by Chloe Cox
Roman put his hands up. “Of course. I shouldn’t have offended Adra with the comparison.”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
“Do you know what you’re doing, Ford?” Roman asked seriously.
Ford met his gaze. It was obvious what Roman was talking about: Adra.
“About as much as you knew what you were doing with Lola,” Ford said. “She’s my best friend, Roman. I won’t let anything or anyone hurt her, including me.”
“Your best friend?” Roman said.
“Stop smiling.”
Roman only smiled again, this time ruefully. “Neither of us should be smiling. Someone leaked the location, and that might hurt all of us. We have a long night of security preparations ahead of us. That, and finding out who the leak is.”
“You got a guy for that?”
“Not in Los Angeles. Do you?”
“Yeah. Private investigator I’ve used for legal work,” Ford said. “He’ll get it done.”
Ford made the call, and then spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how to secure an entire compound from a ravenous press and a rabid fan base. By the time he drove by the Volare compound, the photographers had already staked the place out, and there was another accident at that damn stoplight involving a news van and a food truck that had shown up to feed the gathering fans.
It had taken just a few hours for the circus to start. People were going completely crazy over this movie.
And Adra was going to have to get through this sea of security risks the next morning. The studio would take care of the movie people, but Ford didn’t trust them to take care of Volare people. Which was how he ended up knocking on a neighbor’s door at about six in the morning.
The neighbor—Volare’s neighbor to the south, to be precise—was actually surprisingly accommodating. An older guy named Dan had owned his Venice property since the seventies, and he still surfed every day. He was friends with Thea, and was perfectly willing to let Ford hang out until Adra was due to arrive.
Just as he knew Adra would be about to get up, Ford texted her directions. “Avoid Abbot-Kinney, and don’t go directly to Volare. Meet me at 28 Altair.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Secret’s out,” Ford wrote back.
It wasn’t until he saw her face as she stood on Dan’s front porch, waiting for him, that he realized he could have chosen his words better. She looked confused and way too anxious for this early in the morning.
Ah. She thought he meant that secret. Which now meant he was thinking about that night.
Who was he kidding, he’d be thinking about that no matter what. Just looking at her was enough to stir up those memories. He just had to deal with it.
“The press knows they’re filming the movie at Volare,” he said, trying not to smile at her nervousness.
“Right, of course,” Adra said. She bit her lip and looked down at her feet. Damn, did he want to kiss her. “So what am I doing here?”
“You’re getting sneaked in the back way,” Ford said. “No way you’re going through that goddamn gauntlet out front.”
“The back way?” she asked, eyebrow raised. “And what about Derrick and Olivia?”
“They’re the studio’s responsibility,” Ford said, leaving it unsaid what he knew to be true: Adra was his responsibility. “Follow me.”
He took her hand, and ignored the nearly overwhelming desire to take the rest of her.
Neighbor Dan’s house had a sizable backyard with plenty of pretty looking trees with decent climbing branches. Ford had no idea what kind they were, but he would have been all over them as a little boy. Volare had been careful not to screw with the Zen appeal of Dan’s garden when they’d constructed the tall wall that bounded the compound, and Dan had remained grateful. And now Ford was grateful for those trees.
“That’s our wall,” Adra said, pointing.
“Yup,” Ford said.
“And that’s a tree right next to it,” she said.
“Yup,” Ford said.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Nope,” Ford said, grinning.
Adra crossed her arms. “Do I look like the tree-climbing type?” she said.
“You used to jump the wall every day in high school,” Ford laughed. “You told me yourself.”
“That was in different shoes.”
“Well,” Ford said, lifting himself up onto the lowest branch and then jumping lightly onto the top of the wall, “You don’t have to worry about that.”
He knelt down on the top of the wall and extended his hands.
“Just grab on and I’ll do the rest.”
Adra smiled and bit her lip again, this time with a decidedly different expression.
“What?” he asked.
“My high school boyfriend tried this once,” she said. “It didn’t work very well. He fell and broke his arm.”
“I am not your high school boyfriend,” Ford said.
Adra looked up at him.
“You most certainly are not,” she said.
Then she put her hands in his.
It was almost cheating, considering how light she was. He’d forgotten about that. He could have thrown her up in the air and caught her, just for fun, but settled for lifting her up and into his arms, balancing them both on the top of the wall.
Adra clung to him, unsure of herself in her heels. God bless women’s shoes.
That was not a friendly thought. But Ford decided to give himself some leeway when she was actually in his arms. He was only freaking human, after all.
And it’s not like they’d stopped wanting each other. He could tell, from the way she was breathing…
Damn.
“Sit down,” he said to her, holding her hand. “Put your legs over the edge.”
Adra kept hold of his hand as she lowered herself into a seated position, her movements somewhat constrained by the skirt she was wearing.
