Free and Bound (A Club Volare New Orleans Novel)

by Chloe Cox

  And then she saw the flash of recognition on his face. Of insight. And then that evil grin again.

  Whoops.

  “What’d you name your boobs?” he asked.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Don’t lie,” he said roughly, pressing her hips into his and grinding her, hard. “Or I won’t let you come.”

  “Jesus,” Cate said. She could feel herself blushing. She’d only done this to herself. She laughed and mumbled, “Lucy and Ethel.”

  “What?” Soren laughed.

  “Lucy,” Cate sighed. “And Ethel.”

  Soren literally had tears coming down his cheeks.

  “See?” Cate said, hitting his chest again. “It’s embarrassing! This is not in any way fair if—”

  “Shut up,” he said, stripping the sweatshirt off of her. “And let me see them.”

  The look he gave her. Like he was going to devour her whole, make her his.

  She was already his.

  “Take it out,” he ordered.

  She knew what he meant. She fumbled with his zipper, his jeans stretched against his erection. Soren was done wasting time. He moved her panties aside, lifted her up, and impaled her on his cock.

  “Oh my fucking God,” she cried out. She was already wet, but without preparation, without preamble, it hurt just enough. The feeling of Soren filling her blocked out everything else, and she sighed.

  He lifted her up. He lifted her up, and then brought her down, pumping into her so hard she squealed. She held on to his shoulders while he moved around as he wanted to, not entirely sure what was happening, what would happen, but knowing she’d reached the point of not caring. Cate choked on her own breath, her body driving her to move, to contract, to take as much of him as she could, while he held her with his eyes.

  “Can I come?” she asked. “Please…”

  “Come,” he said. “I want to feel you. Fucking come.”

  Cate felt it build fast at his words, releasing in a quick flutter that told her it would be the first of many. He didn’t even pull out, just rolled them both onto the couch, turning her around and lifting her leg. He fucked her hard like that, then slowly, then sweetly again, until she was delirious, until she’d come too many times to count, until she was as free and untethered as she’d been in subspace, floating somewhere where all the things that worried her no longer mattered, only this time it was just Soren that did it to her.

  Only Soren.

  And it was as she was coming back down from this place, her head resting on his chest, their legs intertwined, their clothes who knows where, that she had that moment of clarity.

  That damn awful moment of clarity.

  She loved him.

  Well, that slammed her back down to reality pretty quickly.

  The one thing she knew could not happen. The one thing she knew to avoid. The one thing he could not reciprocate, and she’d gone and done it anyway. She didn’t even have a divorce yet, and she was falling in love with the one man she couldn’t have. Not even done with one heartbreak and she’d set herself up for another.

  She must have stiffened noticeably, the fear and dread running through her as contemplated her future. Fear, dread, and joy at feeling this wonderful thing, all mixed together in a confusing cocktail.

  Soren’s hand rubbed her back. Cate closed her eyes.

  Then he said, “Cate, tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  Her voice was hoarse. She tried to hide the sadness in it.

  You shouldn’t have to be sad when you realize you love somebody.

  “Are you worried about the crap they put out this morning?”

  Cate lifted her head off of his chest, puzzled.

  “What?”

  Soren sat up, cradling her under his arm, concern marring his otherwise perfect face. “You know it’s more bullshit, don’t you? I didn’t do what they’re saying I did.”

  “Soren, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He smiled.

  “You were hiding from your phone.”

  “Oh my God, will you stop showing off how predictable I am and tell me what the hell you are talking about!”

  Soren ran a hand through his hair. “I haven’t seen it myself. Declan called me. Said there was a story online that I gave women drugs or something similar.”

  Cate stared at him.

  “What?” she said.

  “I don’t know the details.”

  “How was this not the first thing you told me?” she said. “Soren, this is my job. I need to protect you from this kind of thing.”

  Cate put her face in her hands and tried to shut out her heart. She’d only just started listening to the stupid thing, had only just gotten brave enough to let it really feel, and now she had to lock it away again.

  This was bad.

  She had to game this out. The story already had several hours lead, there was no way to call and get it killed. She would have to respond, and she would have to go heavy on the research. She needed to have her entire team on it yesterday.

  She needed to be one hundred percent not distracted by being in love with Soren.

  “Oh, I am screwed,” she muttered.

  “Hey,” Soren said, tilting her chin upwards. She’d never seen him look so worried. “You know I didn’t do this.”

  Cate saw something there.

  Was this the bigger thing she’d felt circling them, the thing he hadn’t talked about? He’d told her about his family, but there was something he’d held back. There always was. Cate herself was holding back a legal husband; she wouldn’t begrudge him his own secret.

  She could see it, playing beneath his golden surface, tormenting him. Something eating him up inside, giving him those lines around his mouth, that grim sadness in his eyes.

  “Soren, why don’t you think you’re any good at it?” she asked.

  “What?” he said softly.

  “You said you weren’t any good at love,” she said. “That’s why you don’t do relationships, commitment. Whatever we’re calling it this week.”

  She smiled. He smiled. He had been a little bit of an ass when he’d said that to her.

