The Greatest Risk

by Kristen Ashley

  She had wanted to hit the Bolt tomorrow to start up that investigation.

  But Stellan had arranged this, and Ami was a good guy who needed a good Domme in his life, and a good woman, so although women being victimized at a BDSM club took precedence, she’d allow this to delay it.

  Though during the day, she’d spend time hitting up some of the folks she knew who frequented the Bolt and could keep their mouths shut but eyes open so she could start gathering information about what was perceived to be happening there.

  “I’m in.”

  “Fabulous,” he murmured, unhooking his leg from hers and using their linked arms to pull her float even closer so their heads were lined up.

  He leaned in, she leaned in, they touched lips, and it was a testimony to superior floats that both of them didn’t go under.

  When he broke contact with her lips, he made contact with her eyes.

  “You ready to get out?” he asked.

  “Is that code for, ‘Are you ready to go upstairs so I can fuck you senseless?’”

  He grinned. “Yes.”

  She grinned back. “Then yes.”

  She braced to make a move off the float and into the water, but his fingers wrapped firm around her wrist, so she focused on him again.

  “I am always here to take the heavy,” he said softly.

  “I know, baby,” she replied.

  “Never forget,” he ordered.

  “I promise. I won’t.”

  “Thank you for yesterday.”

  Now he was being awesome and making her want to cry.

  “Again, handsome, stop being awesome,” she warned instead of deep breathing to control the tears.

  “It’s important you know what it meant to me,” he noted.

  “Do you know what it meant to me?” she asked.

  “You did not hide that.”

  “You didn’t hide it either.”

  “Simone, understand me, it’s important to me to know you know what it meant, you sharing that with me.”

  She didn’t get it.

  And as ever, he didn’t miss that she didn’t.

  “It was a gift,” he stated. “That’s what’s important that you understand. Yesterday was a gift. A gift of trust. And there are few gifts more important than that. We’ve got this lovely calm after a storm. But life does not stay calm. Whatever happens, understand this. Understand this calm is what defines us. Whatever happens, we’ll find our way to it again. And more, don’t twist what happened yesterday out of what it actually was, how important it was. In other words, never regret giving that to me or question whether you should have shared what you shared. Having you whole means more than my home, my cars, my business, anything. That’s what you need to understand should anything ever threaten to split you apart again. You can and always will be Simone to me, and that, all of it, is the gift you gave me yesterday.”

  She sniffled then snapped, “Seriously, lay off the awesome.”

  He smiled.

  Then he totally laid off the awesome when he lunged from his float into hers.

  Obviously, that took them both into the drink, and under.

  She came up spluttering … in his arms.

  “Right, total jerk move,” she shared, treading water with her hands on his shoulders.

  “You love it,” he replied, treading water with his arms around her waist.

  “Do you think I could dunk you?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered.

  She put pressure on to try to dunk him.

  He was right. Even treading water, he stayed head and shoulders above it.

  Major lower body power.

  So she tried a different tact.

  One hand went to his head to distract him.

  The other hand went somewhere else.

  Right into his swim shorts.

  They both ended up going under.

  She also ended up giving him head while he sat on the side of the pool before they dripped their way up to their bed, where they fucked like teenagers then passed out.

  Domestic decadence.

  Indeed.

  twenty

  Never

  SIXX

  On her way home the next evening, after a busy day of firm work and recruiting informants for the job at the Bolt, with only had fifteen minutes to change and freshen up to go out to dinner with Stellan and then to the Club to meet Mistress Naya before hopefully approving her for a scene with Ami, Sixx was psyching herself up to do something she didn’t want to do.

  But she had to do it because she just had to do it.

  Also because she was going to be at the Honey later and there was a chance Leigh would be there, so she needed to do it now.

  So, stopped at a stoplight, she scrolled down to Leigh’s name, reminded herself that all this sharing and honesty had been good, starting with blurting all she’d blurted out at Susan, and all the dishonesty and denial that had come before it had really not been fun, she hit “go” on her steering wheel to make the call.

