by Lexi Blake
“Did I misread the situation?” Riley asked, looking between the two of them. “I can call her back. I assure you she’ll overlook a little embarrassment to bottom for either one of you, though I worry about what your sub might do if you try to take on another one, Master Josh.”
“Kayla knows the rules of the club. She’s not going to misbehave, and she’s certainly not going to question me if I decide to bring in a secondary play partner.” He was well aware he’d gone into arrogant-asshole mode, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t want to become the laughingstock of the club. He wasn’t about to become that Dom, the one who couldn’t control his submissive.
Sometimes he was absolutely certain this was the only place he was in control.
Still, he wasn’t about to tell the man that the thought of taking on a second submissive—even if only for a scene—hadn’t occurred to him once. She was more than enough woman for him to handle.
And it would hurt her, something he couldn’t do.
“Of course, you know her far better than I do,” Riley said, inclining his head politely.
But there it was. It wasn’t the same tell every time, but it felt like Riley Blade knew something he didn’t. Something important. It was probably paranoia. He got that way when the payment was due. He let it go, but he couldn’t help but think that the Dom in Residence wasn’t quite what he said he was. “I do. Is our scene set up? I want to have plenty of time before the party.”
It was the monthly birthday party for the members. Silly thing, but he tried not to miss it. These people were his family and friends. His only family and friends. It was also the perfect time to sneak away. Everyone changed into street clothes for cake and ice cream, wine and beer. He could slip out the back, hop on Jared’s Ducati, and make it to the trail he’d been directed to. He would have to haul ass to find the statue of the Virgin Mary, leave the package there, and get back before the bodyguards knew what was happening.
And hopefully he didn’t step into a nest of rattlesnakes or get torn apart by a mountain lion.
It wasn’t even like he had a million in cash. He was delivering a small box that contained an electronic key. The key would allow his asshole blackmailer to access the account he’d dumped the million in. It changed every time and at no time in the past five years since the blackmail had begun had the jerk allowed him to simply transfer the funds himself. Nope, the fucker liked to make things rough on him. Always somewhere dark. Always alone. Always dangerous.
Like a reminder that no matter how far he’d come, there was someplace dirty and rotten for him to fall back to.
No matter how often he fucked his sub, no matter how good she felt and how well he seemed to sleep after she’d given him everything she had, she was still bought and paid for. She wouldn’t writhe under him, holding him close, if he didn’t keep the payments up.
When he thought about it like that, his whole life was one big blackmail scam.
“Everything has been prepared for you,” Riley said with another nod. “The red room is closed until you and your lovely sub are ready for play. I was surprised. You typically like to play in the larger dungeon.”
The red room was all about intimacy. It was the smallest of the play rooms, and even if he’d wanted a crowd, he wouldn’t have been able to fit more than two or three extra people in.
He wanted her to himself. Even when they were here. It was odd and wrong. She was a woman who enjoyed being watched. He’d never had a single problem showing his submissives off. He would parade them around, allowing the rest of the club to enjoy their naked beauty.
He didn’t like the way they looked at Kayla. She was a bright light and everyone in that dungeon could see it. When she walked in, every head turned, and not simply because she was lovely. They were all attracted to her because she put them at ease with her smile, her bright eyes, her infectious laugh. If she were an actress, she would be the star of every film, the strong center around which the story turned, the lead female every male wanted and every female wanted to be.
“Tonight we’re playing in the red room. Do you have a problem with that, Master Riley?”
The Dom held his hands up in obvious defeat, or perhaps as a way to say he chose not to play at all. “No problem. I’m sorry if I gave offense. I’ll go and check twice, make sure everything is in working order.”
He turned and walked away.
“Dude, what do you have against that guy?” Jared asked.
“Nothing.”
“That is not what it looked like.” Jared watched the man stride toward the back of the club. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so…shit, it’s tonight, isn’t it? When were you going to tell me?”
He felt every muscle in his body tense. “I wasn’t. I was going to lift your keys from your locker, take your bike, and hope you didn’t notice it was gone.”
“My locker is kept locked. You don’t know the combo.”
“It’s Sarah’s birthday. I’m not stupid.”
Jared sighed. “I’m going to change that.”
He wouldn’t but Josh wasn’t about to point that out now. Jared would be pissed enough as it was. “I didn’t want to bring you into it.”
“Except for stealing my bike. You could have gone out there and gotten yourself killed and I wouldn’t have known anything was wrong until I went out looking for my bike,” Jared replied, bitterness in his tone. “Does Kayla know?”
He didn’t want anyone to know, wished Jared didn’t know as much as he did. “No.”
“How is she supposed to guard you if she doesn’t know what’s going on? I thought the whole point of hiring all these people is to keep you safe. She can’t keep you safe if she’s not with you.”
That was where Jared simply didn’t understand. “I hired them to keep me safe from stalkers, not to follow me around, figure out my secrets, and use them against me.”
