“That was back when I was still with Carlos,” Frankie said. “I remember telling you I was going to scream if I couldn’t let off some tension and that was when you said we needed to take an exercise class together.”
“Your ex is the one who really ought to be glad that coin toss led us to yoga,” Lacy said, taking another sip of her juice. “If you were about to become a kick-boxing master like you’re going to be a yoga master, you would have kicked his ass six ways to Sunday by now.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Frankie sighed and swirled her straw through the green matcha slush in her glass. “You know my mom has been inviting him to family dinners lately? She and my abuela are so sure if I see his face enough I’ll magically want to go back to him.”
“Ugh!” Lacy made a face. “That’s awful, Frankie—you should stop going.”
“Like hell I will.” Frankie frowned. “I’m not going to let that hijo de puta keep me away from my own family—even if half of them think I’m crazy and the other half aren’t speaking to me.”
“Is it really that bad?” Lacy squeezed her arm sympathetically. “I’ll come with you to the next one if you want—for moral support. Only you’ll have to translate for me—you know how bad my Spanish is.”
Frankie laughed. “As if I could forget! Do you think we would ever have gotten to be such good friends if Mr. Gonzalez hadn’t paired us up in tenth grade Spanish Class?”
“I like to think so,” Lacy said comfortably, taking another sip of latte—none of which would settle on her slender figure or perfect little butt, Frankie was sure. “We’re kindred spirits, after all.”
Frankie shivered. “Hey, don’t say the K word, all right? You know that since my divorce from Carlos is final I have to go register for the draft.”
“I’m surprised they reinstated it after all the trouble we had with them a while back,” Lacy remarked. “But don’t worry, Frankie—you know the chances of getting called as a bride are super slim. I'm registered too and I'm still here. Neither one of us is going to end up on the Mother Ship.”
“We'd better not,” said Frankie darkly. “My abuela would have another fainting spell if she knew I was having dinner with Professor Ramlow and he’s just white and Protestant. If I ended up with one of those freaking huge alien Kindred who aren’t even human, she’d probably have a heart attack.”
“All the more reason to keep it from her. And speaking of the sexy professor, you are going to go down to that new salon, Wax Me Beautiful, we were talking about, and get yourself looking all smooth and gorgeous in case the night gets amorous.”
“I can’t afford that,” Frankie protested. “And even if I could, nothing is going to happen. Just because I had the nerve to get a divorce doesn’t mean I can shake a lifetime of being a good Catholic girl all at once.”
“Yes, you can,” Lacy protested. “You haven’t gone on a single date since you got away from that jerk, Carlos. It’s high time you got some good nookie.”
“I’m not going to—” Frankie began.
“Well, just go get waxed anyway, just in case you change your mind.” Lacy finished her latte and pointed her dripping straw at Frankie. “Do it, Frankie—you’ll feel like a whole new woman, I promise. And you can take my appointment—it’s already paid for and you can just pretend to be me.”
“I can’t do that,” Frankie protested. “I can’t let you buy me such an expensive gift.”
Lacy waved her protests away. “Oh please, I got it on Groupon so it was way cheaper than it would normally be. Besides, I was just getting it done because I was hoping Doctor Sloan would ask me out.” She sighed. “He didn’t though and the weekend is officially upon us. So you might as well take the appointment—you’ll get more use out of it than I would.”
“He’ll ask you out next weekend,” Frankie said, squeezing her friend’s arm soothingly. “And if he doesn’t, he’s just an idiot who can’t see how gorgeous you are.” She finished her own drink. “And now I need to get going. I’ve only got one more hour left on my shift and then I’m out of here.
“Good for you—some of us are working a double” Lacy sighed. “Maybe I should go back with you to VS and see if I can find some sexy underwear to cheer myself up before my dinner break is over. You should get some too, you know. To go with your new wax job.”
“I’m not getting waxed there,” Frankie protested. “It hurts too much! I’d rather shave.”
“Shaving doesn’t get you nearly as smooth,” Lacy informed her. “And the waxing might hurt but it only takes a second. You have no idea how sexy you can feel until you have a fresh Brazilian and a new pair of naughty panties to go with it.”
“I’ll consider it,” Frankie promised, sliding off her stool and pitching her plastic cup in the trash. “But for now, I really do have to get back. I just hope Mrs. Hofstadter isn’t going to show up at the end of my shift and want to talk my ear off.”
“Is that the one into all the super kinky BDSM?” Lacy asked with interest.
Frankie nodded and shivered.
“I swear the things she tells me she and her hubby get up to—yuck!”
Lacy smothered a smile. “Hey, give her a break! Personally, I’m inspired by her. I think it’s amazing that a woman in her seventies is still getting busy.”
“I have no problem with her getting busy,” Frankie said. “I just don’t want to have to hear all the dirty—and I do mean dirty—details. Honestly, I wouldn’t want to hear them if she was twenty-five. It’s just too much information.”
“Well just think, you’ll be out of there soon. TA-ing for the sexy professor and teaching yoga like nobody’s business. You’re going to be amazing.”
