I let her cry until she got it out of her system. She seemed embarrassed that I’d seen her in such a vulnerable state but she didn’t need to be. I was honored that she felt comfortable enough with me to open up about why she’s the way she is.
Not wanting to leave her alone while she was so upset, I hung out with her and we decided to watch a movie. I continued to hold her and caress her hair as I stroked her shoulder. I could feel us bonding and getting closer. For the first time, I could feel our relationship beginning to blossom into something solid instead of the superficial relationship we’d always had.
CHAPTER 5
Lexi
I couldn’t believe I’d fallen asleep in the middle of the movie I was watching with Liam. I had no idea how long he stayed with me or what time he left my house but when I woke up, the sun was shining and I was covered in a blanket.
I was a little ashamed of myself that I let him see me act the way I was acting but I was grateful that he was such a gentleman. It was nice, especially in comparison to what I’d been through with Kade.
As scary as it was, I couldn’t deny it anymore. I was developing feeling for Liam Bane. Even though I could no longer write them off, I was determined to fight those feelings with all I had. I don’t know why I was being so stubborn.
What girl wouldn’t want a guy who was treating her so right? She’d have to be stupid, right? Well, call me Miss Stupid because I still couldn’t get past the fact that he wasn’t a bad boy, which was all I’ve ever wanted in a man.
The next day, he called me to find out how I was doing. He seemed surprised that I answered the phone but I didn’t see the need to blow him off anymore. He asked if he could come by because he wanted to ask me something very important.
“Liam, I don’t have time for games. Tell me what you want,” my words came out harsher than I had meant them to.
“I’m sorry, Lexi, but I would really like to ask you this in person. Mind if I come over?”
“Whatever, Liam,” I sighed. I didn’t want to sound like a complete bitch even though I already did.
“I’ll be over tonight. Will you be home or did you have plans?”
“No, I should be here,” I said, sorting through my desk drawer as I searched for an emery board.
The time on the clock seemed to tick by so slowly. With nothing to do, I figured the best thing I could do was take a shower and get myself cleaned up. Lying around the house was not a good look for me.
A bath sounded even better so I ran a tub full of hot water and soaked my cares away. I felt like a new person when I got out and could almost feel my confidence coming back into me.
Liam showed up right at seven, just like I knew he would. I let him in and offered him something to drink, which he declined.
“So what did you want to ask me?” I asked.
A smile crept over his face as he extended his arm out to me. I was horrified when he pulled a single rose from behind his back and held it out to me.
“Lexi, I wanted to ask if you would be my date and accompany me to Cotillion Ball.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Liam. Somebody else has already asked me and I’m going with them. If I didn’t already have a date, I would have loved to have gone with you.”
I was lying to him. I didn’t have a date to the cotillion. In fact, nobody had even asked me to go. I just panicked when he asked me and didn’t know what else to say. The look on Liam’s face spoke more words than he ever could have.
He looked genuinely hurt by my response. I don’t know if it was because I turned him down or that I told him I already had a date. I suspected it was some combination of the two. I felt like a big piece of shit for hurting him. More surprisingly, I was feeling some of his pain.
Typically, I could lie with the best of the best and never have a second thought about it. This was different. I was feeling hurt because I was dishonest to Liam. These feelings were new territory for me and I wasn’t sure how to handle them. The best thing I could do was try to spare some of his feelings.
“I’m not going with someone whom I’m dating or anything like that. Just a friend that asked me a few days ago. Maybe I’ll see you there and we can hang out.”
“Yeah, maybe. I guess I’ll see you around.”
Without saying another word, he turned around, walked to his car and drove away, leaving me feeling like the biggest asshole that ever lived.
§
I had an internal battle going on with myself in the days leading up to the ball. On several occasions, I was tempted to swallow my pride, call Liam and tell him that I lied about having a date to the ball. I wanted to call and tell him that I would go with him but was afraid that it would give him the wrong signals about what I wanted from him.
Other than the unexpected guilt I was feeling, there was one other downside to the lie that I told him. I was obviously going to show up to the ball without a date. How was I going to explain that away? Tell him that my date stood me up so I was all his? What guy wants to be the second choice? I know I wouldn’t want to be the second choice for some guy I was crushing on. How was I going to get out of that mess? It didn’t take long to figure it out. I simply wasn’t going to go.
The problem was, I didn’t particularly want to stay at home either. It had been a while since I’d gone out and had a good time but I was so scared of running into Kade and having to deal with his bullshit, especially since my sister didn’t sleep with him.
