by Chloe Cox
They’d started the poker game already. Luke, Holt, Connor, and Damon, playing four-handed around Connor’s mother’s old kitchen table, poker chips stacked up and spilled out. It looked good.
“Nobody’s seen this man for three days,” Luke went on, starting the deal. “We were about to call search and rescue.”
“Lost in a sub,” Damon grinned. “Thought you didn’t do that anymore.”
“Watch it,” Gavin said.
Damon raised his eyebrow over his beer as he took a swig. The rest waited. What he’d said was true. And it was true that he was supposed to let everyone think they were in love.
But that still hit too close to home.
“Retracted,” Damon said, hands up.
“He’s just sore because he knows he’s about to get his ass kicked,” Luke said, smiling again.
“I hate to disappoint, but this isn’t entirely a social call,” Gavin said.
“Have a beer,” Luke said, and grinned. “Connor’s mother taught you better manners than that.”
Connor glared and threw some chips in the pot.
Gavin caught the beer Holt tossed him. He’d forgotten what it was like, to be in a room full of people who’d known you a long time. Who knew the worst things about you and your past, and didn’t care.
“Glad you’re back, Gavin. What happened, you get bored out there?”
“Hell yes,” Gavin said.
They laughed, but it was true. Gambling was gambling, with cards or with equity deals, and money had always just been a way to keep score. But Gavin was long past the age when he needed to keep score to know he’d won, and all those fancy, polished boardrooms in Palo Alto and San Francisco had started to seem hollow. Same with the BDSM scene out there. No one had ever made him look more than once.
“I came back for the club,” Gavin said.
“You cut it close,” Damon said, folding. “We’re almost DOA and I would freaking love a proper place to play with all the subs around here. No offense to your mother’s kitchen, Connor.”
Damon pushed in his cards, grinning.
“Dude,” Connor said. “Phrasing.”
“I meant what I said.” Damon laughed as he ducked a balled up napkin.
Only Holt was serious. He looked like Gavin felt—aware of an imminent danger.
“What are you doing about Delavigne?” Holt asked.
The mood changed.
“We leave Delavigne out of it,” Gavin said.
Holt snorted. “How long are you going to protect that—”
“Hard line,” Gavin said.
Damon shook his head, leaned back. “Then you sure your presence is helping all that much?”
“I’ll handle him,” Gavin said. In a twisted way, he was the only person alive who understood the man. “I need you to tell me about this man Crennel. Says he’s starting his own club.”
For a second the only sound was the shuffle of cards. Then Holt looked at Damon, who looked at Connor.
And Luke said, “Only if you promise not to lose your damn mind and get us all arrested.”
“Olivia! You sure you don’t want in on this?”
Olivia smiled, shaking her head, and backed away slowly. The Club Volare kitchen looked nothing like…like, well, a sex club kitchen. Instead it was covered in flour and sugar and little bits of chocolate while the rain pattered against the windows. And it was full of…
Really nice people.
But like, a lot of really nice people. Apparently there was some event? Blue had them all over for some club-related thing, and while normally Olivia would love to meet a bunch of new people, right now…
She was still struggling to figure out how to phrase the whole submission-not-a-relationship thing to herself, and she needed to get that straight if she was going to know when her life ended and the performance as Gavin’s new girlfriend began. Which was why she obviously needed to call Charlene.
So she was looking for privacy. There was no way she could go back up to the attic. This was the first time she’d ventured out after apparently falling through an orgasm-induced rip in the fabric of the universe—she still couldn’t believe it had been three days—in which she’d given up complete control of her body, in which she’d been his to command, to play with, to tease. It had just been a blur of sensation and orgasms, and the kind of half-dead but weirdly honest conversations about nothing you have when you can’t raise your head off the pillow. Even if they had slept in separate beds every night.
And now she couldn’t hang out in that attic without basically going into heat, which did not for an appropriate conversation make.
She hustled her way back up the big, sweeping staircase and went hunting for a private room. That was one thing the club had a lot of. She picked a random door, turned her phone on for the first time in three days, and ducked inside.
Dark. The pale blue of her phone booting up was the only light. She slid her hand along the wall, looking for the light switch, when her phone practically vibrated itself out of her hand.
About seventeen million messages. Again. Olivia sighed. Really, the first person she should call was her agent, or her brother, or, God forbid, her father, and the fact that she hadn’t and didn’t even feel particularly bad about that anymore was…part of what was weird. Because it wasn’t weird, it just felt natural, like part of this little D/s-Gavin Colson-sex god bubble she’d made for herself…
“Crap.”
Olivia stared down at her phone in the darkness. Most of those messages actually were from her agent. And the last one read, “Emergency. Call me.”
“How bad?” Gavin said.
“It’s not great,” Connor said.
“He’s only ‘teaching’ newbies who don’t know any better,” Damon said. “Doesn’t care about safety at all. He’s a textbook abuser masquerading as a Dom.”
