Lizzy began to dance, and Georgie started dancing, and Rae started doing that embarrassed shuffle thing that Lizzy could have sworn they had cured her of last year.
Two wailing songs later, Lizzy told Rae, “You need a drink.”
Rae nodded, obviously relieved to leave the dance floor. Maybe Georgie has psyched her out with all that talk about The Dom.
They drank jewel-colored, pucker-sweet girlie martinis at the bar that ran the length of one wall. Lizzy stood with her back resolutely to The Dom, feeling his presence six feet away, even through the people clustered around him. With two steps of those long legs and one reach, he could whirl Lizzy around and kiss her right there. The back of her neck prickled as she listened for any movement behind her.
Lizzy licked sugar off the rim of her martini glass and asked Georgie and Rae, “What’s the difference between dark and hard?”
Rae’s glance with those big, brown eyes was bashful, but her grin was infectious. “I don’t know. What’s the difference?”
“It stays dark all night.”
The girls laughed college-girl titters, but Lizzy heard a low chuckle behind her. It wasn’t The Dom’s deep chuckle, which she had only heard the one time, but it was definitely masculine and amused.
They drank and talked for a few minutes, and Lizzy ordered another sour apple martini for Rae. “What’s the difference between light and hard?” Lizzy asked.
This time, Georgie humored her. “What?”
“A man can go to sleep with a light on.”
The girls laughed, and again, Lizzy heard that chuckle behind her. Some guy back there liked juvenile dirty jokes. She almost turned to take a look, but she didn’t want to catch The Dom’s eye, so she stared at Georgie and Rae instead. Besides, if she turned around, it would give the guy a fat head, the bad kind.
Rae slurped rest of her bilious green drink and signaled the bartender. “What kind of whiskey do you have?”
Georgie and Lizzy exchanged glances behind Rae’s back. Georgie leaned in. “Slow down, pardner.”
The bartender finished pouring a beer and raised an eyebrow. “The usual. What d’ya want?”
Lizzy rested her elbows on the bar. “Something from the top shelf. Maybe that Johnnie Walker Blue, with water.”
“Blue Label?” Rae asked. She squinted up at the bottle the guy retrieved from the top rack of booze.
“Yeah, it’s good, but it’s a sipping whiskey, not a shot.” Lizzy caught a glimpse of the guy behind her back who had been chuckling at her jokes, but he was turned the other direction. His dark blond hair seemed well-cut, shaggy on top like he might not be too old, and he was holding a beer. His shoulders were broad under his—sigh—black suit.
All the guys here were wearing dark suits. The hotel suite looked like a convention of those government agents who showed up after you saw a flying saucer to tell you that it was a weather balloon. Lizzy turned back to Rae.
Rae sipped the Scotch. “This is good.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. Roll it around on your tongue. Don’t drink it too fast.” Lizzy kept peeking out of the corner of her eye to see what Chucklehead looked like, but he was talking to some guy on the other side of him and never turned back toward her.
With every sip, Rae’s paranoid stare slid toward giggles.
Finally, Lizzy dragged them to the dance floor again. This time, Rae danced like a sexy woman rather than a teenaged giraffe.
The guy dancing next to them doffed his shirt. He was around their age, maybe barely drinking-legal, and his muscular chest and ripples of abs were shaved as smooth as a seal. Lizzy would have liked to look at him a little longer, but his Domme snagged the thick silver collar around his neck and dragged him to her. She kissed him hard, holding the back of his head, and Lizzy looked away.
Lizzy and Georgie danced close to Rae because the crowd jostled and shoved them together.
Across the room, The Dom was still surrounded by chattering people, but he caught Lizzy’s eye. He raised one blond eyebrow at her, a question.
Lizzy pointed at Rae, who was shimmying in that silver dress and gawking just a little at the Domme necking with her boy toy.
The Dom shrugged with a muscular raise of one shoulder and glanced away from Lizzy, turning back to his conversation, obviously not interested in Rae.
Damn it, Lizzy had been wrapped up in her own crazy all night, and she should have been figuring out how to get The Dom interested in Rae. Stupid, she chastised herself. Rae needed this job more than Lizzy needed to be coy around The Dom.
