“Asshole,” Ian taunted as they circled around each other.
“You’re a fucking liar. Let me see if I can’t give the doctors a reason to wire your jaw shut.”
“Bring it.”
Nick’s fist collided with the side of his head, snapping it to the right. Ian whipped it back around in enough time to duck his next punch, landing one of his own to his gut.
The ooph he heard was payment enough for the stars swirling in his head.
Back and forth they parried, blow after blow, knocking the wind out of each other several times.
Nothing else was discussed but the communication they shared was quite profound.
They hated each other.
Nothing was going to change that.
Sharing Jenna wasn’t an option and the gloves were officially off.
They’d each do whatever it took to win her heart and if the other man was left in the dirt, so be it.
After another forty-five minutes of throwing insults and kicking the shit out of each other, they finally went to their own corners.
Nothing was resolved.
Ian hurt like hell and he glared at Nick as he headed toward the locker room. He tasted his own blood from several cuts inside his mouth from punches Nick had landed with surprising accuracy.
He’d have given him props if he weren’t such an asshole and pining after his girl.
He stripped down, letting the water pelt his sore muscles as he stewed.
Jenna was his, plain and simple.
How she reacted to him and how she came for him still proved more than a shadow of a doubt that he was going to fight for her.
She was worth it.
And he’d be damned if he’d lose to someone like Nick.
Cocky fucktard.
He cleaned up and toweled off, pulling on a clean T-shirt. He sat down and tied the laces on his black leather boots, remembering when Jenna used to do it for him.
His cock thickened at the thought of her on her knees before him.
Serving him.
Submitting to him in ways that still blew his mind.
She was it for him.
He’d tried to move on.
Literally.
There wasn’t another girl out there who compared to what she was to him.
What he felt for her.
He loved her.
He scrubbed a hand down his face. Guilt made an unwelcome visitor when he was trying to ignore his mistakes.
He’d told himself that it was because he was young. A simple error of judgment but he knew he’d been lying to himself ever since the day he left her.
Scared didn’t come close to what welled inside him when she’d told him what she wanted.
Needed.
Terrified was closer. The panic that night had been unreal. He’d told himself it would fade, that he’d get over her.
He shook his head.
He’d already come to terms with the fact that she still owed his heart.
All he had to do was bide his time and let Nick fuck up. He’d be there to swoop in and pick up the pieces. This time he wouldn’t choke when it was important.
Watching it happen wasn’t going to be pretty and the last thing he wanted to see was Jenna get hurt, but growth rarely happened without some kind of pain involved with it.
He stood and grabbed his gym bag, tossing it over his shoulder.
Nick glared at him on the way out and he could have given two shits about it.
He wasn’t important.
A minor, temporary annoyance.
Nothing more.
He pushed through the door into the hot afternoon sun, sliding sunglasses on as he walked to his car.
A Viper.
Black.
Some would call it a midlife-crisis car.
He called it fucking awesome.
Right after his alarm system beeped off, his phone vibrated with some kind of notification. He slid into the driver seat, tossed his bag in the passenger seat and entered the password on his phone to unlock it.
It was a blog notification.
Did he follow many blogs?
No.
He followed a grand total of one.
Jenna’s blog.
Aftercare.
She’d started it a couple years ago.
He’d found it mere days after she’d launched it.
He’d learned a lot about her through the words on her posts.
Some were short and not so sweet.
Others were so poignant he’d had to stop in the middle of them and come back to read them later when he’d had time to prepare himself.
He’d done her dirty when he’d left.
Admitting that had been a real bitch but it was the truth.
He had a lot to make up for and as soon as he could get Nick out of the fucking picture, he’d set about fixing what he’d messed up so long ago.
Ian pulled up Jenna’s blog post titled “Those Bastardizing Whore-Faced Sluts.”
He grinned at her gumption.
She didn’t pull punches and he admired that.
He stretched his jaw, knowing exactly how good her follow-through was.
He put the phone in the console in the middle, turned on the vehicle and finally shut the door.
Pulling out of the lot and heading back toward The Library, he wondered what had happened to prompt Jenna to post today. She normally only posted on Tuesdays and Fridays. He wondered if the little fight she walked in on had anything to do with it.
Checking the blog as soon as he got to his office became priority one.
He eased into a higher gear as he released the clutch on the highway.
The car sped toward its next location, quietly, hardly making a single rumble.
And if anyone had hurt her, God protect them because he would take them off at the knees.
Doubts and defamation were part and parcel for the BDSM world but if he was good enough at his job it wouldn’t touch the members at the club. And it sure as shit wouldn’t ever touch Jenna.
Chapter Twenty
Mad didn’t even begin to describe how pissed she was at the city hall people. The board refused to even listen to her at her hearing.
They’d called a special session just for her and she thought was a good sign going in.
It wasn’t and she should have known that instead of getting her hopes up.
They scheduled it the way they did so not all of the members could show up. The ones that did were staunchly opposed to her every idea, no matter how much revenue it could bring their city.
