Cards of Love: Page of Swords
Page 1
Cards of Love: Page of Swords
Ainsley Booth
Sadie Haller
www.friskybeavers.com
Contents
1. Meadow
2. Bas
3. Meadow
4. Bas
5. Meadow
6. Bas
7. Meadow
8. Bas
9. Meadow
10. Ellie
11. Bas
12. Meadow
13. Bas
Epilogue
Which Card Will You Choose Next?
Read Prime Minister Next!
Coming Soon: Bull of the Woods
Also by Sadie Haller
Also by Ainsley Booth
About Page of Swords
Bas:
Meadow is off-limits. She’s my tenant, my friend, and most importantly, a woman who has her shit together when I famously do not.
But in the dark of night, when the filthiest of fantasies take over, it’s her soft, curvy body I’m tying up, holding down, and dominating.
So I throw myself into yet another new project—a Halloween street party. It’s supposed to be clean and wholesome, but with each planning session, a little bit of kink slides in. And my depravity is just twisted enough that I start to imagine the good doctor is enjoying the double entendres.
Meadow:
I’ve been keeping a secret from Bas since the moment I met him, and everything that’s happened since then—our friendship, my inappropriate crush, the fact that I moved into the apartment over his bar—is tainted by that lie.
I need to confess everything, and I will, after Halloween. Because there’s no way I’m going to miss the hottest party of the year—or lose what might be my only chance to explore the hidden side of my desires I’ve never been brave enough to let loose before.
THE HALLOWEEN STREET PARTY RULES:
No nudity. Leave your undies on when you climb onto the spanking bench!
Adults only, please. The entire street is licensed for liquor and inappropriate language.
Whatever you do, don’t fall in love with your best friend. The costumes aren’t real, and the feelings are fragile.
The Frisky Beavers Series
Page of Swords is a standalone novella set in a fictional kinky world that makes up the Frisky Beavers series
Other titles available:
Retrosexual
Prime Minister
Dr. Bad Boy
Full Mountie
Mr. Hat Trick
and coming soon…
Bull of the Woods
Visit www.friskybeavers.com to learn more!
1
Meadow
Every so often I forget where I am, who I am, and what’s appropriate to say at work. This is the only excuse I have for what I say in a moment of exhausted, unvarnished honesty at the end of an interdepartmental meeting, when the surgeon chairing it says something about having to plan around maternity leave. And then casts a judgemental eye in my direction.
“I’d have to have sex in order to get knocked up, so we’re safe there.”
In my defence, it’s under my breath, and the only person who really hears the whole thing is Max Donovan, a paediatrician with a decent sense of humour.
He manages to contain his chuckle behind a subtle smirk, and although the general surgeon across boardroom table gives me a weird look, the meeting wraps up and everyone hustles off to their morning rounds or into the OR for the first procedures of the day.
I have the day off, so I stay seated and try not to look mortified when Max lingers, too.
Once we’re alone, he laughs out loud.
“Shut up, you’re happily taking care of your wife all the time, aren’t you?”
He winks. “That’s between me and Violet.”
“That’s a yes, and I hate you both.” I groan. “I can’t believe I said that out loud.”
“You’re exhausted.” Now the look he gives me is pure concern, and I get it. We were both on call last night, and I had a difficult surgery in the middle of the night, repairing a bad haemorrhage in a new mom. Max was on hand for the birth, and made sure to come back after my patient woke up again to reassure her that her baby was just fine.
That was my third rough shift in a row. “I thought once I was done with residency, my life would return to normal. Somewhat.”
He shakes his head. “That’s a lie we tell new trainees to get them into the cult.”
“Accurate.” I sigh and roll my neck. “Okay, I’m going to the gym to work out my frustration—shut up again—and then I’m going home to sleep like the dead.”
He rubs his jaw. “I, uh, have a timely confession to make.”
“What?”
“I talked you up to a friend of mine—no names, just a general description—a few weeks ago. He asked for your number, and I said I’d give his to you if you might be interested.”
On the one hand, a blind date is the worst thing in the world.
On the other…I haven’t had sex in six months, and good sex in more than a year. Fuck it. Even though I know how this is going to go down, I’m game. “Gimme.”
“You don’t want to know anything about him?”
“Is he a serial killer?”
“No.”
“Misogynist?”
“He does his best not to be.” Max clears his throat when I give him a side-eye at that. “No. He’s pretty cool. He owns a bar in Metcalfe, but he’s always got something new on the go. A creative type.”
“Is that code for he works random hours and understands the life of an obstetrician?”
Max grins. “Something like that.”
“Gimme gimme.”
