by Paula Cox
“I’ve noticed you doing less work these days,” he noted, leaning against the wall by the fridge, his brow furrowed. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” she said with a laugh. “Everything’s great. I just…I’ve never had a real distraction from school stuff before, and it makes me realize just how unhappy I am studying law.”
“Really?” He crossed to another cupboard to pull out a mug, the kettle reaching a boiling point now, the water inside bubbling feverishly. “But you’ve worked so hard. Your final year is the most important. And I thought you like law school.”
For a moment Nash sounded like her father, and she pushed the thought from her mind. Nothing made a man look less sexy than comparing him to her father.
“I didn’t actually want to go to law school at all,” she admitted after a long moment, listening to Nash rustle around her kitchen for a spoon to cradle the tea bag in. “I wanted to go on with my education, but at the time I wasn’t sure what I wanted. Maybe the arts. Maybe museum work. I don’t know. My dad was the one who really pushed me into law. In fact…”—she swallowed hard, remembering the day perfectly—“I almost feel like he strong-armed me into applying. He could get me in, seeing as he was the dean, and he said it was my best opportunity for a better future. My wants and feelings were never up for consideration. Law school was the only option.”
And it had taken her a long time to acknowledge that she was genuinely unhappy there. The years dragged on, and it wasn’t until Nash had wandered into her life that she saw the potential for something more than practice depositions and research and endless hours of stress over her grades.
She’d never admitted it out loud. If any of her classmates knew how she felt, she’d probably be chewed up and spit out. Law school wasn’t for weak people. Competition was stiff. Peers were ruthless. And it only got worse after graduation, apparently, but Eliza had spent years mentally retraining herself to accept the world she found herself in.
“So why not just leave?” Nash asked. Suddenly he was back beside her, and she shuffled over to make room on the loveseat, taking the tea he brought her with a sweet smile. He stretched his arm out across the back cushions, playing with her hair in the way that made her heart melt. “I mean, you could always change careers.”
“I think my dad would disown me,” she admitted after a moment’s consideration, which was followed by a hollow laugh. “I don’t even know what I’d do if I did drop out. Law school has been my life for…a long time.”
“But you’re an adult now.”
“Thank goodness for you,” she teased, using the steaming drink to warm her hands. “You might face some problems otherwise, considering what we’ve been doing.”
“I’m serious,” Nash continued as he gave her hair a gentle tug. A chastisement. She sat up a little straighter, that tingle returning between her legs. “You’re a grown woman. Intelligent. Beautiful. You can make your own decisions.”
“It isn’t quite that simple with a father like mine.”
“Controlling?”
“Very,” she said with a nod, then brought the mug up to blow the steam away. When she risked a quick sip, she burned the tip of her tongue, and she brought the mug back down to her lap, waiting with a frown. When she glanced at Nash, she noted that he seemed very far away in his thoughts, his gaze unfocused as he stared ahead.
“You don’t…” He spoke just as she was about to ask him what he was thinking about, and Eliza pressed her lips together. “You don’t look at me as controlling in the same way he is, right? You’re not…me dominating you isn’t…like your dad—?”
“Oh my god, no,” Eliza cried, her expression horrified. “No, no, god no! I don’t relate what you and I are doing to what my dad has done to me my whole life. You’re helping me find my sexuality. You make me feel…good. He’s just stubborn. He doesn’t care whether I’m happy or not, he just wants the family name to be maintained. I’m not the son he wanted, so I can’t pass the name on to my kids, so I guess he just wants me to be in a reputable profession, or something to that ridiculous nature.”
“Huh.” He was gone again for a second, but came back much faster this time, leaning in to press a kiss to her forehead. It felt oddly sweet, and she felt a blush tickle her cheeks. “Well, good. I don’t think I can handle any serious Daddy issues on top of everything else in my life.”
She jumped on the opportunity to ask more about his life, since he’d opened the door to the conversation, but Nash shut it as fast as ever, encouraging her to drink her tea while he found something on TV for them to watch. Frowning, Eliza did as she was told, then reminded herself that it might take some time to get him to open up. He could pretend they weren’t in a relationship, but she’d managed to bring Nash into a full-fledged relationship. Master and sub. The labels didn’t matter. As of right now, he was hers, just as she was his, and Eliza wouldn’t have it any other way.
Chapter 9
“Are you sure? The dean?”
“Sure as the sky is blue, Nash,” Micky said through the phone, cackling a little. Rolling his eyes, Nash glanced up and resisted the urge to tell him the fucking sky was gray today, the clouds packed with the winter weather everyone was preparing for, but then thought better of it. His pal was being a rhetorical shit and nothing more.
“Guess I should have started with the highest up and worked my way down,” he said, his voice tinged with anger. He could picture Micky shaking his head, waving off his concerns, but Nash couldn’t ignore his frustration. Today Micky had told him that rumor had it that the dean, Eliza’s controlling, son-of-a-bitch dad, was playing fast and loose with his position. Whispers of money laundering, blackmail, and excessive favoritism amongst staff and students were heard, and finally they’d made their way to Nash’s ear. If some asshole was trying to squash the Steel Phoenixes and take more control of the underground drug world of Blackwoods, there was no one better than a guy who already played God every single damn day of his life.
