Stronghold (Stronghold 1)

by Angel, Golden

  Smiling ruefully, looking more boyish than ever as he bounced slightly on the balls of his feet, Liam raised an eyebrow at him. “You know Hilary’s going to be upset if you send me home with bruises.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t mar your pretty face,” Adam retorted.

  Since there was no one to referee they would need to be slightly more careful anyway. Truthfully that was what Adam craved; a reaffirmation of his self-control and a reassertion of his mental peace. Sparring with a referee could sometimes become more uninhibited than sparring without, just because there was always a third person there to slow the fight if it needed. With just the two of them, they would have to watch themselves.

  And Adam prided himself on always being in control.

  Grinning, Liam bounced toward him, his lower body tensing as if he was going for a kick when suddenly his weight and movement changed and a fist went flashing towards Adam’s chest. It caught a glancing blow as Adam barely managed to pull himself out of the way, thrown off-balance enough that he wasn’t able to return the hit before Liam followed up with the kick that he’d already been expecting.

  Pain exploded as Liam’s heel hit squarely on the meaty part of his thigh, focusing his concentration as adrenaline and endorphins rushed through him. Ignoring the throbbing in his leg, Adam swung around, his foot snaking out in a move designed to take Liam down. As always, with the dojo owner, such a move didn’t work but it did force him back, giving Adam just enough time to recover and renew his stance. They circled for a moment before Liam came at him in a flash of movement aimed at his shoulder.

  Catching Liam’s arm, Adam used the other man’s momentum to pull him forward, jutting out his hip and throwing Liam over it. The move was one of his favorites, something he could do in his sleep, and he’d practiced it enough that he actually managed to use it against Liam about fifty percent of the time. Against his other friends the percentage was much higher.

  He went down on one knee, twisting around to follow up on his advantage, but Liam was already breaking his hold and grabbing his wrist. Momentum diverted, Adam found himself flying head over heels to land with a soft thunk on the mat. Growling, he kipped up to his feet and spun to face Liam again.

  Fifteen minutes later they both sat, panting, and nursing their wounds. Adam had managed to keep from marring Liam’s pretty face, as he’d promised, but he’d given the other man a bruise on his arm that was already darkening, as well as a wrenched shoulder that now had an ice pack pressed against it. He’d received a black eye for his troubles, along with a bruise on his thigh from the initial kick that Liam had given him and his fingers on his right hand were slightly swollen after Liam had bent them back.

  But he felt great.

  “So. Angel said she’d be back this weekend.”

  Adam eyed his friend. He’d already heard that opening line to a conversation several times over the course of the past week.

  “I’ve heard.”

  “Are you going to scene with her?”

  It was stupid to be reluctant to answering, considering that everyone would be able to see anyway. But it made him feel strangely vulnerable, not exactly something he enjoyed. “I’m going to ask her if she wants to.”

  “She’ll say yes.”

  For a moment Adam hesitated, and then he asked the question that he hadn’t quite dared to ask anyone else. Not even Justin. But here, in the dojo, where they were all alone, he knew Liam wouldn’t tease him. Not his style. “Did she talk about me at all?”

  “No,” Liam replied with a sympathetic smile. His grey eyes glinted. “I just can’t see you accepting any other answer now that you’ve got a woman you’re actually interested in.”

  ******

  “Angel!” Mark’s voice was strangely strangled and high-pitched. Kind of panicky really.

  Sighing, Angel gave over her perusal of her corsets and short skirts. She’d been trying to decide whether or not to go to Stronghold for another Thursday night. Impatience had been spurring her on, although she was more interested in seeing the club on the actual weekend. And she thought it was more likely that Master Grouchy would be there on the weekend than on a Thursday, unless he was doing another Introduction Scene.

  The sick feeling in her stomach told her that she didn’t particularly relish the idea of witnessing that.

  Abandoning her closet, she trotted out to the top of the stairs. “What?”

  “COME HERE!”

  Yep, definitely panicked.

