His head tilted, regarding her. “Have you discussed this with a doctor?”
“Oh, hell, no.” Her tone had come out more acidic than she had meant. Embarrassing conversations pissed her off. The Dom was just trying to be nice, probably, but Jesus, they didn’t need to hash out every jackass detail. “Look, I just didn’t want you to waste time trying to get my body to do something it’s not wired to do. And please don’t say, ‘we’ll see about that’ or think that you’re the one with the magic dick. You are not a super special sexual snowflake. It’s not you. It’s me.”
He crossed his arms, and Lizzy worried for a second that his round biceps were going to bust out of that pretty suit of his, but the fabric held. “You realize that when you state it like that, most men will take it as a challenge or a point of honor.”
“And I’m telling you not to. I’m not a challenge to be won. I am Sisyphus’s motherfucking rock. No matter how many times you roll that bitch up the hill, it’s not going over the top.”
After a moment, The Dom smiled, showing white teeth and stunning Lizzy, and then he chuckled.
Lizzy’s fingers went numb, and she almost dropped her clutch purse. When The Dom smiled, it was a softening of his lips. He never laughed, at anything.
Lizzy smiled back, tentatively at first, then she laughed, too. “If you don’t want to get involved with all this, I understand. I’m all kinds of fucked up.”
He put one arm around her shoulders, and that time Lizzy’s hands did open in surprise but she caught that little beaded purse just below her belly button.
He said, “All right. I won’t try. The pressure is off of both of us. Here’s an option: if physical pleasure isn’t an option for you,” his eyes took on a steely shine that made Lizzy step back from his broad chest, “perhaps you would consider an altogether different experience.”
Lizzy in Love
Thursday late afternoon, Lizzy stood in The Devilhouse’s costume closet, a cement warehouse of a back room behind the ladies’ spa area, and changed into a bright blue cocktail dress and matching pumps, wiggling as she zipped the snug dress up the side. The racks of other-sized dresses, gorgeous stuff that would have trailed the ground behind her, hung on six taller racks. The leather, lace, and snakeskin fetishwear scented the room with saddlesoap and cowhide under the more common smells of laundry detergent and dry cleaning chemicals. The shoe racks smelled like the cedar bags stuffed in all the shoes.
All Lizzy’s outfits matched because she was the only size zero, short, in the dresses and size five in the shoes, so the shoppers just matched everything for her. She liked the blue dress. Lizzy’s eyes were pale blue, almost gray in the sunlight, and electric blue reflected in her irises and made them look bluer. Theo’s thick, black eyelashes were so wasted on a guy. And The Dom’s sapphire blue eyes were so wasted on a guy. And she could go on.
Sadness trickled down her back again. The Dom wasn’t ignoring her, just busy.
Maybe she should make an appointment with him, just to talk about nothing in particular.
Or get him alone in a play room.
She rolled her eyes at herself. That canny coyote wouldn’t be so easily tricked.
Lizzy snagged her printed schedule from the bench and glared at it again: Two guys, which was one more than she usually saw on a weeknight.
The second name on the list, her eight o’clock appointment, was a name she recognized, “Bruce Lee.” He had started off as a skinny, painfully shy guy but had gained thirty pounds of hard muscle working out over the last year. He liked her to marvel at his katas for their hour. She played the adoring fan for him, giggling and hopping in elation. He was a nice guy, just lonely and desperate for approval like most scientists.
Like most of her clients, “Bruce” had thought that he wanted blow jobs when he had signed up at The Devilhouse, when he had actually needed a cheerleader. Most people would probably be shocked and pretty disappointed at how little sex occurred in The Devilhouse.
“Bruce” had asked her to attend his brown belt test in a couple weeks, and she was seriously considering going even though it was a breach of The Devilhouse’s Terms of Service. The TOS was to keep them safe, but she felt safe meeting “Bruce” at his dojo and providing some moral support. She had to make sure he understood the continuing limitations of their relationship, and she was pretty sure that he did. He was almost at that point that two of her previous clients had reached, when she told them that they didn’t need her anymore and to go out in the world and knock ‘em dead.