  “I know why I can’t do it,” she said hurriedly. And really, that hadn’t changed, had it? She wasn’t just babbling to cover up the fact that she’d just figured out that she loved him?

  She went on, “I mean, I can’t…lose myself in something that way unless I’m sure I’m able to and not have it be horrible. Or whatever. You know what I mean.”

  No, she was definitely babbling to cover up the fact that she loved him.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “So?” she said, curling up in his lap. “You’re different. You’re over that; you’ve gotten past it. How can you possibly think you’re no good at love?”

  Soren’s jaw tightened, and the tension returned to his shoulders. He was looking off somewhere far away, somewhere that definitely didn’t have Cate in it.

  For the first time, she felt alone with him.

  “I’ve tried before,” he finally said.

  He turned and locked eyes with her, holding her in place. She held her breath. She had no idea why; her body just stopped.

  “I’m just not built that way,” he said. “I’ve tried. But I don’t have the ability to love a woman the way she deserves to be loved. The way you deserve to be loved, Cate. You can have everything I got, but that’s all I have to offer.”

  Cate didn’t move.

  It took all of her energy to pretend those words didn’t burrow down and kill something deep inside her. She felt rent in two, hollowed out, left empty. She’d known this was coming. She had.

  She balled her fists, looked up, and forced herself to smile.

  “I think you might have more to offer than you think you do,” she said quietly. “It’s a pretty good deal for me.”

  “I like to offer value,” he said, grinning. “Now, what are we gonna do today?”

  Cate shook her
head. She knew what was about to happen. Soren was going to try to insist that they spend the day together, that they stay close, that he really show her beyond a doubt that he still cared about her, still found her interesting. The man had a mission.

  And it made her want to cry.

  He was about to try to spend the day with her rather than letting her get to work to protect him against a vicious, damaging slander, just because it might make her feel better. What else would you call it when a man would sacrifice his own welfare just to make sure a woman had a good day?

  “We’re not doing anything today,” she said. “You are hiding out and recording or whatever it is you do at Declan’s. You are not going home. There will be reporters at home. I’ll go pick up Desi, but you are staying out of the spotlight until I can deal with this. And then I am going to work.”

  “That’s not gonna work,” Soren said, and put another strong arm around her.

  “Soren, please,” she said, putting a gentle hand on his face. God, it broke her heart. “Don’t let me fail at this. This is my job. This is the thing I know I’m good at.”

  “You’re good at everything you do, as far as I can tell,” he said. “Stop saying otherwise.”

  Cate closed her eyes.

  “Soren. I need to go do this.”

  He looked at her. He wasn’t upset, and he wasn’t arguing, he was…figuring it out. It was unnerving. Cate remembered all the other times he had seen right through her and grew nervous; this would not be a great time for him to figure out that she loved him. She hadn’t even had time to decide what that meant yet.

  That was another thing. She needed time away from him. Away from his influence. Now that her brain had spoiled everything by figuring out how she really felt about him, just his presence, which was still intoxicating, was now sweetly painful, too.

  Yeah, wow. She was a mess.

  “Ok,” he said.

  “Ok?”

  “Ok. It’s important to you. So ok.” Soren dipped down and nibbled at her neck just below her ear. “New orders. Go kick ass.”

  Cate shuddered. Whether from his lips on her body or from knowing she had a choice to make, she didn’t know. She would have to find out.

  Fifteen

  Soren thrashed through the closing chords and drops of sweat arced out from his hand, splattering on the studio floor. The last sounds of their current song hung in the air while the rest of the band watched him. Their eyes on him didn’t make this any easier. On the other hand, the situation with Cate was making for some amazing guitar solos.

  Not much fucking consolation.

  The woman was hiding from him now by burying herself in her work. He hadn’t seen her since he’d left her house. He’d stayed sequestered at Declan’s, as requested, but his patience for that was running thin. He didn’t really give a crap about the case, at least not in comparison to Cate, and he knew which concern would win out in the end if it came to that. He was worried that he’d pushed her too far, too fast, though he knew it had felt right; when he’d been there at her house, it had felt right. It had felt fucking perfect. She had been perfect. She’d opened up like a flower, and it had made her happy. And now he didn’t know what was wrong.

  The worst fucking part about a situation like this was knowing that he was the one man who couldn’t help her right now. Apply pressure on something like this, and watch it all break apart. He was too disciplined to risk it all just because he wanted to see her.

  But goddamn, was it difficult. He didn’t even like to think about the drug allegations. Or what Cate was likely to find when she went looking into it.

  No, she believed in him. But she was hurting, somewhere, in some way, and Soren couldn’t help. Just knowing that made him feel like he was about to lose it.

  “Let’s take a break,” Declan said and waved the other guys off. They all knew, after so many years together, when to clear out and let Soren and Declan hash it out. Soon it was just the two of them.

  “You gonna tell me what happened?” Declan asked.

  Soren cracked his knuckles and stretched out.

  “Something went wrong,” he said. “Don’t know beyond that.”

  “Something?” Declan asked.

