by Amy Valenti
NOT YOUR DAMN DOM
Amy Valenti
Copyright 2014 Amy Valenti
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I’m just waiting for the inevitable.
Three years ago, I broke my submissive’s spirit completely. After she fled, I swore I’d never call myself a Dominant again. No one who screwed up as badly as I did is worthy of that title.
Then Alexandra Ashford signed up for my personal training sessions—smart, confident, yet perfectly willing to follow my every order. The kind of submissive every Dom dreams about, even if she doesn’t know it.
I knew I had to keep my distance.
My intentions were good, but she seduced me anyway. I’d stayed away from women for three years, yet it took her three days to get past my defences. Now I can’t make myself let her go. She’s more than I deserve; everything I want.
But keeping vanilla? That’s gonna be hell.
All I can do is hope she never begs me to tie her up and hurt her, though my Dom side craves it. If we cross that line, I have to leave her. I can’t break another submissive.
I can’t be her damn Dom.
NOT YOUR DAMN DOM
CHAPTER ONE
Spencer
Get away from me! You monster! I trusted you, loved you, and you did this to me…
I rained punches and kicks upon the punching bag in front of me, using violence to vent my anger and frustration at a situation that could never be fixed. I’d dreamed about her again. It had left me in a black mood.
Beating the shit out of an inanimate object helped me to deal with it, released the tension for a while.
“Wow, what did that punching bag ever do to you?” a female voice interrupted, startling me.
I hit the bag one more time before turning, irritated that my workout had been disturbed. I hadn’t been expecting anyone to arrive for another thirty minutes, and I’d thought I had time to work through my aggression, then take a shower before meeting my new client.
It looked like I was meeting her angry and sweaty, instead, because that…that was definitely Alexandra Ashford.
I’d never seen any of her work, hadn’t even known her face until yesterday, but in this business, it was a good idea to look actors up on the Internet Movie Database before you met them. If you didn’t, you might make the serious faux pas of asking if they’d been in anything you might have watched. Alexandra’s headshot on IMDB had been pretty much what I’d expected—she was blonde, in her mid to late twenties, smiling.
In person, she had an attractive energy about her that her picture hadn’t conveyed. She was shorter than I’d expected, and her body language was a little wary as she crossed the room. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. My friend dropped me off early because his kid needs a dentist. I can wait outside if you like.”
I shook my head, trying to put on my client-friendly persona. It was too early in the morning for that shit, but she was paying for my personal training services—or her studio was, at any rate. “No, stick around. Might as well get started.” I pulled off a padded glove and began to hold out my hand for her to shake, then grimaced and withdrew it. “I’d shake your hand, but it’s a little sweaty right now. I’m Spencer Hyde.”
She rolled her eyes and stuck out a hand anyway. “Alexandra Ashford. Alex.”
I took her hand. It almost felt as though I was soiling her skin, tainting her. The completely irrational thought had come out of nowhere, but the notion was pervasive.
I pulled away as soon as was polite and beckoned to her. “Let’s sit down and talk about what I can do for you.”
“Sounds good.” She followed me through the gym and into the tiny office where I took care of the paperwork side of the business. “You came highly recommended.”
We sat down with bottles of water from the refrigerator in the corner.
“Yeah, about that—who recommended me? I don’t get many female clients, especially not female actors. They usually go to places with programmes more specialised towards women.”
Alex shrugged. “I didn’t want somewhere that would pander to my gender. I need to focus on my muscle tone, not my weight. I don’t want to be body shamed for not doing the anorexic, fitness-freak Hollywood actress thing.”
I raised an eyebrow, but refrained from commenting. There wasn’t much I could say to that, and besides, she still hadn’t answered my question.
“Callum Connors recommended you,” she added after a moment.
Callum was a friend of mine from way back. We’d fallen out of touch for a while, but reconnected earlier this year. I just hoped he’d recommended me because I’d be the best for the job, not as some misguided attempt to matchmake. “I’ll have to thank him. How do you guys know each other?”
“I was a recurring guest-star on One Last Look a couple of years ago. We kept in touch.”
I looked over the printout of the online form she’d used to book my personal training services. There wasn’t much information there, but it was an excuse to look at the paper instead of the woman in front of me. Not that I generally had a problem with looking at women, but this tiny, matter-of-fact female was far from the flighty diva I’d come to expect from working in Hollywood. That coupled with her premature entrance had put me off balance.
“So tell me what you need. I’m assuming you’re preparing for a role.”
She smiled. “My first starring role, actually. It’s an action movie called Walk on Glass, and it’s due to start filming in just over a month.”
Well, wasn’t that just something? I leaned back in my chair. “I know the project. I’ll be choreographing the fight scenes for it.”
She blinked. “Wow! Coincidence.”
