by Stacey Lynn
“What else?” he snapped.
“What?”
“You said a lot on your mind, what else was it?” He tugged his hand from mine and moved away.
I fumbled finding the words. His disappointment was clear. His anger at either Meredith or the lingering remains of my first meeting with his mom hadn’t minimized. It rolled off him in thick, heavy waves.
“Tell me.”
“I...I asked Dylan if Luminous was open tonight.”
Surprise colored his sharp cheekbones. “You what? Why?”
“Jensen—”
“To play?” He sounded aghast. Hurt.
I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts, but they were a jumbled mess. I was handling this all wrong, and yet we were on a train with no upcoming stop.
The tension became so thick it was difficult to breathe. “Yeah, I guess,” I finally said. “I wanted...I saw Gabby and Dylan, the way they are, and it just reminded me of what I was searching for.”
“And that’s not me.”
“No, that’s not it at all.” But it was too late.
He ran his hands down his face and then through his hair, twisting them together at his neck. He stared at the ceiling of the car and cursed.
“Wow. I just...misjudged this whole thing.”
This thing?
I was now a thing to him?
Fear burned in the back of my throat. I blinked rapidly to push away the tears filling my eyes. “I don’t think I’m explaining myself well. You are enough.”
“Clearly,” he snapped, glaring at me, “I’m not. And holy shit? You see one conversation between the two of them and what, were jealous, because Dylan gave Gabby something you wanted that I didn’t? Fuck, they have years together. We’ve had weeks.”
“It was the way she called him Master.” I recognized my mistake immediately.
His dark eyes cooled and he licked his lips, turning to face the front of his car. He didn’t speak while he shifted out of his seat and reached for a bottle of amber-colored alcohol in a small cooler on the side. The clink of ice cubes, the glug-glug of alcohol being poured was the only sound in the car. I could only stare.
Wait.
It took so long and I stared out the window catching the familiar alley as the car slowed to a stop.
Dread settled like an anchor in my stomach.
I had messed this up. I had messed everything up when the night had started so perfectly, when he’d looked at me like I was the most important—the only—person in his life.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, forcing the words out of my dry throat. Tears filled my eyes and my throat burned. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me. You’ve given me everything I’ve needed, more than anything I could possibly imagine. Jensen.”
I unbuckled my seat belt and leaned toward him, but he jerked out of my reach.
The rest of the words lodged in my throat. I was terrified but what else could I tell him? That I was falling in love with him? Would the admission push him further away after I’d already made such a big mess? Would he even believe me now?
I did want what Gabby had.
Yet, Jensen had already promised me a collar. What more did I want?
And was it a sexual or emotional connection I was seeking?
“Red.”
“What?” All the blood rushed from my face, chilling my entire body. “What?” I repeated.
“Red.” His lips tightened and he sipped his drink. “You can go in there—”
“I don’t want to. Not without you.” He grimaced and I clarified, “Not even with you.”
“Then perhaps the problem is that you don’t know what you want, but what I can give you might not be it. I have to go see to something. Take the time you need and let me know once you’ve got your shit figured out. Until then...red.”
He was stopping this. I understood. I wanted to pull the words back into my throat and wish I’d never said anything.
But, he had to go see to something? We were supposed to spend the night together.
“What stuff do you have to do?” I asked.
He tossed back the rest of his drink and slid toward the door. “The last time someone threw Courtney over the edge she tried to kill herself. What Meredith said tonight...what she did...I can’t think about your misgivings until I can make sure she’s okay.”
A bucket of ice dumped over my head couldn’t have made me shiver more. “You’re leaving me, for Courtney?”
My words were harsher, more accusing than I meant them, but it was too late to take them back.
It was too late to take any of it back.
His jaw tightened. “The driver will take you home.” He barely spared me a glance as he opened the door and climbed out. “I’ll call a cab.”
The door shut and I sat there, staring at him through glass where he couldn’t see me back, but as the car shifted into gear and we pulled out of the alley, Jensen didn’t stop watching me drive away from him until we’d turned the corner and disappeared.
He had left me.
For Courtney.
His ex-partner.
And I had royally screwed, everything up.
Potentially permanently.
Chapter Twenty
Jensen
Blindsided. A slap to the face wouldn’t have jolted me more than whatever in the fuck that was that just happened in the limo.
I stood in the alley, still so stunned and angry, and yeah...fucking hurt...I could barely move until the car disappeared.
It was only then I called the cab that would take me to Courtney’s, assuming that’s where she’d run off to.
Fuck. I hadn’t talked to her in years. Gong to see her might not have been the smartest thing to do, but to some extent, I was still to blame for this. Yeah she was unstable, but had I never introduced her to the lifestyle I’d so desperately craved, she might not have become so twisted...so desperate to feel, for external pain to relieve her internal ones.
And now I had another woman in my life, a woman I not only cared about, but could go the distance with, who was pushing. Pushing me to go farther than we’d already discussed.
