by Lilia Moon
Need (Fettered #7)
Ari & Jackson
Lilia Moon
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Lilia Moon
Borrowing my words to make money is a hard limit. Using them to fuel your own fantasies is totally encouraged!
xoxo Lilia
Don’t Miss Books!
It’s Ari here, people. Pay attention, because I want to make sure you make it to my new series…
Lilia’s really sweet, so she’s giving you choices. Pick the one that works best for you (and do pick one—this is the final Fettered book and we don’t want to lose you!)
1. Preorder. There’s a link to the first book of the awesome new Handcrafted trilogy at the end of this book, or here, if you’re impatient like me. Twisted Strands is fantastic. Cute kittens, hot canoe sex, and Fettered’s best ropes guy. You totally want to read it. (My new series comes later. We have a little work to do before we’re ready for you.)
2. Email List. There are two. One sends you a notification for each new series, one lets you know about every new book. I wanted an extra one with bonus spankings, but somehow that hasn’t happened yet. Click here to sign up for the list you prefer.
Now go read. I’ll see you at the end. ;)
xo Ari
Chapter One
Ari
I look down at Emily’s footwear and manage my usual grin, because the shoes totally deserve it. They’re red and really sparkly and a nice match for her very rosy cheeks. Her Dom must have been harassing her on the way in the door. “Nice shoes.”
She clicks her heels together and laughs. “There’s no place like home.”
There isn’t—and she does a lot these days to brighten mine. Which feels important tonight. I’m a little raw and I know it. I hold out the scanner to check her thumb in to the club and look into the empty space behind her. “What did you do with Damon?”
She shakes her head and looks amused. “He’s outside taking a call from the Dish.”
Their lifestyle blogger has fallen a teeny, tiny bit in love with Fettered and the man who owns it. “Everything okay?” Our first run-in with Mari Trilo was a little rough, but Emily doesn’t look concerned. She shouldn’t—she’s done more to soften and shine our image in the city than anyone.
“She wants his input on a list of adventurous toys for your lover’s stocking this Christmas.”
This time my laughter doesn’t take any effort at all. “And what bad thing did Damon do that you’re making him take the call?”
Emily grins. “He’s withholding spankings.”
Foolish Dom. She’s wearing her yellow sundress, the one that could visit any nice cafe in town. The one she wears when she really means business. “Tell me you’ve got something on underneath your dress that matches the shoes.”
Her cheeks fire up again, but the rest of her looks very pleased with herself. “I’m not wearing anything underneath. Which I might have mentioned to Damon as we came up the walkway.”
Sam, who scooted through the door in time to catch the last of that, hoots and wraps his arms around Emily from behind. “You go, sugar. Make him beg.”
Leo growls meaningfully, which has exactly zero effect on Sam.
I shake my head, but this is exactly why I sit at the front door night after night and greet my people. “How’s Soleil?”
Sam lets go of Emily and gives me a hug and a kiss too. “Sound asleep with Gabby and Daniel watching over her. They said we need to get out for the night.”
Leo snorts. “No, they said you need to get out.”
Sam, who’s a brat, but not an idiot, melts into the Dom who adores him.
I look down at my tablet so they don’t see what rises in my eyes. I don’t hide, but I don’t make my friends sad either. Not when they’re exactly what I need.
The door opens again and Emily, Leo, and Sam take the hint and head into the lounge. Mattie blows in, holding the door as Milo joins her, looking like a wide-eyed newbie. Which means Sam isn’t the only sub stirring up trouble tonight, although if I know Mattie, and I do, she’s going to make her Dom wait for it.
Mattie casts me a quick, gleeful glance, one that stutters when she meets my eyes.
I shake my head just enough for her to see and Milo to miss. Not tonight—it’s not sympathy I need. It’s family.
She winks at me and spanks Milo’s ass. “Gotta go, hot stuff. I promised Meghan I’d help her hand out drinks for a while.”
I snort as she pushes through the door, shaking her scantily clad ass at her man. The subs are definitely on a roll this fine evening. I might have to join them. Being a brat fixes a lot of things.
Milo chuckles quietly and shakes his head. Then he gives me a slow, quiet once-over and holds out his arms. “Come here, you.”
Damn. Sometimes I wish I worked with people who are a lot less observant. I slide into his arms anyhow. I’ve never walked away from hugs, especially ones from people who love me and know exactly when and why I hurt. “Sorry. I’m a little tender tonight. I spent the afternoon with Gabby and Daniel, and they’re just so darn lit up on each other.”
He doesn’t say a word. He just kisses the top of my head and holds me tight.
I can feel the tears coming, and I don’t want to let them arrive. Ever since Xander decided he was heading for the job in New York instead of here, something inside me has been standing a little too close to the waterworks tap. It needs to stop. I’m fine with having feelings, but I pride myself on living with two feet planted in the reality of what is, not in a romantic pipe dream I concocted out of nothing more than a couple of fun play sessions with a guy from L.A. who happened to really know his stuff.
“He isn’t ready for you,” says Milo quietly into my hair.
I don’t want that to be true. “The man has mad skills.”