“No one blames you,” Micky said gruffly. “You’re doing what you gotta do. Shit happens.”
“People died, Mick,” Nash hissed. “I wouldn’t call that ‘shit happens.’”
“Well, get to the bottom of it faster if you’re going to throw a fit,” his old friend snapped, and he hung up the phone when he spotted Eliza approaching. Evening approached, and he had a whole night planned for her. No more pointless evenings in the library for them. If she didn’t care about her classwork, neither did he, and there were about a dozen more tantalizing things they could do together than sit in the library and play footsie under the table. He couldn’t give her his commitment or his devotion, but Nash could give the gorgeous thing a piece of him in the bedroom.
She’d earned it after all. She was so forthcoming with information about the school. She kept the security personnel off his back. She literally kissed his feet when he instructed her to. Eliza was exactly what he needed to distract himself from his problems, but not enough of a distraction to drag him away entirely. In his mind, he’d found a nice balance.
“Hey,” she greeted, a little bounce in her step as she approached. When she leaned up to kiss him, he offered her his cheek, then made a note to discuss acceptable forms of public displays of affection. Fucking her hard behind a building was fine, but Nash didn’t just kiss in public. Not unless it was leading to something more.
“You ready?” he asked, grabbing her wrist instead of her hand, as he pushed away from the bike rack he’d been leaning on. When she nodded and licked her lips, he swore his cock twitched to life, eager to feel that tongue slide from base to tip before he slowly fucked her face. She’d need time before he could use her as he really wanted to, but every encounter with her was an improvement from the last. Law school might not have been her thing, but she was a damn good pupil.
“Yeah, starving,” Eliza admitted. He’d planned to take her out to eat then back to her apartment in the dorm. While the conversation hadn’t been something he’
d put much thought into before, he now had every intention of grilling her about her dad under the guise of being a concerned and interested master. Her relationship with the man clearly wasn’t great, but she always seemed eager to discuss him. Good. Hopefully he could get something useful out of her before he turned his mind to other matters.
More specifically, the ball gag in his backpack, and just how hard he planned to make her scream with pleasure, her mouth full and gagged, before the night was over.
Chapter 10
In his time with the Steel Phoenixes, Nash had seen his fair share of dead bodies. Most of the time, however, they weren’t people he knew. They were just random assholes who had gotten in the way. Stiffs. John Does. The kind of hard corpses he had no problem dumping in a field or in a lake if it meant the Phoenixes wouldn’t be under suspicion.
He’d only seen two dead bodies in the past of people he knew personally. Tonight, he’d seen four more, and these were guys he actually cared about. Billy. Zayn. Kent. Finn. Four young guys who were new to the MC but seemed like they’d be lifers. They got the job quickly. None of them gave lip. Each did as they were told, whenever they were told, and never asked any stupid questions.
And tonight someone had killed them. Shot them. Micky had called him, just as he was about to head over to Eliza’s, and after shooting her a quick text saying he couldn’t make it (and nothing more), he hopped on his bike and rode out to the crime scene. Things were still fresh, the bodies found in one of their underground clubhouses in the downtown core, under a convenience store whose owner took a measly two percent cut for keeping his mouth shut; the Phoenixes used the spot to store cash. Never a lot, but more than any one man would feel comfortable carrying around in public.
The boys were there to guard it. That was their shift. According to the convenience store owner, a bunch of hooded sons of bitches wearing sunglasses and leather gloves descended upon the dirty stairwell that led to the basement door about an hour earlier. No surveillance cameras down there, as per the MC’s request. The owner had thought they were part of the club, maybe a change in shift, then panicked when he heard gunfire and closed the upstairs store immediately before contacting Micky. Some might have thought the old man was in on it, but Nash trusted his loyalty—as did all the other higher-up guys in the MC. They let the owner go, telling him not to open for a few days, while Micky and Nash investigated the scene.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, his expression hard, his eyes threatening to water, as he took in the sight of four bullet-ridden boys. Blood coated the walls, the floor, and the chairs of the table where they’d all probably been sitting. The money was gone, of course.
“How’d they find it?” Micky said after checking the safe again. He stepped around the bodies carefully, skilled enough not to leave a footprint in the pools of blood. Both men wore gloves, hoping to minimize their presence on the scene. If they could get the clean-up crew down here in time, nobody would have to know, but there was no accounting for any other random fucks who heard gunshots and called the cops. They couldn’t stay for long.
“Somebody must be talking,” Nash said. His voice threatened to crack, his throat dry, stomach churning. “Unless the guy behind it caught wind that I was investigating the college.”
“Who you been talking to?”
“No one yet,” he told his old friend, shaking his head, unable to tear his eyes away from the bloody bodies. They still looked alive, their eyes wide open, mouths gaping like fish on land. “Been following up on the dean like you told me.”
