by Chloe Cox
Olivia snapped to attention, her eyes fixed on the other woman. What could she mean? Blue already knew Olivia was Gavin’s sub—hell, she’d “known” that before it was even true. Which reminded Olivia that Blue was not in on the whole thing. She needed to keep up the charade that she and Gavin were the real deal, and not for the first time, the lying bothered her.
But somehow the role itself was getting easier and easier to play. Easier than dwelling on Charlene’s reminder that they weren’t actually a couple, that was for damn sure.
Blue waved a hand in front of Olivia’s face and laughed. “Earth to Olivia? What do you think?”
And she hooked one thumb at the stage.
Oh my God, that’s what she meant we had in common. Singing. On stage.
Gavin had told her he’d make her do it, and she’d both thrilled at the thought and recoiled from it. How had he even known that singing was one of those childhood fantasies, the kind you give up on but still somehow hold on to, like clutching tightly at a warm memory? She’d never even told Brandon about that. Hell, she hadn’t talked about it much at all since her mom had died and she’d had to get serious about bringing in some money. Maybe she’d mentioned it once, during that week in Los Angeles? And now Gavin wanted her to do it in real life, in front of so many people…
“…So we’ve got all those routines ready to go,” Blue was saying, “and we’ll pull out all the stops, maybe have a few vignettes that manage to sneak in some good old BDSM education in the mix. Show ‘em we have another tradition to be proud of in this city.”
Blue had been talking the whole time Olivia was just lost in Gavin-land. Quickly, Olivia nodded—seemed Blue was already pretty well informed anyway.
“Sounds great.”
Blue smiled. “Don’t you worry—we’re going to knock their socks off. What do you want to call it?”
Olivia went blank. Every time someone asked her something about this new part of her life, she still felt bound to the old one, and in that old life she’d have literally no idea what to call a BDSM party. It was only with Gavin that she felt…
“Free,” she said. Instantly the gears started turning. “I mean, not that. Maybe ‘Free and Bound,’ I guess? Or it can be something else, if you—”
“It’s perfect.” Blue smiled.
“Was there any point to me coming around here?” Olivia asked suddenly. “What I mean is, you would have done it all along, wouldn’t you? If Gavin asked? I mean, it seems like he already did.”
“Of course,” Blue said, leaning back against her bar. “But if I’m being honest, I think the point, so to speak, was to get you to take a good, long look at that stage.”
And Blue grinned.
“Charlene did say you knew him pretty well.” Olivia smiled.
“Yeah, well, when my ex left me, he was a lifesaver,” Blue said. “Someone cooks you enough dinners while looking after your kids so you can just get some damn sleep between jobs, and you get to know him pretty well.”
Wait. Gavin cooked? Olivia remembered his denial at the Cook For Your Life party, and smiled—so he had cooked at least once in his life.
“That, and when he found out my real name,” Blue went on, “he didn’t tell a soul.”
“It’s not Blue?”
Blue held her look for a second, then leaned forward, and dropped her voice.
“It’s Bitsy,” she said.
Olivia tried so hard, but she couldn’t hold it. She cracked up.
“See?” Blue said, laughing. “Wouldn’t you change it?”
“Blue suits you better,” Olivia said.
The looked at each other, and things suddenly seemed more comfortable. Like they could really be friends. Real friends.
“I’m glad he’s got you,” Blue finally said. “I think you’re good for him.”
And there it was. The inevitable reminder that Olivia was lying to this lovely woman that she’d like to be friends with. She took a deep breath.
But Blue went on, not really looking. She’d gone back to intently cutting up limes. “And when I went by the club to help you with that dress and saw Charlene there, I thought, oh my God, has she come home, too? But then you can’t have everything.”
Ok, wait.
‘Come home?’
Olivia’s mouth fell open. She was an idiot. She’d assumed Charlene’s discomfort with the club, just little subtle things that friends picked up on—she’d thought that had been about BDSM itself. She’d just assumed. But if Charlene had her own history with the club…
Why hadn’t she said anything?
“Anyway,” Blue said, grabbing another lime, “he hasn’t had love in his life for a long time, so it’s good to see him like this. And with his sub, no less.”
Inwardly, Olivia cringed. She just knew what was going to happen next. Blue was still talking because she had something she wanted to say, and it was going to be something private because Blue thought all of this was real—she thought Gavin loved Olivia, that he trusted her. And Olivia should stop her.
She should really, really stop her.
“To tell you the truth,” Blue said, while Olivia said nothing at all, “I was afraid he’d go on punishing himself forever. I know he had his reasons, but sometimes—shit!”
Olivia looked down to see a thin line of blood blossom on Blue’s finger. Almost too quick to see, the other woman dumped the bloodied lime in the trash and tossed the knife in the sink. Blue smiled wryly as she turned around to get a first aid kit from behind the bar.
“As I was saying, sometimes accidents happen.”
Olivia smiled back, but she felt a million miles away. She wasn’t dumb. She knew what Blue wasn’t saying.
Someone had gotten hurt.