Instead, she agreed to meet with him and on a whim, had an opportunity to steal the memory card from his phone, which contained all of the photos he had taken of me. I hadn’t heard a word from him but I was sure he’d be pissed off.
Right on cue, my phone started to ring. It was Sarabelle.
“What’s up, sis?” I answered.
“You won’t believe what happened!”
“Spill it.” She always knows exactly how to annoy me.
“Christian beat the shit out of Kade! They got into it, and he took matters into his own hands. We won’t have to worry about him anymore.”
“Seriously? When did this happen? And did he know about Kade and the pictures? Are there any more polaroids?”
“Last night, and no, he doesn’t know anything about the pictures. He would kill Kade if he ever found out about that whole blackmail scheme, but I guess you could say he got what was coming to him,” she chuckled.
“Awesome! You know, I think this calls for a celebration. I’m gonna call some of my friends and make a night out of it.”
When my friends insisted on going to this one club in particular, I should have known something was up, but I was still swooning over Kade getting his ass kicked by Christian Wilde. I was glad that I didn’t feel the need to look over my shoulder and I would be able to let loose and have fun.
I did feel guilty for not going to the ball, especially if Liam may have been looking for me but that didn’t stop me. I needed this. I needed to clear my mind.
Melody and the rest of our group of friends picked me up around 9:00. I couldn’t wait to get out and have some fun, but I started to become annoyed shortly after I got in the car.
“Where are we going again?” I asked as my friends laughed and whispered to one another.
“We’ll show you when we get there,” Melody said, looking back at me in the rear view mirror.
“What the hell is so funny?” I snapped at our group of friends.
“Nothing,” Kristin laughed. “Nothing at all.”
I looked on as Jaycee, Kristin and Nikki continued to laugh and whisper. I was about ready to call a cab to take me somewhere else, but I noticed that Melody was getting closer as the car started to slow.
Finally, the car pulled up in front of a dark, dingy building. The only identifying information was a wooden sign that said Paddles. My girlfriends were all looking at me, trying to gauge my reaction. When all they saw was confusion, they started laughing again.
“What’s so funny?” I asked. “What the hell
is this place?”
“Just come on with us,” Melody said. “We’re going to have a blast.”
Against my better judgment, I got out of the car, showed the doorman my ID and followed them into the building. The music was loud and strobe lights were flashing so fast that it was making me dizzy. It took a bit for my eyes to adjust so that I didn’t feel like I was going to fall over with every step I took.
Once I was able to make out the things around me, I was a little freaked out about what I saw. The building was huge and appeared to be a converted warehouse. Women were walking around in leather bras and panties, some with their tits hanging out for the world to see.
The appearance of the men varied. The small and frail-looking men were almost always following around women. The big, burly, muscular men, most of whom were wearing no shirts, led women around, sometimes by a collar around the women’s necks.
The place was giving me a bad vibe. It seemed like it was dark and dangerous. I questioned my safety but my friends seemed to think we were okay. I wondered about them. They seemed way too familiar with the place.
I know that I’ve slept around quite a bit and have done my share of experimenting but I could now tell that I was standing in a bondage club and I had no BDSM experience whatsoever. I had no clue what I was going to do. I needed to figure out how to make my exit and I needed to do it quickly.
CHAPTER 6
Liam
Since Lexi flat out refused to go to the ball with me, I decided that I wasn’t going to go either. Besides, the last thing I wanted was to have to watch her dancing with another man when I wanted nothing more than to be dancing with her. I was hurt by her turning me down but I was also pissed off. I’d done everything right up until that point. I hadn’t tried to be pushy, I’d given her all the space that she needed and she still refused to go to one fucking ball with me.
So fuck the ball, I was going to go have some fun in my own way. There was only one place I could go where I could truly be myself without any consequences or fear of people judging me. I was going to go into the city to get in touch with my dark side.
I always have a good time when I go to Paddles. Since I’m a regular, there are a lot of people who know who I am. The women love me at Paddles. They treat me like a god and I love it. I’d barely been in the building for a half-hour and I already had a few women at my table trying to seduce me.
These women are regulars too and they all know what I bring to the table. They all know what I’m into and how I make women feel. If I choose to take them into the back room, they are guaranteed to leave sore and satisfied. If their legs are not shaking when they walk out of the room, then I can promise you I wasn’t in there with them.
The fact that so many women at the club wanted a piece of me was flattering. At a time when I was feeling my confidence wane, seeing that people were lusting after me was much needed. Regardless of the amount of women who were all over me, I wasn’t feeling it.
