Let it Snow

by Suzan Butler, Emily Ryan-Davis, Cari Quinn, Vivienne Westlake, Sadie Haller, Holley Trent

  “Yes,” she conceded breathily as footsteps—what sounded like two sets of them—neared them.

  He let his fingertips flutter over her G-spot, and at the start of her usual keen of pleasure, pushed his thumb into her ass.

  “Max!”

  A couple passed them on landing, trying and failing to look disinterested, but Max knew what they must have looked like with his hard cock straining against his snug pants and his fingers buried in a winsome goddess’s bottom. They probably looked like they couldn’t control themselves—like couldn’t make it to a room. Like strangers fucking for the first time.

  Well, fine. He had no intention of hiding. G was beautiful.

  And his.

  He fucked her harder with his fingers and raised an eyebrow over the top of his mask, looking at the slow-moving couple on the stairs.

  “I thought staff was off-limits,” the man said, and cast a longing glance at Giselle. If she saw it, she might have finally fought herself free and ran upstairs, but fortunately at the moment she had her face turned in the other direction. He could see the flush of burgundy in her cheek, though.

  So pretty.

  “There are some perks to being a VIP,” he said.

  “Max…” she growled.

  He pushed his thumb farther into her ass.

  Her cheeks tightened. It’d been so long since she’d let him take her there. Too damn long. Hell. It’d been too damn long since she’d let him take her anywhere.

  “How does one get to be a VIP?” the man asked.

  His lady friend rolled her eyes.

  Max winked at him. “You wouldn’t have the proper credentials.”

  “Are you staff, too?” the man asked.

  “Sure,” Max lied. He turned Giselle about twenty degrees counterclockwise so the couple could have a better view of what he was doing to her. She’d likely want to kill him later, but she wouldn’t be able to manage it if she were tied up. Besides, the wetness gushing onto his knuckles told him exactly what she thought of the unplanned exhibitionism.

  “We’re just part of the floor show. We’re here to titillate and spur the imagination,” Max said, and he increased the speed of his fingers in her pussy.

  Her strained moan spurred him on.

  “You’ll probably want to go back to your room and fuck like rabbits.”

  “Oh, well I don’t actually know her,” the man said.

  The woman huffed and put her hands on her hips. “And you won’t be knowing me at the rate you’re going.” She turned to Max. “We were going down to the black rooms. This guy fancies himself to be a Dom.”

  “Ah, I see.” Max pulled his fingers free from Giselle.

  She gasped, and then growled. Poor thing deprived of an orgasm. Better get used to it until you submit, sweetheart. Payback’s a bitch.

  He smoothed her skirt down and righted her.

  “I happen to be something of a Dom myself,” he said. He suspected his grin was predatory, but who the fuck cared? He didn’t know these people, but they might prove to be useful. “Perhaps we could give you a demonstration. Queen G loves to show off.”

  She turned on him, brows furrowed and a warning of death in her dark eyes.

  He clucked his tongue, tipped her head back, and kissed her hard. Her lips barred him access at first, but he kept probing the crease with his tongue, and she opened. Whimpered. Melted against him.

  As always.

  Why the fuck did she keep fighting him?

  He pulled back, keeping one arm wrapped around her waist. “I’m going to wash my hands, then we’re going to go downstairs and show our guests how to take full advantage of the black rooms.”

  The man nudged his guest with his elbow. “See, stick with me and you’re guaranteed to have a good time.”

  “Seems more like if I stick with him” —she crooked a thumb toward Max—“I’ll have a better time.”

  “Sorry,” Max said. “Me and G are a package deal, and only I get to touch her.”

  “Damn,” the man muttered.

  Giselle rolled her eyes, but made no objections. She’d helped him put novice subs through their paces before, and this was no different, really. He knew that in those instances, she compartmentalized and pretended the play wasn’t about them. It was just a demonstration. To Max, it was taking all he could get at the time. Well, he wasn’t going to settle for scraps anymore. She could give him more. She could give him everything, and he was going to make her want to. They could get to the bottom of her enduring recalcitrance later. Right now, though, it was time to play.

  She didn’t think when they played. Just trusted. She obviously needed a reminder that he’d earned it.

  Chapter Four

  Giselle cringed as Max led her and their little entourage down to the garden level. When it came to him, having sex with him had always been easier than having deep conversations with him. Maybe that wasn’t the whole truth. Sharing secrets had been easy when they were kids—stupid fourteen-year-olds who didn’t know shit about shit. But, truth got harder after that first time they’d taken of their clothes. They’d been eighteen-year-old virgins and Max was about to move away to college. His parents were gone that weekend, and what started as awkward groping on the living room sofa turned into a desperate, noisy fuck on a narrow twin bed. She remembered that it hurt, but then that some weird-as-hell euphoria had settled in. It didn’t matter that Max’s thrusts were inexpert, because every time he put his lips to her ear and whispered her name, she melted a little more.

  She’d been out of her fucking mind ever since. And of course, Max kept getting better. More confident. More dominant. And Giselle? Well, most of the time, she felt like she got left behind. She talked a good game, sure, but really, she was still that teenager fumbling on a sofa, and needed to be told what to do.