Lizzy waved at him, catching his eye. He glanced back.
She pointed more emphatically at Rae, a demand that The Dom at least come over and talk to her.
He inclined his head, acquiescing, and tipped the rest of his drink into his mouth before he began to extricate himself from the crowd around him. When he made a move to leave, most of the people focused on him, trying to keep him there. They were all networking hard, trying to gain admission to The Devilhouse.
The Dom meandered through the crowd toward them, reaching the edge of the dance floor.
Lizzy pinched Georgie’s elbow and directed her attention toward the The Dom making his way through the crowd. Georgie nodded and watched him, too. He was taller than most of the people there, taller than the tall men and the women perching in spiked heels, and the recessed lights in the ceiling caught his bright golden hair above all them.
The music slipped from ancient disco to some British soprano singing about unrequited love.
Lizzy ducked into the crowd just as The Dom slipped between them and Rae.
Lizzy and Georgie skulked off to the bar. They could debrief Rae in the car.
Mannix at the Cocktail Party
Mannix listened to his sub dissect the designer clothes that other people were wearing while he watched the other Doms with their subs.
Down the wall, a Dom had his sub up against the wall, his fist in her hair, and was threatening her with rather severe punishment.
Mannix surreptitiously snapped a photo of the man’s face with his cell phone. He would try to put a name to him, later.
The Dom of The Devilhouse, that pale blond man in the crowd, didn’t tolerate real brutality in his clients. Mannix was at the party to spy on the prospectives. Couldn’t have the wrong sort gain entry to The Devilhouse, even though Mannix suspected that he, himself, was the wrong sort. He was just better at hiding it.
“And that Domme,” Gina fluttered her hand toward a statuesque woman wearing navy blue and brushed Mannix’s long, black hair behind his shoulder, trying to get his attention. “I can’t believe that she’s wearing Chanel. How staid!”
“Of course, mon ange,” Mannix murmured, utterly bored.
His sub, Gina, could spot a designer at a thousand yards. She sniffed at the people who wore the international designers, lamenting their poor taste at wearing with the usual suspects rather than choosing someone local, someone interesting.
Local and interesting usually meant twice as expensive as the international designers, Mannix had discovered. He still wasn’t sure why cactus couture cost so much more than Chanel or Armani.
Across the room, Mannix spotted a small woman sitting at the bar, sipping a yellow martini. Her dress was as the same hue of pale gold as her short, blond hair. The crystals caught the light. She glittered.
Mannix had seen her around Devilhouse functions, on Saturday nights and at these parties. He had asked about her, learning that her name was Lizzy Pajari, that she was employed at The Devilhouse, and some other information. He had tried to get on her schedule, but the Devilhouse office had told him that her list was closed.
He could see why she was in such demand. When she laughed at something, her tiny body shook. She looked so small, so fragile, so joyous.
Mannix bet that she would look even more delicious tied up with her arms above her head, stretched hard, while he manipulated her body until she screamed.
Gina
prattled on about clothes.
Mannix reached behind her and grabbed the long, silver chain that hung from her collar to her narrow waist. He tugged it sharply. “Be quiet.”
Gina was quiet.
Mannix continued to watch Lizzy.
She was endlessly fascinating.
Theo the Non-Guido
After shoving a shocked Rae into The Dom’s arms, Lizzy swung up on the barstool she had occupied earlier and ordered a lemon drop martini from the guy tending the bar. With Rae safely dancing with The Dom, Lizzy could relax for a few minutes. It was all up to that girl, now. She could make or break her whole future with this one conversation.
Of course, if Rae did fuck it up, she would go home to her sweet little family and have to go to church. It’s not like Rae would end up a sixteen-year-old runaway, trading sexual favors for a fake ID so she could dance on tables or anything. Seriously, how bad could having to go to church be?
But a job at The Devilhouse would be better for her. Between the six-figure salary and the commissions, if Rae worked for two years and saved her pennies, she could probably save seven figures, enough to have her autism clinic.
