by Lilia Moon
Damon raises his glass my way. “From what I’ve seen, we probably won’t need to revoke your membership.”
I manage not to roll my eyes. They’re like a tough-guy comedy routine. “Does this shit work on most baby Doms?”
He grins. “Yup.”
Harlan claps me on the back. “Quint says you handle her well and you learn fast and he might not have to set you on fire. I haven’t seen anything to make me disagree with that. Scorpio thinks you’re good people, and I don’t disagree with that either.”
Good people and good enough to be Ari’s Dom are two very different things and we all know it. I empty my glass and try again. “Any advice?”
He nods. “Yeah. Don’t listen too hard to old-fart Doms who think they know everything. You’ve got good instincts. Trust them.”
Damon shakes his head and refills my glass. “This old-fart Dom thinks you should sign up for lessons with every person who has a skill you want to acquire.”
I blink at him. That’s not what I expected to hear. “You think I need to do that to keep up with her?”
He chuckles. “No, actually.” His eyes shift to dead serious. “If you have a weakness, it’s that you assume your lack of skills means you’re not good enough for her. And she’s got that same weakness because too many baby Doms have seen her as a trophy instead of as a human being with more soft spots than she lets most people see.”
Harlan nods. “Good catch, boss.”
Damon is still looking at me, and in the depths of that look rides the guy I’ve heard about. The one who made a safe space for kink in this city and did it without ever raising a fist. “If you two don’t make it, I want it to be for the right reasons. Not because she’s holding too tight to her idea that a baby Dom can’t take her where she needs to go. Or because you let her hold on to that.”
My breath huffs out. “I’m doing my best to convince her otherwise.”
The steel hasn’t left his eyes. “Sometimes what a sub believes can change through experience. Sometimes you have to crack it over the head with a hammer.” He gives me another long, thorough study. “Don’t be afraid to use a hammer if you need to.”
I raise a wry eyebrow. “You’re suggesting I use a hammer. On Ari. With half the club waiting in the wings to kill me.”
Damon grins, and it’s really clear why he’s one of Seattle’s top predators. “Yes.”
Harlan claps me on the back. “This is not a job for wimps.”
Or for people who want to keep breathing. But it might still be really great advice. I look over at Harlan, because I might as well keep asking questions while I have two of the best Doms in Seattle riding my ass and trying to prop it up at the same time. “How do you balance the soft and the hard? As a Dom, and in what you ask of your sub?”
“Shh.” His head tries to disappear into his shoulders. “Don’t say that too loud or Scorpio will maim both of us.”
Damon snickers.
Harlan gives him the evil eye. “Just because your sub is all ladylike and gentle, don’t think she won’t kill you in your sleep.”
Damon grins. “Answer his question, asshole. Or I will.”
Harlan rolls his eyes, but when he looks at me, he’s gone somewhere serious. He leans forward, intent. “You trust. You watch. You listen to that little voice inside you that doesn’t always make sense but is usually right. You’ve already figured out that Ari needs soft, even if she doesn’t always want it, and that puts you way ahead of most of the jerks who want to play with her.”
They don’t get to play with her anymore. Not until Ari and I figure this thing out or blow it up, and there’s something really strong and bendy and good in knowing that.
Harlan blinks. “Holy shit—you got her to go exclusive?”
I stare at him, and then at Damon.
Damon smirks. “If he wasn’t managing my club, he’d be a really rich psychic.”
Harlan punches him, and it doesn’t look gentle. “Shut up, asshole.” Then the big guy looks at me. “That means you really matter to her. She doesn’t do that.”
Somewhere in this comedy routine, they’ve pointed me toward a lot of solid ground, and I hope they can see that in my eyes. “She does now.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ari
I’m somehow not surprised to find Scorpio lurking in the shadows as I head back to the private rooms to check on gear setup. I’m only surprised Eli isn’t with her. He might look like an elegant, easygoing guy in a suit, but I’ve seen the band together. They’re tight, and while I think they underestimate Jackson a lot less than I do, they’re still going to close ranks around him.