“You think she would do that?”
He didn’t want to think it. Not for a minute. He wanted her to be exactly what she looked like—loyal, sweet, kind, moral. “I can’t take the chance.”
Besides, she was basically a mercenary. There wasn’t anything wrong with it. It simply meant she would watch out for herself first, and wasn’t that what everyone did? He had one friend he trusted—to a point. Jared knew he was being blackmailed but didn’t know why. Jared thought it was about some kind of a sex tape. He’d tried to convince Josh that everyone made a sex tape at some point in time.
Those people had made them to have fun or to spark controversy that might help their careers. They hadn’t done it to eat. They hadn’t done it because they didn’t know how to do anything else.
What they’d done was playful and fun, and the trouble those celebs would get into if their tapes got out was nothing more than a few days of ridicule. What he would get out of it if he didn’t pay up was something altogether different, something sick and insidious, something he would never be able to outrun.
He would pay up again and again. Anything to keep the world from knowing his secret.
Jared leaned in. “Give me the package and let me make the drop.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t like the guy. It was that sometimes trouble followed him. Like always. And then there was the fact that Jared was easily distractible. One shiny thing and he would forget where he was stashing the very important blackmail payment. But he wasn’t going to hurt Jared. “I can’t. It has to be me and me alone or the deal is blown.”
“You need to bring the bodyguards into this,” Jared said, his voice tight. “They’re trained for this kind of work. They can protect you.”
“I don’t need to be protected,” he shot back. “Do you honestly think she wants to kill me? And have all that money dry up?”
Jared stopped and Josh realized he’d made a horrible mistake. “She?”
“Or he.” Why had he fucking said that? He was careful. Always careful.
Jared pointed his way. “But you said she. You know who this i
s.”
“No,” he replied. “But I did catch a glimpse of her once. Just a second, and I only saw her back. She had long dark hair. She picked up the package and she was gone before I could follow her. She’s not alone, though. She’s got muscle behind her and they’re very attentive. That same night I got the shit kicked out of me because they knew I had stayed behind to watch. He came out of nowhere. I was at a gas station and he pulled me into the shadows and beat me like I’ve never been beaten before. I thought for sure I was a dead man.”
And that was saying something. His life had been about beatings at one point before he’d broken.
“When the hell did that happen?”
“Five years ago. It was the second time I paid.” The memory was crisp in his head, the way a breeze had come off the ocean, the feel of his body being not his own. Again. The smell of blood and fear and failure.
He wasn’t going there again. And he wasn’t exposing Kayla to that side of his life. Or Jared, for that matter. They were shiny and happy and they would stay that way if he had anything at all to do with it.
“All right.” It was obvious from the slump of Jared’s shoulders that he wasn’t happy about giving in. “But be careful. I worry about you, man.”
It was good to have someone who worried and someone who watched his back. He wished he could trust that it would last. “You know you can do something for me.”
Jared’s eyes lit up. “What’s that?”
“Find out everything you can on Riley Blade. Something about him makes me nervous.” Or maybe he should get Declan and Shane on that.
“There’s no need to. If you tell the others you want him gone, they’ll find someone else,” Jared assured him. “You’re important to this club. Hell, you’re the reason we have a place of our own at all.”
“You paid for part of it,” he pointed out.
“Only because you called me. I didn’t know we were in trouble. I was shooting in Vancouver. If it hadn’t been for you buying this property, we would likely have broken up and found other clubs. If you don’t like Riley, he’s gone.”
“I’m probably being paranoid.” He didn’t want to cost a guy his job if there was nothing there. “The other guys seem to like the hell out of him.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” Jared replied.
Maybe it would help distract Jared while Josh did what he had to do.
He looked over to the hallway and Kayla walked in, arm in arm with another sub. She was talking and laughing and generally making all the people around her smile. Infectious. She was utterly infectious, and he was doing the right thing.
Yes, Kayla was smart and deadly, but the truth was she needed someone to care about her, to protect her, to want her safety and satisfaction more than his own.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she turned and found him. She was dressed for play, but he was caught on her eyes. Shit. He was caught period.
He was falling for a woman for the first time in his life and he was going to make it work.
And that meant keeping her as far from his past as possible.
Chapter Ten
Two hours and one fairly hardcore scene that had her ass aching later, Kayla stared at the computer in front of her, the email she was writing open and half finished. She felt a little half finished. Oh, the scene had gone all right. There had been bondage and spanking and pinching and rubbing, finished off with a giant Hollywood cock giving her an orgasm, but it had been different. Josh hadn’t been with her. Not fully. Something was distracting her Master and she had no idea what it was because Levi wasn’t returning her calls and she hadn’t had a chance to talk to Riley. She’d meant to, but she’d found Josh’s eyes on her every time she tried to get away for a few moments.
He’d kissed the top of her forehead—way too far away from her damn lonely mouth—and told her she had thirty minutes to get ready for the party and maybe she should spend that on her new project.
