by Kendra Mase
Looking around, she was much happier to end up right here.
Still, he shook his head, eyes turning back down to the calendar in her lap. “You never said what happened when you went to DuCain.”
“I talked to Nik, and I met this other girl who was there wearing a rather short schoolgirl uniform.”
“Evie.”
Katherine met his eyes and nodded. “She’s nice.”
“She’s new.”
Katherine shrugged. “Avril left.”
“Off on one of her adventures,” Jack confirmed with a tight smile. “At least that is what we all assume.”
“What do you mean?” The space between her eyebrows creased.
“It’s what Avril does. I called Reed and he didn’t seem concerned so…”
“Reed and her—”
“Reed has always been her number one. A package deal, in a sense,” Jack explained. “Honestly, if you wanted to know anything about Avril, Reed would know. So, when Avril runs away once in a while and Reed says that it is okay, we can all believe it.”
“Even when she leaves behind her life and event planning for this New Year’s thing at Rosin and DuCain?” Katherine asked.
“So that’s what they pulled you in on.”
Looking back down at the planner, she couldn’t say anything to deny it. “They were very charismatic.”
“Like Devil was.”
“About, yes.”
Jack barked a laugh.
“But now I am basically the planner of the entire thing it is sounding like, all because I said I could maybe come here and try to find her notes on the past year.”
“So that’s why you came to the castle?”
“Is that what you call it?” Katherine looked around the place. It was rather apt. “At first. I figured if you weren’t at DuCain, you might’ve been out. I could just slip in and out for these notes. No one would ever notice.”
“I would’ve noticed you.”
But he didn’t. He hadn’t noticed that she was gone after that amazing day they had together when he showed her Ashton, her home, for weeks. How long would that have lasted if she hadn’t shown up here tonight? How long would he have not noticed?
The thought must’ve dawned on him. “I’m sorry that I didn’t call. I would be pissed at me too.”
“I’m too tired to be angry with anyone anymore, Jack,” Katherine said, “Or at least not for a long time. You say that you’re a bad secret keeper, well I’m terrible at holding grudges.”
Some sort of peace fell over his face.
She shrugged. At least she was the one who caused it. “I feel like I’d be madder than I’d be anxious at this point and that’s… a lot.”
“Why is Emilie mad at you, anyway?”
He’d caught that. She curled up farther. “I brought up some ideas for the shop again like the website and online shop.”
“She’s still not for the idea?”
Katherine shook her head. After today, she’d say that was a bit of an understatement. “She says it’s not the right time. I feel it is. I understand the shop like she said she wanted me to. She’s let me basically take over the past few weeks and it has been going well. Oddly well.”
Jack smiled.
“I’ve had a lot of time and even my corsets have come along way, even if they aren’t perfect yet,” Katherine went on. “I even finished the website, besides the name of course—”
“Show me.”
“What?”
Jack was already reaching underneath the coffee table, from somewhere among the chessboard and other random things, he pulled out a laptop. Waiting for the screen to light up, he shoved it toward her. “Show me.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to see,” Jack insisted, shaking the keyboard.
Meeting his gaze, Katherine took the computer from him. Slowly she keyed in the website builder, showing him the editing screen. She’d been too nervous to even hit preview in case she accidentally published it with a ridiculous domain name she couldn’t change. Then it would really look like they were some random shop of unpronounceable scandal.
She turned the screen toward Jack.
His eyes widened as he scrolled. “This is really amazing, Kit. How long did you spend on this?”
Longer than she’d admit. “I still need to take photos.”
“I can help with that.”
Katherine shook her head. “I didn’t mean it like I was asking.”
“I was offering,” Jack said, peeking up from the screen. He let her watch as he logged out and shut the screen again. Everything’s safe. “What, are you nervous about modeling?”
“I would not be modeling.”
“There would have to be at least one photo of the lingerie on someone, don’t you think?”
Katherine stared at him for a long moment. She thought this through, and he was right, but—it certainly wasn’t going to be her. “Truth or dare?”
“We are playing again?”
She waited.
“Truth.”
“You just really want to see me half naked, don’t you, Jack the Ripper?” Katherine asked, though she couldn’t fight the small smile forming on her lips. Yes, she wanted to say. Yes.
Jack shook his head, fighting off another wide smile himself. “God, you’re weird.”
“You’re just starting to realize?”
“You’re just starting to realize that I almost saw you thoroughly fucked against the ugly hallway wallpaper earlier tonight where anyone else could see? Much worse than some boudoir on the internet if I do say so myself.”
Trying to contain herself, she closed her lips and looked at Jack again, feeling the blush rising to her cheeks. He didn’t say the words, and yet he was still there, looking at her like that.
“You’re slowly blooming for me, Kit. Let me watch.”
Blooming, was that really what she was doing? Katherine took a deep breath and shifted across the couch toward him.
Truth or dare. It was his turn.
Her eyes shifted down to his lips before moving back to his eyes again, trying to track where he was looking.
Right at her.
