by Lexi Blake
“Sweet Child O’ Mine” blasted through the club. The guitar riffs reached a crescendo and then went silent. Eve breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank god. That’s way too loud.”
“Oh, wait for it,” Ryan said.
The song started again. “Does he have it on autoplay?”
“Yep, and he’s threatened to shoot me if I turn it off. I haven’t seen a gun, but I don’t doubt he has one hidden somewhere.” Ryan sighed. “I’ll be honest, I have no idea what to do. I would leave him be, but the rest of my staff is going to be here in a couple of hours to start setting up. Should I cancel the scenes for tonight?”
And be forced to explain why? “No. Let me talk to him. Can you turn it down a little? Just a smidge. He might not notice.”
They walked through the lobby, and she caught sight of Ian. Well, the back of him. He’d taken a chair and placed it in the center of the stage. He was directly facing the St. Andrew’s Cross, his back to the rest of the club. He’d taken off his jacket, and she could see that he’d rolled up his sleeves. A glass with a couple of fingers of amber-colored liquid was in his right fist, the bottle on the floor beside him.
And the energy coming off him was righteously bad.
Yeah, he wasn’t okay.
Ian had been Alex’s best friend most of their lives. He wasn’t a big talker. She’d never had a therapy session with him. Ian’s version of therapy was very different. He wouldn’t talk about what was wrong. He would drink and apparently listen to metal ballads.
But in the end, she couldn’t treat him like a patient. She had to treat him like a friend, or better, a Master. Those other subs had probably tried to offer him sex. He didn’t need that. Half the time she wondered if there was an actual submissive bone in their bodies.
Sometimes a Dom needed a sub for way more than sex. Maybe it was time to start getting that part of her life back, too.
She kicked off her shoes and shrugged out of her jacket, folding it and putting it on a table. She pulled out the pins in her hair as she stared at Ian.
Ryan was watching her with his arms crossed. “The other subs tried.”
“The other subs don’t love him. That man has basically been my big brother for most of my adult life. I’m not going to offer him my body, Ryan. He would vomit. But I can offer him something else. Now get them out of here. You should leave, too.”
Ryan frowned. “I don’t know about that. He might be the boss, but I’m the Dom in Residence and I’m responsible for the safety of every sub here.”
And sometimes she just couldn’t be submissive. “And I own a piece of the club. It might not be the biggest chunk, but I’m still a founding member.” She softened a little. “Ryan, I appreciate it, but Ian Taggart, for all his bluster, wouldn’t hurt a sub. Never. And he definitely won’t hurt me. Please. You called me here for a reason. Let me do my job.”
He gestured to the three women huddled together, and they moved toward him like a small herd of baby chicks. God, they were young. When the hell did everyone get so young?
One of the girls was crying, her mascara in streaks down her face. “I’m sorry, Sir. I tried.”
Ryan shrugged. “I guess he wasn’t in the mood for a lap dance.”
“But the music really lends itself to dancing,” the blonde said. “I just wish every Dom was as nice as Master Alex. He would never call a woman a skank.”
“Well, in Master Ian’s defense, he had asked you to stop and then you took off your top,” Ryan argued.
“I was just trying to help.” She turned her eyes to Eve. “I don’t know what the Ice Queen is going to do that I can’t.”
“Amanda!” Ryan shouted over the music.
Amanda, who might look like a baby chick, but who obviously had kitty claws, pouted. “Well, everyone knows how she uses Master Alex when he’s the best Dom in the world. One day he’ll wake up and he’ll see he needs a real sub.”
Eve took a long breath. She should be patient. The girl was young and obviously handicapped by her innate skankiness. Ian had nailed it. It was just part of her personality. “It’s all right, Ryan. Just take her out of here, please.”
Amanda walked past, a sullen look on her pretty face.
