Ties That Bind (Club Risque Book 3)

by Poppy Flynn

  Luanna stopped dead in the doorway as Jake's words slowly sank in. They owned the club? Two clubs. Two kink clubs. The blood drained from her face as she put two and two together and came up with Club Risqué. Logan, Connor and Jake owned Club Risqué. But there were four co-owners. Logan, Connor, Jake and…Joel, of course! It all made a horrible kind of sense now. All those tiny niggles, all the stuff that sometimes didn't seem to add up. Now each little piece of the jigsaw suddenly fell into place. Somehow, it all seemed so very obvious that she couldn't believe she had never seen it before.

  But then, Logan had never alluded to being the club owner. In fact, he'd always said it belonged to 'friends' of his. He'd lied to her. Had he lied to her? Technically, what he had said was true. A lie by omission, then.

  The colour that had leached from her face bloomed again, and her cheeks heated as she considered what a fool he'd taken her for. All those times she'd agonised over whether or not he could let the kink go. Walk away, if it proved not to be anything she could handle. There was no way he would ever have left it behind. He couldn't. He was tied to it! Literally!

  Logan's eyes widened as he spotted her in the doorway. Whether alerted by the horrified look that contorted his features or the small, strangled sound that ripped from her throat, the other two spun around to face her. Logan seemed to have been struck completely speechless.

  For a moment, there was only the deathly quiet in which you could have heard a pin drop. Time seemed to slow. It was as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room and no one moved.

  Then the bubble burst. "Luanna!" Logan found his tongue, and the echo of her name hung in the air. Connor screwed up his eyes and dragged a hand over his face, his whole body heaving with the intensity of his sigh. Jake looked like he was about to have an apoplectic fit, but he recovered swiftly and then ripped into her.

  "Great! And now we have frigging eavesdroppers!" he spat.

  Luanna's mouth dropped open in shock at the sheer contempt in his tone, and she took an instinctive step backwards.

  Connor clamped a warning hand down on Jake's shoulder and Logan took a step towards her.

  Reality dropped like a lead weight into the stilted atmosphere and snapped Luanna's spine back into place. A steely calm iced her veins, and the words that left her mouth were cool and succinct, despite the cauldron of bubbling anger that was steaming in the pit of her stomach.

  "The three of you are shouting, the door is open, and the entire floor would be privy to your 'conversation' if any of them had lacked the good sense to take their lunch break out of the office." She took a deep breath and looked each of them coldly in the eye, before settling on Jake. "Your behaviour is inappropriate and unprofessional. I strongly suggest that you all go back to work and shelve your 'discussion' until you have some privacy."

  She turned briskly on her heel and swung out of the door, fighting to keep a tight rein on her anger and struggling to combat the bitterness she could feel starting to seep through the veneer of her surface calm.

  "Luanna…" Logan called after her, a hint of desperation colouring his voice.

  "I'll speak to you, later," she fired over her shoulder, without bothering to look back as she speed-walked back down the corridor as fast as she could without breaking into an undignified run.

  She couldn't bear to look at him, right now. Just like she hadn't been able to bring herself to say she'd speak to him 'at home'. Because, at this moment, it was all appearing to be an illusion, like reality was just a fabrication, a web that had been woven to simulate fact. But the web was disintegrating. She had tried to repair it a few times, herself, desperate to hold on to the fantasy. She thought she had reinforced and strengthened the weave that held their relationship together, but one by one, the threads were snapping, rupturing too severely and too rapidly for her to patch them back together, so, now, the entire entity was in danger of collapse.

  She felt so damned disillusioned that she was barely holding it together. But, unlike them, she flatly refused to make a spectacle of herself. She'd done that once in her life, and that was one time too many.

  Luanna left work that evening, without bothering to wait to hear from Logan, never mind give him a lift. Trying to keep her own relationship issues at bay, she swung past Charlotte's neat little Victorian townhouse, even though she was hardly decent company, herself. Not that it mattered. Charlotte's place was closed up and had an almost abandoned look about it, which sent a bit of a shiver down Luanna's spine.