“Probably not, if Callum’s involved.” I grabbed the outline they’d sent me and spent a few seconds scanning it, then looked up at her. She was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, which made it difficult to gauge her upper body strength. “How much can you bench press?”
“Ninety-five on a really good day.”
Not bad, given that she couldn’t be more than five-four in height. “Okay, let me take some more physical information from you.”
She gave me the basics as I asked for them, even her weight, which I’d had women—and a surprising number of men—get defensive about in the past. She didn’t seem to care what I thought of her stats, just accepting that she needed to give me the information so I could help her. I appreciated that.
We headed back out to the gym, and I gestured towards the iPod dock with speakers in the corner. “If you have a playlist you want to use, go ahead and plug in.”
Alex smiled and pulled her iPod out of her pocket. “Thanks. Do you let all your clients do this?”
“I’ve only really regretted it a couple of times since I started offering.” Remembering the Celine Dion aficionado, I winced. He’d been fun.
“Hopefully this won’t be one of these times.” She took a moment to call up the playlist, then slotted the device into the dock and nodded as the music started.
I’d been mostly on autopilot since she’d walked in, but a
s I recognised the song, its strong bass unmistakeable, my brain finally woke up. I raised an eyebrow. She was into late-nineties industrial music? I had to give her kudos for that. “Good choice.”
“I know.” She analysed me appreciatively, as if she were thinking the exact same thing about my taste in music.
Interest rose within me, but I mentally smacked the emotion back down where it belonged. I was here to do a job, and she was paying me to help her. That was all this could be.
Getting my mind back on track, I directed her to do some stretches to warm up her muscles.
A small flash of confusion crossed her face—probably at my unintentional abruptness—but then she nodded and shrugged out of her hoodie to reveal the sports bra underneath. “Anywhere I should focus on in particular?”
There was somewhere I was trying fucking hard not to focus on. My cock stirred at the sight of her exposed abs and the hint of cleavage the bra gave her. Fuck! “Everywhere you can. I’ll be back in a moment.”
“Okay.” She positioned one foot in front of the other and redistributed her weight to stretch out one calf muscle, concentrating on the action rather than on me.
I retreated into the office and rested both hands on the desk, willing my arousal to dissipate. Goddamn it, Hyde, it’s not like you’ve never seen a woman before.
But this particular woman was appealing to me more and more by the minute, as she stretched her beautiful body—following my orders—to the tune of one of my favourite songs. Callum was so fucking dead when I got hold of him. He’d sent temptation my way on purpose and now I was gonna have to ignore it.
I grabbed my phone and sent him a text message. You owe me so much goddamn whiskey.
It was our code; whenever we had women trouble, we’d support each other with alcohol.
His response was almost immediate—he must have been on a break from filming. I owe you? What did I do?
I wasn’t buying it. You sent Alex fucking Ashford here.
A reply flashed back. I have no idea why that’s a bad thing but I have to get to set. Call you in a few hours?
I tossed the phone back onto the desk and ran a hand over my face. At least messaging Callum had killed my hard-on.
Taking a step across the office, I glanced out of the open door, then cursed under my breath as my arousal spiked again. Alex had her back to me and was touching her toes, giving me an unobstructed view of her ass in those tight workout pants.
My sadistic side reared its head and for just one second, I let myself wonder what it’d be like to leave red stripes all over that ass with a belt or cane. My cock throbbed, and I stepped back out of view, muttering more obscenities.
That would never happen. Could never happen. I’d left that stuff behind for good.
I had to bring my mind out of the gutter right now and concentrate on doing my damn job.
Alex
I was just about done with my warm-up, so I glanced around, looking for my new personal trainer. The gym held one of every type of exercise machine, but only one—this was just a private personal training space, not a full-blown gym people could join with a monthly membership. No one would be interrupting our sessions, which I guessed actors more famous than I was must find a comfort.
Spencer Hyde could take as much of my physical information as he wanted, measure it with his hands and lips if he wanted to. It was a good job my talent was acting—I’d had to make good use of those skills right there in his office. Keeping myself professional and not rubbing myself up against him like a cat had taken all of my focus. Then his admission that he was into the same kind of music I was had made me want to jump him even more.
Callum had said Spencer was good at his job, but he’d failed to add ‘tattooed, built and drop-dead gorgeous’ to that description—unsurprisingly so, since his tastes didn’t run towards guys. I wondered just how many more tattoos were under Spencer’s shirt. He was absolutely magnificent even with a black tank top covering his upper body; his inked biceps alone made me want to swoon. If he took his shirt off in my presence, I’d probably pass out.
If I was really lucky, maybe I’d wake up tied to his bed so he could have his wicked way with me.