The first name on her schedule in the seven o’clock time slot was new: “Thomas Hobbes,” like the English philosopher.
God, what a dorky fake name. Lizzy was really hoping that the name didn’t mean that the guy reveled in being nasty, brutish, and short. Well, it was a just an initial meeting, which meant that she was interviewing him to see if he got a provisional place on her roster, and that was all.
A new guy appearing on her schedule was weird. She had closed her list months ago because she was making plenty of money and didn’t want to overbook herself. Maybe it was an emergency. Some contractors had been quitting lately, just natural turnover, nothing unusual. She could clear it up later.
Georgie was waiting around the corner, also studying her schedule. She was wearing a long, black formal and a tiara.
“What’cha got for today?” Lizzy asked her.
“An English tea service and restrained flirtation with ‘Lord Alfred,’ then a drinking game with ‘Boston Bob.’ Every time the Red Sox hit a homer or catch a pop fly, we do a shot.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I drove.”
“Hell, yeah. Good thing that tomorrow’s sociology test got postponed. I already watered down the bourbon so I won’t end up barfing my guts out.”
Clicky footsteps clattered like someone hurrying in high heels. They looked up.
Someone barged around the corner and high-heeled-skidded to a stop in front of Lizzy and Georgie.
Lizzy looked way, way, way up at Rae.
Rae wore a corset-style black bustier and matching tight skirt that clung to her curves. Her skirt was short enough that just a strip of her white thighs showed over the tops of her thigh-high boots. In those stiletto boots, Rae was well over a foot taller than Lizzy. It was amazing that she didn’t get nosebleeds in the thin air up there.
“Um.” Rae ducked her head, swinging her dark auburn hair to cover her face. “Hi.”
Lizzy and Georgie gawked as the spa music tinkled in the air and the waterfall burbled. Georgie asked, “Rae?”
Rae looked down at her shiny boots standing on the polished wooden floor. “Yeah?”
Lizzy’s brain went on the fritz at seeing Rae in that fetishwear, considering that only a year and a half before, Rae had been wearing Hester-the-Repressor long skirts and white, high-necked blouses. “What are you wearing?”
Rae’s cheeks and nose flushed pink. “I got it from the costume closet.”
Georgie asked, “Rae, are you dressed like a Domme?”
Lizzy grinned. “So you’re hired? So you can stay at school?”
Rae said, “Yeah. Um, that guy? Um, The Dom? The Dom hired me. I signed the contract and nondisclosure agreement just now.”
Yes! Lizzy threw a fist up to Heaven because she had saved Rae from that stupid hometown of hers and she could have her autism clinic. “All right!”
Georgie, ever the one for details instead of celebration, asked, “Did he hire you as a Domme?”
“Yeah. As a Domme.” Rae’s voice seemed subdued.
“That’s great! That’s great!” Lizzy chanted. She held her pumps in her fingers and bounced, popping a couple of quick jumps to burn off some exuberance. She jumped high, forgetting for a moment that she was on a hard floor, and looked over Rae’s shoulder to the make-up area beyond.
She landed hard. A spike of pain cracked up her shins.
She stopped. No one would probably notice or ask why she had a twenty-inch vertic
al jump, if she cut it the hell out right now.
Georgie cocked her head to the side and said to Rae, “You have to teach me how to be a Domme. I’ve been trying to work into that for six months, and I’ve gotten no traction.”
“I’m just figuring it out. I’m kind of in training,” Rae said.
“Who’s training you? Sonya?” Lizzy asked. She reached down and rubbed her shin.
“No,” Rae said. “The Dom is.”
The Dom? Her Dom? Lizzy’s mouth fell open.
Georgie’s voice sharpened. “The Dom is training you? The tall, blond guy you waltzed with at the party?”
Rae glanced over their heads, clearly uncomfortable. “Um, yeah. I didn’t know who he was at the party. I just kind of called him The Blond Hottie in my head.”
Lizzy’s breath whooshed out of her chest, and she covered her mouth with one hand. She wasn’t going to cry, damn it. She was just so damned shocked.
