by Lexi Blake
Eve was studying her carefully. “What just went on in your head?”
Honesty was the best policy, most of the time. “I was feeling self-conscious about being naked. I decided not to be.”
A little smile curled up Eve’s lips. “Good for you.”
“Could you teach me to do that?” Serena asked. “Because I’m always self-conscious.”
She didn’t tell Serena that she’d learned it in the harshest of ways. She’d learned to choose because if she hadn’t, she would have broken. Never forget. You are my daughter. You are Charlotte, and no one gets to take that from you. The last words her mother had told her.
Her father had tried. He’d beaten her. He’d denied food for a while. He could force her compliance, make her do things she normally wouldn’t do, but she hadn’t let him change that core piece of herself that remained Charlotte.
Only one man could do that. The one she’d chosen.
“Are you really always self-conscious? Because I’ve learned that most women aren’t really. Serena, do you like what you see in the mirror? Are you comfortable with your body when you’re alone?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Yes. Actually I really am. When I’m alone, I tend to dance around half naked, so yes.”
Most women were. They only started to hate themselves when other people became involved. “Sweetie, then what does it matter what anyone else thinks? You have to decide what’s good enough for you. If you spend your life trying to live up to everyone else, you’ll have a wasted life.”
“Holy shit. I’m totally writing that down.”
Avery smiled. “I like that. I like that a lot.”
“My sister is quite the philosopher,” a familiar voice said.
Wow. The absolute last person she thought she’d see here in Sanctum was Chelsea and yet there she stood in the doorway, a bag in hand. “Hey, Chels.”
Her sister glared at her and then broke down laughing. “I should have known you would be naked somewhere. You never did have body issues like the rest of us.”
“Only because I accept the whole sad package,” Charlie admitted. Chelsea was definitely one of those women who was comfortable up until the moment a man walked in the room. “What are you doing here? I thought you would be in Barbados by now.”
“And leave my big sis? No. I’m not going anywhere without you.” She walked into the room, the only sign of her bad leg a slight limp. “If we’re making a stand, then you have to know I’m standing with you. As to why I’m here in this den of iniquity, well, the British asshole and the American idiot decided I needed a little vacation from my very nice condo and they decided to bring me here. They actually got past security by claiming to be messengers. I’m complaining to management about the doorman. They were supposed to go to the fifth floor, but apparently one of them is damn good at rewiring elevators. He’s also quiet or I would have taken his head off. Your Neanderthal apparently wants to keep the family together.”
“He probably wants to keep an eye on both of us while the whole ‘assassins trying to kill us’ thing gets sorted out.” She had no real idea how they were going to sort it out. She’d kind of hoped she would have some time before they caught up to her. No such luck.
“Are you really an information broker?” Serena asked.
Chelsea’s eyes widened. “Did you pass out business cards?”
Charlie shrugged as Eve was working out the laces on the corset. She slipped the small band of spandex over her hips. It would barely cover her ass, but that was likely the point. She noted that someone had been a little kinder to her sister. It looked like she was holding PVC leggings and a matching tank top. “I don’t lie about what we do.”
Chelsea cleared her throat deliberately.
She took everything so seriously. “Well, of course I lie to the Feds. I was talking about our friends.”
“You’ll have to give me some time to figure out if they are our friends. Where can I get some privacy? As long as I’m here, I could use a workout. My leg is stiff. I’ve been sitting for days.”
“There are changing rooms and showers you can use,” Eve explained, gesturing toward the back of the locker room.
“Excellent.” Chelsea walked back to the dressing rooms, her left leg dragging just a bit. She was probably in extreme pain, but she wouldn’t show it. One of the ways she’d learned to deal with the pain was BDSM. Charlie might not have had a Dom since Ian, but she’d found several willing to help her sister out.
“So she seems oddly comfortable for a woman who was likely dragged out of her home and taken to a sex club. Arms up.” Eve held out the emerald green corset, stretching it around Charlie’s torso before she started in on the laces.
“She has some problems with her legs, especially her left one. A good long flogging gives her some relief. We normally had Doms come out to our place, but she’s been in a few clubs as well.” She took a deep breath because it would likely be her last of the evening.
The door to the locker room opened again and two women walked in. Both were blonde and looked in desperate need of a cheeseburger. One of the blondes had a nice rack and the other had a fake one. They carried in their fet wear in dress bags.
Eve groaned a little. So these girls were not friends. Eve seemed determined to ignore them.
“Hello. You must be the new girl,” the blonde with fake cans said. She was dressed conservatively, though she wore a ton of makeup and had left her blouse opened far past what could be considered professional. “My Master told me you would be here tonight.”
Serena looked up, frowning the blonde’s way. “I didn’t know you had taken a collar, Amanda.”
“I didn’t even know you were dating anyone,” Avery said.
Eve kept working on the laces, her hands moving smoothly.
“She’s had her eye on this particular Master for quite a while,” the other blonde said with a nasty little laugh. She picked a locker and hung up her clothes for the night. “We all should have known that Mandy would be the one to bring him down.”
