Stronghold (Stronghold 1)

by Angel, Golden

  She wasn’t in subspace exactly, but she wasn’t quite coherent either. From what he could tell, all she wanted to do right now was cuddle and he was quite happy to fulfill that desire for her. Aftercare was about taking care of whatever the submissive’s needs were following a scene, and while he knew that he was going to need to get her a bottle of water in a bit, right now he was just going to enjoy holding her in his arms.

  Quietly hoping that she’d want to repeat scening with him as desperately as he wanted to with her.

  Chapter 14

  The Dixie Chicks blared from Angel’s iPod speakers as she tried to concentrate on her latest project – a corset for Lexie. It was going to be the exact same shade of blue as Lexie’s eyes, which would look electric against all that black hair. Although Lexie had a very different body shape from Angel’s, which much less in the boob department and a flatter stomach, so Angel had changed the pattern slightly to accommodate for that. Lexie’s breasts didn’t need a shelf so much as something to just gently cup and present them. A little smile flitted across Angel’s face as she thought about how much it would piss off all of Lexie’s “big brothers” to see her in such a garment, because she was pretty sure there was no way Lexie would want one of the high necked shirts that Angel had worn when she’d donned the same corset for a night at Stronghold.

  Pissing off Lexie’s big brothers sounded pretty good right now.

  Well, okay, really only one of them. The others were kind of innocent bystanders, but she didn’t care if this drew their ire as well. Right now she was feeling a bit pissy.

  It was Tuesday evening, three days since her visit to Stronghold, and all she could think about was Master Adam. Mostly she thought about how incredibly humiliating it was to have begged him to fuck her and basically be rejected, although logically she knew that he couldn’t really have done anything else. She was more upset about her own loss of control and letting him know how much she wanted him when she didn’t have any kind of idea as to his own feelings.

  After their scene, their incredibly intense and soul-baring scene, he’d delivered her back upstairs to Mike without a single qualm. Hadn’t seemed bothered that Mike had taken one look at her and declared that he was driving them home. Hadn’t said anything other than good night – although there had been a hot, intense look in his eyes when he’d said it – and then let her go!

  The next morning she’d tormented herself wondering what he’d done after she’d left the club, because goodness knows he hadn’t gotten off with her… and she’d been well aware while they were cuddling in the aftercare area that he’d been hard as a rock. So what do you think he did?

  Shut up!

  It wasn’t something she wanted to think about. She wouldn’t think about it. Because she had no claim on him and whatever he did once she left, he was perfectly within his rights to do so. They’d just scened together. They hadn’t kissed or anything. He hadn’t even asked for her phone number.

  But some part of her mind insisted that the scene had been more than just a scene and that she hadn’t imagined the incredible intimacy that had sprung from it.

  “She held Wanda’s hand and they worked out a plan

  And it didn’t take them long to decide… that Earl had to die…

  Na-na-na-na-na-na-naaaaaaah…”

  Singing along with the slightly cheery, slightly angry country music helped a little bit. Gave her a bit of an outlet to vent some frustration. Unfortunately she didn’t really have another arena where she could do that at the moment because she hadn’t had a self-defense class today. Yesterday had been good, but today she’d woken up with a bunch of pent-up energy that she really needed to work off.

  Unfortunately it was cold as balls outside, to the point where if she’d tried to go running the air would have just frozen in her lungs and she’d have ended up coughing and choking. Angel didn’t like running much anyway, but she’d found that she absolutely couldn’t in extreme temperatures. She didn’t have asthma exactly, but her lungs would seize up unpleasantly, to the point where more than one gym teacher had insisted she get tested for it. Bah.

  The door to her room opened and Angel glanced up, already knowing who it would be. None of her roommates would enter without knocking and Mike was out at a job interview, so that only left one person.

  Musical notes clashed together before Angel reached over and turned off her speakers and a distressed looking Leigh held out her phone to Angel. It was playing Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing,” which was Michael and Leigh’s “song” ever since their high school prom when that had been the theme for the evening.

  “He keeps calling and I can’t… I’m just not ready to talk to him yet,” Leigh said, holding the phone out towards Angel beseechingly. “I don’t know what to say to him. Please… answer it and tell him I’ll call him soon. Just not yet. I don’t know what I want from him so I don’t know what to say to him.”

  Wow… that was new. Angel blinked, but reached out to take the phone from her friend. The fact that Leigh was even considering that maybe she wanted to do something other than get back together with Michael… it killed her to think how much her friend must be hurting to come to such a conclusion, but at the same time she wanted to support that. Maybe this time things would be different.

  She slid her finger over the little arrow to accept the call.

  “Hey Michael, it’s Angel.”

  “Oh… um. Is Leigh there?”

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t want to talk to you right now.” Leigh glared at Angel. “She just needs some time… she’ll call you in a couple of days, okay?”

  “What does she need time for?” Michael asked, sounding frustrated. “I told her I love her and I didn’t realize that she didn’t want to take an actual break… I would have never suggested it if I didn’t think it was something she wanted.” Angel tried not to roll her eyes. Maybe he wouldn’t have suggested it this time, but he sure as hell hadn’t had a problem trying to take advantage of it to date other women. She wondered if he’d been shot down already or if he’d just realized how much harder he was going to have to work to find someone to bang that wasn’t Leigh.

