by Angel Payne
Her yelp popped out as Sam thrusted to his feet, hauling her right behind. Still reeling from chugging her Cabernet, Jen careened forward. He caught her easily, despite the dark fury still claiming every inch of his mien. While settling her balance, he beckoned a cocktail waitress.
“Captain Mackenna,” she murmured politely. “Will you be transferring the evening to private status now?”
Sam’s smile was perfunctory. “Fuckin’ bet I am.”
“Transferring the—” Jen darted her gaze between him to the waitress. “‘Private status?’ Huh?”
“Very well, then.” The server, a leggy beauty with trendy cat-eye makeup, spoke like Jen had commented on the weather. “Right this way.”
“Right this way where?”
Sam gave her no solid rebuttal but his tighter hold and his harder stare. Jen was able to summon her own glower before he pivoted back around, following Leggy toward a portion of the bar’s stylish wall that actually turned out to be a swinging door.
“Hold on a second,” Jen blurted. “Sam…is this…did we…” She caught sight of the electronic pad in the hostess’s grip, realizing that the screen didn’t appear at all like the seating chart of the round room they’d just left. Instead, she spotted an icon of a lock, with the label VIP beneath it. But stumbling along behind Sam, Jen didn’t feel very “VIP.” Skittish colt instincts to the rescue. She backed away until she couldn’t—held back by a six-foot-something fighter pilot with launch rockets blazing in his eyes.
“Room three,” said Leggy.
“R-R-Room three?” Jen raced her gaze between the hostess and the man still clamping her in an unretractable hold. “Room three of what?” But as soon as she really regarded Sam again, she knew. The rigid set of his face, along with the new authority in his stance… “You knew,” she gasped, identifying the coalescing logic in her mind. “You knew from the second we got here, didn’t you? Maybe even before that?”
Nothing about his aura faltered. If anything, his composure smoothed in proportion to the higher flare of her hackles, working in tandem with the wine to confuse her even more. “I would never deliberately deceive you, mouse.”
“No? Then what the hell is this?”
“Someone beating you guys to the spanking bench by ten minutes.” The interruption, erupting from behind them, was tied with an all-too-familiar ribbon of humor. Familiar, as in a tone she’d known for over twenty years—ever since it was used to comfort her after Tansie Owens pushed her off the swings on the kindergarten playground.
Sure enough, she spun around to behold the treasured grin and twinkling fairy gaze of her best friend—though Tess’s smile and eyes were about the only recognizable aspects of her face. The woman had made up her face so she really did look like a fairy—of sorts. Maybe a naughty fairy. The glam shades of red, orange, and black were angled to make her look wicked yet innocent—at least to her neckline. From there, the sparkled shades spread out to cover the tops of her breasts, which were barely concealed by a tight red corset. Beneath that, layer upon layer of red and black tulle sprung out in a skirt—though again, the description barely fit the look. Tess’s naughty bits were barely covered by the frothy flair, from which Jen rapidly averted her gaze. She had a feeling that was exactly the idea. She also had a feeling that her friend’s panties were hiding in one of Dan Colton’s pockets—though the man slated to become her husband in five days, now strolling out into the hall behind his woman, didn’t appear to have a pocket with enough room for the task. The man wore nothing but black leather pants, and they perfectly outlined every damn inch of his—errrmmm—assets.
“Okay,” Jen heard herself mutter, tossing her stare all the way to the floor. “Whoa.”
Tess giggled. Giggled. That was enough to bring Jen’s gaze back up for a second. Tess wasn’t the giggling type. On the other hand, she’d never known Tess to be the naughty-fairy-in-a-tutu type, either. “Well, hello to you too, missy.”
Jen managed to return her friend’s fast hug. Kind of. She didn’t hug hard, afraid she’d squeeze too much in the wrong places and she’d see more of Tess than she wanted to. Rephrase. She’d already seen more of Tess than she wanted to. “Wh-What are you guys doing here?” The woman had half of Atlanta’s society page in town for the wedding and a brain-exploding to-do list. Jen had been trying to help out where she could, but Tess’s mom turned “control freak” into an art form.