“Mandy” winked her friend’s way. “You know it, Britney. It was inevitable. By the way, Serena, you look really nice today. I don’t know anyone else who could quite carry off that look the way you do. I didn’t know they made dresses like that anymore.”
Serena shut down, looking back at her computer.
“What did you just say?” Charlie asked.
Amanda shook her blonde head. “I was just complimenting her. Subs have to stick together. Isn’t that what you say, Eve? And you really have to give me the name of your moisturizer. You look so good for a woman your age.”
“I’ll get around to it, Amanda. I’m a little busy with my husband. We all are busy with our husbands and families.” Eve had some claws, but Charlie wasn’t sure she was going far enough.
Amanda glanced back at Charlie and then Eve. “Oh, honey, if you need any help getting that corset on her, I am actually really strong. Don’t worry about it. I think the Master will be busy with me tonight.” She leaned in. “Ryan explained it all to me. The Master needs to pretend to have something going with you so he has to have someone he’s really attracted to around or he probably won’t be able to pull it off. I always knew he would come back to me.”
Charlie wasn’t exactly sure what the blonde’s Master had to do with her, but she didn’t want to prolong the conversation. Amanda walked to the dressing rooms with a confidence most women didn’t have.
It was a confidence Charlie was pretty sure she didn’t deserve.
“Just ignore her,” Eve said, putting the finishing touches on the corset. “We all do.”
Serena was looking down at her screen, but Charlie could tell she was close to tears.
That little blonde bitch had told a pregnant woman she didn’t look nice. Among other things. “Is she always so nasty?”
Avery’s hands moved angrily now. She could probably do some damage with those knitting needles if she wanted to. “She’s hit
on every one of our husbands. Even after the whole marriage thing. She also likes to tell me how pregnant I look. I can’t stand her.”
“She’s a brat. An actual real one. She’s really sweet when the men are around, but she’s hateful around the women. I’ve tried to get Alex to kick her out, but she won’t do anything to violate the rules,” Eve explained.
Being nice should be a rule. “Ian doesn’t care that she’s mean?”
“No one really talks to him about her. He’s always been standoffish. I don’t understand why he would…” Serena stopped midsentence.
Everything finally fell into place. “She was talking about Ian. When she talked about her Master. That rat-fink bastard. I knew he was up to something. This is his way of showing me he doesn’t care. Tell me honestly, Eve, has he ever touched her before?”
Eve turned a nice shade of pink. “Maybe once when she first came into the club, but you have to understand…”
She understood. “He screwed everything in a corset who would let him. I’m not worried about that. Tell me if they had a relationship. I want to know if he had a thing for her.”
“No. He can’t stand her. He’s the only one who sees through her bullshit. Charlotte, he hasn’t had a relationship with anyone.”
Serena shook her head. “He never spends more than a couple of nights with any sub, and all of his contracts state that he isn’t interested in anything permanent. The few times he’s trained new subs, he didn’t sleep with them.”
Avery’s mouth dropped open. “How do you know about his contracts?”
“Oh, I really wanted to read one and he keeps copies on Ryan’s computer. Ryan never changes his password, so it was easy for Adam to grab me one. I totally used it as the basis for the contract in Sweetheart in Bloom.” She flushed a little. “Now might be a really good time to remind everyone that what happens in the locker room stays in the locker room.”
Eve rolled her eyes. “You are going to get in so much trouble one day.”
Charlie needed them to stay on track. So he’d picked someone he couldn’t stand in order to annoy her, to show her that he couldn’t be won back. Well, he picked the wrong girl to pull that shit with. If he’d picked someone sweet and nice, then Charlie would have trouble dealing with it, but Ian made everything easy. “So Ian is pretending to have two subs with him tonight. Me because of the whole shooting thing and trying to keep the cops from figuring out who I am, and skinny bitch because he wants to make sure I know he’s only topping me because of the shooting thing. You all let her talk to you like that?”
“She never says anything that can’t be taken two ways. She’s the queen of the backhanded compliment. If I called her out, she would say I took it wrong,” Avery explained.
“No one ever calls her on her shit?” Charlie was really shocked.
Eve sighed. “It’s the South. We all just kind of suck it up and say ‘Bless your heart.’”
Blessing wasn’t what Charlie was going to do with Blondie’s heart. Ripping it out and forcing it down her throat sounded like a much better idea. “Okay, I am going to show you how to deal with this.”
Eve’s eyes widened. “I don’t know if that is such a good plan.”
“Are you going to kill her?” Serena asked with a little smile.
Charlie turned. “No, I’m going to be honest with her. She was honest with me about where she thought my place with the Master was. I’m going to return the favor.”
She strode into the dressing rooms. A woman like Amanda got away with crap by following a very specific set of societal rules. Charlie had her own rules.
She caught sight of herself in the mirror. Amanda wanted her to think she was fat? She looked damn good. Eve had a nice hand with the laces. Her boobs looked huge.
Britney stepped out of the shower section with a towel wrapped around her skinny middle. That towel would likely barely cover Charlie’s boobs, but Britney had it wrapped around her twice. “Oh, god, there’s a chick in the shower with the gnarliest scar on her leg. First that Avery chick and now this one. We’ve become the dungeon for cripples.”
