Yellow (The Safeword Series, #2)

by Ava Claire

  Lindsay didn't budge, but her voice stopped me in my tracks. “Nice try, but I'm not going to let you do that. I'm not gonna let you be me.”

  That made me angle back to her, my brow scrunched in confusion. “What?” I squinted, searching her face for the glazed look that meant she was buzzing and clearly talking out of her butt. “How much have you had to drink?”

  She perched her hands on her hips. “I work in a strip club, Soph. You think I don't know how to hold my liquor?”

  Good point. It still didn't explain the 'like me' comment.

  She nodded like she'd read my mind. “I guess I should explain, huh?” She gripped the rail and inhaled deep. When she exhaled, she smiled like she could still feel the city in her lungs. I knew that she didn't care that we lived in a shoebox and didn't have a view or any of the things I focused on. To her, she could see the lights in the distance, a future filled with jet setting and couture gowns and stories about the tiny apartment she used to live in and how every rotation on that pole pushed her closer to her big break.

  “You know how I feel about life. I live it out loud, with little to no concern about who I piss off and the bridges that I burn because of the choices I make.” She drummed her nails on the railing. “With all these people here, you'd think I had countless friends. 90% of the people in there? I'd be lucky if I could remember their first names. I surround myself with people because it makes me feel less alone. Because when it's quiet and I'm by myself, when the music stops playing and the dancing stops, I have to listen to the voice in my head that's my own worst enemy. And then I start wondering if I made a terrible mistake moving to the city, and what if I just become another actress with a dream that never comes true? So I close my eyes, and I dance so hard that nothing else matters.” She cast her dark eyes at me. “That's not you. Connection matters to you. Peter matters to you-”

  “But not in a way that matters to him,” I interrupted. “I was honest with him and I just don't see him that way-”

  “Because you met someone at the club?”

  I froze, like I'd been caught.

  “Jesus, Sophia, you're not in trouble,” Lindsay laughed, shaking her head. “You think you're the first woman who fell in lust, then it tumbled into love?”

  “I am not in-” I didn't bother finishing because I realized that the look on her face was one of someone who'd been in my shoes. Drowning in all of the lies and secrets, there was a single truth that she knew, and I knew, but I couldn't say out loud. Not yet. Not until I figured it all out and definitely not before I'd actually talked to the object of my desire. And my butterflies every time I saw that black mask. The way my heart sped up and my throat went dry and even though we knew so little about each other, I was just crazy enough to believe that if I got to know him and he got to know me, we could build something that could last outside of Hush.

  I threw my head back, feeling crazier with every passing moment. “How can you love someone when you know next to nothing about them?” The answer that shouted in my head wasn't of the Disney variety where happily ever afters existed. “You can't love someone when you barely know them. This is lust, masquerading as...the other thing.”

  “Perhaps,” Lindsay offered, spinning so her back was pressed against the railing and she was facing me. “How will you know if you don't explore it?”

  It was a question she left for me to figure out, steering us back to the topic that brought us on the balcony in the first place. “Peter will come around. Right now, he's just hurt and mourning because let's face it, you're freaking awesome. And he'll remember that your friendship came long before his feelings for you did and that's worth fighting for. Just give him time.” She did a little shimmy when the song changed to something with thumping bass. “Pretty wise for a stripper, huh?”

  I pulled her in for a hug, laughing, realizing that I was pretty damn lucky to have her in my life. Peter wasn't the only one that had my back.

  I still had an hour before I had to leave for my shift, but I'd need at least that long to prepare myself mentally for what I was going to do.

  I was going to take off my mask and tell D everything. I was going to put it all on the line and take a risk, hoping that when I jumped, he'd jump with me.

  I was just crazy enough to believe that when I told him I started at Hush with the intention of writing a tell-all story about the club, he wouldn't walk out of my life forever.

  Chapter Five: Desmond

  I barely looked up from my laptop, even though I knew Caity was giving me that look. The look that made guilt swarm in my stomach and would confirm that I would be sleeping on the couch for the foreseeable future.

