Free and Bound

by Chloe Cox

  And he was still touching her.

  With his free hand he pushed the front of her dress aside, exposing her bra. He slipped his fingers between the bridge of her bra and her warm skin, just between her breasts, and she stopped breathing entirely.

  Gavin pulled her bra out of the front of her dress, in the middle of a party, in front of everyone and their brother. He left her with her breasts spilling out of her dress, and her pulse pounding between her legs. When she spoke, it sounded like someone else’s voice.

  “Green,” she whispered.

  Gavin made that sound again, a rumbling sound, and this time he was faster. He gathered the fabric of her dress up in his big hands and reached under it and pulled her panties down over her ass in one smooth motion.

  “Give them to me,” he said.

  Olivia shimmied, acutely aware of the crowds of people on either side of them. She wondered if they were all watching now.

  She wondered how far he would take this.

  But she knew she would do it. As she tugged her freaking panties off her heel and put them in Gavin’s hand, she absolutely knew she would do whatever he told her to do next. She couldn’t give up the way he was making her feel if her life depended on it.

  He was still watching her.

  “That’ll do,” he said finally. “For now.”

  Olivia closed her eyes. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath. She had never felt so…focused, in her life. So reduced to a single sensation, a single awareness. It had felt so…light.

  There was no way she was going to be able to do this while pretending to be someone else. She was just going to have to lean in to how she truly felt and use it. Which meant that Gavin had, technically speaking, been right.

  No way in hell she was going to tell him that.

  “You happy?” she said.

  “How are you feeling?” he said.

  Yeah. She needed to get this done tonight, because otherwise she didn’t know if she’d be able to tear herself away from this man who wasn’t hers. And she couldn’t face herself if she let her family down.

  “Fantastic,” she said. “Now where is Aaron Black?”

  12

  As Olivia made her way across the party, it felt like she was walking underwater. Every nerve in her body screamed at her with every step she took away from Gavin. She was damn near incandescent, the tension building inside her every time her dress rubbed against her now bare nipples. Just the awareness of Gavin at her back, watching her…

  Get the job done, Liv. Get this guy to vote right, and get out.

  Aaron Black was tall, with a deep tan and the short, cropped hair of a fighter. He was standing at the bar at the far end of the great room, getting talked at by a tall, thin man who looked kind of like a whippet. Talked at, but not necessarily talked with—Olivia knew the distinction well. It was what happened when the performance was more important than the person.

  Her instincts kicked in—from years of practice, Olivia was better than most at sensing trouble, and those alarm bells were definitely ringing. In fact, they were ringing almost as loud as they did when she was around Gavin.

  And that snapped her out of her Gavin-induced trance. Olivia beelined to the bar, just in time to hear the whippet-faced guy sneer, “I promise you, this place will be closed within the week.”

  “You’re wrong,” Olivia heard herself say. “You’re wrong, and you’re rude.”

  As insults went it wasn’t exactly her best, but it was accurate. The guy was snacking on an entire tray of appetizers while he trashed the club that provided them.

  Aaron Black turned around, but that’s not what caught her attention. The whippet-faced guy’s expression had gone from angry to…amused.

  “Look who it is,” Whippet-face said. “I told you this place is a freak show,” he went on, talking to Aaron Black again, but letting his eyes linger on Olivia.

  “Mr. Black,” she said. “Do you think we could talk for a moment?”

  Black finished his drink and carefully placed the heavy glass back on a coaster. And then he turned his ice-blue eyes on Olivia.

  He said, “Do you usually interrupt people in mid-conversation?”

  “Not as a rule,” she said. “But I make exceptions when they’re being lied to, I guess.”

  He looked at her.

  “Call me Aaron,” he said finally. “And I saw you with Gavin Colson. I know you’re involved with him. I don’t count you as an objective party, Miss Cress, and I don’t like that you’ve been sent over here to do God knows what on that man’s behalf.”

  Olivia did her best to smile.

  “Nobody needed to send me, Mr. Black. I have my own ideas about why this club is important.”

  The whippet-faced man didn’t say anything, but she could feel his eyes on her, leaving a trail of grossness all over her body. If this was who Aaron Black counted as a friend, she wasn’t sure Aaron Black was a man that Volare should have much to do with.

  “All right,” Black said. “I’m sure you do. But given what I know about Gavin Colson, I’m not inclined to support a group that would be led by him and his judgment.”

  Something twinged in Olivia’s chest.

  “What do you know about Gavin Colson?”

  Aaron Black shook his head, and pushed his empty drink towards the bartender with a hefty tip wedged under it.

  “Ma’am, I advise you to have an honest conversation with your Dom,” he said.

  Olivia wasn’t sure which part of this annoyed her more—the implication that Gavin was hiding something from her, or the way she felt when she heard the words “ma’am” and “your Dom.”

  “Anyhow, my position stands until I see evidence that that man has changed. And so far,” Aaron Black said, looking over Olivia’s shoulder, “it seems that he hasn’t.”

  Olivia turned. She knew she had no right to feel anything, really. No right to be more than just vaguely irritated that Gavin wasn’t playing the role of devoted Dom boyfriend quite right.

