The Dom with the Deviant Kittens

by Sorcha Black

  “Shhh. No work. Fucking.”

  “No fucking! I have to work!” She tried to wriggle away, but he held her in place. Soon, he’d yanked up her dress and pulled down her panties, and his suit pants-covered erection was positioned for her to rub against him, which he knew was one of her weaknesses.

  Sooo frustrating. In the position she was sitting in, though, she had a clear view of the counter full of dishes. Fruit flies were starting to use it as a habitat. Between her crazy workload and Lock internet-searching for work, there was no one to look after the house.

  But to hell with the house. To hell with work.

  Thinking about doing dishes reminded her of standing at the sink with Tess, goofing around, smacking each other with cloths, and splashing each other. She missed Tess so damned much. Curling up behind her when they slept, talking to her all day, playing with her, loving her.

  Lock slid his hands onto her hips and ground against her, as she silently started to cry. Everything in the house reminded her of Tess now – even Lock. Seeing the two of them together had become so normal, that her being gone felt all wrong. She pried his tie off of her wrists just as he noticed her tears.

  “Hey, hey – what’s this about?” He turned her sideways on his lap and snuggled her. “What’s wrong, baby girl?”

  The stress that had been building over the past days leaked out of her eyes. “We have to go get her. Things aren’t right like this.” She sobbed, and she felt his muscles tense.

  “She wanted to go, Minou. She isn’t our property. She’s a person with her own thoughts and feelings. I think maybe she was just here for stability, and when that was gone there was no point in staying.” He shrugged, but the flippant gesture didn’t hide the hurt lurking behind his controlled mask.

  “After everything we said to each other, you think she was just here for free rent?” She wanted to smack him. How could he say such a thing?

  “Well, I think she liked all of it, but money must have been a motivating factor or she wouldn’t have hightailed out of here at the first sign of financial trouble.” His brow furrowed. “I thought we meant more to her than that, but some people are good at faking things.”

  “Maybe she didn’t love you, but I know she loved me!” She fought to push away from him, but he held onto her so she couldn’t get to her feet.

  “Lying to yourself doesn’t change the facts.” He was angry now. “She left you the same as she left me.”

  Fury bubbled over. She screamed and slapped Lock’s face, the sting of her palm matching the red splotch she’d left on his cheek. He grabbed her wrists and they struggled until he’d forced her face down over his lap.

  Elodie kicked and screamed, trying to get away as he bared her bottom.

  “That was unacceptable. You do not hit me, no matter how much of a tantrum you’re having.” Lock landed a firm smack on her ass. “Do you understand me, girl? This type of behavior is never acceptable.”

  Lock spanked her then, firmly and for longer than he ever had before. How was this fair? He was the one who’d been mean, using his words to hurt. Why was she the one getting spanked when he deserved it just as much if not more?

  She swore at him in French, using every bad word she could think of, and making some up when the spanking still wasn’t done. She raged at him until she had nothing left and she hung there, sobbing.

  When he stopped and helped her up, he tried to hold her, but she ducked away and ran down the hall, straightening her clothes and grabbing her shoes on her way out the door. She slammed the damn thing behind her, but it didn’t help a bit.

  *

  She drove for a long time, not sure where she was going, but sure as shit not going home – well, back to Lock. Was it ever her home, or was she just a guest who’d overstayed her welcome? She hadn’t lived there much longer than Tess.

  Eventually she parked her car at the mall and sat there, staring out the window, watching the darkness gather and swallow her whole. She could go back to her parents, or go live with her sister for a while, until she figured out what to do.

  What he’d done hadn’t been fair.

  Although...

  Maybe if she’d toughened up and gone to the stupid golf tournament none of this would have happened. Or if she’d let Tess stay dowdy and lonely and unloved. Or maybe this was her punishment for being greedy, and wanting two, when the world only allowed you to have one.

  She sighed and rested her head on the steering wheel. What did she want? Once, she’d sworn to Lock that he would always be her choice over Tess. But now? Now the idea of letting Tess walk away, alone, was horrifying. If she couldn’t have them both, and Lock was going to be an ass about it, maybe Tess should be her choice. She loved Tess just as much, and Tess needed her more. Or maybe after everything that had happened, Tess would be happier with someone else? And Lock? He could get another sub in a heartbeat.

  Maybe neither of them really loved her at all.

  Elodie’s breath caught in her throat and she gagged, gasping for breath. Her heartbeat hammered erratically. She pressed a hand to her chest. Dieu, was she having a heart attack? Her shaking hands fumbled for her phone, but she couldn’t remember what to do. There was a sharp pain under her ribs and it felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest. She hyperventilated, her breath loud in her ears. She was going to die in a stupid mall parking lot. Alone. Maybe no one even cared.

  She shook, her tremors making her teeth chatter. There was a weird pain in her head, and she was sure she was going to pass out. She curled into a ball on her seat, freezing, feeling like she was going to throw up and choke on it and die. The staggering of her heart wouldn’t settle. Her phone was lost on the floor and it was too dark to find it.

  An eon passed, but the sun didn’t rise.

