by Lilia Moon
I didn’t miss the first part of what she said. “But not with Harlan.”
She shrugs, and her eyes are full of steely empathy that makes me flail helplessly. “He’s one of the best men I know, and he gets people, way down deep where they sometimes hide the things they most want.”
I shudder, because that’s the most attractive thing about him—and the most dangerous.
She hands me the photo. “Consider whether maybe your Dom sees something important and he wants to give you a chance to meet it.”
Her words are a fist to my gut. “I don’t want this.”
She reaches for my hands—and she never looks away from my eyes. “I’m going to stick my nose in way deep where it doesn’t belong, and Harlan’s probably going to kick my ass for it.”
I manage a wobbly grin. “I’d like to see him try.”
She laughs, and then she leans her forehead into mine. “If this really is a hard line for you, he’ll be the first one to respect it, and if he doesn’t, there will be people lined up for a mile to beat him up.”
“I’m not going to like the rest of this sentence, am I?”
I feel her smile. “You’re a smart cookie.” She pauses, assembling her words carefully. “There are a lot of Doms who will let you get away with conditional surrender—heck, lots of them won’t even notice you’re doing it.”
I tip my head, remembering what Harlan said about her last night. “That happens to you a lot, doesn’t it? That’s why you were having so much fun last night. The guy from L.A. is a good catcher.”
Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Yeah. He is.” She pauses and bites her lower lip. “It’s a really big gift when someone can do that.” She taps the photo without looking away from me. “I think maybe Harlan’s asking for the chance to do that for you.”
I close my eyes. I don’t know if I can say yes.
Chapter Thirty-One
Harlan
Damon pushes away his laptop as I walk into his office. “Whoa, what crawled up your ass?”
I want to scowl at him, but my face is already there. “Nothing.”
He snorts. “Scorpio did great last night. What happened between then and now?”
I fling myself into the most disreputable chair in his office. “What makes you think I’m having sub problems?”
“You’re here early, you’re wearing your meanest leathers, and you’re sulking in my office.” He looks amused. “Do I need any more reasons, or are you going to stop the middle-school crap and tell me what the hell’s going on?”
The guy’s known me since forever. That’s not always an upside. “I don’t know yet.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Does it have anything to do with Ari texting me that she’s going to be late because she dropped by Scorpio’s place for breakfast?”
Fuck. “Does she have to stick her nose in every damn thing?”
“Yes. It’s what we pay her to do, and she’d be doing it even if we weren’t paying her, so don’t be an idiot.”
The side of me that’s been a professional Dom for fifteen years knows that’s a very good thing. The rest of me is pissed off and cranky and out of sorts. “I’ll find shit that needs repairing today. I probably shouldn’t inflict myself on actual people.”
“Good to know where I rank,” says Damon dryly.
I reach for the stapler to throw at his head, but he beats me to it. He leans back in his chair and raises the eyebrow that says I’d better talk or I’m going to seriously regret it.
I growl at him. “I taught you that look.”
“Yes, you did.”
Fuck. “I pushed on her last night after we left. Probably too hard. Total joykill on a great night.”
He shrugs. “You must have had your reasons.”
That’s the problem, right there. “I did. I’m just not sure I’m right.”
His face is more serious now—but it’s the eyes of my friend, not my boss. Waiting with patience and compassion, because in our world, talking is everything, even for two tough guys who run the place.
“Two things. First is that I kind of dragged her into this, because I wanted to play and she’s curious enough to have given it a shot. But she was really clear that she doesn’t want to live on the edges all the time. She did that with her band. Too much blood.” I don’t need to say any more than that. We’ve seen plenty of bleeding in our world.
“So you pulled her into the warm and fuzzy world of kink.”
This office needs more staplers. “For her it kind of is. She totally fit in last night, and there’s plenty of warm and fuzzy in what we’ve built here.”
It’s his turn to scowl. “I blame that part on Ari.”
We both know that’s bullshit, so I don’t bother saying so. It comes straight from the top—she’s just the cheerful, cute face we put on it these days so that people don’t try to hug us all the time. “Hell, even Emily totally fits in here, and she’s way more mainstream than Scorpio.”
Damon gets the goopy look in his eyes that happens whenever Emily’s name comes up. “Yeah.”
I snort. “Focus. You’re supposed to be quizzing me on my problems.”
He eyes the stapler meaningfully. “I am. So you think Scorpio wants the soft version of our lifestyle, whatever the heck that is.”
I don’t have to take this shit from my best friend. “Isn’t that pretty much what you’re giving Emily?”
“It might look that way.” He shrugs. “It feels plenty intense.”
That’s exactly the problem. “I used Ari’s porn thing with Scorpio, and I saw something. You know that look subs get when they want something but it’s scaring them away?”
He’s nodding. “You have to push.”
It’s one of the basic laws of gravity for what we do. “I did. She pushed back. Called it a hard limit.”
He winces. “Fuck. Tread carefully.”
