by Livia Grant
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” he defended.
Davidson silenced them. “Enough. It’s clear that you two know each other. Connor, how old is Miss Castle?”
It pained him to answer the question. Impatient, Davidson walked to Gabby and held out his hand. “I’d like to review your participation agreement again, if you don’t mind, Miss Castle.”
She smiled a gracious smile that lit up her face and almost had him fooled, but her trembling hand that held out the piece of paper to Jaxson betrayed just how shaken she was. She was in way over her head.
Davidson grilled her. “What is your date of birth, Miss Castle?”
“It’s right there on the paper. You have a copy of my driver’s license. You can see I’m twenty-four years old.”
“Like I said. Too young...”
Jaxson cut him off. “So you’re exactly the same age as my Emma, who has been with Chase and me for over two years.”
Strike one.
He’d try another tactic. “Fine, she may be of legal age, but she is a complete newbie. She’s never been to a BDSM club before tonight.”
She shouted back at him, “Oh, are you so sure about that? I thought I was just a troublemaker, out getting into trouble wherever I go. Maybe I’ve been to every sex club between here and Tokyo in my travels.”
It was Jaxson that interrogated her. “Have you?” When she tore her angry gaze away from Connor to look at the club owner, he repeated his question. “Have you ever been to a BDSM club before, Miss Castle?”
She shuffled, stalling until she finally admitted. “No, but that doesn’t matter. There is a first time for everything.”
“This is bullshit,” Connor cursed. “We’re leaving.” He moved towards Gabby, but she backed up until she was truly backed into the corner.
“Not so fast, Connor. I have a few more questions if you don’t mind.”
“Actually, I do mind. This is none of your business.”
“Wrong. It’s completely my business. You’re both in my club, and don’t forget it.”
Davidson could be a real hard-ass when he wanted to be. “Maybe, but I’m her guardian and I have the final say on this.”
He’d hoped she was too nervous to catch on to his minor stretch of the truth.
He’d hoped wrong.
“You wish. You’re not my guardian. Did you fall asleep the day in law school when they taught the difference between a guardian and a trustee?”
“Is that what this is about, Gabby? If you’re doing this to convince me to approve your investment idea, you’re sorely off base. You’re proving how right I was to deny your request.”
“Fuck you, Connor. Have you considered that this has nothing to do with you? That I just wanted to come here to have some fun? To meet some people in a private club where there’s no chance of the paparazzi tracking me down?”
“Enough!” Jaxson stepped forward between them, pinning Gabriella with a stern look. “How did you find out about tonight’s event?”
The fear was back in her eyes in a flash. Her eyes flitted rapidly between Jaxson and himself, yet she remained silent. The energy of the small space grew more awkward by the second, but Jaxson continued to pin her with a glare that would scare the bejesus out of even himself if it were aimed at him.
“Hey, it’s time to get started. Is there a problem?” Cartwright had joined them. Jaxson kept his eyes on Gabriella as he answered. “No problem. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of how Miss Castle heard about our very private event.”
“Does it matter? I thought tonight was open to non-members?” Her voice was a full octave higher than normal. She had perspiration on her forehead and tears in her eyes. She was about to fold.
“That’s true, but it is by invitation only. Which member invited you to sign up?”
Whoever it was, Connor would be paying them a little visit after he got Gabriella safely returned home.
She wasn’t going to answer. Connor stepped around Jaxson and when she started slapping him away, he’d had enough. Connor bent, shoving his right shoulder into her tummy and throwing her over his shoulder. When she struggled, he used is left hand to give her a swat on her ass.
“Ouch! Put me down.”
“Ouch? Seriously? You’ve just proven my point, Gabby. That was a little tap. You’re in way over your head, little girl.” He turned, prepared to fight his way through Davidson, Cartwright and the DM if he needed to.
“I’m not a little girl. I’m a twenty-four year old woman, you big jerk!”
“No, you’re the equivalent of my little sister. As your brother, I’m going to protect you, whether you like it or not.”
The three other men in the space were blocking the entrance. Jaxson’s face was turning bright red. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to see he was not happy.
“Are you two blood related?”
“No, but...”
“Enough. Put her down.”
“We’re leaving. You’ll be down one sub and one Dom so it won’t mess anything up.”
“You are free to leave, of course, but I’ll be disappointed. Regardless, I still want to get to the bottom of who invited her.”
He set her on her feet, but maintained his grip on her upper arm. “Who the hell invited you, Gabby?”
She didn’t answer with words, She instead used her free hand to open her small purse and pull out a crumpled black sheet of paper. The second he saw it, his heart rate spiked.
He reached out and snatched it away. “You little thief! You took this right off my desk. I thought it got thrown away.”
“Am I understanding this correctly? You, as a member, broke the rules and allowed a non-member to not only find the flier with the secure URL on it, but she somehow hacked our password too?”
He groaned. They were going from bad to worse. “Urbanski had put the password on the back for me.”
