The Princess Sub: Club Volare Boston

by Chloe Cox

  He finished, looking at her with that effortless Dom confidence. Sierra didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. And in that moment, with the firelight flickering on his face, and warmth in his eyes, she was just grateful that she was with someone who understood that.

  She nodded.

  “Good,” Conor said. “Now. Is this a good birthday?”

  “Are you insane?” she said. “Yes. Yes, it’s a good birthday. Yes.”

  Conor smiled easily, a smile she hadn’t seen before. It was gentle, somehow, tender. He reached up one of those massive hands and threaded it through her hair, his thumb brushing against her cheek. He held her face like that as he looked into her eyes and spoke.

  “That’s the present,” he said. “You are done having bad birthdays, Sierra. Only good ones from now on.”

  “Why do I believe you?” she whispered.

  “Because I’m your Dom,” Conor said. “And I’m making a promise.”

  Sierra didn’t know what to say. Instead, she watched his face. This face that she trusted beyond all reason, that she was pretty sure, as of this moment, she was heartbreakingly in love with. Up until that moment, Sierra had never questioned whether she could handle love. But now, with it washing over her…

  But Conor was different. He was still watching her, but closely, now. Like he was looking for something.

  “I’m not done,” he said. “And normally, as your Dom, I wouldn’t overload you like this. But you deserve to know.”

  “What?” she said.

  “We got the stalker.”

  Sierra didn’t know what she was expecting, at that particular moment, in the firelight of a clambake on a beach on Cape Cod, but it sure as hell wasn’t that.

  She had to blink a few times.

  “You what?” she said, eventually.

  Conor was still watching her in that careful way. Like he was looking for her reaction, or…Sierra didn’t know. There was still something she didn’t know.

  “You got him?” she said. “Like, it’s over?”

  “No,” Conor said, still looking at her. “It’s not over. We think he was working with someone else.”

  Sierra was still trying to process the idea that she no longer had a stalker, so it took her a minute.

  “Wait, what? A stalker…team? Is that a thing?”

  “Not really.”

  “So…what? Someone hired him? Why?”

  Conor opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but Sierra beat him to it. There had been this effervescent, bubbling joy, a lightness building in her chest, and now, for some reason, it boiled over. She laughed, delighted.

  “I don’t even care,” she said. “The immediate danger is gone? And you guys will get him eventually right?”

  She closed her eyes this time, and squeezed Conor’s big, strong arms with her hands. She could hardly believe it.

  “We’re following several leads,” she heard him say, but she didn’t care. She laughed again, a peal of joy that rang out clear and high over the sound of the waves.

  “Oh my God,” she said, opening her eyes eventually. “You have no idea how this feels. I mean, I know I’m going to be a mess when the fear and everything else I’ve been actively repressing hits, but like. I’m free, Conor. I’m so close to being free.”

  She looked at him, and in the dying light he was still studying her with that inscrutable Dom face of his.

  “What?” she said.

  “You look really happy,” Conor said.

  “That’s because I am,” she said.

  His shoulders settled, his eyes relaxed. He went from watching her to gazing at her. Like he’d made a decision, somewhere in that Dom head of his.

  “Why have you been looking at me like that?” she said. “Oh my God, I forgot. You said three things. That was two. What’s the third thing?”

  With that weird spontaneous joy, she put her tiny hands flat on his chest and tried, as hard as she could, to pin him down on the sand.

  “Come on, fess up. What’s number three, Caveman?”

  Sierra’s weird spontaneous joy apparently liked to play with fire.

  Conor’s eyes flashed as he smiled, rising against her hands effortlessly, even though she put all her weight into it.

  “Caveman, sir,” he said, as he took hold of her wrists and began to push her back in the opposite direction.

  Sierra giggled as he pinned her to the blanket below in slow motion, his big body looming over hers.

  “Please, Mr. Caveman,” she begged. “Tell me the third thing before you ravish me.”

  “The third thing,” Conor said as he pinned her arms over her head and pulled her comfy sweatpants down over her hips, “is that I’m in love with you.”

  Sierra was silent as Conor stripped her down to nothing, his hands running all over her heated, aching body, his eyes on hers the whole time. She couldn’t speak. There weren’t words. With her body she answered him, shuddering at his touch, drawing him to her as fast as he would allow.

  She couldn’t speak, but her cheeks were wet as he finally kissed her. She’d never cried from happiness before. She hadn’t really thought it possible.

  “I love you,” she whispered into his mouth.

  Conor kissed her once more as he slowly, inch by inch, slid his cock inside her, filling her to the point of bursting in one more way.

  Sierra didn’t know what she’d done to be this lucky, or this happy.

  Maybe this time — this time — it would last.

  Thirty

  Conor was amazed.

  He’d watched his sub — his Sierra — all morning for signs of a freak-out. The previous night on the beach had been intense, and most people who grew up hard had a hard time trusting happiness once it came around. He’d been on the watch for a happiness hangover like that.

  Only his sub wasn’t hungover. Sierra was…happy. More herself than Conor had ever seen her. Easy, relaxed, smiling and laughing at nothing as they packed up their things and said goodbye to Granny’s cottage.