Britney was easy. Charlie walked straight up to her, standing over her. “That’s my sister. Would you like to call her a cripple to my face? Let me explain what will happen if you do.”
“You don’t have to do that.” Britney swallowed twice, obviously unused to anyone calling her on her shit. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”
She moved away and practically scampered out of the room.
“Wow, rude much?” Amanda asked. She was still dressed. She obviously hadn’t made it back to the changing rooms yet. “You’re not going to last long around here if the Master catches you doing that.”
“Are you talking about Ian Taggart?”
“Yes. I’m talking about the hot hunk of Dom I’ve already had a couple of times. I knew he would come back to me. Look, I was trying to be nice out there, but you should understand that he’s just letting you follow him around because you’re some sort of job to him.”
She towered over Amanda. Sometimes her height came in really handy. “I’m his wife.”
Amanda’s face screwed into an ugly mask. It was probably her thinking face. “He’s not married.”
“I have the paperwork that says otherwise, honey. I’m Charlotte Taggart and I have been for five years, so if you think I’m going to let you fuck my husband again, you’re totally wrong.”
Skin flushing to a mottled red, Amanda held her ground. “Well, he’s been cheating on you. With everyone. Hate to be the one to tell you, but your ‘husband’ is kind of a manwhore.”
“Oh, I think you love telling me, but you’re not saying anything I didn’t already know. I forgive him for the sleeping around. He didn’t know he was still married. Now he does. So he’s going to stop. I also forgive him for needing another sub to hide behind. He’s not very self-aware. He’s not good with the whole emotional thing, so I’m patient. But guess what? It’s not going to be you.”
“What are you talking about? Ian wants me.”
“Ian is going to have to live with disappointment because you are a rude, nasty piece of work, and your reign of terror stops now.”
Amanda laughed. “Who’s going to stop me? It’s sure not going to be Eve. Everyone thinks she’s the queen of the dungeon because she’s married to Alex, but she’s just an old hag. Alex married her because he feels sorry for her. And god, I don’t even know what Liam and Jake were thinking when they brought those fat little mice here.”
Charlie heard a gasp and realized Serena and Avery and Eve were standing in the background listening to all the crap Amanda was spewing.
It was time to take her place in the pecking order. Eve was a nice lady, but it was obvious to Charlie that she hadn’t been taking care of business the way she should have. “I like Eve, but Eve is not the queen. The queen is the sub who is married to the king, and there is only one king of Sanctum.”
“What are you going to do?” Amanda asked in a mocking voice. “Are you going to go to Ian and get me kicked out? It won’t work. Ian thinks I’m a sweetheart. All the Doms do. There’s not a lot any of you can do.”
“Oh shit.” Chelsea was standing in the hall that led to the showers. “You can’t kill her here, sis. We don’t have any acid. The showers would work. They’re nice and roomy, but where would we get a couple of gallons of acid at this time of night? And I don’t think even acid would work on those fake tits. We would have to bury them someplace. How are you going to explain walking around with two grade-D implants?”
Her sister was always cool in a crisis. Amanda was staring at her. It was one of those things that no one took seriously when it was said in anger, but Chelsea’s cool and calm demeanor had caught Amanda’s attention.
Charlie matched it. It was fairly easy to make up bullshit. They had never actually taken apart a body. Charlie had killed a couple of men, but she’d never had to bury anyone. Amanda didn’t have to know that. “Chels, she’s not worth
killing. I mean the murder part would fun, yes, but there’s all that work we would have to do afterwards. Do you remember the last time we took apart a body? The smell was horrible and we had to wear all that protective gear and it smelled bad, too.”
“You’re joking.” Amanda’s voice trembled just a bit.
“Am I? Well, like I said, you’re not worth it.” Charlie reached up and grabbed a handful of bottle blonde hair. “But I am going to teach you who the queen is.”
Charlie started to haul Amanda out of the locker room. The girls had said that what happened in the locker room stayed in the locker room, but in this particular case, she couldn’t keep her problem secret. It would likely get her in trouble, but some things were worth a spanking. And probably a lecture. And more quiet time.
“Someone help me! Get this Amazon bitch off me!” Amanda was screaming as they hit the lobby.
“Hey!” Alex was standing just outside looking awfully nice in his leathers. “What the hell is going on here?”
Amanda cried out, obviously looking for a savior. “Master Alex, please help me. She’s gone crazy. Please.”
“Charlotte, you will let her go this instant.” Alex proved he had a damn fine Dom voice.
Yeah, he wanted to mediate, but Charlie didn’t have time for that. She definitely wasn’t going to allow Amanda to get him on her side. “She called Eve old and pathetic.”
Alex’s eyes flared. “Are you fucking with me?”
Eve was in the doorway, an amused expression on her face. “Nope. Amanda isn’t the nicest girl.”
“She called me fat,” Serena said.
“She said my scars were ugly,” Avery added. “They are, but it’s not nice to point it out.”
A big bouncer was standing at the front of the door. Charlie was sure he was probably a big bad Dom, but he stared at her, obviously having no idea what to do when one sub attacked another.
“You should open the door,” Charlie suggested. “Miss Amanda here has had her membership revoked.”