by Lilia Moon
She swallows, loud enough that I can hear her. “What do you see when you look at this?”
I wait until her eyes meet mine, until I know she’ll keep them there. “A woman who is totally fucking sexy.”
The air quivers between us. A choice on the line. And one that I know better than to force, no matter what the heat inside me wants.
I sweep all the photos back into the envelope. I haven’t forgotten about the yearning eyes and whatever she’s avoiding, but that needs to come after she decides. “Go away and follow the instructions this time.”
She takes the envelope and looks at me with those big, serious eyes of hers. And then she slides off her stool and walks away.
Chapter Nine
Scorpio
Emily peers down at her list and scrunches her nose in the way that tells the rest of us we’re almost at the end and she’s checking to see if anything new mysteriously added itself while we’ve been eating donuts and taking care of business.
Or at least Leo and I have been eating donuts. Gabby has this idea that she has too many curves and Meghan doesn’t eat sugar and Emily’s so high on Damon she probably doesn’t eat anything anymore. Which means more donuts for me.
I lean forward and grab the last one in the box. It’s vaguely person shaped, and when I bite off the head, it’s full of blood. Probably raspberry filling, but I have to take my edges where I can find them these days.
Or at least that’s what I thought right up until Harlan decided to get weird and shake things up. Now he’s offering me a real edge to ride and I don’t want it to fuck up my nice, safe, donut-laden life. Which makes me a wimp or something even sadder—but I’ve seen women sign on with a Dom, and none of them ever come out the same.
Including the obnoxiously cheerful one leading this meeting. I lean forward, suddenly restless and needing out of chair captivity. “So we have three new fall weddings, two of them at Fettered, and everything else is just follow-up, right?” Small steps forward on weddings that are months into the planning with months more to go. Apparently only the kinky folks are in a hurry.
Meghan drains the rest of her coffee. “We’ve got more referrals coming in from the BDSM community. The word’s out that we’re friendly.”
Leo smirks. “The word’s out that Emily can convince Damon to let a bunch of glitter and flowers and streamers loose in his club.”
Emily somehow manages to keep looking professional. “Developing locations is part of my job.”
Leo’s flat out laughing now. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
Clearly he’s in on the pool to make her blush. I hand him the raspberry-blood-filled bottom half of my donut. “Back off, hot stuff. You’re just jealous because she got spanked last night and you didn’t.”
Emily clears her throat, her prim face totally in place. “I’ll have you know I got spanked this morning, thank you very much.”
Meghan groans, Leo high-fives Emily, and Gabby turns as pink as her dress. I shake my head. Just another day at the office, or at least the new version of my office that got abducted by aliens and then sent back. Not that I mind. This is the kind of wedding-planning company that might actually hire somebody like me.
“One last thing.” Emily cuts through the hilarity with amused eyes and the voice that makes her the nicest dictator on the planet. “Fettered has formally invited all of us to attend their charity ball at the end of the month. It’s at a swanky hotel, with a romance theme, although that probably means something a little different than it would if we were in charge of decorating. Ari says to think evening gowns. Silk and satin and classy sex.”
Leo grins. “I totally have an evening gown like that.”
The paper airplane I throw at his head doesn’t miss.
He throws it back and blows me a kiss. “Sam and I will be there.”
Meghan’s shaking her head. “I think I’ll be taking that week off. We don’t have any weddings, and I need a break.”
Nobody points out that a charity ball isn’t work. She isn’t as easy with the energy of Fettered as the rest of us, and that needs to be okay. I like that nobody’s pushing her. That’s how edges start drawing blood.
“Well, um.” Gabby looks shy, and more than a little flustered, but determined. “I think I’d like to go. If someone can help me figure out what to wear.”
Leo’s hand is in the air before she finishes her sentence.
I keep my hand down, because I shouldn’t be dressing anyone, but I’m glad he’s going to help. He’ll make sure she doesn’t show up looking like she wants to be gobbled. Although anyone who tries is probably going to have to run a gantlet of big, bad Doms. Gabby might not need a keeper, but she’s got a shit-ton of volunteers.
Emily turns to me and raises an eyebrow. I nod, because of course I’ll go. I’ll have fun, even if I’ll die before I slide this bod into an evening gown. But I’m also feeling sandpapered. This is an easy choice for me. Showing up to a Fettered dance might be Gabby’s edge, but it’s not mine. It’s me hanging out on the sidelines again, inhaling someone else’s smoke, just like I do when I watch grape farmers at weddings.
I’m a tourist in way too many lifestyles.
Leo moves to the chair beside me as the other three head out of the room. “So, who’s the guy?”
I raise an eyebrow and put on the poker face that kept me solvent on way too many road trips. “Who says there’s a guy?”
He snickers. “Okay, who’s the girl?”
I roll my eyes. “Been there, tried that, got evicted from the island.”
He picks up his laptop, stands up, and blows me a kiss. “Fine, don’t share.”
I can’t, not yet. There’s a guy I have to go talk to first.
Again.
Chapter Ten
Harlan
I close the door behind me and finish locking up. I love being the last one out, putting the club to bed for the night and strolling home at an hour when pretty much everyone else is sleeping.
