by KD Robichaux
“Ah, doll, come here.” Seth’s voice is soft, and I hear movement, like he’s pulling her in for a hug.
“Twy?” I prompt, my brows furrowing.
She sniffs loudly, her voice full of tears when she answers, “I’m here, Astrid. I’m…”
I… am an asshole. “Oh my God, Twy. I’m so sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t even think about how you would feel bringing up everything that happened last year. Shit, I feel like such a bi—”
“No!” she interrupts. “No, sis. It’s not that. I’m all good there. It’s the pregnancy hormones.”
I lift my brows at that. The woman has actual scars from what happened to her because of me, and she’s “all good there?” My need for this information doubles.
“I’m just…” She sniffs loudly. “I’m just so happy. This depression you’ve been in since it all went down has been like a huge weight on my shoulders, and you just have no idea what a relief it is to hear you sound so much like your old self.”
That brings tears to my own eyes, and my chin wobbles. “Yeah, I’m working on it, kid,” I tell her softly. “And I think what would really get this ball rolling is if you were to give Neil permission to tell me the type of therapy you went through. Because I’m hoping if it worked out so well for you, then maybe… just maybe, it might help a little bit for me.”
“Yes!” she yells into the phone, and I give a little half-smile as I glance up at Neil. “I give my permission, Doc. If I need to sign something or whatever, I’ll do it. But I give you the green light. Tell her everything; I don’t even care. In fact, this is way better. If you tell her, then I don’t have to, and it’ll be way less embarrassing for me.” She laughs even as she sniffs again.
“Does she need to sign something in order for you to tell me right now? Because I will leave right now and take it over to her,” I ask him, lifting a brow.
“No, goddess. Just the verbal confirmation is good,” Neil replies, and I nod, making to stand up from his lap to go back to my seat, but his big Thor arm comes down over my legs like a lap bar on a roller coaster.
I purse my lips before telling my sister, “Well, that’s all I needed, Twy. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“I want to see you!” she inserts quickly. “I mean, not now. You’re in the middle of… important things right now. Obviously. But I want to see you soon. Dinner sometime this week, the four of us? Or maybe lunch just the two of us?”
“Definitely. I’ll text you later and we’ll make actual plans. I love you, baby sis,” I murmur.
She sniffs one last time. “Love you too, Astrid. Bye.”
I place Neil’s phone back into the nook in the hot tub then look him in the eye. “Spill.”
The corner of his sexy lips tilts up, but he shakes his head. “While I am enjoying this pair of balls you’ve grown, and I fully intend to tell you everything you need to know, we’ve been in this hot tub longer than the recommended amount of time. Where would you prefer to move this conversation, goddess?” he asks, and it’s not until he mentions it that I realize I’m pruny and flushed from the spa.
“Hmmm… how about the study, so I get the full therapeutic effect on the leather couch?” I suggest, and he chuckles.
“The study it is,” he replies, and instead of letting me up off his lap, he just stands, lifting me in his arms and making me squeal in surprise.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. A little warning, Viking,” I chastise, and his eyes get all steamy. “Damn, the air sure is thinner up here,” I joke nervously, seeing that look in his eyes take over his whole face the longer my mostly naked body presses against his torso bridal-style as he steps us up then down and out of the hot tub.
Without preamble, he lets go of me with the arm beneath my legs, and I yelp when my body drops like a dead weight. But the arm encircling my upper back holds tight, and then he slooowly slides me the rest of the way down his palpitation-inducing body until my feet touch the non-slip mat.
“Well that was unnecessary,” I say, my voice all breathy, and he just gives me a sexy smirk as he takes a towel off the stack and wraps it around me.