  "Jeez, give yourself a shake, woman!" she muttered to herself. She was letting it all get away from her. It wasn't like her to be so fanciful. Charlotte had probably just popped down to the local supermarket to pick up a well-deserved tub of Ben and Jerry's. She'd try reaching her on the phone again, later. The way she was feeling at the moment, they could binge ice cream together and commiserate on what pigs men were.

  She gave an unusual sigh of relief that Danny had practice after school, this evening, and she had the house to herself for a little while. She needed to get her head together and think things through, decide how she felt about the curve ball she'd been thrown. She'd had to shelve it as best she could all afternoon and knuckle down to some work; there was a time and a place, after all.

  Stripping off as she wandered through the little flat, she wadded up her clothes and balled them into the laundry hamper before running herself a well-earned bubble bath. While the taps drizzled sluggishly, courtesy of the pathetic water pressure, Luanna padded back to the kitchen in her bare feet and underwear to pour herself a much-needed glass of wine.

  Submerging herself in half-hearted bubbles, fifteen minutes later, she took a long sip of the good red wine Logan had left and tried to sort through her jumbled thoughts.

  They were back to where they'd been a few weeks ago, when Logan had failed to tell her about his involvement in the opening weekend at Club Risqué. Of course, all of that made more sense now that she was privy to this new piece of information. And he'd had the perfect opportunity to divulge the whole truth of his obligation to the club, right then and there, while the subject had been front and centre of that dispute, but he'd chosen not to. What did that say about their relationship? Did he not trust her to keep the information to herself, or did he think she wouldn't understand his commitment? Neither option was very flattering.

  While she'd had her doubts back then—masses of them, to be sure—she'd made a concerted effort to be calm and understanding. She'd tried to give Logan a chance to explain, so their relationship could have a chance to flourish. Had she wanted to live the dream so much that she had just blinded herself to reality? She had let go of her uncertainties and reservations without much argument. Had she coveted the idea of a 'happily ever after' with Logan so much that she had allowed herself to be diverted? She was no great expert when it came to relationships. She was a single, teenage mother, after all. That about said it all. Stupid. Just plain stupid. What the heck did she know about any of these things? This was the first real relationship she'd ever had. One she'd never expected to attain. The gaps in their compatibility had always been there. It wasn't as if she hadn't been aware of them, but she'd never seen them as a barrier. People didn't come together like two parts of a jigsaw puzzle that just slotted neatly together to form a perfect relationship. That kind of thinking would have been truly naïve. She'd been open-minded and prepared for the push and pull of give and take, of consideration and concession until they settled into a happy compromise. She had thought she was shoring up the walls, pointing up the brickwork to form something that was strong and enduring. In retrospect, perhaps she'd just been papering over the cracks.

  In the silence of the house, Luanna heard the key turn in the lock. She heard Logan call her name with an edge of desperation. Or was that just wishful thinking? What was that old saying about just being sorry that you got caught?

  Luanna sighed, melancholy wrapping around her like the steam from the water as she stepped out of the bath in the tin
y room. Logan was a millionaire, for Christ's sake. What was he doing slumming it here with her, anyway?

  And on that depressing thought, she pulled on a long terry robe that had seen better days and went out to face the outcome.

  He was still here. By the skin of his teeth, and that was no word of a lie.

  Logan looked over at the woman who lay next to him in the modest bed. She was lying just about as far away from him as physically possible, despite the tight confines of the space, but at least she had allowed him to stay, and if nothing else, that gave him a sliver of hope.

  She lay as stiff as a board and her breathing was quiet and even, but he wasn't convinced she was asleep.

  Logan slumped on his back, his forearm flung across his eyes. They hadn't had much of a chance to air their grievances and get things settled. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that Luanna hadn't had much chance to air her grievances and for him to defend himself.

