by Nadia Aidan
Play by Play
Nadia Aidan
Book 1 in the Red Velvet Rope series.
Katherine Higgins is the no-nonsense owner of trendy Las Vegas casino Taboo, and she has a secret. Every night her fantasies are filled with visions of her bodyguard dominating her. Seth Kyoto is Katherine’s no-nonsense bodyguard, and he too has a secret—every night his fantasies are filled with visions of his boss submitting to him.
From the moment Katherine hired Seth, their strong personalities clashed. Underneath their mutual animosity is a simmering attraction neither wants to acknowledge, but they can no longer ignore. And when someone threatens Katherine’s life, Seth is forced to stay close to her, closer than either is comfortable with. While they’re stuck together, two secrets will be revealed and every one of their fantasies fulfilled.
But they each hold one last secret that, if it comes to light, could ultimately tear them apart.
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
www.ellorascave.com
Play by Play
ISBN 9781419931581
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Play by Play Copyright © 2011 Nadia Aidan
Edited by Jillian Bell
Cover art by Syneca
Electronic book publication February 2011
The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Play by Play
Nadia Aidan
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Armani: GA Modefine S.A. Corporation
Cheshire Cat: Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Coke: The Coca-Cola Company Corporation
Jacuzzi: Jacuzzi Inc.
UNLV: University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Versace: Gianni Versace S.p.A.
Prologue
Katherine took her private elevator down three floors to Joshua’s office, where the hotel security department was located. She figured Seth would be on the ground level, talking to the security personnel before he headed home for the day. Seth was nothing if not predictable, which was good for her. They’d gotten into a bit of an argument earlier. He wanted her to stop using her private elevator—said it wasn’t secure enough because if anyone got hold of her keycard they would automatically have access. She’d reminded him that she’d never lost her keycard, and since it was pinned to her at all times, there was little chance that she ever would.
Typical Seth. He’d been stubborn on this particular point. And typical Katherine, she’d told him to relax, then for good measure, she’d gotten on the very elevator he didn’t want her to use, bringing a quick end to their conversation.
The metal doors slid open and she swiped her card to open the door to the staff hallway. She heard the sound of muffled voices as she neared Joshua’s office so she slowed her steps. The door was slightly ajar and she would have knocked softly on the doorjamb, announcing her presence, but instead, she stilled when she recognized Seth’s voice.
Great. Just great. She didn’t want to deal with him right now. She turned to leave but the words she heard next stopped her in her tracks.
“I’ll meet you at the Velvet Rope in an hour,” Seth said.
Katherine’s eyes widened. The Velvet Rope. As in the Red Velvet Rope.
The heavy thud of footsteps drawing closer quickly reminded her of where she was and she raced back down the hallway, hurriedly swiping her keycard again as she pushed inside the small room to get back on her elevator.
Her heart thumped wildly and she leaned against the metal walls to steady herself.
What were Seth—and apparently Joshua—doing at the Red Velvet Rope? No, take that back. She got why Joshua would go, but Seth? Mr. Rigid-Unshakeable-Seemingly-Asexual Seth? She smiled. Maybe he wasn’t as asexual as she’d thought.
And an hour later she was on her way to find out.
She wore a form-fitting red dress with a matching red mask, high heels and an auburn wig. Sexy seductress was so not her style, but she figured she needed to play the role if she wanted to fit in at the notorious club.
Though she knew this wasn’t real for her, that nothing would happen while she was there, she was nervous. She clutched a glass of whisky and Coke in her hand, her second one, the rich liquor slowly easing her anxious jitters.
The Red Velvet Rope was an upscale and very exclusive BDSM club in Las Vegas, which Katherine had learned about when she met one of the owners a couple of years back at a convention for entrepreneurial women. She’d been intrigued when the female owner told her about the club’s policy and Katherine had promised she’d visit, though she never had. Women and couples were allowed in if they could afford the five thousand cover. Men always had to be invited by a woman unless they were members—and the fee for members, male or female, was not cheap. Seth hadn’t mentioned meeting any women there, which meant only one thing. Her number one and two in security were Doms, or possibly subs, though she immediately decided it was the former. She didn’t know much about the BDSM lifestyle, but she knew the basics, and she just couldn’t imagine Joshua, and certainly not Seth, taking orders from anyone.
The place was a maze of hallways and darkened corridors, with a faint crimson haze of light filling the shadowy spaces. The décor was subtle, simple, and as she weaved her way through the club’s many corridors, she fell under the spell of the forbidden place, her body tingling with a thrill of anticipation.