  “She just needs the time and you need to give it to her,” Angel said sharply. “If you don’t want to then that’s your decision, but at the very least stop calling her and give the girl some space.”

  “Is she seeing someone else? Is that what’s going on? Because I thought she didn’t want us to see anyone else!”

  “No, she’s not, she’s just not ready to talk to you, yet.”

  As much as Angel would have loved to have told Michael that yes, Leigh was considering dating other people, she knew that it wasn’t true and that Leigh would be pretty pissed if Angel lied about it. It pissed Angel off how much antagonism and affront there had been in Michael’s voice when he’d asked if Leigh was seeing other people. So it was okay for him to, but not for Leigh? Ugh, she wished she could reach through the phone and punch him in the balls.

  “Just give her a couple of days, she’ll call you when she’s ready to talk.”

  “Okay. Fine. Just tell her that I’m not going to wait around forever.”

  Angel bit her lip to stop herself from retorting that Leigh shouldn’t have to wait around forever for his proposal either. Not her business.

  “Okay,” she said instead, forcing down the bile that was rising in the back of her throat at having to keep all her antagonism inside. “Bye.”

  She ended the call without waiting to hear if he said anything else.

  Leigh seemed to sag in front of her eyes, going over to sit on her bed and looking pale and almost wraith-like. Immediately Angel folded the corset fabric so that she could find her place again and went to her, wrapping her arm around Leigh’s slender shoulders just as they started to shake.

  “Hey baby… it’s okay…” she murmured. “You know you don’t have to get back together with him if you don’t want to.”

  “But I do want to
…” Leigh said, turning her head into Angel’s welcoming shoulder, tears muffling her voice slightly. “I just don’t know if I should. What’s the point of sitting around waiting for him to get to the perfect place in his life to propose to me if he’s just going to spend the rest of his life wanting to date other women?”

  “Shh…” Angel hugged her. “You are the best damn thing that ever happened to him and you know it and even he knows it. He sounded pretty impatient to talk to you. He said he loves you.” Angel truly believed that he did, at least inasmuch as he was capable of. Michael was kind of a narcissist, but as much as he could, she believed he cared for and loved Leigh. He would just never put her before himself, in any way.

  At least from what Angel could see, but she was trying really hard to be there for her friend and what she wanted. And she hated to see how Leigh’s self-esteem rose and fell with her perception of how much Michael cared about her. As if her worth only came from how much he thought she was worth.

  "I know he does. And I love him. I just don't know if it's enough anymore."

  There wasn't really anything she could say to that, so Angel just hugged her friend and thought about how much men sucked.

  ******

  "Knock knock."

  Adam looked up from the papers spread out on his desk and tried to quell the immediate surge of bundled negative emotions that clenched his gut. The man in the doorway hadn't done anything to deserve his animosity. Not really. It just seemed to be an automatic reaction ever since he'd met him.

  Granted, it came and went. Michael obviously hadn't had a problem with Adam taking Angel away for a scene on Saturday. But then he'd taken Angel right back under his wing when she and Adam had come back upstairs. Insisted that they go home. If it hadn't been for that then Adam could have kept her at the club for a while longer to give her more time to recover. Michael had wanted to take her home to do so.

  Since Adam wasn't her Dom he hadn't felt that he had the right to protest or try to keep her at the club.

  But it had grated on him to hand her over to someone else. Especially someone that she was so comfortably tactile with. There hadn’t seemed to be anything sexual in the way she and Michael touched each other, but that didn't make watching it any more fun for him.

  "Hey, how was the interview?" he asked.

  Finding out that Michael wanted to sign up for a temp agency while he waited for the usual D.C. cattle call of auditions had prompted Adam to offer some help. A way to prove to himself that it did not bother him how close this man was to Angel, that he didn't see him as a threat.

  With an easy grin, Michael leaned on the door frame, hands in his pockets. He had the kind of confident nonchalance that Adam had always envied. Michael looked like the kind of man who could relax easily, even though he wasn't as playful as Chris. Maybe it was the way his hair fell in his eyes. Adam had a feeling that was the kind of thing that a lot of women found attractive, and it had probably helped the man a lot in his career, but he knew that such a look would never work for him. Adam needed his hair short and easily styled.

  "It went fine, I think they'll probably call you about taking me on. I just wanted to stop by and say hi and thank you."

  Adam waved his hand in acknowledgment. "No problem. It benefits my company to have plenty of people to place in jobs."

  "And makes sure I won't end up back on Angel's couch in a month or two if I can't pay my rent, right?"

  He felt his face freeze, an immediate reaction to covering up his emotions. "Sorry?"

  Michael just laughed and Adam had to squash another surge of emotion, mostly anger.

  "You should call her. She's been pacing around the house and making her housemates nervous because she keeps muttering under her breath and they have no idea why."

  "I didn't get her number." It wasn't a real excuse. He hadn't asked for it because he knew that he could get it from Patrick any time that he wanted. Of course, the day after scening with her it had occurred to him that calling her without having asked for her number made him kind of look like a creeper. "And I figured she'd be at Stronghold this weekend."