  There was a noise. She startled, realizing she’d fallen asleep. A pale face loomed in her driver’s side window and a shriek tore from her already sore throat. The big man opened the car door. He crouched beside her and pulled her into his arms.

  “Shhh...shhh Elodie. I’m so sorry. If you want me to leave you alone, I will, but I had to make sure you were okay.” Lock’s voice was gruff in her ear. “This isn’t a safe place to spend the night. I’ll bring you home and I’ll sleep on the couch – or I’ll stay at a hotel, if you want.” He pressed his face against her hair. “I waited, but when you didn’t come home I panicked. I mean, you had every right to leave. That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, spanking you like that. But then I started to worry about rapists and sex traffickers and serial killers, and I couldn’t just not look for you.”

  “You’re the biggest asshole I’ve ever met.” She pushed him away.

  He dug a hand through his hair, but didn’t look away. “I know,” he agreed quietly.

  “Worse than Alexandre.” She glared. Saying he was worse than her ex was satisfying even though it wasn’t true.

  “Yes.”

  “I had a heart attack all alone in this stupid fucking parking lot, and if I died, you’d have moped around wearing black for the rest of your sorry life.” She was babbling, but she didn’t care. “And maybe it’s my fault you lost your job, but being an ass to Tess isn’t fair! She didn’t do anything bad. Rien! That was all me. And you! If you ever punish me in anger again, I’ll...smother you in your sleep! With my fucking tits! Do you hear me?”

  Now he was biting his lips together as though she was funny.

  “Don’t you laugh, asswipe. I’ll kick you right in the nuts.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He petted her hair. “I can’t help it. You’re so fucking adorable, even when you hate my guts.”

  “I’m not adorable! I’m in a towering rage, you fucktard! I’m angry and tired and sad. And I’m hungry. And I hate you so much that I can’t decide if I want to punch you in the face or the dick!”

  “Bring your towering rage home and rest then. You can decide where to punch me on the way, or you can wait and smother me in my sleep. Either way,
I just want you home, okay?”

  She hesitated, trying to calm down.

  “I’m serious, Lock. I detest you right now.” Elodie realized her voice had been getting shriller and it was starting to make her head throb again. She lowered her voice. “I need to know if this is just the tip of the iceberg. Is this going to be an abusive relationship, or was that spanking a mistake?”

  He folded onto his knees on the dark pavement, and morbidly she wondered how much chewing gum he was kneeling in. He closed his hands over her calves and rested his forehead on her thighs.

  “It was a mistake, Minou.” He lifted his head and his gaze met hers. “A bad one. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. And you didn’t make me lose my job. I’m to blame for all of that.” He reached up and brushed a lock of hair back from her cheek. “I broke your trust, and I’m just hoping there’s a way to fix it.”

  Elodie nodded, but wasn’t ready to forget so easily. “Maybe it’s not unforgivable, but it’ll take some time before I trust you again, like I did.” She felt weak and tired, and just wanted him to take care of her. “I think I had a panic attack and I don’t feel very well.”

  “My poor girl.” Lock shifted to sit cross-legged on the ground and pulled her into his lap. He held her there for ages, and she dozed on his shoulder on and off. They should really go home, but she was too tired to move.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I logged into Find My Phone. I still remember your password from when I set it up for you.” He grimaced apologetically.

  “You creepy fuck,” she grumbled.

  “Yes, but I’m your creepy fuck.”

  He set her on her feet, got up, then carried her to his car and buckled her in. By the time they got home, she was so sleepy that he carried her into the house too.

  All through the night when she woke, he was there, watching over her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Who’s making you smile like that?”

  Tess looked up from her phone, having forgotten where she was while she was reading. The bus lurched as they went around a curve, and she had to hang on so she didn’t slide onto the floor. A moment later the tour bus was up to speed again, the scenery flashing by faster than her eyes could follow. Her stomach rolled over for the zillionth time.

  “My...um. Elodie.” She shrugged grimaced at Saya. “I don’t know what we are to each other right now.”

  “From the look on your face for the past five minutes, I’d say she’s your girlfriend,” Winter chuckled. “That and she’s sending you dirty texts.”

  She blushed but didn’t see any point in denying it. The Kink Monsters were hardly wilting violets. Nothing she could say would surprise them or make them judge her. “Elodie rarely says anything that isn’t dirty.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that.” Saya gave Winter a pointed look. The way they were cuddled up on the couch made Tess miss Elodie all the more.

  Their men were playing chess with Spider – they rarely asked her to watch the boy when they weren’t busy with band things. It was something she appreciated about them as people, but it also meant that she had far more downtime than she wanted to have. When she tried to tidy the bus, the band members shooed her away, telling her she wasn’t their maid.

  She wasn’t anyone’s maid anymore, and hadn’t been for a while. Neither Elodie nor Lock had ever treated her like one, even in the beginning.

  Looking at the text from Elodie again, she couldn’t help but smile. A picture of her pursed lips, like she was giving Tess a kiss, took up her whole message screen.

  She rubbed her thumb over the picture, wishing she could kiss her phone without looking creepy. Elodie had been so mad at her when she found out she’d left for this job that she hadn’t texted her for an entire day. But the next day she was back, blowing her phone up with messages all day.

