by Tia Siren
So beautiful. So fragile. So ready to mine.
Seeing her brings out the fiercest dom in me.
I want to touch her, own her, make her scream my name.
She’s mine to protect and to take.
I'll save her.
And destroy her brother’s killer.
Chapter 1
Luke
Blush wasn’t a new BDSM club on the Los Angeles BDSM scene, but I only found out about it a couple weeks ago. I hadn’t been looking for a place to fuck and be fucked until then.
When I walked through the main entrance, I was searched for weapons—maybe the BDSM scene could get dirtier than it needed to be—and I was offered a mask to hide my identity if I wanted to.
I passed on the offer. I had nothing to hide. I wasn’t here to jump into anything straight away. I wanted to see what this place was all about.
The club had deep red walls that were dripping with the promise of sex. Black accents finished off the general look with an air of danger, and everywhere, huddles of people were getting down and dirty with different plays. I was surrounded by women wearing black leather and straps. Stations with restraints lined the sides of the club, some of them occupied, some of them open.
There were naked bodies everywhere. I was embarrassed at first, but other men stood ogling, watching the play scenes take place. Men had women harnessed to walls or on their knees in front of them. I spotted some submissive men with dominant women as well.
Bodies were put on garish display with no modesty and no shame for the owners, no reservations for the submissives.
I was getting hard, and lust unfurled in my gut, making me hornier than I usually was. New ground tended to have that effect on me. I tugged at my belt buckle, trying to get comfortable with my dick hard and eager in my pants. I walked to the bar and ordered a drink to take the edge off and to have something to do with my hands that didn’t involve beating my meat.
“First night here, honey?” the bartender asked me when I ordered a whiskey. She was voluptuous and comfortable in her own skin. Black leather wrapped around her body, pushing up her tits, cinching her wide hips, and showing off her tiny waist.
“Is it that obvious?” I asked.
She nodded, pouring my drink. “The new ones always look like they’re not sure if they should avert their eyes or not. Trust me, everyone here wants you to look.”
I looked around me again. I guessed she was right. No one came to a place like this if they didn’t want to be on display.
I watched a dominant male and his submissive female. She was on her knees in front of him, her hands bound behind her back with black nylon rope. He held her by the head and fucked her mouth. She gagged on his hammering cock, and it was a serious turn-on for me.
That was what I wanted: the dominance, the control, a submissive who was willing to give herself over to me completely.
I paid for my drink and leaned on the bar on one elbow, watching the show. I’d always been rougher, more demanding in bed. I’d always fantasized about being a dom to someone, to take control and have a woman offer herself to do with her as I pleased.
Lately, the BDSM community in LA had been growing. Books and movies had made the idea less taboo and it wasn’t so strange anymore.
“Are you looking for someone to bend to your will or someone to make you beg, big boy?” a woman said next to me.
I was a big boy for sure, but the come-on didn’t do it for me. She leaned into me, her tits pushing up against my arm. I looked her up and down.
Her makeup was striking. Dark eyes and wine-red lips lifted her features, and she wore a black dress that was so tight it looked painted on. She looked like sex on a stick, and in any other club I would have pulled her over and had my way with her. There were plenty women willing to do the dirty in a club bathroom and not think twice about what that would do to their image.
But this was different. I was testing out the field, seeing what was out there. I had no intention of jumping headlong into something the first night.
“Tonight I’m just watching, sweetheart,” I said to her.
She pouted. “You’re sure I can’t change your mind?” She pressed herself against me.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to get into anything tonight. Sure, I’d had my fair share of fucking around, and I was hard and ready to fuck if I wanted to. But if I was going to be a dominant, I wanted to make sure that the submissive I found would be worth my time. It wasn’t the kind of thing you did with a stranger, no matter how eager she was for you to dominate her.
“Have it your way,” she said. “You seem like the type that likes control, and I’ve never been one to concede control too easily.”
I watched her sashay away and attach herself to the next man.
I’d lost my virginity at a young age, and if you were a man, the world was your playground. Women had to behave. When they fucked around, they were slut shamed, but men could rack up the numbers and everyone would envy them. I’d been one of those guys. My life was defined by alcohol, danger, and sex, and it worked for me.
But it only stayed interesting for so long, and it was time for a change.
My phone beeped with a message, and I pulled it out of my pocket.
Give me a call as soon as you can.
It was from Dalton. He was my best friend. We’d grown up together. I’d been so close to him for so long, I felt like a member of the family. When he needed me, I was there for him because he would do the same for me. He was like a brother to me. We’d been together since kindergarten, and even though I didn’t always agree with his choices—I would have gotten out of the MC club straight away when I found out what they were up to—he was still my boy and I would have his back.
And I knew he would do the same for me no matter what. Dalton was as loyal as they came.
Dalton Starr was one of the Samurai, a motorcycle club that constantly fought for power in the streets of LA. The Samurai were an ugly bunch of men with no respect for common decency and a terrible habit of ignoring the law. The Samurai had more enemies than friends, and often enough, one of them ended up with a bullet in his skull. But for every bullet they took, they dished out ten more, and they were feared. Their power was enough that rival clubs wanted it. There was a constant play for power.