There were at least a dozen rooms per hallway, all filled with beds and other contraptions that she’d only seen at sex toy shops. Several of the rooms were empty, but some were not, and what she saw in them—men and women dressed in leather, bound in chains—made her heart race. Sex was everywhere—the smell, the breathy sounds—and her entire body pulsed with lust.
Her breath quickened and she took a sip of her drink, trying to ease the flurry of butterflies in her stomach. What was wrong with her? She acted as if she’d never seen people having sex before. But this was different—totally beyond anything she’d ever known. For the life of her, she wasn’t even sure what she was doing there. If Seth or Joshua caught her, how would she explain? Hell—what if she caught them? What would she do then? She thought about it for a second.
She should leave—right now.
But then she turned the corner and the choice was taken out of her hands.
She saw him. Dressed in a gray suit, his shoulder-length hair pulled back into a ponytail. Seth never wore suits to work—never. But the way he wore that suit, she decided she would have to make them mandatory. God, he was handsome, and different. An air of authority clung to him that was somehow different f
rom his commanding presence at work. At work, he was composed but more subdued.
But here, he walked around as if he owned the place, the very personification of raw, masculine power.
She followed him, turning down a hall when he turned down a hall, being sure to stay close to the walls, hidden within the shadows. She quickened her steps when he turned another corner, but drew up short when she saw nothing and no one down the hall.
Damn it. She’d lost him. She wandered around the club searching for him, and was just about to give up and leave a half hour later when she found him.
Like all the rest, the entire door was made of glass so she could see everything inside the bedroom, and what she saw made her nipples harden to almost painful buds and her pussy slick with wet heat.
Joshua was stretched out on the floor, his chiseled body on display as a beautiful, voluptuous brunette rode his cock. Her arms were bound behind her back, her eyes shielded by a dark blindfold. Above her stood Seth. Even though Katherine couldn’t see his face, the tapestry of tattoos across his naked body revealed his identity. He held the woman’s head between his hands as he pumped his hips back and forth, working his cock in and out of her mouth.
Katherine gasped, a combination of shock and need surging through her. She ached to touch herself as the woman pleasured the two men, and in turn they pleasured her. Katherine couldn’t stop herself. She leaned closer to the glass as she slipped her hand beneath her dress to push past her thong and stroke her clit.
The woman moaned around Seth’s pulsing shaft as Joshua bounced her up and down on his rod, her heavy breasts jiggling with each powerful thrust. Skin slapped against sweaty skin, their moans and groans of pleasure causing a fresh gush of wetness to seep from Katherine’s slit.
She stroked her clit harder, faster, in rhythm with the thrusting cocks of the men she thought she knew, but clearly didn’t know so well. Joshua pushed up inside the woman one final time, his fingers digging into the supple flesh at her hips. Katherine watched him, his face twisted in pleasurable agony, a harsh grunt tumbling past his lips as he came.
She fingered her clit faster. She was almost there—almost to that place of bliss. Seth surged forward to shove his cock down the woman’s throat one last time, the muscles in his ass clenched tight. In the distance she heard his ragged groan and imagined his eyes were shut tight, his lips parted slightly as he spilled his seed into the woman’s warm, waiting mouth. It was probably a beautiful sight, and heat roiled through her belly at the image. She gasped in pleasure, a throaty, breathy sound as a pulsing, throbbing warmth started at her core and a wave of pleasure crashed upon her, taking her, tossing her until she was shuddering, the juices of her climax trickling from her body.
As the pleasurable waves of her orgasm receded, she slowly came back to the present. She hadn’t realized she’d closed her eyes until she opened them and her gaze clashed with his.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” Seth grinned down at her.
She gasped and backed away, startled that she hadn’t heard him open the door and that she’d been caught.
“Wait, where are you going? I was going to ask you to join us.”
She shook her head as she continued to step away and he frowned as he watched her retreat.
“If you didn’t want to join us, then why did you follow me?” His eyes narrowed and a dark sensual emotion swirled in their depths that made her shiver. “Am I mistaken? I was certain you were a sub.”
Her eyes widened. She didn’t know what she was more shocked by—that he’d known she was following him the entire time, or that he thought she was a submissive. “I-I have to go,” she mumbled under her breath so he wouldn’t recognize her voice, or at least, hoping he wouldn’t.
She turned to run. He called for her to wait, but she didn’t stop. In seconds she was tearing out of the club’s private garage in her car, breathing a sigh of relief at how close she’d come, but thankful she hadn’t been caught.
Chapter One
Three Months Later
“Seth—I need you—now.”
Seth stood just outside his boss’s office but he didn’t move a muscle, except one. His lips quirked into a tiny smile at Katherine’s choice of phrase. Those words—he’d often imagined them spilling from her lips just before he buried his cock deep inside her, so deep she would never be able to forget he was there. But to hear her belting them out in a shrill voice tinged with fury did nothing for him.
