Linger

by Lauren Jameson

  “Didn’t you have quite a treat the other night?” Luca pushed the bottle of wine aside so that he could get a better look at her face. Scarlett tried to will any emotional reaction from her expression, but Luca was a damned experienced Dom, and she knew she wasn’t fooling anyone.

  “That’s not open for discussion,” she warned, hiding her face behind her cup. She’d managed to avoid thinking about Logan for a good chunk of the last few days, since she’d been so busy packing. But Luca’s reminder brought it all back, and now it felt like a heavy weight had settled in her stomach.

  She had been sure that her disappointment would fade within a few days. So far, she’d been wrong.

  Luca eyed Scarlett thoughtfully. She glared right back. The man might have trained her, but since they were both Dominant, they were equals, despite her lack of comparative experience.

  Of course, they weren’t at Veritas. But Scarlett was pretty sure that Luca would respect the boundary anyway.

  He studied her for a long moment, those dark eyes taking in things she was sure she didn’t want him to see. Walking away from Logan the other night had been one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do, and she was still feeling decidedly unsettled.

  “I’ll miss you, kiddo,” Luca finally said, his face heartbreakingly handsome when he smiled. He was the type of man she was usually attracted to, Scarlett mused—swarthy good looks, a slick smile, a dirty sense of humor. Yes, she usually preferred that kind of man, not cowboys with scruff dusting their jaws, with tight asses in even tighter jeans, with challenge in their eyes.

  Damn it.

  “I’ll visit,” she said mildly. She’d have to if she wanted to experience her kind of sex. Montana didn’t boast any major cities, and though she’d combed online sites, she hadn’t found any hits for BDSM groups there, either. “And it’s only for a year.”

  But right at that moment the thought of visiting Veritas—of playing in the club without Logan—made her want to stick a straw in the wine that Luca had brought and start slurping.

  “Whenever you make it back, I have a submissive who is quite desperate for another scene with you.” Luca grinned wickedly, wiggling his eyebrows. “In fact, after that paddling you administered in the bar this week, I suspect there’s going to be an outbreak of broken hearts when I tell the subs that you’re gone.”

  Scarlett rolled her eyes. Normally, she would be pleased that her skills had been admired.

  But normal wasn’t a word that applied to what had transpired between herself and that big cowboy.

  She really didn’t feel like telling Luca that, though, so she pretended to consider it when he told her it was Bren who was asking after her. She felt a flicker of surprise, not that the submissive had made any secret of his interest in her, but that he was so quietly persistent.

  If she hadn’t met Logan the night before, she might have been intrigued.

  But she had. So she wasn’t.

  “I’d rather not start anything I can’t finish right now,” she finally said, hoping that she sounded convincing. The way Luca arched his eyebrow at her told her he wasn’t buying it, but he let it slide the way he never would have if she had been a sub.

  “Fair enough.” Draining his coffee, Luca kicked back in his chair, arms behind his head. Scarlett was amused to see most of the females and a few of the men in the shop not so surreptitiously eyeing the very large, very sexy man. “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone that you’re secretly pining away for me.”

  The smirk on his face made Scarlett consider, quite seriously, dumping her Frappuccino over his head. Finally deciding that would be a waste of whipped cream, she bent over, ostensibly to tug on the top of her boot, but really to let him see the tops of her breasts, which were displayed fairly chastely in her V-neck T-shirt, but she knew he would look.

  He did and had the grace to smile wryly when she smacked him on the knee. “Babe, I’d eat you alive.”

  “I don’t doubt it. You need someone strong like me, though . . . but someone who wants to let you be the bossy bitch you are in the bedroom,” Luca replied, his lips curving into a smirk. “In fact, if you’d just let me matchmake, I know the perfect person for you.”

  “No. No more.” Scarlett held up a hand, saw something uneasy flicker through her friend’s eyes. She blinked, sure she’d imagined it, and then her cocksure friend was back, placing his feet in her lap, right in the middle of Starbucks, owning the small coffeehouse the way he commanded every place he went.