Chapter 11
Astrid
After going upstairs and somehow only rinsing the chlorine off our naked bodies before getting dressed, we’re now in the study, me on the couch and Neil sitting in the matching brown leather armchair he pulled around to face me. Wanting the full therapy session experience, I asked him if he’d dress like he was going to work, and goddamn does he look delicious in the midnight-blue with white micro-dots button-down shirt that fits him like a second skin, solid flat-front navy-blue slacks that leave nothing to the imagination, and a medium-brown leather belt and matching short boots. On his left arm is a watch that’s big enough to be used as a weapon paired with a beaded earth-tone bracelet that circles his wrist three times. He even took the time to fix his hair and clean up his beard, and he topped it all off with a navy blue tie that pops against the darker shade of his shirt. The whole package was enough to make me swoon. Which is why I’m lying longways down the couch with my head resting on the arm.
“You know that’s only how they do it in the movies, right, goddess?” he prompts, and I hold up my hand to shush him.
“I am not your goddess right now, Dr. Walker. My name is Astrid Quill, and I’m here for you to shrink me,” I reply, then pull down my hand to lace my fingers together and rest them on my stomach.
“And I’m telling you that if you were to have come into my office and laid across my couch in that little sundress you have on, I would’ve lost my license,” he responds, and my eyes widen as my head slowly turns in his direction to look at his face.
Serious. He’s serious.
I sit up, making sure to keep my knees together, and when I’m facing him, sitting properly on one cushion, I cross my legs, and his eyes drop down to them before meeting mine once again.
“Very good, Ms. Quill,” he remarks, taking the notepad off the side table he set there with a pen and resting them against the knee of his leg he’s got crossed, his ankle propped on the opposite knee.
“Might I say, Dr. Walker, you have a niche for accessorizing. Everything from your shoes up to your tie is making me feel some kind of way,” I admit, shifting in my seat a little at the growing ache between my legs now that I’m having to sit up and face him instead of staring off at one of the bookcases.
While the rest of his face stays stoic, I catch the fact that one corner of his lips twitches, and it does something funny to my heart that I’m able to affect this big, strong, normally ascetic man.
He’s never been ascetic with you, though, a little voice reminds me, but I push it away.
“I don’t know how accurate this will be if we’re treating this as a normal hour of therapy, since I usually don’t start out by telling my patient all about her sister’s sessions,” he adds.
I narrow my eyes, crossing my arms over my lap before leaning forward to say low, with attitude, “Being the big, bad professional Dom you are, I’m sure you’ll do just fine at roleplaying your own occupation.”
His eyes drop to the cleavage I made, and they fill with heat before meeting mine. I sit back, sucking in a breath when his face darkens and his nostrils flare.
And there’s the Dom he keeps tucked away. Look what you did. Bad, bad, bad.
My eyes instantly widen, my attitude dropping quick. “Shit. I’m sorry. I don’t know why the hell I keep doing that. Am I fucking bipolar or something?”
“You recognize me as your Dom, and you’re subconsciously provoking him.” His voice is neutral, matter of fact, and I nod.
“So, what? Something inside me is just begging to be punished?” I ask, my brow furrowed.
“Have you ever heard the saying ‘bad attention is better than no attention?’” he asks, writing something down on his notepad.
I sit up straighter and try to look over his knee to see what it is, but he covers it with his fist holding the pen. I huff. “What, like
a child throwing a tantrum when Mommy or Daddy isn’t paying them any mind?”
He tilts his head to the side, narrowing his eyes curiously. “For lack of a better example.”
I rest back in my seat. “Noted.” I switch my crossed legs and slip off my flip-flops, burying my toes in the rug beneath my foot. “So, Doc, please tell me about my sister,” I request, and I brace myself. Because God knows this is the true catalyst of why I’ve been in this… funk for the past year.
He pulls a leather folio off the side table, opens it up, and takes out printed papers that have been stapled together. “These are the actual notes from your sister’s sessions.” When I instantly reach for them, he pulls them against his chest, and I frown and sit back. “It’s in psychology jargon you wouldn’t understand.” I lift a brow indignantly. “Not because you’re not brilliant, god—” He clears his throat. “—Ms. Quill, but because unless one has a doctorate in these subjects, they likely wouldn’t understand it. It’s literally an entirely different language.”