  My inbox was filled with emails to answer, my phone was humming every five minutes with texts from everyone from my agent to the executives at Fox, ready to discuss my plans for America's Chef and two other possible spin offs that would put my scowling face in living rooms all over the country, three nights a week.

  I'd seen proofs of the advertising campaign; shots of me in the chef's jacket I barely wore these days, muscles flexing, mouth wide open and snarling like I was ready to step into the ring with someone.

  Caity pushed my laptop closed with her hand, and when I finally looked up at her, I realized she was ready to step into the ring with me.

  “I don't get it, Des,” she snapped, her hand still pressed against my laptop like she was worried that if she removed it, I'd just flip it back open. “When you asked me to marry you, I didn't think I was signing up for this.”

  I sat back in the chair, trying to keep my voice as level and non confrontational as possible. “This—you mean a fiancé who works 80 hour work weeks, is trying to build a presence on network television-”

  “I mean a fiancé that's content to be a fiancé!”

  I blinked up at her, sure I'd missed something along the way. Caity Monaghan was a primary school teacher who played the ukulele and finger painted with her class of six year olds and never raised her voice unless she was truly pissed off.

  The day we met I was grabbing a coffee on my way to the restaurant and some Wall Street asshat was berating the barista because there wasn't enough foam on his double shot cappuccino. Everyone else rolled their eyes in silent condemnation, but not Caity. Maybe a hundred pounds wet, dressed in her P.S. 159 sweatshirt, jeans, and flats with cats printed all over them, she got in his face like she was Floyd Mayweather. She didn't care that she was half his size, that he made some ludicrous amount of money, or that she was making a scene. The suit ended up apologizing to the barista and everyone in the cafe, then booked it out of there like the Securities and Exchange Commission was at the door. I bought Caity a cup of coffee, which became a date, which became, well, us.

  I didn't miss the fact that she had the same look on her face now that she had at the cafe. Anger, disgust, frustration...but what shined the brightest was her disappointment. Like I'd tricked her into falling for me.

  Like I'd been lying from the moment we met.

  I pushed back from the desk, catching a bit of her anger. “You can't be serious, babe. You know I love you. I can't wait to be your husband.”

  She finally let go of the laptop, but she didn't stop eyeballing me like I wasn't to be trusted. “Every time I bring up picking a date, or the ceremony, or moving in together, I get shrugs and ‘Let's talk about it later’, or some form of bullcrap.” She blew her blonde bangs from her eyes and turned her dark opals on me. When she smiled, her eyes were practically the color of caramel. Tonight, they were nearly black. “Just be honest, Desmond—do you want to marry me?”

  “Of course I do!” I assured her, rounding the desk, moving to take her in my arms. Hold her. Show her I meant what I said.

  She held out a hand that was essentially a stop sign. An electric fence that would fry me instantly if I came any closer. “Don't even think about it. In fact, I find it telling that you didn't even take the effort to think about the question. You just rattle off what you think I want to hear
like I just asked you if some dress makes my butt look big.”

  My nostrils flared. “I answered your question immediately because it was a stupid question.”

  “So now I'm stupid!” she hissed, stomping toward the window without another word. We were at my mother's house, a tiny bungalow on the edge of the city. I'd lost count of how many times I offered a new house or apartment to my mother, and how many times she reminded me that all she needed was a roof over her had and blackberry Merlot in her fridge. Considering the view was of the freeway and a drug store, I knew Caity wasn't taking in the scene.

  When I walked up to her, the smell of sunflowers and vanilla wafting to my nostrils, I knew that she was right. I had been dragging my feet. There were things she didn't know about me that I'd kept secret because I was worried I'd lose her. How could I tell the most gentle woman I'd ever met that nothing turned me on more than to spank a lover until her ass was as red as Caity's cardigan? Until she was trembling and moaning with some combination of pleasure and exhaustion?