It sounded tiring if you asked me, but my view of the whole thing was why I’d never followed Dalton down that road. I was too realistic. Common sense had done a number on me, and risking my life for stupid things just didn’t seem worth my time. There were bigger and better things to focus on.
Dalton had fallen into that group of people early on in his life, and no matter how much I had told him he was making a mistake, he’d pledged his allegiance to them. As the years passed, I’d seen how he’d fallen into their traps, their claws digging deeper into his skin. Once you were in as deep as Dalton was, there was no turning back, no getting out.
I threw back the last of my drink and nodded at the woman behind the bar before leaving the club. I had to talk to Dalton. He needed me.
I was parked two blocks away and walked the dark road quickly. This wasn’t the best part of town. Blush had made a hole for itself in an area that was still up and coming, closer to the industrial area of LA than it wanted to be. The alleys were dark and quiet, and the night hummed with the energy that came with potential danger.
Not that I was scared. I was six-two and three hundred pounds, and it was pure muscle. I didn’t train for no reason. Whoever faced off with me usually thought twice after they saw me.
When I reached my car, I got in and dialed Dalton’s number. It took him so long to answer, I thought I would get his voice mail, but he answered finally and sounded out of breath.
“You doing okay?” I asked him.
He swallowed through his hard breathing. “Thanks for getting back to me, Luke,” he said.
“What’s going on?”
He swallowed again. “I think someone is after me.”
“Who?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell you much. I don’t want to get you involved in this. Besides, you know what they do to rats. I just…I think I talked to the wrong people, Luke. I think I fucked up.”
“Slow down, bro. Tell me what happened.”
“I can’t tell you,” he said. “It’s not safe. But if something happens to me—”
“We’re not going to let anything happen to you, Dalton,” I said, interrupting him. “Tell me what’s going on and we’ll fix it.”
“This is too big,” Dalton said. “You can’t fix this. If something happens to me, I need you to do something for me.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to talk like this with you.”
“Luke, please,” Dalton said. His voice sounded strange, like he’d already accepted his fate. “Just listen to me.”
I sighed. “Okay,” I said. “What do you need?”
Dalton took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, as if this was hard for him to speak about. Like it was something he didn’t want to say.
“I need you to take care of my family,” he said. “If something happens to me, you know Mom’s going to blame herself, and I don’t want that. The life I chose isn’t her fault.”
I nodded. “I’ll be there for them. They’re my family, too. You know that.”
“I know. But I need you to take care of Alexa specifically. She’s going to need you to get through it. You know how innocent she is, and this life…it can’t catch up to them, okay? Promise me.”
“Dalton, I—”
“Promise me!” he cried. I’d never heard him this frantic before. Whatever was wrong was very real, and he was sure something might happen to him.
“I promise, bro. I’ll take care of them. I’ll make sure nothing happens to them.”
Dalton breathed out as if he were relieved, as if he could finally relax about it.
“Thank you, Luke. You’re my best friend, like a brother to me. I can’t tell you how much you mean to me. I value your friendship more than you know.”
“Don’t talk like this,” I said. “We’ll figure this out, and later I’ll beat you up for scaring the shit out of me. Okay?”
Dalton chuckled. “You’ll lose, you know. I’ll kick your ass.”
I laughed. “The way you did when we were at Jerry’s?”
“I was drunk and you know it. You’re never going to let that go, are you?”
We laughed together, the tension gone. It was just the two of us again, talking, joking, and fucking around with each other. By the time I hung up, Dalton sounded like himself again. Thank God. He’d really scared me.
If something happened to him, I didn’t know what I would do. Of course I would always take care of his family, but in his request, he’d forgotten that if he were gone, I would need someone to take care of me, too.
But that was a moot point because we would fix this.
Nothing was going to happen to him.
Chapter 2
Alexa
The rain soaked me through to the bone. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be warm. I was so cold I felt numb. Or maybe that was the pain. Thick gray clouds covered the sky like a blanket that would never let in the sun again, and a persistent rain fell.
How fitting. The sky was crying. The drops on my cheeks hid my tears, and I watched with my mom and my dad as they lowered Dalton’s coffin into the ground.
I couldn’t feel. There was a hole in my chest where my heart had been. The spot where Dalton would have stood next to my dad was vacant, empty. But if it were filled, if Dalton were there, we wouldn’t be standing in the cemetery. We would be home where we all belonged.
Not that any of that would matter now. My parents had divorced as soon as Dalton and I had moved out, so us being here, together, didn’t mean all that much. The happy memories as a family had been a lie. Now how close Dalton and I used to be had been ripped away, too.
I couldn’t hold back. A sob racked my chest. My mom squeezed my hand, and a thick arm came around my shoulder.