  They were on the road to the Fiore compound early, since technically Sierra would be working. Just this launch party and then she would finally get a break. Plus, the immediate threat of Tony Tomes was gone. Those were all good things. Should be a good weekend.

  But that Dom voice in his head got louder and louder the closer they got to the Fiore compound. The more he saw how Sierra’s guard had dropped, her face smiling up towards the sun as they wound up the Cape.

  Conor didn’t want her guard down for one good reason.

  Jared Fiore.

  He mulled it the whole way. When they came in sight of the Fiore compound gates, wrought iron set in great raw stones of pale reds and yellows, like they’d been dug out of the Tuscan ground, Sierra brought her hand to her throat. An unthinking, unconscious gesture. She was feeling things, lots of things. Then she turned to him and looked…happy.

  Jesus Christ. Rourke hadn’t been kidding around. Conor would move a mountain to keep that smile on her face.

  But it couldn’t last. He’d have to tell her, eventually. After they had evidence. He’d break into the family office, get whatever they needed, let Sierra get through the party safely, then they’d make their move. Detain Jared, let the DA handle the rest. And tell Sierra the truth.

  Conor just had to keep her safe in the meantime.

  He brought the giant SUV to a gentle stop, just short of the gates. Sierra looked at him.

  “You ready?” he asked her.

  Her eyes softened. “I am now, yeah.”

  “I told you we’re not done,” he said. “Tomes was working with someone. We’re still treating this as an active threat. I need you to remember that.”

  “I know,” she said, and took a deep breath. “And honestly, I’m a little weirded out that he wasn’t ‘working’ alone. But you can’t know how good it feels to know that the scumbag who…”

  Sierra couldn’t finish the sentence. She just l
ooked at him, her eyes wide and open and vulnerable, just like they had been the first night he’d stayed to protect her.

  “I’m just glad you got him,” she said.

  “Me too,” Conor said. “But you will take your security seriously, Princess. Understood?”

  Sierra smiled as she leaned back against the seat.

  “Oh I understand that extremely well,” she murmured.

  Conor frowned at the gates as they opened in front of him. His sub thought he was flirting. He trusted her to take it seriously, but if there was even a hint that she wasn’t, Conor would do what he had to do to keep her safe.

  “I’m not kidding around, Princess,” he said as they eased their way down the drive. Christ, it was more like a road. Thing went on forever. The whole place was meticulously landscaped with trees and brush, like a park that sat high on a bluff over the Atlantic, and as they turned a corner the house itself came into view.

  It looked like a castle someone took from the Italian countryside, blended it with an English manor house, and dropped the result on the water in Cape Cod. Huge, imposing, beautiful, even. But somehow out of place.

  “I know you’re not kidding around,” Sierra said. Conor nodded, turning the giant SUV onto the gravel courtyard between the two main wings of the house. He pulled up close to the flat stone patio in front of the giant stairs leading up to the massive front entrance and noted that there were several uniformed staff members out on the steps, lined up at attention, apparently waiting for them.

  It was a little creepy.

  “You know all these people?” he said. “We’ve done background checks on everyone, but do you actually know any of them?”

  “We didn’t grow up like this. This is Jared’s thing,” Sierra said. “He’s…into having servants.”

  Conor smiled grimly. He’d be more surprised by the revelation that water was wet.

  He got out of the SUV quickly, eying Kane as he approached from the side. Lyons Security would be all over the place already, some of them blending in, some of them decidedly not blending in, for effect. He opened Sierra’s door and helped her down onto the patio, then fixed her with an unmistakable look.

  “You will take your security seriously,” he said, one more time.

  “Oh my God, yes,” she said, looking up at the sky.

  Suddenly Conor took her hand and pinned it to the small of her back, thrusting her chest up to him. He took a moment to appreciate what belonged to him and then sealed it with a long, devouring kiss.

  “It may be your birthday,” he said, “but I will spank you as needed. When needed. Wherever that is. Understood?”

  Sierra had flushed a deep red, a smile at the corner of her lips.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Good. You will wait here while I go talk to Kane.”

  “Conor,” she laughed. “This is technically my house.”

  Now it was Conor’s turn to smile. “Are you disobeying an order?”

  Sierra’s got wide. “Nope,” she said. “No, sir. Not at all.”

  Conor nodded and pulled her to him so he could kiss her forehead, slipping his hand down the small of her back to grab a handful of her ass as he did so, right where the cheeks met her legs. Her little plaintive moan was satisfying as hell.

  “Good girl,” he said, smacking her on the ass.

  This was going to be a tough weekend. But one way or the other…

  It would all be over.

  Sierra stood in the ridiculously large courtyard of the ridiculously large mansion her father had insisted on building for her mother, years before she was born, and tried not to look like an idiot. She definitely felt like an idiot, standing there in front of a bunch of people — staff hired for the party, presumably? — who were themselves standing at some sort of attention, all while dressed like old-timey butlers.

  While Conor went to go chat with Kane on the other side of the courtyard, Sierra was trying to figure out what bothered her so much about…well, the whole servants-at-attention thing. They were staring straight ahead like royal guardsmen or something. She tried waving at them, but nope. Like statues. It was like Downton Abbey cosplay. Her father would not have been into it.