“Fair enough,” I reply.
“All right.” He reads it over and then seems to translate it. “Session one. We talked about Twyla’s childhood. She grew up with two loving parents now married for twenty-eight—now twenty-nine years—and a sister who is two years older than her and who she is very close with.” He looks up from the paper. “Sound about right?” He sits up a little straighter. “Not that I’m wanting to double-check the accuracy of what she said, but I mean, was it the same for you? Is that how you remember it?”
“Oh. Um. I thought this was just going to be about Twy, but um… yeah. That’s accurate. Our parents are badass. I think you got to meet them at the wedding, right?” I ask.
“I did. Very lovely people. Your dad was very interested in my beach house,” he replies, and I smile.
“Sounds like Dad. California dude who moved to Florida. He’s an ocean guy through and through.” I nod.
He reads farther down the paper before flipping the page then back to the first again. “Session two, we talked about Twyla’s high school and college years, and her professional career as a chemical engineer. It was a first for me while initiating a member into Club Alias, because she was a virgin up until a few weeks before that point, so there was no sexual history for us to cover during this session. Session two is normally when a prospect and I delve into the reasons they are drawn to the BDSM lifestyle, but in Twyla’s case, it was a special circumstance—”
“My darling brother-in-love,” I finish for him with a smile, and he sighs good-naturedly and nods. “So, question. Seth only told me Club Alias is like fight club. Don’t talk about it and all that stuff. He didn’t say much else about it, and I never really picked Twyla’s brain after… yeah. In fact, I think the only reason I know about it at all is because Twyla told me about it when she was going to start taking lessons from Seth to learn the different toys she was supposed to be selling at Toys for Twats. And then, of course, the first time I met you, when Twyla scared the ever-loving shit out of me when she fainted at the club, and you came and got me.” A little smile pulls at his lips at the memory. I, however, don’t find that moment in time very amusing. “Anyway, it was during the day when I went to the club, and so it was completely empty aside from us and then Seth and Twyla up in his office. Then the twenty minutes I was there the night Brian and Clarice got engaged, no one had shown up yet, and we left before anyone did.”
“Right,” he prompts, waiting for the actual question.
“Um… well, are you able to give me any more information about what Club Alias is about? I mean, besides that it’s a super-secret BDSM club that’s apparently really freaking hard to get into. Because, trust me, I tried.” I roll my eyes.
That caught his attention. “You… tried? You mean you tried to come to the club…”
“And failed miserably. The dude at the door was having none of my shit. After Twyla told me she was going to these lessons, I couldn’t just let my virgin little sister run off to a fucking BDSM club without at least trying to scope out the place, make sure it wasn’t some nasty-ass sex club with this ‘Dom’ she was meeting up with who might eat her alive,” I reply. “What kind of sister would I be?”
“And what happened?” he asks, a smile tugging at his lips that he tries to hide behind his hand holding his pen as his elbow props on the armrest.
“Fucker wouldn’t let me in! I was dressed all cute, makeup looking sick—that’s like, ‘awesome,’ in old people speak—” I wink as he lifts a brow. “—and pulled open this super-sketchy blacked-out glass door, and the guy was standing there behind his little podium to check IDs. Handed him my driver’s license like any normal nightclub, and he looked at me all weird, asking me for my membership card. Duh, I didn’t have one, so I asked to fill out the application right quick and how much the fee would be. And. He. Laughed,” I say, outrage clear in my tone. “The asshole laughed at me! Now, I saw the type of people walking in before and after me. I’m from freaking LA, okay? Well, not the city limits, but close enough to count, goddammit, and I know what expensive-ass brand name shit looks like. And I might’ve rolled up in there in my little black Walmart dress, and my Steve Madden pumps I’ve had since junior prom, but I fucking looked good. There was no reason for him to laugh at me—”
“Ms. Quill.”
