by Chloe Cox
And it had bothered him until he’d decided what to do about it. It wasn’t much of a plan yet, but it was a start. And it would start tonight.
The only thing standing in his way was the frail old woman in the red clapboard house, pretending not to watch him from behind her old frayed curtains. Mrs. Greenfield had had a bad time, of late. And things were about to get even worse.
Holt reached down, reminded himself that there was right and wrong in the world and he was on the right side, and got out of the car.
“Uh. The new sign arrived,” Michelle said. By the expression on her face alone, Simone knew there was something new wrong with it.
And she did not care.
Not even a little bit.
“What’s wrong now? Random punctuation where there should be no punctuation?” she said, and couldn’t help but smile.
Michelle gave her that inquisitive puppy head tilt. “Kind of. I’m pretty sure they hired an intern?”
“You’re an intern, and yet you are a perfect angel baby.”
“You know what I mean.” Michelle blushed.
Simone laughed. “Just send it back. We’ll be ok.”
Michelle shrugged, and eyed her boss as she left the office. Simone knew it was probably confusing to see her so relaxed after the past few weeks, but she wasn’t about to explain what had brought about her change of heart.
“My ex and now current Dom spanked the stress right out of me” or “I know this guy with a magic cock” would probably both be considered inappropriate topics for any vanilla workplace.
But it was the truth. Somehow, Simone had forgotten how Holt could make her feel. Until she was dramatically, loudly reminded in the middle of the Club Volare dining room.
She hadn’t come that hard in her entire life. Not even when they were together. She’d never felt that kind of explosion of light surrounding her, like some sort of cloud that wrapped her up and protected her from the worst that life had to offer. It hadn’t gone away, either. She’d carried it with her, through the aftercare that had been sweet but distant enough not to scare her, through the night when she’d slept a deep, comforting sleep, through the dreams she’d had about Holt taking her again and again and again. She’d woken up with bruises on her ass and a smile on her face, and all had been right with the world.
Not even another stupid text from Crennel could mess that up. She’d deleted it, unread, and moved on with her day.
The truth was that Holt was a stronger drug than anything Simone had ever tried during her wildly misspent youth. And that did, truthfully, worry her a little bit. It had been easy to look into his eyes, when he was holding her afterward, and forget all the reasons they couldn’t be together. It had been even easier to remember the reasons she’d once thought she would marry him.
But she’d pulled through it. She’d gone home, and she’d stopped herself from thinking all those kinds of thoughts, and she’d reminded herself of the reality of their very different worlds.
Simone laughed as she packed herself up to head out to the club. She’d bet all the money she had that Alan Crennel hadn’t thought he was doing her a favor by sending her another threatening text. Being Dominated by Holt could even make that better.
Well, on the surface. It could make it better on the surface. Give it a purpose anyway. And that purpose was reminding her that no matter how it felt to be with Holt, it would not work. Mistakes like Alan Crennel didn’t happen to people like Holt. No matter how bright that spark inside her felt, no matter how much it expanded inside her, casting out the shadows—shadows like the ones that hid a monster like Crennel, who Simone had decided was all bark and no bite—well, it had its limits. Opposites might attract, but they didn’t actually fit together.
So she would enjoy what she could. And Holt’s domination gave her the strength to do that. She didn’t even care if that was some sort of circular logic; circles kept spinning, right?
Right.
The drive to the club felt like it took about a million years. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed being excited to go there, rather than worried she might run into her ex with someone else. Even if they still had a ton of work to do on the Love for Life event, and even if she still didn’t know how it was all going to come together, Simone was feeling confident.
And then she walked into Club Volare and saw Holt standing there in one of his damn suits, and she felt like jello.
She stood there on weak knees until the sheer force of him pulled her forward, her for-once-sensible shoes not making her any steadier on her feet. The thing about Holt was that he was so well proportioned that off-the-rack suits fit him perfectly, provided he got them in extra-large sizes. He would never notice something like that, but Simone always had. Hell, she was a girl who’d grown up wealthy and she was a freaking clothes horse, and she’d thought he bought off the rack and then got everything tailored when she first met him. It had confused the hell out of her.
Nope. He was just perfect under there. She only had a few seconds before he turned and noticed her, and then she’d be pretty much hypnotized by those mercurial gray eyes. So she took what time she had to appreciate him. Specifically, she took the time to imagine—to remember—what he looked like under there.
She hadn’t gotten to see him naked in the dining room. Which was just as well. She might not have a mind left at all if she had.
Simone had dreamed about that body. Not too bulky, like he spent all of his time lifting dumbbells in front of a mirror, but strong, the way men who worked for a living sometimes were. Tall, strong, effortlessly athletic, with a light dusting of fine dark hair that trailed down to that sexy-as-all-hell v muscle that had led her, so many times, down to his massive cock.
She had to pause there. She’d always thought of herself as sort of squeamish when it came to male parts, until Holt. She’d seen Holt and she got it. He was the only man she’d ever enjoyed sucking off. And oh, God, had she enjoyed it.
