by Chloe Cox
Sierra clicked the little replay icon, and the clip of Conor pulling her off the bar and over his shoulder, flashing her ass to the entire world, played again. It had been shared approximately one gajillion times. Someone had combined it with the clip of Conor flipping her over his shoulder at the frat party, and Sierra herself couldn’t stop watching it.
It turned her on so freaking much, she couldn’t stand it.
And that was infuriating.
She couldn’t move without her thighs brushing together, reminding her of where Conor’s fist had rested the first time he’d carried her down off a roof. She couldn’t breathe without feeling the spot on her chest where he’d put his hand. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing his face when she’d lied—again.
Is there anything I need to tell you?
Yeah. I’m a sub, I want you, and I’m losing my mind.
“Everything ok, Miss Fiore?”
Sierra shook her head. She’d made some sort of frustrated, pissed off sound and hadn’t even realized it. Her bodyguard for the night sure had.
“I’m ok, Ben,” she said. “Sorry. And thank you.”
“No apology necessary, Miss Fiore. Are we going anywhere tonight, or do you plan to stay in?”
“Staying in,” she said. “Definitely.”
And with that Ben nodded politely, and faded back into the background.
It was truly weird how quickly she’d gotten used to having someone around all the time. On the other hand, he wasn’t Conor. Conor was impossible to forget about. Even when he had a night off somewhere, probably with some other woman, someone he actually respected enough to want. Not just tease in an elevator. Anyway, Ben didn’t deserve her Conor frustration. And the fact that she was clearly behaving like an actual spoiled brat about it just deepened her embarrassment.
Damn Conor Kelly.
She was saved from another mental round of gymnastics by her phone—and by one ring in particular. It was Palmer Hoff, of Hoff Partners, her business partners for the cosmetics line she was about to launch. Sierra grabbed the phone so fast it didn’t have time to ring again.
“Palmer!” she said, way too enthusiastically. “What’s up?”
“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Palmer said.
Oh crap.
Even over the phone, Sierra could hear the concern in Palmer’s voice. Not personal concern—Palmer wasn’t a jerk or anything, but that wasn’t their relationship. He was professional. And Sierra had always really appreciated that he treated her professionally. So Palmer sounding worried? Not good.
“Is this about the clips going viral right this very second?” she said.
“It is, yes.”
Sierra closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“You don’t think they’re on brand?” she asked. She’d thought that was the one thing she had going for her. Her fans were already joking that having a hot bodyguard to throw you over his shoulder was the new must-have accessory. They loved it almost as much as she had.
“They’re definitely on brand,” Palmer said. “But I am concerned about safety, Sierra. We’re very close to launch, and there is the…persistent threat.”
‘Persistent threat’ was Palmer’s polite way of referring to her batshit crazy stalker. The one who’d left her a pig’s heart outside her supposedly impenetrable front door not just a few days ago with another promise to kill her. That one.
“Right,” she said.
“I don’t want to sound callous, but if something were to happen to you right before launch…”
“Millions of dollars gone,” she said. “I know.”
“Neither of those clips seemed as though they happened in an environment I would describe as particularly controlled,” Palmer went on. “Is this a security problem? Do we need to scout out a new firm, or—”
“No,” Sierra said, the firmness in her voice a surprise even to her. “It’s not a security problem. It’s a me problem. And I’ll take care of it.”
There was a pause.
“Ok,” Palmer said, finally. “Take care of it.”
Sierra hung up and flopped back on her couch. Well this wouldn’t do. At all. She was, essentially, risking her future because…why? Because she knew why. She freaking knew. She’d just been in denial.
She looked down at her laptop. Almost as if her fingers had minds of their own, they flew over the keys, calling up the Club Volare Boston website and logging her in from memory. There were no pictures on the website, nothing but a schedule and the portal to the member’s only section. Her account page wasn’t yet complete. Her application had been approved ages ago, but she’d chickened out before paying the membership fee. It was the final step. The last thing she had to do before she could just walk into Club Volare Boston like she belonged there.
This was the reason she was losing her mind. Not Conor Kelly. This.
But she was wound up so tight she couldn’t admit it. She couldn’t just admit that she was slowly losing her grip, and she needed a release, and the closest she was likely to get any time soon was by jumping up on a dumb bar and pouring tequila on drunk people. So when Conor had asked, she’d lied.
She wanted to believe she just couldn’t give Conor the satisfaction of knowing he was right. And that was part of it. But she kept thinking about that look in his eyes, and Sierra knew, deep down, that what she couldn’t handle was the rejection. Fine. She still had some pride left. And she was going to hold onto it come hell or high water.
Which meant she had a problem, and there was only one way to solve it. She needed release. She needed Club Volare.
Her heart thudded against her chest for a long, quiet moment. And then her fingers were flying again, typing in her credit card number from memory, hitting enter, enter, enter until the screen changed to a single page that said just one word.
“Welcome.”
“It went through,” she whispered. She was officially a member of Club Volare Boston with full privileges.
“Miss Fiore?” Ben asked.