“Nothing in life is perfectly safe,” Blue was saying. She held up her now-bandaged finger. “I’ve been cutting limes my entire adult life, and look. Mixing sex and love? Now that’s dangerous. Add safe words into the mix…”
Blue shook her head.
“It’s always a high-wire act,” she finally said.
Safe words.
Carefully, Olivia composed her face. All she could think about was Gavin, and his almost obsessive attention to safe words…
“I didn’t mean to ramble, and I know it’s not my place,” Blue said, returning to the limes with a fresh knife. “But it’s good to see the change in him. But then I’m sure you know all about that.”
And she smiled.
It hit Olivia like a bucket of ice water. Olivia might not know the specifics, but she knew about painful things. Especially about things so painful the only way to keep going was to wrap yourself around them as tight as you could, until sometimes they became a part of you. Until it seemed impossible that you could ever let them go…
Time to lie.
Faintly, Olivia said, “Sometimes people change.”
“Well, I’m not big on fairy tales,” Blue said, going back to her limes. “But seeing you two together?”
Blue stopped and looked up, smiling softly.
“You two give me hope.”
Olivia blinked.
She tried to breathe, but the air felt suddenly warm and humid, sticking to her throat, coating her lungs. The low ceilings looked heavy, and the music louder. And it wouldn’t stop. It hadn’t stopped, the entire time she’d been down there.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “I think I need to get some air.”
She didn’t really hear what Blue said as she walked, with increasing speed, towards those stairs. She was on automatic. She had to be, while the rest of her tried very hard not to totally freak out. Hope? At that moment, with those words swirling in her head, she’d never felt more hopeless in her life.
This time her eyes had adjusted to the dark, and she could see that the staircase was lined with old cabaret posters and pin-ups. She knew a lot of it was fake, she knew some of the stories behind the posters were probably terrible, but she couldn’t help but believe the fantasy of it.
Pictures of women who got up on stage, every day, and put all they had into it. Women who were themselves, who did what they wanted, damn the consequences.
It seemed so free. She used to just think it was irresponsible. Only in the past few weeks had she begun to understand how brave it really was to just be yourself, every day. She was a sub. She was more than that—she was her own person, totally separate from her professional image. She liked weird medical oddities and true-crime books and pie, and almost no one knew about any of that.
And she wished she could be all those things and somehow believe that she wouldn’t pay the price for it.
It was still raining sheets. She’d be stuck on this porch until Charlene came back, just alone with her own thoughts, wondering about how a man like Gavin, who’d made her feel so safe, had ever…
She turned around and froze.
He was there.
The truck was in the middle of the road, at an angle, like he’d just stopped and jumped out. He let the door close behind him as he stood there, motionless, rain soaking through his shirt, eyes locked on hers.
A moment.
And then he was coming towards her, relentlessly, his face marked by water and…worry? There wasn’t any time. He put one massive hand on the railing and jumped it, boots landing on the porch with a wet thud, and then he was there. He stopped just short of her, rainwater sluicing off his arms, his lips, his eyelashes. Careful not to get her wet.
He didn’t speak. Just stared.
Raised one hand to her cheek, almost, almost touching her.
She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to press her body against his and feel the wetness seep through, feel like everything that separated them might just dissolve, forgotten, washed away.
And that meant she was in a whole lot of trouble.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
He didn’t speak. Just touched two fingers to her cheek, and released a breath she didn’t know he was holding.
“You’re ok?” he rasped.
“Gavin…”
She wanted to ask so many questions. She wanted to know why he’d run up here like she was in some kind of danger, why he cared either way, what she was supposed to be feeling and what she actually was feeling. But she wasn’t sure she wanted the answers yet.
She looked down.
And then, lightly, the touch of his lips on her forehead again.
“I’m taking you home,” he said.
Twenty-Six
Gavin needed to be careful.
He watched Olivia run back and forth across what was now, despite his best efforts, the attic suite they now shared. He’d held the line on separate beds, but giving Olivia her own bedroom still hadn’t separated them as much as he thought it would. So he’d had a front-row seat on the preparations for this big shindig she was planning.
She’d been busting her ass to get this big “Free and Bound” party ready, buzzing around like a hyperactive bumblebee, attending to last minute details like it was her club on the chopping block.
Gavin didn’t know much about rebranding a Hollywood image, but he did know that Olivia was kinky as hell, and she wasn’t going to be happy until she came to terms with that. Slowly, he’d been watching her get right with that idea. But she wasn’t quite there.
And he’d been watching for a reason, beyond natural Dom curiosity. He needed to know whether or not to call off the plan he’d set in motion when Crennel threatened to out her before she was ready. And she hadn’t said a damn word about her career, her agent, or that role she needed so bad in days.
“We’re gonna be late for Charlene’s party,” he said. “And you need a break.”
Olivia looked up with wide eyes, a piece of the hair piled up on her head falling across her face, and Gavin couldn’t help but smile.
“I just have one last checklist—”
“Put it down,” he said. “That’s an order.”
Olivia smiled. “Well, in that case…”
She walked over to where Gavin sat on the corner of his desk, and put the clipboard down.