“Let me get this straight. You didn’t invite her. The law firm I pay an enormous amount of money to keep my private business private is responsible for a security breach resulting in an unauthorized intruder at a private event? Do I have that right?”
In that moment, Connor wanted nothing more than to take the wisp of a girl standing in front of him out onto the floor of Black Light and tie her to the nearest spanking bench and wail on her ass until she screamed out how very sorry she was. Charles Lambert’s son or not, if Gabby ended up losing him the Davidson account, he would get thrown out of the firm by sunrise.
They were close enough that he could smell her vanilla shampoo. She looked up, surprising him with a confession.
“It isn’t Connor’s fault. He was called out of his office. I went through the stuff on his desk while he was away. The black paper with just the URL and password intrigued me. I decided to take it and see what it was when I got home.”
“I see. That is very brave of you to admit, Miss Castle. I certainly hope you read the fine print on your consent form.”
Connor knew no one ever read the fine print, except the lawyer responsible for the fine print that is. He knew the Black Light contract like the back of his hand and knew the clause Davidson was referring to instantly.
He was torn. Part of him wanted to watch as Gabriella was disciplined by the club dungeon master for a security violation. That would certainly have her running from the club, never to return.
That was what he wanted, right?
So why did the thought of any other man but him touching so much as a hair on her head, let alone paddle her ass, make him see red?
“What was in the fine print?” she asked softly.
“Oh you don’t need to worry about it. Assuming you choose to remain in tonight’s event, I’ll be asking the dominant that rolls your name to deliver your added punishment for breaking club rules.”
“What? Punishment? I didn’t do anything wrong!”
Chase stepped closer. “We need to get started. Like in one minute. Unless I’ve missed something, she is
of age and of sound mind, so it is up to Miss Castle if she wishes to participate in tonight’s event or not. She’s signed the NDA. She’s signed the authorization form acknowledging the rules of the game. She’s chosen four hard limits. I have just one final question for Miss Castle. What is the house safeword you’ll use if you want a scene to stop?”
She looked up at Connor, nervous, but stubborn as hell. “Red.”
“This is bullshit.” He tried one last time to convince her. “You’re getting in over your head, Gabriella. Please, I know you’re just doing this to piss me off.”
She had the audacity to grin as she asked. “Is it working?”
“Oh, little girl, you’d just better hope the wheel doesn’t pair you up with me. Little sister or not, you’ve succeeded at one thing tonight.”
“Oh, and what’s that?”
He paused, making sure she was really paying attention. “I’m really looking forward to watching you get your sassy ass paddled like the brat you always act like.”
Recognizing he’d lost the battle, Connor turned, stalking past Cartwright and Davidson and whipping the velvet curtain to the side. Once he was back on the floor of the main club, he hesitated, unsure if he should turn left and leave or right and stay. As much as he suspected he’d regret it, he just couldn’t bring himself to leave her there.
He turned right, resigned to grit his way through the miserable night ahead. Like it or not, he felt responsible for her. He tried to tell himself it was only in a brotherly way, but the hard appendage making his tailored pants too tight called him a liar.
Chapter 3
She’d lost her mind. That was the only reason she could come up with for finding herself standing in the dwindling group of women, each one more excited than the next. One had even fainted while waiting.
Each time a new dominant’s number was called, Ella held her breath. She wasn’t sure what she dreaded more; hearing Connor’s name or her own called out. The only thing she knew for sure was that the worst-case scenario was having their names called out together.
Ella had done her homework before signing up. She’d spent dozens of hours online, soaking up as much as she could about the BDSM lifestyle before finally deciding to play Roulette. The fact that she’d gone through not one, but two, sets of batteries on her vibrator was testament to how turned on she’d been by what she’d seen and heard. She’d gotten little done for days at a time, holed up in her New York loft, ignoring calls from friends to stay home and obsess over this amazing new world she’d been oblivious to just one month before.
She’d studied. She’d researched. And tonight felt like her final exam. Only now that she was here, Gabriella was discovering how different it felt to be here in person, witnessing naked submissives kneeling at their master’s feet just inches away. Listening to the gagging of a blowjob in progress. Curious, it took all her self-control to keep from gawking at the sexiness surrounding her.
Another Dom. Another submissive. Chase Cartwright and his beautiful lover were already over half way through the pairings. She tried to distract herself by figuring the odds of her getting paired with Connor. She’d felt confident with her decision to stay when the odds were below ten percent. But now that she was down to a one in five chance of being paired with the man she’d always thought of as a big brother, her confidence was wavering.
The whole plan for tonight was to prove to Connor that she was grown up––a woman. Not some child who needed to be sheltered and reined in.
That would be infinitely easier from across the room where he could catch a glimpse of her in intense adult situations. She’d dressed provocatively, leaving no room for him to mistake her womanly body for that of a teenager. It would serve him right if he went home thinking of her as often as he’d appeared in her thoughts since reuniting in his office the month before.
But if they were paired together, her strategy would disintegrate. He’d have a front row seat to her inexperience––or worse––the unexpected sexual hunger her research had awakened. She would be mortified.