  “I’m not going to see you for a while,” he started, wiggling his feet in her lap. “So before you run off to Montana, let’s have a good talk. I want to make this visit count.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The bottle that Luca had given her—a going-away gift from all three owners of In Vino Veritas—jostled on the passenger’s seat of her Honda Civic as Scarlett maneuvered the vehicle over the gravel road that led through the front gate of her destination.

  A weathered wooden sign with FOLSOM FARMS carved into it arched overhead, the posts gnarled, rough, and looking almost as though they had grown right out of the ground.

  At the end of the rutted lane, with one hand on the pricey wine for safety, Scarlett pulled up in front of the large house that would be her home for the next year. Her mouth fell open slightly as she climbed from the car and got a good look at the structure . . . and at the massive dog lying on the front porch, an animal that was hairy and gray and nearly as big as she was.

  The dog lifted his head, looked at her, and returned to his nap. Scarlett smiled, amused, and looked back at the house.

  Made of the same rough wood as the front gate, the house wasn’t as big as it had seemed at first glance. But almost the entire front of the building was made of glass—windows that stretched floor to ceiling—and the way the glass reflected the setting sun and the blazing sky cast an optical illusion, making things seem more open than they really were.

  And they were plenty open already. Shading her eyes, Scarlett took a moment to stretch out the kinks from her long drive and to get the lay of the land.

  So much land. Open, untouched, stretching out under the endless Montana sky. The vast emptiness was fiercely beautiful—and more than a little unnerving, after the neon lights of Vegas.

  “Hey there, big guy.” When the massive dog finally roused himself, trundling over to say hello, Scarlett crouched down, eager for the company. “You must like having all this space to run around.”

  The dog sniffed her hand and promptly flopped down to the ground, rolling over to beg for a belly rub. Charmed, Scarlett buried her hands in the soft fur and indulged him.

  “Oh, I see. You’re more the type to just laze around and survey your kingdom.” Scarlett laughed when the dog shook the fur out of his eyes and rolled them in delight. “Well, thank you for letting me come here to look after all of your royal subjects.”

  “That’s Mongo. You’ve got his number already.” An amused male voice made her jolt. “It’s his house. I just live here.”

  Shading her eyes again—she’d left her sunglasses in the car—she rose to her feet and dusted her free hand on her jeans before holding it out. She’d been looking forward to meeting the supervisor of her veterinary internship in person for months.

  When her eyes locked on the man who was staring at her, looking equally shell-shocked, she understood the pained expression that Luca had given her over coffee yesterday.

  A jolt went through her as their eyes met. Damn it. That inexplicable connection between them was every bit as tangible as she’d remembered.

  “I . . . What . . . ?” Uncharacteristically lost for words, Scarlett let her stare linger on the man whom she had last seen with a hard, lickable ass bent over a barstool.

  “You’re Dr. Logan Brody?”

  Scarlett took a step forward—to do what exactly, she wasn’t sure—and wondered if s
he should throttle Luca or thank him.

  Now she knew why he’d looked uneasy for a split second yesterday . . . He’d been at the club that night. He’d seen what had pulsed in the air between Scarlett and the beautiful blond man whom she’d topped.

  Knew he’d sent her off to live in close quarters with that cowboy for the next year. And he hadn’t said a damn word.

  “S stands for Scarlett, then.” Under her scrutiny, Logan stuffed his hands in the pockets of his worn jeans and stared back, his expression unreadable. “Or maybe for sadist. My ass is still sore. You have a hell of a swing.”

  “You said you wanted to feel it,” she shot back, then found herself blushing. She never blushed.

  But here it was, out in the open. And oh, what a clusterfuck.

  Her one-night stand, the man she’d admitted to wanting to break apart and build back up, was her boss for the next three hundred and sixty-five days. And though he had to have come to the same realization, he was just standing there, a hint of an insolent smile curling his lips.