This could wreck everything, the one part of her brain said as she looked up at him.
The other parts whispered, somehow louder. Dare.
And so she kissed him. Yanking him down by the collar of his shirt so she could reach his mouth, Katherine kissed Jack Carver the way she imagined herself kissing him a hundred times before. His mouth was warm and hard with sudden shock, but Katherine kissed him, and maybe this could be enough for her, whatever happened after. Whether he wanted to be with her or—
Breaking apart, Katherine was sure that her heart might break if she finished that thought. Pounding as hard as it was, anyway, it would break right through her ribs and chest until she could no longer hide it, out in the open to gape at as well as the hole it left.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’ve wanted to do that for…”
Forever. Since the first moment she saw Jack, even though in between, she thought there for a while that her mind was going too far to other places.
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” Jack stopped her, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. He shook his head as he blinked. This time, there was no doubt where his eyes landed when he opened them. He stared at her lips. “Don’t be. I’m—I’m really sorry I didn’t call you, Kit.”
She shook her head, leaning back where she lounged on the couch. On the television, an old movie started to play in technicolor.
“Truth or dare?”
Jack narrowed his eyes and took a long moment in the silence between them. “For the first time I’m afraid to say dare.”
“Then, truth?”
He nodded.
“Why do they call you Ripper?”
“Because,” he sighed, biting his bottom lip. “I’ve gained the reputation of ripping out hearts.”
“How drama
tic.”
“My middle name. You caught me.”
If only she did.
Chapter Twenty-One
Katherine was used to waking up on couches, but this one wasn’t hers. Over the past few weeks, she had ended up here, blinking her eyes open to find Jack in what looked like a very uncomfortable position on the other end. His head tilted back up toward the ceiling, legs extended so one was still on the couch while the other was propped on the coffee table.
In the mornings, Katherine started work with Emilie, who slowly but surely gained her strength back to come down to the shop, quietly working on the small pile of bespoke requests that piled up. The first time she came home after the fateful night of two parties and her new position as New Year’s event coordinator, Katherine waited for the moment her aunt would question where she was or who she obviously spent the night with in that proud yet teasing way of hers.
But she didn’t. Her aunt’s focus remained completely on her work, offering corrections on Katherine’s, when she glanced up or was brought tea, noting a loose thread or order pickup she needed to make.
Katherine didn’t bring up the website again. Instead, she worked. She put together more sets to replace the others that had been taken off the displays. She caught her finger on the sewing machine to which she did not cry. She cleaned up the shop at the end of the day and switched the sign over to closed. She tore out of the shop each day in order to make it to DuCain where Jack was often finishing up a session and conceded to helping her and Evie with the event plans.
He’d out of everyone had actually been to the previous ones and had some sort of clue what the end product was supposed to look like.
Jack told her to be there by six o’clock sharp, but he still looked surprised when she showed up on time each day.
“This is what you call normal?” Katherine asked him the first evening as she jotted a few more notes down from Avril’s planner. The pages were a mess of phone numbers and minor details Katherine would’ve never thought of.
“Better than being alone,” Jack said simply. He didn’t lift his eyes from where he whipped down his equipment.
It seemed to become their motto.
From DuCain, sometimes they didn’t leave right away, Evie joining them. She seemed to always be at the club. With simple ease, whether or not she knew they would be there; she’d crack the door open as she threw a sweatshirt over whatever clothes she was wearing that day. All of them hid inside Jack’s preferred dungeon, sprawled out on the floor as they planned.
Among the three of them, their other motto included, what would Queen do?
It was met with up and down results.
“We need to set down the headliner here at midnight too,” Jack said one day after Evie snuck in.
Evie poured over Avril’s planner, nodding as she focused.
“Evie,” Jack said again.
Katherine glanced at her too, until the girl’s head popped up.
“What?” She looked between the two of them. “Threesome?”
Jack held back a laugh as he rolled his eyes. “As much as it overjoys me that you would be interested in a ménage à trois, with those welts on you and another client later on your calendar, no.”
Evie rolled her eyes, mimicking him. “It’s just Trevor coming to play later. It’s like taking a luxurious nap in between when he tries to tickle me.”
“You aren’t ticklish?” Katherine couldn’t help herself before suddenly asking over the top of her computer.
Evie pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I think he sees it as a challenge.”
“This is not why we asked you to come today.”
“No one ever asks me these days.”
Jack ran a hand down his face. Before glancing at Katherine as if to say, you see what we are dealing with? “Evie.”
Katherine felt her lips press together to stay closed as she smiled. She was pretty sure she loved Evie.
Handing the planner back to her, Evie curled her knees up toward her chest. “What?”
“The headliner for New Year’s. I was thinking it could be you and me.”
Evie’s eyes widened. Her finger pointed back and forth between them. “You and me?”
With a tilt of his chin, Jack nodded. “It’s up to you, of course. I know that you haven’t been completely open with doing public scene work.”
The girl next to her swallowed, and in that moment, Katherine didn’t see the strength in Evie that she always did. Yet still, with a deep breath, Evie blew it out and started to nod slowly. “Okay.”