“Change of plans, Ben,” she said. “We’re going out.”
As soon as she said it, Sierra felt that tension creep back into her belly. Yeah, she might be recognized. She might be exposed, and have to deal with people actually knowing something real about her. Not just something: the most personal thing possible.
But if she didn’t go, she was going to keep putting herself—and maybe other people—in danger.
This was Conor’s fault. He’d had her up against the wall, ready to do whatever he wanted. Sierra would have done things — let him do things — that she never in a million years thought she’d do. He’d brought her to that point in under a minute, and then…
He’d left her there.
He’d known what he did to her. He had to. She saw it in his eyes. He knew she was his for the taking. And he’d walked away.
Well, there would be someone at Club Volare who wouldn’t walk away. Someone she could trust not to see her as just a silly brat. Someone who could give her what she needed.
And that person would not be Conor freaking Kelly.
Twelve
Conor woke up the day of his first night off with an erection that could have punched through a concrete wall.
It had been less than a day, and every time he closed his eyes he saw her eyes looking up at his, her lips parted. He’d been this close to breaking. To slamming his hand down on the emergency stop button in that elevator and ordering her to her knees to suck him off before he turned her around and drove his hard, hungry cock into her slick heat, all the way to the hilt.
But more than that, he was pissed off.
He wasn’t supposed to care. Not about this client, not like this. She wasn’t his sub. Conor had no business being disappointed in her, wanting to discipline her, caring one way or the other about what she did.
But then she’d lied to him. Again.
He’d felt it in her heart, beating under his hand. Seen it in her ey
es. She was still defiant, still too proud to admit she needed something, still putting herself in dumb danger because of it.
There were still a few possibilities. Sierra might be kink curious, not sure how to go about it. She might not want to admit her attraction to Conor. Or she might just be lying her ass off.
Either way, every fiber of Conor’s body wanted to take her in hand the way she needed to be taken in hand. He knew a bratty sub who wanted to test him when he saw one. Not treating her like one felt like swimming against the current—you do it if you have to, but it’s not what nature wants.
And the thing inside him was growing. Every time he thought about her, he felt it stir. It was a relief, in some ways, from the cold of revenge, from being the guy who couldn’t save any of the people he loved, could only get them justice after the fact. And in other ways it made him fucking crazy. And if he didn’t take care of it soon, it was going to compromise the mission.
There was only one thing to do when a man felt like this. Went double when a Dom felt like this.
He needed a willing sub.
He needed a woman under his hands, bound, powerless, begging. He needed to feel the last of her control give way, needed to feel the gift of her submission wash over him. Needed to feel her come around his cock, pausing just long enough to savor it before he picked up the rhythm and fucked her all over again.
So when he came down the Club Volare stairs, tight and sore after a long day of being bent over a computer following up on the leads Rourke had given him, he had only one thing on his mind. And the subs crowding the Club Volare lounge knew it. Looked like dozens of them, every kind, every stripe, all of them looking at him like they were ready to get on their knees at the snap of his fingers. Should be a damn candy store.
He didn’t want any of them.
“Don’t see anything you like?”
It was Kane, coming down behind him on the stairs. He came to a stop at Conor’s left, the two Doms surveying what was on offer below them.
Conor just growled in response. He didn’t have it in him to pretend to be civilized at the moment.
Kane laughed.
“You’ve got a problem, huh,” Kane said.
“You don’t know what I’ve got.”
Conor felt Kane Lyons follow him as he made his way down the main staircase of Club Volare Boston. Conor’s patience for that was only going to last so long, but for the moment he wanted to get down from the landing, where he wouldn’t be annoyed by the sight of a whole bunch of half-naked women who weren’t Sierra Fiore. It was nothing against Club Volare’s subs, who were all beautiful in their own way. Under normal circumstances, Conor would be having a field day. But his cock had decided the circumstances weren’t normal.
His cock had fucking opinions now.
Conor jogged down the stairs with Kane in tow, eyes scanning the first floor of the mansion out of habit. The pile of bricks Kane had bought for Club Volare Boston was a grand dame of a mansion, double-wide, with four huge rooms on the first floor arranged around the central staircase. On the upper floors were the smaller private rooms, not much in use yet, but ready. Conor was staying in one. Here on the first floor, they’d made the entry foyer into a little reception area, security stationed outside. Once inside, nobody wasted any time.
One room, the former parlor, was a lounge area where people just kind of sat around in their fancy fetish gear and socialized in a very classy setting. That wasn’t for Conor. Another room housed the bar, next to the old servant’s stairs that went down to the kitchen into the basement, refurbished into a true fetish club, and then further in was the first public play room. Next to that was the library, where he was headed. From there he could watch the entrance and brood over his cock’s demand to fuck Sierra Fiore immediately without having to swat away too many single subs.
And apparently he was going to have company.
“Why are you following me like a puppy?” he said to Kane as he took a seat in one big leather armchair. Kane laughed and sat in the other with the slow confidence of a man who owned the place.
“You’re the only person to ever compare me to a puppy,” Kane mused.