Did Alex look at the young subs and wonder what he could have if he wasn’t saddled with her? He was known as the huggy Dom. He was the Dom all the whiney subs went to when they needed a cuddle. And he gave it to them because she wasn’t willing to take comfort from him. Alex needed to give comfort. It was his primary purpose as a Dom, and she hadn’t accepted a hug from him in years, much less allowed him to kiss her. Sometimes she wondered if guilt and need was all that was left between them.
No. She wasn’t going to think that way. They were moving past that. Years separated them from the time after her kidnapping. Alex was a different person. He’d stood by her through everything. He wasn’t looking for some twenty-something playing at submission.
Axl Rose started wailing again, and she prayed Ryan managed to get the subs out and turn the volume down.
She stepped up the three elegantly placed stairs that led her to the stage. The music volume went down by roughly twenty-five percent.
“Hey, turn my fucking music back up!” Ian shouted.
“Axl Rose called. He wants his record back, babe.” Ian was one of very few men she felt perfectly comfortable calling by pet names. Ian had been at her wedding. Ian had done his damnedest to save her. Tears blurred her eyes briefly because she realized just how much she loved him. He was a friend. No. He was her family.
“Go away, Eve. I’m in the mood to tear someone up, and I don’t want it to be you. I’ve made enough subs cry today.”
She stepped in front of him. He was the very picture of decadent beauty. Ian Taggart was a Viking of the first order. He was roughly six foot five and had not an ounce of fat on him, but she could see the weary set of his brow. Blond hair and startlingly sharp blue eyes didn’t make him any less of an actual man. He still had his sorrows. He still needed comfort. He just didn’t always take it. Ian Taggart was practically a demon, and even demons needed friends. “Well, if one of them was that little skinny blonde, I’m okay with it.”
He chuckled a little. “I wondered when you would notice that Mandy has a thing for your ex.” He shook his head. “You go and defend your Dom. And if you wouldn’t mind doing it in a vat of Jell-O while wearing a bikini, that would really liven up the day.”
She sank to her knees before him, a sign of respect. “I can’t leave you, Sir.”
“Fuck.” He took a long drag from his glass. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here. Church is too serious about his job.”
But Ian’s pride wouldn’t let him retreat. She totally understood that. “Want to talk about it?”
“Want to talk about what happened between you and Alex?” It was a challenge.
“If I don’t, I’ll have to walk away, right?” This was the way Ian played things. He was a great believer in making bargains. She was sure he thought she wouldn’t live up to her side.
“Yeah. So just go now.”
“But if I do talk, you’ll tell me why we’re reliving the eighties?”
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t talk about your shit.”
She didn’t before, but he severely underestimated how much she cared about him. “I was raped.”
His gorgeous face went tight. “Don’t do this to me. I already know the story.”
But it was what he needed. He needed to open up and the only way she could make it safe for him to be open was to be open herself. Ian might know the facts, but he’d never heard her say them. “I was raped, and Alex couldn’t handle it and he turned away from me. It nearly killed me, Ian.”
He closed his eyes, but his hand came out as though it had a mind of its own. He touched her hair, drawing her closer.
“I thought he cared more about punishing the man who hurt me than he wanted to be with me.” The words were nearly stuck in her throat, but it was easier bec
ause she’d made the decision to give them another chance. She had to talk about it.
“Eve, he loves you.”
But he might love revenge more. It didn’t matter now. Michael Evans was a million miles away. “I’m thinking about renegotiating our contract. Now, I’ve talked. Why are we listening to hair metal?”
He frowned, those full lips turning down. “Because I like it.”
“It doesn’t seem to be making you happy.”
“Can you leave this alone?”
She laid her head down on his lap. She knew just how to manipulate Ian Taggart. What the other subs didn’t understand was that Ian responded to tenacity, gentle, loving tenacity. “Yes, I can leave it alone.”
She gave him a couple of seconds of quiet. She knew he would make the right decision. He would never leave her hanging.
“Manipulative little brat. You know me far too well. Fine.” His hand soothed back her hair. “I had a woman I…cared about.”