Her eyes zoom straight to the cuffs on my wrists. “Are those what I think they are?”
It’s Scorpio. She might be here as Jackson’s fierce older sister, but she’s my friend too. I let her see some of what’s still swimming in my eyes. “Yes.”
She reaches out a finger to touch them, which I suspect is going to happen pretty often. “They’re freaking gorgeous.”
They are, but that isn’t why she’s here. “Spit it out, tough girl. I know you want to.”
She grimaces and looks at me, her finger still tracing Jackson’s weaving. “I know you and Mattie have a thing about baby Doms.”
We have reasons. “Same as you would about amateur guitar players crashing your band.”
Horror flashes in her eyes.
I press my advantage, because this friend doesn’t blink often. “They might have hot skills, but they don’t know how to play well with others or how to read the nearly invisible cues that flow between band members or when to stop being a hotshot and ride the magic of what you’ve created together, right?”
She nods slowly. “Okay, I get it, although I feel compelled to say that I was pretty damn green when Harlan decided to stick his hands down my pants.”
That story has turned into one of Fettered’s urban legends. People take pilgrimages to the stone wall where the big guy first rocked her world. “You and Emily and Meghan too. But it’s easier when the greenie is the sub.”
She makes a face, but she nods. “Yeah. Or the piano player, or second guitar.” She gives me a look laced with empathy. “Way harder if it’s the drummer, though. Lose the beat and the whole song goes to hell.”
I give her what I can. “He’s a really unusual baby Dom. He’s got skills most of them don’t have. Some from the music and some from the life he’s chosen to walk.”
She sighs and steps in, laying her head on my shoulder. “But you’re not convinced yet.”
“I can’t be.” My words are soft, because she’s not riding my ass now—she’s trying to help it stay afloat. “It’s not just about protecting my heart, although I’m allowed to do that. It’s about not putting too much pressure on this before we’re ready.”
She pushes off my shoulder and laughs. “That’s bullshit. You know that, right?”
I kind of don’t. I stare at her, because Scorpio says it straight, every time. Unless there’s sexy lingerie involved.
Her face gentles. “Either he can handle you or he can’t, Ari. Neither of you are going to know unless you go all in.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You underestimate his Dom skills if you think he’s letting me half-ass scenes.”
Scorpio’s face runs through a movie of expressions, all of them priceless. “I don’t think I want to know that about my drummer.”
I laugh. “You saw your second guitar player thoroughly fuck his barmaid two nights ago. Your band has sex, sweetie. You’re going to have to deal. Even if you mostly think of Jackson as your kid brother.”
She scowls. “The others were big, scary Doms before I met them. Jackson’s got this innocence, and I want to keep him shiny.”
I keep my mirth from hooting down the hallways, but it’s a near thing. “He’s the drummer in a sex-club band. If you want him shiny, you need to go play church gigs or something.”
This time I get the look that says Scorpio could be a deadly swi
tch if she wanted to be. “That’s just mean.”
“I know,” I say quietly. “Which is why Jackson can’t be shiny if he wants to play with me.”
“Maybe.” Scorpio’s silent for a long time. “Look, you’ve got a bunch of assumptions about who can keep up with you, and they’re mostly not wrong. It’s good to keep your ass covered.” She reaches out and touches my cuffs again, and this time her eyes are sad. “But Jackson’s a guy with some really interesting depths, and you’re going to fuck him up if you play that game.”
I was wrong. His band underestimates him just as much as I did. “I repeat, he’s a better Dom, and a more demanding one, than you think he is.” I shrug and make a face, because she’s the last person who expects me to be perfect. “He’s surprising the fuck out of me.”
Scorpio’s smile takes a while, but when it arrives, it’s full of wicked delight. “Go, Jackson.”
I’d be jealous of his cheering squad, except I know darn well they’re cheering for both of us. “Give us space, okay? I hear you. I have some preconceived notions about baby Doms that could do us harm, and I’m used to controlling the pace and depth, maybe a little too much.”
