by Maren Smith
“I hope you like prison,” Ethen spat, cowering in the shadowy back of his own cage. “You have no idea who you’re fucking with!”
“The best civil lawyer in his field, or so I’ve been told.” His belt still in his hand and the urge to keep using it tickling at the back of his neck, Noah hunkered down to better see Ethen through the wire of the door. “Go ahead, extradite me. It might take awhile, since I don’t reckon you’ll have much sway once you get done explaining this—” He tapped the wire of the cage. “—or that battered girl in your living room to your cop buddies. You may be King Shit out here, but I don’t live here and you don’t scare me. So, go on; jump, since you’re feeling so froggy. I’ll take you down with me, mate, but I promise that’ll feel like a slow leisurely fuck in the garden compared to what I’ll do if you ever bother my Kitty or her friend again.”
Ethen’s eyes narrowed, but already his confidence was dimming to a mere ghost of what it had been.
“That’s a promise,” Noah warned. He turned away, half expecting to find Pony-girl with a phone in her hand and, at the very least, emergency services on the other line. But although they had walked right past a line of cellphones on the kitchen counter, the tall blonde had made no effort to grab one. She hovered in the bedroom doorway, posture perfect, her nervousness revealed only in the fidgeting of her fingers and the swallow of her throat when he came toward her. She looked from him to her master and back again, every inch of her a woman who had been told what to do every minute of every day for so long that she didn’t know what to do now.
When he neared the door, she backed away. “Go to your room,” he ordered.
She obeyed.
“Stupid fucking—” Ethen said, only half under his breath.
Noah closed the door on him, following a few paces behind Pony-girl until she was in her room. There wasn’t a bed, just a leather sex-swing hanging from the ceiling and some hay on the floor. An assortment of crops and whips lined the hooks on the wall, alongside a giant black horse-cock of a strap-on. “You may not come out until the police get here.”
He had no idea if she’d obey that or not, but he didn’t lock her bedroom door when he closed it on her. Dialing 9-1-1, he put the phone on the counter and left.
“Oh my God!” Hadlee said, shock and happy surprise lighting her face as she came shoving through the door that separated the main play area from the locker room’s security desk where Kitty had been waiting now for almost twenty minutes. Getting past Luís had been a nerve-wracking ordeal because Kitty had nothing with which to prove her membership. Ethen had always taken care of that. For a while, she had been so convinced that Luís would turn her away, but in the end, a quick phone call had got her through the first checkpoint, through the tunnel that ran under the alley and straight to Danny, who was content although in no great hurry to investigate further. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to get in,” Kitty said, pretending she couldn’t see the look Danny shot her as he waited silently, cellphone pressed to his ear. The old her would have felt guilty for causing him trouble. All the new her felt right now was tired, but still she tried to smile as she accepted Hadlee’s welcoming embrace.
“You look so much better,” her friend said. “You’ve put on weight—oh, but not in a bad way,” she hastened to assure. “It looks good. You needed it.”
If she had put on weight it couldn’t have been more than a few pounds and was due entirely to Rule Number Seven. Something she hadn’t paid much attention to since she’d left Noah’s house. She did feel guilty about that, though she tried not to think about it. She also changed the subject. “So… apparently, I was banned?”
“Oh, uh…” Hadlee winced a glance to Garreth who was standing quietly beside her, arms folded across his chest, a very domly and disapproving frown on his face. “Yeah, about that…”
“Ethen got banned,” Garreth corrected. “Because of the cellphone incident on Roulette night.” He traded looks with Danny, who was finally off hold and softly relaying information to whomever he’d called—probably Jaxson or Chase, Black Light’s co-owners and the only two people with the power to confirm or rescind a banned membership. “I don’t think the Menagerie was included in that order, but we’ll get it straightened out.”
As if, now that Garreth was on the case, the problem was practically resolved, Hadlee changed the conversation back again. “When did you get back?”