The thought had her licking her lips.
And that was Holt turned and saw her.
Simone couldn’t help it. She blushed. Ridiculous. But she always did wonder if he could literally see what she was thinking. If…
Her brain stopped. He was coming toward her. With those damn eyes.
“Good,” he grunted as he got close. His eyes flickered down. “You’re wearing the right shoes.”
A confused smile crept across Simone’s lips as she looked down. She was wearing flats. They were the kind of shoes practical for shuffling around her office all day, and for painting charity centerpieces, which had been the plan for this evening. Not good BDSM shoes. She was…kind of disappointed.
“Thanks?” she said. “I’ll just go hang up my—”
“No you won’t,” he said. Simply. Just stating the way things were. “We’re going to dinner.”
For a second, Simone paused. Dinner was a date type of thing. They were not dating.
Then she remembered what had happened the last time they went to “dinner.”
“Again?” she said, slightly more hopeful this time. If it would get her another go in the dining room, she’d wear any damn thing he told her to.
God, she hoped it was nothing at all.
“Different plans. Different place,” Holt said, once again reading her freaking mind. That amused smile crept into the corners of his mouth, and Simone huffed her frustration.
The smile disappeared.
“Behave yourself,” he said, and tweaked her right nipple so quickly she nearly squealed. “Or I won’t let you come all week. My car’s outside. Move.”
10
“Wait, this is your new truck?” Simone said. The disbelief in her voice made him smile.
“You got a problem with that?” he said mildly. He opened the passenger door and offered her his hand.
She stared at him. Then she stared at the truck.
“It’s so dirty,” she said.
“I do dirty things,” Holt said. “When
I’m not upholding the law.”
He only said it to see that blush on her cheeks. He was not disappointed.
“Get in the damn truck before I see how much redder I can make you,” he growled.
“That’s not actually the threat you think it is, Manning,” Simone said loftily as she let him help her into the cab. “Maybe you’re a little rusty.”
Holt shook his head and laughed. “I will not be baited, woman.”
Then he looked at her long legs disappearing into a skirt that he planned to ruin later on.
“Doesn’t mean I’m gonna forget, either,” he said, and closed the door.
They were quiet on the way to the restaurant. Companionable. Every time he looked sideways at her she had that small little smile on her face, the one he’d missed so damn much.
Even so, it was different.
It was all just a little bit different.
He focused on the road. He wasn’t one to dwell on emotions. Never had been. They came and went, and things were either right or wrong. Maybe that was why he could feel something start to bubble up, like in a pot of good gumbo. Or maybe that was just because he was hungry.
“Is this where you’re taking me?” Simone asked, her eyes tracking the little place called the Gumbo Shack as Holt pulled into the clearing that served as a parking lot. He brought the truck around to the employees’ area in back, and stopped.
Holt just smiled and got out of the truck.
He’d never taken anyone here before. Never thought about it. But now that he had, he realized it hadn’t felt right, taking Simone here, before. She was part of a different world then. This was a place where things were clear to him, simple. Simone hadn’t fit.
Well, not anymore.
He opened the door for her, and as he did he slid easily into Dom mode. Not that it ever went away, but he knew when to turn the volume up when it was needed. Which was now. This was his plan, as far as he had one. Take her somewhere new, somewhere that rattled her. Get her talking.
Because at the club, Simone was both comfortable and uncomfortable. She’d know everyone there, and that meant she wouldn’t be vulnerable. Not really. Her defenses were automatic. Polished. Practiced. So much so she didn’t even know they were there.
Here she was going to have to work for it.
But there was still that feeling bubbling up. He ignored it. The important thing was right in front of him.
“Out of the truck,” he commanded.
“Ok, but where are we?” she said, taking his hand and stepping out of his muddy truck like a damn debutante. “A gumbo shack?”
“The Gumbo Shack,” he corrected.
The place hadn’t changed, and never would. Just a shack out in the bayou, a little place across the lake and maybe just ten minutes off Pontchartrain Drive that was still about a million miles away from everything. You had to know it was there. And people who knew food knew it was there.
He led her up the creaky, weather-beaten wooden slats that formed a path to the old house-turned-restaurant. They passed a couple taking out their early-bird dinner, nodded and said hi. The man was smart enough not to look too hard at a woman like Simone in front of his wife—or in front of Holt—but you could see the question in his eyes.
“Holt,” she said softly as he held open the door for her.
“Simone.”
“This is not a date,” she said, looking around at the few sparse, rickety tables and chairs in the main room. “Right?”
Holt ignored her in favor of the old grizzled man who’d appeared at the half-wall that separated the kitchen from the indoor dining area, arms folded over the ledge. No, it wasn’t a date. And that still pissed him off.
“Two of the regular, Beaux,” he said.
Beaux nodded, giving only a passing glance to Simone. From Beaux, that was a lot.
Simone was staring hard at him now.
“Outside,” he said.
“This is not a date,” she repeated.
