Two Strikes

by Holley Trent

  She closed her eyes again and leaned her head back against the base. “Maybe I should just go.”

  “Go where?” The deep voice came out of nowhere, and Giselle nearly jumped out of her uniform.

  “Fuck!” Clutching her chest, she craned her neck and looked back at the leather-clad eye-candy named Max Fletcher. He was also known in certain circles as “Maximus,” “The Dark Dom,” and, newly, “The Reason Giselle was Going to be Fired.”

  He crouched at the adjacent side of the ice sculpture’s base, nudged the black mask he always wore at Den events to the top of his head, and peered up at the iceman.

  He pursed his full lips and whistled low. “Damn. I hope Henri’s getting his money back. Fuckin’ thing is missing eight fingers and a cock.” He leaned back, and his brow furrowed. “Where’d his lips go?”

  Giselle cringed.

  “You on break?” he asked.

  “A permanent one, probably,” she muttered.

  “Ah, you’re always saying you’re going to get fired. I think you underestimate management’s tolerance of you. You’re practically an institution around here, Queen G. I have it on good authority that the guests think you’re nice to look at.”

  She rolled her eyes. She knew exactly which parts of her the guests were looking at.

  “I tried to call you last night. You didn’t answer your phones.”

  She shifted and straightened up. She’d allow herself one more moment of self-pity, and then she’d go do what needed to be done. “I know. I heard them ringing. What’d you want?”

  “That’s cold, honey. I always tell you when I’m going to be here.”

  “You’re always here. I don’t need the warning.”

  He chuckled. “You know, I don’t let most people talk back to me like that.”

  “What are you going to do, spank me?” She scoffed. “I don’t need the constant reminders. Save it for your new submissive.”

  “That’s uncalled for. If you need a spanking, I’ll kindly oblige.” He leaned in close and put his lips against her ear.

  Her body tensed and skin prickled at his proximity. When he was that close, she could never resist him. Couldn’t say no. And it wasn’t because they played together sometimes and he had her trained in that way. It was because she was supposed to be his, but couldn’t be.

  “If you’d like, I can put you over my knee right here, warm your ass, and send you on your way.”

  Yes. Please. “Fuck off, Max.” She scooted away from him and turned to look at the doors. Most guests of the Den of Sin Winterball Masquerade wouldn’t check in until after three, so the hotel was experiencing its pre-storm period of quiet. Staff was busy tidying rooms, preparing food for the ball, and propping up last-minute decorations. Giselle herself had been on the way back from the VIP wing where she’d been changing out room service menus.

  “What’s gotten into you, G?” Max whispered.

  “Nothing.” Just jealousy, rage, and delirium. Any one of those words would have worked just fine, but she didn’t need to share them with him. She was becoming too much of a stereotype already. Batshit nutso scorned lover.

  Kind of. Technically, she wasn’t scorned so much as dissatisfied.

  Her narrowed blue-green eyes at her and reclaimed the space she put between them. “Bullshit. I know you better than anyone, even your own mother. Don’t forget that.” He stood and held a hand out for her. “Get up. You’re going to get your uniform dirty.”

  “I don’t care about the uniform.”

  He crouched back down.

  She turned her gaze away from his far-too-wise stare, but she could still feel it scorching her cheek.

  He wasn’t going to go away.

  She sighed. “What do you want, Max? I don’t want to help you break in another submissive you’re not going to keep.”

  “If you’d answered your phone last night, I would have told you.”

  “I can’t play with you, Max. I’m at work.” She scoffed mentally. As if being at work had ever stopped her before. More than once, he’d fucked her so hard during her lunch break that she’d spent the second half of her shift tottering on her sensible pumps. Unlike the iceman, Max Fletcher was deliciously hung and knew just how to wield that endowment.

  He pulled his mask down as a couple of indistinct voices passed a nearby archway. Although every guest at the hotel’s rare Den of Sin events were required to sign contracts promising they wouldn’t disclose to the public what or whom they saw while attending, Max’s job required he maintain an extraordinarily high degree of anonymity. He had good reasons to stay off peoples’ radar. Those reasons were part of the reason why Giselle couldn’t be with him. And why she couldn’t keep playing with him just as friends, either.

  “We don’t have to play here. What time do you get off? I haven’t seen you for a while. I wanted to talk to you,” he said.

  “Shift’s supposed to end at five.”

  “What do you mean supposed to?”

  She groaned. Of course he would catch that nuance. He rarely missed anything. That was probably why he was such a good cop.

  “Max, I…” She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and balled her hands into fists at her sides to stop them from shaking. Spit it out, girl. “Look. I did something bad. I need to tell.”

  “Tell whom?”

  “My supervisor. I’m going to be fired. Hell, possibly arrested. Still, I’ve got to own up to it. I don’t know what got into me.” It was a damned lie. It was very obvious that Max had gotten into her. He’d been working his way under her skin since they were fourteen. She couldn’t serve at another Den event knowing that Max would be downstairs with some new woman courtesy of the in-house matchmaker. She’d asked for the weekend off a month ago and had the request refused. She’d known anxiety before, but nothing like this. She didn’t know how to cope with it, and her subconscious brain hadn’t been any better at figuring it out, either.

