Fever

by Jamie K. Schmidt

  “Oh, hell no. Ma’am. No, ma’am. I’m unable.” Jana looked away quickly and swallowed hard.

  “I see,” Colleen said, feeling like an ass for jumping to conclusions. “Very well. Go up to your room and rest for eight hours. Once the sushi has left your system you can report back to your Master.”

  “No, she can’t,” Dante said, approaching them at a fast clip.

  “Master, I’m so sorry.” Jana fell at his feet and began to kiss his boots.

  “Stop,” he said.

  She obeyed instantly.

  “You were given instruction. Don’t shame me even further than you have.”

  “I’m so sorry, Master.” Jana scurried to her feet.

  “After you rest, you are to attend to Mistress Colleen’s every need for twenty-four hours.”

  Colleen opened her mouth to protest but shut it at Dante’s furious glare. It was his sub, and besides, Nefertiti could use the help. Jana’s idea of serving was usually sexual, so being forced into business attire and helping around the office was a pretty good punishment.

  “Yes, Sir,” Jana said miserably, and retreated out of the dungeon.

  “I should have caught that.” Dante rubbed his temples.

  Colleen shrugged. “It happens. I’m glad it wasn’t anything more serious than bad sushi. But…” Colleen put her hand on his shoulder. “She needs to feel it’s all right to interrupt you in an emergency.”

  “I’ll work on it,” he said. “And I’ll pay more attention to her. Jana’s just so well trained I’ve gotten lazy.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s not as if you were chucking knives at her this time.”

  Dante snickered and followed her as she continued to her whip room. Inside, several whips in various lengths and styles were hung up on pegs or lovingly placed in velvet bags. She couldn’t wait to hear the satisfying crack as she practiced her figure eights and volleys.

  Colleen fondled a few leather whips, considering each one for length before choosing a ten-foot bullwhip specially made and modified by one of the greatest whip makers in the world, David Morgan. She heard the Indiana Jones theme song in her head every time she picked this one up. It had been Alfie’s.

  “Where’s Leo?” she asked.

  “I’ve let the students play with him and one another for a while.” At her raised eyebrow, he clarified. “Micah is supervising. I wanted to catch up with you.”

  “Well, as you can see, I’m going to need a lot of room, so carry on with whatever you have to do.” Poking around for some cards to put on the targeting form, Colleen came across some candles. She could light them and see if she could snuff them out with the tip of the whip. But she would have to let them burn a little. Some hot wax on her nipples might be a way to end this solo scene.

  “I’d like to watch you work.”

  Colleen considered it. It might be fun to have an audience. “Okay. But I’m warning you, Dante,” she said, waving him back, “the range on this thing is longer than you think. Don’t move once I start winding up.”

  Without answering, he went to a closet and shrugged into a heavy leather jacket.

  Colleen swallowed hard. “What are you doing?”

  He pulled a St. Andrew’s cross to the center of the room. “I thought about what you said before. Maybe you should teach me a lesson. I want to see how you work. Buckle me on.”

  Colleen swore. “Talk about topping from the bottom.”

  Dante had the grace to smile sheepishly. “Twenty whacks with that whip,” he said, doing it again.

  Colleen inspected the tip. Shaking her head, she said, “This whip will cut that jacket to shreds. It’s too heavy for people play.” She pouted a bit, but put it back in favor of another single-tail whip. This one was shorter, about six feet in length, and also made out of kangaroo leather.

  “I can take it.”

  “Maybe we can work up to it.” Dante had no idea what he was asking for. Colleen considered it, though. With a heavier and lined jacket, it would still hurt like a bitch, but it wouldn’t draw blood.

  She unrolled the smaller bullwhip and tested the weight, gave it a few cracks. “Even with that jacket on, this is still going to leave marks.”

  “Good. Now, make it hurt. If you can.”

  Oh, this was even better than him watching her pretend to be Lady Zorro. Colleen didn’t hesitate to take him up on it. She knew Dante had a high tolerance for pain and was more than capable of taking a whipping. If he wanted some of this, she’d gladly give it to him. Strapping his arms and legs down, she slapped his ass. “Safe word?”