  “Yeah, something,” Soren said. He let the silence linger for a minute before catching his friend’s eye. “I’ve never been this crazy about it before. I feel sick, man. If I don’t know, I can’t fix it. And if I can’t fix it, I know she’s hurting. And that makes me…fuck, I don’t know.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  Soren shook his head. “You know how it is,” he said. “I gotta let her come to me. Some things you can’t be told, have to figure them out for yourself.”

  Declan smiled. “If she’s yours, let her go.”

  Soren looked at him sharply. His friend knew Soren’s stance on relationships, and he knew the reason for it, too.

  “Don’t try to mess with my head,” Soren said.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. You don’t need any help there.”

  “Bite me.”

  “See? This is what happens when you let your sub get away.”

  Soren laughed it off. It wasn’t until later when they were all watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles for the millionth time—Brian’s favorite holiday movie of all time—that Soren got the texts from Cate.

  He already knew what they would say.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do us anymore. I can be your lawyer, but I can’t be anything else.”

  Soren felt the sadness descend on him like a weight. He knew how much she must be hurting. Knew how lonely she must feel to send that text. He’d been there. Maybe not exactly the same, but in a similar enough place, the place where you have a good thing and think it can’t possibly be right, so you burn it down. He never wanted her to feel like that, and it didn’t matter that he knew she had to, at some point. It was just something she had to go through, but it made him crazy with grief to think of it.

  If he pushed, she’d run away screaming, and for good reason. All he wanted to do was help her, and he fucking couldn’t.

  Before he lost his mind completely, he typed out the only true thing he could say without making it all worse.

  “You never have to hide.”

  And then he called Adra.

  Brian threw a couch pillow as he got up and blocked the screen, and Soren caught it, threw it, and nailed Brian in the head with it without breaking stride. These guys were family, but God help them if they got in the way right now. Only Desi, still weirded out by being in a new house, followed him out.

  “Soren, what time is it?” Adra said.

  “Don’t know,” he said, stepping out into the brisk night air with his dog. “You talk to her? About all this? Ford set her up with you, right? So did you talk to her?”

  He could hear Adra sigh. “Yeah, I talked to her, but you know I can’t tell you anything, Soren.”

  “Adra, you don’t have to tell me shit except whether or not she’s ok. Is she ok?”

  He was pacing, looking for some way to get the energy out. Desi whined at his heels. He felt like a gladiator without an enemy. He would climb mountains to fix whatever it was, and instead he was pacing around Declan’s porch like a moron.

  “Adra! Just tell me she’s all right!”

  Adra sighed again. “Yes. Ok. She’s not in any immediate danger or crisis.”

  “That’s a very lawyerly answer.” He laughed humorlessly.

  “I think it’s contagious.”

  “You know what I want to know.”

  “I can’t give it to you, Soren,” Adra said. “There are so many different ways to be ok, or not, or…look, she’s obviously figuring stuff out. Let her do that.”

  “That was the plan.” He paused. “Thank you. I just needed to know that she was all right, and that there was someone watching out for her. This isn’t gonna be fun for me, but I can handle it. Just…watch out for her. As a favor to me.”

  “I’d do it any
way. It doesn’t have to be a favor to you.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  He could practically hear Adra roll her eyes at Dom ridiculousness. It made him think of her and Ford.

  “Hey,” Soren asked. “What about you? You ok?”

  Silence.

  “After the thing with Ford, Adra. You all right? I haven’t been down to the club lately.”

  Another sigh. When she finally spoke, Adra was quiet. “I have no idea how to even talk to him,” she said. “So we’re not. Talking. I don’t even—”

  “He went crazy when another man invaded your space, Adra. Don’t overthink it. We’re not that complicated.”

  “We?”

  “You know what I mean. Men.”

  “It’s just so not like him,” she said. She sounded sad, and somehow hurt.

  Soren pinched his nose and shook his head. For two people who had had the love of their lives handed to them on a silver platter, Ford and Adra were unbelievably stupid.

  “Christ, Adra, will you two just work it out already?” he said.

  Adra finally laughed, and it was a good sound, an all-is-still-mostly-right-with-the-world sound. “Says the man calling me to find out about his sub,” she said.

  “She’s not my sub anymore,” Soren said. Even if he planned to fix that soon.

  “Oh, Soren, I’m sorry,” Adra said.

  “Just keep an eye on her for me, will you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Adra said.

  Soren paused. “And I won’t tell Ford you called me ‘sir.’”

  Adra hung up, laughing and cursing at the same time. It felt good to make his friend laugh under the circumstances. For a bunch of people who made a point of being self aware enough to keep their various kinks safe, they all seemed to suck at relationships.

  Soren maybe more than others. He didn’t pretend to be good at it. He didn’t keep in touch with his family, he didn’t let anyone but Dec and the band and now Cate depend on him, and he knew there wasn’t anyone out there who needed him except Cate. He thought he had it pretty well under control.

  And that was when his sister called.

  Cate had a longstanding habit of throwing herself into her work whenever her personal life became too painful, something that at least partially accounted for her professional success—something she’d decided long ago to see as a silver lining—but this time when she threw herself into work, it meant thinking about Soren.