I tried to ignore the warmth spreading through my lower belly, moving into a stretch I’d already done once to try to distract myself. I was here to get in shape for my role, and this man could help me do that. That was all that mattered.
Besides, he was hardly even looking at me. He might have been my type, but I obviously wasn’t his.
“All set?” He’d come up behind me while I wasn’t looking, and his earlier irritability had returned. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but I didn’t know him well enough.
“All set,” I confirmed. “What’s the plan?”
He outlined the plan for the session—to put me through my paces on the machines and monitor my heart rate to see how he could best help me, basically—and set me going on the treadmill. As I jogged, then upped the pace to my usual run, I sneaked the occasional peek at him. Sometimes he was watching me, sometimes not, but the whole time his jaw was tight. Something had made him pretty damn angry. I just hoped it wasn’t me.
As the treadmill signalled that it was going to slow me down, to ease me back down to a jog before I stopped running, I put my hand on the sensor that would record my heart rate. I wondered whether it’d be slower if I didn’t have a rugged, powerful-looking man watching me at that moment.
The sensor unit beeped and I called out its reading to Spencer, who nodded and noted down the measurement. A couple of minutes later, after slowing me to a rapid walk, the treadmill finished its pre-programmed cycle and I returned to Spencer’s side. “How am I doing?”
He smiled, just a little. “Pretty good so far. Elliptical next, then you can show me your bench press. I’m guessing since this is for the big screen, you’re gonna want some extra muscle definition in your arms?”
I hated weights, but he had a good point. “You’re guessing right.”
“Not a fan?” He followed me across to the elliptical machine.
“Everyone’s gotta have an exercise they hate, right?” I carefully positioned myself on the pedals. “Except you. You look like you love them all.”
“Not a fan of yoga,” he deadpanned, and I laughed, trying to imagine this mountain of a man in the tree pose.
I thought I caught a glimpse of warmth in his expression, but it was gone before I could really tell. I couldn’t figure the guy out—one moment he could be encouraging me and the next he’d be pissed off again. This was going to be a challenging few weeks for more than just physical reasons, but as much as I hated to admit it, I was looking forward to spending more time with Spencer.
Spencer
By the end of our session, I was longing for a battle with my punching bag. Promising myself a long workout with it later was the only thing that kept my cock in check as Alex got sweatier, more breathless; as she looked to me for instructions. Fuck, I wanted her.
She paused in the doorway before leaving. “Spencer?”
I glanced up from the clipboard I was pretending to study, the sound of my name from her lips impossible to ignore.
“Thank you.” She smiled. “See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” Luckily, she hadn’t really waited for my response before heading out, so she couldn’t see how at a loss her words had made me.
I hadn’t been this out of my depth for years. After what had happened with Kristin, I’d sworn I’d limit myself to one-night vanilla hook-ups with women I’d be unlikely to encounter again.
So far, I hadn’t even gone looking for one-night stands. It was almost two years, ten months since Kristin’s departure. More than enough time to heal and move on, according to a couple of my less tactful friends.
I’d never trust myself with a vanilla relationship again, let alone a D/s one. I needed to stop fucking daydreaming and deal with this crazy infatuation before tomorrow, and there were only two ways I knew of to do tha
t. One was to work out. The other had to wait until Callum provided the booze he owed me.
I stalked across the room and hit the punching bag so hard it flew off its hook.
Fuck.
* * * *
Spencer
An afternoon’s work had given me enough time to calm down, so when Callum opened his front door I was able to resist punching him in his pretty-boy face. Barely.
To his credit, he didn’t ask me what was wrong until I had a generous measure of whiskey in my hand. “So what’s your problem with Alex?”
The alcohol burned a fiery trail down my throat as I glared at him. “You know exactly what my problem is. I told you I’m out of the lifestyle. I don’t need your misguided matchmaking attempts in my place of work, Callum.”
“Whoa, wait a minute.” Callum’s surprise seemed genuine, but he was an actor—of course it would. “You think Alex is submissive? Have you even met the woman?”
“I spent all fucking morning giving her orders. It might have been a while, but I can still see when a woman’s getting off on obeying.”
Callum sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Listen, Spence—” I opened my mouth to stop him, but he just raised his voice and carried on. “Just let me speak, all right? I sent Alex to you because I knew you were working on the fight scenes for her film and she asked if I knew of anyone who could help her with action sequences. I didn’t even think she was your type, let alone submissive.”
I knocked back some more whiskey as silence stretched between us.
Callum shook his head. “I know Kristin fucked you up, man. And God knows I understand why you don’t trust yourself to let anyone new in. But Alex has never pinged as submissive on my radar. Maybe you’re just projecting. You want the girl and your Dom side sees what it wants to see. You know? Tomorrow when you see her at work, she’ll probably come across totally different.”