“What does it look like?” Tess replied easily as the guys grunted, fist-bumped, and murmured to each other in ways that made Jen nervous and aroused at the same damn time. When obvious Doms started muttering mysterious things, it was time for submissives to pay attention, wasn’t it? But Tess went on as if they were just standing on the corner of Flamingo and Vegas Boulevard, waiting along with the tourists for the light to change. “Franz told Dan and the guys about this place, and we jumped on a reservation as fast as we could. We both need to get away from the wedding insanity—like, now.”
“Right.” That part, she could give with sincerity. A girl didn’t put a ring on it with one of the world’s most prominent businessmen, in the middle of Las Vegas, without there being some crazy fanfare.
“Got a bonus from the whole thing too. Turns out we won some kind of a contest among the guys from acting so fast, so Master picked up a new paddle and told me to splurge on the new play gear. Like it?”
Master? Paddle? Play gear? “Uhhh…sure,” Jen all but choked. “Pretty.”
“Hopefully it’ll match what he does to these.”
“Oh my God.” So much for pretending they were standing in a mob of tourists. Or for the way her eyes bulged as Tess turned and flipped up her skirt, exposing the very firm and very bare globes of her backside. It was official now. She had seen too damn much of her best friend.
Apparently, and thankfully, Dan seemed to agree. The man reacted to his sub’s playful “show” with the speed of a tiger tamer with a wildcat, sweeping over by a powerful step and then hauling her against his side with a powerful pull. Once she was there, he dominated her mouth with a crashing kiss until she visibly melted and audibly moaned.
“Sorry to cut social hour short, gang,” he growled once they dragged their mouths apart. “But a certain little ruby needs to be reschooled in showing herself off in the hallway without her Master’s permission.”
At once, Tess erupted with a cute little yip. While Dan’s gaze never wavered from her face, his hand had disappeared beneath her tulle—no doubt giving a subtle preview of what he had planned for his fiery fairy. “Oh yes please, Master. Teach me a very good lesson.”
Jen watched, fascinated, as Dan only reacted by tightening his gaze and clenching his jaw. But the lack of outward signs aside, the energy—the power—flying and flowing between the two was like a blast of sheer electricity on the hushed air of the hallway. Just being a witness to the whole thing, Jen admitted she was fascinated. And enflamed. And so fucking turned on…
Which made it doubly strange when Leggy cleared her throat and arched her sculpted eyebrows Sam’s way, a silent request to keep them moving on down the dim corridor. How the woman could still look so bored, after the tease of tantalization Dan and Tess had just given them all, needed to be catalogued as a new mystery of the cosmos. Not that Jen even thought about it once Sam moved back next to her, his eyes filled with silver intensity and his presence radiating more of the potent Dominant flow she’d just experienced from Dan Colton.
She was intoxicated—and it had nothing to do with the wine.
She was soaked—and it had everything to do with him.
She was limp—and it was due entirely to his hold on her. With his hands around her wrists, not his fingers threaded with hers. With his forceful efficiency in pushing right into her personal space, hauling her up against his chest, and dipping his stubbled jaw into the sensitive crook of her neck.
“What do you say now, mouse?” he gritted. “It’s still your choice now… Will we have a few more cocktails or a lot mo
re fun?”
Somehow—she really had no damn idea how—she got in a huge swallow. But once her throat oscillated against his prickly jaw, her self-composure was done. Even her irritation with him had vanished. All she could feel was the man’s heated focus…his full, thick, lust-driven attention…his desire to give her everything she’d just witnessed between Dan and Tess and maybe more. Oh, so much more…
“Holy…shit,” she rasped as he swept around to bracket her body from the back, locking her wrists using just one of his hands and yanking her against him with the other hand at the front of her neck. Not in a stranglehold. He didn’t need one. This was right where she wanted to be. Right where she’d dreamed of being. She just hadn’t realized it…until now. “Ohhhhh, holy fuck.”
So much for pruning the lust from her gasp. Or feigning that his responding hum, rich and deep and low, didn’t affect her in exactly the same way. “Might just happen, sweet one…if you’re good.”