* * *
I go home and crawl into bed, but when I wake up, my first thought is this guy. Sebastian, Max wrote down on a card. “But everyone calls him Bas.” Good to know. Bas the bartender.
So I get up, have a shower, and drive into the country because who am I kidding?
If Max thinks this guy might be for me, I’m intrigued.
Metcalfe is an adorable hamlet, little more than a set of intersections. Sebastian’s bar, Duke & Main, is in fact at the intersection of Duke Street and Main Street.
How hipster.
And yet it works. The façade is real rustic, not hipster-out-of-the-box, and there’s an amazing looking coffee shop across the street. Tessa, it says in the window. Coffeebar and Bakery is written under the flowy name, all of it in a delicate script.
I stop there first, because coffee is courage.
There’s a tall brunette woman behind the counter who gives me a welcoming smile. “What can I get for you?”
“I’ll take a short espresso shot, please,” I say as I peruse the baked goods in the glass display. I want a muffin, but it’s probably rude to bring food to a blind-date ambush.
If it doesn’t go well, I’ll come back.
Who am I kidding? I’ll be back either way. “Just the shot for now.”
The big espresso machine behind the counter hisses to life and I turn around, peering out the window at Duke & Main.
“What brings you to Metcalfe?” the barista asks.
The real answer would be way oversharing. “I had the afternoon off and wanted to come for a drive,” I say absentmindedly.
“That’s how a lot of people find us. I’m Tessa, by the way.”
I point to the name on the glass window. “The Tessa?”
“Yep, that’s me.”
“Cool.”
I turn back and take the shot she pushes across the bar. “Thanks.”
It’s perfect, with a lovely layer of crema on top. I take a sip, enjoyin
g the sweet acidity and the glorious bitterness, then I drink the rest quickly.
I have a man to find, so I leave Tessa to her adorable baking tasks or whatever and set across the street.
It’s not as dark inside the bar as I expected. The exposed brick walls are painted white, and there are pot lights glowing in the ceiling as well as hanging fixtures with the Edison bulbs promised by the hipster name of the bar.
I love it immediately.
And then the man behind the bar moves, catching my attention, and everything else fades.
He’s so tall it’s hard to fully take him in. Well over six feet. Closer to seven, with big hands and bigger forearms and shoulders as wide as a football field.
“I’m looking for Bas.” Please be Bas. The words shake as I say them, and wow, this is not going to go well. What was I thinking?
“You’ve found him.”
“I…” My voice falters as my heart rate picks up. Nerves and excitement wrestle for top spot in my chest.
Then he holds out one of those hands—big, so big—and my heart just plain stops. “Sebastian Absalom, at your service.”
I’m Meadow, I know I should say. I can hear it, a faint whisper. An offer. Would it be too soon to fall to my knees and ask him to spank me?
Yes. Too soon.
One thing at a time. I hold out my hand and he shakes it gently, like he thinks I might break.
Okay, next task is to find my voice and convince him I’m not fragile. “Hi.”
He smiles.
I nearly pass out.
Third task. Find more than a single syllable and introduce myself. I’m Meadow. Financially independent, sexually curious, and very open to booty calls in the middle of the—
Before I can say any of that, the bell above the door jangles again. Bas slides his gaze past me to the new arrival and his face lights up. Like, the smile he gave me before was nothing compared to this beaming welcome.
“Lovely,” he says, moving around me. “I didn’t know you were back in town.”
Just like that, my spanking fantasies die a miserable, pathetic death.
And now I need to come up with an excellent excuse for why I showed up here looking for him.
“Sorry about that,” he says from behind me. “Miss?”
I turn around, a falsely bright expression glued to my face. I can brass this out. No prob. “Yes?”
“Are you here for the apartment?”
My brain scrambles, latches on to the excuse, and instructs my head to nod agreeably. Yep. “I sure am. The apartment. Yes. That’s me.”
He tosses one of those big arms around his girlfriend—ugh, I hate her already, which is totally unfair—and gives her a gentle squeeze. “Hang tight here while I show the place?”
She murmurs her agreement and slinks her way onto a barstool. I viscerally and immediately dislike her, which is completely unreasonable. I’m sure she’s lovely.
But she has a boyfriend with massive hands and I am about to find myself with two apartments when I barely use one.
Great.
Just, great.
“How did you find about the listing? It just went up?”
I can’t tell him Max’s name. Max said he talked to Bas about me. Fuck, can I even give him my name? What am I doing? “Uh…I think I saw someone share it online?”
“Cool.”
Hardly. Don’t rent the apartment, Meadow.
Except I will. I can feel it. I’m a thirty-year-old woman. A surgeon. And I’m about to do something completely stupid because of insta-lust over a brilliant smile and a pair of hands that make me weak in the knees.