  “Ah, I see you changed your mind,” came a cultured, Southern baritone voice Giselle had hoped not to hear again for at least a week. She rolled her eyes behind Max and tried to make herself small. Max was a big man at over six feet tall and packed with muscle, but she was no dwarf.

  Henri Beaudelaire leaned sideways and fixed her in his gaze.

  Shit.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to,” Max said, “but we happened upon this couple who was interested in learning about the black rooms G and I were going to show them some of the more premium features.”

  Mr. Beaudelaire nodded, extended a hand to each guest, and shook theirs. “Welcome to my hotel. Is this your first time attending a Den event?”

  Both nodded.

  Mr. Beaudelaire raised one of those dark eyebrows and looked the couple up and down. “And going straight to the black rooms? I guess that saying really is true. We mustn’t judge books by their covers.”

  Giselle suppressed a snort. She’d bet good money that neither could endure what Max was capable of doling out. It was true that a person couldn’t always tell who was into kink by another person’s outward appearance, but these two were about as clean-cut as they came. The man was wearing lace-up Oxfords and the woman’s cardigan had tinsel woven into the knit.

  Max was going to scare those two right back to Omaha or whatever small-town haven they’d come from.

  She grinned.

  “And how are you?” Mr. Beaudelaire asked Giselle. “Are you recovering well?”

  She nodded. It was a wonder how not being fired could lift one’s spirits and clear the mind.

  “Yes, I’m much better.”

  “Confession makes the heart lighter, doesn’t it?” Max said through clenched teeth.

  She gave him a grin in return that showed far too many of her own teeth, and hopefully just enough malice to intimidate him. Not that she’d ever managed to do that.

  “Will I see you at the ball?” Mr. Beaudelaire asked.

  Whether he was speaking to Max or Giselle, she didn’t know, but she knew what her answer would have been.

  “I migh
t be able to rustle up something to wear,” Max said.

  She rolled her eyes. He could go alone.

  “Fantastic.” Mr. Beaudelaire nodded to the guests and indicated an open black room. “I’m certain you’ll enjoy the facilities. Do let me know if I may be of service.” He bowed gallantly, turned on the heel of his smart white loafers, and strode toward the atrium. Not too many men could pull off the all-white look and still look serious, but the man would probably be just as formidable in a burlap sack and a polka dot bow tie.

  The woman in the tinsel sweater sighed as Mr. Beaudelaire walked past. Giselle couldn’t help but to grin. Henri Beaudelaire was attractive in the way tigers and arctic wolves were attractive. He was nice to look at from a distance, but Giselle wouldn’t want to get too close. He was probably the type to leave a nasty bite. She’d worked at the hotel long enough that she no longer saw him as an attractive, single man. To her, he was just the person whose signature was scrawled on her paychecks.

  Max gestured to the room. “After you,” he said to their guests.

  They walked slowly, eyes wide as they approached the doorway, and Giselle turned to Max.

  “I could just leave your bossy ass right here. Since I seem to have the night off, I can go home and watch television. Eat rum raisin ice cream. Put on my sweats. Be alone.”

  He nodded. “You could. Yes. You’re lacking one thing, though.” He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “What’s that?”

  “Permission.”

  “I don’t need permission. I’ve already gotten it from the one person I needed it from.” She pointed in the direction of the departing hotel owner.

  “You need my permission.”

  “I’m not playing this game with you, Max. I’m not your sub. You seem to keep forgetting that. I may put on a good show when necessary, but that’s it.”

  He hooked his hand around her neck and drew her closer. “I’d say right now, a good show is necessary, don’t you?” he whispered hoarsely. “Those two squares are expecting an education, and I think we should give them one.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Since when did you become the ambassador to kink? I think you’re just making excuses. You know I won’t say no to you during a demonstration.”

  “Mmm, excuses.” He scoffed. “That’s funny as hell coming from a woman who doles those out like beads during Mardi Gras.” His hand skimmed down her spine and settled at the small of her back.

  Instinctively, she arched against him, inviting his touch.

  Dammit. She closed her eyes against his searching stare.

  “If you’ll recall, mere minutes ago when I had my fingers in your cunt, you were doing more than just helping me put on a demonstration, weren’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Max-i-mus.” She enunciated his club name with a little sass and opened her eyes only to roll them at him.

  “Sure, honey.” He nodded. “If I’d pushed you down to the floor and fucked you there in the south stairwell, you wouldn’t have cared who saw us. There could have been an audience of ten, and nothing would have mattered but my attention on you. Isn’t that right?”

  Yes, it was right. She craved his attention. She wanted him to dominate her and make her forget everything except what mattered, but she’d conditioned herself to not accept what he offered. She’d been fighting the compulsion to just give herself to him for years, and it wasn’t just about sex, but comfort, too.

  She fretted about him. Missed him when he was gone.

  Loved him. Always had.

  And he could break her. In her mind, it wasn’t an issue of if he’d leave her, but when. She didn’t want everything about him tangled up in her, because when he left, she’d break.

  Women like Giselle weren’t allowed to break.