  Rolling her eyes, Angel started down the stairs, frowning when the soft sound of crying reached her. Picking up her pace she peered around the corner of the stairwell as she came down.

  “Leigh!”

  It sounded like thunder as she pounded down the rest of the stairs and Leigh turned, her face streaked with tears and pulled away from Mark's arms to throw herself into Angel's. Relief and concern warred on Mark's face as he hesitated, obviously wanting to run away from the crying woman but also unable to ignore the instinct to try and fix whatever was making her cry. Mark was a sweetheart. Angel jerked her head at him, indicating permission to flee. While Leigh knew all of her roommates, she wasn't particularly close to them, and whatever had made her this upset called for girl time.

  "Come on sweetheart," she said, pulling her around to the front of the couch in the main room. When the guys weren't connecting all their computers, the front room was empty except for couches and chairs.

  Tugging her stumbling friend over to one of the couches, Angel pulled her down and just held on tightly. Mark flitted into the room with a box of Kleenex in his hand and Angel mouthed 'Thank you' to him before he fled again. Pushing a tissue into Leigh's hand, she wrapped both of her arms back around the shaking woman as she let her cry it out.

  Impatient as she was to know what had upset her friend, she was sure it had something to do with Michael. Anger and upset surged through her as she imagined the various scenarios which could have reduced Leigh to this.

  "I'm going to kill him," she muttered as she hugged Leigh closer to her.

  "No, no it's my fault."

  "How can you say that?!" Angel would have thrown her hands up in the air in exasperation if she hadn't been hugging Leigh.

  "Because it is. I broke up with him."

  And she broke into fresh sobs.

  It took another ten minutes of cuddling, crying, and nonsensical soothing words before Leigh started gulping and hiccupping, her shaking shoulders finally slowing from the almost violent shuddering they'd been doing. She forced herself to sit up, although Angel's arm remained around her shoulders, blowing her nose and wiping her eyes until there was a small pile of Kleenex on her lap.

  "So what happened?" Angel asked, examining her friend. Leigh was not a pretty crier; her eyes and nose were swollen and pink, even her lips looked kind of swollen, and her cheeks were puffy and patchy red. "I thought last weekend went really well."

  "It did but... I mean... he didn't propose." Leigh had already told her that, so Angel just nodded. "It started bothering me and I kept thinking about what you said, about how I should talk to him about what I want instead of just waiting around for him. So I mentioned over dinner that before we went away this weekend that I'd thought he might propose." She sniffed and Angel cuddled her closer again. "He got kinda irritated and told me that he's not going to propose yet, because he's not ready."

  "Again?! That bastard."

  "No... It’s not the reason you're thinking." Leigh shook her head. "He said he wants to be ready to buy a house and to have a place for us and be ready to financially support us completely. I mean, I kinda liked that he wants to take care of me, but I pointed out to him that I'm perfectly happy working even though I'd like to be a stay-at-home mom, it's not like we need to have kids immediately. And that I don't need him to have all those things lined up to be ready to marry him.

  "So then he said that I was pushing him and that marriage just isn't on his timeline yet. And I said that we've been together long e
nough that it should be, and it just devolved into this awful fight, and all I could think about was what happens if he loses a deal or his job? Does that mean the timeline gets pushed back? I don't care if everything's fallen perfectly into place, I just want to be with him. I started feeling like maybe these were just stalling tactics.

  "I was getting pretty upset and then I said that maybe we needed to take a break and think about this time whole timeline thing... I meant a break from the fight, but as soon as I said it he asked if we could see other people if we went on a break... I thought I was going to strangle him as soon as he said it."

  "You should have," Angel muttered. Wouldn't have been much of a loss. Trust Michael to jump on any opportunity to try and get some experience outside of his high school sweetheart.

  Ignoring her, which was probably the best policy, Leigh went on. "I asked him if he really wanted to see other people and he said yes, and so I said that I couldn't stay in a relationship with someone who wasn't completely sure he wanted to be with me when I already knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. It's just... not... fair... to me..."