  She let him help her up.

  He helpfully brushed the dirt off her bottom.

  She slapped his hands away. “You’re such a goddamned opportunist.”

  “Let me touch it when I want, and I wouldn’t have to be.”

  She gave him a glare that would have made any other man’s nuts shrivel, but he was Max. The Dark Dom wasn’t so easily affected.

  He winked at her. “I love your intensity.”

  “Some Dom you are.”

  “Since when did we play by the rules? You told me a long time ago that you weren’t interested in abiding by them.”

  Her mouth and brain didn’t always work in sync. She figured he didn’t need to know what, though. “And my pussy’s just so good you’d take me any way you could get me, huh? Yeah, right. You know I don’t need theatrics and head games to get off, and you just want easy sex sometimes.”

  His smile drew in. “I’ve been telling you for years it’s not about that.”

  “Whatever, Max.” Smoothing the wrinkles out of her button-down shirt, she took a bolstering breath and started toward the management offices.

  Start with an apology, state what you did, and promise to pay it all back. Don’t get defensive.

  She already knew she was going to have trouble with that last part.

  Max followed closely on her heels.

  She turned, and he stopped just before his hard chest squashed her breasts. “Dammit, don’t you need to go track down your weekend toy?”

  “No, she happens to be two centimeters from me.”

  “Fuck you, Max.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to get you to do, amongst other things. When you get off, you can come with me.”

  “I’m going to get fired. The very last thing I need is to hang around here and get fucked by the Dark Dom. It’s highly likely I’m going to get escorted off the premises.”

  “Shit, G, just what did you do?”

  She put her hands up. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.” She turned and continued toward the off
ices. “Call me later if you’re not too busy plowing someone.”

  “I already told you I’m not plowing anyone tonight. I came here to see you since you don’t take my calls anymore. I begged off work this weekend so I could be here.”

  She stopped again, but didn’t turn.

  He said no to work?

  She didn’t know that was allowed. Then again, she wasn’t exactly sure for whom he worked. She’d previously assumed he was self-employed, but certain clues hinted at otherwise. Whether he worked for the government or some private agency, she didn’t know. Didn’t want to know. She just knew he’d been shot enough times to convince her that chances were excellent that one day he was going to be killed on the job. Just like her father.

  Her brain started that nauseating spinning again. She closed her eyes tight.

  God, don’t want to think about that.

  She didn’t want to think about how her father had been shipped home in a box and how her mother still hadn’t recovered.

  “Y-you…took off work?” she asked.

  “I did.”

  “You’ve never done that before.”

  “I can learn new tricks outside of fetish clubs, Queen G.”

  “Squash that noise.”

  She started walking again, and tried her damnedest to ignore Max at her heels. If he thought he was going to follow her all the way to Ms. Gibson’s office and listen to her lay it all out, he had another think coming.

  She passed reception and kept up her pace as she strode down the hallway where the offices were situated. The dull thud of Max’s boots hitting the ground behind her had ceased, and she turned her head just enough to verify he hadn’t followed.

  She stopped in front of the general manager’s office, took a deep breath, smoothed her white skirt, and knocked.

  Nothing.

  She checked her watch and pulled off her sodden right glove.

  Where else might Ms. Gibson be this time of day?

  Ms. Gibson normally took lunch in her office or on the go. The consummate perfectionist took the idea of a working lunch to a whole new level.

  Giselle knocked once more to the same response. Relief loosened fear’s hold on her heart, and her tense shoulders fell to their natural position.

  “Ms. Gibson is unavailable.”

  Giselle nearly leapt out of her boring uniform pumps at the sound of the familiar, cultured voice. She grimaced, but fixed her expression before turning to face Henri Beaudelaire.

  The hotel owner held the end of his pearlescent, white, paisley-patterned tie between his finger and thumb and stared at it.

  For as long as she’d been working at the hotel, she’d never seen the elegant man wear the same tie more than once. Then again, she didn’t see much of Mr. Beaudelaire. He didn’t show his face much in the service kitchen, and her department manager or Ms. Gibson usually led her staff meetings.

  Giselle’s mouth opened, then she closed it wordlessly. She never knew if she should curtsy, salute, or abase herself at his feet. He tended to put off a sort of I could dominate you if I gave a shit about you vibe that even Max couldn’t manage.

  Mr. Beaudelaire tucked his tie into his white vest and lifted one dark eyebrow.

  She must have looked nuttier than her aunt Minnie-May’s special pecan pie.

  Clasping her wet glove in front of her belly, she cleared her throat. “Hello, Mr. Beaudelaire. Do you happen to know when Ms. Gibson will return?”

  He jammed his hands into his pockets and raised his shoulders ever so slightly. “That, I can’t say. There was an issue with the matchmaking rings that were going to be assigned to guests at check-in. Many went missing, and I believe Ms. Gibson was in the process of sourcing a last-minute substitution.”

  Shit. That fucking roulette wheel in her head stopped and the ball landed on another embarrassing memory. Her stomach lurched and bile filled her mouth. She shifted her weight and drew a cooling breath through her mouth.