The bartender slid Lizzy’s drink to her, and she pinched it between her small fingers to catch it. She sipped. The super-sweet lemonade almost covered the sting of the vodka.
Almost. Soon that vodka would course through her veins, drowning out all the crazy that tumbled in her skull.
Perched on the tall barstool, Lizzy could see over the crowd to the dance floor. Even though she had always been the smallest kid in her classes at school and church and everywhere and been down in the crowd her whole life, being at elbow-level still made her claustrophobic. She tended to climb like a spider monkey and perch on tall things, like barstools or counters.
Beyond the weaving crowd, over on the dance floor, Rae and The Dom were waltzing.
Lizzy held her martini just under her chin and watched them.
They danced braced apart and looked perfectly matched: strong, elegant, and tall. Rae’s supple back, bared in that silver mermaid dress that Lizzy had picked out for her, bent as they glided through the other couples. Her loose hair twitched like dark fire as she said something to The Dom, and The Dom smiled at her. His smile was that cold, disastrous smile that didn’t touch his blue eyes.
Lizzy turned back to the bar. She was trying to get Rae a job at The Devilhouse to save her butt from having to leave college, but that didn’t mean that she liked watching another woman dance with The Dom.
She could still feel his warm breath, hot on the back of her neck.
She sucked a deep sip of the lemon drop martini and sighed. Her tongue numbed.
She could use a few more of these.
Georgie had said that it wouldn’t be weird anymore, but it was. She resolved to think about anything, anything else.
The man next to her was kind of cute, if you like that middle-of-the-road, sandy-blond hair, lightly tanned, medium thing. She wondered if he was Chucklehead, the guy who had liked her dirty riddles, or if Chucklehead had moved on when she had left to dance.
She wasn’t particularly interested in him, anyway. Medium Guy seemed normal. Nothing about him screamed or brooded or even swaggered. Lizzy tended to go for the more extreme male specimens, like the golden blazing mystery of the The Dom.
Medium Guy nodded at her and went back to sipping his beer.
Lizzy spun her barstool around and glanced over the crowd of Doms and their wussy little subs, avoiding looking at the dance floor. The Doms tended to be tall, broad-shouldered, and glowering, emanating enough attitude to overpower a simpering little sub who probably couldn’t take half the pain that Lizzy could. Sometimes the Doms reminded her of the tanned gym rats back at the shore, like Gio.
God, Giovanni, what a stereotypical name for a guy who she had thought was different than all the other Guidos on the shore, but he wasn’t. He was juiced on steroids like someone had stuffed hams into his biceps and thighs, tanned to the tint of fine orange leather, and spent an hour blow-drying his hair until he looked like a bleach-streaked troll doll.
Sometimes she thought that the Universe was valiantly trying to give her clues because, evidently, she had no clues of her own.
The crowd at The Devilhouse’s audition party roamed like a herd of well-dressed wildebeests milling around several alcoholic watering holes.
Over the packed heads at the party, one man stared back at her.
He stood against the wall near the windows that overlooked the city sparkling in the night. His jet black hair fell silky-smooth over his shoulders, and his hot blue eyes locked on hers. His black suit did nothing to slim his muscled body, though the fabric clung to his rounded shoulders and moved like it was from a high-end designer. Lizzy had learned a few things about expensive men’s fashions while working at a club with a six-figure initiation fee.
When the guy shifted his weight, Lizzy could tell from across the room that he was musclebound under his clothes. His cheekbones and jawline were sharp slashes, and his broad shoulders cut a stark inverted triangle out of the white wall behind him. One tendril of a black tattoo reached out of his white collar and up his tanned neck.
He was still staring at her.
Wow.
Even from fifty feet away and over the crowd of heads, Lizzy could see that his fiery eyes were the color of blue-hot stars.
Lizzy bet that guy could distract her from her current Dom-obsession. She could practically see heat mirage lines coming off him because that man smoldered.
Mr. Smolder’s skin didn’t look fake-orange tan, more like real-tan bronze, so he probably wasn’t the Jersey shore kind of guy who went straight from the gym to the tanning booth.