Haley’s proposal, her manipulation in getting us to Luminous hadn’t only shocked the hell out of me, I never would have figured her to be a woman to try to top from the bottom.
I clenched my teeth—ground them so hard they should have broken.
My phone rang in my pocket and startled me. Dylan’s name popped up on the screen and I growled at the phone in my hand. Fucking Luminous. It was the source of all my problems.
“What in the hell are you doing outside the club and where’d Haley go?”
I turned around, found one of the cameras pointing at me and lifted my middle finger. “Tell Joe in there to fuck off and quit staring at me.”
Dylan barked out a laugh. “Surprised as hell she wanted to go tonight, not going to lie. You wanna tell me why you’re out there looking like someone just kicked you in the balls?”
“You can’t fucking see me.” After the disastrous meeting between Haley and my mom, we’d taken off. Gabby and Dylan had planned to stay longer.
“New security app I have on my phone, doesn’t matter and stop changing the subject. What happened?”
I ran a hand across my jaw and groaned. “I’m not even fucking sure. What’d she say to you?”
“Oh God, we go back to junior high again? I don’t play this he-said she-said bullshit, but she didn’t say a thing. Just asked if the club was open tonight. I figured she wanted to show off her tan ass for the club—show you off to the club. Not what I assumed?”
“I don’t even know. She said some shit about you and Gabby, the collar which she’d talked about before. I feel li
ke I’m spinning my wheels trying to catch up to a conversation and I’m still not sure what it was about.”
“How’d it end?”
Sudden shame ate away at my gut. Hell, had I really done that? “I called Red, Dylan.”
He coughed loudly. “You did fucking what? Why?”
“Because! Because she’d just filled my head with shit about Courtney, and barely paid attention to meeting my mom, and I don’t know why the fuck I did it, but I couldn’t bring her here, not tonight.” Possibly not ever. I didn’t think I ever wanted Haley on display for dozens of leering eyes. Men wanting to jerk off to her alabaster skin while I marked it.
But if it was what she wanted...needed...could I give that to her? I was supposed to be the one setting the fucking limits, making the rules. Subs were supposed to follow them. And here I was, my first trip back to Dom-ville and I had another woman trying to pull the strings.
“Gabby told me about Courtney, Jensen. Whatever happened wasn’t your fault. I thought you were past this shit. This has Meredith all over it.”
He didn’t understand. He never did. I was over having Courtney in my life, over the fact I couldn’t have helped her if I wanted, over the fact that I’d missed the signs, but it still wasn’t right to abandon her, either. Besides Meredith she didn’t have any family, no other real friends I knew of.
“I’m headed to her house to see her.”
“And then you’re going to Haley’s to discipline her, right?”
I ran my hand down my jaw, and caught a flash of the yellow taxi cab pull to the end of the street. I hurried toward it. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“Fucking hell, Jensen. Get your sub in line. She pushed you too far and you need to manage that shit, you don’t let it make you run from her. You forget everything I taught you or are you going soft?”
His tone was teasing. His words were spot on and hit me in the chest, flaying me wide open.
“I gotta go.” I clipped my phone shut, his laughter the last thing I heard. I gave the address for Courtney’s townhome to the cab driver, hoping like hell she hadn’t moved in two years. Then I sat back in the cab and scrubbed my face with my hands.
Damn Dylan. He always made sense. It was why I respected him. Why I’d wanted him to be the one to mentor me.
And no, my first thought hadn’t been to discipline or punish her for pushing us further. She manipulated a situation to figure out something for herself, but that wasn’t how this worked. She communicated, I considered, and I decided.
I hadn’t done any of that. I’d freaked out, let my emotions get the better of me and instead of dealing with the entire situation the way I should have, I pushed her away.
Shit. I could have ruined things with her tonight, especially with the parting shot of going to see Courtney.
I had seen the pain, the jealousy in her tone, and I hadn’t even bothered to reassure her of anything.
For all Haley knew, we were over and I was going back to my old sub.
Damn it.
I flipped my phone in my hand, considered calling her, and decided not to.
I’d go see Courtney, make sure she was okay, and then I’d go deal with Haley.
And by the time I was done with her, she’d learn the way a relationship with me...one where we figured it out together, not her making decisions behind my back...would really go.
With me being the one leading it.
* * *
“Have a good night,” I said to the cab driver, tossing him enough money that he could take the night off.
I didn’t care. My heart pounded against my sternum. Lights were on all over the place, and the green plastic furniture she’d always had on her small front patio was still there, along with her gardening tools she’d loved so much. In the summer, her tiny, landscaped front yard would look better than anyone else’s in this townhouse community.
I was just glad she was still there. I wiped sweat from my palms down the thighs of my suit pants as I prowled to her front door, rapping firmly on the red wood six times, each knock successively louder.
I was wound tight.
Fearful.
Behind the door, music blared, and it gave me a moment’s hope. It was hip-hop music. Not the angry, screaming messy rock shit she’d listened to when her depression covered her like a thick blanket.