Jenna sat in the backseat next to Haleigh, fuming. She grabbed a rope out of her bag and tied a chest harness around her upper torso as Skye drove down the freeway.
“That bad?” Cyn asked from the passenger seat. She’d swiveled around at some point after they’d picked her up outside the gates of The Library.
Haleigh fiddled with her camera and the lens attached to it, which Jenna had asked her to bring along. But she was focused on Jenna’s answer just as much as the other girls were.
This affected all of them, making her feel even worse.
“We’re officially dead in the water.”
“What happened?” This time Skye asked as she glanced up into the rearview mirror.
Jenna dropped the rope that she’d already tied and retied—twice. She ran her fingers through the ends of her hair and tried to focus on using her words instead of just using every cuss word she could think of.
“Our types of businesses,” she made air quotes before continuing. “They’re…let me see if I can remember their list.” Jenna ticked them off on her fingers as she recited them. “Disreputable, immoral, depraved, seedy and unbefitting of the stature of the great city of Arcadia.”
She rolled her eyes and grabbed the working end of her rope again, continuing to tie. “They sat up in their little chairs, judging me as if they were the gods on Mount Olympus. Fuckers.”
“Did they even let you spea
k? Were you able to refute any of their claims? Nothing of what we’re going to be offering is anywhere close to as depraved as they make it out to be.” Haleigh’s sweet face all screwed up in offense made Jenna smile.
“Nope. They asked me my name. That was the extent of it.” She looked at each of them, willing her emotion to shut up “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve let you all down. I’m sorry I got your hopes up when we never had a chance to begin with. I feel so awful.”
“Why in heaven’s name would you be apologizing to us?” Cyn practically crawled over the middle console to face Jenna. “You’re not responsible for their self-righteous attitudes, or their backwoods thoughts on sexuality.”
“No, I’m not. But I am responsible for pulling all of you into this. All of our names were on the license application, just like we talked about. Even yours, Skye.” Jenna held her gaze for a few seconds but had to look away.
Skye came from a wealthy family. Wealthy as in, her parents would get tired writing how many zeroes it took to total their fortune. Her name being on the application with all of the rest of them would be discovered soon enough.
With her family—sooner, rather than later.
“I figured any backlash would be worth it when we had the licenses we needed so we could move forward. I never anticipated the possibility we may never even have the opportunity to try.”
“We’re not exactly dead in the water.” Haleigh spoke up.
“How do you figure that? Without the licenses we can’t do anything—”
“In Arcadia.”
Jenna closed her mouth with a click, scowling. “Of course not in Arcadia. Where else would we go?”
“Missouri.”
Crickets chirped somewhere in China. Everyone was quiet before Cyn spoke up. “That’s not even in our state.”
Haleigh smiled, and it quickly morphed into a laugh. “No shit, Sherlock. But it is no more than fifteen miles from Arcadia. The licensing requirements are a lot more lenient and I may have found us lease space as well. Lease-to-own, actually, working in our favor on many fronts.”
“All of that sounds good,” Jenna capitulated and grabbed another rope from her bag, untying the coil. “But we’d still have to make nicey-nice with the zoning committee—“
“I happen to know an influential board member who has discretionary authority on granting leases.”
“Discretionary? As in, no formal meeting?”
“Exactly.”
“But who’s to say he’s going to dig what we have to offer and who we are as a group and individuals? He could be so vanilla he—”
“He’s also a member of The Library.”
Jenna’s jaw dropped and she started going through a mental list of all the Doms at the club. “Master?”
“He’s definitely a top. Owner, maybe. I’m not certain of his specific status.”
“How did all of this come about?”
“It’s all seemed pretty perfect actually. I knew this person’s name from the circles my parents run in. He’s wealthy and I just assumed he’d be this stuffy, middle-aged man with a paunch the size of Cleveland and a comb-over to match.
“I was quite wrong on everything but the wealthy part.”
The girls remained quiet for a few seconds.
“First name?” Jenna inquired.
Haleigh smiled. “Damien.”
“Jesus.”
“Holy fuck,” Skye and Cyn cursed together.
“Damien? As in the hard-ass sadist who’s terrified many a sub until she’s nothing more than a puddle on the concrete floor of The Library? And that’s normally before he actually touches them.”
“Small world, huh?” Haleigh lifted her shoulders, holding them there for a few seconds before she dropped them again. “Oh, and the building I found that would be perfect for us? It’s brand-new, no tenant’s ever had their little grubbies on it…he owns it. And because it’s us, he’s willing to contract the possibility of us buying it at the end of our first year lease term.”
Jenna shook her head. Surely all of this was way too good to be true.
“Hey, where are we going anyways? I’ve been driving around in a circle on the loop for the last ten minutes. Aimless is my middle name.”
“Sorry, got distracted. Head back toward the town square. You know the statue of the founder of Arcadia? I’m going to self-suspend from it. Haleigh’s going to take pictures of us photobombing city hall.”