  Angel squeezed her friend, a few tears leaking from her own eyes in sympathy to ragged edges of pain that were in Leigh's voice as she broke down again.

  "Oh sweetheart, I'm so proud of you… that's exactly what you should have said because it’s so very true." Angel murmured, comforting Leigh as best she could. Sure some of what she was saying was cliché, but in this case it was really all true.

  Eventually Leigh pulled herself back together, pushing back up to a sitting position.

  "Sorry," she said, looking guiltily at the water spots that she'd left behind on Angel's shirt.

  "Not a problem." Angel stroked Leigh's hair as her friend wiped her eyes again. "What else are friends for?"

  "Hopefully for letting me crash with them until I figure out where I'm going to live?" Leigh said, looking a little guilty.

  "Of course, absolutely," Angel said firmly. A thought popped up in her mind. "Ah, you'll have to fight with Mike over who gets to sleep in my bed with me and who gets one of the couches. He gets here on Saturday."

  "Mike's visiting?"

  "Mike's coming back to live," Angel corrected, and explained his situation. While Leigh and Mike were friendly, they weren't friends the way Angel and Mike were, but it was a nice safe topic that distracted Leigh and allowed herself to pull together even more.

  Angel just hoped that her roommates would be okay with the extra guest.

  Once Leigh had gone out to her car to grab the suitcase that she'd packed, Angel went down to the basement to explain the situation to the guys. To their credit, each one of them immediately pledged their support for Leigh and said she could stay there as long as she wanted.

  "Is she okay?" Sam asked. "Should we be paying Michael a visit?"

  "You've been watching too many mafia movies," she told him.

  "SAMPSON!" shouted Q and Mark at the same time, making her laugh as Sam rolled his eyes. He hated his full name.

  "You gonna pull out some whoop-ass, Sampson?" Q asked, his eyes on the screen where he and Sam were currently brawling on SmashBrothers. "Cuz you could use some right now."

  "Shut it, asshole," Sam muttered, furiously pushing buttons to go on the attack.

  Deciding that she could leave the guys to her own devices, Angel went back upstairs to help Leigh get settled in. She'd forgotten that she'd pulled out some of the clothes she'd been thinking about wearing to Stronghold and found Leigh examining one of her corsets.

  "Did I interrupt something?" Leigh asked, holding it out as Angel entered her bedroom.

  "Oh... no. I was thinking about going back to Stronghold tonight."

  "I thought that you were going to wait until tomorrow."

  "I was. I am. It was just a thought. That's okay though, I don't have to go this weekend."

  "What? No, of course you're going, don't be silly." The mulish expression on Leigh's face was much preferable to the devastated one she'd been wearing earlier, but Angel still wasn't going to be convinced that Leigh was okay enough to be left alone.

  "I'm not going to just ditch you tomorrow night," Angel said flatly.

  "So we'll both go. I want to meet this Adam guy anyway," Leigh said. "And it'll be good to get out and go do something that I would have never done with Michael. I want to go out and do something I wouldn’t normally do."

  Angel opened her mouth and then closed it. While she didn't think that going to Stronghold was something that Leigh should be doing the day after her break-up, it wasn't like she was an expert on long-term relationships and how to cope with them possibly ending for good. Possibly because she wasn't convinced that Michael wouldn't coax Leigh back again eventually. He was a master at it. Although this was the first time that Leigh had left him.

  As a member she could bring a guest, although she would be considered responsible for Leigh and her behavior. Still, maybe if she could show Leigh something of what she was missing by taking her around the club, showing her a world outside of her relationship with Michael...

  "Fine. But I'm not ditching you to go do a scene while we're there."

  Leigh smiled wanly. "Sounds good to me." She took a deep breath, looking anywhere but at her suitcase which was propped next to Angel's closet. "Got anything to eat? I'm starving."

  "We can order Chinese, and I've got some Ben and Jerry's while we wait."

  "God I love you."

