by Cathryn Cade
He was going to have words with Jake, and this time not friendly ones. Either the dude got his shit sorted, or Dack and Trace would sort it for him. Not only was his friend obviously hurting, but his behavior had hurt a good woman, and if he kept on, his behavior would damage the club too.
Jake was a head dom, a mediator and peacemaker, a protector. Tonight he’d behaved like the opposite.
Jake walked into the Club 3 office and straight into a hard fist. It smashed into his mouth, flattening his lips against his teeth and rocking his head back. He grunted as the pain hit, his arms already coming up in self-defense. Then he saw who had hit him.
Trace stood before him, both fists raised, his face hard, eyes flashing with fury. Dack leaned on the desk, arms crossed. He looked ready to take a turn next.
“Wha’ the fuck?” Jake mumbled, outraged. He lifted a hand to his mouth, and his fingertips came away bloody.
“You asshole,” Trace gritted. “You fuckin’ gutted that sweet, shy woman. It took all her courage to dress up in a leather corset and walk in here, for you, and you cut her down to ribbons. What the hell is wrong with you?” Since his voice rose to a near bellow at the last, Jake lost it.
He thrust his face near his assailant’s. “There’s nothin’ wrong with me,” he roared. “I’m just unloading her before she starts sluttin’ around on me. She can go do whatever the fuck she wants with whoever the fuck. A free woman, all right?”
The silence in the room was absolute. The bottom fell out of Jake’s gut, and he squeezed his eyes shut, then looked away from the eyes of the two men who knew him best. Where the fuck had that come from? Not what he’d meant to say at all. He just meant…he didn’t like other men looking at what was supposed to be his, that was all.
Trace stepped back. “I was right,” he said over his shoulder.
“Believe you are,” Dack agreed.
Jake swiped the back of his hand over his bruised lip. “Fuck this, and fuck you two,” he muttered. “I do not need this shit.”
He turned to leave.
“You can walk out of here, man,” Dack called. “But you can’t walk away from what you did, and you know it.”
“You’ve got some hard thinking to do, brother,” Trace said.
No, thinking was the last thing he wanted to do.
“We’ll talk again,” Trace added. “This is not over.”
Jake walked out into the night and across the parking lot to the gym. Let himself into the silent gym, changed into his running shoes and a pair of shorts. Walked back out into the summer night, where he jogged, slowly at first and then faster and faster. But he could not outrun the memories.
His father’s rough voice, pleading in the other room. “C’mon, baby. Stay home with me and Jake. You know I don’t have the money to take you out partyin’ again.”
His mother’s voice. A razor-sharp blade, wielded with an expert hand. “You don’t have the money, I know people who do.”
“You’re not goin’ out dressed like that, woman. Your tits and ass are hangin’ out of that thing. Christ, it was made for a little teenage girl, not an old broad like you.”
The sharp sound of a slap, then his mother’s furious voice. “Barley thinks I look just fine in this. He likes the way I look out of it too, you loser. Get out of my way, or I’ll take the boy and go.”
“You’re not takin’ my son anywhere.”
“Then I guess you better stand aside, or I’ll tell the judge my two-time loser husband is mean to me. Who do you think he’ll listen to, huh?”
“Fine, go then, bitch. But don’t bother comin’ back this time.”
“Oh, I’ll be back, Ray. And you’ll be waitin’.”
Jake ran until he was staggering with exhaustion, then trudged the last blocks back to the gym. He sank onto the curb outside the front doors, and then lay back on the warm cement of the sidewalk, staring blankly at the floodlights overhead.
He was exhausted, but he still couldn’t turn off his brain. Couldn’t banish the way she’d looked. A shy temptress dressed up in barely there red leather, her luscious curves spilling over the top and peeking out between. Her hair piled up in messy curls that begged for a man to pull it loose, feel it cascade over his hands, and his skin. She’d been wearing too much eye makeup, but it had not been able to disguise the dazed look in her blue eyes, the incomprehension as he’d battered at her with his ugly words. He hadn’t seen it then, hadn’t let himself see it. He saw it now.