“G-G-Good?” Jen stammered back. “H-H-How?”
“That’s my secret to know and yours to find out,” he supplied in a soft snarl. “Now, she said room three. Walk.”
Once more, Leggy was the picture of baffling boredom. She watched their entire exchange from heavily kohled eyes as if she were just wiping off plastic menus and they were a normal couple having a tiff. Jen wasn’t sure if that made it easier or tougher to comply with Sam’s order, but she did it, even admitting to all the tingles of erotic expectation through her body as she did.
Down the alluring, thick-carpeted hall they stepped, past numbered rooms that couldn’t even be written off as specialty spa suites. No way could Jen ignore what the rooms were there for. After passing room two, the picture was crystal clear. Heavy moans bled through the door. Then a series of distinct smacks, like leather meeting leather. Then more moans and a man’s baritone voice crooning distinct words. Good girl. That’s my good girl.
As they passed, Sam fitted his lips once more to her ear. “You ken what I’m sayin’ now, mouse? Good girls get rewarded around here.”
She almost snapped around to tell him that good girls usually had more than three seconds’ notice to discover they were going into the hidden dungeon with their sexy-as-hell Doms, but it had been an hour and a half since she relinquished her panties to the man, more than implying that she trusted him for whatever crazy turns the night took. But more importantly, she kind of liked that part. When was the last time she’d been someone’s “good” anything? Even the subject of their little spat was kind of cool. He’d been so bent about her trying to talk him out of considering her so special, it had taken him right into full-on fury.
She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had ever cared enough to get pissed at her.
And once Sam pushed open the door to room three, no way could she deny how he planned to prove it to her even more.
The space was lighted even dimmer than the main room. There was a canopied bed fit for a king, framed in mahogany tapestries and piled with endless pillows. A three-sided mirror stood in the corner with a multilevel stool in front of it, serving a purpose Jen could only imagine—though right now, her imagination ran pretty damn wild.
“In.”
His voice was harsh, twisting into her like a newly heated poker, needing no embellishment for her compliance.
But he’d given no stipulation about doing it meekly. “Damn it, Sam. We should talk about this, right? I mean—”
It was impossible to say anything else, with the man’s tongue suddenly in her mouth.
Passionate. Powerful. Consuming.
Ohhhh, damn.
“Your safe word is fantasy. Now in.”
After he finally freed her from the next openly carnal kiss, a moan exploded up Jen’s throat. She wanted to—needed to—resist but couldn’t. Her lungs struggled for air as her stomach battled for the right way up. Her head fought a silvery, lusty fog. Her whole body burst to life, as if this was the first time she and Sam had made out like this.
Dear God. He really was a dream come to life. Every amazing romance hunk she’d ever fallen for, rolled into one magnificent package. Turning every feeling she had and sensation she felt into something new and brilliant, incredible and illicit…
Especially as she walked all the way into the room and he rammed her back against into the thick bedpost. And kissed her with hard, ruthless possession all over again.
She met his desire with a matching groan of urgent need, hiking a leg around his waist. To her shock, Sam pushed it back down. When he tore his mouth away, she let her face drop into confusion.
“For the record, it isn’t acceptable that you’ve compared yourself to the scum on my shoe and then even hinted that—” Whatever he was going to say stunned him into silence. He stabbed a hand through his hair. “Arse and fuckin’ parsley, Jenny. We’ve shared a lot of bloody things with each other in the last two weeks! Do you really think that I would be even half attracted to someone like—”
He interrupted himself with another growl. The violence of it curled into Jen’s blood, making her instinctively reach back, clutching the bedpost with one hand.
A lot of good that did.
“Fuck it,” he muttered, grabbing her free wrist. “I’m tired of tryin’ to sweet-talk this into you.”
“That was sweet talk?”
Bad move. The three seconds she took for the sarcasm were all the time he needed to pivot her around and then lift her other hand to clasp the post. In another flash of motion, he pulled on something hidden in the canopy. A pair of padded wrist cuffs dropped from seemingly nowhere. Holy shit. Did every piece of furniture in this place come with kinky booby traps?
