Angels, Demons and Doms

by Caroline McCall; Eileen Gormley

  Sam dialed Lexi’s cell phone but she didn’t pick up. “We have to talk,” he told her voicemail, but there was no response.

  On the drive home, his insides were a nasty combination of rage, fear, and yes, guilt. Damn it, Anton had been right. All the signs were there that Lexi was an D/s virgin. Oh she was a natural sub, and needed a good Master, but he hadn’t handled her right.

  He had been so delighted to find Lexi that he had never stopped to find out what she needed from her Master. Instead he had pushed her too far, too fast and had freaked her out. It was up to him to put that right.

  * * * * *

  The taxi pulled up outside her apartment. Lexi wiped her face again. She didn’t want to be alone. Not after what just happened. She glanced at her watch. Eleven thirty. Maddie was a night bird, she would still be up. Lexi punched in her number and a cheerful voice answered.

  “Oh Maddie, I’ve made such a fool of myself…”

  The cab driver waited while she packed a few things and then drove her to Maddie’s place. Maddie opened the door. “Come on in. I’ve got wine and ice cream. You can tell me all about it.”

  Out it came, in fits and starts, as they dug into the ice cream. The phone sex, the club, the guys.

  Maddie’s eyes widened. “Oh my God. And I thought you had no life outside work, Lexi.”

  “So did I,” Lexi admitted. “What the hell am I going to do?”

  Maddie poured her another glass of wine. “Nothing, hon. You did nothing wrong. You took a walk on the wild side and things just got a little out of hand. But him, that no-good devil Dom. I’d love to stick him with his own pitchfork.”

  Lexi managed a weak smile at the thought of her Dom running away from an enraged Maddie.

  “My cousin works at the phone company. I’ll tell him you have a stalker problem and get him to disconnect your cell phone number right away.”

  “Thanks, Maddie.” Lexi smiled gratefully.

  “In the meantime, you can stay here. I’ll make up the spare room.”

  After Maddie had gone to bed, Lexi lay in the strange room listening to the unfamiliar sounds of someone else’s home. What if her Dom turned nasty? Would she have to move again? She had spent months decorating her little apartment and making it her own. She didn’t want to leave. It would be admitting she couldn’t manage on her own.

  Hot tears welled up again. Stop it, Lexi. Maddie’s right. You took a walk on the wild side, but it’s over now. Her Dom was married. His wife knew about them. That should be enough to keep him away from her.

  She didn’t want to think about the club, but images of the night danced inside her head. They had made her feel special. She had never come so hard. Her Dom’s mouth on her skin had given her more pleasure than any man she had ever known, but it was all a lie. He was a cheat, just like Joe. How he must have laughed at her—stupid fat Lexi. She was finished with men. They weren’t worth it.

  Her cell phone buzzed again and she rolled over and picked it up. Twelve missed calls, all from the same unfamiliar number. Her Dom was still trying to contact her. Did he think she would fall for his lies again? Lexi resisted the urge to fling the cell phone at the wall. Instead, she pressed the off switch. Next week she would have a new number and he wouldn’t be able to contact her.

  On Monday morning, she dressed in her gray suit and dragged her unruly curls into a neat chignon. Maybe she should just get it cut short? Despite the fact she had done nothing all weekend, she looked washed out and tired. Lexi reached for her lipstick and then stopped. What was the point?

  * * * * *

  Sam dialed Lexi’s cell phone number again. He had spent the weekend calling her and she’d refused to pick up. Where was she? A voice on the line gave him hope until he realized it was an automated message. “This number has been disconnected.”

  He lowered his phone and stared at it. She had changed her phone number, just to make sure he couldn’t contact her? Shit. She really didn’t want to hear from him again. Fortunately, Lexi didn’t know her Dom was Sam Lincoln. He skipped the gym to make sure he was at Starbucks before she was. If Lexi wouldn’t speak to Master Demon, she would have to talk to Sam.

  He almost didn’t recognize her. She was dressed in a drab gray suit and had done something to her hair so it was pinned tightly to her head, instead of its usual cascade of curls. Worse, her whole attitude screamed defeat. Just the way she stood in the line made her look depressed.