  But somehow the sight of Gavin with that same blonde from Charlene’s Cook For Your Life event made her just a little bit queasy.

  “So are the rumors true?” Simone said.

  She had one hand on her hip, and she was wearing a long, black coat over a short black dress that looked like it was meant to be messed with. She’d come to Club Volare, she’d walked in without an invite, and she’d gone right for Gavin.

  Gavin couldn’t believe it.

  He’d been watching Olivia talk with Aaron Black and whoever the hell that other man was, and he hadn’t liked the body language he’d seen. He’d been about to go over there, annoyed that he’d let her go off on her own to begin with, but now he had a situation to handle.

  “What rumors?” he said.

  “Her,” she said, gesturing towards Olivia. “It’s real, then? You and her?”

  “What do you want, Simone?” he said.

  “You know what I want,” she said.

  There was a long pause.

  Gavin tried to read her, but it was tough. It had been ten years, she was a stranger to him now, and she wasn’t sober. All they had in common was the past.

  “I want in,” she finally said, looking away.

  “You want to be a member here?”

  “Yes,” she said, and crossed her arms.

  Gavin frowned. Simone Delavigne was the last person he wanted hanging around the club, especially now. But even with all that time and distance, he could still see how desperate she was. And Lord knew not much could make her come to him for anything.

  “C’mon, Gavin,” she said. “Just let me in.”

  “Depends. Are you drunk?”

  “How dare—”

  “Intoxication and BDSM don’t mix safely. I won’t allow that in my club.”

  She said nothing, but her face broke a little. He hated to see that.

  “You can always come here, Simone,” he said, as gently as he could. “And you can always get help
here. But if you’re not sober, you’re not playing.”

  Simone wrapped her arms around herself, needing to think. Gavin let her. Instead he looked for Olivia—and couldn’t find her. There were too many people, thronging together in the middle of the damn room.

  “But I want to help you!” Simone blurted out.

  “What?” he said.

  “I know what my father is trying to do, and I want to help you,” she said.

  Gavin only half heard her. He’d finally found Olivia in the crowd, and he didn’t like what he saw.

  She was in trouble.

  As Aaron Black walked away, the whippet-faced man underwent what could only be described as a marked mood change. It was like the sun going behind a cloud, if the sun shot rays of creepiness and the cloud was made of angry…cloud.

  And now he was staring at her.

  She looked down at his wrist—his wristband had a red stripe.

  “Just…why? Why are you trashing the club?” she said. “Aren’t you a Dom? Shouldn’t you support this place?”

  And why does this bother me so much?

  The man laughed.

  “My name’s Alan Crennel, and I’m not about to help the competition, sweetheart.”

  Olivia forced a smile. “The ‘competition’?”

  “This ain’t the only club in town,” Crennel said, and smiled at her with his teeth, his forearm just an inch too close to hers on the bar. “Or it won’t be, when we get all our partners lined up.”

  Olivia connected the dots, and it still seemed stupid and mean.

  “So you’re trying to get Club Volare shut down?”

  “And then we’ll be the only club in town,” he said. “Olivia.”

  Her name sounded gross in Crennel’s mouth. It was the way he said it—the careful, deliberate enunciation, drawing out the tongue against the teeth. Olivia looked at him, edging closer to her, trying to box her in, and in a moment she clearly saw the difference between this man and Gavin. Crennel needed to be dominant, and he needed to remind everyone that he was dominant over something, constantly. Gavin just was a Dom. She wondered if Gavin was watching her now.

  She backed away.

  Crennel’s smile vanished.

  “Colson’s got you workin’. Maybe we should get Rio Redhawk to come do them tequila shooters he does down at our bar,” he said.

  It took a second for Olivia to process that. She was never prepared for people to be that deliberately mean. Rio Redhawk was Brandon’s most famous movie franchise—he played a mercenary, gun-slinging, hard-bitten Neanderthal-type who did tequila shooters after every kill or ‘conquest.’

  Olivia used to kind of like those movies, in a guilty pleasure kind of way.

  “How much you think that would cost us?” Crennel went on. “To get Brandon Greer down here? Aw, don’t play at being upset, sweetheart. I hear you made your money on that deal.”

  She took another step back. Somehow the closer Crennel got, the more everything else receded in the background.

  “Matter of fact, I’d like to know: is everything for sale, Olivia?” he said, and he looked her up and down. “The whole store, or just what’s in the display window?”

  “Go away, Mr. Crennel,” she said.

  “You can’t be too picky, darlin’, you have terrible taste in men,” Crennel said. “Now what’s your price?”

  He smiled that toothy smile.

  And he reached to touch her hand with one long finger that represented the last of many, many straws.

  “Go to hell,” Olivia said. She took Aaron Black’s abandoned glass full of melting ice and threw the contents in Crennel’s grinning face.

  Crennel spluttered and blinked. Then he grabbed her wrist, hard.

  And then a large hand grabbed Crennel.

  13

  Gavin.

  She wasn’t even surprised.

  Gavin’s big, weathered hand completely encircled Crennel’s wrist, and after a moment the smaller man winced. Nobody said anything. Nobody had to.