Mr. Smolder nodded to her from across the room. He hadn’t taken his blue eyes off her.
Lizzy felt distinctly like prey, so she swiveled back around and set her martini on the bar. A clump of sugar fell off the rim onto the shining wood.
Medium Guy, still sitting beside her, set his beer on a coaster and wiped foam off his lip with a napkin. He had one of those light stubble-beards that was manly without looking unkempt, also light brown and glistening with gold. His neck and under his chin were clean-shaven, and his beard was manicured to a straight, cut line. His white shirt collar was unbuttoned and open, baring his smooth throat.
The dance music was still soft, so she heard him say, “Quite a party.”
“They always are,” Lizzy said. She swore that she could feel Mr. Smolder’s eyes lingering on her back.
Medium Guy asked, “You come to these often?”
“Yeah.” She stirred the sugar off the bottom of her martini with the swizzle stick.
“With your Dom?”
“Nope.” Lizzy tried to ignore a remembrance of The Dom’s fingers trailing down her bare spine. “I’m not into Doms.”
If she told herself that about a thousand times and maybe tattooed it backwards on her forehead, she might begin to believe it.
“Here with your boyfriend?”
From the side, Medium Guy’s cheekbones seemed cut enough to be interesting, but between The Dom waltzing back there and Mr. Smolder running his eyes down her spine to her ass, she wasn’t interested in Medium Guy, but it was a Devilhouse party so she had to be nice. “Nope. I’m all alone.”
“What’re you doing here, all alone?” He glanced at the posing crowd like one of them might kidnap sweet, little Lizzy, as if she didn’t carry her Taser in her purse everywhere she went.
“I’m bait,” she said.
“Bait?” He smiled a little, and the smile seemed warmer in his eyes than on his full lips.
“Yup. I work at The Devilhouse. Where’s your sub?”
“No sub.” He swirled his beer to wash the foam down the sides. “I’m not into subs.”
“Why are you here, all alone?”
“Dragged,” he said and sucked down some beer.
“Your girlfriend trying to turn you into a Dom?�
�
“No girlfriend, no wife,” he said. “Broke up with the last girlfriend six months ago and haven’t found another one.”
“Have you been looking for one?”
“Not really. Work has kept me busy. You have a vanilla guy waiting for you at home?”
“Hell, no,” Lizzy said. “I’m single, too. Dumped a God-awful dork from back home a couple months ago.”
And the one man she was really interested in might flay her alive with a few words, probably Russian words. Lizzy could feel him on the dance floor, dancing with her friend, like he was the sun that warmed her back.
She glanced past Medium Guy’s back at Georgie, who was flirting with some other dude. Lizzy didn’t even bother to see what Georgie’s dude looked like. Georgie adhered strictly to the use-’em-and-lose-’em code. On the slim chance that this new guy made the grade, he would do something to screw it up with the Ice Princess soon enough.
Lizzy leaned on the bar and lifted her drink. Other women might look sophisticated, holding a mixed drink like a real adult and making sexy eyes at some guy. Lizzy settled for trying to not look like a tiny circus freak by carefully balancing the oversized glass in her tiny fingers. Trying to look sophisticated when you’re the size of a twelve-year-old is a losing battle.
“So where’s back home?” Medium Guy asked.
“New Jersey.” Lizzy sipped her honey-sweet cocktail.
“But you don’t have big hair or huge teeth, and you didn’t say Joy-zee,” the guy said.
She smirked at him. “No one from Jersey ever pronounces it like that. That’s a Long Island accent or something. Everybody in Jersey has a different accent, anyway. People from Hoboken sound like they’re from across the river in New York. People in South Jersey sound like they’re from Philly, but no one says Joy-zee. It’s Jurr-zee. I don’t go to the beach. I go down the shore, and the traffic jam down there is the goddamn Bennys fucking up the shore traffic.”
The guy chuckled. It was kind of a refreshing change from The Dom who so seldom cracked a real smile. She was pretty sure that Medium Guy was indeed the Chucklehead who had laughed at her dirty jokes, so he must have a sense of humor.
Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1) Page 4