  Oh, God.

  “Uh, the rings… That’s part of what I wanted to talk to her about.”

  “Sourcing substitutions?”

  “No. The actual rings.”

  Spit it out and get it over with.

  She might as well get her walking papers straight from the top. “I took them. They’re probably in the landfill by now. I’m sorry.”

  She remembered now. She’d been pissed and done a petty, childish thing, and her throat tightened at the thought. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes and she pressed her nails into her right palm and welcomed the pain. She wasn’t going to cry. Burke women never cried. They tended to fall apart in other ways.

  The ensuing silence had a thick, choking quality about it. The same sort she knew from church. She always felt that heaviness when she turned up for mass on Sunday morning after being very wicked on Saturday night. Apparently, the wrath of God was a silent thing.

  Mr. Beaudelaire straightened up from the doorway and pulled his hands from his pockets. His expression was inscrutable, but his pale eyes seemed to bore right through her.

  She’d never been more thankful she’d skipped a meal than that moment, because if she’d had lunch, she would have lost it.

  Mercifully, he pulled his stare away and locked it on something over her shoulder. She didn’t dare look back. It was probably Ms. Gibson arriving to deliver Giselle’s deathblow.

  “Mr. Fletcher,” Mr. Beaudelaire said. There was an unusual lilt to his voice—a mirth, even—that hinted at a relationship that was more than superficial.

  Odd.

  Now Giselle did turn and saw Max standing at the end of the hallway. His mask was pushed up to the top of his black hair and he held his arms crossed over his chest.

  “How are you doing, Henri?”

  “Splendid. Were you able to get your usual room?”

  Max shook his head. “I didn’t book a room. I should only be on the list as a day guest.”

  “Can’t spend the night?”

  “I could, but I didn’t actually come for Winterball. I came to see Miss Burke. You see, I can’t get her to answer her goddamned phone.”

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, and wished the floor would open up and swallow her. She was already at three strikes with the afternoon’s shenanigans, and fraternization with guests was an absolute no-no. It didn’t matter that she and Max had known each other since they were fourteen. They weren’t allowed a relationship of any sort at The Den.

  She shot Max that ball-withering glare again.

  He rolled his eyes at her and made the short walk down the hall.

  “It would seem Ms. Burke has a slight performance issue we need to work out,” Mr. Beaudelaire said.

  Rich people put such a special ring on their bullshit.

  Giselle turned to face him. “I want to pay for the damages. Look, there’s more I need to tell you. Can we go into your office? Where it’s private?”

  “Of course. You should know, however, that very little goes on here that Mr. Fletcher doesn’t know about. He conducts many of our more sensitive background checks.”

  Giselle gaped, and faced her sometimes-lover again. “You never told me that.”

  He shrugged. “Cloak-and-dagger shit, like you always say. Don’t act like you don’t have secrets.”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “Bullshit.”

  She growled, loosened the fist she’d balled her hands into, and turned yet again to the man in charge. “Maybe I should just write you a resignation letter telling you everything I did.” She cringed. “What I remember of it, anyway.”

  “What do you mean what you remember of it?” Mr. Beaudelaire gestured to his office door.

  Giselle walked through it and took one of the seats in front his fine wood desk. At the sound of the door closing, she looked up only to see Max had followed Mr. Beaudelaire in.

  Go the fuck away.

  He perched on the arm of the neighboring chair.

  She groaned softly.

 
Mr. Beaudelaire sank into his leather chair and tamped some papers into a neat pile. “Why don’t you start at the beginning, Ms. Burke?”

  Oh, God.

  She rolled her gaze up the ceiling and chewed the inside of her lip. The beginning. When was that?

  After a moment, she shrugged. Didn’t matter. “I’m going to make a long story as short as possible. Since Max is here I can’t lie and say he doesn’t have anything to do with it, because he does. I didn’t want to be here for another Den event if Max would be attending.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Yeah, why is that, G?” Max put his elbow on his knee and propped his chin atop his fist.

  Asshole.

  Her teeth grated. “Max and I have a really complicated relationship.”

  “It’s hardly a relationship,” Max said. “You keep reminding me of just how much it isn’t a relationship. What’d you call it?” He tapped his chin pensively. “Friends with benefits? Fuck buddies?”

  “Shut up. I’m gonna get fired, and I want to go out with at least a little bit of dignity.” And she would have liked to do it without divulging her personal business to the King of Kink Henri Beaudelaire himself.

  Max put his hands up. “Go on, then.”

  She wanted to grab him by the neck and shake him, but somehow resisted.

  She cleared her throat. “I requested the time off so I wouldn’t be here for Winterball, but the request was rejected.”

  “Who rejected the request?”

  “Ms. Gibson. She said it’s her policy not to put new hires on the floor during Den events and we would have been short-staffed in my department.”

  “Not just her policy, but mine. You didn’t believe that reason had merit?”

  Way to put your foot in it. She swallowed again. Her throat was even tighter now that she’d started laying it all out. An odd feeling for a woman who’d never been afraid of straight talk. “Yes, I don’t question the merit behind the rule, but I think the reason I requested off had merit, too.”