by Lilia Moon
He’s got something else to say and I want to hear it. “And your unofficial answer?”
His eyes are watching me and there’s no laughter left in them at all. “In the end, this lifestyle is about walking the walk. At some point you might just have to show him.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Emily
I feel so very different than the first time I stepped through Fettered’s doors. It’s hard to believe that was only a week ago.
Ari’s on her stool, manning the gates again. I smile at her. “Hey. Is Damon available?” It occurs to me that I probably should have checked before I showed up.
There’s easy welcome in her eyes—and rabid curiosity. “We’re hosting an event that’s just getting started. He’s probably going to be on the floor most of the night.”
I have a lot of questions, and they’re squabbling for position at the front of the line. “What kind of event?”
“Newbies trying their first public scenes.”
I remember what I saw in the dungeon last time, and the slow fire that’s been churning in my blood all day snaps into high gear. “The people last week weren’t new?”
“There are always some new folks on the floor, but this is an event we put together especially for people who haven’t tried the public thing before.” She talks about this as easily as I talk about brushing my teeth. “Sometimes you don’t know what you want until your body gets to try it, so we’re making tonight as safe as possible for people who want to experiment.”
I think of some of the things my body has discovered it wants—and the man it wants them from. “A chance to walk the walk.”
The look in Ari’s eyes now is pure speculation. “Yup. There’s a big difference between wanting to be spanked and bending over the bench.”
If I intend to do this, I have to at least be able to walk in the front door without dying of embarrassment. I meet Ari’s gaze and grin sheepishly. “We didn’t get as far as a bench.”
She laughs. “There are four out on the floor tonight if you want to give it a try.” She hops down from her stool. “I’ll tell Damon you’re here.”
I can walk at least this much of the walk. “Can I maybe just go in and look for him?”
Respect gleams in Ari’s eyes, and approval. “Yeah.” She reaches behind me and locks the entry door. “I’m done here anyhow, and I’m working the floor tonight, so I’ll go in with you.”
I don’t know her nearly as well as I do Leo, but I can tell she’s volunteering to be a friend at my back. “Thank you.” I take a deep breath. “Is there anything I need to know so I don’t act like an idiot in there again?”
“You did fine last time,” she says quietly. “It’s okay to want things and to let people see that. No one will shame you for it, not here.”
I wonder if she knows that she’s quoting her boss almost word for word. “Last time I was here, I didn’t know that I wanted any of this.”
She’s studying me, listening intently. “And now?”
I have no idea what to say. Damon is her boss. “I like what I tried. I’d like to try some more.”
Her whole face lights up at that, and she slides her arm into mine. “Well then, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s go watch some newbies find out how they like hanging their asses out in front of an audience.”
A week ago that sentence would have had me bolting for the door. Tonight it feels strangely enticing.
Ari navigates us through most of the bar area without stopping. “I need to get on the floor. You can come with me or hang out in here. Up to you.”
She’s giving me a graceful out. I don’t want it. I want Damon. “I’m coming with you.”
She stops at the door to the dungeon and waves me forward. “After you.”
The sounds catch me before I even make it all the way in. I recognize some of them now. The crack of a Dom hand meeting someone’s ass. A sub whimpering at denied pleasure.
I walk slowly, also hearing and seeing what wasn’t here last week. Someone’s breath hitching in indecision. An order given in a voice that isn’t quite certain. A sub in the corner, looking at a spanking bench, her eyes full of desire—and trepidation.
I’m not the only one who’s new at this. Somehow that settles me more than I thought anything possibly could.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Damon’s Dom voice isn’t loud, but it cracks across the dungeon anyhow, and I’m not the only one whose head jerks his direction.
He’s at my side in three steps, every line of his body furious.
I won’t shrink back. Not now. “I need to talk to you.”
“Then make a fucking appointment and come to my office.”
I don’t call him an arrogant ass, but it’s a very near thing.
His furious eyes flick to Ari, who has materialized at my shoulder. “She’s not a member. She shouldn’t be in here.”
“The contract you signed with her makes her a probationary member.” Ari’s voice is completely calm, and it steadies me.
I can see a lot of attention turning our way, pulled by the gravitational well of Damon’s fury.
I won’t be sucked in. “You think I don’t belong here. I want to find out if that’s true.”
“That isn’t your choice.”
“Yes it is.” I take half a step closer and put my face as close to his as I can. “When we’re in a scene, you get to decide. Until then, my choices are mine.”
I can practically hear Ari applauding beside me.
And I can see that Damon isn’t swayed so much as a hairsbreadth by my words. He’s too angry. Too certain.
Too convinced I can’t do this.
I step back and I see victory in his eyes. But I also see something else. My gut wants to believe that it’s hurt. Sadness. A man who wants this as much as I do, even if he can’t see the way to get there.
It’s that man I came to talk to—but Damon isn’t going to set him free. Not here. Not with me.
Words aren’t going to get this done.
I turn and look around the room until I see what I need. I start walking, trusting that Damon will watch where I go.
