment, restraint. That’s what you saw tonight. It wasn’t sex. In fact, I haven’t slept with her since you came here.”

  -->