  Tess’s guilt grew every single day. She’d stopped answering Elodie’s texts, not long after she realized Lock wasn’t talking to her. There was no point in encouraging something that wasn’t going to work out. She lived for Elodie’s texts though, and felt like a bitch for not being able to reply.

  They’d only be gone a month now, but Tess knew she needed to get her head on straight and give Elodie and Lock a chance to figure things out. She missed them so much already.

  And Lock, well, there was radio silence there. He was probably glad she was gone. Tess wasn’t stupid. Letting her into their relationship had never been his idea, and now that he had Elodie back to himself again, he was probably glad to be rid of a quiet, mousy sub that was terrible in bed. Guys liked girls who were fun and vivacious – not quiet and uncertain. It had seemed as though she was growing on him, but he’d probably only put up with her because Elodie had wanted to keep her.

  Looking back on things with Lock now embarrassed Tess. It seemed like an unrequited schoolgirl crush. Elodie had pushed them together, and she’d fallen in love with him. He’d used her body, and said words about feelings that would make Elodie happy, but when did a guy like him seriously fall for a girl like her? Elodie was different – she was wild and unusual and maybe liked Tess as a way to thumb her nose at the world. But Lock was calm and logical, paired with hot and smart. What did she have to offer? Dependence, adoration, and an inability to support herself didn’t sound good on a relationship resume. Love was all fine and dandy, but most relationships were built on the knowledge that the other person would help build a life, not be a leech. Really, she had very little to offer anyone.

  How are you holding up? For a moment she’d thought it was another text from Elodie, but this time it was Q.

  Okay, she texted back. Just feeling like a loser.

  You need to get your ass home and fix things with them. When you’re part of a family you don’t split every time there’s a problem. You know it’s not always fun and games at our house, either.

  Tess groaned and rolled her eyes. It was easy to think things would sort themselves out when you were someone like Q. She was hot and badass and successful. The three of them had been together for years and had kids. They were out to their families. Like Elodie, they were self-employed, and didn’t have to worry about the kind of thing that had happened to Lock.

  What he’d said to her as she was leaving the house – that she had to think about whether she wanted a wedding and babies and a life she didn’t have to hide – had played over in her mind so many times, it was like a recording. It sounded as though he was trying to get rid of her at the time, but if he’d been serious, how important were those things to her?

  A wedding? She’d never thought that would happen for her anyway, so she had never really become emotionally invested in the idea. Apparently some girls had detailed daydreams about what their wedding would be like, but without a potential groom, or family she’d want to invite, it hadn’t crossed her mind. Being the center of attention like that would be horrible, anyway.

  But babies – she loved babies. At one point she’d thought about going to a clinic to get pregnant, sometime in the future, but a child deserved a better life than she could provide. With Lock and Elodie to help, it might have been possible.

  Hiding her life with them was probably the least of her worries. Her parents had no use for her since she stopped giving them money, and they weren’t the nicest people, so she didn’t care what they thought. Self-help books from the library had gotten her over most of that. And although discrimination from strangers might be scary sometimes, it would be worth the risk. Most of the people she worked for were poly anyway, so in those circles she’d actually be normal, for once.

  When she thought about how it felt when she laid between them in bed on lazy mornings, being cuddled and whispered to and touched, her heart hurt. In the intermittent silence of her apartment, with her canned food and screaming neighbors, with no one to hold her and no Elodie and Lock to love, her life had become pretty pointless. What had she been doing before them – warehousing herself until she died? That wasn�
��t living, it was living life on hold. Your call is important to us, please wait. Wait for what? For love to be easy and safe? For her life to pass in the slowest possible flash before her eyes? With them she’d felt alive. Like her future was a book and every page held something hot or interesting or neat or painful – but having the opportunity to feel was addictive. Having people she loved who loved her back made her life mean something.

  She did love them. Both. Insanely. Maybe at first it had been about gratitude, but that was fine. Sometimes love grew out of peculiar situations.

  Strange people got strange love.

  Elodie loved her.

  Now it was about Lock. Did he love her? Without him, there was no them.

  And with the fact that he wasn’t responding to Tess’s texts, it was starting to look like his love for her had only existed in Elodie’s imagination.

  *

  Winter and Mack had gone to bed early, and had taken over watching their sleeping Spider. Saya and Ramsay were out on a date. She envied them – the two couples who had become one relationship. They’d worked through the worst of their shit, and they were all affectionate with each other – even the guys when they felt they were in a safe place. Spider had doting parents and a dedicated family. It was more than she’d ever had.

  She wandered down to the hotel lobby, looking for the gift shop. The greasy dinners she’d been eating, along with all the traveling, hadn’t been agreeing with her lately. What she really wanted was an apple, but she was guessing the closest she’d get was Raisinets. Could they be considered a fruit?

  Todd, the sound tech, was sitting in the lobby drinking a soda and watching CNN. She waved as she went by, and he smiled at her. He was a hottie, and had been talking to her lately. It was weird to think that a few months ago she never would have waved to him first, but she was a different person now. Hot guys didn’t scare her.