  His stomach twisted. He had done that to her. It was his fault. Ruthlessly, he cut in front of two gossiping teenagers so he could stand behind Lexi. “Hey,” he said. “Can I buy you another cappuccino with cinnamon? I’ll even drink one myself to try it out.”

  Lexi turned to him. There were dark circles under her eyes. She looked as if she’d spent the whole weekend crying.

  “No thanks. I’m having a plain black coffee today.”

  He raised an enquiring eyebrow at her. He’d never seen her drink black coffee.

  “I have to lose weight,” she explained.

  Sam ran his eyes over her. That drab outfit did her no favors, but he would never forget how she had looked sprawled naked on the bed, her dark curls spread over the pillow. “No, you don’t,” he said.

  Lexi collected her coffee. “I have it on the best authority that I’m fat.” She turned, searching for a free table.

  How dare anyone insult her like that? “Tell me who said that and I’ll beat him to a pulp.”

  She shook her head and sat down. He sat opposite her, unwilling to leave her alone. She drank her joyless coffee without speaking to him. He waited until she was three-quarters of the way through the cup before he broke. “Have dinner with me tonight.”

  Lexi choked on a mouthful of coffee and spluttered, spewing it over the table and him. She turned scarlet. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.” She patted at him with a napkin, trying to clean up the tiny spots of brown liquid. “Let me pay for dry-cleaning.”

  He allowed him to dab at him, just so he could enjoy the feel of her hands. “Only if you agree to have dinner with me.”

  She met his eyes. “Sam, you’re very kind, but you know as well as I do that I’m too old for you.”

  He didn’t like where this was going. “Lexi, I’m thirty-four. I’m divorced. I’ve got my own business and my own home. What more do I need to prove I’m old enough to date you?”

  She just smiled sadly at him and picked up her bag. “Thanks for the compliment, Sam. I know you meant well, but I don’t do relationships any more. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to work.”

  Sam made a point of meeting Lexi for coffee every morning after that. She still dressed as if she was on her way to a funeral and was still drinking plain black coffee, but it seemed to him she looked forward to seeing him. At least, there was always an empty space at her table which he took without asking.

  Although she would chat to him about the weather and whatever was in the news, she closed him down when he tried to get personal. It drove him mad, but he had learned patience in a hard school, so he let her set the pace.

  She was getting thinner, and it worried him.

  He was working late one night, determined to get all the details of the hospice finished before they did the formal laying of the first stone nonsense. He looked up from his drafting table and saw Lexi’s light was on. Memories of the last time that light was on so late slammed into him, but this time Lexi was fully dressed and hunched over her computer. Even from here, he could see she looked tense and uncomfortable. He kept an eye on the light, and when it went out he locked up in a hurry so he could be standing by the door of Mackenzie’s when she came out of her building.

  She looked startled when she saw him, but he kept it casual. “Hi, I’m just finished work and going to grab something to eat. I could do with company.”

  “Eat?” She blinked, as if the concept was unfamiliar to her.

  “Yeah, I’m starving. Going to get some—”What was chick food? Chocolate and ice-cream?
He doubted she’d buy it if he said he was going for chocolate and ice-cream. “Pizza. Want to join me?” It killed him, but he managed to stay relaxed, as if it didn’t matter to him.

  “Pizza?” Her face was a study, a combination of wariness and longing.

  “Yeah, a big pizza with extra cheese, and maybe a beer.” He deliberately tried to tempt her.

  She made up her mind. “Okay, but we split the check.”

  Sam was too relieved that she had agreed to eat with him to be pissed about the check business. He hustled her into his favorite Italian restaurant and resisted the temptation to ask for a quiet table at the back.

  Lexi ordered a spinach salad and a mineral water. Sam scowled. That wasn’t enough to keep a sparrow alive. What the hell was she trying to do? If his sweet sub wouldn’t take care of herself, then he would. He should have the right to do it, and it pissed him off that he didn’t. He itched to put an end to her idiocy, but tightened his lips against the impulse to command her to order more.

