My eyes wander over to Aryn and he looks away from me quickly. He’s watching me. “Oh, Aryn?” She gives me a brief widening of her eyes. “I met him shortly after they got here, last Saturday I think.” No need to mention what it was that we were doing. I imagine Tristan can be quite alpha, but they’re hardly into the lifestyle. “Though Derek introduced him as Aryn.”
Cami smiles and it reaches her eyes, giving her a very genuine, happy look that you don’t see on many Hollywood types. “He’s one of 69 Bottles’ security team,” she tells me. “He’s also assigned to Alyssa for the premiere tour.”
“Oh reeeallly,” I say with a sly smile. “I thought he belonged to Dex.” I give a soft snort that goes unnoticed. No - he most certainly does not belong to Dex.
“He does, but we borrow him from time to time. He’s one of our top guys.”
“Why have I never seen him before?” I ask her, trying to get as much candid information from her while she’s talking as I can.
She shrugs her shoulders. “Not sure, but he travels mostly in the musician circles, that could be why.”
I nod in agreement and take another sip of my scotch.
Our conversation is cut short when the servers start serving dessert and I let my eyes find Aryn’s once more. I am disappointed when I see that he’s talking to someone else, someone who’s dressed the way that he is, only female. Jealousy slides through me as I take in the girl and the playful smile on Aryn’s lips.
*~* ARYN *~*
“Sean wants you outside.”
I smirk at Celeste. “Why not call me on the radio then?”
“Why when I was coming to the kitchen anyway.” She winks at me and moves past me. I shake my head and head toward the front door.
As I do, eyes bore into me and I don’t need to look to know it’s Caden. The minute he looked up from his dessert while I was talking to Celeste, I not only saw his gaze but felt it along my neck when my hair stood on end. What in the hell am I going to do about him?
I shake my head as I step free of the door and go walking toward Sean’s post where they set up the temporary visual equipment for tonight.
Sean showed me the AV room this week and I was blown away when he said he was adding more for the event tonight. He has a three hundred sixty degree view of this entire property with very little blind spots and most of those are usually covered by a guard.
When I enter the hut the guys are laughing at one of the monitors. I follow their gaze and shake my head.
“Some people just can’t wait till they get home,” I mutter as I watch some woman sprawled out on the bathroom sink with someone up under her dress having her for dessert. The facial expressions she makes has all of us laughing for a good ten minutes before the guy crawls out from under her dress and I’m surprised to see who it is. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Yup,” one of the guys says through his laughter. “And that is not his wife.”
My eyes widen at the video monitor, getting a good clear look at one Senator Millstone.
I ask Sean what’s up, telling him I know he didn’t bring me out here to watch that. He laughs and says, “Sure, I did.” But he gives me a very pointed look before getting up and escorting me outside.
“What’s up?” I ask him when we’re clear of the guys, though they’re still laughing.
“Don’t worry about them, they’re all under confidentiality agreements, they can’t tell a soul about what they saw. I can’t say the same for you.”
I snort a laugh, “Believe me, my lips are sealed. I am curious though.”
“About what?”
“Will you tell Derek?” I ask him.
He sighs. “Yes, unfortunately I will tell him. He will be pissed beyond words because Sally, the senator’s wife, is a very good friend of Derek’s and while he couldn’t care less for the Senator, he does care about Sally.”
I frown. “So, you needed me for something?”
“Not really, thought you could use some fresh air.”
I chuckle. “Sure.”
“Walk with me?”
I cock my head at him, but follow him through the makeshift parking lot of cars, looking for anyone who may be where they’re not supposed to be. There is temporary lighting throughout the makeshift lot and an entire valet team to handle the cars.
We walk for some time before Sean starts talking. We cover the party, the weather and other mundane topics before he says, “I didn’t know you knew Caden Matthew.”
I shake my head. “Can’t honestly say that I do. I met him Saturday night, at the err, the. Is that a problem?”
He shakes his head. “No, not at all.”
“What’s wrong, Sean?” I ask him as we come to a stop at the far end of the parking lot.
“Nothing, just be careful with him.” He turns to look at me.
I cock my head. “I’m not following what you’re implying.”
“He’s not, I don’t know, he’s not your typical kind of guy.”
I want to press him to explain further, but I am not entirely sure I want to know anymore.
“Look, he’s just, a friend of mine is one of his ex-subs.”
“Whoa, you, how? Wha-what makes you think it’s like that with me?”
He gives me a curious look. “I think I find it odd that my assumption wasn’t the first response you gave me.”
I turn away from him. “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I tell him coyly.
“Your first thought wasn’t about you and him, it was curious about what I knew. Very curious,” he says with a skeptical tone. I turn back toward him and his eyes are narrowed at me, trying to read me.