When I get to the unoccupied spanking bench, I turn to face him. It’s time to walk the walk. I meet his gaze, just like he’s taught me to, and in every other way, I let my body tell him that I’m ready to do as he demands.
That I’m his.
He’s frozen, still standing where I left him, his gaze locked on mine.
I smile, and let all of what I feel show in my eyes. “Please, Sir.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Damon
I can’t believe she’s doing this.
My sub, standing in the heart of my club, issuing a challenge. Daring me to scene with her, and every person in here knows it.
I can see Ari circling to Emily’s side. Harlan too, both of them reading the cards on this table like the pros they are.
Shit.
I hate that they’re getting ready to pick up the pieces, and I hate that Emily has just put us both in a place where some of them are going to be mine.
It’s my spanking bench she’s standing beside, the one that usually lives in my playroom. My favorite toy, and she wants me to bend her over it and turn her ass red and make her come.
I want, desperately, to live in that world. To welcome her into the center of who I am and somehow have it work. But I’m a realist. The woman who’s standing by my spanking bench, already starting to shake, already losing her nerve, isn’t going to be able to stretch this far.
I refuse to be the man who breaks her.
I see Ari step in and murmur something in Emily’s ear. And then I see my sub’s eyes fly up, and there’s fire flashing in them.
Fuck.
It’s not going to be enough to tell her this won’t work. I need to show her.
I take one step toward her, and then another. Ari steps back, shaping the circle, creating the invisible boundary that will hold us as we s
cene. It’s not necessary—no one will step into my space, and we’re not doing this over my favorite spanking bench, no matter what anyone else thinks.
I walk right over into Emily’s face and keep going, forcing her backward with the sheer strength of my will. I don’t touch her. That would undo us both.
I can see the uncertainty in her eyes. The growing fear.
Good.
I back her up until she runs into the dungeon wall and stops, eyes wide. She stood in exactly the same spot a week ago, panting and shuddering and laying out her desire for the whole damn world to see.
I wish it wasn’t there now. Even facing down the fury of her Dom, I can see her wanting. Trusting me to deliver for her, just like I did the last time she gave herself to me.
I growl and yank her arms above her head, encircling her wrists with one of my hands. My other reaches for her breasts, finding a nipple just as my mouth finds hers. She tastes like apples and sweetness and her squeak of astonishment has my cock ready to split my pants open.
I pull my head back just as she’s beginning to respond. “Is this what you want, Emily? To have me fuck you against the wall of my club with everyone watching?”
Her eyes are huge, and it stabs me somewhere important that she’s seriously considering my question. It was supposed to be a threat. The one that would make her leave.
She licks her lips and tries to say something.
I growl and tweak her nipple.
She moans and leans into my hand. “Is that what you want, Sir?”
My control is nowhere near where it should be, and I know it. This is deadly, dangerous territory, and I should be stopping this right now.
I yank my hands off her and take a step back. “You stood here a few days ago and wanted to come. Can you do it now?”
She’s just looking at me. Bereft. Shivering. Lost without my touch.
This is possibly the worst thing I’ve ever done as a Dom—and I don’t know what else to do. And then I do. I step to the side, out of the way of her path to the door. “Red. Go. We’re done.”
I can hear hissed inhales in all over the dungeon as Emily slowly peels herself off the wall. She gives me one long, last look, and then shoulders back, head held high, she walks by me.
Out of my dungeon. Out of my life.
Chapter Forty-Four
Emily
My phone is beeping relentlessly. I ignore it, just like I ignored Ari when she tried to chase me down as I left Damon’s club.
It isn’t anyone from that world I need right now. I turn the corner at the end of the hour-long walk through the night that has brought me to the quiet, upscale neighborhood where Meghan lives, and finally find enough space in my ribs to take a full breath.
That was an utter disaster, and somewhere in my three-mile walk, I’ve gotten honest enough to admit it wasn’t all Damon’s fault.
I waved a red cape at a bull in front of all his friends.
I can hear my breath hitching. My rational brain might be trying to forgive him. My heart wants to stomp all over him in four-inch stiletto heels and then cuddle his bruised and battered body and tell him that I’m falling hard and I need him to catch me.
I tromp up to Meghan’s door instead. I need someone to remind me that I’m perfectly capable of catching myself, and my best friend since third grade has the widest independent streak I know.
It isn’t until she opens the door, bleary-eyed and pulling on her robe, that I realize what time it must be. “I’m sorry—it’s late. I can come back tomorrow.”
She grabs me before I even manage to turn to leave. “What the heck are you doing wandering around in the middle of the night, Em? You never do that. This neighborhood isn’t that safe.”
The part of me that knows how to stay safe is lying broken and bleeding on the floor of Damon’s dungeon.
She herds us into the large and comfortable space that serves as her living room, dining room, and spare bedroom, and plunks me in a corner of her couch. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
I’m never moving again. I lean my head back into the couch’s familiar squishiness and let my eyes drift closed.
