The dog, who was used to playing tug-of-war with Carl, held on and rolled her brown eyes in Carl’s direction, looking for an ally, or so it seemed to Kim.
Carl was laughing too hard to help, however.
“Carl, get ahold of yourself. Bambi”—Lille tugged on the whip, but she was still struggling not to laugh—“let it go.”
Bambi dug in, her back haunches lifting, tail wagging.
Jordan chose that moment to chime in; his voice sounded muffled since his face was pressed to the cross . . . or maybe he was laughing as well. Kim couldn’t tell over Carl’s snorts and howls. “You can’t sound like you’re laughing, or it won’t work.”
Kim zoomed the camera in on Lille’s face, watched it change from laughing woman to woman who meant business. It was fascinating, as if Lille had the power to take her true self and hide it, shove it down in a box somewhere inside her. Kim wished she could do that, could take her true self and put it away, protect it. But she didn’t have inside her this other person like Lille did, a persona that would protect her, make her fearless.
“Bambi,” Lille ordered, her body perfectly still, one eyebrow raised.
Bambi dropped it and sat back, her tongue lolling happily.
“Good girl,” Lille praised her.
Carl’s giggles continued until she turned the look on him; then he managed to tamp it down to a brief chuckle every now and then.
When he was quiet enough for her liking, she turned her attention once more to Jordan. “All right. Let’s try this again.”
CHAPTER Sixteen
When they were done recording, Lille took a moment to cool off in front of the window air-conditioner in the office. Whipping was hard work.
Mary stepped inside, closing the door firmly behind her.
Lille closed her eyes. She’d known Mary wouldn’t let her get away with not telling, not when she’d heard something was wrong.
The chair squeaked as Mary sat down. Lille stayed in front of the air-conditioner.
“So.” Mary tapped her fingers on the arms of the chair. “Tell me.”
Lille gave a deep sigh. “It sounds so dramatic, so stupid, when I say it out loud. You know?”
Mary made an affirmative noise. “So tell it like it’s a story. Like it happened to someone else.”
Laughing lightly, Lille turned away from the air-conditioner and faced her oldest friend. “In a way, it did.”
Mary’s brows rose curiously. “Now that is interesting.”
“Indeed.”
“So who did this ‘it’ happen to?”
Lille walked around the room, rolling her shoulders a little, distracting herself from her memories by looking at the poster of Casablanca.
“Her name—my name—used to be Sarah Wells.”
Mary blinked. “Sarah?” She sounded doubtful. “I don’t see you as a Sarah.”
“I don’t, either.” Lille shrugged. “Not anymore.”
Mary stopped tapping the chair. “You really changed your name?”
Lille nodded. “I really did.”
“Why?”
Lille smoothed her hands down her costume, fingering one of the buckles. “My father was a gangster”—she paused, then amended—“the son of a Russian gangster. Before he was sent to prison, my father would beat the crap out of my mother on occasion. That’s not why he was arrested.” She gave a sour look in Mary’s direction. “He would never have been arrested for that, not being who he was, but he did kill a man and left enough evidence that they put him away for it.”
“Damn,” Mary whispered, leaning forward and putting her elbows on her knees. “You’re serious?”
Lille shrugged her shoulders delicately, her mouth turned down at one corner. “I’m afraid so.”
“What happened? Why did you change your name?”
Lille walked over to the window, pulling back the curtain. She’d cooled off, and the cold air from the AC made goose bumps rise on her arms.
“My mom had terrible taste in men, but she was a good mother, more or less. She came up with a plan to protect me in case my father was ever released from prison. We made up a name, and she had the documents created.”
“Must’ve cost her a fortune,” Mary commented.
Lille managed to smile at her. “What would you know about forged documents?”
Grinning back, Mary shrugged. “It always costs a fortune in the movies.”
Lille laughed. “As it happens, you’re right. I don’t know how much she spent, but the documents she purchased helped save my life after I ran away.”
“How old were you?” Mary asked softly, her voice careful, as if she knew she was treading on delicate ground.
“Fourteen,” Lille said simply, but really, nothing more needed to be said. A fourteen-year-old girl out on her own was a target no matter what she looked like, but when a young girl looked like Lille. . . .
“So why tell me now?” Mary asked. “What’s happened?”
Lille sighed. “I’ve been contacted by someone who claims to represent my father. I don’t really know what he wants.”
Mary was silent for a moment, the news sinking in slowly. “So, if you went to the police . . . ”
“I’d have to tell them the whole story, including my real name. But it isn’t my name anymore. Even then, there’s no proof that he intends me harm or anything.” Lille waved a frustrated hand in the air.
“Do you think he means you harm?” Mary asked carefully, getting up and moving to stand next to Lille.
Lille looked out the window at the palms and birds of paradise blooming in the small landscaped nook around her window. It’s so beautiful here, she thought idly.
She gave Mary a sideways glance. “It seems stupid to take the chance, doesn’t it?”
Mary nodded.
Lille took a deep breath. “So what would you do? Leave? Run away? Change your name again?”
Mary seemed to think about it, but then she put her arm around Lille’s shoulder. “Maybe I would have before I came here. This place has changed me. Having someone I care about has changed me. If I were in your place, I would fight to keep it.”