  How could I marry someone that I hadn't given all of me: the annoying businessman, the relentless chef, the doting son and brother, and the lover who was filled with passion and dark needs in the bedroom? Dark needs that she and I hadn't even brushed up against in the year plus that we'd been dating?

  I put my hands on her shoulders, knowing what I needed to do. Tonight, I'd show her...and I'd let her decide if she still wanted to marry me.

  “Why don't you spend the night at my place? We'll have some wine, order in-”

  “And we'll avoid this conversation some more?” She shrugged off my hold, darting to the corner like she was afraid that if I got too close, I'd make her forget that she was angry. Not just angry. Furious. The flush ran from her face to her neck and was intensified when I saw her clenching and unclenching her fists.

  I let my own anger and frustration out to play, tugging my tie loose with a scoff. “You seem to have something on your mind. You ask me questions and I give you answers but since I didn't wrap it up in some bow, you're pissed at me? What do I have to do to convince you that I want to marry you? Pour over wedding magazines and go to cake tasting after cake tasting? Cancel all my meetings and make the wedding planner #1 on my speed dial?”

  Her jaw fell open like I'd just called her out of her name. “You really don't get it, do you? That's not what I'm asking for. I'm asking you to talk to me-”

  “Which is why I suggested dinner-”

  “A dinner that will be cut short when we start drinking and kissing and fucking!” She said shrilly. “I don't need a husband for that. I don't need you for that.”

  I tightened my jaw. “Well, then. Glad to know where I stand.”

  She took two steps toward me and stopped. “I didn't mean it like that.”

  She looked down at the floor and I saw her shoulders trembling and if I wasn't so stubborn, so angry myself, that's when I would have taken her in my arms and held her tight. I didn't need roses and wine and Chinese takeout to be honest. I just had to trust that when I let her see me, all of me, she wouldn't throw the engagement ring at my head.

  But I just stood there, watching her cry silently, breaking my heart because I could see hers pulsing and battered right in front of me.

  “I know you love me,” she said hoarsely. “And I love you...but I feel like there's this wall you've built and I've got my rope and I want to scale it.” She shook her head furiously. “No, I want to tear it down, but you won't let me in. How can I marry someone that won't let me in?”

  She looked up at me with tears streaming down her face and I opened my mouth. I saw the hope dangling and...I couldn't.

  I cut the string.

  “I don't know what you're talking about, baby.”

  I didn't believe me. And from the way her tears stopped and her face was cleared of all emotion but rage, I knew she didn't either.

  She shoved past me, looking at my hand like I was diseased when I grabbed her, trying to dig myself out of the hole I'd put us in.

  “Go to hell, Desmond O'Connell.”

  I let her go then, but I followed her from my mother's study, past my sister's room where she pretended like she was reading a book and hadn't heard the entire exchange. My mother was on the couch, wine glass in hand, engrossed in some game show.

  “Ms. O'Connell,” Caity asked my mother, wiping her face and forcing a smile that just twisted the knife in my chest. “Do you mind running me home? I don't feel well.”

  My mother turned her drowsy green eyes from the screen, to Caity, then me, then back to Caity. She finished her glass of wine in a single gulp and continued the O'Connell trend of pretending like everything was just peachy.

  “Sure, sweetheart.” She nodded back at me and shuffled over to the door where her keys were waiting. She told me goodbye.

  Caity said nothing.

  I told myself that tonight, I'd go to Caity's apartment and I'd wait as long as it took.

  I'd make this right.

  ****

  It was the first time a submissive had summoned me to a dungeon...and the first time that I was the one doing the obeying.

  I’d become a walking contradiction. I hadn’t given Kara any grief on set in days. I forgot I was supposed to be an asshole when the cameras were rolling, smiling at the contestants and giving out compliments when they wowed me with their dishes instead of my usual responses. Things like, ‘It doesn’t suck’, or, ‘It’s edible, but just barely’, and one better, ‘You may not be going home tonight’. I’d even agreed to meet some gossip columnist for lunch tomorrow, and those kinds of inquiries usually went directly to the trash.

