by Chloe Cox
“You’re going to be a little bit later,” he said. “There’s something else I need.”
“How?” she said. It sounded so plaintive that she had to laugh.
Then she felt him moving. His hand, that hand, again, pulling at her ruined underwear, tugging them down over her hips. Letting them fall to the floor.
“Step out of them,” he said roughly.
“Soren,” she said.
“Now.”
That voice again.
That voice.
Incredibly, unbelievably, Cate put her hands back on his shoulders and carefully stepped out of her panties. She watched while Soren grinned, dipped briefly, picked them up, and put them in his pocket.
“Now you’re ready for the meeting,” he said.
Cate’s brain function was starting to return. She must have looked as horrified as she felt.
“Trust me,” he said. He gripped the side of her face and held her still against the wall, his eyes boring into hers. “Trust me.”
“Oh, fuck me,” Cate muttered. “I do.”
“Soon.”
The ghost of that orgasm fluttered somewhere deep in Cate’s belly. Soren meant it. Soren would do it. This had really just happened. He had her underwear in his pocket and her juices on his fingers.
Or did, until he licked them off.
Cate watched, incomprehensibly turned on and possibly embarrassed and definitely flustered.
“You taste incredible,” he said gruffly. “I’m not going to be able to wait that long. Get in that meeting.”
Cate tried to smooth her skirt down as best she could, tried to fix her top, her jacket, her hair, tried to do everything possible to hide the fact that Soren had just made her come against a wall and all over his hand.
Soren just smiled.
“Now,” he said.
Cate bit her lip. The voice could definitely work for her.
In fact, the voice worked so well that she rode that high all the way across the first floor of the club, past the clueless people congregating at the bar, all the way to the stairs that lead up to Ford’s office.
It wasn’t until she was actually climbing those stairs, only dimly aware of Soren’s eyes on her ass, that she started to freak out. It wasn’t anything new, so to speak; it was just the reality of the situation starting to seep in past the blissful haze of an intense orgasm and the awareness that her underwear was in Soren’s pocket.
She was going to do her job in front of a man who now knew her as someone else. As a woman who, yes, had been abused, even if he didn’t know the details of how, who, or when. As a woman who wanted to submit, sexually. As a woman who, if the right man told her to do it, would ride his leg in a semi-public place until he finally told her she could come.
It was shattering, in a way.
Her brain wouldn’t work. The different parts of her refused to work together; she couldn’t make sense, couldn’t hear herself think over all that dissonant noise. Normally she’d put on the professional mask and be done with it, but with Soren here, she couldn’t. It felt like lying, like it would be embarrassingly transparent. It was such a stupid thing, so silly, only she’d never had to do this before, and when she reached out to knock on Ford’s door, she saw that her hand was shaking.
So did Soren. He gently put his hand on the small of her back, and she knocked.
“Cate,” Ford said, opening the door wide. “You’re late.”
“I got held up.”
Ford looked past her shoulder at Soren and cocked his head. “Everything all right?”
“Everything’s great,” she said, propelling herself past Ford and into full-on lawyer mode. If she had to do it by brute force, she would.
Dammit.
“Well, obviously everything’s not great,” she added, remembering the reason she was ostensibly here so late at night. “Can you show me the complaint?”
Ford handed her the papers. Cate managed to avoid his eyes, but that didn’t stop her from thinking about how she must look. And about where her underwear currently resided.
She felt exposed, and scared, and yet very aware of Soren’s presence, and that was safe. Which was all confusing. And then beyond it all was this complaint.
She scanned it. No surprises. Some woman named Daniella Collins accusing Soren of using his position to engage in sexually abusive practices, etcetera, etcetera. And she thought of Mark Cheedham’s opening gambit, and her lawyer brain clicked on.
“Soren, I have to ask you this again, so please don’t take offense,” she said. “You’re sure there is no basis for this suit? Nothing? Nothing that could even be construed as a basis for this suit?”
“I’m not a lawyer,” Soren said from behind her. “But I never hurt her. I get affirmative consent. Always. And not that it matters, but she came after me. I don’t make just anyone my sub. Everyone on that tour watched her work on me for months.”
Cate felt a twinge of wholly inappropriate pride. She hadn’t had to beg, though she probably would have if he’d told her to. Who was she kidding; she definitely would have. But Soren had come after her.
That might not have been admirable, but a weird thing was happening. Her anxiety and fear and all that dissonance—it was all starting to fade away.
Very weird.
Roll with it, Kennedy.
“So what does this mean?” Soren asked, walking over to the side of the room. Cate felt very conscious of his gaze now that he could see her face. “What happens next?”
Cate took a deep breath. Screw being afraid. Screw the mask.
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” she said. “You’re going to tell me everything, Soren. I mean everything. We’ll respond to the complaint, and I’ll try to get a gag order, which won’t work in any practical sense. Then they’ll start doing press. Because if they really have nothing except the power to embarrass you and the band and your potential business partners with lots of salacious sexual details, they need to do it soon if they want you to settle before we go into discovery and discover that they are, in fact, completely full of shit.”