“What I’m going to be is tired.” Frankie yawned. It had been a long day and she would be glad to get home and take a hot bubble bath before crawling into bed.
Lacy yawned too. “Me too. You know, I think I’ll just head back to UCH, hon. I need to conserve my strength if I’m going to get through the second half of this double.”
“Okay—talk soon,” Frankie said, giving her a hug.
“All right and I’ll text you the details for that waxing appointment.” Lacy hugged her back. “And you better go. Believe me, you’ll be thanking me later when you want to get busy with the sexy professor.”
Frankie laughed and shook her head. “All right, all right. I’ll tell you all about the date tomorrow night after he goes.”
“Unless he stays the night.” Lacy waggled her perfectly shaped eyebrows expressively, making Frankie laugh again.
“Yeah, right—whatever. Never gonna happen. I’m not letting any man stay the night at my place.”
“You might be surprised,” Lacy said mysteriously as she left.
Frankie waved her friend’s words away and went back to her job. Luckily Mrs. Hofstadter didn’t make her usual appearance and so Frankie was able to get through the store closing routine fairly quickly. At the end of the night, before the registers closed, she even picked out a nice bra and panty set—a black lace one that minimized her butt—well, as much as it could be minimized—and a sexy bra to match. Lacy was right—who knew what might happen? She might end up with a man staying the night at her place after all…
The ride home wasn’t too long and Frankie was able to get her bubble bath and climb into bed in fairly short order. Which was perfect—she needed a good night’s sleep because she had a very busy weekend planned. Between the waxing appointment, her yoga final exam, her “date” with Professor Ramlow and the weekly family dinner where Carlos was sure to put in an appearance, she was going to be running from sunup ‘til sundown all day Saturday and Sunday.
That’s all right though, she told herself comfortingly as she snuggled down into her worn but clean cotton sheets. I can handle this. I’m ready for anything…
Or so she thought. But then she started to dream…
Chapter Two
It was such a vivid dream Frankie almost thought it must be real. But how
could it be? She was in a subway station—at least, it looked kind of like a subway station. There was a vast underground space hollowed out with people rushing back and forth, all of them obviously in a hurry to get where they were going. And she was walking along with them, using a swift, purposeful stride as her boot heels clicked on the hard, shiny black surface of the floor.
Wait—her boot heels? Frankie looked down at her feet, frowning. She didn’t own boots—there was no point, living in Tampa where you could live in flip-flops almost all year round. But sure enough, she had on black, shiny boots that came up to her knees. They were kind of nice, actually—if a little too masculine for Frankie’s taste. Only…why did her feet look so big? And what else was she wearing?
Black trousers with a red stripe up the side and a red uniform type shirt were what met her eyes when she looked down. That was weird—Frankie didn’t remember owning any outfits that looked like this! As she looked around, she noticed that everyone else in the crowded subway was wearing strange clothing too—all of them were in one kind of uniform or another.
Here a group of blonde women in dull blue jumpsuits with red sashes wrapped around their waists rushed to catch a train. And passing on her right were a bunch of tall men wearing olive green trousers and matching green uniform shirts. Like the women, they had narrow shoulders and white-blond hair. Each had a large black badge pinned to his right shoulder and some kind of weapon tucked into his broad, black belt. Everywhere she looked it was the same—people wearing clothing like she’d never seen before. And most of them seemed to have white-blonde hair. Where was she anyway, Sweden?
And what was the deal with this subway station? Instead of plain or tiled concrete walls, it appeared to be lined with large, flat TV screens. Every spare inch of wall space and some of the ceiling space too was filled with a never ending stream of images and information. Between the screens, the echoing sound of many feet, and the rush and hiss of the trains which must be running somewhere in the distance, Frankie could barely hear herself think. And yet, as she looked around, she noticed that no one seemed to be talking to each other very much. They all had serious, intent looks on their faces as if they were in a hurry to go do something very important.
Apparently she was in a hurry too. Her brisk strides carried her along through the crowds until she came to a long row of turnstiles. They were floor-to ceiling affairs with metal bars separating the crowded underground tunnel into two parts. The more she looked at them, the more Frankie thought they looked more like jail cells than turnstiles. The fact that tall men in black uniforms were patrolling back and forth on both sides of them only enforced the image.
As Frankie watched, someone at the front of the line apparently tried to cheat the turnstile or get in when he wasn’t supposed to. It was a man in a ragged brown outfit that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a while. When he got up to the tall metal bars, instead of sliding open for him, they stayed shut and a red light began blinking over his head.
At once one of the officers in black uniforms came around and dragged the man out of the crowd, over to the side. He had some kind of weapon or truncheon in his hand. Frankie saw it rise and fall and heard the offender squealing in pain as the sudden, brutal punishment was administered. She couldn’t stop staring but no one else in the crowd even seemed to notice—apparently this kind of thing happened all the time.