“Aren’t you screwing his daughter?”
His lips twitched into a small smirk, and Micky let out a deep breath.
“Careful, Nash,” the man grumbled as he headed for the door. “Bitches talk.”
“Not this one,” he assured him, following behind him. “This one does what I tell her.”
Micky glanced back, grinning as if there weren’t four dead bodies behind them. “Oh, one of those, huh?”
He shrugged, not really wanting to talk about Eliza with Micky. She was separate from this world, from the Steel Phoenixes and bleeding bodies.
“She and her dad don’t vibe,” he insisted, throwing his hood up as they pushed out into the stairwell and hurried up the stairs. It had started raining since they went down to investigate, something to wash away whatever footprints they left, but it was cold enough that everything would probably turn to ice before the night was over. Nash crossed his arms over himself to ward off the chill. “When I ask about him, she thinks I’m being supportive. Doubt she’d even consider I’m looking for intel.”
“Good. Keep it that way,” Micky said dismissively once they reached the sidewalk. Nash clenched his jaw, but said nothing until his old friend said his goodbyes. The two went in opposite directions, Micky headed for his house in the suburbs and Nash to his apartment on the south end of town. He wasn’t looking forward to sitting on a wet motorcycle seat, but that was the least of his problems.
Sure, he’d been looking into the dean and his staff, but not hard enough. Because he’d been fucking around with Eliza, four good guys were killed. Someone was getting the upper hand on the club, and Nash was failing his brothers. It was time to get serious. Eliza needed to go on the backburner, for now, until he got his shit straightened out. It’d be tough seeing less of her, yeah, but Nash was a big boy. A fucking grown-up. He adored how easy she fell into the role of his submissive, but she was proving to be a bigger distraction than he’d anticipated.
Just for a little while, it was time for a break.
Chapter 11
Can’t make it tonight. See you Thursday for our study date.
Eliza pursed her lips, studying Nash’s most recent text before throwing her phone—gently—across the bed. It bounced on impact and flew over the edge, but when she didn’t hear anything crack or shatter, she sat back in her array of pillows and tried not to sulk. This was the third time Nash had blown her off in two weeks. Sure, she should have been preparing for her end of the quarter exams, but she wanted to be with Nash.
She wanted to feel the sting of his palm, the pressure of his belt around her neck. She wanted to bite down on a gag as he took her from behind, trying desperately, and failing more times than not, not to climax as per his instructions. It had been too long since they’d been together, and she was just itching for another fix. Nash and his kind of kinky sex had become her drug of choice, the only one Eliza had ever deigned to partake in regularly, and she was aching for another taste.
And it made her feel pathetic. To be so wrapped up in sex. In a man. She’d gone twenty-three years without having sex. Surely she could handle a few weeks only having it sparingly.
If only she had nurtured some of her friendships over the years. There were a few people in her contacts list she could call and drag out for a coffee sometime, but she wasn’t really close enough with anyone to talk about her sex life. Most of her close friends, the ones whose friendships she’d forged in high school and would likely last the rest of her life, had gone away for college and grad school, fleeing Blackwoods the moment they could. They had their own lives too, and Eliza hadn’t been great about keeping in touch. They understood, of course, her close-knit group of scattered friends, because they were busy as all hell too, but she’d felt guilty contacting them only to whine about the guy who wouldn’t technically be her boyfriend despite her asking.
No, she’d have to swallow the lonely feeling on her own. She’d have to deal with the anxiety that he was getting bored of her, that she wasn’t satisfying him sexually anymore, in silence. Bury a nose in her books, which she should have been doing all along.
But she hadn’t been. Eliza was hooked and Nash was her salvation. Her world was bright and shiny these days, and every time he canceled, things started to feel a little darker again, a little more constricting.
Now that her evening had freed up, she should have dragged out her shoddy notes and unused textbook and study for a Civics exam…
but instead, she plopped herself down in front of the TV, phone in hand, and moped, hoping that Nash’s plans would fall through and he’d show up out of the blue to surprise her.
He didn’t.
Chapter 12
“Who were you talking to?” Eliza arched an eyebrow as Nash approached. She stood waiting by their usual table, her things packed up and ready to go, her stomach in knots. He’d been texting someone all evening, telling her it was no one when she asked the first time, and then had practically ran off like the hounds of Hell were after him when his phone rang. Maybe he just didn’t want to disturb the other library-dwellers, but he could have set his phone to silent if that had been the case.
“No one,” he muttered as he began throwing his things haphazardly into his backpack. The same laptop. The same three textbooks. Eliza frowned, but before she could say anything, he added, “Well, not no one, but no one for you to worry about.”
It had to be a woman. Christmas loomed in the very near future, and the bulk of the Blackwoods University student population had fled for the holidays already. She stayed, of course, because home was only just up the street, and she preferred her dorm to her dad’s bachelor-esque apartment any day. Sure, it was huge. Yes, there was a room permanently made up for her, but she liked the freedom of having her own space. She’d visit for Christmas, of course. Probably New Years, unless Nash suggested they do something together.