The door flew open, and Courtney, with one hand wrapped around the handle, swayed toward me. She caught herself right before she toppled over.
I reached to help steady her and she giggled drunkenly.
“Jensen. What are you doing here?”
I looked her over quickly. Red, bloodshot, swollen eyes and a pink-tipped nose told me she’d spent more than enough time crying. Mascara ran down her cheeks and smeared the rest of her makeup. Courtney was beautiful, it couldn’t be denied. She had sweet, succulent curves, hair that had to cost her a whack to get taken care of at the salon, a body that men didn’t just look twice at, but more than that, when she sauntered on by.
Tonight, she looked exactly how Haley had described her.
Destroyed.
And drunk.
Never a good combination for Courtney.
Any relief I’d felt seeing her alive vanished.
“Can I come in?” I asked, sliding my hands into the pockets of my pants. “Thought maybe you’d need to talk.”
“Funny, I don’t really have anything to say.”
She tried slamming the door on my face, but I caught it before it closed. Her reflexes were slow, and I pushed myself into her small entryway, barely enough room for both of us to stand in front of the stairway leading to the second floor.
“Well come on in, then.” She waved her arm in the air, her other hand clamped around the neck of a wine bottle. She pulled it to her mouth, drank, then asked, “What do you want?”
“Was going to ask if you’re okay, but I’m seeing that you’re not.”
“I’m drunk, Jensen, not popping pills. If that’s all you needed to know, I’ll be okay.”
She looked like she wouldn’t be. My gaze flickered toward her door. I could leave. She’d given me the okay. But then I’d never know for sure.
I took a step toward her, forcing her into her small but sweetly decorated living room. There was a deep purple couch with a chaise lounge part at the end and as I stepped into the room, I steered her around the furniture, toward a chair.
“Haley told me about Meredith.”
“Yeah.” She lifted the bottle. “That’s what this is for. You ever think you know someone and then realize it was all a lie?”
I flinched and she caught it, even in her drunkenness. “Yeah...I suppose you do. I pretty much screwed you over, didn’t I? Did you come over just to play knight in shining armor?”
Her words were slurred, the hope in her voice was clear. I leaned against the corner of the wall that would take me into the kitchen and kept my distance.
“I was worried, Courtney. Haley said you were destroyed and I...I had to make sure.”
“I’m better than I was, Jensen.” She took another drink, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and then stared at the bottle like she didn’t know what it was. She leaned forward and set it on the table before relaxing back in her chair. “You don’t have to worry about me, I promise. This isn’t a plea for help. I’ve been getting that for years now. This is me being pissed off and sad that my best friend is a lying whore.”
Her realization of Meredith wasn’t entirely wrong.
Still, I was worried.
“If you need someone to talk to—”
“It won’t be you.” She lay back in the chair, closed her eyes, and pulled in a deep breath. “I appreciate what you’re doing here, Jensen, I really do. But we’ve been over for years and you alre
ady know my issues go far past anything you could have done.” Slowly, one eye peeled open. “I like your new girl...Haley?”
At my nod, she smiled.
“Yeah. She seems nice. Pretty, too. Go be happy, Jensen. I’ll be fine.”
Worry ate at me. Courtney had always been fine. She was okay and she was good and she was fine, but she was never happy or great or full of joy.
She forced both eyes open. Her head lolled to the side and she smiled lazily. “Honest. I appreciate what you’re doing, that you’re trying to come to my rescue, but I don’t need it. I need to finish this wine, take some ibuprofen and sleep off my hangover. Then I need to figure out how to find new friends.”
I laughed at her smile, shaking my head. “I’ll get the meds.”
I walked around a small bar and into her kitchen.
“Above the microwave,” she called out.
In the years we’d spent together, we never spent a night at Courtney’s place. We played at the club and went to my penthouse. The only times I was inside this place was when I picked her up. I didn’t know where she kept her glasses. I didn’t know if her bedroom was messy, or cluttered but clean like Haley’s, or perfectly fixed. Did she make her bed in the mornings? Haley didn’t. She claimed to have too much to do to worry about wrinkled sheets.
It struck me as I found the medicine and dug through cabinets searching for a clean glass.
I’d had years with Courtney. I’d only had weeks with Haley.
Yet I’d already opened myself up to her far more than I’d done for anyone else.
She was an open book, with the exception of earlier tonight. She gave me everything, open and willing, not hiding a thing.
I’d been the one holding back, even while I tried not to, and the first time she’d tried to talk to me, I’d shut her down.
That wasn’t how you treated someone you were falling in love with.
My hand holding a glass under the running tap froze.
What? I couldn’t. I couldn’t love her. Not yet.
I couldn’t deny that she was all I thought about. All I wanted. And it wasn’t only in the bedroom. It was her laugh and her teasing smiles. It was her winks and the way she ran her hand through her hair, not caring if it ever got mussed. She was unintentionally, beautifully perfect. She was incognizant of all of it.