“Almost two hours ago,” Kitty said, but inside all she could think was how nice it must be to have that kind of confidence in the man in your life. That no matter the problem, he could just… fix things and magically make everything all better.
Noah had that kind of magic.
Yeah, well, Noah wasn’t here, she told herself. From here on, she was going to have to learn to do things on her own.
“Did you not like it there?” Hadlee gently pried. “Did you and Noah not get along?”
“It was time to come home.” Kitty did her best to offer what she hoped was a believable smile. The way Hadlee’s was fading, she suspected she might not be as good at hiding things as she used to.
Garreth wasn’t smiling at all. A tic of leaping muscle played along his clenching jawline as he drew himself stiffly upright. “Does Noah know where you are yet? Because he didn’t have a clue when he called us last night.”
A tiny fist of guilt took squeezing hold inside her chest. “He called you?”
“Yes, he did,” Garreth said sternly, still not smiling, arms still folded. “One might even say he was worried about you.”
“I left him a note.”
“A note?” Hadlee echoed, shoulders sagging, eyes widening. “What did he do?”
“Nothing!” Kitty recoiled, the fist squeezing even tighter because that was the conclusion they’d jumped to. “He didn’t do anything wrong at all. In fact, he did everything right!”
“Then why would you run away?” Garreth demanded, the lash of his disapproval knocking her back a step.
“The whole point was to stop running away!” Kitty protested, once she’d recovered her shock. “Everybody’s so busy trying to clean up my mess, and I appreciate the help, I really do, but at some point, don’t you think I should be trying to clean it up too?”
Hadlee caught her arm, glancing back toward the secret passage where the distant noise of someone else crossing under the alley could faintly be heard. “Let’s not talk about this here,” she said, and turned pleading eyes to Danny, who was no longer on the phone.
“Are we good?” Garreth asked.
“She can enter tonight so long as she understands her membership is being put under review. Also”—Danny held out his hand—“cellphone, please.” His was a thin, impersonal smile. “Sorry, but if it’s not in my hand, you don’t go in.”
Digging through the duffel bag that held her few belongings, Kitty passed him her cellphone. It vibrated when she first touched it, signaling she’d missed a call. Multiple calls, she saw when she glanced at the screen. That she hadn’t heard it ring didn’t surprise her, she’d muted it the day she boarded her first plane, the one that had taken her to Noah. Afraid of accruing traveling fees she didn’t have the money to pay, she’d kept it off… until yesterday’s ill-fated decision to call Ethen. She checked the return number, half expecting Ethen’s to pop up on the screen, but it wasn’t. It was a mess of numbers instead, an international call. Noah.
“I texted it to him before I ever put you on a plane,” Garreth said, solving the mystery. “I texted it again after we found out where you were going. I was hoping he’d be able to talk some sense into you.” He got the locker room door for her, and he did it with the utmost disapproval. “Store your things. We’ll go to the bar.”
She didn’t want to have this conversation with him any more than she wanted to have it with Noah. Leaving her luggage in her assigned locker, she followed her friends out to Black Light’s play area. The lights were low, even around the bar where the infamous black
lights lit the array of liquor bottles and drinks as they were served, amplifying the club atmosphere. Submissive men and women dressed in little or, as was the case of one slender red-head, nothing at all as they wove through an audience of voyeurs and players in pre- or post-scene negotiations. Garreth chose the table, a quiet place in the back, while all the sights, sounds, and smells of the once familiar club dungeon swept over her.
For once, her first gut reaction to the smell of leather and massage oil didn’t seep into her like an old haunt. Kitty slid into a seat with her back to the wall, but it felt more like slipping into a warm bath, with the low erotic thump of the music keeping time with the beating of her heart and the fleshy smacks of impact play happening in coincidental tandem both on the St. Andrew’s cross and in the medical play area clear across the room. Another woman was being double-fisted as she hung upside down from the ceiling hoist, her body trussed in black and red predicament bondage ropes and, God help her, a submissive kitten on hands and knees crawled on a leash behind her owner. Kitty caught a glimpse of her as she was led through the curtains of an aftercare alcove, her sapphire blue fox tail swishing across the backs of her naked thighs.