“Is that illegal?” Cyn wanted to know. She didn’t sound particularly worried, just curious.
“Nope. No such law stating you may not suspend from local statues. The police can get you for other things if they really feel the need to be assholes. Public nuisance, trespassing, etcetera. It’s why I use public places to suspend by. Not to mention it stirs up a bit of ruckus when pictures are posted. We’ll be blogging on Aftercare, about what happened today. Spreading the word to all of our kinky friends about exactly what the city of Arcadia thinks of us.”
Jenna grabbed another rope and tied on a simple no-fuss hip harness, unclipping her seatbelt for part of it to make sure the tie was secure. Her hands were focused on doing perfect rope work but her mind was elsewhere. “So when are you going to really meet with him about this?”
Haleigh continued. “I’ve been waiting to hear about how the meeting went with the Arcadia city people. He’s been on standby. Didn’t want to step on any toes, you know?”
Jenna nodded. “You have the all-clear from me.”
“Me, too.”
“A-okay from me.”
“I’ll call his office tomorrow and set up a meeting.”
“If you need someone else to go with you, just let me know when.” Jenna glanced over at her and she smiled. “People way underestimate you. You know that?”
“I’ve underestimated me for far too long. Ain’t nobody got time for that!”
Laughter filled the vehicle just as they turned the corner, leading to the town square.
“Great. There’s enough light that we can see by and there’s no one around. We’ll park. Everybody pile out. Haleigh you’re on pics. Obviously. Cyn, you and Skye are my lookouts. I’ll have only one suspension rope so if we need to literally cut bait and run, I can be down in thirty seconds or less. Just keep your eyes peeled for anybody who might cause us trouble.
“We’ll take a few pictures and then take off. Everybody got it?”
“Yeppers.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, Sir,” Haleigh piped up at the end with a fake salute and everything.
“No wonder Scott likes whipping you so much. You’re a bit bratty. Who knew?”
“Mmmm….” Haleigh closed her eyes, holding her camera close to her chest. Her charm could power a city, if it ran on good-natured happiness.
“Slut,” Skye joked as she pulled into a parking spot.
“Yes?” Haleigh, Cyn and Jenna all asked.
“Ha!” Skye threw the car into park. “Everybody out. Let’s get this party started.”
Jenna glanced at the clock, grabbed two other hanks of rope and bolted out of the vehicle with the others.
She ran for the statue, uncoiling her rope on the way and tossed it over as soon as she was below the middle arch.
“I feel like I’m 007 on a mission for…whoever he goes on missions for.”
Jenna snorted at Cyn. “But there aren’t any secret double-agents with New Age weapons of mass destruction hot on our tail.”
“Wow, thanks for ruining the moment for me. Bitches.” Skye laughed and nervous giggles followed suit from the other two girls.
Jenna connected carabineers onto the suspension line and attached the rope onto her chest and hip harnesses. Her arms burned as she pulled herself up and into position and tied off again.
She released her chest harness, bearing all of her weight by her hip harness. She secured the line and relaxed into the rope.
Her back arched and she grabbed one of her feet behind her head. The other leg
she lifted, wrapping her ankle around the suspension line.
The pose always reminded her of an upside-down figure skater.
The click of the camera drew her attention and she wondered how long Haleigh had been taking pictures.
“This is awesome,” Haleigh whispered even though there wasn’t anyone around to hear them. “I can see City Hall in the background, along with the skyline and the last vestiges of the sunset.”
Skye moved around behind Haleigh. “That’s hot.”
Haleigh snapped a few more pictures, completely focused on capturing the moment.
Things were quiet for a few minutes while Haleigh click, click, clicked away.
“Headlights in the distance.” Cyn whispered. “Don’t know if they’re coming this way. Do we have what we need?”
Click. Click. “Yes, we’re good. Jenna, you’re good to come down.”
She lifted her own body weight, reattaching the chest harness and lowered herself to the ground.
All of the rope was off and they were sprinting back to the car. They piled in, holding their breaths as a vehicle drove past behind them.
“That was close,” Skye admitted.
“Nah,” Jenna answered even through her hands shook. “That was nothing. It could have been much more interesting.”
Skye started the car and backed out of the space. Jenna glanced at the clock.
Took them less than ten minutes.
Perfect.
Another vehicle went past, a blue pickup. They pulled out behind it and Skye whistled, as if nothing or everything was out of the ordinary.
“Haleigh, when do you think you could have them edited?”
“Less then twenty-four hours and I think they’re going to be stunning.”
“I have no doubt.” Jenna took Haleigh’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Can I see some now?”
“No.”
“No? What do you mean no?”
“I mean the opposite of yes.”
Cyn piped up. “Yep, she’s definitely bratty. You might have to have a chat with Kyle and Scott about her. Don’t want anything to get out of hand, of course.”
“Hey, that reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
“Hit me. Well. You know, figuratively speaking, of course.”
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