“Don’t you dare go to sleep on me.” Meghan’s back, and judging from the two mugs of steaming cocoa in her hands, I’ve lost track of a few minutes.
I yawn and take one of the mugs. “Sorry, I’m crashing.”
“Yeah, got that part.” She holds up her phone. “I also have about five hundred panicked texts from Ari and Leo, which I only discovered because a dozen of them came in while I was making hot chocolate.”
Meghan is religious about putting her phone on Do Not Disturb at night. Brides can be disturbingly nocturnal. “Sorry. Tell them I’m fine.”
“I told them you’re here. I have no idea if you’re fine yet.”
I don’t know either.
“So. Spill.” She’s using her no-nonsense voice, the one she pulls out for scared grooms and drunk uncles with wandering hands.
“I spent yesterday and this morning with Damon at his condo and had some of the most mind-blowing sex of my life, as well as a bunch of other stuff I’m too tired to tell you about.”
She snorts. “You’re so not getting off that hook.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you after I’ve had some sleep.” Fatigue is landing on me and it weighs more than a soccer team of elephants.
“Get to the part where you’re arriving at my doorstep in the middle of the night.”
My eyes drift closed again and there doesn’t appear to be anything I can do to stop them. “He doesn’t want me in his world.” That one short sentence stabs pain through my numbness. “In a moment of temporary insanity I went down to his club, wandered in on newbie night, and asked him to spank me in public.”
It seemed like such a smart, brave idea at the time. “He shoved me up against the wall, threatened to fuck me silly, and I seriously considered letting him do it.” I close my eyes and feel the tears leaking down my cheeks. “And then he told me to go.”
Dead silence.
I open my eyes to see if Meghan’s shocked to the point of speechlessness, and find her grinning at me instead. I scowl and wipe my face with my sleeve, snot and all. “What?”
“Someone finally cracked you.” She looks unreasonably pleased at this discovery. “I wasn’t sure that was ever going to happen.”
I’m not the only one who lives a pretty buttoned-up life. “What’s wrong with the way we live?”
“Nothing.” She takes a sip of her hot chocolate. “And just for the record, I’m going to stay right where I am and hold down the fort of women who have their shit together and don’t have guys offering to bang them against a wall. But I’m glad it’s happening to you.”
I manage not to throw my mug at her. Barely. “Thanks a lot.”
She looks at me and tilts her head. “Would you have let him do it?”
I scrub my eyes with my hands, too tired to lie. “I’m not sure.” The remnants of my buttoned-up self scramble to explain. “It’s different than it sounds. In his world, the trust and openness matter more than the sex.” I splutter to a stop. There’s just no way to make this sound even a little like something I might have done last week.
She’s staring at me, eyes wide—but she’s also considering. Finally she nods. “It sounds a bit like getting married. Making a public commitment instead of just shacking up.”
Somehow a woman in pajamas and fuzzy slippers has just nailed it. “Yes. Except he doesn’t want to. Or maybe he does, but he doesn’t think I can handle it.”
Something slips into Meghan’s eyes, and it looks oddly like amusement. “And you’re going to let him get away with that?”
I stare at her, sure that my brain has stopped comprehending whatever language she’s speaking. “What do you think I should do, strip naked and dance in his lap?”
She grins at me. “It sounds like you already tried that.”
More or less. I’m all out of words. I just stare.
She stands up, pats me on the shoulder, and takes my hot chocolate. “Sleep. You’ll think of something in the morning.”
I slide down the couch into oblivion and bring the last look in Damon’s eyes with me. And decide that Meghan is right.
This isn’t over yet.
Chapter Forty-Five
Damon
“Idiot.”
I wake up to a pillow bouncing off my head. It takes another ten seconds to fully process that I’m at my desk and I’ve fallen asleep on my stapler.
“Gods.” I push myself up to sitting and look at the man who threw the pillow. Harlan looks pissed and it’s not hard to guess why. “Everything okay downstairs?”
He rolls his eyes. “That was last night, and yes, I took care of it. No thanks to you.”
I don’t abandon ship very often, and I’m not in the mood to apologize for it now. I needed to bleed in private. “Don’t be a hard-ass.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” His words crack out, a Dom in full sail. “What the fuck was that, the crap you pulled with Emily? Since when do you leave a sub high and dry and walking the streets on her own?”
Guilt lands with lead feet. “Ari tracked her down, said she’s fine.”
“Ari’s gold, but it’s not her job to take care of your subs. It’s yours.”
I don’t need a lecture from my best friend, especially when he’s right. “And I’m the guy who taught you that, so just lay off.”
“Not gonna.” He stands in my office door, legs spread, arms crossed, looking like the tank I’m going to have to go through if I ever want to leave again. “Someone needs to read you the riot act, and I punch back.”
I scowl at him. “It’s complicated.”
“Not from over here, it isn’t. A sub so new she still squeaks asked for something she’s not remotely ready to do, and you cranked her up and then abandoned her.”