  Chapter 11

  Getting Leigh dressed for Stronghold was fun. She looked incredible in a black lace shirt over a black tank top with a fluttering navy blue chiffon skirt and very high black heels. Fortunately she and Angel fit into a lot of same clothing; even though Leigh was much less busty than Angel, they had the same curvy hips. It did mean that Leigh didn’t fit into any of Angel’s corsets, and she’d never allowed Angel to make her any, but the black lace shirt worked well enough. And it meant that Leigh was more comfortable, because she was basically completely covered.

  Angel grinned, wondering what Leigh would think of Lexie, since the last two times she'd seen the younger woman she'd been wearing similar tops to what Leigh had on now, but without the covering undershirt.

  At least the clothing and getting dressed was keeping Leigh firmly distracted. She'd had small bouts of crying all day, sometimes just her eyes filling up with tears over something completely random - like the turkey sandwich she had for lunch - and sometimes because she'd start fretting about what Michael was doing. She didn't say 'and with whom,' but the unspoken sentiment always hovered in the air.

  "Are you sure this skirt isn't too short?" Leigh asked, tugging at the hem as she turned to try and see her backside in the mirror. "I feel like my butt's hanging out."

  "It's not, it just looks like it's about to be," Angel reassured her.

  Leigh made a face. "That's not nearly as comforting as you think it is."

  "Stop it, you look fantastic." Angel raked her gaze over her friend and gave a sigh of envy. While she loved her curves, sometimes she looked at Leigh's completely flat stomach and wished that she was maybe just a little bit less curvy. "Maybe I should re-think this whole bringing you thing..."

  "Shut it, you look like sex on heels."

  "Yeah, thank god for corsets sucking in my stomach for me."

  Her friend held up her forefinger and made a face at her. "That's one... you get to three and I'll give you a spanking!"

  "Sweet Jesus, what is going on in here?" The deeper masculine voice broke into the room, making both of them jump.

  "Dammit," Angel muttered when she realized all three of her housemates were crowded into her doorway. She'd left the door open a crack - just a crack! - and one of them must have peeked in to see what was going on. She sighed. "We're going to a club."

  "Looking like that?" Sam's voice squeaked a little. His style was pretty much 'stylish geek' as he liked to call it and he was often taken aback by some of the more outrageous things that Angel w
ore, but he'd definitely never seen her looking like this before. Every time she'd gone to Stronghold she'd put on her coat before going downstairs.

  She put one of her hands on her hips and used the other to gesture from her breasts up to her face. "Up here boys."

  Wow, a communal blush as all their eyes flicked upwards. Even Q with his darker skin was blushing - she couldn't actually see the red but she could tell. "Do we need to have the 'you don't get to tell me how to dress' discussion again?"

  Honestly she thought their protective instincts were pretty cute, considering that she didn't consider any of them dominant to her. Although they might occasionally try to act it. She appreciated that they acted like a pack of big brothers on occasion, but it wasn't something she was willing to put up with in certain areas. Matters of dress was one of them. One of the things that had made her wonder if she really was submissive was the fact that she definitely bossed around a whole house of men, now she knew that it was part perception and part how people acted.

  Her housemates were perfectly willing to have her run the house about eighty percent of the time. The other twenty percent they would get riled up about something and try to tell her what to do; sometimes she listened, sometimes she didn't. Somehow she couldn't see any of the Doms she'd met at Stronghold allowing her to push them around that often. Even the most easygoing were the type that would only follow if it was already the direction that they wanted to go in.

  "Aren't you the one who always preaches about not putting yourself into a situation where you might be in danger?" Mark said, his eyes flicking over to Leigh. Sometimes Angel thought he might have a crush, but she didn't think anything was going to come of it, even if things between Leigh and Michael finally crashed and burned. “Those outfits look dangerous.”

  "Nice to know that you listened," she said. "But the place where we're going, we will fit right in. In fact, we're a little overdressed." She grinned at the skeptical looks on their faces before turning and grabbing her coat. Leigh did the same.