Scorpio snickers.
I roll my eyes. “That wasn’t innuendo.”
She walks away, shaking her head. “Don’t mess up my band.”
I watch her go, my fingers sneaking toward the weaving on my cuffs again. I told Scorpio some of the truth of Jackson as a Dom, but not all of it. I don’t know how to say the rest yet. He was so sweet when he put the cuffs on. So touched. So freaking tender.
I know he’s got steel in him, but that’s mostly not who he is with me.
I ignore the voice in my head that thinks that might be a problem. It hasn’t been yet, and it’s long past time I got done making assumptions about what Jackson can and can’t be. I need to see. There’s a really good chance this will crash and burn, and a lot of it will be because of the person I need to be, but I’m not going to crash it with bad driving inside my own head. Driving Scorpio just called out, because that’s what kinky friends do for each other. I need to take all my labels off Jackson, and all my labels off me, and see what happens.
I sigh. I know part of the problem is that I’m feeling lonely lately. Vulnerable. Scared I’ve turned myself into someone really hard to partner. I’m not feeling like the Ari I mostly try to be, the one who can bloom wherever she lands.
The plug in my ass buzzes.
I lean against the wall and shake my head, stupidly amused despite all my best intentions. The man has uncanny timing.
I listen, but I don’t hear footsteps in the hallway. My Dom isn’t coming for me, not right this moment, anyhow.
Maybe it’s time I go find him.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jackson
I’m pretty sure she walked in here just to exact a little revenge. She’s busied herself with something behind the bar, but given the dirty looks Quint is firing, she isn’t supposed to be back there.
She hasn’t given me any looks at all. I’m Dom wallpaper, something she’s so used to in her world that she’s just bopping along to the beat of whatever’s playing in her headphones.
I pick up the beat I can see in her body with my drumsticks. Eli and Quint are still screwing around with our set-up, but drums have never needed amplifiers, so I’m superfluous for now. I can sit on a stool and enjoy the heck out of the woman who has agreed to be mine for a while.
I don’t let myself get stuck on the last two words. In Gambia, I learned to treat time loosely. To not get so stuck on beginnings and endings that I forgot to be in the middle. Ari and I aren’t quite at the middle yet, but we’re past our beginning, and that feels really good.
I take my hands to a simple beat and ponder what I might do next, here in this interesting middle. Mostly I’ve been running scenes I’m sure I can keep under control, ones so short they probably don’t even qualify as real scenes. Kinky snippets where I know what I’m doing and nothing has much of a chance to go off the rails. Baby sessions that fit the Dom I’m going to be for a while yet, especially when the woman I want to be with has spent a solid decade of her life climbing the rungs of this particular ladder.
But it isn’t a short scene I want right now, or a simple one. She’s wearing my cuffs, and she keeps looking at them and going all melty, and that’s doing something primal to the beat inside my cock.
He’s done with waiting.
I shake my head and grin. He’s not a romantic. More of an action man.
I put down my drumsticks and step off the stage. I can feel Quint’s eyes on the back of my head, but I don’t care. One baby Dom, taking himself off the leash. My sub is waiting for me and I know what she needs, or I’m going to stick with the arrogance of that until it thwacks me upside the head and says something different.
She doesn’t look up my whole walk to the bar, which has to be intentional. Nobody sneaks up on Ari, not when there’s only four of us in the lounge and my footsteps sound like I’m wearing combat boots.
I growl a little when I get close and her eyes fly up.
Better. I don’t want to be someone she can ignore. I stride around one end of the bar, in behind the counter. As I pass her, I wrap my fingers around one of the cuffs. I keep walking. She’ll catch up.
I hear a quick inhale as she scrambles to follow me. “Well hello, Sir. Nice you dropped by. Where are we going?”