  In fact, he looked like he was enjoying the hell out of that notion—like he was relieved that their power struggle had finally flipped in his favor.

  Scarlett’s gaze raked over him hungrily. So many times in the last few days, she’d replayed their time in the club, wondering if she’d made the right decision by leaving without making plans for more than what they’d already shared. She’d wondered if she would ever see him again.

  She wasn’t upset about this turn of events, even though it complicated things greatly.

  Logan looked mouthwatering, his jeans faded, ripped, and tight in all the right places. A slim-fitting black T-shirt stretched over the chest that she’d had her hands all over, and the boots she’d taken off of him herself were back on his feet.

  Her fingers itched to touch him, to run her hands over those broad shoulders. She took another step forward, her new cowboy boots crunching on the gravel, and watched as a shutter that was damn near visible dropped down over his face.

  It stopped her in her tracks.

  He had let her top him inside the walls of Veritas, but out here—out here the rules were different. This delicious alpha male was her new supervisor, a fact that tilted their power exchange way off its axis.

  “Bags in the trunk?” Logan finally asked. Scarlett strained to hear some kind of inflection in his voice—anything to let her know that he was feeling even part of what she was. But his face was set as he pulled her two suitcases from the car without even straining, though they had to weigh upward of sixty pounds each.

  “I’ve got it.” He waved her away when she reached for one, scowling until she backed off. Shrugging, she followed him into the house, though she did sneak a peek at the way his arm muscles flexed under the weight of her luggage.

  But when he walked up the stairs ahead of her, her face was put right on level with the fine spectacle that was his ass. The fact that she’d seen that ass naked, touched it, owned it had Scarlett digging her nails into her palms in an attempt to keep her hands to herself.

  “This one is yours, if it suits you.” By the time Scarlett had followed Logan into a large, sparsely decorated bedroom, she was vibrating with lust. Realizing that he expected a response of some kind, she turned in a slow circle, taking in the wooden dresser, the patchwork quilt.

  The wrought-iron headboard. An image of Logan spread on the bed with his hands bound to those bars had dampness surging between Scarlett’s legs.

  She swallowed desperately. Oh man, this was so awkward. Mostly because all she wanted to do was jump him, and yet he stood there, as cool and composed as if they’d never met.

  If he hadn’t commented on his sore ass, she might have wondered if the man she’d met in the club had an evil twin.

  “Well. I’ll let you get settled in.” Logan nodded once shortly. “I’ll make some dinner. Come on down when you’re ready.”

  He might have left like that, leaving Scarlett utterly bewildered, but he hesitated, then crossed his arms over that wide chest.

  Body language 101, or so Luca had called it. Arms crossed over the chest . . . Logan was feeling just as disconcerted as she was.

  What should she do? Be professional and pretend that what had happened between them . . . well, hadn’t?

  That was ridiculous. It had happened, and there was no going back. So Scarlett decided to take matters in hand. It was going to be one hell of a long year otherwise, because she wasn’t going anywhere. She wanted this internship experience.

  And it would be what they made of it. It didn’t have to be awkward.

  No, it could be downright delicious instead.

  Bad, Scarlett. Bad.

  But she couldn’t look at the man and not remember how he’d felt inside of her.

  “Are we going to address the situation?” Slowly, Scarlett pulled her arms from the sleeves of her fitted denim jacket. The posture arched her back, brought her breasts forward.

  Logan’s gaze flicked down, took in the view she was offering. He shifted, and Scarlett’s eagle eyes watched his cock swell against the front of his jeans.

  “You really want to start out this way?” He looked into her face, his expression set in stone, and for a long moment Scarlett felt her heart leap into her throat—he was going to reject her, and this was going to get even more awkward, if that was possible.

  But how could he ignore it? That pull between them?