  Sophia made me smile; she made me wonder if maybe, just maybe, I’d found someone that could embrace all the pieces of me. If she wasn’t frightened by the most taboo side of me, the Dominant, then the Desmond outside the bedroom would be a breeze.

  Or, she could say that she likes you, but isn’t looking for more than Hush.

  I swept into the elevator, adjusting my mask like some warrior preparing for battle. Fear had ruled my life and decisions for far too long. No more. What was the worst that could happen? She’d tell me to put my mask back on? Doubtful. There was no way I’d misread her so spectacularly. I could feel her reaching for more from the moment she told me that she liked me more than she was ready to admit. That was when I began to face the fact that I felt the same, and was reaching and hoping for more too.

  “Well hello, stranger.”

  I’d barely noticed the couple in the corner of the elevator, focused on my own mission and leaving them to theirs. It was the brunette sub from Submissive’s Choice, the woman who’d approached me and thanked me when I intervened before Colin got out of hand. Even without the collar and the feline-like movements from that night, I would have remembered her because of her Cheshire grin.

  She hung on the arm of a Dom who gave me the customary nod of acknowledgement. This was a sex club after all, that prided itself on discretion. There wasn’t a whole lot of chit chat in the elevator.

  “Good evening,” I answered, dipping my head as well. That more than sufficed and I turned back to the front.

  The brunette was looking for conversation. “I’ve requested you several times since Sub Night, but the hostess always says you’re unavailable.”

  I didn’t glance over at her, out of respect to her Dom. I didn’t recognize the man from the brief hello we’d just shared, but since I had a willful sub of my own, I knew it was up to me to remind her of how things worked. How I worked. I wasn’t sure what their dynamic was, but I was sure that I hadn’t shown interest then, and I was definitely uninterested now.

  “That’s right,” I said, any sort of geniality scrubbed from my voice.

  She didn’t get the hint. “If you ever want to-ouch!” The smack was audible and I didn’t need to make out the words he growled into her ear to know that she had crossed some line...and he didn’t approve.

  “Apologize for disturbing his e
vening and disrespecting your Dom,” he barked, loud and clear.

  “I’m sorry for bothering you,” she said without hesitation, her low, timid voice a world away from the effusive, flirtatious lilt from a few moments ago. “And I’m sorry for disrespecting you, Sir.”

  I had a feeling her apology was just the beginning of a night of atonement, but I forgot them both the moment the elevator hit my destination.

  I moved down the hall with a purpose, tapping out the access code in a flurry. I opened the door and my jaw dropped.

  Any sign of Sin had been left elsewhere. The woman in front of me had long, dark strands that dropped to her waist. She was wearing a emerald colored dress, the v neck cutting low in the front and giving me a tease of her milky skin, and the round curve of her lush breasts. But I didn't tarry in the erotic department. I was marveling over the fact that she wasn't wearing her usual costume of sex and secrets.

  “You're not wearing a mask,” I whispered, more to myself than her. Her mask never covered all of her features, but now that there was nothing keeping my eyes from roaming over every inch of her face, it was clear to me just how beautiful she was, from her big blue eyes to her high cheekbones and her full lips. All of which didn't require a swipe of makeup to enhance or highlight or illuminate a thing. She glowed, heat racing across her cheeks when I took a step toward her.

  “Sophia, you're gorgeous.”

  She didn't preen like a woman that was used to being told that she was attractive and wore it like a beauty queen sash. Her eyes dropped to the floor and she fidgeted, picking at the side of her dress.

  “Thanks.” She cleared her throat and slowly raised her eyes back up to me. “It's weird - you've seen me, like, every part of me and I feel more naked now than I ever did with all of my clothes tossed in a bundle on the floor.” She swept her hair behind her ear, making a face like she was already screwing up and she'd just begun. “Not my clothes. My roommate's clothes. This dress is mine though. One of like three. I wore it to my graduation a few years ago.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “And now I'm doing that blabber mouth thing. Sorry.”