“Look, I only physically met him the other night, that’s it. And tonight he came by to say hello.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask him sternly.
He sighs. “He has a tendency to find subs, use subs and then move on to someone else.”
“Is he really using them or are they not compatible?” I ask, trying to counter his claims about Caden. I have the sudden urge to defend someone who isn’t here.
“Honestly? I don’t know. I just know that he broke my friend’s heart. She was devastated enough to drop out of the lifestyle altogether.”
I frown and that’s about all I can do. I don’t quite know what to say to him about Caden. I’d prefer to make judgments on my own and ironically enough, I can’t quite understand why I care about what he’s done in his past, why it would matter to me.
“When Caden wants something, he gets it,” Sean says out of the blue as he turns and starts walking back toward the hut and the house.
“I’m pretty sure he’s not my type,” I add on a laugh, letting him know that it isn’t something he needs to worry about with me.
“Well, shit,” he says. “Why didn’t you tell me that?” Embarrassment colors his tone and his cheeks.
“Because I had no idea where you were going with this little speech. I find it admirable that you want to protect your friend and even me, but I assure you, he’s not my type, his chest is way too flat.” I laugh humorlessly and Sean joins in. I don’t find my words convincing to myself, but it’s sufficient enough for Sean who does and that’s all I care about.
Sean and I walked back to the AV hut and then I left him there to return to my post inside the house.
Once inside, I find that dinner is over and several guests begin leaving the party, while the majority of them take to the dance floor as the band picks up the tempo, livening up the party.
The party finally wraps around one in the morning, though those that remained were staying for the night at Derek’s, just a couple stragglers, including Caden.
Sean dismissed me from my post before the end of the friendly gathering, which I’m grateful for. I kept catching Caden watching me throughout the night despite my best efforts to ignore him and do my job. Being able to leave the room made the likelihood of
him coming to talk to me diminish.
I escaped back to my room. The living area of the details’ quarters is full of guards laughing, chatting, drinking and having a good time as they wind down for the evening. As I pass through, Celeste catches my eye and she holds up a fresh beer for me. I smile at her but shake my head.
For as vulnerable as I feel tonight, drinking with her isn’t the best idea in the world and while the distraction would be great to have, if only for tonight, I still have to work with her for the next week or so.
TWENTY~ONE
THE NEXT MORNING I lay in bed, like most days back at home, reading a book I’ve been working on since I got here. Christmas has never been a cheerful holiday for me and even as an adult, I can take it or leave it. I’ve spent too many holidays away from family and friends to feel the nostalgia of being around them as a necessity.
Around eleven, my phone rings with a call from Dex, who proceeds to yell at me for hiding in my room. After some half-ass attempts at arguing with him, I throw on a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt and grab their presents before going into the main part of the house.
I don’t run into anyone along the way and it makes me smile when I see Raine and Cotah working in the kitchen versus Derek’s kitchen staff. “Merry Christmas,” I smile at the two of them who beam back at me with bright excited smiles and a very cheerful Merry Christmas greeting before they go back to finishing what they’re doing.
I head into the great room where Derek, Dex, Cami, Tristan and their son Jaden are talking and playing with Jaden’s new toys. He’s a cute little shit.
They play a little more before the girls emerge from the kitchen carrying trays of food and place it on a table that I overlooked when I came in. It’s literally covered with food and I smile.
“We graze for Christmas.” Derek smiles at me. “I give my staff the day off.”
“Sounds great to me,” I tell him with a wide smile back.
We have a small gift exchange, mostly just the presents from friend to friend. It’s obvious to me, when I see Raine’s new laptop, that they’d all already exchanged their personal presents with each other.
That’s fine with me. I would have felt really out of place watching them open their personal presents to each other.
Dex hands me a present and I in turn give them theirs.
When I was struggling to figure out what to get them, I’d remembered the art gallery event we went to a few months back and the painting they’d both fallen in love with. It struck me as odd that neither one of them purchased the painting at the time, so when I saw it, I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t bring it with me, so I took a picture of it and stuffed it in a card. Yeah, I don’t do the whole wrapping thing. In turn they’d given me a new iPad, since I dropped mine at their house a few weeks back, shattering it. While I hadn’t replaced it yet, the gesture was a little over the top and more than double what I’d spent on them.
Sometimes having rich friends when you’re far from it can be a bit daunting and it makes things seem lopsided. But, like a good little boy, I accepted my gift with gratitude.
After a while, I returned to my room. Dex has always tried to include me, but I can’t bring myself to get into it.
The next day, Cami and Tristan took off early in the morning. I didn’t see them go, but we followed shortly after in Derek’s plane for Nashville.