I scowl at him. “Why the hell do you think I’m in your office? I’ve got a sub who wants a few edges with lots of safe landings in between, and I pushed her at an edge too fast and she’s telling me to back the hell off. Except her words and her body are saying different things.”
Damon’s watching me with that revved-up stillness he has. “You have the best instincts in the business. If you think she needs this, then you made a commitment to take her there.”
I jam my head in my hands. “I know. So why am I feeling so damn cranky about it?”
The words from the other side of the desk are quiet—and unrelenting. “What do you want to do?”
Crap. I look up, because telling the truth has been the first rule between us since before this office existed. “I want to hold her and tell her she’s safe and let that be enough.”
He looks at me, and then he smiles, and I can see that all the cards have just hit the table. “Those are the words of a Dom who’s falling for his sub.”
Those are the words of a man who’s falling for a woman. “I blame you. What the fuck door of hell did you open around here?”
He grins. “Don’t let Emily hear you say that.”
She’s not the woman I’m worried about. “I can’t think that way about Scorpio. It will mess with all my Dom instincts. It already is.”
Damon’s grin is just getting bigger. “Sing it, brother.”
I want to make his nose bleed, but I’m pretty sure his sub would hurt me. “I manage a sex club. I like my life that way.”
He starts humming something under his breath that even I know is a wedding song.
This time the stapler doesn’t miss.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Scorpio
I walk through Fettered’s back door and sigh. The man needs to get out more, so that I don’t have to keep walking into a sex club to find him. There are edges here, even on a sunny morning when the kitchen smells like Gabby’s carrot muffins.
The three guys sitting at the counter eating them all stare at me, and then Damon and Quint mumble about things they need to do
and head for the hills. I notice they manage to raid most of the muffins on their way out.
Harlan’s looking at me like he can’t figure out whether to hold me or spank me. “Hi, beautiful.”
I don’t want him to be nice to me this morning. I can feel the fight I want to pick with him rising in my throat, and I swallow it down. Ari says he’s offering me a gift. Until I can think straight, I’m going to try to believe her. I reach into my pocket and pull out the image that has collected an impressive number of wrinkles and stains since last night. I don’t let him see it yet. “I came to talk to you about this.”
He looks at me and nods slowly. “Lap or stool?”
I want to crawl into him and stay forever, but there’s no way I’m going to get the words out if I do. I fold my arms over my chest and stand my ground. “You’re right. This isn’t a hard limit, although I really want to say it is. It’s just something about me that I wish you didn’t see.”
He pats the stool beside him. “Come sit down. Have a muffin. Did Ari make sure you ate something this morning?”
The fight I swallowed is back in full force. “Did you send her?”
“No.” He’s not dodging my mad at all. “But I would if I thought you needed somebody.”
My hands clench into fists. “I’m not fragile.”
“I know that.” His hand moves toward me and then lands flat on the counter. “I talked to Damon this morning. In this lifestyle, talking is huge, and needing someone to talk to is never a weakness.”
He’s treading way too close to lands I don’t want to visit. “Sorry. I’m in a pissy mood.”
“I can see that.” He mostly manages to hide his smile. “Have a muffin.”
“I don’t want a bloody muffin.” I slam the image down on the counter. “This is the one.”
He’s watching me, not the picture.
Fuck. He already knows.
His eyes are gentle, but there’s no escaping them. “Why is this the one?”
I want to tell him. I thought I came here to tell him. To trust this big man with the muffin crumbs on his lip and the eyes that care about me —but I can’t. Not even for him. And that pisses me off more than anything ever. “I don’t know. The lingerie, maybe.”
His hand slaps down on the image. “Don’t dig yourself in any deeper, beautiful.” His other hand turns my chin to face him. “You promised to tell me the truth, even when it gets hard. You’re new to this, so I’ve given you some latitude with not telling me stuff. But don’t fucking lie.”
I can feel something in me snapping—and I let it. “You don’t own me.” The words fire out like bullets. Seeking blood.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Harlan
She’s a trembling, snarling mess—and she’s not done. “You don’t get to demand that I strip every damn thing for you just so you can get some kind of joyride off being a control freak.”
Fuck, how do I help her through this?
It’s not her words that matter right now. Those are just hot air. She’s right on the edge of bolting—and if she does, she won’t come back. I know this as surely as I know my own name. And I’m frozen by the war going on between the man and the Dom inside me. The man needs to hold her close and respect the edges she wants to stay away from and tell her it doesn’t matter and she’s entirely worthy just as she is. The Dom needs to help her be everything. It’s why I do this. To help people become who they’re supposed to be, let light into their dark places, strip off their armor, find their place to belong.
The Dom can feel the need beating in the woman in front of me, mouthing off so that I won’t see her.
But if I push, and I’m going to have to push hard, the chances are really good she’s going to run, and I don’t know if she’ll ever come back. She’s given me all kinds of warning—a sub who knows exactly where her quicksand lives and wants to fence it off and keep everyone the hell out.