  But then again, her father had weird tastes. Weird enough to build this house, anyway.

  It couldn’t even properly be called a house. It was that big. Her father had built it for her mother as a wedding present, an old man trying to impress his much younger wife. Of course, then her mother had died in childbirth, and the rest…

  Sierra wasn’t sure her father hadn’t hated this house, in the end. She didn’t have any happy memories here, not until Conor kissed her in the courtyard, and she was pretty sure it had only ever reminded her father of what he’d lost. And then it became this fortress of wealthy solitude that still couldn’t, in the end, protect him. And now it just sat here collecting dust, for the most part. Jared used it for parties, maybe sometimes for weekends. But it seemed like such an enormous waste. Sierra had fantasies about turning it into a school or a hospital or something.

  The man her father had become, or was becoming, towards the end, would have understood that. That was the man he was in the letters he wrote Sierra once she went away for school. The man who was full of regrets for his past, who wanted to use what time he had left to repair the damage he’d caused and spread goodness in the world.

  Well, maybe Jared would be ok with donating it to charity.

  Sierra smiled to herself, with just a tinge of sadness. Hope springs eternal, I guess. But if her father could start to change so radically in his eighties, well, maybe there was hope for anyone. And after having a Dom like Conor practically fall out of the sky and into her life, Sierra could believe in almost anything.

  And like he’d somehow known she was thinking about him, her twin brother emerged from the house.

  Jared was in one of his light tailored suits, a crisp white shirt, and sunglasses. He paused at the top of the steps leading up to the house that was still, incredibly, lined on both sides by unmoving, uniformed staff. Like he was surveying his empire—only Jared hadn’t built any of it.

  Then he saw Sierra, and began jogging down the steps.

  She braced herself as she saw him coming. It was instinctual: her shoulders tensing up, her core tightening, the way you would if you were preparing to be attacked, somehow. Sierra was so used to it she might not have noticed it at all if she weren’t coming off a Conor-related relaxation high. But she was, so she did. And it made her sad.

  But still. He was her brother.

  “Hi, Jared,” she said as he walked up to her.

  And to her surprise, Jared took off his sunglasses, an expression of concern on his face, and looked her right in the eye.

  “Sierra,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “You are?” Sierra blurted out.

  Man, her guard really was down.

  Jared…grimaced? Like an expression of…regret?

  “That’s fair,” he said, nodding. He paused for a moment, as though collecting his thoughts. When he raised his head, his eyes were soft, almost warm. He was smiling slightly. It would have looked affectionate if it didn’t look so awkward.

  Sierra, meanwhile, was too stunned at that admission to respond. “That’s fair” was the closest she’d ever gotten to an acknowledgement from Jared, let alone—

  “I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Jared said, interrupting her thoughts with another freaking bombshell. “I’m sorry for how I’ve treated you, Sierra. Not just about this party, but…”

  Jared paused again, his brow furrowed. Like he wasn’t used to this, and it was hard for him, but he was trying.

  “For all of it,” he said, eventually. “I know that might be hard to believe, but maybe in time…”

  He shrugged. Sheepishly.

  Jared Fiore apologized, and then shrugged sheepishly.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Sierra said, and it was the absolute truth.

&nb
sp; “I hope you’ll still come on stage with me tonight,” Jared said.

  “Uh, yeah,” Sierra said. “Of course. That was the plan.”

  “Great,” Jared said, smiling brightly. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of preparation to do—your people are already here, out back in the garden, setting everything up. And your hired gorilla is coming over with a look on his face that tells me I should make myself scarce.”

  Sierra blinked, then looked over her shoulder. Conor was walking towards them, quickly. And yeah, he did not look happy.

  “I won’t keep you,” Jared said. “But thank you, Sierra, for giving me another chance.”

  And just like that, he turned around and jogged back up the steps. Sierra had no idea what was going on, but for the first time in her life, she actually believed she might actually be this lucky. It was possible.

  Right?

  Conor didn’t know how it worked, exactly, but even though his back was turned, he knew the second Jared appeared. The expression on Kane’s face only confirmed it.

  “I’ll deal with it,” Conor said, abruptly.

  They’d already been over the arrangements for the party about a dozen times, all at Conor’s insistence. Jared’s security set up around his office with the records they would need to nail him meant that Conor would have to be the one to break in. No one else on Kane’s staff at the moment had that particular skill set. Conor couldn’t really blame them—most people didn’t know how to subvert a security system, climb out onto a roof, and repel down an air shaft. Special forces were special.

  But it meant that Conor wouldn’t be by Sierra’s side for at least fifteen minutes during the party. He didn’t like it. He didn’t have a choice, but he didn’t like it. So they’d been over the arrangements for her security so many times even Kane was getting bored.

  And now Jared was up to something.

  Several thoughts ran through Conor’s mind as he closed the distance between him and Sierra, his eyes fixed on Jared the whole time.

  One: Tony Tomes had been out of circulation for long enough for Jared to notice. The DA didn’t think there had been any leaks, but who knew what Jared knew?