Derek has a really nice house in Nashville, a third of the size of the estate near Charlotte, and I found it a little odd that he would have a house here. He’s barely an hour flight from Nashville. That was until he had to run off to the office and it wasn’t in the house. The well-used house seemed a little more personal, at least for Cotah and I get the impression that they actually live here more than they do in Charlotte. It’s none of my business so I don’t ask a ton of questions about it.
The next couple of days are rather boring for me. Yes, the girls went shopping, and yes, I took Dex and Raine out a couple of nights without Derek and Dacotah, but all in all, it was uneventful and nice to just sit back and relax for a few days.
Tonight, however, is another story. I haven’t been this nervous since I was a teenager going on my first date.
Tonight is a fetish ball at The Box and it is also the day before New Year’s Eve.
Dex took me shopping, without the girls, earlier this week. He insisted that I needed something else to wear to the club tonight because it is a fetish ball after all. Derek had recommended a couple of different shops in the Nashville area that were more gothic than fetish in their attire and I didn’t feel so out of place while inside of them. Granted, I’m a thirty-four year old man shopping in a store geared toward high school gothics not adult fetish wear.
Regardless of the location or the store audience, I was able to find myself a pair of leather pants and for some strange reason, a solid black t-shirt that is about two sizes too small in the chest department.
So that is what I’m wearing tonight. Sans the mask. There’s a masquerade element to tonight’s party and the girls are wearing them, however, neither Derek nor Dex are planning on wearing one. I take their lead and decide against one too. Unlike Derek and Dex, I’m not famous nor do I feel the need to hide my identity. Especially if I’m planning on sticking around the club after tonight.
Dex, Derek and I are chatting in the living room when the girls come down. Their hair is pulled up and back and they’re both wearing the same outfit. Black and red corsets with short tutu like skirts, thigh high red and black striped socks and platform boots.
Both Derek and Dex light up when they see them. They exchange greetings and once again jealousy courses through me. Why am I so jealous all of a sudden?
It’s not like I’ve been dying for a girlfriend or anything. In fact, I am pretty sure I’m better off without one. But then again, I haven’t had a solid, steady one since high school and that was more of a relationship of convenience on her part. I was the exact opposite of what her parents would approve of, so I was the fun scapegoat, but whatever. We had fun and took each other’s virginity late in our sophomore year. We lasted another two years, only breaking up after I graduated from high school and left her behind to finish her senior year. She used me to gain popularity with the popular cliques in our tiny ass school and once she realized it no longer mattered because I wasn’t going to be there anymore, I was tossed aside. It was fine by me.
I shake my head, wiping away the memory of all those years ago just as Derek and Dex hold open coats for the girls.
We pile into Derek’s Range Rover and start for the club. We have no security with us, except for me, but I have no weapons on me whatsoever. Club rules.
I had argued about that with Derek, but he said it was the rules of the club for one and for two, it’s a member only party and all guests are fully vetted by the club. This is honestly the safest place Dex, Raine and Derek can go without a detail team as there are dungeon monitors and the club’s own security team inside at all times.
I watch from the back seat as Derek drives us through town, becoming suspicious of where we’re really going when the scenery turns from alternating houses and businesses to industrial sized steel buildings. Loading docks and the occasional eighteen wheeler driving down the road.
We approach an empty area along the street that isn’t empty just black as can be. The only identifying marker is the red lights that line the top of the building and Derek turns in.
The building lives up to its name. It literally looks like a big two, two and half story box with no windows and only two doors. One double set and one off to the left of that one. Both doors are lit by overhead lighting, but can easily be missed if those lights are turned off. There is a couple walking toward the double doors and I watch as they open them but I cant see anything inside before the doors close again. No one is going in and out of the other door, but I notice a security pad next to the door. My guess is that it belongs to the offices or maybe the private rooms that Dex had told me about.
The plus side to my dues, I don’t have to pay them until after I’ve come to the club a few times and feel it’s really where I want to be.
As we stand in line to check-in, Derek tells me, “All members are required to check-in, this is so that they know who is here for the night and to keep track for capacity rules. There are nights that people are left waiting to get in because it’s full. Or they haven’t opened up the other side of the dungeon. Tonight is invitation only and responses were required.”
“I didn’t get an invite,” I tell him.
“No, you didn’t, but Master Orik is a dear friend of mine and knows that you’re my guest tonight, so you’re perfectly fine. The responses were required because they used those to determine how many more invites they could send out until they reached about thirty below capacity.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Why is capacity so important?”
Derek gives me a pointed look like I should know and understand the answer to my own question but I’m honestly baffled by it.
He sighs. “Sorry, I guess capacity is for two reasons. One, we don’t need the police showing up here. Master Orik goes through a great deal to keep this place off the radar. For all the cops really know, this is some type of exclusive bar.”
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