Well, of course it was about a woman. And he wouldn’t talk about it normally. He would hide it. She was catching him in a vulnerable moment, but she thought he needed to talk. She didn’t know about any woman he’d really cared about except his high school girlfriend named Holly. From what she’d been told, they’d been engaged, but Holly had broken it off during his first stint in Iraq. As Alex explained it, one day he’d had a fiancée and the next he had a Dear John letter.
That was right about the time he’d discovered BDSM. Had he been mourning her loss for all these years? As long as Eve had known him, he’d always been surrounded by subs. He was a sub magnet, but she’d never seen him fall for a single woman. If he said he’d cared about a woman, then he had very likely loved her with his whole damn soul. “Is this about Holly?”
He snorted a little. “Holly? No. I thought Holly was the queen bitch of the world. Then I met Charlotte. No. I’m not pining over Holly. I wish Holly and mid-level lawyer husband number two all the fucking best in the world.”
Charlotte? She didn’t know a Charlotte, and she couldn’t very well push him. “Charlotte is a nice name.”
She could only soothe him. Any aggression or outright curiosity at this point would send him into his shell.
“Yes. A lovely name for a lovely woman. But she was a crazy bitch.”
For Ian, that was practically a term of endearment. He was a man who appreciated a righteous bitch. She softened her voice and hoped she wasn’t going too fast. “What happened to her?”
It couldn’t be good.
His expression never changed. It stayed a careful blank. He took a long drag off the Scotch. “I can’t make her leave. She’s in my head. I can’t get her fucking out. Never met anyone with skills like Charlotte. She could make me run in circles and I liked it. Do you know what’s it like to not be able to get a woman out of your head?”
So he’d been in love. God, Ian in love was probably a sight to see. “Why don’t you call her?”
There was a long pause. She couldn’t imagine that a woman wouldn’t fall madly in love with Ian Taggart. He was gorgeous and had that crazy, impossible wall up that seemed to call to most women.
He took a long breath before answering. “No point. If you and Alex can’t make it, there’s no hope for a dumb shit like me. You two had it all. You were what I was aiming for.”
She felt tears blur her eyes. Ian never talked like this. Just looking at him, she wouldn’t really guess he was plastered. His hands were steady and his voice was perfectly controlled, but the words coming from his mouth proved it. When Ian was sober, he would very likely never admit he wanted more than sex from a woman. “Well, we’re just human, Ian.”
“Nah. You were more. You were happy, and then shit happened and it all died.”
It was a little more than shit. She’d been brutalized, and Alex couldn’t handle it. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a good relationship.”
He laughed a little, but there was nothing humorous about it. “Good? You think I can find a healthy relationship with some nice woman out there? Maybe raise a few kids? Hey, we could find a four bedroom with a white picket fence and a dog named Cuddles. Who the fuck do you think I am, Eve?”
It was then that she noticed the envelope on the floor next to him. She recognized it from this morning. It had been delivered along with the flowers. “I think you’re one of my oldest friends and you deserve some peace.”
His eyes darkened. “That’s only because there’s so much you don’t know about me, honey.” His mouth flattened, and he let his head drift back. “I really do care about you, Eve. And not simply because you were Alex’s wife.” He took a long breath and looked back down at her. “Are you sure you’re done with him?”
She could answer that honestly. “No. I don’t know that I’ll ever be done with him, but I also don’t know that we can live together again. I’ve changed since we got married.”
“You got stronger. I actually thought you weren’t a good match for Alex. You were too submissive in the beginning. Alex needed a challenge. It’s one thing to have a sub in the bedroom, quite another when your partner, the woman you rely on, is utterly dependent on you for every decision.”
She felt her eyes narrow. “I certainly was not.”
“He picked out your clothes every morning, Eve.”
It had started out as a game. He would pick out her clothes for their dates and he always selected her lingerie. Somewhere along the way, they had fallen into the habit of him laying out her clothes and admiring her. “It was just for fun.”