With a deep groan, Jake lifted his fists and pounded them against the concrete, wishing he could do the same with his brain. Bash the pain, old and new, out of it like a do-it-yourself lobotomy.
Fuck, he was an idiot.
It hit him like a truck, barreling down on him from the road. Why he’d gone ballistic, hot and angry and vengeful, when he’d seen her standing in the club doorway, laughing with Mase, the asshole’s arm around her.
It was because Carlie was special.
He’d started to really care about her, want her, wait for her out of all the other women to walk into the gym and the club. It was like his whole world brightened up, music sounded better, his mood went mellow and jazzed at the same time. After he fucked her, he could just lie and hold her the rest of the night, not caring if he slept. That first time, he’d simply held her, listened to her breathe, smelled her hair and her perfume, the smell of their sex.
And then, he’d fuckin’ panicked. He couldn’t stand the reality, which was that even though he wanted her all for himself, she was free to share all her bounty with other men, right at his club. That was why they’d started the place, so they could have all the women they wanted, those who shared their kink. Now he’d found one, she was starting to come out of her shell, embrace the lifestyle, and he couldn’t handle it. Didn’t know how to handle it. How to control this huge, clawing black thing inside his gut. Fear.
He was a bodybuilder, a Marine and a bad-ass dude, and he was so fuckin’ paralyzed with fear he’d shoved away with both hands the best woman ever to come into his life.
Headlights swept across the front of the building. Tires whispered on pavement and rolled to a stop nearby.
“Excuse me, sir, can I ask you to sit up there?”
He lifted his head just enough to see a Beaverton police cruiser stopped a few feet away, two uniformed officers out of the car and watching him warily, unsmiling, hands near their weapons.
“Yeah,” he said. “I can do that, Officers.”
He wasn’t good for much else, but he remembered how to follow orders from someone in uniform.
Chapter Twenty
It was the next Friday before Jake could get Daisy and Sara to agree to ask Carlie if she would speak to him. Sara would not look at him when she came to the gym. Daisy would—she went on a rant, standing in his office at the gym. Jake had been unpacking some new women’s weight-training equipment, and he looked up when Daisy and Dack walked in, sat frozen on the edge of his stool as Daisy faced him.
“You don’t know how she looked,” she told him, Dack standing behind her, silent and neutral. Her green eyes filled with tears, her mouth twisting at a bitter memory. She leaned back against Dack, and he slid his arm around her waist, supporting her. “She was…hunched over. Like she was trying to make herself smaller. Like those girls who developed early in junior high and got teased by the boys so they tried to hide. Which she had to do, because she was one of them.”
Jake took it, because he knew he deserved it, but his hands curled into the weight bar he held, his arms shaking with the effort of holding still.
“I spent the night with her,” Daisy went on relentlessly. “Ninety-five degrees outside, and she got up the next morning and put on a long-sleeved blouse, buttoned up to here.” She slashed her hand across her own throat like she wished it was his, maybe holding a knife. “And this butt-ugly pair of dark slacks that hung on her. My gorgeous friend looked like a freaking bag lady. Then, when Sara came over with donuts, Carlie barely touc
hed them. Barely spoke to us. She crawled back into bed and just lay there. With her clothes on.”
There was a dull creak. Dack’s brows shot up, and Daisy looked down, diverted. Jake followed their gazes to the bar he held. It was bent nearly in two. No wonder his hands ached.
“Think you made your point, baby,” Dack murmured.
“I hope so,” Daisy said, but her voice was no longer full of venom.
She crossed the room to Jake and dropped to one knee to look up at him. “Jake, if you care about her at all, you need to do everything you can to fix this. ’Cause I think…” She took the bar from his hands and held it up. “You don’t know your own power in more ways than one.”
He looked at her blankly.
She rolled her eyes. “Jake, for gosh sakes. Open your eyes. You have women whenever you want them, right? Well, you’re not as cute as Dack, but you’re not exactly ugly. You’re big, you’re all buff, you’re a dom. And when you talk in that deep, rumbly voice, it’s kinda…hot.”