Rae saw Lizzy’s ridiculous expression, and the creases between her eyebrows seemed pained. “Lizzy, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why he’s doing this. I think it’s just a casting decision, because I’m tall and stuff. I look the part of a Domme.”
Lizzy swallowed hard. “How is he training you?”
“He’s just telling me stuff. Like what to do in a session. What to say.”
Tears burned Lizzy’s eyes. She shouldn’t ask and there was no need to ask and yet she couldn’t shut up. “Are you sleeping with him?”
Rae’s eyes widened, and she blinked hard, ever the ingenue. “He just shows me what to do. How to use a riding crop. What to say. That sort of thing. I’m not anything special to him. Like Georgie said, he likes women, lots of women, and he’s nothing but a shiny shell. And I opted out of the arrangement.”
Lizzy nodded, even though The Dom never trained people. Something else was going on. It was as obvious as the sun glaring laser beams off a mirror.
Lizzy reassured Rae that it was no biggie and work was work, but she strode down The Devilhouse’s wide and twisting corridors on her way to her meeting with the new guy, “Thomas Hobbes,” wiping her wet cheeks.
She stood as straight as she could outside the door to Vanilla Room Six and breathed.
Lizzy was fine. She had no claim on The Dom. Indeed, no one had a claim on him. This was stupid. She was being stupid.
Maybe she should quit The Devilhouse. Maybe it was too much for her to handle.
If she quit, she would have to drop out of college.
If she quit, she would still have no skills to speak of, and she would be back to when she was a sixteen-year-old runaway, homeless, scared and hungry, and alone.
Better to work. Better to keep making progress, even if it was incremental progress, toward a new life, a better life, one that didn’t all fall apart with a single momentous failure.
Besides, pain was weakness leaving the body.
Not all pain was physical. The Dom had shown her that.
All right. Time to meet the new client, “Thomas Hobbes.”
She took a deep breath and flung open the door, posing in her bright blue cocktail dress with her leg extended, as sexy as a tiny house elf can be. Vanilla Room Six looked like a fussy Victorian parlor, complete with bosomy furniture, crocheted doilies cobwebbing the arms and heads of the chairs, and miles of ruffles, fringe, and lace edging every pillow and cushion.
“Thomas Hobbes” slouched in an armchair, staring into his beer. His long legs stretched out in front of him and were crossed at the ankles.
Lizzy knew even before the man looked up that he would have light caramel eyes and a strong jaw.
She forgot to be welcoming and geisha-like. “Theo? What the fuck are you doing here?”
Theo’s First Session
Lizzy stared at Theo, who was lounging in a wingback chair and staring into his beer like it was a piss-colored crystal ball that reflected the depths of his tormented soul, and considered how best to throw him the hell out of The Devilhouse. Head-first seemed good. On-his-ass sounded fine, too.
Theo settled his beer on an end table and strode across the rose-embossed rugs to her in three strides of his long legs. His intensity suggested anguish instead of desire. “Look into my eyes again. Do you still think I have a soul?”
Lizzy looked at his light caramel eyes, but she shook her head. “That was bar talk, Theo, drunken bar talk. Maybe some flirting. I can’t really see souls.”
He wasn’t laughing at all. His hazel eyes slanted with anger. He kept rubbing his hand across his mouth. “Go on. Look at me.”
“Hang on a sec.” Lizzy turned pressed the intercom button on the unit beside the door. “Glenda? My seven o’clock appointment was a mistake. Cancel it on the schedule, and don’t bill him, okay?”
“No, I didn’t mean that,” Theo said. He reached as if he wanted to hang up the intercom, but he didn’t touch it.
Over the phone, Glenda agreed to cancel it.
“Okay, thanks, honey.” Lizzy turned back to Theo. “I don’t know how you got in here. I don’t know how the hell you got on my schedule. It’s been locked for months.”
“Evidently, your boss likes having prosecuting attorneys as members. My membership was approved in an hour.”
Yeah, Lizzy could see how The Dom’s machinating mind would work like that.
Theo was calming down as he talked fast, explaining. “After that, I knew your first name, so I asked to get on your list.”