Worse, her whole scheme to remove his control over her would fall apart. As her Dom, Connor would wield complete control over her. She accepted that was how this dangerous game she’d willingly signed up for was played. Her independence would be trampled, and once they crossed that bridge, she knew there would be no going back.
She forced herself to pay attention as the next couple on the stage rolled water sports.
What the hell is that? Do they play in the hot tub I saw across the club?
The next couple was matched.
Knife Play.
What the hell had she been thinking? The words ‘knife’ and ‘play’ did not go together in her vocabulary. At least she’d been smart enough to put that one on her hard limits list.
As she watched another submissive climb the stairs to the stage to meet up with the scary looking hulk of a guy waiting for her, Gabriella fought down the urge to flee. She was now down to a one in three chance of being paired with Connor.
She couldn’t resist looking his direction. When their eyes met across the shrinking group of aggressive-looking men, Connor didn’t even try to pretend he wasn’t glaring. She tamped down the nervous giggle as she imagined him bursting into flames from the heat of his stare.
Within minutes, they were down to a fifty-fifty chance of being paired together. She clutched her purse, shifting back and forth from foot to foot in a nervous dance for one. Before coming, her biggest worry had been having the roulette wheel roll a kinky assignment that she would hate, but now that there was a very good possibility she’d be matched with Connor, her worries had multiplied exponentially. For the first time, she contemplated turning and running from the club.
But out of the corner of her eye, she monitored his continued glare in her direction. Instead of scaring her, the slight lift of his lips into a sly smile pissed her off.
He thinks this is funny. Well fuck him.
The only other woman submissive left to be paired moved closer to her, reaching out to grab Ella’s hand. She leaned in and whispered into Gabriella’s ear.
“It’s down to just the two of us. I was kinda hoping I’d get the tall, dark and handsome guy in the suit as my dom, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off of you since the spinning began. Is he your Dom?”
“No,” Gabriella quipped.
The sub’s face brightened at Ella’s assurance. “Then I sure as hell hope he rolls me. I wouldn’t mind groveling at his feet, if you know what I mean.”
“Not really,” she countered with more force than she intended. She wanted to inject that she had no intention of groveling at Connor Lambert’s feet, but an uncomfortable grain of doubt surfaced in her brain. Within seconds, she had to acknowledge a possessive flame burning deep in her upset tummy at the thought of watching the beautiful woman squeezing her hand submitting to Connor’s dominance.
She did her best to push the jealousy down. Nothing good would come of it.
When Chase called out ‘thirteen’, she had at least part of her answer. Connor had drawn the last number for the men, since number fifteen had to drop out.
Gabriella held her breath as the portly man standing next to him in the kilt stepped up to the roulette wheel. If only the last dom besides Connor was closer to her age... and remotely attractive. Her sudden revulsion at the idea of letting the balding man even touch her casually, let alone sexually, threw Gabriella into a tailspin. She didn’t know what to hope for now.
She licked her lips as she let her gaze dart around the room haphazardly. She felt all eyes on her and the tall sub squeezing her hand as she willed herself to remain calm.
Just before Chase Cartwright would announce the name the wheel had chosen, her gaze connected with Connor’s. His sexy five-o’clock shadow couldn’t hide the clenching of his jaw or the straight line of the scowl on his lips.
A low hum thumped in her ears by the time the name was announced. She missed the announcement, but the disa
ppointed cluck from the sub next to her just before the woman moved into motion to join her portly dom gave Ella the answer she was looking for.
Her math calculations were done.
She had a one-hundred percent chance of getting paired with Connor. The relief of not being matched with the unappealing older man was short lived when she felt, rather than saw, Connor already moving in her direction. Fight or flight reflexes took over, spinning her around on her too-high heels. There was a zero percent chance of her sticking around to join him on the stage.
She wasn’t prepared for the throng of spectators pressing around the stage to take in the festivities. Every path to the exit was blocked. The pounding in her ears grew stronger, making it hard to focus in her panic.
Gabriella knew she had to move. Her chance to escape without making a fool of herself was dwindling. She forced her feet forward towards a small opening in the crowd.
“Excuse me...” she pressed forward. “I’d like through, please.”
She barely made it a few feet before a man in a suit and tie stepped directly in front of her, blocking her forward movement.
“Where do you think you’re going, little lady? The party is that direction,” he nodded towards the stage behind her, his hands on his hips in an authoritative sort of way.
“I need to leave. Get out of my way... please.”
Warm arms tightened around her waist, pulling her back against a hard chest.
“Having second thoughts, Gabby? I thought you came ready to have some fun?” His lips were against her ear in an unexpected intimacy. She wiggled to no avail. His hands slid from her hips across her flat tummy, fully engulfing her in a snug hug meant to immobilize her.
“I’ve changed my mind. I want to go home now,” she argued.
She could feel his warm breath on her neck. So close she felt surrounded by him. His clean, masculine scent. His strong muscles. The low growl of frustration as she wiggled against him for her release.