  When she looked into those cerulean eyes and saw a hunger that mirrored her own, she understood that he was just as confused as she was. She couldn’t help it—she smiled, a slow curve of the lips.

  “You fight dirty.” Logan growled, his gaze raking her up and down. Scarlett felt as though his hands had touched her in all the places his eyes had looked.

  And with those words, the admission of the need vibrating beneath his sneer, that delicate balance of power shifted yet again. Triumph, relief, washed through her.

  Scarlett drew herself up tall and placed her hands on her hips. “On your knees.”

  That twist of his lips faded for a moment—with shock, Scarlett assumed—and then it was back.

  “We’re not at Veritas, little girl.” He took a step toward her—crowding her, trying to take some power back. “You don’t give the orders here.”

  Scarlett didn’t move.

  “But if you want me, all you have to do is say so.” Another step—now he was close enough that she could feel the heat emanating off his skin.

  And she felt that connection snap back into place like it hadn’t been three days since they’d rocketed each other into a state of bliss.

  “I said, on your knees.” He didn’t move; neither did she. Her mind raced, trying to think of a way to make him submit that didn’t involve physical force.

  His chin tilted up with defiance, pride, and it hit her. A big, stubborn alpha like this—she hit him in his Achilles’ heel.

  “I’d have thought a big, tough cowboy would be man enough for a real Mistress,” she taunted, twisting her lips into a wicked smile. “But maybe you can’t handle anything more than a little playmate who has no idea how to top you.”

  Logan’s spine stiffened, and victory lit her up when she saw the flash of anger in his eyes.

  Challenge accepted.

  “You’re kind of a bitch, aren’t you?” There was no heat in his words—it was merely an observation he offered as he finally sank to his knees, shifting to look up at her.

  “Arms behind your head,” she said quietly, savoring the rush of power that came from obedience—from this man’s obedience. “Head down.”

  Another pause, a mutinous glare, and then he did as she said. Scarlett looked at him for a long moment, noted the tension and the desire stringing him tight.

  She also noted that his cock had swollen to full hardness as they’d interacted, tel
ling her that, at his most base level, he wanted this. In fact, it looked like he wanted it so much that it was damn uncomfortable.

  “Don’t move. Not even an inch.” She’d just let him think on that for a few minutes. And allow time for her to compose herself, to think about what all of this meant now.

  She’d been kicking herself for days over leaving him behind, never dreaming that he hadn’t lived in Vegas, too. And here fate had smacked a second chance down in her lap.

  She just had to reconcile that with how badly she wanted to learn while she was here.

  “I heard you the first time.” Logan glared at her, and Scarlett raised an eyebrow to hide her amusement.

  She turned to the purse she’d tossed on the bed, rummaged through it, then returned to Logan with a bandanna.

  “Don’t you dare,” he spat as she folded it into a long strip. His muscles twitched, like he was fighting the urge to stand.

  “When I tell you to kneel, I expect you to embrace the posture fully. That means no fighting it. Not even with words.” He narrowed his eyes at her; she returned the expression, then pressed the folded cloth over his mouth.

  “Fuck!” Logan tried to pull away, but Scarlett hooked a leg over one of his shoulders, pressing the softness of her belly against his face, offering him the heat of the place that ached between her legs.

  The distraction paid off. Logan stilled, his nostrils flaring. Scarlett flushed a bit, knowing that he was scenting the musk of her arousal.

  She pushed through the small wave of discomfort at the sudden intimacy between them, since he’d done what she wanted. While he was distracted, she swiftly slid the gag over his mouth, worked it between his lips, then tied it snugly behind his head.

  He growled, his eyes throwing little daggers her way.

  “Do it completely, or don’t do it at all,” she reminded him. “And if you choose not to do it, sniff three times loudly to get my attention.” Turning her back in a purposeful dismissal, Scarlett reached for the zipper on one of the suitcases that Logan had lugged upstairs for her. She felt Logan’s presence behind her, demanding her attention, and it took everything in her not to turn around.