Cate thought about Jason and his talent for finding ways to cause her pain. What Cheedham was planning to do wasn’t all that different from what Jason sometimes did to her. Only Cheedham did it for the money—Jason did it because he liked it.
Wow, was she tired of being pushed around.
“It’s all about applying pressure,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “They’ll keep finding women to talk to the press about what a sadistic, abusive monster you are until we pay them.”
“That’s not my thing,” Soren said. “And sadism isn’t abuse. We have sadists here; they’re nice people.”
Cate shook her head. “Nobody cares about what actually happened. Sorry, boys, it’s true. Cheedham’s just going to try to make it cheaper and less painful for you to pay him than it is to fight him. The way I fight that is by going after the plaintiffs and Cheedham himself, no holds barred. That means you have to let me off the leash.”
Soren’s eyebrows went up, and he was grinning. Did she just give him ideas? Jesus.
“This is you on a leash?” Ford said.
“Soren,” Cate said, and she was surprised to hear her voice. It was her lawyer voice. It was her leader-of-armies voice. And she was using it with the man who held her underwear in his pocket after he’d just pinned her to a wall.
“Cate,” he said. He was smiling.
“This is a woman you once cared about,” she said. “Think about that. Because I might have to destroy her. You have to decide if you’re ok with that.”
The smile on his face faded, and Cate felt something inside herself grow warm. Soren took this seriously; he didn’t like the idea of going after this woman, even though she was trying to hurt him. He really was that guy.
“It’s likely that I won’t be ok with that,” Soren said.
“Yeah, well, we’ll have to talk about that,” Cate said. “I don’t take it
lightly. Because if I have to destroy someone and I find out later that they were innocent? That they had reasons to come after you? Then I will come after you. Both of you. Screw the Bar and rules of ethics, I will come after you.”
Silence.
Where had that come from? Cate was breathing hard, her whole body wired. It tasted like fear, but it felt…different. It felt like fighting. And she couldn’t get thoughts of Jason and Cheedham out of her mind. One and the same, those two, and probably working together, and she was damn sure going to go after them.
Ford and Soren were still staring at her.
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Soren,” she said softly. “It’s just a warning I feel obligated to give. Please know that I do believe you.”
“Understood,” Soren said.
“Cate,” Ford said. “What the hell?”
She sighed. “Yes, Ford, this is personal. Don’t look at me like that, you should know better. You think I got to where I am without having to deal with real harassment from powerful dirty old men? Ford, you remember Professor Willis?”
Was it lying if she failed to mention her own ex-husband? Did it matter? She was already breaking enough rules, what was one more.
Ford’s face fell. “He seemed nice.”
“He wasn’t. And every time there’s a bogus lawsuit like this, women like me have to think twice about filing a complaint. Proving that it’s bogus won’t help, but it will make me feel better. And call me idealistic, but it irks me when people use harassment and abuse as a pretext for extortion. So basically everything about this annoys me, and I’d really, really like to take my annoyance out on Mark Cheedham, if that’s all right with you.”
Cate finally stopped talking and realized she was a little bit flushed, a little bit out of breath. She was, in fact, worked up. She was angry, she was determined, she was passionate. She was going to crush these jerks.
All of this was weird. She was normally controlled. Normally, she wore the mask.
She didn’t know what else to do, so she looked at Soren. Who was smiling. Seriously, seriously smiling, leaning up against the wall, his huge arms crossed in front of him, looking like he just won something.
“What?” she demanded.
“Where’s the retainer agreement?” Soren said.
Cate pulled it out of her jacket pocket, tried to pretend she hadn’t quivered at the sound of his voice, and smoothed it down on Ford’s desk.
Soren walked around until he face her across from the desk, reached for a pen, and said, “Look at me.”
The voice again.
He held her eyes. She saw a lot of things in those eyes. She saw triumph, she saw lust, she saw a promise.
He signed the agreement without ever looking away, and she knew exactly what that meant. She was doing both. She was his lawyer, and his sub.
What the hell had she just gotten into?
“See?” Soren said, walking toward her. He didn’t give her a chance to respond before he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to him, his big hand covering the span of her lower back, his hard body pressing against hers. He held them there like that for a beat.
Then he bent down and nipped at her neck.
“I told you that you could do it,” he whispered.
Cate shuddered.
More than that, she had completely forgotten that Ford was still in the room.
“Excuse me,” Ford said. “Soren, can I borrow your lawyer for a minute?”
Soren grumbled, but he let her go, leaving aching trails where his hands had been. “For a minute,” he said. “Cate and I have to set up a few meetings.”
He looked at her and smiled. “Tonight I’ll let you sleep, though,” he said softly.
Cate blinked. He’d let her…?
By the time she recovered, Soren was already gone. Just her and Ford. In a room. With Ford looking at her funny.
“Don’t tell me you’re shocked,” she said, trying to pretend she wasn’t shaken by being outed to Ford. It obviously had to happen at some point, she just hadn’t thought much about it. Apparently Soren had. “You see weirder stuff than that all the time, right?”
“I do,” Ford said quietly. He leaned back in his desk chair and watched her for an uncomfortable second. “I have to ask, Cate—Jason?”