  Danny had come home from practice and had been exuberant enough in his pleasure at finding Logan back that Luanna had let things drop and stopped short of asking him to leave.

  Any other time, Logan would have been both touched and elated by the kid's unconditional acceptance of him as part of the family. Heck, he still was. It was just tinged with a good dose of guilt and apprehension.

  Danny had welcomed him as a surrogate father figure, accepted him as a part of his mother's life. Luanna had stayed open-minded about his kink and been calm and patient in the face of his previous fuck-ups, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

  And he'd messed up—again!

  Luanna wasn't the type to suffer fools, and Logan was under absolutely no illusion that the only reason he was still around was in deference to her son. If it hadn't been for Danny, Luanna would have kicked him out on his ear. Logan was still slightly surprised that she hadn't done just that, regardless. But he also knew she would never have permitted a scene in front of him, so backing down was simply the lesser of two evils.

  She'd looked so damn shattered when he'd come in. She hadn't ranted and raged or screamed and torn strips off him. She had just looked at him out of glassy, moss coloured eyes that swam in hurt and disillusionment and looked so damn sad that it had almost broken him just to look at her. He would have preferred it if she had stormed and shouted and vented her anger with him. Instead, she had just stared at him and asked one thing, "Why?"

  Why hadn't he told her? Why hadn't he trusted her? Why did he feel it necessary to keep secrets if he was serious about them building a life together?

  He'd made his protests that their relationship had been so new but that had just undermined his feelings for her. He'd given the excuses about it not being just his secret to share, the agreement between the four of them to keep it a secret, and then, yes, he'd had to admit that Desi knew, so that argument lost most of its credence. He'd scrambled to convince her that he did trust her, but his omissions seriously weakened those reassurances.

  He sounded lame, even to himself. And suddenly, all those reasons he had convinced himself were right seemed completely ridiculous, and he had to wonder why he hadn't just come clean. She'd accused him of not taking their relationship seriously, and damn if he couldn't come up with any kind of retort, because whatever way you looked at it, the evidence was just stacked against him.

  So maybe she hadn't thrown him out, but he knew, without a doubt, that he was nowhere close to being out of the woods.

  All he could do was pray—pray that he could convince her of his sincerity and hope they could pull things back together again. There was no more room for error. One more strike and he'd be out. He didn't think he could bear for that to happen. Whatever mistakes he'd made—and he wasn't denying any of them—he did truly love her.

  "I'm sorry," he whispered into the darkness. He needed to say the words, even if she was asleep. He needed to say them for himself.

  He was met by the silence he had expected. Better if she heard them, perhaps, but maybe he'd get another chance. If he practiced saying them now, maybe he'd have them perfected by the time he got to tell her properly and he could make things right.

  "I never meant to hurt you, Lu. I never meant to make you feel that I didn't trust you or value our relationship." He sighed, a long silent exhalation and slipped the arm covering his eyes under his head.

  "I missed you so much while I was away. I was so glad to be back, so chuffed that Danny was pleased to see me. I love that kid as much as I love you," he murmured. " I never expected to, never had a thought of becoming a father to a ready grown lad, but that's how I feel about him. Like he's mine as much as you are. I hope I get the chance to tell you that, to tell him that."

  Logan cleared his throat, which had thickened as he realised just how much he had to lose.

  "I fucked up. Big time. I know that, baby. I guess I've been doing the D/s thing for so long that I've never really learned how to handle a proper relationship. I never expected it to be so hard. I know it's foolish to think it will all just fall into place, but the truth is I'm not used to having to consider how everything I do affects someone else."

  Logan fell silent for a moment, thinking over his own words. He gave a small, wry laugh. "And that's a crap excuse. Totally fucking bollocks…" He let out the gusty oath, then sucked in deep breath. "…but it's the truth, for what it's worth."