“You still haven’t answered the question.”
“I figure with a face like that, you must have an update on the case,” Kane said.
Conor eyed him and wondered. His face was carefully blank. Sometimes hanging out with other Doms was a pain in the ass.
“Nothing substantial yet,” Conor said. “Got a list of all known pieces of crap currently connected to Jared Fiore, but it’s about a mile long. It’ll take a while to comb through it.”
“Known pieces of crap?”
“Guys with a rap sheet, guys in debt to the wrong people. That kind of thing. It’s a big list.”
“Sounds like the case is progressing normally.”
“Sure.”
“So then what the hell is your problem?”
Kane said the words so mildly they took a second to register. When they did, Conor laughed. He liked Kane for the same reasons the man scared other people.
“It’s a problem I’m going to solve,” Conor said, eventually.
“Sierra.”
It was a statement. Not a question.
Conor stared ahead.
She was supposed to be a means to an end. A harmless airhead who’d give him access to evidence he needed to put Jared Fiore away for Mikey’s murder, and in the process Conor would save her life from her brother’s second attempt at murder. Fair trade, and she never even had to know about any of it.
Instead she was complicated. Smart. Perceptive. And a sub looking for a Dom. The kind of natural bratty sub that managed to push all his Dom buttons just by giving him a look. A sub who didn’t know she was a sub was always a mess, but this was something else.
That charge, that fucking thing between them, the electricity that jumped along his skin and made his cock stand straight up when he thought about her—it helped push her to act out. Do stupid stuff, like jump on bars in a place where he couldn’t guarantee her security.
The thing in his chest flipped on again, a flash of it, hot and sharp. Whatever she was waking up inside him didn’t want to go back to sleep. And it wanted Sierra.
“You’ve got some energy to work off,” Kane said.
Conor shook his head. He’d practically forgotten about the other Dom.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“There’s plenty of subs here tonight.”
More than plenty. A few kept walking by, making eyes at Conor.
“You don’t want them though, right?”
“Watch it, Kane.”
“Quit your bullshit, Conor,” Kane replied, just as quickly. Again, Conor laughed.
After a pause, Kane’s voice turned serious.
“Is it getting in the way of the mission?”
Conor turned.
Kane was watching him, closely. The other Dom’s eyes were narrowed. He was looking for something specific. Conor’s own Dom instincts clicked on.
Of course Kane knew that Conor was attracted to Sierra, because Conor had a pulse. And he knew that Sierra was a handful.
But there was something else.
Conor had asked, when he was pitching the whole operation to Kane, whether Sierra was a member of Club Volare. She’d come to Kane Lyon’s firm for her security, after all. Kane had sworn that she wasn’t a member.
He hadn’t sworn that she wasn’t a sub.
“What are you trying to tell me, Kane?” Conor said.
This time Kane looked away, gaze sweeping across the club he’d built. People were starting to filter in, the night was getting going. There were more people each night as the community that had never had a place to call their own started to find it, here, in this fancy ass mansion. One of the things Conor liked best about Kane was that he looked out for people. If someone couldn’t afford the club’s fees, Kane found a way for them to earn their way. If someone was having a hard time, Kane foun
d a way to help them. Nobody was turned away, and he kept people’s secrets.
So Kane wouldn’t have lied to Conor. But he wouldn’t have told him the whole truth, either, if he thought he was protecting someone’s privacy.
Kane finally turned his head and looked Conor in the eye.
“I know you’ll do whatever you have to to keep her safe,” he said. “Just make sure that if you have to choose, you make the right choice.”
Conor didn’t answer.
It was some sixth sense that kicked on and turned his head for him. Some disturbance in the air, a ripple in the conversation around him. Or maybe it was just the damn pheromones creating a trail of scent that the animal inside him was compelled to follow.
He knew it would be her, and he was right.
Sierra Fiore stood just inside the club, right after she would have cleared security. She didn’t have her on-shift bodyguard with her, which was just as well, because Conor would have taken him out. In fact, any man looking at her in that dress was in the danger zone.
Another fucking dress.
This time it was black, sheer, strapless, and defying the laws of physics. It hugged her curves like a second skin, squeezing her breasts together, just begging him to take it off so he could get his mouth on her. The skin on her bare shoulders was shining slightly under the soft light from the chandelier above her, her collar bones two quick brush strokes of white on dusky skin. She was beautiful.
And she was in fucking trouble.
“When were you going to tell me she joined the club, Kane?” Conor said. “You arrogant son of a bitch.”
Because Sierra Fiore wasn’t confused. She didn’t need to figure herself out. She knew what she was, and she knew what Conor was. And she knew why she’d put herself at risk.
She’d just been lying her ass off about it.
Conor stayed right where he was, his Dom instincts telling him to observe. He watched the crowd hush as people slowly started to recognize her. Watched the silence spread out from where Sierra stood, alone. Watched her turn, suddenly aware that she was being watched by a club full of regulars.
Watched another Dom elbowing his friend. Ogling Sierra, like she was a trophy. Just a piece of famous prey for sport-fuckers.