And just like that, my thoughts circle back to him. Things were going great. No, not great, they were going amazing. I was enjoying myself, enjoying what was happening between us just to have it shattered.
I fall into the chair and close my eyes, but the moment I do, all I can see is Caden standing before me with a sweet smile on his lips. I sit up, grabbing the seventh bottle of whiskey and open it. Bottoms up.
Knock, knock, knock.
I fight to hold my eyes open.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Come on, Beck, open the door.”
I scrub my hands over my face. My head is pounding. My neck feels like it’s been wrenched in a vice.
I stand up, knocking into the table and knocking over half a dozen empty whiskey bottles and a few full ones.
The knocking turns to pounding. “Yeah, I’m coming,” I holler and stumble my way to the door, sliding the deadbolt and opening it.
“Dude, you know you’re not supposed to drink on duty, you look like shit.” Casey looks me up and down.
“Thanks, what’s up?”
“We’re taking Alyssa out. She wants to go shopping and she’s meeting a friend for lunch,” he tells me.
I scrub my face again. “Give me twenty.”
“Nah, forget it, we got this. Go take some Tylenol or something.”
“You sure?” I ask.
“Yeah, it’s just lunch.”
I nod. “Sorry, bro.”
“Don’t stress it. What happened last night?”
I shake my head, trying to remember what exactly happened and I can’t recall much of anything. “I drank way too much.”
“Obviously. We’ll call if we need anything.”
“I’ve got that dinner thing a little later.”
Casey smiles. “Don’t worry about it, we got this. Take the day, you’ve been working like a fool and Alyssa said she’s having a few friends in her suite tonight. So we’re all free.”
I nod. “Thanks, Case.”
“No problem.”
I nod my head and he walks toward the elevator. I close the door before falling against it.
The events of last night slowly slide into my conscious and I immediately want to grab another drink.
I push away from the door and go back to the table. I pull a fresh bottle from the stash and down it. A little hair of the dog.
Then I turn back toward the bathroom, shedding my shirt and pajamas as I go.
Once under the hot spray of the water and with the whiskey starting to course through my veins, I start to feel a little bit better except for the damn kink in my neck, compliments of crashing in the chair. At one point I went for the bed, but all I could see was the mess on the duvet that Caden and I had made and I fell back into the chair with another shot of whiskey and that was pretty much the last thing I remember before Casey pounded on my door.
“Hey,” I say to Ashley as she approaches the table. I stand up and kiss her on the cheek.
“You look like shit.”
I roll my eyes. “Nice to see you too.”
She smiles and shrugs as she takes her seat opposite me. “You didn’t tell him where we were meeting, did you?”
She snorts. “No, I didn’t. Though I wish I knew what the fuck was going on between the two of you.”
I shrug and take a drink of water to avoid answering her question. She reads me in a heartbeat. “So that’s how this is going to go? Listen, Aryn, whatever it is, you need to talk to someone about it.”
“Hardly. There’s nothing to talk about. We both want different things, so I guess we can just leave it at that.” I say it with a sharper tone than I’d intended to have, but she doesn’t call me on it.
*~* CADEN *~*
Ash to Caden: I’m having dinner with him tonight.
That’s the text message that greeted me when I got off a conference call with a new studio that is looking to contract me for a new movie that will start filming late this year or early next year. Though I am interested in the project, the timing is awful for me.
I sit at my computer and pull up the program I designed a few years ago for another project I did. The program was a nice tool to have when we were scouting because of where we were looking. It was a fast, rocky area in eastern Australia. The program allowed us to pinpoint the location of anyone on our crew. This made it easier to find someone should they have problems and it proved invaluable when there was an accident and we were able to track them down within fifty yards of their location.
I type in a number and wait.
Location Unknown
I scowl at the screen. “Impossible,” I breathe.
Thinking that the power is off, I click a couple of boxes and search for a last known location but again it comes back as an unknown location.
“I know it was on last night, so how is there no last known location?”
I shake my head.
I have an alternative outlet. I text Ashley.
Caden to Ash: Where?
“You idiot,” I grumble to myself and go back to my computer and type in another number and it pings back almost instantly. “Loews. The restaurant or his room?” I muse out loud.
I click a couple more buttons, zooming in on the map and pulling up the Loews in 3D format and I see the ping coming from the lower levels. I let out a rush of breath I didn’t know I was holding in.
“What the hell are you doing?” I try talking myself out of what I’m doing. “He deserves your trust as he’s done nothing to violate it and this is bordering on stupid stalker status, Caden.” I click out of the program and shut down my computer.
*~* ARYN *~*
“How did you know you wanted into the lifestyle?” I ask Ashley.
She shrugs. “I don’t know, I think I always knew that there was something different, something that I seemed to be missing. Until I read a book that discussed it, that had characters in the lifestyle and while I didn’t know at first if that was it, it sparked within me the idea that there just might be a reason why I felt the way I did.”