Holt put his hand on the small of her back, the jolt of the charge that always existed between them providing a counterargument, and led her out to the partially covered wooden veranda overlooking the water. It was what he called a swamp view. Beaux kept the Christmas lights hanging from the rafters in all seasons.
They were alone, this early. He knew they would be. He pulled out an old wicker-bound chair, and looked at her.
She sat down.
Only then did he answer her.
“No, it’s not a date,” he said. “You think I’d take a woman I was dating to a place like this?”
Just as he said it, Beaux appeared with two steaming bowls of the best stuff Holt had ever tasted. Simone was blushing, probably from embarrassment.
Holt grinned. “No offense, Beaux,” he said.
The older man just shook his head and grinned back.
“No offense taken,” he said, setting Simone’s bowl down with the care that Beaux judged a lady deserved. Holt’s was sloppier. “This is where you take a woman who’s already been dumb enough to marry you.”
Simone’s blush deepened, and Holt couldn’t help it. His cock twitched.
This damn woman. He had to focus.
Then she looked at him, with those big blue eyes, and gave him an evil little smile.
“It would be just like you to forget to ask,” she said.
Holt laughed. “You’re not helping, Beaux,” he called out.
“Good!” the old man shouted over his shoulder.
“So what is this?” she said.
“Friendship gumbo,” he said.
Now it was her turn to laugh. It felt easy, the two of them like this.
“Friendship gumbo?” she said. “Is this some sort of formal ritual?”
She’d relaxed, a bit.
Perfect.
Holt looked at her, hard. He looked at her as her Dom, and he waited until the force of his stare penetrated those big blue eyes and filled her up all the way down to her toes.
“You can’t be my sub if we can’t be friends,” he said. “Friendly, at least. You can make up all kinds of rules about our arrangement, but that one doesn’t change. You will tell me the things I need to know to be a safe Dom.”
Simone blinked. Maybe it wasn’t fair, pushing her sub buttons like that. But life wasn’t fair. And he wasn’t going to take chances with Simone. Not again.
“I know,” she said, finally. She looked down at her gumbo, untouched. “It’s just…I know the other thing doesn’t work, either.”
The other thing. She meant being in love. Being his woman, not just his sub. She didn’t think that worked.
Holt stared at her for a long time, but she didn’t look up.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
She did. She always would.
“I took you here because I know there’s something going on with you,” he said. “And you’re not going to talk about it at the club. You don’t have to share your whole world with me or whatever you call it, but I damn well need to know if something is putting you in danger. That’s not negotiable. I’m trying to be nice about this. But you know ‘nice’ isn’t my natural state.”
They locked eyes for so long, Holt didn’t realize he was gripping the table hard enough to leave his knuckles white. The next thing that came out of his mouth did so on its own.
He said, “I won’t see you get hurt again.”
For a second, Simone almost believed she saw…
She almost believed she saw what she had wanted to see, all those months ago. Concern. Understanding. Love, even. It was enough to make her want to run to him, for that split second. To tell him about Crennel. To get some kind of comfort.
But she didn’t really know what she saw. Holt wasn’t her boyfriend. And that had been his choice. He’d made it really clear that he didn’t want to be with her that way. Whatever she’d seen in his eyes, just now, when he talked about seeing her get hurt—that had been her Dom talking.
A Dom who expect
ed his sub to still be a total freaking mess.
“I can take care of myself,” she said, as coldly as she could manage in the warm, wet bayou air. “That’s kind of the point.”
Holt was unfazed. It was like trying to hurt a brick wall: you just ended up with a bruised toe.
“No one can take care of themselves all of the time,” he said.
“Well you seem to do ok,” she shot back.
This time Holt sat back, still watching her, but with his eyes hard. She’d forgotten that he didn’t have any family to speak of, outside the club. She hadn’t meant it that way, but it didn’t matter now. She’d said it.
“I’m stressed about work,” she said finally, her eyes finding something fascinating in the untouched gumbo in front of her. “The club is important, and it’s my first big client, and it’s my chance to show everybody that I’m not an irredeemable screw-up, and it’s just…not going as well as I thought it would. That’s all.”
It wasn’t a lie, technically. Crennel was a big part of the reason things weren’t going as well as they could, even if Simone refused to allow him to take up more space in her head than was absolutely necessary. She had finally nailed down a date and time to give that stupid style reporter, Cave Johnson, a tour of the club, but Simone had a sixth sense about these things, the same way she used to have a sixth sense about boys (present company excluded). And Cave Johnson was definitely going to try to screw her somehow.
But she would handle it. Because that’s what she did now. She handled things.
It mattered that she did this on her own.
“You’re not an irredeemable screw-up,” Holt said, his deep voice carrying right through her thoughts even though he’d been quiet. “And you will stop talking about yourself that way. Understood?”
That last word sent a shiver down her spine. Damn him. He was watching her, leaning back in the shadows, his eyes still glittering. She couldn’t help but look at the way the strength of his body came through his white button-down. The bit of hair visible under his collar, where he’d loosened his tie. The five o’clock shadow starting to darken his jaw.