Lille nodded. “If I had someone who loves me the way John loves you, I’d probably stay and fight as well, but I don’t.”
“Max—”
Lille held up a hand to stop her. “Max doesn’t love me. Don’t pretend that he does.”
Mary stopped, mostly because she sensed that Lille didn’t want to hear what Mary had to say about Max.
“All right. No pretending. But you had big plans for him this evening. It seems a shame to waste them now.”
Lille looked highly amused, but she nodded. “I suppose it would be.”
“You ready?”
Lille took her friend’s arm, allowing Mary to escort her from the room. “Always.”
CHAPTER Seventeen
Lille felt as if electricity was running over the surface of her skin as she drove her convertible over to the pub almost two hours later. Aside from a hint of dusky red on the horizon, darkness had fallen, and a breeze whipped the palm trees planted in the median strip. Carl sat next to her, while Kim and Jordan sat in the back. Kim was recording, always recording, though there wasn’t much to record on the short drive to the pub.
Lille grinned for no reason, feeling the way she had the first time she’d tried Ecstasy back in San Francisco. Whipping someone was surprisingly exhilarating—she couldn’t wait to try it on Max.
She wasn’t actually sure why this evening’s attempt to make an instructional video had turned her on. The exercise had been more hilarious than anything, between Bambi’s escapades and the ridiculous moans and comments that Jordan had made. But the thought of Max beneath her, at her mercy, had kept Lille at least partly in the game. Nobody else had seemed to bother.
“Stop, I can’t stop laughing,” Jordan had gasped when Lille’d trailed the handle of a whip up the crack in his ass after the dog incident.
“Okay, that’s enough.” Carl was still snickering. “We’re supposed to be professionals.”
“That was funny,” Kim conceded. “It’s better.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be funny,” Lille argued, but her lips twitched as well.
Kim shrugged. “Funny will get attention faster than serious.”
Carl had agreed. “She’s right. If you can make people laugh, you have their attention.”
Lille didn’t doubt it, but she also didn’t think Max would be laughing tonight. The crop was in her bag, along with the mask and a couple of feathers.
Anticipation was riding her, making her wet, and the truth was, she didn’t want to think about her father’s call or Mary’s startled reaction to learning the truth about Lille’s past. Talking with Mary had felt almost liberating. She’d always wanted to tell her best friend, always thought she should know. She hadn’t told her before because it hadn’t been necessary. She was Lille, and talking about the past always made her feel restless and ashamed.
Lille tapped on the steering wheel and tried to shake off her sudden melancholy. She imagined the look on Max’s face when he saw her and her mood immediately lifted.
She hummed a little under her breath. She thought that the private investigator she’d called would probably turn up the same information as she already had. She’d sent him an e-mail this afternoon, along with a bank transfer for five thousand dollars, which took a fairly big bite out of her savings. This job needed to work out; if the store kicked ass, she kicked ass. But if she needed to leave suddenly, she wouldn’t be traveling in style.
She pulled into the parking lot of Jobman’s Pub quickly enough that some of the gravel in the parking lot spewed from beneath her tires, then parked in one of the empty spaces next to the rope fence that separated the lot from the back patio. She thought she saw someone through the French doors on the stage, but she wasn’t able to make out who it was. There were a few other cars, older makes and models, but there was also a black Porsche Boxster and a purple Chevy Impala with expensive rims and a white leather interior.
She tilted the mirror to check her lipstick and met the black eye of the camera—she was starting to hate that thing. She stuck out her tongue at it. Jordan laughed, then glanced at Kim with mock longing . . . only Lille didn’t think it was, in fact, mock longing. She blew him a kiss, too.
“Are we ready, friends?”
“I’m starving,” Carl chimed in, “but ready.”
“We’ll eat inside,” Jordan suggested. “It’s shepherd’s pie night.”
“Okay”—Lille threw up her hands—“you’re all ruining my seduction routine here.”
“Seduction routine.” Carl pursed his lips. “That’s an interesting choice of words.”
“You know what I mean.” Lille tilted her head and gave him a haughty look.
He opened the door, pulling the seat forward to let Jordan out. Kim followed him out backward, her camera still pointed at Lille, who put on her best catwalk as she led her little crew through the parking lot to the front of the pub.
“So, when do I get my kiss?” she heard Jordan ask Kim, and then she heard what sounded like someone getting punched in the stomach.
Lille winced and pulled open the heavy wooden door to the pub. Jordan certainly knew how to pick his crushes, she thought with a sniff, feeling slightly superior since she’d never had a crush in her life, even on Paul. She’d just appreciated that he was normal and unsurprising.
Music rolled across them like fog as they stepped inside and walked through the entryway into the bar. Someone was singing a Mumford & Sons song—“Hopeless Wanderer”—in a smooth angry baritone that had the hairs standing up on Lille’s arms.
Charlie and the boys were sitting at the bar as if they’d been planted there. They saw her and waved, but they didn’t cheer; they were facing the stage, listening and watching as someone performed. The bartender, whom Lille had never met, nodded at them as they came in.