  The party came to a clattering halt.

  “Leave,” Gavin said into the silence.

  He let go, and Crennel backed away, muttering. He looked like he might have said something, anything to save face—except there were two other men in matching Club Volare vests behind them.

  Gavin watched Crennel walk away with the utter focus of a wild animal. Olivia could see his muscles moving under his white shirt, the bulk of them straining against some material that was clearly not designed to deal with a pissed-off Gavin Colson, and she half expected him to hulk out.

  And when Crennel looked back, however briefly, she could swear she heard Gavin growl.

  The sound reverberated inside her, and, for a second, she had to close her eyes. Why is that so unbelievably hot? Why does that make me want to just…?

  “Olivia.”

  She opened her eyes to find Gavin watching her. It was like a switch had been flipped: Gavin’s intense focus turned on her, and only her. His big body was angled so that she was out of sight of the crowd, even though the sounds of the party were starting back up behind him. His big hands hovered near her, not quite touching her.

  And his freckled-granite eyes watched her, and softened, just for a moment.

  “You keep swooping in,” she said, her voice mostly steady. “This is like the third time. I should start carrying a ‘Beware of Gavin’ sign.”

  “Are you ok?” he said.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You don’t have to answer now,” he said, still watching her, still not touching her. “Take a moment.”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  He looked at her, and then at her wrist—she’d been rubbing it absent-mindedly. It had hurt more than she thought.

  Gavin put his hand out and said, “Give me your hand.”

  Olivia blinked.

  “I bruise easily,” she said.

  Gavin’s grip tightened, just for a second. And then he looked up.

  The look in his eyes stopped her heart. She saw how easy it would be. She could fall for all of this, she could fall in way deep and way fast, she could go fully down the rabbit hole and just beg Gavin Colson to be her Dom. To teach her. She could see herself falling into a whole new life.

  And it took her a full second to remember that she couldn’t have that.

  Olivia pulled her hand away and faked a laugh.

  She said, “How many times are you going to threaten to clobber someone for me?”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “He was thinking about it,” Olivia said. “But probably mostly because I threw all that ice in his face.”

  “I noticed that,” Gavin said. He kept looking at her, over and over, checking to see if she was injured. His utter calm was soothing, but she kept expecting him to touch her again, and each glance ratcheted up her anticipation another notch. It was torture.

  Ever since she’d pulled her hand away, it had been torture.

  “What did he do?” Gavin asked.

  Olivia nodded. Right. She wasn’t going to feel ashamed, no matter what the situation.

  She met Gavin’s eye.

  “He asked me my price.”

  Gavin’s jaw clenched.

  “He’s banned,” he said, roughly. “And I’m going to make sure every club on the coast knows what kind of man he is. I don’t like guys like that.”

  “No,” she said. “You don’t, do you?”

  They stared at each other. A bomb could have gone off, it could have rained fire, freaking ice giants could have invaded, and she wouldn’t have noticed.

  “Do you remember what I told you earlier?” he said.

  “That I should come get you if anyone bothered me,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Something shifted in his voice. His eyes. Somehow he was bigger, more powerful, and his restraint more noticeable.

  “Answer me.”

  There were a lot of reasons. She didn’t
like asking for help. She didn’t think she should have to. She didn’t like that Gavin had told her to, if anybody got to her. But when she spoke, she went with the biggest reason of all.

  She said, “Because I wanted to see what you would do if I didn’t.”

  The words hung in the air between them, sparking, swirling. Olivia hadn’t realized it until she’d said it out loud, but it was true. She’d broken the one rule he’d given her for exactly one reason.

  “To provoke me,” he said.

  Olivia shrugged, and it felt like the most daring thing she’d ever done in her life, that time she climbed the water tower with a boy and a six-pack of beer included. Gavin exhaled slowly, and every hair on Olivia’s body stood up, her skin alive with pins and needles. The only thing that could push her higher is if he touched her.

  And then Gavin raised his heavy hand and slid it behind her neck, his calloused palm resting on the back of her neck, his thumb cradling her head. Slowly he tilted her head up towards his, and pinned her with his gaze.

  “I know what you’re playing at,” he said. “No more games. No more pretending.”

  “I told you not to treat—”

  “Quiet,” he said, and his tone thrilled her. Then he looked her up and down one last time.

  “You have your safe words,” he said.

  And then he pulled her by the back of her neck, pushed her, controlled her, toward the stage in the center of the room.

  Olivia was suddenly conscious of the hushed silence and the heavy pressure of all those eyes on her. All those people, watching with interest, who still needed to be convinced that Olivia and Gavin were serious. She’d completely forgotten that she was supposed to be playing a role.

  She wasn’t playing a role anymore. It was her body, responding. Her body, crying out for more.

  All she could think about was what Gavin would do next.

  With a look from Gavin, the jazz band in the corner started up again, but nobody turned away. They were still very much the center of attention as he led her up the shallow steps to the stage. It had been full of people, most of them dressed in very little black and lots of skin in a style Olivia had come to think of as kinky cabaret, and there were black wires and musical equipment and…other kinds of equipment, all in various stages of assembly. They’d been setting something up.