I can feel the chill in the wind on my cheeks. The first touches of winter, or what passes for it here in Seattle, anyhow. I grin at the door handle. Standing here thinking poetic shit in the middle of the night is a sure sign I need to get laid.
“Hey.”
The voice behind me activates every nerve I have, and that’s before I register that it’s Scorpio and not some thug who wants to crack me over the head and steal my wallet. Some really high, blind, stupid thug. Nobody even a little bit sane tries to rob a guy with as much ink and muscle as I have.
I apparently don’t scare the woman leaning against the tree, though. “It’s not smart to walk the streets alone at night.”
She’s got her poker face on. “I don’t need a protector.”
I need to be one, but that’s a fight we can have later. I’m way more interested in why she’s here. “How long have you been out here?” We have club hours, but respect for those hours is a totally different thing—and the middle-of-the-night time is my favorite. Scenes are done, newbies have gone home, and I get to take off my manager hat and enjoy the people who are the core of my world.
“Not long.” Scorpio hasn’t moved from her tree. “Want to take a walk?”
“Yeah.” I punch the final codes into the door alarm system and hold out my hand. “Which way do you live? I’ll walk you home.”
She studies my hand for a minute and then offers me hers. I hold my breath as our fingers slide together, feeling her skin on mine, the dance as our energies get to know each other a little.
“You do this with all the subs you’re chasing?” She’s still staring at our hands.
“No.” I shrug and tell her the truth. “With friends, mostly.” Touch is a permission thing in my world, so it’s something I’m careful with, even though I’m a guy who drinks it up like water.
She looks at me. “This feels different than friends.”
“Yeah.” I tug her gently toward the street. “Is that why you’re here?”
Conveniently, so do I. We walk together quietly. I listen to the sound of our footsteps, feel the warmth flowing from her hand to mine. In the vanilla world, holding hands doesn’t mean much. In mine, it’s a big deal.
She pats the bag hanging over her shoulder. “I picked some images.”
Tension zings through me and straight into our joined hands. I made my instructions very clear. If all she wants to play is beta tester, she’d be having this conversation with Ari. I stop us on the sidewalk and back up until I can lean against a low stone wall so that my eyes are level with hers. I need to be really sure what she’s chosen. “You’re bringing them to me. You want us to play with whatever you’ve picked.”
She stares at me and nods.
The lessons start right now. “Words. You want this, you need to own it out loud where we can both hear it.”
She reaches into her bag and draws out a manila envelope. This one’s a pretty green color and a lot skinnier than the one I gave her. She puts it on the stone wall beside me. “Those are the ones I picked.” She swallows. “I think I’m a sub, and I think this is what I want. But I’m going to be really honest and say that I know a lot of people who want to sing behind a microphone in their daydreams, but they crap out fast when they actually try it.”
Somewhere in that bare-naked honesty she’s stopped meeting my eyes. I reach for her chin. “That’s what safewords are for. I take care of my subs, Scorpio—even if that means stopping dead in our tracks and curling up in a chair for as long as it takes until you feel okay again.”
She nods slowly, and her eyes are full of the kind of courage that only happens when you know you might fail and want to try anyhow.
“If we do this, I’ll push you like hell, because that’s part of the deal for me. But all it will ever take for you to push back is one really small word, even if you said yes to that thing two seconds earlier.”
She eyes me wryly. “You’re very good at this, aren’t you?”
I want to touch so much more than her hand. “Playing’s no fun if you have to get it right every time. We’ll explore, we’ll try some things, we’ll talk, we’ll try some more things.” I hold up our linked hands. “So since we’ve already tried something—is this okay?”
Her smile is softer than usual. “Yeah.”
“Good.” I put my free hand on her envelope. “What about you sitting in my lap while we look at these together?”
“Ah—” I can hear the disconcerted surprise in her voice. And the arousal.
God she’s hot. “Or we can go find a bench somewhere and sit without touching, and talk pictures and contracts.”
She’s eyeing me. “You do contracts? Even when it’s not a club thing?”
I shrug. “For myself, I mostly just need a good, clear conversation, but Fettered requires paperwork for lots of smart reasons, so I stick with that just to keep everything clean. You okay with that?”
She’s nodding. “Yeah. But I don’t want that vibe when we’re checking out the porn.”
I like her style. “Porn first. Lap or bench?”
I can see the shaky breath she pulls in. “Lap.”
My cock is fully in favor of this plan, which she’s about to find out. I reach for her other hand and pull her in between my legs. “What’s your safeword, Scorpio?”
She stares at me, and I can feel her wanting to lean in. To connect. To soak in what I’m putting out there for her.
Damn. This is going to be freaking combustible. I squeeze her hands. “Safeword. Something really easy for you to remember.”
She swallows hard. “Lightning.”
I grin. “I like that one. Where’s it from?”
She laughs quietly. “It’s the name of my favorite electric guitar.”
She’s made it personal, which is smart. And told me why, which is the kind of naked and honest I need and want from her. And she’s waiting for my signal to move, even though everything in her wants to cuddle in.