In that instant, Kitty forgot where she was. No longer was she sitting in Black Light with Hadlee on one side of her, mouthing to Garreth to be nice, and Garreth on her other, fighting to take deep breaths so he could ‘give her space’ as if she were still so… fragile. The way she’d been fragile right after she’d left Ethen. Not like she’d been in Australia, with Noah who’d forced her to ask for the strapping she’d received when she’d bent over the foot of her own bed. Who hadn’t hesitated over punishing her when she’d broken his rules. Who’d spent all day making her a tail, paws and ears, for no other reason than because she’d said she’d been a kitten once.
The low thump of the music crawled up through Kitty’s chair and into her flesh as she remembered the feel of his arms, the heat of his chest, the press of his fingers as he lubricated her ass and stretched her open. Her stomach quivered, the way it had quivered when she’d been presenting herself to him, asking without words for the privilege of his own hand pushing her new tail into her.
The thump of the music became the low, heady thump of her own blossoming arousal, even as notes of sadness wound their way through her. She’d made the right decision, she told herself. For all the reasons she’d already told herself, both before she’d left Australia and again, over and over throughout the long flight that had brought her home again. To sitting here, with Garreth and Hadlee. To them, she was still fragile, but that wasn’t how she felt. She wasn’t the same Kitty that she had been the night she ran away from Ethen.
Across the floor, coming through the shadows, she recognized Jaxson’s grim face. Chase wasn’t with him, but his pretty and pregnant submissive, Emma, was. She trailed along behind him, a huge smile on her face and one hand resting on the swell of her belly.
“Wow,” Kitty marveled.
“Big as a house,” Emma exaggerated with a smile and shrug. “I know. Twins. Fortunately, being in a poly relationship means there will always be someone available to change a diaper and I can stay in bed.”
Having only reached the table, Jaxson stopped and gave his wife a Look. Beaming back at him, she bounced once on her heels and then changed directions.
“I’ll go get some water,” she said and headed to the bar.
Oh, how things did change in the short time since she’d been gone. Kitty didn’t remember Emma sporting so much as a baby-bump at the Roulette party. But then, the only thing she’d been paying attention to that night had been Ethen’s rapidly souring mood.
She was going to have a baby bump like that pretty soon, and then she wouldn’t be able to hide it anymore.
On the heels of that thought came another, every bit as startling: She missed Noah.
She missed the gentle brush of his hand on the small of her back and the touch of his lips on her forehead. She missed the way he’d wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her back into the cradle of his body as he’d slept. She missed the way he accepted her—her sad pathetic side, her kitten side. Her everything side.
“I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life, haven’t I?” she suddenly said, more to herself than to either Garreth or Hadlee. But now it was out there, verbalized for everyone, including Jaxson and Emma who’d returned from the bar.
“I apologize for the way you were greeted at the door,” Jaxson said, but in a tone that seemed better reserved for scolding. “Considering what happened the last time you were here—”
“What Ethen did the last time she was here,” Hadlee interrupted, but stopped when Garreth touched her knee. It was the kind of touch Kitty recognized as both comforting and silencing.
“His club, his rules,” Garreth told her. “Let him talk.”
“I know what you went through,” Jaxson told her, but then his attention locked back on Kitty. “I didn’t know about any of it, however, until well after the fact. So, since I don’t know exactly what role you may or may not have played in the violations that occurred that night, I have decided I would rather break my own rules and err on the side of caution. I am going to allow for the possibility that you had nothing to do with your master’s violation of our digital recording policy.”
“Good, because she didn’t!” Hadlee blurted. “He’s not her master anymore either.”