Lille had a feeling, even as she took those last few steps that would carry her into the open area of the pub, that she would regret her decision to come to the pub tonight. She knew it as she came to the end of the long wood-paneled wall; she knew it as she turned her head to the left, toward the stage, where Max was sitting on a stool, playing guitar and singing; she knew it as their eyes met, and his widened, yet he didn’t stop playing. He sang on, his eyes taking her in.
He was a gorgeous, blue-eyed, dark, and angry man; and the longer he played, the weaker she felt, until she knew that he wouldn’t be the one whipped tonight. She could feel her power slipping away from her with each strum of his guitar.
Somewhere behind her, she was aware that Jordan and Carl had taken seats on stools at the bar, while some of the other patrons—there weren’t many—had noticed her clothing and let out low whistles and a few shouts: “Hey, honey!” and “Come sit on my lap, baby!” The shouts and cheers, which normally would have made her preen just a little, fell hollowly inside the shell she’d built around herself.
Kim was beside her, recording her wholly unwelcome response to Max onstage, but Lille couldn’t take the step that would get her away from the eye of the camera, couldn’t look away from the promise in Max’s gaze. Anger, resentment, lust, and something Lille couldn’t define swirled in his gaze more quickly than his fingers moved on the strings of the guitar in his hands.
“Shit,” she heard Kim mutter, “if that man looked at me like that, I’d have to change my panties.”
So did Lille, if she really thought she’d be wearing them for very long.
“Kim, I changed my mind. Go away,” she managed, but the girl ignored her.
Max finished his song; the crowd cheered, including her compatriots, but it all sounded very far away to her, as if the blood rushing through her veins were a river that crashed and thudded against her bones, shaking her foundations.
Max thanked them, but he was looking at her even as he set aside his guitar, looking at her as he walked off the stage. And then he was standing in front of her, and for a moment it was as if they were back in the Fetish Box, two strangers who’d shared a bed but were incapable of having a polite conversation.
“I’m going to my office, Lille, if you’d care to join me,” he informed her, close but not touching. She caught the faint whiff of cigarettes and sandalwood cologne.
She did. She absolutely did. And when he turned away and headed toward the hall that led past the bar into the kitchen, she swallowed and did something she’d never done in her life. She followed where a man led.
Gorgeous. Pain-in-the-ass. Woman. Max didn’t know whether to spank her or toss her out of the bar. He was angry. He knew he was angry, but he couldn’t think past the lust that crashed over him. He was leaning toward spanking her because she was the most beautiful feckin’ thing he’d ever seen in his life, and not because of her insane getup. He’d taken one look at her face, at the surprise he’d seen stamped there, surprise at her own unwilling desire, and she’d seemed suddenly vulnerable, suddenly human. Which didn’t stop him from wanting to see her up-ended in his lap, her bare ass vulnerable to the flat of his hand, with maybe a thong that he could pull out of the way. He walked a little faster, though he was so hard that it was uncomfortable to move in his jeans.
He heard Carl shout behind them, “Use the whip, Lille!”
Max reached back and caught her hand, tugging her through the kitchen, ignoring the whistles of Angel and the others. The room smelled of cooking beef, onions, and dishwashing detergent. They made their way around the rolling metal preparation tables and into the dark hallway, past the dressing rooms and into his office.
Her heels clicked on the floor behind him, each tick another nail i
n the coffin of his delusion that he could stay away from her. He hadn’t touched her, had barely seen her, for two weeks, yet she was all he’d thought about. The first thought in his head in the morning, the last before he went to bed at night. There was nothing to do about it except take her while he could, while she let him, while she stayed.
He released her hand to dig his keys out of his pocket and unlock his office door; then he yanked her inside.
Dark and smelling of wood, old books, leather, and, vaguely, German shepherd, it wasn’t the most romantic of settings, but neither one of them was interested in romance. He locked the door behind them. She walked ahead of him, sliding her bag off her shoulder and onto one of his leather guest chairs. She didn’t turn around but stood next to his desk with her back to him, her shoulders straight, her chin slightly down and to the right.
“Lille?”
“Yes, Max,” she murmured.
“Why are ye here?”
“We were going to cause a scene,” she confessed in a soft, emotionless voice.
He grunted. She’d certainly managed that.
“Well, we can’t have ye gettin’ away with that, can we?”
“No,” she agreed, softly, and her acquiescence had him moving forward, sliding his hands into the bun that held her hair, unknotting it slowly, moving his fingers carefully around her scalp and finding the pins that had held it in place. When he was finished, he smoothed the teased mass of it over to the side so that her hair wouldn’t get tangled in the zipper of her blouse.
“That’s it, then,” he murmured. “Such a good one, ye are.”
She murmured something indistinct and rolled her shoulders as he began unzipping the high-necked leather blouse. He peeled it away from her, running his hands over the smooth skin of her shoulder blades. Her skin was like silk and smelled of roses and woman.
“Yer beautiful,” he murmured, and stroked one finger down the back of her spine, feeling each bump, counting them as he descended. She let the thin leather garment drop to her elbows and then to the floor, so she was standing in her black lace bra and narrow skirt, her feet still encased in her heeled boots.
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