“I know.” A long pause, and another squeeze around my ribs. A friend who knows exactly how to soothe me. “You need more than that. He’s a good guy, but he’s not ready to get as naked as he would need to get with you. Or as soft.”
I push away, instantly pissed off and scared and fine with letting him see both. “Don’t put me up on a pedestal. I’m not some goddess of love and kink no guy could possibly handle.”
He reaches out and touches my cheek. “That’s exactly what you’re afraid you are.”
Fuck. I know better than to speak before I think, especially when this particular Dom is paying attention. “I have a fat head, huh?”
He chuckles. “The whole time I’ve known you.”
I make a face and punch his bicep. “Go. Stop loitering in my foyer. I have people to let in.” I wait until his hand reaches the inner door. “And thank Mattie for sharing you.”
He doesn’t object to the term, even though the two of them are absolutely, adorably exclusive. He knows what I mean. That spank on his ass when she headed into the lounge was my soul sister sending her very best person to act as temporary standin for what I really want.
I sigh into my suddenly quiet foyer. This is not a rut I want to be in. I know I live a charmed life. Milo is only one of the many amazing people in my world who see me and know me and take care of my heart every day. But even a brief hug from a man who wants to protect me from the world is an aching reminder.
I have so many Doms who love me. But none of them are mine.
Chapter Two
Jackson
Scorpio fades out the last notes of the song we just finished and turns off her mike. Break time. The night is young yet, but she’s good at feeling out the moods of the crowd. Tonight they’re still mellow, happy to chat while the entertainment takes a little down time.
She leans her guitar against Eli’s keyboard and gives me a look. “Nice beat you h
ad going on that last one.”
I know that tone. She’s not over here to talk about my drumming skills. “Thanks.”
She glances casually at Quint, who’s messing with the new guitar string that keeps sliding infinitesimally out of tune and driving him nuts. “We can take a longer break if you want. Give you a little time to go find a play buddy.”
I wondered when she’d join that line-up. Scorpio isn’t the queen of logistics because she’s good at letting things happen at their own speed and time. “No, I’m good. I brought my hand drums in case you want to mess around with a ballad or two later.”
Her eyes flick over to Quint again, and for a moment I think that I’ve successfully managed to throw him under the bus. Then the man with the perfectly tuned guitar looks up and I see the tank behind the bus. “A longer break sounds good. I’ll go bartend with Meghan and man a playlist from there for a while.”
Eli’s suddenly paying attention to this conversation too. Which confirms what I had already figured out.
My band is staging an intervention.
Eli points a wry smile my way. “You could do a groupie or two a favor and save them from Chloe’s wrath.”
Chloe has some very scary looks, especially for a sub. They’re all for show, because she also has the high-octane self-assurance of a woman who knows she doesn’t need to do anything more to keep her Dom than breathe. Personally, I think she toys with the groupies occasionally just to make Eli squirm, but I’m smart enough to keep that thought to myself. Subs have some very inventive ways of getting even. “I don’t think a groupie is what I need tonight.”
“Maybe not.” Quint’s voice is casual. The kind of casual he used in training right before he lopped off some poor baby Dom’s head. “But you do need to stop being a tourist. You’ve taken the training and you’ve got good instincts, but you don’t turn into a Dom by sitting on a stool.”
I don’t turn into the kind of Dom I want to be by fondling random subs, either.
Scorpio doesn’t say anything. She lets the two big tough guys in the band do the talking, and then she levels me with nothing more than a look. One that says I matter and I need to spit out whatever I’m not saying before she brains me with her guitar.
I sigh and get honest, because it’s either that or play the kinds of games I gave up in middle school. I know I matter to all three of them, and one of the reasons I walked in the door of Fettered in the first place was to find a tribe that knew how to keep it real. “I’m not planning to scene with anyone tonight. I know you all think I should, and I know you’ve got reasons, but I have some as well. I’m asking you to respect my choices.”
“We do.” Quint pulls over Eli’s stool and takes a seat. I can see eyes in the crowd watching us—the band doesn’t usually take a break and then stay onstage. “But you’re new here, and that comes with responsibilities for you and for us. Yours start with talking. You’re a risk to yourself and others if you don’t, which is a lecture I gave on the first day of class and you were one of the few smart enough to be listening, so don’t make me say the rest of it again.”
He’s so very much like the man who taught me everything I know about playing the drums. Tough, dangerously insightful, and good all the way through.
Eli and Scorpio have taken up flanking positions in support of us both. And in quiet threat. Nobody pulls any of their punches around here.
I set down my drumsticks. I came here to be real. I remind myself that means something different inside these walls than it does out of them. “The woman I want to scene with—I can’t give her what she needs yet.”
His eyes widen. I’ve surprised the hell out of him, which any other day I’d be enjoying quite a bit.
He frowns at me. “Who?”
I don’t say anything. I just look over at the door. The one that leads to the front foyer.
Quint follows my look and sucks in a breath. “Oh, hell.”
Those two words hang in the air for another breath, and then he reaches for his guitar. “No ballads. Let’s do something with a beat.”
I pick up my sticks. What we play next won’t change the message he just sent. The one that was all action and left no room for doubt.