  “Don’t need one.”

  “You’re getting one anyway. ‘Jana’ is what you say when you’ve had enough.” Colleen checked the jacket’s thickness. Dante was going to have a back full of bruises. But he knew that. So she wasn’t going to hold his hand through it. Still, she needed to let him know the score.

  “I’m not going to go easy on you,” she warned. “I can always smack the hell out of my practice dummy if you change your mind. Are you sure you want this?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He rested his cheek against the frame.

  “Oh, I was wondering if you knew that word.” Her sarcasm was lost on him.

  He closed his eyes and relaxed into the cross like he was taking a nap. Thick black lashes rested on his cheeks. He really was quite pretty.

  Colleen went back to warming up, a thrill of anticipation flooding through her. She loved her bullwhips, but she rarely got to take them out to play. Most beginning submissives who liked flogging preferred cats and quirts the best. The more experienced ones would let her use a signal whip. The bullwhip was as powerful as it sounded, but truthfully the fun sonic boom sound was what really pushed people’s buttons, and all whips did that. Colleen wound up and did some practice cracks until Dante stopped flinching from the snap. She rolled her shoulder, feeling it loosen up. It was going to be marvelous not to hold back.

  “Ready?”

  “Whip me, beat me, make me write bad checks,” he joked.

  She let loose in the center of his back.

  His laugh turned into a shout of surprise and pain.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  Dante breathed out through his teeth. “A softer blow might have been nicer to start with.”

  “You’re wearing armor, you big pussy.” She wound up and took him again in the back an inch below the first strike.

  “Fuck,” he snarled.

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Colleen said, cracking the whip over his head, enjoying his flinch. “I’m not fucking you after this.”

  He grunted, tensing for the next blow, which she made him wait for. She flicked it past his arm, missing him by calculated inches.

  “You know what you’re doing, right?” he asked as she cracked the whip by his ear.

  “The time to ask that, Dante, was before you demanded to be strapped in.” She landed another hard stroke on his back, an inch lower than the last.

  Gritting his teeth, he hissed out between breaths, “I figured you knew enough to hit my back.”

  “You’re a dumb-ass. This whip in the hands of an amateur is dangerous; deep cuts would be the least of your worries.” And for shits and giggles, she put another strike close to the back of his thigh. While she was pretty sure she could snap it just below his balls, she never played that dangerous. Never wanted to risk an injury there. “How are you doing?”

  “Is that all you got?”

  “The correct phrase is ‘Thank you, Mistress.’ ”

  “You hit like a girl.”

  He wasn’t flip anymore after three precise lashes landed on his shoulders in quick succession. She let him recover, his slight moans not affecting her libido in the slightest. But there was a sense of pride, and something tight in her chest loosened. Anya had been right: she needed to let go. Colleen was rolling up the bullwhip when Dante roused out of the haze of pain she put him in.

  “We’re not finished, are we?” he sa
id groggily.

  She must be cursed to have lousy subs. Uncuffing him long enough to slide the jacket off him, Colleen checked his back. Deep welts were beginning to form.

  “Looks good,” she told him, using her hand to give him another hard whack on his ass.

  He didn’t even respond to the tap. “Why are we stopping?” he asked in a gruff voice.

  She really needed to get a nice quiet submissive. “Think you can take twenty lashes with a bullwhip, tough guy?”

  “I took six.”

  “Six is all you’re going to take. I need you mobile and functioning tomorrow. As it is, you’re going to be sore.” She secured him back to the cross.

  He shifted restlessly. “So untie me then,” he said sourly.

  “I didn’t say we were done,” Colleen said, grabbing a flogger with suede falls to lessen the impact.

  Chapter 3

  Chase could count on one hand the number of fucks he gave about fashion designers and models who looked like they could use a double cheeseburger and gravy fries. He was on his best behavior, trying to appear interested, nodding in all the right places when one or the other came up to him and prattled on about things that were as foreign to him as one of Gregg Williams’s blitz schemes would be to them.