“Once you started to put two and two together, did you fight yourself over it?”
She chuckles, “Yeah, I did. I think we all do. It’s just natural to do so. You have to find yourself and figure out if it works for you. I struggled a lot with the idea that I would give up so much of myself, only to realize that any Top who forces you to give up any part of who you are, isn’t worth their weight. It’s about embracing who we are and nurturing what it is that we want to become.”
“What happened when you finally realized it was what you wanted?”
She smiles. “I met Teddy. I talked to him and explained to him what I thought I wanted or needed and he helped me see the benefits of a lot of things that I needed along with a lot of the cons and why some of the things I thought were important were actually rather insignificant in the long run.”
“What kinds of things?” I ask.
“You’re awfully inquisitive tonight.” She shrugs when I just nod dismissively. “It’s different for everyone. But I realized that a lot of what was controlling me was the fear of the unknown. Like pain, being tied up, losing control over my environment, things like that. That’s when I realized that the sub really has all the control. Nothing happens unless I want it to.”
She pauses, allowing me a chance to soak up what she’s saying and to take a drink of the water in front of me. I have to admit that many of her fears are my own, the biggest thing is finding it in me to be able to trust someone enough to surrender myself like that. I’ve lived too long trusting no one, the idea of being able to trust them that much is hard to process.
She swallows a large drink of water and continues. “It took me a long time to understand that the person who’s really in control is not the Top but the bottom. Nothing happens unless the bottom is a willing participant and everything that happens is based on what the submissive needs and not what the dominant wants.”
I scrub my hand through my hai
r. “It’s all so confusing.”
She smiles. “It can be, until you find what it is that you’re after.” She sets her silverware down and looks me square in the eye. “Why are you asking me about bottoms?”
I don’t answer her, instead I look for anything to distract her from her question and I come up empty.
Reading my reticence, she says to me, “This has to do with Caden, doesn’t it? He wants you as his submissive and you’re unwilling, why?”
“I’m not a submissive,” I snap.
She laughs, “Bullshit, Aryn.” She takes a large sip of her wine while I stare blankly at her. After she swallows, she looks at me with a hard stare before she leans into me. “I knew the moment I met you that there wasn’t a dominant bone in your body,” she whispers. “You’re alpha by nature, but hardly the dominant type.”
“How in the hell do you know?” I snap.
“Don’t get testy with me, Aryn, I’m your friend, if nothing else. I know because while you like the idea of dishing out pain and punishment, you haven’t got a clue the level of caring and respect that goes into being a Top. If you did, you’d have never run out of that room, you’d never have ignored Caden’s attempts to check on how you were doing following what happened. Despite what you may think, he wasn’t doing it to be a dick, he was doing it because he cares. Where you, on the other hand, don’t give a shit about anyone else. You don’t care that Caden was going out of his mind, despite what I or anyone else may have been telling him. Until he heard it from your mouth, he was never going to give up. Not until he knew that you were alright.”
She pulls her napkin from her lap and sets it on her half eaten plate before standing up. She throws a hundred dollar bill on the table. “That should cover most of it.”
I grab her wrist before she can walk away. “Why are you running away from me?”
“Because, whatever it is that Caden wants from you and you’re unwilling to give him is something you should be discussing with him. Not with me. I am more than willing to help you better understand this lifestyle, but first, you need to decide if this is a lifestyle you want to have, then you need to decide which role you wish to take on. If being a Top is really what you want to be, than be one, but if being a bottom is what you want or what you need, then you be exactly that. There is no bouncing back and forth until you’re capable of mastering both sides and the way you’re handling all this, I am leaning toward this lifestyle not being for you. And that’s fine, but until you make that choice, I can’t help you.”
She pulls her arm free of my grip.
“Good night, Aryn,” she says before leaving me staring after her like a fucking child who’s left the refrigerator door open.
FORTY~THREE
*~* CADEN *~*
“You did what?” I snap at Ashley as she paces away from me in my private room at The Box.
“I’m sorry. He pissed me off, so I just kind of lost it on him.”
“Damn it, Ashley, you were probably the one person he trusted to talk to. And now?”
“Oh for Pete's sake, Caden, I’ll apologize to him.”
I charge up behind her, grab her arm and spin her around. “What did you call me?”
Her face falls and fear blooms in her eyes. It’s a healthy fear that she knows what she did wrong. “I’m sorry, Sir. But this is not my fault, and yes, I will apologize to him, I’ll make it right, if I’m doing it for the right reasons. I’m going to piss you off further by saying this, but I am not your lackey. If you want to know about him, about what questions he has, what problems he is having, you talk to him,” she snaps and rips her arm from my grip.
“I’m sorry,” I apologize to her. “You’re right, this isn’t your responsibility. I shouldn’t have put you in this position.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. You’re inadvertently using my submission against me. Using me to get information from a friend of mine or someone who I’d like to be friends with. It’s not fair.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re absolutely right, Ash, and I’m sorry.”