Sometimes the brat needs attention. Sometimes she needs to know that she doesn’t get to win. I head out the other end of the bar and take a sharp right turn into a small square area, fenced in on three sides by walls and swinging doors. I reach Ari’s wrist up the wall and engage one of Milo’s seriously awesome magnetic toggle switches.
My sub gulps as her second wrist joins the first. She tilts her head back and scowls at the hook I’ve just attached her to. “That must be Quint’s fault.”
Probably. He does enjoy torturing his barmaid. And this little nook is out of most major sight lines without being remotely private. I wrap my fingers around Ari’s wrists, molding my body to her back. Absorbing the riot of sensations as she leans into me, letting her weight rest on her wrists and my cock.
I don’t worry about her wrists—she knows what she’s doing in restraints. I’m far more interested in her body language. There’s no fight in her, no resistance. Only softness.
I grin. It’s taken days to get there, and that’s totally not what I want from her right now. I run my hands down her arms and glide over her ribcage until I’ve got two luscious breasts in my hands. I tweak her nipples through the thin fabric of the gauzy top she’s wearing, hard enough to have her gasping.
I tug the stretchy fabric off one of her shoulders and bite her neck as I grind my cock into her ass. One hand travels down to the short red skirt she’s wearing and discovers it isn’t stretchy at all. Which means it needs to go. I unzip it and let it fall to the ground. Then I back away from her, because I have some logistics to take care of.
I kneel down, running my hands down her legs as I go. She’s wearing garters, which I’ve never actually seen in real life before. Red lace running down to red stockings, which need to stay on, because my eyes totally deserve this gift—and because I have no clue how to get them off.
I lift one of Ari’s feet, clad in a sexy red ankle boot, and step her out of her skirt. Then I put her foot up on a block. It looks deceptively simple, but I know Milo engineered the heck out of these things. Padded, stable and non-skid—guaranteed not to dump a sub on her ass, no matter what.
Really useful when you’re six inches taller than the woman you’re about to fuck.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ari
It takes longer than it should for me to realize what’s just happened. He sucked me in with those slow, gentle demands of his, and now he’s caught me totally off guard with one of the oldest Dom tricks in the book. One I’m really struggling to accept is connected to this Dom.
I l
ook down as he taps my other ankle, cuing me to shift my weight. There’s only one reason I can think of that he would be putting me up on blocks, and it just does not compute.
He looks up and grins at the shock that must be on my face. “Hello, beautiful. I hear we haven’t had sex yet. About time we fix that, don’t you think?”
I gape. He just strung me up on a hook on the wall beside Quint’s bar where his whole damn band will hear whatever happens next. I don’t ask him if he’s sure. I read body language as well as anyone, and there’s no doubt in him.
He wants this just as much as when he makes me come like a marshmallow.
Freaking sneaky Dom. He had me believing he was all sunshine and lollipops. Me. Who’s been at this at least ten times long enough to know better. I feel the laughter trying to shake my ribs, and I let it out, because there’s just no holding it back.
He slides his way back up my body and tweaks my nipples. “What’s so funny?”
I shake my head, hoping he can hear the ruefulness in my voice. “You totally got me. I so wasn’t expecting this.”
His growl is low and damn fucking pleased with himself. “Good.”
I break every sub rule in the book. “Why?”
He bites my shoulder again as he toggles the switch that will move the hook up the wall and take away the slack the blocks have made. “Because this is easy for you.”
That would be his steel talking. And my answer. This is my reward for giving him my marshmallows. I lean into the cuffs and grind back into his cock, because he hasn’t told me I can’t yet, and I intend to drink every drop of this he’ll let me have.
He chuckles and swats my ass. “You can do that when my cock’s inside you. Until then, you wait patiently.”
I’m many things, but patient has never been one of them. I try to keep my groans quiet—it won’t take much for his band to consider my noises an invitation, and I don’t know whether the guy sliding his fingers into the slick of my pussy actually intends for us to have an audience.
I hear footsteps. Measured ones. Quint, coming over to the bar. Trying to clue Jackson in, most likely.