Kitty’s heart and pussy both danced, fluttering spasms that were equal parts sexual delight and wistfulness when Garreth caught the back of Hadlee’s neck. He leaned over the arms of both their chairs, bringing his mouth very close to her ear. What he’d said was for his submissive alone, and it made Hadlee both frown and blush.
“I mean it,” Garreth re-enforced, once he sat back again. “Not one more interruption.”
Kitty envied the severity of the warning frown he shot Hadlee. Her friend pressed her lips together, but though she wilted under the sternness, it wasn’t anything like the way she used to look with Ethen. Because Ethen had never loved her, and for all that Garreth wasn’t happy with Hadlee’s interfering behavior, no one could doubt for a second that he did. He’d been hopelessly in love with her back when Kitty lived with them and she’d seen that love expressed in a hundred tiny ways every single day. She could see it right now, even in Garreth’s disapproval. Maybe even especially in it.
Noah had looked at her like that, Kitty suddenly realized, and a pang of startled wonder thumped hard inside her chest.
“Did you hear me?”
Wide-eyed, Kitty snapped her gaze back on the unsmiling club owner.
“You’re the second person I broke my rules for tonight. I sincerely hope you don’t give me a reason to regret that decision.”
“Second person?” Blinking twice, now it was Garreth’s turn to interrupt. “Who was the first?”
“Him,” Jaxson said dryly. The pit of Kitty’s belly twisted into an instant knot as he very pointedly turned and nodded toward the locker rooms. “Let’s just say, he was persuasive as hell.”
Hadlee turned all the way around in her chair to follow the direction of Jaxson’s nod. Kitty didn’t need to. All she had to do was turn her head and there Noah was, standing in front of the locker-room door, his face void of smiles, his blue eyes scouring the faces of everyone in the bar until he found her.
Her legs weakened and yet, Kitty stood up. Her chest was so tight, she couldn’t hardly feel the suddenly lurch of her own panicking heart, and yet a flood of welcome heat washed over her, swelling her breasts, tightening her nipples in the wake of the shivers that followed. Her belly ran both molten and frozen. More frozen than warm the moment his gaze locked on her, fixing, sharpening. Hardening.
He was so angry with her.
What was he doing here?
He’d come after her. He’d come all this way… after her.
And he was so angry.
And for the first time since she could remember, Kitty was on the verge of tears, but n
ot because she was scared. Not of Noah. Never of Noah. No matter how angry he was, she already knew, he might hurt her but it wouldn’t be in the bad ways.
He wouldn’t treat her as if she were fragile, either.
In the very back of her mind it occurred to her, angry as he was right now, that might not be such a good thing.
Chapter 17
Be calm. That was Noah’s only thought and it began a repeating loop through his head from the moment he spotted Kitty sitting in a quiet corner of the crowded bar. Be calm, rational, and soft-spoken. He started toward her, weaving his way past waitstaff and Black Light members. Give her a chance to explain herself if she wants to try. Then he was going to tell her what a shitty thing it was to leave like that, without a word or giving him a chance to help. For Ethen, of all fucking people.
He was halfway across the room now and his steps were picking up steam.
Kitty stood up from her table. So did Garreth and his little submissive, Hadlee, who positively whitened when she saw him. He recognized Jaxson, one of Black Light’s owners, who he’d called from the parking lot because he couldn’t think of anyone else.
“You could send her out to me,” Noah had said, already knowing the answer.
“Not a chance,” Jaxson had replied. “But if you promise to behave yourself, I might be inclined to allow you in.”
“I just want to talk to her. Once I know she’s all right, then I can go home.” Standing outside the psychic shop, that truly had been Noah’s only intention.
He didn’t realize he’d been lying until now—with little more than three… two… one meter separating them—the desire to talk was disappearing as fast as the distance between them.
Garreth tried to step between them. He held up a cautioning hand, a glitter in his dark eyes suggesting he knew the maelstrom cutting through Noah had to be far closer to explosive than it was to calm. “Let’s sit down over here.” He tried to intercept Noah and lead him to a different table. “I’ll get us a drink—”