“We get the word out as best we can,” Luke said, finally putting down his cards. No one cared about the game anymore. “But like Blue said, the best thing to do is to get Club Volare up and running. Give people a good place to go, bleed him of members, and then try to shut him down.”
The tension wound through Gavin’s body like a snake, squeezing his heart. This was his fault, in a way. If it wasn’t for him, Daniel Delavigne wouldn’t care about Club Volare one way or another, the club would be up and running, and they could deal with Crennel. And if there had been a place like Club Volare all those years ago…
“This is my mess,” Gavin said. “I’ll clean it up.”
Luke shook his head.
“Due respect, Gavin, it’s all our business when we got someone teaching people that safe words are for…” he leaned back, trying to remember the word. “What’d he call ‘em? That’s right. ‘Amateurs.’”
“Did that happen?” Gavin said, quietly.
They nodded.
Gavin closed his eyes. There was a kind of anger and pain inside him that could only be awakened by the idea of people abusing safe words.
It hit him like a goddamn freight train: a flashback, to Olivia, calling yellow. She trusted him, and then she did what she promised she’d do. And he’d trusted her back.
But that was dangerous.
“Crennel’s looking for partners,” Connor said.
Gavin stood up, his chair screeching against the wooden floor.
“I don’t care who he knows. I won’t abide a man like Crennel.”
“You’re not getting it,” Damon said. “It could happen if Delavigne wants it to happen.”
They stared at each other.
“So I gotta ask, Gavin,” Damon said. “Does Delavigne hate all BDSM folks, or just you?”
Gavin honestly didn’t know.
“I’ve been wondering about that myself,” Holt said, still sitting at the table. He turned his palms up, like he had something to show them.
They waited.
“Reason I ask is I’ve got a new sub, too,” he said. “And you’re not gonna like it.”
“She’s gonna stay at the club for a bit,” Holt went on. “In fact, she’s there right now.”
Silence.
Gavin broke it.
“Who?” he asked.
“What do you mean I’m going to lose that Critical Vengeance role?” Olivia whispered into her phone.
She’d never found the light switch, and was standing inside a dark room with only the light from the hall creeping in through the door she kept open with her foot. And instead it was like her ears weren’t working.
“I mean it’s already lost, and they’re looking at other people,” Sonny said. “I mean there are fifty million girls just like you who would kill for a role in a big-budget action feature that might become a freaking franchise. I mean you had that locked down, and you had a payday coming, and now because of all this bullshit neither of us has a payday coming. Unless you do something about it.”
She’d been counting on that money. Her family had been counting on that money. She had to call her brother. And her father…
“I did do something about it,” she said.
“What? I can’t hear you. Where the fuck are you, a church? Why are you whispering?”
Olivia tried to take a big, calming breath. Why was she whispering?
“I said I did do something about it,” she said. “I did what you said. I made an…arrangement with someone.”
“What kind of arrangement?” Sonny said.
Olivia opened her mouth, then closed it again. The sliver of light from the door seemed unnaturally bright. Why was it so hard for her to tell her agent about Gavin?
Well…tell him what, exactly, about Gavin? The idea of sharing anything so personal as, “Oh hey, I’m actually a sexual submissive and now I’ve hooked up with this Dom who is amazing but unattainable but he is willing to pretend to be in love with me for my career so it’s all good,” with Sonny, of all people, made her nauseous.
“Olivia. What the hell is going on?”
“I did what you told me,” she whispered. “I asked someone to pretend to be my boyfriend.”
She felt like a moron even saying it.
“Who?”
“Gavin Colson.”
“What’s he been in?”
“Nothing. He’s not an actor. He’s a venture capitalist. And…” She closed her eyes. “And he’s one of the owners of Club Volare New Orleans.”
Olivia didn’t know what she expected, but it definitely wasn’t outright laughter.
“I told you to be more relatable!” Sonny said. “Oh man, are you really doing this? Is this—?”
“No!” Olivia said. “It’s an arrangement. It’s totally fake.”
And then she remembered why she’d been whispering.
Nobody was supposed to know it wasn’t real.
Olivia felt along the wall for the light switch again, and this time she found it. She flicked it on, totally irrationally scared that she’d find people sitting in the dark, listening in on all of her lies. Of course there was no one there.
But there was a whole bunch more equipment.
More shining black leather, glinting metal. Ropes, from the ceiling. And a chandelier.
With cuffs on it.
“Olivia?”
“I’m here.”
“So you’re pretending to be his slave or whatever? Ok, ok, ok, I can work with that. I’m the best, of course I can work with that,” Sonny was saying. “You know what we do? We make it a big production. We make it a fucking coming out party, just like your ex. Hell, see if you can get him to show up. We are in show business, Liv, we will make this a fucking show.”
Olivia wanted to scream. She was supposed to come out about being a sub while pretending to not really be a sub while actually being a sub. Or something.
But at least for the time being, only she and Gavin knew what was real. At least she had everyone fooled. At least she could go on playing a role. Somehow everything felt safer when she knew she could play a role.
“I can count on this guy to be a professional, right?” Sonny was saying. “He knows the deal?”