Dack cleared his throat pointedly, and Daisy dropped the weight bar and rose, taking a step back. But she looked at Jake, for the first time with a reluctant smile in her eyes. “Y’know, Twila told me those of us who are bodacious must learn to use our power wisely. She’s right.”
“Bodacious?” Jake muttered. To his own amazement, a laugh quivered in his chest. He dropped his head and rubbed the back of his neck, staring down at the bent bar lying on the floor. Then he rose and looked down at Daisy.
“You can get her to talk to me,” he said. “I’ll fix it. Somehow.” He didn’t sound very hopeful, even to himself.
She raised her brows. “Flowers are always a good start.”
“Yeah?” He’d never given a woman flowers. Well, he’d brought his mother a grubby handful of dandelions and wildflowers a time or two, but since she’d just chuckled around her cigarette, ruffled his hair and then tossed the wilted blooms in the trash, he didn’t think that memory was much help. But there was a flower shop in the shopping center up the street. He’d start there. He nodded.
Dack moved. “Come on, baby. Time to go. Jake, later.”
“Later.”
The couple walked out, leaving the door open. Their voices floated back as they walked away.
“You got over being mad at him pretty fast,” Dack commented.
“He’s suffering,” Daisy said with satisfaction.
Dack laughed. “Yeah, and he ain’t done suffering either.”
“Nope.”
She had that right. Jake picked the bent bar up, tossed it in the trash by his desk and got on the computer to look up flower arrangements. Roses. They were classy. She’d like those, wouldn’t she?
When her doorbell chimed, Carlie sat quickly in the chair by the window in her sitting room. Not in her usual spot on her sofa, because then Jake might sit beside her. She could not handle that.
After one of the best weeks of her life, she’d had the worst two weeks of her life, because of him, because his words at the club had not only hurt her, they brought up all the worst of her feelings about herself and her body. August, and all she’d wanted to do was hide inside. Daisy and Carlie had coaxed her out for walks, and she’d ridden her bike, but she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of walking into Big Iron.
Developing early and large had not been fun. She’d endured jealousy from the other girls, looks and comments from boys, both her age and older. Even grown men had felt free to stare and at times comment on her breasts. She’d learned to hide, in clothing that covered her up, and in groups of friends, staying to the back of the group, keeping her voice soft. She’d comforted herself with cupcakes and bags of chips, in her room with a book or a movie in her player.
Her friendship with Daisy and Sara and her introduction to the world of fitness and the satisfaction of being her physical best had helped a lot. Also, simply growing up, realizing that other women triumphed over all kinds of physical and emotional variables. She was a professional woman, with family and friends who loved her, so even if her dating life was not so great, she had hope she’d figure it out one day, meet just the right man.
Then she’d learned about dominance and submission and met Jake, and a whole new world had opened up. One that she felt had just been waiting for her to discover. One where she might just fit, where she was safe to be naughty and a bit wild.
Until he’d slapped her away verbally, shown her she was just a visitor in that world, and not an entirely welcome one at that.
Now, as she heard his deep voice at the front door, she glanced across at the sofa and nearly bolted out of her chair. Oh crap. Now he’d sit over there and she’d have to look at the floor to avoid looking at him. At least on the sofa, he’d have been beside her, and she wouldn’t have to worry about accidental eye contact.
“Come in,” Daisy said, her voice cool. “Carlie’s in the living room.”
“Thanks.” Just a single word, but closer now. In her sitting room. She stared fixedly at her hand curled in her lap. Then when no one spoke, she looked up.
Jake stood there, in front of her ficus tree, only a few leaves visible around his tall, broad frame. He wore a dark polo shirt, straining at his muscles of course, and a pair of plaid shorts. He looked dressed up, for him.
He lifted his chin in a nod, drawing her eyes to his face. A mistake, as his gaze caught and held hers. He looked wonderful. No, wait. She was done thinking that.
“Hey,” he said. “Thanks for letting me come over.”
She nodded.