Luke was suddenly next to me, and I looked up at him. His eyes were a light blue, and they were sympathetic. I leaned into him, crying. His body heat radiated through his wet clothes, and it was the first warmth I’d felt since they’d told us that Dalton had been murdered.
None of his biker friends were here. A member of their gang was dead and they didn’t give a shit. And it was their fault, too. If Dalton hadn’t been in so deep, he might still be alive.
The police had told us that he’d been killed in a mugging, that someone had taken his life in exchange for his money and phone. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was the life he’d chosen that had demanded too much of him. Dalton had laid down his life for those people, and they couldn’t even make it to his fucking funeral.
I cried harder, and Luke pulled me closer to him still. His body was rock hard and overpowering. With him, I felt safe.
He was the only one of Dalton’s friends who had arrived. Luke had been a part of our family for as long as I could remember. He’d been there at my mom’s place the night they’d come to tell us that my brother had been killed.
The priest said a few words about Dalton. That he’d been a good kid, that he’d had a full life ahead of him, and that he’d been ripped away too soon. It was so generic. They could have used that on anyone who died.
Nothing about it had been personal, and everything else was just as bad. The simple coffin, the headstone that would arrive in the next two weeks, the plot at Rosedale Cemetery—it was all so nondescript, so impersonal.
It was killing me.
I turned away, twisting myself out of Luke’s arms, and walked away from them all. I left the huddle of people, all dressed in black with their somber faces and sympathetic eyes, behind. My parents, even though they were divorced, still had each other in some way. The rest of them hadn’t lost a piece of their very souls. But me? I’d lost my brother. What had been left of our family had been ripped apart, and there was nothing that could take away the ache in my body, the pain that was so sharp I couldn’t breathe.
I dropped to my knees, the wet grass soaking into my stockings, and screamed.
Four hours later, I was at my mom’s place where we had hosted all the funeral goers. All that remained were the remnants of the little reception we’d had, the black clothes we wore and the aching hole that everyone tried to ignore. I sighed and looked at the pile of dishes, the small plates with smears of mayonnaise and the glasses with lipstick stains on the rims.
“Let me,” Luke said when I started running hot water in the sink.
He came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. They were large and warm. When I moved, he stepped in front of the sink. He’d taken off his blazer, and the collared shirt he wore stretched across his muscles, barely keeping together at the seams. I hadn’t seen him in a suit more than twice.
He cleaned up well.
“You don’t have to play house, Luke,” I said.
“I want to. Why don’t you pack away those leftover biscuits?” He pointed to the counter.
I nodded and opened a cabinet to find a plastic container. Luke was being practical, doing all the things we weren’t able to think about in our grief.
“Luke, you don’t have to wash dishes,” my mom said, walking in with a tray.
“I want to. You just relax, Mom. I’ve got this.”
Luke had called my mom “Mom” since he and Dalton were seven. He’d called my dad “Dad” too, until they’d gotten divorced and he’d just become Carl.
My mom smiled. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
She put her hand on his arm, smiling at him. Her eyes welled up with tears, and I bit back my own, trying to swallow the lump in my throat.
“Dalton used to kick up such a fuss about dishes,” she said. “If he saw you now, he would never let you hear the end of it.”
Luke chuckled. “Nothing wrong with a man doing dishes.”
“You should tell Carl,” my mom said.
“Who’s telling me what?” my dad asked, coming into the kitchen with a vase of flowers. He put them on the counter.
“Luke’s saying there’s nothing wrong with a man doing dishes.”
My dad shook his head. “I don’t agree.”
For a moment everything was normal. My parents were bantering—or were they bickering?—and Luke was adding his bit, jabbing in just the right places to keep them going. This was what it was always like at home. Except Dalton should have been here, too, and he and Luke should have been joking with each other.
That wasn’t going to happen again.
I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I couldn’t stand here and play happy family when this was the saddest day of my life. I turned around, abandoning the biscuits, and fled.
The rain was relentless. I sat on the porch and looked out at the sheets of it, wishing I could let out all the pain, all the sorrow. Tears rolled down my cheeks, but no matter how much I cried, Dalton was gone and this pain was going to be permanent.
Why the hell had Dalton joined that club in the first place? He had been such a goddamned idiot. And now? Now my family had been ripped apart, and every happy memory we’d had would be forever tainted by the fact that Dalton was gone.
I covered my face with my hands. The pain in my chest was so bad, I could barely breathe around it. It was always said that the person who died was in a better place. It was the people staying behind who suffered the most. And it wasn’t fair. Dalton had known he’d been playing with fire, and now we were paying the price for that. We had to pick up the pieces of a life that he’d been taken from too soon.
“Alexa,” Luke said, appearing at the front door, “are you okay?”
I looked up at him and shook my head. “I’m not,” I said. “Dalton’s dead, Luke.”
He nodded and came to sit down next to me.
“I know,” he said.
“I’m so angry.” My voice caught in my throat, and I swallowed hard. “I’m so angry with him for checking out so soon. What the hell did he think he was doing?”