He doesn’t think I’m ready either.
Chapter Three
Ari
Kink is most of my life. Yoga is only a little corner, but it’s a corner I work hard to make time for. Which is why I’m here, even though I had to pull leggings out of the laundry pile to do it.
I walk into the studio at Breathe, one of the very few places in town where nobody knows what I do with the rest of my life, and exhale into the serene vibe. Dreamy music underpins the murmurs of conversation and mats unrolling and people beginning to let go of their tight places in this oasis from the busy of their lives. Athena flutters her fingers at me from the front of the room. She’s a tiny, stocky woman who looks nothing like a dancer until she starts to move, and she pulls in a full house for every single one of her classes, even at the ungodly hour of ten a.m.
I roll out a yoga mat and towel, which is fortunately cleaner than my leggings. It won’t stay that way for long. This is hot yoga, which was invented thousands of years ago by the same person who invented kink, or least that’s the theory I’m sticking with.
Athena shuts the studio door, the quiet clink of the gates of hell closing. The two massive heaters in the room start spewing out hot, dry air, which will turn this place into a desert in about three more minutes.
Then we’ll start sweating and turn it into a stinky rainforest.
I nod and smile at the two people wedged in on either side of me as we line up mat edges and peel off all the clothing that vanilla people consider acceptable to shed in public. We’re about ten minutes away from being slimy together, which is a weird form of bonding with strangers when there hasn’t been a limits conversation first. The guy to my right is a good person to be parked beside—he’s got a really good sense of where his skin ends and the rest of the world begins. The woman on my left is still a little shy, but less than she was last week. She’s new, but she’s got moves when she’s sweaty.
I laugh quietly at myself and wipe invisible lint off my mat. This isn’t my club and Athena doesn’t need me babysitting her newbies.
There’s a disturbance in the force at the front of the room, and I lift my head to look. I can’t see for a moment, and then enough bodies shift that I can see the trim lines and easy moves of the new arrival. Trim lines and easy moves I’ve seen before. The man dropping his bags gently on the floor and scanning the room is none other than Fettered’s resident drummer.
I make a face, because Jackson doesn’t look like he rolled out of bed and got dressed from his laundry pile, and yet I know for a fact that he left the club only a few minutes before I did last night.
The shy gypsy on my left leans over to get a better look and sighs happily. “Oh, wow. I didn’t know he was going to be here.”
I grin and wonder if Jackson knows he’s got groupies everywhere. The ones at the club tend to send him into hiding.
Athena moves, and Jackson’s eyes track her—and then along the line of sight beyond her straight to me.
I can see the surprise on his face. I smile and wave. I’m sure I’m far more used to running into club friends in the grocery-store aisle and the rest of life than he is. He’ll get used to it. Some days, Seattle feels like a really small town.
I get a small smile back as he pulls a set of hand drums out of a hand-woven bag done in gorgeous, earthy colors that just want to be stroked. He folds the bag carefully, almost reverently, and sets it aside. A tool, then, and one he cherishes. He taps lightly on the top of one of the drums as he pulls a water bottle out of a different bag, one he treats far more casually.
As he sets his water down, he catches me still looking at him.
I see the surprise, and the pleasure. And a man who doesn’t bother hiding either.
Interesting. He’s a lot more buttoned down a
t the club.
Athena steps into the formal lines of mountain pose at the front of the class, her body signaling so that her words don’t need to. She talks less than any yoga teacher I’ve ever known, which makes us all pay very close attention. I know some Doms who should take lessons.
She glances over at Jackson, who’s set up a beat to help call the class to order, and nods, pleased. He does something fast and tricky with one hand that sounds a little bit like laughter and puts smiles on at least half the faces in the room.
Athena full-on grins at him and turns back to the class. “Ready to get hot and sweaty, people?”
She’s not the ethereal Zen kind of yoga teacher.
There are a few moans and grunts as people make final peace with choosing to torture themselves like this. The rest of us just glug water. We know what’s coming.
I glance at Jackson, who’s wearing a lot more clothes than most of us, and wonder what the heat and humid sweat will do to his drums. Then I look at the African print on his special bag and stop worrying.
His drums will revel in this.
I’ll do my best not to want to kill them.
Chapter Four
Jackson
She’s beautiful.
I never get to watch her full-on like this without worrying about who might be watching me. Drummers are supposed to watch the people they drum for, and as an added bonus, at least half the yoga poses so far have demanded that Ari’s head go somewhere that she can’t catch me staring.
I wouldn’t care, except I need time yet, and I’m not sure I’ll get it if she figures out why my eyes are on her.
Fortunately, she’s pretty thoroughly distracted. The room got African levels of hot about ten minutes ago, and the sheen of sweat on skin has taken us all to a place of earthy and tribal and primal. A jungle of carefully coordinated spandex. I grin. Kengali would laugh. He found white people hilarious in general, and me in particular. The earnestly sweaty people in this room had nothing on me when I showed up for my adventure in his little corner of Gambia. I’d gone to spend a year as a well-meaning student, hoping to use some of my privilege to bring change to somewhere that needed it.