I ignore him, my rant feeling very cathartic. “—and I don’t know what kind of establishment you all are running over there—”
“Astrid.” He tries again.
“—but even on the run and in hiding, I had some goddamn savings I could’ve used to buy a membership to ya little dirty sex club in order to check it out and keep my baby sister safe—”
“Goddess!” he growls.
“What?” So much attitude. So, so much attitude.
Your LA came out reeeal strong with that one, the little voice says, and I cringe on the inside but keep my face sassy. If I’m going down, might as well go down with a fight.
“The fee, my love, to become a member of Club Alias… is $85,000,” Neil states, and my jaw drops. “And I’m sure he wasn’t laughing because you weren’t dressed fancy enough. We have members who show up in nearly nothing at all.”
That makes my teeth clack my mouth closes so quickly, an overwhelming sense of jealousy making my stomach feel hot. I certainly don’t like that idea. Judging by the reaction the bitches at the gym had to Neil, it makes me nauseous to think about naked bitches acting the same way. I narrow my eyes. “Then why do you suppose he did then?” I prompt, keeping up my haughtiness to hide the fact that there’s a green-eyed monster about to flip over his side table and shred his lamp shade with her cat claws.
“Because, Ms. Quill. There is no just ‘filling out an application right quick.’ There is a very extensive application process, which includes but is not limited to four therapy sessions with me in order to make sure the prospect is a good fit,” he answers, and my sassiness deflates.
“Oh.” I push my long, straightened blonde hair behind my ear and pull my legs up beneath me on the couch, spreading my skirt out around my calves. “Um… and what do these sessions entail?”
“Let’s start at the beginning of the process, shall we?” he prompts, and I nod. “You are special, because you already know about the club. But normally, a full-fledged member would invite a prospect, and only during special times of the year when new people can apply. The person would fill out the application, and after leaving a $1000 deposit, Imperium Security runs the background check. As you know, Seth is a technological genius who graduated from MIT, so this isn’t some generic background check. It goes highly in depth to weed out a lot of what we deem unfit. But if it all comes back clear, then we set up the first appointment with me, and they come once a week for a month.
“There are two reasons we do the therapy sessions before membership is offered. The first is to make sure the prospect has no ill intentions. You’ve read enough books and, from your past experience, know what sad
ism and masochism is. Sadism is the tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others.”
I snort, crossing my arms over my chest. “Yeah. I know exactly what a sadist is.”
His voice gentles as he continues, when before, it was like he was reading from a manual he’d repeated countless times, which I guess he has, if every member of Club Alias has to come through him. “And it’s exactly men like him who we make sure to weed out through this process.”
I nod in understanding, a weight on my shoulders I didn’t realize I was carrying suddenly lifting.
“A masochist is a person on the other end of that scale. They derive the pleasure from being humiliated, hurt, or controlled.” A pause. One long enough that my eyes focus on his when I’d been looking through him while my mind absorbed his words. “And there we have it, my love, as you and I already knew,” he says. “God, I love your little microexpressions. So telling. If I didn’t already know you, I’d be able to read you like a book.”
“So you’ve said before, and I have no idea what that means,” I reply, narrowing my eyes.
“You know how people say ‘you wear your heart on your sleeve’ when they say you’re easy to read, nothing hidden away for anyone to see? It’s a little different, because you are hard for others to read, but being trained, I’m able to decipher the smallest hint of emotion in your face and in your body.”
“Probably comes in handy for this process,” I murmur, and he nods.
“Very. And what I just saw was… you have absolutely no interest, not one ounce of sadism inside that delectable little body of yours. And while the humiliation and hurt part of masochism weren’t high on your list, you were highly receptive to the being controlled aspect. You, Ms. Quill, are a submissive. Which we already knew, but now my expert opinion is confirmed,” he tells me with a wink, and I can’t help but smile. He’s so fucking charming.