Not that she cared about the answer—especially as Sam wasted no time in latching her into the cuffs.
The second he was done with that, he hiked her skirt up. She was exposed—and completely turned on—from the waist down.
“Ahhhhh!”
And then turned on and screaming—as the man delivered a sharp spank across the center of her bottom.
“Sam! Oh!”
Then a second smack.
Holy crap!
“What the—”
He cut her short by spinning her back around and kissing her again. Delving deeper. Sucking on her harder. He didn’t relent, compelling her head to drop back so he could assault her mouth—doing it as brutally as he squeezed both globes of her ass, rubbing in the heat from the pain he’d just dealt. And God help her, Jen let him—not just because he gave her no choice but because she wanted to. Because somewhere, in her wildest and naughtiest dreams about this man, she’d envisioned him like this. Tearing into her mouth. Razing into her senses. Firing up her pores and skin and nerves…
Exactly…
Like…
This.
By the time he pulled away, her chest heaved, her blood throbbed, and her sex clenched tightly enough to make her moan again.
Especially when he delivered a third blow to her bottom.
A fourth, at twice the impact.
A fifth, intensifying more.
“Shit!” she finally managed past the screams.
“Breathe.” His exhortation was practically a Zen chant in her ear. Calm. Soothing. Infuriating.
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you, Jenny Thorne.” Bizarrely, a smile entered his voice. It twisted with his anger, throwing Jen off. Was she supposed to melt for him or pour molds for new ice daggers?
As he circled in order to look at her directly, though the post was between them, his expression gave her no clues. He was still beautiful, with those dark eyes and ginger waves and jaw like a precipice from his native land.
“Fuck you,” he repeated, “for thinking so little of me, that someone like Mattie Lesange could ever meet my needs. And fuck you for thinking so little of yourself to presume you wouldn’t.”
Her breath stopped. Well, she knew what to feel now. Giddy astonishment collided with abject remorse, sprinkled with a layer of maybe
-this-really-is-all-a-dream. “I’m…sorry.” And she really was—though that didn’t throw a cease-fire onto her confusion. “But men love pretty things on their arms, Sam.”
He glowered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Not the insult you’re taking it as.” She shrugged. Remaining covered from the navel up lent her the confidence. “Life is life, friends are friends, and lovers are something completely different. Sometimes, good sex is just good sex, and making more out of—”
He jerked her chin up using two fingers. Stared like she’d just told him the moon was made of bacon. “Is that really all you think of what we’re sharing here? ‘Just good sex?’”
Confusion tumbled in again. The answer to that seemed apparent but wasn’t. She decided to go for total honesty. “Look…I just don’t expect anything else, okay? And it’s fine that—”
“I should expect anything else.”
She ignored the darkness in his tone. “How could you? And why would you? Neither of us is a kid. It’s great to think of taking home grand meanings from a one-night thing—when you’re young. But we’re not—”
He stopped her with another kiss. Dug his hand against her scalp, locking her head in place. Stabbed his tongue against hers, as if needing to strip off the words she’d just uttered. When he let her mouth go, he kept his hand in place. Dragged her head back up so he could impale her stare with his. The command in his grip was as compelling as the force in his eyes, once more driving in like that fresh poker, scalding its way onto her psyche and searing its way into her soul.
“I want to spank you again, Jenny.”
She swallowed. “I know.” Ohhh God, how she did. All the silver spikes in his gaze had told her so.
“I just don’t want to be gentle about it.”
“I…I know.”
He dragged in a rocky breath. “Do you?”
“Of—of course. I pissed you off. And you’re a Dominant.” And I want you to punish me. To control me.
Yes, please…
“No.” He shook his head fiercely. “No, you don’t understand. The punishin’…it’s done. But I’m not.” He pushed in, smashing his lips to hers. “God help me, my burners are just starting to fire.” His hand twisted tighter in her hair. “Not a fuckin’ thing I feel about you is civilized, woman. It hasn’t been for quite a while.”