“What’s the deal with you and him? What is it that you want from him that he’s so scared to hand over?”
I sigh. “I want what I want from anyone I’m with.”
Her eyes widen. “Their submission and?” she prompts.
“And nothing.”
She huffs. “That right there is your problem, Sir. You can’t ask someone to fully submit to you and not expect feelings and attachments. It doesn’t work like that.”
“You handle it just fine,” I counter.
“No, Sir, I don’t. But the difference between you and I is I am not your submissive. I submit to you in the dungeon because it’s fun and because Teddy likes you. He’s willing to allow you to Top me. And if you didn’t want to have me that way, I’d find someone else.”
“Is that so easy for you to do?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “With you, yes. You were very clear when we started talking that you wanted nothing more than a submissive who was willing to bottom for you. There were no strings, no attachments and if you think about it, of all the times we’ve scened together, you’ve slept with me three times and that was only after I practically begged you to do so. With the exception of when Aryn was in here.”
The mention of his name has me backing away from her, putting some distance between us, and I end up turning toward the bed. All I can see is Aryn tied to it. I close my eyes.
“The difference with that night versus the others was that I knew it wasn’t about me. I knew it was about the two of you. I knew that one of you needed a buffer and I was in the right place at the right time. A lesser person might feel used by that.” Her tone is getting snarky and it’s making my palms twitch, but they’re itching to punish out of anger and that is one thing I would never do. Not to Ashley, or anyone for that matter.
“Do you?” I ask softly.
“Do I, what?”
“Just because I’ve given you some attitude, I’d watch yourself, girl. You’re pushing the limits of my control.”
“Do I feel used? No. I got off, you both did, it was fun, but I don’t know if it’s an experience I want to have again, at least not under those circumstances. I’d much rather have a more hands-on approach.”
“You’re not making me feel any better.”
“I’m not here to stroke your ego.”
I turn to her and she steps back from me when she takes in my expression. “That’s it. Get out. Whatever your problem is tonight, it’s not me or my fault. I suggest you go home.”
“I’m scening tonight.”
“You most certainly are not,” I snap. “Go home. I’ll discuss with Teddy what your punishment shall be once I’ve had a chance to calm down.”
“But-”
“But what?” I snap back.
“Nothing,” she bites back and heads for the door. Before opening it, she turns back to me. “If you want him, go fucking get him. If all you want is his submission, you’re not going to get it. In case you haven’t noticed, you mean far more to him than he does to you and that will never get you anywhere.”
She opens the door, slamming it shut on her way out.
I clench and unclench my fists a few times before I go after her.
When I enter the dungeon, I’m surprised to see her standing there talking to Will. I go up behind them.
“Hello Master Caden,” Will says with enthusiasm which tells me that Ash hadn’t told Will she was supposed to leave.
“Where’s Teddy?”
“Right here, what’s up?” Teddy says from my right. I turn my head toward him and he has drinks in his hands.
“Ash is grounded. She is to go home immediately and you and I need to discuss a proper punishment.”
“Ashley,” Teddy barks and she wilts before Teddy as she turns toward him. “Care to explain to me why Master Caden feels it necessary to punish you?”
She doesn’t respond. She simply lowers her head
in supplication and it takes a little bit of my anger away, seeing her like this, but it doesn’t mean she’s going to get punished tonight. “Ashley, I asked you a question.”
“I’m sorry, Sir, but my mouth has gotten me into a lot of trouble tonight, and therefore I think it best if I just say nothing at all.”
Teddy snorts, “I can hear that. Go home.”
“I’m supposed to scene tonight with-”
“It’s cancelled effective now. Whatever you did to piss off Master Caden was obviously enough to send you home for the night. You can come back tomorrow night.” Teddy looks to me to confirm and I nod slightly. “We will handle your punishment then.”
She doesn’t answer him right away. She is hot tempered tonight and I don’t understand what her problem is and unfortunately I won’t be able to find out until tomorrow night.
“Do you understand?” Teddy’s voice is tense.
“Yes, Sir,” Ashley finally murmurs.
“I can’t hear you,” Teddy says and she raises her head. Her tear streaked cheeks are almost my undoing. While I enjoy tears with physical pain, emotional tears are harder to process.
“Yes, Sir,” she says a little louder and Teddy seems satisfied. “Go home,” he says again, this time it is more of an order. An order I know that she can’t resist, which means she’ll be a good girl and go home.
She turns on her heel and heads through the velvet curtains.
“Will, go help Emma at the bar. I need to talk to Master Caden.”
“Yes, Master,” Will says quickly and somberly. He starts to head toward the bar but Teddy grabs his arm, then the back of his neck, and he tilts his mouth up and crushes his lips to Will’s. Will visibly melts.
Aryn's Desire: A BOLD Security Novel (Finding Submission Book 1) Page 22