“I don’t want you on my list. You are hereby banned from my list.”
“You’re the only reason I’m here,” he said. “I just need to talk to someone about this.”
“So you joined The Devilhouse? That’s nuts, Theo. There’s a pro-rated membership cancellation refund. You can get all of your money back.” Georgie had read the Terms of Service and all the contracts in The Devilhouse last year while working on an independent study project for her law school professor, and she’d read the most shocking parts aloud to Lizzy, who had smiled and nodded at the time, but she had evidently retained some of it.
“I just want to talk to you,” he said.
“If you’re on my client roster here, I can’t see you outside of business hours. Cancel your space on my list, and you should sure as hell cancel your membership, too.”
“I’d really like to talk to you now.”
“I have an hour free.” Lizzy walked over to the other armchair. “So let’s talk.”
He paced. “Have them bill me. I owe you that. I took one of your time slots.”
“I don’t want them to bill you. It will nail you to the TOS.” Lizzy tugged her short skirt down around her thighs and swung her feet in the blue shoes that weren’t particularly near the floor.
“It would be unethical for me to renege on that. It’s a contract.”
“You’re in a place called The Devilhouse. Don’t talk to me about what’s ethical. You’re not getting billed.”
“It’s lawyer ethics. It’s a billable hour.”
“I don’t do lawyer ethics. I’m a philosophy major. I do real ethics.”
“And that’s why I’m here. That’s why I need to talk to you.” Theo ran his hands through his hair in one heartsick gesture, mussing it further. He looked better with his hair a little wild, like he might play rough. “Lawyer ethics are fucked up.”
Lizzy cocked her head to the side. “Tough day at work?”
He gestured to the security camera with it’s red Cyclops light, slowly blinking. “Can you turn that thing off?”
“Sorry. Devilhouse rules.” That was true, plus, like hell Lizzy was turning off the cam in a soundproofed room with a guy she had met once in a social, public area. She didn’t have her Taser with her.
Theo sat in the other armchair. His head fell forward into his hands, and a snow-white doily slipped to the floor. “I can’t tell you. It’s privileged. I certainly can’t tell you while we’re being taped.”
Oh, well, okay then. Sure, she would just turn off her only
protection, in that case. “I don’t think they can be shut off. If you shouldn’t tell me, then you should stop talking.”
His hands tightened in his hair. “I did something terrible today, because I had to. The alternatives were worse, I think. I don’t know. I don’t know which wrong was worse, and I need someone to tell me whether I made a huge mistake. The other attorneys are all giving me lawyer advice, but I think I did the most wrong thing out of all the possible wrongs.”
He sounded like he was coming apart at the seams. “We can talk in generalities.”
Theo nodded, still clutching his hair in his hands.
Lizzy scooted her armchair closer to his and laid her hand on his back. Heavy muscle layered his back, too. She stroked his warm spine, soothing him. “So talk.”
“Professionally, this has been the worst week of my life.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “I let a guy walk. The evidence against him was tainted by procedural violations, which doesn’t mean he’s not guilty. It just means that some people didn’t jump through all the legal hoops in the right order while they were trying to save innocent people’s lives. I called his lawyers, told them what happened, and asked the judge to dismiss the case. We didn’t have enough evidence without the tainted stuff to even hold the guy.”
“And he’s a bad fucker.”
“I know he’s going to kill more people.”
Lizzy recoiled. “Like a serial killer?”
“Not like BTK or the Zodiac killer or something. It’s just business for him. He’s a thug. He’s in trafficking.”
Lizzy had heard enough of Rae’s stories about the Border to ask, “Drugs or people?”
“Both. Plus guns. He prefers people,” Theo inhaled hard again, “because you can only sell drugs once. You can sell a woman over and over.”
“Fuck, Theo.”
“His lawyers know the names of all our witnesses who were going to be called to testify while we were building a case against him. His lawyers are dirtier than shit. They’ll hand him the list. I convinced every one of those witnesses to testify, and now he’s getting out.”
“You’ve warned them, though.”
Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1) Page 8