Frankie became suddenly aware that she didn’t have a ticket or a card of any kind and she was getting closer to the jail door-turnstiles all the time. She began to panic but she was being pushed inexorably forward by the crowd behind her which had now swelled to either hundreds or thousands—it was very difficult to tell in the low, underground space lit mainly by the glow of the large, flat screens.
Up until now, Frankie had been allowing herself to be carried along in the momentum of the dream—because it had to be a dream, didn’t it? She had never been to a place like this or seen people like these. When words scrolled by on the bottom of the screens, she didn’t recognize the language or indeed, even the alphabet. So she had to be dreaming all this, safe at home in her bed, right?
But dream or no dream, she didn’t wish to take a vicious beating just because she couldn’t find her ticket. She began to fight against the crowd, trying to get to the side, to get away from the turnstiles and their guards.
To her surprise, she was able to make some headway, even in the packed area. She realized that she was taller than almost everyone here—taller and stronger too. Which was crazy—she was always shorter than almost everyone, not taller. And though she had worked a lot on her upper body strength in order to do a lot of the inversions and head and hand stands required in yoga, she still wasn’t strong enough to muscle her way through a packed crowd. Yet, that was what she was doing…only not fast enough.
Before she knew it, Frankie had come to the end of the row of turnstiles with only one person in line in front of her. She watched to see what that person—a girl in a dull yellow uniform jumpsuit—would do. To her surprise, the girl simply put her hand to a black pad on the side of the turnstile. Her hand was briefly outlined in brilliant green light and the barred door slid open for her. Then it closed again and suddenly Frankie was next.
She stood there, hesitating, wondering what would happen if she pressed her hand to the pad. She didn’t belong here—would the mechanism inside the turnstile sense that?
The crowd behind her was shoving forward, clearly wondering what was happening and why they weren’t moving forward. But Frankie was an interloper—what if she got shocked? Or what if the black uniformed guard who was standing to one side grabbed her and started beating her with the long, silver metal baton she saw shoved into his belt. Or what if—
“Who are you?”
Frankie looked around but the voice wasn’t coming from anyone around her—no one she could see, anyway.
“Who in the Seven Hells are you?” the voice demanded again. It was deep and masculine—a man’s voice. “And what are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Frankie said aloud. “I don’t know where I am.”
Several of the people behind her were glaring at her now and the black uniformed guard was beginning to take an interest in her—doubtless for holding up the line.
“You’re in the pubtrans station. But more to the point, you’re in me,” the voice told her. “What the fuck are you doing in my body?”
And then Frankie realized…the voice was coming from inside her head.
Look for the Brides of the Kindred 17, Switched, coming in early 2016
And read on for the blurb and preorder link for Evangeline's new book, The Institute: Daddy Issues, coming Valentine's Day 2016.
Can Kink heal a Broken Heart?
Detective Andi Sugarbaker is going to find out…the hard way.
Searching for the source of the deadly new date rape drug, Please, Andi and her partner, Viktor Saltanov, must go undercover at the infamous Age Play resort, called simply The Institute.
Here at The Institute, time is rolled back and Andi finds herself forced to relive painful trauma from her past in order to pursue her case. Meanwhile, her partner is showing a whole new side of himself that Andi never dreamed existed.
Born and bred in Mother Russia, Viktor Saltanov is 6’5, muscular, and as stoic as they come. But now he has become Andi’s sole support, protector…and disciplinarian. Letting her partner spank her and touch her in ways she never dreamed of is slowly breaking down Andi’s defenses, taking her to a vulnerable place inside she’s been trying to suppress for years.
Can the two of them navigate the traitorous maze of lies and deception and find a deeper truth about themselves? Or will their experience at The Institute destroy their relationship forever?
Preorder The Institute: Daddy Issues now to have it pop up on your Kindle as a sweet Valentine's Day treat next year. And scroll down to see the sexy cover. ; )
**Please Note—The Institute: Daddy Issues is the first book in
my new series about an Age Play Resort. Age play is the term for consenting adults who roleplay in some way pertaining to age. There are all ages but The Institute deals mostly with the DomDaddy/babygirl relationship. (Google Daddy Dom if you want a better idea of what I'm talking about.)
Age Play can also include schoolgirl with headmaster or schoolboy with headmistress, and every conceivable age in between. Consensual Play is key, and let me stress again this is about ADULTS - it has nothing whatsoever to do with anyone under the age of a consenting adult.
This is a new writing interest of mine that I picked up while visiting Fetcon this past year. If this is your kink or if you have an open mind for BDSM books involving domination and submission, I think you'll like The Institute: Daddy Issues. However, anyone who was ever a victim of any kind of sexual abuse may find parts of Daddy Issues triggering. So please keep that in mind if you choose to preorder. Please don't buy the book if you can't handle the content—I like to keep my readers happy and so I'm letting you know exactly what to expect.
Hugs and Happy Reading to you all!
: ) Evangeline
Also by Evangeline Anderson
Brides of the Kindred books (in order)
Claimed (also available in print and as an audio book)
Hunted (also available in print and as an audio book)
Sought (coming soon in audio)
Found (coming soon in audio)
Forgotten Page 48