He remained rooted to his spot, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. The only clue he gave that he’d even heard her words was the slight arching of his brow when she stormed out of her office, her eyes hurling violent daggers at him.
“You wanted something, boss lady?”
“Didn’t you hear me calling you?” she snapped.
He remained stoic, knowing it pissed her off. “I heard you, but it sounded more like you were calling for a dog than a human being. I figured you weren’t talking to me.”
Katherine’s nostrils flared and she bit down on her tongue to keep from letting out a string of expletives. Seth Kyoto was a thorn in her side. She wanted to wrap her fingers around his neck and strangle him, right after she wrapped her body around his and fucked him until he was completely out of her system and she didn’t burn with this obsessive need that she seemed to have for him.
She took in a deep breath, tempering her anger. He’d been in her employ for two years and she knew this was not how to deal with Seth. Unlike most of her employees, who cowed at her commands and jumped when she barked, Seth was his own man. She didn’t intimidate him, she didn’t scare him. If she wanted something from him, she had to be…nice…polite—two adjectives that did not describe her. Katherine lived and worked in a man’s world as the CEO of Taboo, one of the largest casinos in Las Vegas. She often had to be tough as nails—not soft, and definitely not nice.
She gritted her teeth.
“Seth, could you come take a look at something with me, please?”
His lips twitched at the saccharine tone of her voice, but he didn’t smile. Instead he nodded curtly as he pushed his brawny frame past her into her office.
Ugh, she really wanted to strangle him now. He was just so—so arrogant. So unflappable. Nothing she did, nothing she said ever seemed to ruffle him, and she hated that he never lost control, that he was always so composed. He rankled her, rattled her, but she couldn’t fire him.
Before he’d come on board as her bodyguard/head of security/sometimes assistant, she’d been losing money to one con artist after another. But when Seth showed up all that had changed.
A whiz with numbers, his reserved demeanor and quiet intensity were somehow at odds with his full body tattoos. Still, there was no denying Seth was smart, tough and intimidating as hell—the perfect right-hand man. Now if only they could get along.
She turned at Seth’s sharp intake of breath, and knew he now saw the note on her desk.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded, his tiger-gold eyes blazing with anger as he read the note with the words Die Bitch painted in vivid red.
“That’s what I was just about to ask you. It came in the mail,” she said, pointing at the envelope. “No name, obviously no return address.”
“I’ll get Aaron on the phone to see if we can get some prints.”
Aaron was their contact in the Las Vegas Police Department and both Seth and Katherine considered him a friend. But even with Aaron’s expertise and resources, she heard the weariness in Seth’s voice and knew he was thinking the same thing she was.
“You don’t think Aaron will find any prints, do you?’
Seth shook his head. “He hasn’t before, but it’s still worth a try.” With a long sigh, he shoved a hand through his shoulder-length black mane. Tension radiated from his rigid form.
“I don’t like this,” he said finally. “First your car, then your doorstep, now your office. Whoever this asshole is, he’s making a point that he can get close to you if he w
ants.”
Katherine didn’t like it either, but what could she do? Each time he left a note inside an envelope with Die Bitch written in what appeared to be red polish.
She’d gotten her share of death threats before, mostly from people who’d been banned from her casino for cheating. The threats bothered her but they didn’t rattle her, not like these did. A note here and there was common, but these were systematic, and from the same person. Seth was right. Whoever this was wanted to let her know he could get into her private space and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop him.
She sighed. She didn’t like this any more than Seth did but she wasn’t going to lose a good night’s sleep over it. That was Seth’s job. Her job was to run a multimillion-dollar casino. She had a long day full of meetings tomorrow, so for now, she was going to let Seth do what he did best while she got some much-needed rest.
“Well, let me know if Aaron finds anything—” She grabbed her purse from her desk.
“Where are you going?”
Katherine had no choice but to stop when Seth blocked her path. “I’m going home.” She looked him up and down with her icy stare as if to say “Get out of my way”. But as usual, he ignored her.
“Fine. Just let me make a few calls and get Joshua up here and then I’ll follow you home.”
She frowned. Joshua was the assistant director of security at Taboo—Seth’s right-hand man. She knew why Seth wanted to talk to him, she just didn’t know why she had to wait for him. She was a big girl. She didn’t need an escort and she said as much.
“This is not a joke, Katherine. This is the third note in as many weeks. I need you to take this seriously.”
Katherine. He only called her by her first name when he was really pissed at her. Most of the time it was boss lady, sometimes Miss Higgins, but never Katherine.