  What he did care about had just sauntered in like the pussycat who’d licked the cream. Colleen eased into her seat and crossed those gorgeous legs. As discreetly as he could, Chase adjusted himself. What he wouldn’t give to shimmy her out of that prissy skirt and taste her again, this time with those legs wrapped over his shoulders instead of his bad knee.

  The hard aluminum chair was made for short events. This fashion show was already going on too long, and it hadn’t even started yet. Chase paid little attention to the introductory speeches until Colleen got up on the stage. The hope that she would be modeling some of the designs—especially lingerie—died when she just gave good promo and thanked her staff.

  His staff, on the other hand, enjoyed seeing the slight peek of cleavage as she sat back down again. He had it bad, but if it had been all one-sided, he would have walked away without a second glance. Colleen wanted him, too. Her kisses proved it. They just had so much bad blood between them, he wasn’t sure they’d ever get past it.

  As it was, he still got razzed by his buds about being a whipping boy. He wondered if those assholes jacked off to the memory of Colleen in that tight leather costume, which had made her ass look like a heart-shaped pillow he wanted to fuck. God knows he still did. And when she had turned around, her breasts almost spilling out of that damned corset, he knew before he saw her face it had been his girlfriend his buddies were lusting over. It took them a few minutes to realize it. Probably because those jerks were fixated on the most perfect set of tits on the planet. After that, it had been all dildos in his locker and whips coiled up in his helmet.

  He wasn’t into all that freaky stuff. It didn’t make sense to him. He’d lived with too much pain after his injury to even contemplate that it could get his dick hard. What was wrong with just plain fucking?

  Chase forced himself to look at the clothes that the models were parading in, up and down the runway. It looked good to him, not that he knew anything about fashion. He could picture Colleen lounging around in some of the outfits. Glancing around, Chase noticed a few people typing or texting furiously into their devices. Flashbulbs went off so frequently, it was like being in a rave. It seemed as though Fierocity was a success.

  He was glad for her. As much as he admired her kicking body, he knew she could be more than arm candy for an eighty-year-old letch. Colleen was as smart as she was beautiful, running the chain of hotels that Granger’s family had let her have after she agreed to leave the family quickly and quietly. It must have stung for her to pack up and leave her home.

  Or maybe she’d been glad to go.

  The thought that she’d married the old man because she was running away from Chase made him feel like a grade-A loser. He needed to know what the story was between Colleen and her Texas billionaire. Maybe Granger had married her just to show off and to piss off his kids. Lord knew she was easy on the eyes.

  His teammates had gotten nasty about her after he had to call one of them to help him find his clothes after Colleen destroyed his hotel room. Then when she’d married Granger, all bets were off. Every tabloid picture or stupid report had been pasted in his locker. He hadn’t been able get away from her even if he tried. It’d died down after a year or so, but when the old man died of a heart attack, it started up all over again. The gossip was he died after having sex with his young wife. Colleen had become the brunt of a lot of locker room jokes again. A part of him had wanted to stick up for her, but self-preservation had quelled that little spark. He wasn’t proud of it, but eventually the team had moved on to other targets.

  She’d never really left his thoughts, not even when his teammates forgot about it and went on to easier targets. Sure, there’d been other women—a lot of other women—but none of them interested him enough to offer more than a tumble or two. Then when he’d had his career-ending accident, the women stopped coming around. He’d like to think Colleen wouldn’t have left him at his lowest point. She wasn’t a quitter. She was a fighter.

  He grinned, thinking about how pissed she had been that day in the hotel room when she caught him in bed with the cheerleaders. If she had only stayed to listen, or maybe if he had let her explain…Chase’s smile died. Well, maybe she would have been his wife instead of Granger’s. He wasn’t a multibillionaire, but they would have had a nice life, even after his accident.