“Oh, screw it,” she said when she was seated, her legs hanging over the edge. “You are in charge of finding my shoes,” she said, kicking them off.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ford said, jumping down to the ground easily. Trail running over boulders had served him well.
When he looked up, shoes in hand, Adra was watching him.
“You ready?” Ford said.
“You know I hate heights,” she said.
“But you’re not a wimp,” he said.
“You’re going to catch me?” she asked.
“Always,” he said, grinning. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She smiled.
“You didn’t just engineer this whole thing to get a look up my skirt, did you?”
“You know I wouldn’t have to go to this much trouble to get a look up your skirt.”
Adra’s mouth dropped open in mock outrage.
“If I still had my shoes, I would throw them at you.”
“Yeah, that was a tactical error on your part,” Ford said. “Now jump before I come up there and get you.”
She bit her lip again. It was damn distracting.
And then she jumped.
And if she’d asked, Ford would have to admit how good it felt to hold her in his arms again. But she didn’t have to ask. He held on to her for just a little longer than he had to, feeling the softness of her body against his, the warmth of her hands on his chest, the little whisper of her rapid, ragged breaths.
Neither of them said anything as he helped her into her shoes. If they’d said something, that would have meant they would have to deal with it all over again. Ford remembered how much that conversation had upset Adra the last time around and so he kept his mouth shut.
Besides, they could only be friends.
He let her go.
It wasn’t until they were already inside Volare, mounting the stairs to the second floor, that Adra found her voice.
“So was all that really necessary?” she said, trying to sound light. Teasing.
; “Look out the window,” Ford said.
It was pandemonium.
The police had only just arrived to try to clear the street for traffic, but it was taking forever, given the sheer volume of people who had shown up. And that wasn’t even including the press. The entrance to the compound was completely overrun.
“Oh my God,” Adra said.
“Someone leaked the location of the shoot,” Ford said. He was still pissed off about it.
“Who?”
“I have someone on it.”
“Do we need, like, security guards? What the hell are we going to do? We have the members’ privacy to think about. Oh God, and the safety issues. This is nuts.”
Ford held open the door to the main playroom and watched Adra walk through it, reminding himself that he would have to keep an eye out for Derrick's antics. They were coaching the first scene today.
“Roman’s looking to get security set up by tomorrow,” Ford said. “Today, unfortunately, we rely on the studio.”
Adra stopped suddenly and turned around.
“You really didn’t want me running through a gauntlet,” she said.
“Of course not.”
A beat.
“How early did you get up to talk to Dan?” she asked.
Ford wasn’t even surprised that Adra knew their neighbor already. She’d probably brought around a plate of cookies or something when Volare first set up shop.
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“No,” she said, her eyes soft. “I guess it doesn’t.”
“They’re all here already,” Ford said, looking over her shoulder. Olivia and Derrick were each reading from their scripts, while the director, a man who went only by Santos, paced erratically between the various play stations. It was kind of a weird sight.
Adra smiled at the floor, nodding her head. “Then we’d better get going,” she said.
Ford grabbed her arm at the last minute.
“You don’t have to take any crap from Derrick, you know,” he said.
Adra gave a grim laugh. “Let him try to give me any.” She took a step then looked briefly over her shoulder. “As if you’d let him.”
Six
Ford looked over the pages that had been thrust into his hand by the harried director and frowned. It was apparently the first BDSM scene they were shooting, but one that occurred somewhere in the middle of the movie, at least in the script he’d read. He would never understand why they filmed things out of order, but he did have a grudging respect for the ability of actors to jump in and out of their character’s heads like that.
Still, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what this scene was actually about. All he saw was some light discipline. That wasn’t nearly enough to go on.
“What do you want from us?” Ford asked.
“Anything you can give us,” Olivia said, laughing nervously. “I have so many questions.”
“Ask away,” Adra said.
“I just…I don’t understand what’s going through her head, here, you know?” Olivia said. “Like, I get the motivation—she’s just defied one of his orders, but it’s because she realizes that she’s actually in love with him, even though it’s supposed to be ‘no strings attached,’” Olivia said, rolling her eyes slightly at the phrase ‘no strings attached.’ “And so she has to like…pull away, or rebel or something. And he’s not having it.”
“You seem to get it pretty well,” Derrick said from where he was lounging on a couch. Ford wondered if his smile was leering, and then decided to let it go. For now.
Besides, Olivia did seem to have a pretty good grasp on the material.
“Yeah, I get the emotional aspect,” Olivia said, picking at some non-existent lint on her jeans. “I just don’t know what she’s supposed to be actually feeling, physically and mentally, as this is going on. As a submissive. Or how it relates, I guess. Like, I have no idea, even the gestures… I don’t know.”
Santos, who had been on the phone, whispering frantically, finally looked over.
“You can help with this?” he demanded, looking at Adra and Ford.
Adra looked up from the script. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I can definitely help with this.”
Ford did not like how that got Derrick's attention.