Goddammit, this woman was in sweatpants and an old Saints t-shirt, and she was sexier than any woman he’d ever seen.
Focus.
“Heard anything about that movie role?” he said. “What’s it called—Critical Vengeance?”
Olivia exhaled, shaking her head, and moved the clipboard she obviously still wanted to be working on from one part of Gavin’s desk to another. She was so close he could smell her.
“My agent is on that,” she said. “I’m just sticking to the plan.”
Deflecting. The question worried her.
At least Crennel hasn’t made a move yet. She still had time to do everything on her own terms.
But not very much time.
“Any word from Brandon Greer?” he asked.
Olivia paused, pretending to stare at that clipboard.
“Not yet,” she finally said.
“That still important to you?”
Olivia sighed then shrugged. “Yeah,” she said. Then she put on a smile. “But the show must go on.”
Gavin rose from his desk in one, swift movement, and it startled her.
Good.
“I’m going to make sure you have whatever you need, Liv,” he said.
She looked at him for a moment, and then turned away, hiding that smile, and towards the bathroom. She left the door cracked open and turned on the shower, and by sheer force of will he shut out the automatic image of a wet, naked Olivia.
Focus.
“Gavin?” she called from behind the door.
“Yeah.”
“That was very sweet, what you just said. Even if it’s not possible.”
Gavin frowned as he pulled a random dress shirt and a random tie out of his dresser. He hadn’t meant that to be sweet, and he sure as hell hadn’t mean for it to be impossible. He was old enough to admit that those words made sense, technically, but he didn’t have to like them. He’d find a way to do the impossible if it meant protecting Olivia from any more undeserved bullshit in her life.
“What are you brooding about?”
Gavin snapped his head up—Olivia in a towel, skin flushed from the steam pouring out of the bathroom. Hair barely wet. Drops of water beading on the top of her breasts, hand clutching the towel tight.
“What are you doing out of the shower?” he grunted.
He shrugged his shirt on, got to the buttons fast, efficiently. Couldn’t move his eyes away from her, though.
Olivia smiled again, this time for real, and it stopped him in his tracks. He left the tie hang around his neck and watched her bite her lip.
“Um,” she said, and walked towards him—no, towards the desk. She reached behind him for the clipboard and a pen. “There was just one more thing…”
Almost in slow motion, he watched her cross through a line on her list, and make a note in the margin. He could feel the steam rising off of her skin. The warmth of her.
“What did I tell you?” he said.
“It was just one thing,” she said.
She looked at him and smiled again.
Then she tied his tie.
“Somehow you are still ruggedly sexy even in a shirt and tie,” she said, smoothing it down. “You’re like a pirate on a formal raid.”
And she smiled up at him, as though this, this sweetness, was the most normal thing in the world.
He couldn’t take it anymore.
“Freeze,” he said.
Automatically she stopped, her fingertips still resting on his chest. She looked up for instruction.
He looked her in the eyes until she looked down, breathing heavily. He could feel the soft cotton of the towel that belonged to him and that covered her, the edge of it falling away from her body. He slipped his fingers under the edge, ran them up the fabric, feeling the textures, watching her breathe.
Then he pulled on it, and watched it fall away.
He said, “From now on, in thi
s room, unless I give you permission to cover up, you are naked. Do you understand me?”
He rested his hand on the soft curve of her hip then slid it, slowly, up. Her stomach fluttering under his thumb, her ribcage expanding in one, shuddering breath.
Eyes lidded. Lips open.
Gavin broke.
He picked up her wet body, took two strides, and threw her down on his bed. He spread her legs in front of him, and stood up.
There was nothing more beautiful on this Earth.
He watched her while he unbuckled. Let her see what she did to him. His cock pulsed in his hand, and he wondered if she knew she fucking owned it.
And then the last piece of him slid into topspace, and he positioned himself on top of her, hands on either side of her, arms supporting him, cock so fucking close.
She never broke eye contact. He didn’t even have to tell her.
He watched her face as he entered her, watched the rising wave crest, watched her give into it. Watched her open.
And he fell the fuck apart.
Like a madman he buried himself in her, over and over again, trying to get deeper, as far inside her as he could, until he felt her start to come around his dick, her finger nails digging into his shoulders, her eyes bright and wide and wet.
Her orgasm built so fast, so hard, it took control, Olivia coming silently and hard with her mouth open, eyes tearing as she looked into his eyes, and Gavin helpless, fucking helpless, to do anything but pour as much of himself into her as he could, collapsing into her and on her, his face buried in her neck for a moment of pure fucking blissful nothingness, while some small part of him knew this was it.
She was fucking it.
Olivia tried not to look at him. Whenever she looked at him she’d think about the ways he’d just touched her, and she just wouldn’t be able to hold it in anymore and this smile would break through. She looked out the passenger side window instead, and closed her eyes.
She still smiled.
“Looks like we’re going to be late anyway,” Gavin said.
Olivia laughed. “Whose fault is that?”
“You came out of the shower in a towel,” he said. “To cross something off a list.”