  For a moment Michael looked at him with something akin to pity. "You know, most women don't like to be taken for granted."

  "I'm not... I just don't want to rush her." He didn't know why he was talking to this man. He barely knew him. Hell, he hadn't even told any of his friends this, and Justin had been in his office at lunch asking about Angel. "She's new to all of this," he muttered.

  Looking amused, Michael just shook his head and stood up straight. "Just don't take too long. Angel's not the most patient person in the world, not once she knows what she wants." He chuckled, gave the door frame one last rap with his knuckles, and left.

  Great. Now even people Adam wasn't friends with were butting in. Sighing, he dropped his head down to look at the social media numbers that Justin had brought in for him. They were doing better than ever, but lately success in business and the expansion of his staff weren't enough to make him feel completely satisfied.

  As well as he was doing professionally, that just made him think more about his personal failings. More specifically, the fact that, despite what he had just said to Michael, it was himself he was a bit worried about when it came to rushing into things. Angel was the first woman he’d been attracted to since he realized he wanted something more from a woman than just a few scenes.

  He had to ask himself, was he rushing into something with Angel based on attraction and sexual chemistry rather than anything other kind of compatibility?

  Not that a successful relationship shouldn't have those things, but he didn't think they should be the foundation. Unfortunately, he wasn't very experienced when it came to transitioning from the club to the real world. In fact he wasn't experienced at all because he'd never done it before. He hadn't realized, until he'd thought about calling Angel without having ever asked her for her phone number and the possible ramifications of how that looked, just how in over his head he already was.

  And there was nothing that Adam hated worse than not knowing what he was doing.

  ******

  Leigh was grabbing the dish of scalloped potatoes from the backseat while Angel was picking up the blueberry pie when her phone buzzed with a text message.

  "Argh."

  Juggling the still-warm dish with one hand while trying to dig her phone out of her purse with the other, slightly hampered by her bulky winter jacket, Angel gave it up for a lost cause. She'd check it inside. Leigh just looked at her with amusement.

  "Come on, let's go," Angel jerked her head at her parents' front door.

  "Doesn't look like Mike's here yet."

  "No, he said he might be late though. He had a late coffee date with one of his former directors, trying to find out if there are any backstage jobs going on during the next couple of months."

  "Do you ever regret not doing the theater thing?" Leigh asked as they headed up the walkway.

  "No. It's a great hobby, but a shit job."

  Doing community theater was all of the fun without the stress and angst. She didn't envy Mike, who was basically going to be working temporary jobs until he managed to either find a part in a show or find a part with a company. It had been even worse before he'd made Equity, now at least he would have a better chance at some of the higher paying shows once auditions came around since he'd done his time in non-Equity gigs.

  Although she was always having to find new places to hold classes, she had certain things that she could count on - like the college courses. And she had a much easier time finding locations than she would have finding acting gigs. While she could have probably made a decent living doing costuming, that was another thing that she preferred to do on her own time and at her own pace. Getting stressed out over auditions because her meals and rent actually depended on it was not something that she wanted to go through.

  Trying to make a living at it would ruin the enjoyment of theater for her. Mike seemed to thrive on it.
Then again he was a sadist, so maybe he just channeled the stress into beating some willing sub's ass.

  Now that she'd spent a little time at Stronghold, Angel could believe that. Scenes could be great stress relief as long as you didn't get too emotionally involved.

  Not that she was. She wouldn't let herself be until she knew what the heck was going on with a certain someone else's emotions. What game was he playing anyway?

  "Are you just going to keep standing there or are we going in?"

  Oops. They'd not only reached the door, Angel had been standing in front of the side with the doorknob, staring off into space without paying any attention to her surroundings. Muttering a few choice words under her breath, she tested the door and was relieved to find it unlocked so that she didn't have to go digging through her purse for her keys.

  "Hello?"

  "My babies are here!"

  Both Angel and Leigh laughed as Angel's mother came bustling into the room, beaming with glee that her "girls" were home. Strangely, while Leigh and Angel's mothers had never become particularly close to each other, they had each basically adopted the other's offspring. In fact, Leigh got the first hug and kiss on the cheek from Angel's effusive mother.

  She was a beautiful woman, shorter and curvier than either Leigh or Angel, with the slightly slanted eyes and flat nose that came from being half-Korean. Long black hair had been done up into a messy knot on the back of her head. Just behind her was Angel’s dad, standing just a few inches taller than Angel and with a cheerful smile on his round face. Half-Chinese, he had a lot of similar features to Angel's mother when it came to being a mixed child, and they'd given Angel a mixed bag of genetic traits as well.

  Not that she minded most of the time, although she sometimes wished for the straight black waterfall of hair that her mother had or the slightly more tanned skin that her father had. Curls came from her maternal grandmother and she'd gotten her paternal grandfather's Irish complexion which meant that she burned pretty easily in the sun unless she had a good base tan. On the other hand, she didn't get all flushed from alcohol and she was rarely hungover even after a full night of booze, so she'd inherited the Irish rather than the Asian drinking gene. That was a definite upper.