“Was it?”
“I wasn’t completely dependent on him.” She said the words and she meant them to some extent, but looking back, she knew she had been far more dependent on him than she was really comfortable with. And yet those were some of the sweetest times of her life. “I can’t be that girl again. I don’t know that Alex will accept anything less.”
“Alex has accepted the crumbs you’ve given him for years. He’ll take anything. If I met you today, I would say you’re too cold for him. Back then you were too submissive.”
Ian didn’t pull punches. Damn, hearing that hurt. “So you think I should let him go.”
Let him go to the likes of the Amandas of this world? Younger women or subs who weren’t damaged and set in their ways? Women he could settle down with into a happy, congenial partnership where he made most of the decisions?
“I think you need to take all the sweetness of the woman you were and merge it with the strength you have now. I think you should stop fucking lying down and fight. We’re all fucked up, Eve, but at least the rest of us are walking wounded. At least we’re trying to get somewhere.”
A little kernel of anger lit inside her. “Oh, really? Just where are you going, Ian? Because from where I’m sitting, you’ve been in one place for a really long time, or are you trying to tell me that you go through a sub a night because you’re looking for ‘the one’?”
He snorted, a sound sure to be ridiculous on a lesser man, but Ian made it sound elegant. “Yeah, that’s my story. No. I already found ‘the one’ and she’s dead and I think Eli Nelson had something to do with it.”
She felt her mouth drop open. She’d known Ian and Nelson had a history, but how far back did it go? “What?”
“Fucker sent me a card. I already tossed the flowers out. I nearly hit Phoebe in the head. She’s going to quit one of these days.” He nodded toward the envelope at his feet.
Eve pulled the card out. It was all hearts and flowers, sappy and sentimental, and it announced Happy Anniversary. It was unsigned, but the mailing address was London, England, Eli Nelson’s last known whereabouts. The rogue CIA agent had been causing trouble for the entire group since he’d attempted to use them to steal industrial secrets for his Chinese handlers. A few months ago, they’d all learned that their ties with Nelson went back much further than they had known. He’d ruined the operation that cost Liam years of his life and then tried to kill both him and Avery after
running off with the information he’d been willing to kill for.
And Ian had struck back, rendering that information useless. They were two titans taking massive swings at each other.
“Why would he send this to you?”
Ian shrugged. “He wants me emotional. He wants me off my game. And he definitely wants me to think he killed my wife.”
Eve felt her eyes go wide and her heart drop into her stomach. His wife? Ian had been married? “How long has she been gone?”
Maybe he’d been right when he’d said there was a lot she didn’t know.
“Years. Minutes. Sometimes I think I still see her. What am I doing? She played me. She was working for Nelson all along, and she got burned. This is stupid. I need to be working on a case and I’m sitting here like some fucking teenager listening to music and crying over a girl.”
He wasn’t crying. His face was a block of stone. Eve had about two million questions, but it seemed wrong to intrude. He was so private. He would regret every word he said later, and she couldn’t stand the thought of anything humbling him. She laid the envelope down and moved to her feet.
“I’m going to hug you now.”
Ian’s eyes came open and a wary look crossed his face, as though she’d just warned him something terrible was about to happen. “Why?”
“Because you need it, Sir, and you can’t accept it from one of the other subs because they all want something from you. I only want something for you.”
“Everyone wants something, Eve.”
She made the bold play. She sat in his lap and put her arms around his neck. He was the brother she’d never had, and she couldn’t leave him sitting here like this. “I want you to be happy. And I think I finally want to be happy, too. You’re right. I’ve been a zombie for years, and I need to start living again. And you need to figure out what you want.”
His voice was a low rumble. “I want to tear Eli Nelson’s balls off and shove them down his throat and then, when he’s gagging on his own testicles, I want to hang him with his large intestine.”
Well, at least he had a goal. “Can I do anything for you?”