  Sam ordered the biggest pizza they had, accompanied by a baked potato and a pitcher of beer.

  Her eyes rounded at the size of his order. “How can you eat all those carbs and not gain weight?”

  “I keep pretty active. Besides, this is nothing. I’ve a friend who is a kickboxer. When he’s in training for a competition, he can put away six thousand calories a day and still lose weight.”

  The food arrived. Lexi ate her salad listlessly, but didn’t take her eyes off his pizza. When the cheese dripped off the slice in his hand, he thought she would drool. He deliberately stopped eating. “You were right. I ordered too much. Help me eat some?” He put a slice of pizza on her plate.

  Sam had to admire her self-control, but even the strongest willpower couldn’t hold out against Mama Mizzoni’s homemade pizza. She took a bite and soon was tucking in.

  He smiled. “Next time we go out to dinner, I’ll feed you properly. What’s your favorite food?”

  She swallowed a mouthful of pizza. “This is pretty much perfect. But I enjoy a good steak too.”

  He had an image of feeding her steak off his fork and his dick hardened beneath the table. Down boy.

  “I haven’t had steak in years.”

  “Why not?” He couldn’t imagine a week without steak.

  “Joe, my ex, he didn’t like it. He wouldn’t eat any food that looked like itself.”

  Sam put down his glass. “What?”

  He poured some beer for her and she took a mouthful, without appearing to notice.

  “Yeah, he had a thing about it. He could only eat fish if it was in a chowder or potatoes if they were hash browns or apples if they were in fritters, and he was really bad with meat. It made it very difficult to cook for him.”

  “You should have told him to cook for himself.”

  She snorted. “He’d have starved. How many men can cook enough to feed themselves?”

  “Lots of men can cook. I’ll prove it sometime.”

  Lexi gave him a disbelieving look.

  They chatted over their meal. He told her of his failed marriage. “It was a mistake. I came home from Iraq and she was there. Everyone thought we’d make a great couple. She was the homecoming queen. I had collected some fruit salad—”

  “What’s that?” She spoke around a mouthful of pizza. “Fruit salad?”

  “I got a couple of medals.”

  She put down her fork. “Oh my God, you’re a hero!”

  Sam grimaced. “No, we all just did our job.”

  He waited for the inevitable questions about what he had done to earn those medals. He tried not to remember that. It still woke him up at night, and he wasn’t the most fucked-up of his friends. Sometimes it seemed the only thing that had kept the five of them sane in Iraq was planning Hades. That club wasn’t just where he played, it was part of his soul.

  The understanding on her face eased something inside him. Lexi hadn’t asked any stupid questions. God, he could love this woman.

  “So what happened with your wife?” she asked.

  Sam shrugged. “It just didn’t work out. We were too different. She was college and country club. I was army and work for your money. We had nothing in common.”

  Especially not in bed, but he couldn’t tell her about that.

  Lexi helped him eat a large gelato dessert and afterward Sam helped her find a cab and extracted a promise to have dinner with him again. As she got into the cab, he brushed a kiss onto her lips. It nearly killed him not to grab her and haul her against his raging hard-on while he plundered her mouth, but he managed.

  He broke the kiss before she had a chance to push him away. “Take care of yourself,” he told her and was proud his voice didn’t betray him. He shoved his hands into his chino pockets as the cab pulled away.

  Chapter Six

  Lexi toyed with her salad while she eyed Maddie’s club sandwich and fries with lustful envy.

  Maddie waved a fork at her. “Spill, Lexi. What was so private we couldn’t eat at the usual place?”

  Their usual place was Starbucks, but she was afraid she would run in to Sam there. Since their meeting outside the office, they had seen each other almost every day. Not dates exactly, but just hanging out together. Sam was so gentle and so sweet. She had never met a guy who enjoyed shopping or who loved watching chick flick movies. He was almost the perfect boyfriend, except for one thing.

  “Is Sam Lincoln gay?” she blurted out.