  It rang three times before she heard, “Sixx, chérie, how are you?”

  The light turned green, she hit the gas and replied, “Good, Leigh. You?”

  “Excellent,” Amélie answered.

  “Listen, do you have a couple of minutes?” Sixx asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I—”

  All right. What did she even say?

  Things weren’t weird. Leigh had never let them get to that.

  She still had to say something.

  “Okay, I don’t know how to start this but I lied in the Dom Lounge the other night. I needed someone to talk to.”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Leigh murmured. “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing … now. I mean, my head was messed up. With Stellan and well … a lot of stuff. But he and I have … we’ve … gotten a few things straight. So things are better.”

  “Stellan is, as you know, a Dom, Sixx, and as far as I know has never switched, so I’ll repeat my offer to introduce you to one who I think might be able to—”

  “It’s not the switch part,” Sixx cut her off to say. “I’ve always been a switch. I’ve always known I was a switch. Since training. I just … never found the right guy.”

  Leigh sounded amused when she replied, “I can say with relative certainty you’ve found the right guy now.”

  Sixx smiled at her windshield.

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “That’s another part of me wanting to talk to you. I wasn’t truthful about that either. Stellan and I are together. Very together. And we’re both going to work at it to keep that so.”

  “I’m so pleased,” Leigh responded.

  “I just … I just…” How lame was she? “I just wanted you to know all that.”

  “As pleased as I am that you’ve phoned me, I hope you know you didn’t need to. Your business is your own, Sixx, only unless you want to make it mine. And if you do, it’ll be gladly received.”

  “I know that. I just haven’t been very good at taking care of my friends because…” God! Why was this so hard? “Life didn’t start out great for me, Leigh,” she whispered. “Nothing good happened, so when good started happening, finding out who I was and what I liked. Finding Aryas. The Club. The people in it. Stellan. I didn’t understand the concept, and I definitely didn’t trust it.”

  “I hate to hear life didn’t start out well for you, chérie,” she said softly.

  “I’m not alone with that. It is what it is. Or it was what it was. Now it is what I make it. I can keep letting it influence how I live and the relationships I have. Or I can learn to trust in the good that comes my way and believe that I, well … deserve it, I suppose.”

  “You deserve it,” Leigh stated firmly.

  “How do you know?” Sixx asked before she could stop herself.

  “Well, pointing out the obvious, sweetheart, you made this call, which couldn’t have been easy, but it was right.”

  That wasn’t a lot to
go on.

  But Amélie wasn’t done.

  “And you went from finding out your nature to learning how to do what you needed to do the correct way, and then you took your time to teach others. Aryas has missed you as a trainer at the Club, Sixx. You were excellent at it. It’s voluntary to do that, and you took on a good many Doms. That’s a great kindness. And I can say for a fact every Master and Mistress you trained would agree.”

  Well, there was that.

  “And you didn’t used to talk much,” Leigh went on, “and it’s very true you didn’t let anyone in too deep, but you listened. You always had all the time in the world to listen, Sixx. People are so busy these days, pushing their opinion and their point of view, their stories and experiences, so many have lost the art of listening, and sometimes, in fact, in a good many cases, you simply need that. You don’t need to know what people think of your problems or your life. You just need someone to listen. And that’s always been you.”

  That was true too.

  “And Aryas adores you,” she continued. “Aryas is the best judge of character I know. And frankly, that was all I needed when I first met you. As ever, it proved to be true.”

  She turned on her turn signal to hook a right onto 44th, promising in a whisper, “I’m going to be a better friend.”

  “I’m uncertain how, but if that’s a goal, I’m not going to talk you out of it.”

  “Thank you for being a good friend.”

  “And thank you in return for one of the best compliments I’ve ever received.”