  Absently massaging his knee, he remembered the lonely days in the hospital and the agony of the physical therapy. Had any of the party girls stopped by? Not that he could remember. His only visitors had been his sister and nephew, and while that was nice, he missed his friends. But they had been on the road, trying to get into the playoffs without him.

  Max slid into the chair next to Chase. He taught martial arts classes to the fashion models when he wasn’t working on his own designs. Chase thought he was a pretty solid guy and admired that he ignored all the blatant come-ons from women—because he was happily married to Colleen’s sister.

  “Can you see yourself up there?” Max asked.

  Chase glanced up and was surprised to see Colleen’s old roommate from her Vegas days strutting down the runaway. He racked his brain to come up with her name. Amy? Anna? Anya? That was it. “I don’t have the legs for that dress,” he said.

  Anya whirled and gave them a peek at the red bows at the top of her garters. Wow. He’d like to see a pair of those on Colleen, preferably as she was bent over her desk.

  “Think you can walk the walk?”

  Chase laughed. “I’ll give it a shot, but don’t make me wear silk stockings.”

  “Good,” Max said. “After this is over, there are a few buyers I want you to meet. They’re going to be pushing hard for your endorsement. Cardboard cutouts in their stores, autograph sessions, and the like.”

  “Not a problem,” he assured the other man. That was all part of his plan. Get in the stores and magazines. Maybe promote his own brand of merchandise. He had offers, but he wanted his name on something more meaningful than mud flaps and beer cozies. A watch sponsorship would be nice, like the one Eli Manning had. Then again, he hadn’t been a quarterback. He should probably hedge his bets. “But you might want to get a pretty girl to sell the line with me. What about your wife?”

  Max snorted. “I won’t tell her you said that.”

  “Good.” He rubbed his nose. “It still hurts from the last time she sucker-punched me.”

  He was glad the little firecracker had found someone to look out for her. Mallory had been a teenager when he first met her, and he’d always had a soft spot for her, like she was his baby sister, too.

  Could have been, if I hadn’t fucked things up.

  Max was talking about scheduling, but Chase was only listening with half an ear. A man he didn’t
recognize had come up to Colleen. He moved stiffly, as if he was in pain. But what had caught his attention was that he leaned down and kissed Colleen’s cheek. She smiled up at him and patted the seat next to her. Her hand was resting on the son of a bitch’s knee.

  “Who’s that?” Chase interrupted Max.

  “Huh?”

  Chase gestured with his chin.

  Max stared over in that direction. “With Colleen? That’s Dante.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “He works here at Couture.” Max cleared his throat. “I think we need to avoid the big-box stores for now. We don’t have the inventory, and quite frankly, I think it will cheapen our brand.”

  “Yeah,” Chase said. “What’s he do?”

  “Dante? He…He’s an entertainer. So I’m setting up a video shoot with a buddy of mine, Clint. He’s also going to be modeling the line. I think you should wear the track suit and the warm-up pants. What do you think?”

  “Might as well do the running gear, too,” Chase replied, just so that Max knew he was listening. “What type of entertainer? Is he a singer? Comedian?”

  “He’s a man of many talents.” Max slapped him on the back. “I gotta go. I’ll see you after the show.”

  Chase accepted a beer from a passing waiter and glared at the couple. Dante caught his eye and raised an eyebrow at him. Chase would have given anything to mouth the word “mine” at the smug bastard, but he didn’t have the right. Not yet. He saluted him with his beer and glared instead. Dante brought the back of Colleen’s hand up to his lips and brushed it with a kiss. Chase’s vision tinted red until he saw her jerk her hand away and rap her knuckles against his chest.

  Good.

  Dante didn’t make eye contact again.

  The interminable show finally ended two beers and a few handfuls of hors d’oeuvres later. Chase pushed his way through the reporters to get closer to Colleen.

  “Mrs. Granger?” A female reporter with a thick French accent raised her hand. Chase peeked over at her press badge. Cielo magazine. He shrugged. Never heard of it.

  “It’s Bryant,” Colleen said crisply.