  Maddie choked on a mouthful of sandwich, coughing loudly until she managed to swallow it. She gestured to the pitcher of water on the table and Lexi filled her glass quickly and watched as her color slowly returned to normal. “You should wave a warning flag before you ask a question like that. Do you mean it? You’re dating Sam Lincoln?”

  Lexi held her breath. Please, God, don’t let me have picked another weirdo. Not after the Dom fiasco. She glanced down at her wrist. She still hadn’t gotten the bracelet off. The jeweler she showed it to had said he could cut it off, but she didn’t want to ruin it and it served as a reminder that most guys were lying, cheating creeps. Except Sam.

  Maddie whistled. “Sam Lincoln was captain of the football team. Came back from Iraq with a chest full of medals and married the homecoming queen. Absolutely and positively not gay, but he’s been off the market since he got married about two years ago, Now that he’s divorced, every single girl in town lives in hope.”

  Lexi sighed with relief.

  Maddie gave her a pointed look. “You want to tell me about it? It’s the least you can do, seeing that you almost killed me.”

  As Maddie ate, Lexi related their evenings spent together, how Sam had spent the previous weekend doing DIY jobs at her apartment and how sweet he had been to her over the past few weeks. “So we’ve kind of been seeing each other, and it’s great, except that…”

  “Except what, Lexi?” Maddie raised an interested eyebrow.

  “We haven’t …”

  Maddie burst out laughing. “Oh I don’t believe this. Nothing?”

  Lexi broke a fry in two and dabbed the ends in salt. “He kisses me good night, but he could be kissing his sister.”

  “No tongue?”

  Lexi shook her head.

  “Has he a hard-on?”

  “Shh!” Lexi looked around anxiously. Maddie had a louder voice than she realized. “I don’t know. He doesn’t get close enough for me to find out.”

  Maddie doubled over laughing. “First you date a sex maniac and now you’re dating a guy who won’t put out? Haven’t you ever heard of normal, Lexi?”

  “Oh, shut up.” Lexi gave up staring enviously at Maddie’s plate and speared another one of her fries with her fork. She sighed with pleasure. “What am I going to do, Maddie? I messed up so much the last time. Sam has invited me to dinner at his place tonight and I…”

  “Oh, forget that weirdo, Lexi. Do what any red-blooded woman would do. Go over to Sam’s place tonight and climb that man like a tree.”

&nbs
p; * * * * *

  At 7.30 p.m., Lexi walked into the lobby of Sam’s apartment building. She mentally checked her preparations for the tenth time. Sexy black dress, fuck-me heels, perfume, bottle of expensive wine. She was as ready as she ever would be.

  In the elevator, she smoothed her dress and wondered for the tenth time about her new underwear. The lady in the lingerie store said that the thong matched the silk bra she was wearing, but it was sticking in her butt and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to expose so much of her ass. Despite starting back at the gym recently, there was far too much of it. She rang the doorbell and her heart skipped a beat. Deep breath, Lexi. He was here.

  If Sam was surprised to see her so dressed up for an evening at home, he didn’t show it. He kissed her on the cheek and invited her inside.

  “Special occasion, Lexi?” Sam asked, eyeing the label on the wine bottle.

  She shook her head. “No. I just wanted to thank you for the last few weeks. You’ve been really sweet to me.”

  She looked around curiously. Sam’s apartment was huge, with open spaces and heavy pieces of expensive-looking furniture. The living room was dominated by a state-of-the-art entertainment system, a picture window with a view of the city and a massive sofa covered in butter-soft leather. The stark black and white photographs on the wall were oddly familiar.

  She followed him into the kitchen and watched while he cooked the steaks and plated up. “You open the wine,” she urged. “I’ll carry the plates.”

  As she placed his meal in front of him, she leaned over, giving him an eyeful of creamy cleavage. Sam shifted in his chair, but his face gave no reaction. Maybe she should try harder? Lexi deliberately brushed her breasts against his arm as she moved away. His gaze darted to her face and she thought she caught a hint of hunger. Score one for the girls.

  Lexi took the chair opposite him and raised her glass. “To friends.”