  He glanced across and looked at the elegant column of her back, covered, right now, in a voluminous sleep shirt. "I hope I can convince you of that when you're awake. I hope I can find the right words, because I love you, Luanna, so damn much, and I don't ever want to lose you."

  Silence settled into the room to hold hands with the fingers of darkness, and Logan rolled onto his side, away from her. He couldn't bear to see the shadow of her form, so close to him and yet so far away.

  He was staring blindly into nothing when he felt the mattress give, felt her scoot closer until her front was pressed up against his back. Her arm snaked around his waist, and silence broke again.

  "I don't want to lose you, either," she whispered, her voice thick with tears. "I don't know where we go from here, Logan. I guess all we can do is try and hope that it's enough."

  Logan pretty much bounced back to face her, his arms encircling her and holding her tight as he buried his head in the crook of her neck.

  There were no more words. After long minutes, he took her face in both his hands and kissed her deeply. Desperately.

  But he made love to her slowly and sincerely.

  Chapter 13

  A week later, things were still on kind of shaky ground. They were working at it, trying to paste the pieces back together, but despite the willingness on both sides, nothing seemed as simple as it had been before. There was a reluctance to push too hard any which way and the constant sensation of walking on eggshells, for both of them, but they were working at it. One day at a time. And each step was a step in the right direction, as far as Luanna was concerned.

  She still hadn't found the time to ask Logan about her rights and justifications regarding Danny's father. Now simply wasn't the time, and in all honestly, that drama had taken a back seat to trying to fix what was going on in her life, right now, never mind the long-dwindled past. It just wasn't important in comparison to repairing the present.

  There was still drama with Charlotte and Jake, as well, and while Luanna was concerned at her friend's continued lack of communication, she simply didn't have the energy to focus too hard on somebody else's problems. She'd be there for Charlotte, if she got in touch. That was as much as she could do, right now.

  She wondered idly if she was being selfish, but it wasn't as if she hadn't tried. She had telephoned Charlotte daily for a week and had even taken another trip across to her home. The other woman clearly didn't want company, at the moment, and Luanna suspected that, like Laurel, Charlotte had taken off for a few days. Heck, the two of them were probably stuffing down that ice cream together somewhere.

  She was walking past a news
stand on her way back from lunch when the reality of the photograph hit her. At first, her brain couldn't quite compute what she was seeing. She knew it was herself, since she recognised the picture. Not that anyone else would know, her body was bowed fluidly, head thrown back, so her face was hidden, instead, highlighting the long, graceful column of her neck and the waterfall of hair that cascaded down behind her while her torso was encased in a Shibari chest harness, which provided the pivotal support for the single suspension cable. The ropes continued in an intricate pattern down her bound legs, like a lacy cocoon, and her arms dangled behind her so that she resembled a ragdoll, just hanging there as if carelessly grasped around the middle.

  For a beat or two, she couldn't work out why it was there, then she saw the BDSM tagline, and the reality of Charlotte's article came rushing back. Her head buzzed with the swift fear of recognition then calmed. Nobody would ever know this was her. And she'd agreed to this publication. It was just a shock, seeing it there on a magazine, on a newsstand, on the street, without any forewarning. Taking a deep, calming breath, she picked up a copy and just stared at it for a long minute.

  "Need to grab that while it's available," the stall holder winked. "That issue is selling like hotcakes."

  Luanna dug in her purse for change and walked back to work in a bit of a daze. With everything that had happened, she hadn't even warned Logan about this. She had expected Charlotte to let her know the publication date, and she had planned to tell him then. Things had been so strained, their conversations so stilted, that there hadn't seemed like a good time to discuss the fact that she'd allowed Charlotte to put her Shibari photos into print, even if they were all deliberately anonymous. In truth, she thought Logan would get a bit of a charge from it. He'd always wanted to get these pictures out there. What better way than in a mainstream, national magazine.