I fall back on fifteen years of training. I don’t know what else to do. I snap as hard into Dom mode as I can, every fragment of body language making it clear what I expect. “There will be punishment for mouthing off, for lying to me. It will arrive in a box at your office in one hour.” It would be better to do it right now, but I can’t. I need to get a grip on the man first, so he doesn’t sabotage everything the Dom knows is right.
I leave the kitchen while she’s still speechless, heading for my safe place, for the dungeon that was the center of my world until a few days ago. I know before I make it two steps that leaving her alone like this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done—but I’m pretty sure it’s going to pale against what’s coming next.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Scorpio
He’s a dead man—and then I’m going to make him rise from the dead so that I can kill him again.
I grab the box that I just opened on my desk, crumple the note that came with it into something the size of a spitball, and storm out of my office. Where I promptly collide with my favorite videographer and dump both of us on our asses. He stares at the maid costume that’s now spread out all over the hallway. The very skimpy, porny maid costume.
“Um, dare I ask?”
I growl and park my butt against a wall. “Harlan wants me to wear that. I’m on my way to kill him.”
Leo winces and slides his butt to sit against the wall across from me. “The man has balls, I’ll give him that.”
I can’t believe he’s even thinking of taking Harlan’s side. “This was one of my hard limits.”
He looks at the offending white lace again. “What specifically was your limit?”
I stab my finger at the lace. “This. All of this.”
He leans forward and rubs a hand down my shin. “Breathe, lady. Details matter here. Was your limit wearing a maid costume, or serving him, or role-play in general, or something else?”
My brain’s going to explode. “All of it. Any of it.”
He just raises an eyebrow, and I suddenly don’t have any doubts at all about what role he plays with Sam. “Do they teach that look at Dom school?”
He flashes me a grin. “Yup.”
Figures. “I don’t remember our conversation super clearly, but it’s the idea of being seen as something less that really torques me.”
He nods. “For what it’s worth, Sam dresses up in all kinds of things where someone on the outside might assume that, and not once, ever, have I thought he was less than me. Mostly the opposite, but he kicks my butt when I talk that way.”
I try to imagine Sam in a maid costume and what’s left of my brain falls off a wall of ice into the ocean. “I still don’t want to be anyone’s servant. Does that make me some kind of judgmental shit?”
The eyebrow is back. “No, it makes you a sub who knows herself well enough to tell her Dom important things that will help keep play safe and fun.”
I wince. “Except obviously I wasn’t clear enough.”
“You’re new, and he’s the best at reading body language of anyone I know.” Leo pats the costume. “Maybe he goofed, and if he did, you’ll figure out between you how to clean that up. But unless I’m missing some of the details, it sounds like he asked you to wear it. Not to serve him, not to role play—just to wear it.”
I hiss. “I’ll feel like less as soon as I put it on.”
He leans across the hall and strokes a knuckle down my cheek. “That’s very different than being treated as less. I don’t know for sure, but it sounds like he’s threading a very difficult needle. Doms only do that if they think it’s important.”
I lift up a leg and kick the door jam. “He wants me to wear it while he spanks me.”
Leo’s face twitches like hell, but he manages not to laugh. “Fun or punishment?”
Suddenly I’m nauseous and nothing about this feels funny anymore. “Punishment. I lied to him. And I said some really mean, bullshit things. I got scared and I ran off at the mouth and I threw crap at him that he totally didn’t deserve.”
L
eo’s arms are around me before I finish speaking, and I turn into him, too upset to be picky about whose chest I whimper on. He holds me while I suck in enough breaths to hold it together, and then he pushes me back up to sitting, his eyes glued to mine. “Better?”
I nod and stay quiet. He’s clearly got stuff to say.
“In the vanilla world, when you screw up, you go apologize and then you try to figure out why you did whatever you did so that you don’t do it again.” He waits until I nod. “In the kink world, with a Dom you trust, punishment can get you there faster and cleaner. It repairs the trust, reminds you both of what you have to lean into so that you don’t have to be scared alone the next time.”
I can feel the tears forming, and that will end me where I sit, so I choke them back. “Just thinking about it makes me feel like a scared little kid.”
“At some point, tell Harlan that. That’s the kind of thing your Dom needs to know.” He runs a hand down my arm. “In the meantime, know that there’s one monumentally important difference between you and that helpless child.”
I shake my head at him.
He smiles. “One little word will stop your big man dead in his tracks. You have all the power, lady. Even punishment is your choice.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Harlan
I’m an idiot. A stuck-in-a-rut idiot who apparently doesn’t know how to stop being a Dom even when his happiness depends on it.
I’ve pushed and now Scorpio’s going to run, and then there won’t be a wonderful armful of woman in my lap anymore, and even my Dom’s not going to be very fucking happy about that. I spin around and head for the door. I spend too damn much of my life in this club and I need to get out.
I make it as far as the front walkway and find Ari sitting on a rock, wrapped up in a scarf and a hat the color of the maple leaves over her head. She takes one look at me and snorts. “Well, it looks like Leo was right.”
I don’t want to know what Leo has to do with anything. “I’m in no mood to talk.”