She stiffened, then forced herself to relax. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t.
“I’m divorcing him,” she said.
“Amicably?” Ford asked.
Cate gritted her teeth. “Anything but. And I’m handling it.”
“I have to ask for the sake of the club, Cate. Anything else,” he said, his eyes drifting toward the door Soren had left slightly ajar, “is not my business.”
Cate sighed. “It’s a difficult situation, Ford. Jason…” She paused, surprised that she still couldn’t bring herself to say it, even to a man who probably already knew. “Jason turned out to be a bastard. I appreciate your discretion.”
Ford looked at her for a moment, his face unreadable. She was asking him to hide her marriage from people, at least implicitly, at least by omission. It wasn’t a fair request, but Cate didn’t have the luxury of caring about that.
“Of course.”
Cate studied him. Had she ever really known Ford very well? She had heard rumors, back in law school, of a woman who’d hurt him, something with his family. But he’d always been so put-together, so remote, and Cate had had her own things to hide, it was as though they’d understood each other enough to give each other a wide berth.
And now she was trusting him with so much. They were trusting each other. It had been a week of trust falls, basically.
“You don’t seem surprised by what I said about Jason,” Cate said.
Ford got up and out of his chair, a faint smile playing across his lips, and walked over to where Cate stood.
“That’s because I’m not,” he said, and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Just remember that everyone has rules for a reason, even Soren. Welcome to Volare.”
Six
Soren was waiting for Cate.
He hated waiting. It made him feel…charged.
And it made it damn hard to focus on this conversation that was going on around him, even though it was about him.
“Maybe it wasn’t so bad,” Molly said quietly. “Maybe nobody pays attention to press conferences. I mean, they have to know the other side is going to lie, right? That lawyers lie?”
The forlorn quality to her voice got Soren’s attention—no one ever wanted any of their friends to sound like that. Plus, she wasn’t her usual bright self. Instead she was slumped in one of Volare’s comfy chairs, distractedly picking at the label on her beer bottle.
Declan shot him a look that said, Fix this now.
“Jesus, Molly, stop it,” Soren said. “Right fucking now, stop it. This is not your fault. We always knew this was coming, right? They were going to do a press conference, they were going to tell lies. It’s not your fault.”
“Would there be a lawsuit without my book?” Molly countered. She looked miserable. “Can you honestly tell me this would have happened if I hadn’t written that book?”
“There totally would have been.”
They all looked at Brian, who was speaking up for the first time since arriving at Club Volare. Prior to this the man appeared to have lost all ability to speak, gaping around in wonder and delight at all the beautiful women and all the shiny equipment.
“What?” Brian said, wide eyed. “Soren whored around a whole bunch, in public, and he did it with whips and stuff while getting insanely rich. Someone was probably going to try to take advantage of that eventually. No offense.”
“None taken,” Soren said, leaning back and training his eyes on the entrance. He wasn’t going to miss it when Cate arrived. They hadn’t seen each other since the night he’d signed the retainer agreement, and Soren was in withdrawal. He’d been thinking about her nonstop. He’d known she would feel good, but he ha
dn’t known how good.
Goddamn, no one could be prepared for how she’d felt under his hands. He could barely think without wondering what it would feel like to bury his cock inside her.
Besides, Brian had a point. A man in his position, with his tastes, might as well have painted a target on his back. That it hadn’t happened before the publication of the book was just dumb luck.
“It’s not your fault, Molly,” Declan said softly. “You wrote the book we wanted you to write. You wrote the truth. And you brought the band back together. Stop beating yourself up.”
“God, it was just so…” Molly ran her hand through her blonde hair and looked at Soren again. She seemed constantly surprised that he wasn’t more broken up about the things people said about him on television. “Soren, it was brutal. It was hard for me to watch them say those things about you, I can’t even imagine…”
Soren just shrugged. Molly didn’t have to know he was used to it.
“I have a thick skin,” he said.
Declan gave him a hard stare. “Then what’s getting to you?”
Damn.
“I, too, am curious,” Brian said, his eyes wandering briefly over a latex-clad lady. “Spill, bro. We’re in this together.”
“Perceptive sons of bitches,” Soren muttered.
“Wait, what’s going on?” Molly said. Even Molly wouldn’t pick up on something like this. You had to have been there with Soren from the beginning to get a feel for this kind of thing, and it had been a long time since it had come up.
“Sonya’s been calling,” Soren said.
“Your sister?” Brian said, dumbfounded.
“You have a sister?” Molly said.
Declan was quiet. Thoughtful. “What does she want?”
Soren met Declan’s eyes. He didn’t need to say it. Sonya, Soren’s sister in blood only, had been Julia’s best friend back in high school. The Julia. The only woman Soren could claim to have loved, if he really had, if he’d really been capable, and the one he never spoke about. The one Declan had helped him get over.
Sonya had been the world’s worst sister. She used to encourage their step-father when he went after Soren, and since Soren had hit it big she only ever wanted money. There was no reason to think she’d changed. And now she was contacting Soren again out of nowhere after his name was in the news for a BDSM-inspired lawsuit?