He was on the edge, and it bugged the crap out of her that she had no clue what was going on in that gorgeous head of his.
It was making her cranky when she needed to be penitent. After everything she’d seen with Josh and Jared and the others, she’d wondered if some apologies should be made. She’d talked to Josh about it and he’d decided she needed some email therapy.
Dear JR Ward,
Please forgive me for my last email. You should write as quickly or slowly as your muse leads you, and you probably know your characters better than I do. So forget that small threat about Butch and V. I didn’t really mean it. You know who best they should be mated with, not me. No one’s coming for you in the middle of the night and while I do know your address, I promise to respect boundaries.
That was good, right? Nothing creepy about that.
“Writing some emails?” Barry asked as he entered the lounge.
Most everyone had changed into street clothes in anticipation of the party. Everyone except Subby Sue, who claimed street clothes gave her the hives. The closest anyone could get her to wear was leather short shorts and a bikini top. Her Dom had to force shoes on her feet when they went “formal,” as they called it.
Funny, Josh hadn’t come back out yet. He’d set her up, given her instructions that she was to write apology letters to at least three of the authors on her list, and went to take a shower.
“I like to call it my grand apology tour,” she replied with a smile. “Apparently I’ve been hard on some people.”
Barry sat down beside her. “Hard on them? Sometimes tough love is the best kind.”
“I might have sent many emails with suggestions on how some of my favorite authors could…change things.”
“Things?”
How to explain? “Like plot things that maybe didn’t feel right to me. You know—constructive criticism. I also might have given them examples of things that could help to boost their efforts and productivity.”
Barry took a sip of the coffee he was drinking. “Do I want to know what these examples are?”
“Just simple motivational stuff.” Like hey, I could show up on your doorstep and help out. No problem. I know all about floggers and pain as motivation.
When she thought about it, she should have been more positive. More cheerleader like. Go author, go! That would probably be better. Looking back, she could maybe see how someone could construe her innocent comments as vaguely threatening.
If she was super sweet in her apology email, maybe Kristen Ashley would rescind that whole restraining-order thing.
“You must really like this lady’s books,” he said. “Have you thought that maybe you get too involved?”
“Oh, all the time, but honestly, when I was a double agent for the CIA and they had me posted in China, I was bored out of my mind. Turns out the Chinese government isn’t hot on erotic romance and the books that do get through there are mostly political treatises on how the government should serve the people and vice versa. Yeah, total fiction but boring, too. No sex. No romance. When I got back, I might have binged like crazy. After you read fourteen books in someone’s world, you kind of find yourself forgetting it’s not real. You start talking like the characters, talking to the characters. Yeah, I’m lucky Damon didn’t lock me up. I spent a lot of time in conferences explaining to him what I thought Wrath would do.”
Barry frowned, but didn’t ask. “Well, I just wanted to come and tell you that I think it’s wonderful you and Josh are getting along. It’s about time that young man found some peace.”
“We’re getting along quite well.” Too well. After he’d made love to her the night before, she’d sat up forever, her soul torn between doing what was right for Josh and her family in London.
“But? I hear a but in there somewhere.”
She flipped the laptop closed. “He still doesn’t talk to me about his past. He knows a ton about mine. He knows some classified shit that could get us all in trouble. You know, I really wasn’t cut out to be an operative. I like to tal
k too much. It was okay when I was embedded with MSS. They were all kind of dicks there.”
It was surprising her sister had turned out so well. The kind of training and torture the Chinese put their agents through didn’t typically kick out loving, kind individuals. Of course, she herself hadn’t gotten the full Agency training either.
“I don’t think Josh talks too much to anyone about his past,” Barry said. “Sometimes not about his present either. He’s known for being quite silent on both subjects. I think he talked a bit to the one submissive he brought to the club, and that didn’t turn out well.”
“Because she went to the press.”
Barry sighed. “I don’t know everything that went on between those two. I know they had some things in common. They had both been raised in foster care. They seemed to click and then one day I overheard her talking to another sub about how much money she was going to make off him. She had contacted a reporter with a tabloid and was planning on doing an exposé on the whole club. They were going to give her millions.”
“You told Josh.”
“I told my Glo and she handled things from there,” Barry explained. “She had been quite close to Josh’s agent at one point. Tina wasn’t in the lifestyle, but she was certainly part of the acting community. My wife was a casting agent. She made sure that woman was never cast again.”
It was good someone had been looking out for Josh. Still, he’d had a girlfriend. A submissive he’d selected for their compatibility and not her skill with knives and guns. “Can you tell me something, Barry?”
“I don’t know. I have to protect him, too.”
“It’s okay if you don’t answer. I wanted to know if he kissed her. The other girl, that is. Did he kiss her during scenes?”
He froze for a moment, as though processing her words, and then a look of sympathy hit his face.