  “Why can’t you just give in, honey? I always took care of you, whether you asked for it or not. Stop resisting me.” His voice took on a somber quality that made her stomach lurch and chest tighten.

  “Don’t do this to me, Max.”

  “You act like I’m trying to break your will, G,” he said pleadingly. “I’m not. I’ve never tried to break you. This has always been about give and take.”

  “But you want something I’m not willing to give.”

  “No. You’re not willing to take what I’m trying to give you.”

  She couldn’t rebut. It was pointless. He was right…and she just couldn’t take the medicine he wanted to administer. She took a steadying breath and dragged her tongue across dry lips. “God.”

  “We’ll hash this out later.” He gave her a small nudge into the dimly lit room. In her emotion-fueled haze, she didn’t resist.

  Vaguely, she registered the sound of the door being closed and locked, and Max giving some instructions to their guests.

  She sat on the padded bench near the door and wrung her hands, staring at nothing in particular.

  Months ago, she’d decided the best thing for her and Max would be a clean break. No more hook-ups. No more Den of Sin encounters. Her heart couldn’t take it. She also couldn’t endure the thought that he was getting his needs met by other women when she refused him, which she so often did. She was regularly stunned by the fact he hadn’t turned cold to her after all this time. And she held out some hope that they could find some way to make this work, but she didn’t want to be that woman like her mother.

  She didn’t want to lose the man she loved to his job—to violence on his job—and be the one left picking up the pieces. Maybe she’d hurt just as much if she weren’t his girlfriend and something happened to him, but if he belonged to her, chances were good she’d never recover. Her mother hadn’t, and it’d been twenty years since her father was killed overseas. Her mother was a shell of who she once was, and Giselle swore she’d always guard herself against that.

  Maybe she’d be sad without Max, but damned if she was going to let him make her a young widow. He’d already been shot three times, and those were just the incidents she knew about.

  She looked up to see the mousy man heeling off his shoes and unbuttoning his shirt while the other woman watched. Max spoke to the woman about various bindings. Giselle couldn’t be sure who was the one volunteering to be bound, but the man seemed far too enthusiastic.

  What has Max been telling them?

  Giselle stood and walked closer. She leaned against the inversion table, which was upright at the moment, and crossed her arms.

  The other man continued to undress, working now on his button-up shirt.

  The woman reached around her back, likely to her pencil skirt’s button.

  Giselle gave Max’s leather-covered ass a pluck.

  He turned to her. “Hmm?”

  “What’s the plan here?” she whispered. “Are we going to watch, or what? There are other things I’d prefer to be doing right now.” It wasn’t that watching wasn’t fun. She just preferred her eye candy to be a bit less salt-of-the-Earth. If she had to guess, their male pupil would be endowed similarly to that underwhelming ice sculpture.

  He shrugged. “I’m making it up as I go along as always. I generally prefer to dominate one person at a time, not three.”

  “Excuse me?” She looked at the woman who was, naturally, looking at Max. If Max thought Giselle was going to bear witness to him getting his rocks off by some other woman’s touch, then Giselle wasn’t the only one who’d lost her damned mind.

  His breath tickled the side of her face and his hand at her waist triggered her obedient turn toward him.

  Dammit. He had her trained, and she hadn’t realized it before today.

  “I don’t fuck anyone else. Thought you knew that.”

  “What?”

  He leaned in and caught her ear between his teeth. The sting, followed by the pleasurable lick, sent wave after wave of anticipatory heat down her spine to her pussy.

  “Why does that surprise you? You think a
Dom can’t keep it in his pants?”

  “I’m sure some can, but…” She let the words trail off, because surely he knew.

  “But what?”

  “But…everyone wants to fuck the Dark Dom.”

  “And the Dark Dom has only let one woman near his cock in the past five years. Why do you think I’ve been through so many submissives?”

  “Because you’re too picky.” Even as the words came out of her mouth, Giselle knew there was a taste of untruth about them. Max had been through a lot of subs, and Giselle knew that any experienced sub would have stuck around longer…unless they weren’t getting the big bang. The sexual frustration had to be unbearable. All that play and no intercourse ever?

  She’d never considered that before, but now it made sense.

  “I can’t be your submissive, Max.”

  “And you can’t be my girlfriend, right? Not even that? Same line again and again.” He turned and looked at the semi-clad guests, then put his attention back on Giselle. “How about you do me a favor?” He dragged his index finger down her neck and popped her top button. Then the next one. And the next. He spread her shirt to reveal her lacy bra and let out a ragged breath. “One little favor.”

  “What favor, Max?”

  “I know it’s hard for you, but for two days, just pretend that nothing bad is going to happen if you give yourself to me. Today and tomorrow. Just pretend.”

  “Pretending is just a pretty way to say lie to yourself.”

  “You don’t need to have an answer for everything,” he hissed. “Think about that. You don’t always have to have the last word. It’s another way you try to assert your control when you don’t really need to have it.”

  “Don’t fucking psychoanalyze me.”

  “Then tell me it’s a lie.” His forehead furrowed and eyes behind his mask narrowed. “Go on and tell me what I’m saying isn’t the truth.”