She’s not wrong about being a sub.
I let my Dom have a few inches of leash. He and I both need to remember that I don’t have permission for squat yet. I let go of her hands long enough to scoop her up, one arm reaching behind her back, the other lifting at her knees. I set her down sideways on my lap, which makes my legs and my erection and the chest she’s cuddling into like she belongs there all very happy.
I breathe for a moment. It’s one of the best things I ever learned as a Dom. Pause. Be in the damn moment. I won’t be holding Scorpio for the first time ever again, and every inch of her is hot and sweet and mine and right where I want her.
She’s got her nose practically buried in my chest. I know what she’s doing, because I’m smelling her too. Imprinting on her scent. Autumn leaves and salt and something that smells totally lickable.
Then I feel her shiver, and I realize we don’t have all night, because eventually we’ll freeze to death on this stone wall. I reach for her envelope and lay it in her lap. “Show me what you want, beautiful.”
Her hands are shaking, and I slide one of mine under her jacket to the small of her back. Steadying. Giving her an anchor. We’ve suddenly gone way deeper than I expected, and we’re not nearly done yet.
We both need me to be her Dom right now. The words will catch up.
Chapter Eleven
Scorpio
I am falling into this man and all I’m doing is sitting in his lap. I’m pretty sure that’s dangerous, but nothing in me wants to move.
His head slides down by my ear. “Show me.” His voice is full of gravel, and it has my hands jumping to obey.
It doesn’t do shit for steadying them, however. When I picked out the photos I liked from the comfort of my own couch, it felt like a game. This doesn’t feel like a game at all. I’m acutely aware that if I show this man what’s in this envelope, he’s going to do those things to me. Not as his partner, his equal, his sexy playmate.
As his sub.
I know what surrender is—I’ve let myself go into more songs and pounding beats than I can count. And I know that Harlan won’t stand for anything less.
I somehow manage to get the envelope open and dump the photos onto my lap. “I only picked three.” My words sound all wispy and apologetic, and that pisses me off. I lean into his hand on my back. “There’s more I liked, but these are the ones that jumped out at me strongest. I think that’s what you wanted.”
He puts a hand over the pictures, blocking his view. “Tell me what I’m going to see.”
I don’t want to be naked that fast. “You have eyes. Use them.”
“Mouthy sub.” He sounds amused. “Remind me that we need to spend extra time on the punishment clause in the contract.”
I can’t resist. “You could sing to me. That would probably cover it.” Ari brought him to karaoke night once. The man has many talents. Tolerable pitch isn’t one of them.
His hand tangles in my hair and pulls, hard enough to get my attention. “Brat.”
I tip my head back and look straight into his eyes. “If that’s not what you want to sign up for, say so before I totally embarrass myself here. I don’t put myself in the closet of girls with good manners for anyone.”
I love the smile that sneaks onto his face. “Yeah. Got that.”
It sounds like he maybe does. “How does that work with being your sub?”
This smile is long, slow, and deadly. “Only one way to find out, beautiful.”
He’s undoing me, one gravelly word at a time. I sit up straight and look at dark shadows off in the distance. “One of the pictures is a room done in velvet. It’s sexy, but not frilly or soft. Another is the restraints one you already saw. The last one is—” I glare at him. “It would be easier to just get naked.”
His eyes are eating me up. “Welcome to my world. What’s the last photo?”
“He’s undressing her.” I fire the words out, trying to push him
back with them. “She’s just standing there.”
He lifts his hand up, and his voice is back to gravel. “Show me.”
I manage to find that image without dropping the others, which, given how badly my hands are shaking, is ridiculously hard.
He wraps his hand around mine, and I can see his eyes studying the picture. I’ve told him the basics, but they’re not what matters. A woman is standing in soft light, her head tipped back on the shoulder of the man behind her. She’s dressed in underwear we can’t really see and what is probably his shirt, and he’s sliding the shirt off one shoulder. All body parts are covered. It’s practically chaste.
Except for the look on her face.
I freaking hope he doesn’t see that part. “I’m assuming he keeps going after the shirt.”
His chest rumbles around me. “Duh.”
I squiggle a little further away on his lap. His hard cock against my leg I can handle. It’s the rest of the intimacy of this that’s freaking me out. “So, I picked. I showed you. What now?”
His fingers are lifting my chin again. “Next is the contract. And know that after you sign it, this avoidance crap stops. You think something, you feel something—you tell me.”
I can feel myself crackling. “You don’t own me.”
“Wrong verb. Right idea.” He’s not backing down an inch. “You’re new, but you’re not that new. You know what a sub is. What she gives.”
Edges. Fuck. “Fine. Let’s do the contract.”
He doesn’t bother hiding his grin at all. “You’re sexy when you’re steamed, do you know that?”
I roll my eyes. “Get used to it. I have a feeling you’re going to piss me off a lot.”
He’s still laughing as he pulls a small tablet out of a pocket in his jacket. “You okay with squinting at a small screen? If not I can email this to you and we can do it in the morning.”
By then I might lose my nerve. “My eyes are young and limber. Is it the newbie contract? I’ve seen that one.”