“Good,” Santos said. “You coach, I’ll be back in ten. This fucking shitshow outside has thrown everything off.”
And with that, the director actually walked off.
Ford frowned. This entire production was a disorganized mess, from the lax security to the lack of planning and preparation for the actors. Ford and Adra had no experience with coaching a scene, Olivia had no idea what she was doing, and Derrick was focused on Adra. The disorganization showed.
Olivia looked at Adra, her expression shy.
“Can you show me?” she asked. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Um, yeah,” Adra said. She smiled nervously. “I guess I’m not sure what I’m doing either? I’ve never acted or anything, so…”
And Derrick made his move.
“Let’s show her,” Derrick said, getting up off his couch. Looking directly at Adra. “Let’s do the scene together.”
That was it.
“Sit down,” Ford ordered.
Derrick sat, slightly stunned. Everyone else froze.
Ford had read the scene. He knew the words—what few there were. But more than that, he knew the scene, in his bones. Now that Olivia had given an emotional context it made sense. He knew what it was, what to do. He was a Dom. And he was damned if he was going to let Derrick use Adra to demonstrate anything.
He pinned Adra with his eyes and said, “Pay attention, Olivia.”
Then he walked over to Adra, threaded his hand through her hair, pulled her head back, and started the scene.
“You knew the rules, and you broke them,” Ford said, his eyes taking in all of Adra—her big brown eyes, her parted lips, her delicate neck. Her undeniable reaction to him. “Now there are consequences.”
Adra’s mind went blank.
For an eternal second, her mind actually went blank.
There was just Ford’s hand in her hair, his lips so close to hers, his body controlling her own…
And then she remembered. The scene. This was the scene. He was speaking lines.
She barely remembered to breathe.
“This,” Ford said, tightening his grip on Adra’s hair, “shocks her into a submissive mindset. It bypasses thought and goes directly for the body. You see her eyes, the pupils dilated? Her lips parted, her breathing shallow and fast?”
He was speaking to Olivia. But his eyes never left Adra’s.
“Yes,” she heard Olivia say.
“This is where he would kiss her,” Ford said.
He pulled Adra’s head back just a little more.
“Softly, at first, but thoroughly,” he said, his eyes on Adra’s lips. “Then harder. Firmer. Establishing dominance.”
Adra licked her lips and felt her breath hitch. His mouth was so close, hovering over hers while he described what he could do to her. What she was feeling. How it would work.
And damn him, he was right.
“This is where she would begin to yield,” he said. “Where she’d begin to feel powerless.”
He was right. The warm, wet feeling started to spread from her core, her skin dancing with a million little tingles. She was enthralled.
“Adra, tell them what you feel,” Ford said.
It was an order.
“Warm,” she said, before she could stop herself. “Warmth. Light. I need—”
“She’s starting to lose words,” Ford said softly. “This is the first reason he reminds her of the safeword.”
He leaned his head down, his mouth by Adra’s ear.
“Tell me the safeword, Adra,” he said.
“Red,” she whispered. “It’s red.”
“What’s the second reason?” Olivia said. Adra could barely hear her.
“To make sure she knows she’s making the choice,” Ford said. “That she’s choosing to submit. That his dominance is so complete that she doesn’t even have control over her own desires.”
There was a pause.
“Oh,” Olivia said quietly.
“That’s when he leads her over to the bench,” Ford said, walking Adra the short distance to one of Volare’s own spanking benches.
When he let her go, she missed him. Felt adrift. Staring at the bench, thinking about what it meant. About who was behind her.
About how he had taken control of this situation without consulting her, without asking. About how she had no idea what this meant, if it meant anything at all. And about how she wanted it to go on so much that she didn’t even care.
She had her safeword, after all.
“He would make her look at the bench,” Ford went on. “He’d make sure she knew what it meant, what it was for. This is when she’s confronted with that choice—submit, or safeword out.”
Adra felt Ford’s hand on her shoulder, pushing her one step forward, just in front of the bench. She couldn’t do this. If she did this, she’d be betraying their friendship. They both would. But Adra would fall so much harder. If she did this, she didn’t know if she could stop. She didn’t know if she could come back from it. She didn’t know if she’d want to.
“Her mind would be in conflict,” Ford said behind her. “The tension between every social convention, every emotional defense mechanism, telling her not to do this, to run away from what she feels, versus the overwhelming urge to obey. To let go, give in, and be free.”
Adra closed her eyes. How far would he take this?
“And then he would give the order,” Ford said.
His hand pushed on her shoulder.
“Bend over,” he commanded.
Adra obeyed.
She did it reflexively, automatically. She bent at the waist, her ass up in the air, her hands reaching out for the handles, fingers spread wide as she savored the way it felt to wrap her hands around the contoured rubber. She turned her head, resting her cheek on the bench. And she gave in.
“She surrenders,” Ford said.
His voice beat with a rhythm she could feel between her legs. Her body hummed with the timbre of his voice.