Meadow Pedersen, you’re a sucker.
2
Bas
Six months later
It’s late when Meadow gets home. And by home, I mean the last barstool, the one closest to the stairs to her apartment.
She has an exterior entrance as well, but she only uses it when she’s in a hurry.
When she hasn’t had a completely shit day.
When she doesn’t want to sit and have a drink in collegial silence.
Tonight is not that.
Tonight, I pour her a vodka tonic and set it in front of her. She drains it and wiggles her fingers, asking for another.
It takes all my willpower to not cover those wiggling fingers with my big paw, press her nervous little hands onto the bar, and make her say please.
But she’s my customer. My tenant.
I don’t get to demand manners from her.
It would be highly inappropriate to do so just to get a swift, sexual high from the exchange—one she would have no clue about.
So I stow my instincts deep and pour her another.
“That kind of day?” I finally ask, when she’s nursing the bottom third of the glass and rolling her head back and forth.
“Yeah.”
In the six months she’s lived upstairs, we’ve gotten to know each other some. She probably knows me better than I know her, because I’m a talker and a dreamer, and Meadow is…not.
She’s a listener.
She’s probably a fucking amazing doctor. She listens and watches and doesn’t miss a single thing.
She calls me on all my shit, and there’s a lot of shit there to call out.
“Bas?”
“Yeah?”
“I said, how about your day?”
I swipe my towel across the new granite counter. “Ah. My day.”
She narrows her eyes. Yeah, she sees everything. “What did you do?”
“Don’t say it like that,” I say, grinning at her. I’m charming. It’s my saving grace.
But not with Meadow. She shakes her head. “What’s the new project?”
“Project is an overstatement.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She swirls the last drop of her drink around the bottom of her glass. “Can I have one more?”
I love the earnest way she says it, like she’d accept it if I told her no. If I sent her packing off to bed for her own good, with a kiss on the tip of her upturned nose and a pat on her curvy bottom. “Yeah,” I say instead, pouring her another drink.
“So, what was it?”
“It was nothing. Just an idea I had.”
Her eyes dance as she watches me. Waiting. Knowing. “A good distraction from the zoning change application you swore up and down you’d get done today?”
“Well, it’s actually related to that.”
“Mmm?” Her entire face lights up with the pure pleasure of knowing I’m full of shit, and I let her have that, because this has to be better than whatever happened at work that had her dragging when she came in.
“I was looking at the patio regulations, and I noticed a segment of the bylaws about licensing an entire street.”
“An entire street,” she repeats slowly.
I gesture out at the dark window to Duke Street. My little corner of Metcalfe, gloriously ungentrified. My corner of the capital region that I am entirely committed to improving, growing, making vibrant and amazing. “This street, for example.”
“More than a patio?”
I nod. “A party. Maybe New Year’s, although that competes with the city events. Or Halloween, although that would be kind of tight to pull together. But a street party would be a great way to give back to the community and connect with new business partners, and it would—could—make a good chunk of change if properly planned.”
“A street party.” She nods. “Interesting.”
“Is it? Or are you humouring me?”
“Little of column A, little of column B? I don’t know. I had a long day at the hospital and know next to nothing about business. But I think Halloween is a holiday relatively underserved in the adult population, if my university friends are anything to judge by. People love dressing up. Is that what you were thinking? Costumes, beer, that sort of thing?”
Yes, in the broadest of strokes. “Something like that. The details need to be sorted out, and I’ll have to find—”
That catches me off-guard. “What?”
“I love Halloween, Bas.” She leans across the bar, close enough I can see the spray of freckles across her pale skin and count the individual eyelashes that brush against the apples of her cheeks. “Didn’t you know that?”
“I did not.”
She pushes back and grabs her glass. “Now you do.” Tipping her head back, she drains the third drink. “Okay, that was probably two drinks too many, and I should hit the hay.”
“Are you working tomorrow?” I don’t know why I keep track. It doesn’t matter. She’ll come in when she wants a drink, text me when she needs something fixed.
As her landlord, I should not care if she’s getting enough sleep.
She shakes her head. “Day off. Thankfully.”
I’m relieved on her behalf, and I tap my palm against the counter. “All right. Sleep tight.”
“Night,” she says sweetly. “And I want to hear more about this street party tomorrow!”
“Come and find me,” I say. “I’ll probably be planning it most of the day, right here.”
I watch as she hoists her backpack onto her shoulder and flips her dark red curls out of the way. That’s all that’s polite, so I pretend to go back to work as she moves away from the bar and heads to the door that separates the bar from the corridor that leads upstairs to the rental unit.
But I don’t miss any of it. The way she takes a deep breath and pushes herself to the full extent of her small frame, like going to bed is a monumental task.