“Don’t worry,” Olivia said. “He’s in on it. You can count on Gavin to hold up his end.”
“Fantastic. Figure out some kind of event and get me the details. Go dramatic. I’ll work on selling you as a new brand, I’ll figure it out. And Jesus Christ, Liv. Don’t screw it up by getting caught.”
That was exactly what Olivia was thinking as she hung up the phone, turned around, and saw Simone Delavigne standing in the now open doorway with her arms crossed and her eyebrow raised.
21
Olivia stood there with her mouth open and just stared at Simone for what felt like a full minute.
Had she heard?
Literally the one thing Olivia and Gavin had to do was keep this whole arrangement a secret, and Olivia had just used the word ‘fake’ about seventeen billion times with Simone Delavigne standing right behind her.
Simone raised one artfully sculpted eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she said.
Olivia racked her brain. They’d never even been introduced. Then she swallowed, and stepped forward with her hand out.
“I’m Olivia,” she said.
Simone looked at her hand, then at Olivia.
“I know,” Simone said, loudly. “Believe me, I know.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Olivia said.
Which had the advantage of being absolutely, completely true.
Simone glared.
“Do you have any idea what you did the other day?”
“No?” Olivia said.
The two women stared at each other. Well, Simone stared, and hard. Olivia just tried to move as little possible. The other woman seemed to be studying her, and Olivia had no idea what she was looking for.
Finally Simone rolled her eyes and sighed.
“You really don’t, do you?” she said.
“Believe me, at this moment, I am confident that I don’t know anything about anything,” Olivia said. “But I’m sorry if I did something to upset you. I really mean that,” she added softly.
“You were there,” Simone said. “All I saw was you storming your way into that stupid secret vote, and then my father’s face when he left that same stupid secret vote. Do you have any idea what you did?”
Olivia cringed. She tried to remember what she’d said in that meeting, but she’d been so hopped up on adrenaline that she’d just sort of…winged it. She didn’t remember the words so much as the feelings, and the feelings had been powerful. She was pretty sure she’d said Club Volare actually saved lives.
But she still didn’t know anything about Daniel Delavigne, or the past, or why he hated Gavin enough to kill the club. Especially when his daughter was apparently…involved.
“Did you ask your father?” Olivia said.
Simone looked at her. “It’s not the kind of conversation you want to have with your dad.”
Well, you couldn’t argue with that. Olivia had been avoiding that line of thought, herself. Turns out, now that this whole submission thing was real? The idea of telling other people about it was terrifying.
I’m twisting in the wind here. Simone looked away in disgust, and Olivia couldn’t totally blame her. She watched the other woman look over the room, the huge padded leather cross, the chandelier, and saw a mirror of her own reactions. She wanted to find some way to tell her she understood, sort of, that they had that in common, that…
Oh my God, I am an idiot.
They obviously did have a whole lot in common.
Olivia had been trying so hard to juggle all of her responsibilities—supporting her family, saving the family business, saving the club, avoiding anything stupid and selfish like falling in love—that she hadn’t really stopped to think about whether or not her hair-brained schemes might actually hurt anyone else. She’d figured that whatever Gavin didn’t want to talk about, it was at least in the p
ast.
But maybe Gavin’s past was standing right in front of her. Maybe his past was Simone Delavigne. Maybe Simone was the one he was protecting.
And maybe Olivia wasn’t the only one who could get hurt by all of this.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said suddenly. “I never meant…”
“The point is I’ve never seen my father like this,” Simone interrupted. She walked past Olivia, towards the St. Andrew’s cross on the far wall. “He’s like…deranged. I don’t think he’ll stop at anything to make sure Gavin leaves and never comes back, and he definitely doesn’t want this club anywhere in the state. And he won’t tell me anything anymore, because he knows I ratted him out about that secret vote.”
She trailed one hand down the padded leather of the cross, and turned to look at Olivia.
“But I know he’s planning something,” she said. Her voice hardened again. “Because of you.”
“What can I do?”
“I have no earthly idea,” Simone said. “But don’t screw this up. You cannot let my father kill this club.”
Before she could stop herself Olivia said, “What about Gavin?”
Instant regret.
She’d promised Gavin she wouldn’t pry into his past, sort of, and she kept her promises. But she was flying blind. Olivia had no idea how to help anybody, including herself, without knowing literally anything.
Which meant that somehow, some way, she needed to get Gavin Colson to trust her.
“Don’t answer that,” Olivia said, softly.
“Wasn’t going to,” Simone said. “You can ask Gavin yourself.”
And then, as if just thinking about him was enough to get him to appear, she heard him.
“Ask me what?”
Olivia turned. Only one man’s voice rumbled down her spine like that.
Gavin Colson.
Simone Delavigne. Staying at Volare. As Holt’s new sub.
Gavin had told Olivia to stay out of his past, and now part of that past was staying under the same damn roof. Holt had said that Simone was sober, but Gavin was skeptical of sudden conversions.
He’d raced back to the club and then he’d taken the stairs two at a time.