“You know you can back out at any time.”
Evie nodded again.
“No harm no foul.”
She forced a small laugh as she let herself relax her back into the wall. “What better time for me to make my grand entry.”
“A nice way to think of it,” Jack granted. “So that’s settled.”
“We’ll practice before, right?”
“Of course. We would never go out until you were comfortable. We can make time to figure out the semantics with no impact. That way, you’ll get the pace of what the scene will be on stage. I don’t go up there without a plan, not anymore,” Jack agreed. “Kit, did you call—”
“Can you show me some now?” Evie cut in. “Just so I can ease my mind. This is free time.”
Jack stared at her. His eyes flicked to Katherine.
Except on stage, Katherine had never seen Jack play before. Especially not in the dungeons where he spent most of his time these days between the house and the occasional photography gigs that were getting fewer now that the weather turned from chilly to cold frost sticking to the streets.
“Come on, please?” Evie shrugged, obviously noting Katherine’s sudden flush. In fact, seeing it, Evie stretched her legs out in front of her, as if preparing for a nap. Her hands even curled behind her head. At the base, her hair became looser by the second. Strands tumbled down past her ears to her shoulders. “I like to know what I am getting into. As you said, I don’t do a lot of scenes in public. Any, actually.”
Jack chewed on the inside of his cheek. With a grunt, he pushed himself up off the dark floor. “Fine. Quickly. Get up.”
“Actually, I thought maybe Kit could take my place. You said yourself the other day that she needed to learn more about the community and the roles here as she put everything together from the bottom up. Plus, I’m a visual learner.”
Jack groaned, looking away, he waved a hand at Katherine. “Of course, you are. Fine. Kit. Up.”
“Me?”
“You just said when you got here that you agreed to learning DuCain and Rosin so that we can market properly.”
Right, she did. A sensation tingly low in her stomach, slowly, Katherine moved her laptop she was typing on to the side. Once it was safe, back in her bag, she stood up and strode across the floor toward Jack, one step at a time.
He seemed taller than normal.
“Aw, aren’t you guys cute together?”
“Evie,” Jack reprimanded.
Evie only continued to smile; this time unafraid at the sudden sharpness in his voice as she taunted. It was similar to the way Katherine did when she was in the shop watching Emilie put something together that was amazing. This was her happy place, filled with torture and pleasure, Katherine put together. In the dungeons of DuCain.
She wondered how many times she and Jack had played together before. She brushed the thought aside, nothing to stick on.
“Okay, so I was thinking—” Jack started.
“Uh-uh,” Evie cut in from where she sat. “Don’t you think to create an SSC environment you should tell Kit exactly what her role is here? Unless, of course, she already has experience. Kit?”
Katherine had to tightly press her lips together, so she didn’t laugh at what was happening. She glanced at Evie, who only gave her a stranger look than she was expecting, understanding.
“SSC?”
“Safe, sane, consensual,” Jack
bit out.
“There is also RACK,” Evie filled in. “Risk-assessed consensual kink.”
Katherine gave a slow nod.
“Also, she’ll need a safe word.”
“We aren’t doing anything.” Jack again gave Evie a look that might’ve once sent Katherine running.
Even Evie took a second before she replied, more to Katherine than him. “You have one?”
“One what?”
“A safe word. You can use the average house word if you want, but I think it’s fun to make up your own.”
“What’s yours?”
Evie didn’t have to think twice. “Cavill.”
Jack raised another eyebrow, hands on his hips.
“You know.” Evie swayed as she looked up in thought. “Like Henry Cavill, the actor? I have quite the thing for him.”
“How interesting,” Jack replied blandly.
“Periwinkle,” Katherine blurted out suddenly. It was an easy word. One that came to mind ever since she read the tag on a sheath of fabric that was delivered to the shop.
Jack turned and stared at her the moment the word passed her lips. He repeated it slowly, quietly, as if memorizing a very important vocabulary word. “Periwinkle.”
Katherine nodded twice.
“Okay.” He licked his lips.
“This is when you show her the basics.”
“If I knew that you were going to top me, Evie, I would’ve brought someone else in here.”
She only waited, waving her hands for them to get closer than the five-foot distance they were still standing from each other.
Yeah, Katherine liked her.
“Fine.” Jack swallowed whatever was caught in his throat. “For starters, the marker of a truly good submissive is one that revels in complete obedience and perhaps even reverence toward her Dom. Isn’t that right, Evie?”
Katherine heard a simple, “Mhm,” from somewhere behind her.
Her eyes were focused on Jack now as he stepped closer.
“Also, the resting pose for a sub is on her knees,” Jack said gently.
“Oh, um.” Katherine looked around toward her heels. With a glance up to Jack and then Evie, who was watching with apt interest, Katherine slowly lowered herself down. The floor of the dungeon was not as hard as she thought it would be on her knees. Tucking her feet below her, her skirt tapered off to reveal the front of her thighs.