  “God,” Sixx muttered. “These days it seems like I’m always on the verge of crying, and for years, I hadn’t shed a single tear.”

  “That’s a shame,” Amélie replied gently. “Tears have a bad rap, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. They’re very healing.”

  “People view them as a weakness,” Sixx pointed out.

  “People are, I’ve noticed, quite often very foolish,” Leigh returned.

  That made Sixx grin while saying, “Too true.”

  “I’m here for you, Sixx, always,” Leigh said.

  This was it.

  It was time.

  She took a deep breath and went for it.

  “Simone,” she declared.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Simone. My name is Simone,” Sixx told her. “I’m Sixx, definitely, but that’s a nickname I gave myself a long time ago. My real name is Simone.”

  “Simone,” Leigh murmured. “How beautiful.”

  “Thanks,” Sixx whispered.

  “No, ma belle chérie, thank you.”

  Sixx hit the turn signal again and swung into the suicide lane to make a left toward Stellan’s home. “We’re going to the Club tonight. Are you guys going?”

  “No, Olly’s on duty tonight. So I’ll be here waiting for him to return home.”

  “Right, well, I’ll see you there sometime.”

  “And perhaps in the meantime, we can have lunch.”

  Sixx grinned again, thinking of Amélie at Sip.

  She’d probably dig it.

  “We’ll set that up. I’ll call you when I’m not driving.”

  “Excellent. Until then … Simone.”

  With Leigh’s soft accent, that was almost as beautiful as Stellan saying it.

  “Until then, Amélie. Speak soon.”

  “We will. Goodbye, sweetheart.”

  “’Bye, Leigh.”

  They hung up.

  Sixx drove home.

  And she parked in her bay next to Stellan’s Maserati, now under the illusion that sharing and honesty paved the road to good things.

  And damned proud of herself for keeping her head firmly out of her ass.

  * * *

  “Gordon’s cup for Mistress Sixx, a vodka martini for me,” Stellan ordered from the server at their booth approximately one-point-two-five minutes after they’d slid their asses into it.

  “Isn’t it gladiator night?” she asked her man as the server walked away.

  Stellan turned to her. “That was last week. However, Ami wasn’t participating.”

  “I know, but how did we miss that?”

  Stellan grinned. “It’s next week, and Ami will be participating. So we’ll make a point to go. And I’ll make a point to ink each event into my calendar whether your commanding Ami or not.”

  She actually felt her eyes sparkle at him as she leaned her tits into his arm.

  “That’d be appreciated, baby,” she murmured.

  He bent in, twisting his neck to touch his lips to hers.

  She suspected her eyes were sparking more after that.

  However, when he straightened away, Sixx blinked into the bar.

  This was because Aryas was leading a woman to their booth who was dazzling.

  No.

  Astounding.

  So much so, without thought, out of the side of her mouth, what she had no idea was comically, she muttered, “Text Ami right now and tell him we got a hot one for him.”

  She couldn’t tear her eyes off the woman coming their way, so she didn’t see, she just felt it, as Stellan turned his amused smile from her to the direction she was looking.

  “I think when he arrives in half an hour, he’ll discover that himself,” he did not mutter out of the side of his mouth.

  What he did do was slide out of the booth.

  “Stellan, my man,” Aryas greeted on a handshake. “Sixx, beautiful,” he said to her on a dip of his chin. Then he put his hand on the small of the back of the tall, lush, exotic beauty beside him. “This is Naya.”

  Naya smiled a white smile behind deep berry lips, this radiating out of a face whose skin tone and bone structure Sixx could not call—Polynesian, perhaps—but it was bottom-line stunning.

  Sixx took her in as Stellan took her hand in greeting, and there was a lot of her to take in.