“I'll be out on the back patio,” Daisy said. She gave Carlie a look that said, If you need me, I’m nearby. Carlie nodded.
Jake stood for a moment, looking around. “You’ve got a nice place,” he said. “Pretty.”
“Thank you,” she said and shifted restlessly as she looked around too. At her cream sofa, the abundance of needlepoint and flowered pillows, most with ruffles. She saw him staring at the vase of carefully arranged roses. Crap, maybe she should have hidden them. No, she was not hiding anything. This was her space. She hardened her voice. “Did you come to see my apartment?”
He was silent. Then he walked into the room and sat on the edge of the sofa across from her, his elbows on his knees, which were way too close to hers. Geez, why had she never realized how small this place was? She scooted back in her chair. He watched her do so, his jaw tightening.
“Came to see you,” he said, his gaze holding hers. “Came to say—and I know it’s only a start, want you to know I realize that. But, came to say I’m sorry. For how I treated you. At the club.”
“Thank you,” Carlie said politely. She watched his hands, fingers flexing nearly into fists.
He sighed, his fingers relaxing again. “Yeah. So, been doin’ some thinkin’. About why I reacted that way.”
Something snapped inside her.
“How you reacted?” she asked incredulously, her voice rising, her heart pounding with welcome anger. She stared at him. “That’s great, Jake. You reacted. Yeah, that sounds like I did something, you reacted to it, so that lets you off the hook somehow. Well, I’m sorry, but I did nothing except walk into the club to meet you. Wearing, I might add, four hundred dollars’ worth of stupid dress-up clothing I bought to please you.”
He listened, his gaze not leaving hers, taking in all she said. Then he nodded again. “You’re right. Bad choice of words. Although accurate.”
“Bad choice of words,” she mimicked, on a roll. “I think we can go with that. I think that’s a good way to describe the way you spoke to me. I dressed up for you, and you accused me of being a s-slut.” He winced at the word. Yeah, not so much fun having his words thrown back at him, was it?
She threw her hands up. “Where did that come from, Jake? What have I done to make you think I’d behave that way? Thrown myself at other guys at the club? Flirted with them? Slept around while I was seeing you? Done those—those scenes with—with other doms?”
His mouth twitched when
she said “those scenes”, but he didn’t smile at her which was fortunate, because she would have lost it.
“No.” He held up his hand when she opened her mouth again, and she closed it. “Listen. After a few sleepless nights, I realized I wasn’t reacting to you, I was reacting to…hell, ancient history.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his head and dropped it again. “My mother.”
Carlie stared. “Your mother?” she repeated, as astonished as if he’d said she reminded him of the Wicked Witch in Oz.
He nodded, although this time without looking at her. He stared at the carpet between them as if something fascinating was taking place there. She peered down, saw him staring at her toes, which Daisy had painted blush pink with a darker pink polka-dot flower on her right big toe this morning, saying there was nothing like new nail polish to help a girl feel better.
Carlie was still miserable, but her feet did look great in her olive flip-flops that matched the leaves on her pale pink flowered sundress. She’d reached for a blouse and capris, but Daisy had ripped them out of her hands, telling her it was time to stop hiding and dress like a woman, not a nun. Now Carlie reached up to pull a lock of hair over her chest, to hide the hint of cleavage the dress revealed. Then she listened to Jake.
“I didn’t come from a nice background, Carlie. You? Baby, one look at you, few words out of your mouth, and anyone can tell you come from class. Well brought up, nice, soft-spoken. You’re a lady.” He lifted his head and looked at her, deep turmoil and trouble in his gray eyes. “My mother was about as far from you as a woman can get.”
“What—what do you mean?” she asked, afraid to hear his answer.
“She was a slut,” he said baldly. “A drunken whore. A married woman, a mother with a son at home and a husband, even though home was whatever dive apartment or broke-down trailer we were currently livin’ in. She didn’t care, ’cause she wasn’t there much. She fucked every man who looked at her, then she’d come back to my dad and persuade him to take her back. And every time, he did. Made him miserable and me too.”