Coming into the club, I wasn’t planning on doing any type of playing. I just wanted to be around people who understood me. My addiction to bondage and domination was not something I could share with the people I knew in everyday life. I’ve tried telling people in the past. I’ve told my closest friends as well as women that I’ve dated. With very few exceptions, they’ve thought that I was weird.
I really wanted to be open about my fetishes and what I’m into but people just don’t get it. It became easier to keep it to myself. I’ve ended up hiding that part of myself from everyone I know and have become very secretive about my dark side. It’s easier to keep it to myself than to worry about who I might be offending.
The women were coming on really strong and I had to distance myself from them. They were saying all the right things and were tempting me to give them what they wanted. If my mind wasn’t on Lexi, I would have had two or three of them in a back room screaming in pleasure and pain. Instead, I walked over to a dark corner of the room so I could sit back and watch what was going on around me.
I grabbed a drink from the bar and stood in the shadows, taking it all in. At the door, a group of girls came walking in and it was clear that they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. They were dressed like they were going to a regular club, not the dungeon that they were coming into. I shook my head as they filed in but nearly spit out my drink when I saw that Lexi was the last person to walk in with the group.
What in the hell was she doing there? Where was her date that was taking her to the ball? Had she been lying to me? I looked around to see if there was a man with her but it looked like it was just her and her girlfriends.
Realizing that she wouldn’t go to the ball with me pissed me off, especially after coming to the realization that she lied to me about having a date. The only question was what I should be doing to get back at her.
As the night went on, I watched her drinking and dancing with her friends. With each drink she downed, I could see her becoming more relaxed and not as concerned with the fact that she was in a bondage club. Sure, there were times their group would stop what they were doing to watch as nipple clamps were attached to a woman before being bent over and flogged. At first, she watched in horror but, as the night wore on, she looked like she may have been enjoying it. That gave me an idea.
On the back wall, there was a leather mask hanging on a hook. I grabbed it and put it on while I waited for Lexi’s friends to go to the bar for more drinks. I’d noticed that she liked to stay on the dance floor while her friends brought her drinks and as soon as she was alone, I made my move.
I walked on the dance floor and went straight in her direction. As I walked past her, I pretended to bump into her, leaving her to look up at me in a combination of fright and fascination. I didn’t say anything to her and she didn’t seem to recognize me, which was exactly what I was going for.
Knowing that Lexi’s friends would be coming back before too long, I started dancing along with the music. She looked at me for a minute before she started dancing again as well. I pulled her in close to me, allowing her to grind against me in time with the music.
I bent down and gave her a kiss on the neck, expecting her to push me away. Instead, she grinded on me even more, enjoying the sensation. If she wasn’t going to make me stop, I planned on teasing her.
I continued kissing her neck and grabbing handfuls of her breasts. The more I did, the dirtier her dancing became. Being under that mask made me feel so powerful, as though there were no rules for me. I could do whatever I wanted to do to her and she would let me.
I decided to try my luck by reaching down and sliding my hand up under her mini-skirt. Instead of being met with resistance, she spread her legs wider allowing me to pull her panties to the side and rub my fingers up against her pussy.
Lexi was wet and appeared to be ready for me. My fingers glided over her clit and slid smoothly inside of her pussy. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was becoming heavier. The deeper I moved my fingers inside of her, the harder she gripped my arms.
I could feel myself getting hard as I watched her biting her bottom lip. I wanted her badly. I was sure I could take her to a back room and fuck her brains out but I didn’t want to take advantage of her like that. I didn’t want her to think that I was a random stranger out at a crazy club that just wanted to have a one-night stand with her.
Against my better judgment, I decided that it would be better to let her in on my little secret. It would be best if she could see the side of me that I don’t ever let anyone see. Slowly, I reached up and pulled the mask from over my head, revealing my face to her for the first time that evening.
CHAPTER 7
Lexi
“Liam? What the fuck?” I yelled in horror when he took off the mask. I thought I was letting off some steam with a stranger I’d never see again. I never would have let Liam see me acting like such a whore. “I thought you were going to the fucking ball. What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I f
eel like I should be asking you the same question,” he said. “When I had asked you to go to the ball with me, you said you couldn’t because you already had a date. So where is Mister Wonderful this evening? I noticed you didn’t bring him with you,” he craned his neck, acting as though he were searching for my date in the crowd.
What was I supposed to say to that? Of course, he didn’t see my date with me. My date wasn’t real for Christ’s sake. It was hard to question why he wasn’t at the ball when I wasn’t there either. But how did we both end up in a place like Paddles? That was the main question running through my head.
Bad Girls Do It Better (Bad Boy Billionaire Romance) Page 4