  She was tall, for one. And built, for another. She was also wearing an exquisitely draped, long-sleeved aqua dress that highlighted her amazing coloring and thick, long, dark hair. The dress fit like a glove, had a plunging vee neckline, a ruched waistline that made her hourglass figure go straight from gorgeous to bombshell, and interesting flat ruffles down the front that a slit up the middle disappeared behind, so the dress was beyond flirtatious, straight to coquettish.

  On sight, Sixx loved her for Ami.

  Upon witnessing that sultry but open and friendly smile, Sixx adored her for Ami.

  After Sixx murmured her greeting and Naya gracefully slid into the booth, Sixx would do a voodoo dance of good luck to make her personality come close to her extortionate beauty so she’d be worthy of Ami.

  “Thank you for meeting me,” she said with an accent Sixx again couldn’t place, while Stellan slid in beside her and Aryas beside Naya.

  “Thank you for meeting us,” Sixx replied. “And do you mind if I ask where you’re from?”

  She inclined her head regally. “French Polynesia, originally. Though I lived in France for about five years growing up before moving here to America when I was seventeen, then living between New York, Paris, London and Milan for a number of years.”

  Jet-setter.

  Which might mean she had money, which might mean if she and Ami took to each other, the gladiator pit would continue to be all kinds of interesting.

  Nice.

  Stellan and Sixx’s drinks were served, Aryas and Naya ordered their own, and the server moved away.

  Naya aimed her big, brown eyes over prominent, rounded cheekbones and back to Sixx.

  “I understand you own this male I’ll be using tonight,” she remarked.

  “Yes,” Sixx confirmed.

  Naya looked to Stellan with a not-surprising, huge amount of interest, then to Sixx.

  “Not Stellan,” Sixx shared. “He’s my Master.”

  Aryas cleared his throat.

  Loudly.

  Sixx narrowed her eyes at him to see him fighting laughter.

  Therefore her eyes narrow
ed further.

  Naya looked to Aryas and asked, “I’m sorry. Is this done? A sub owning a sub?”

  “Mistress Sixx is a switch,” Stellan put in smoothly.

  “Ah,” Naya murmured. “I see.”

  “Though, it isn’t unheard of for a Dom to allow a slave to play at will with another slave,” Stellan shared.

  “I’m not sure I would will this,” Naya replied to Stellan before turning her attention back to Sixx. “I prefer single-partner play. Aryas has introduced me to multiple, but I didn’t fancy it.”

  Strike another one for a move to approve.

  “What, particularly, didn’t you fancy?” Sixx asked.

  “My style of play, the way I prefer it, rather, is that my attentions aren’t divided. The connection feels deeper to me that way. But more, anytime there’s another presence in the room, a sub’s attention can get caught by something else, and I’m afraid I’m too selfish to wish my subs thinking of or focused on anything but me.”

  Great answer.

  “Sixx is known for her multiple-partner play,” Aryas put in at this point, causing Sixx to give him another narrow-eyed look.

  “I’m sorry,” Naya said quickly. “I mean no offense.”

  “I’m out of that phase,” Sixx told her silkily, deciding against kicking Aryas in the shin because at her angle, she might hit Naya.

  It helped cool her temper that at this point, Stellan wound a possessive arm around her shoulders.

  But then again, that would always be helpful in whatever situation.

  “As with all life, but especially this life, it really is to each their own, no?” Naya said.

  “Absolutely,” Sixx replied on a smile.

  “I … may I ask about your sub?” she queried.

  “Of course,” Sixx said.

  “He’s experienced?”

  Sixx nodded.

  Naya bit her so-full-it-was-poofy lower lip.

  “He knows you’re in training, Naya,” Sixx told her quietly.

  “I have only recently been left to my own devices, if supervised. But there’s so much trust needed. It can be…” She seemed at a loss for words. “Intimidating.”

  “Well, if Ami agrees to share a scene with you tonight, which I have a feeling he’ll jump at the chance to do,” Sixx started, “then it’s the perfect match. He’s an excellent sub, communicates very well, has few hard limits and performs beautifully.”