by Chloe Cox
Simone clasped one hand to her mouth as Olivia, somewhere off in the crowd, gasped.
“And I promise you, we will have that party, and a ceremony, and the whole thing, because I am not missing out on an opportunity to put you girls in ridiculous dresses. So I just wanted to say that, before…”
Charlene trailed off, her eyes finding Luke’s. For a second it looked like the two of them might forget about everyone else.
Then Luke turned to the crowd, and flashed another grin.
“We’re getting married. Here, now, with Gavin doing the official legal honors,” Luke said. “Because I couldn’t wait another damn minute.”
Holt almost burst out laughing.
“Gavin’s ordained?”
“Hush, it’s something you can do on the internet,” Simone said through her own teary smile. “Look at them.”
It was true. Luke and Charlene looked like they were living in some bubble of light, with everyone else on the outside. The whole club was rapt just watching them. You could have heard a pin drop on the grass, which was no small feat in a club where you’d normal hear the regular smack of a paddle on flesh instead.
Gavin and Olivia headed up to join them, and Charlene found Simone in the crowd and beckoned her and Holt on over. They all stood and laughed and smiled in a state of increasing awe as it became real. Luke and Charlene were doing it, right then, because there was no better time.
Holt watched Luke and Charlene promise their lives to each other, and then he looked down at Simone, and he knew.
The only question was when.
After the “I do”s it was like the pressure popped. The whole club exploded with applause and laughter and all kinds of happiness, and it didn’t take long for people to take that excitement to the rigs. Normally Holt liked to watch other people play. Tonight, though…
Simone caught him looking at her, and blushed.
“What?” she said.
Holt didn’t say anything at all. Just allowed himself to appreciate the body of the woman he loved. She was wearing a white summer dress that hugged her body and tempted him all over.
“You’re making me nervous,” she whispered.
He looked at the flush spreading across her chest, and her nipples tightening to little peaks beneath the thin white fabric of her dress.
“You’re not nervous,” he said. “You’re turned on.”
“That too,” she said. “You’re going to make me ruin this dress.”
“How’s that?”
Simone bumped him with her hip. “Because someone wouldn’t let me wear underwear again.”
Holt laughed, let his hands roam down her sides and around to her gorgeous ass, and pulled her in close.
“That dress was doomed the moment you put it on looking like that,” he said.
Holt dug his fingers into her ass with the slightest pressure and savored the hitch in Simone’s breath that was his reward. He looked down and locked eyes with the only sub he would ever want. God, he loved her. And he was going to make her his for the rest of their lives.
Hell, he might have done it right then if they hadn’t been interrupted.
“Holt,” came a male voice from far away. Irritated, Holt broke his gaze with Simone.
Cole.
If it had been anyone else…
“Hi, Cole,” Simone said, smiling genuinely. If there was one good thing about the way everything with Crennel went down, it was that Simone already approved of Cole. Holt wanted her to like his best friend. Family was family.
Cole smiled back at Simone, cracking his face in a way Holt didn’t normally see. It usually took Cole a while to warm up to anyone. He’d joined the club and he came to most of the events, but he was still dark and mysterious to most of the members. Which was real popular with all the unattached subs.
Holt smiled at the thought. He’d like to think his best friend wasn’t just a rolling stone with major trust issues. That maybe Cole was just smarter than he thought.
But watching Cole approach, with his reserved expression and tense shoulders, Holt knew he wasn’t wrong. There was something up with Cole. Something more than Holt knew.
“How’s the night?” he asked. “Find a sub yet?”
Cole raised an eyebrow. “I’ve found many subs,” he said. “I expect I’ll find many more.”
Holt shook his head at Simone, who rolled her eyes. “Some people never change.”
“I do have something to tell you,” Cole said.
The change in his face was immediate.
“About the case?” Holt asked.
Cole didn’t say anything. Just looked at Simone.
“If it’s not official business,” Holt said, “You can say anything you want in front of her.”
Simone nodded as Holt watched her, very, very carefully. She’d made strides. She didn’t tense up, didn’t run from things. Wasn’t trying to hide.
“I’d like to know,” she said. “Besides, I’ll just bug him until he tells me.”
Cole raised the eyebrow a second time. “You slacking off on discipline, Holt?”
Holt grabbed Simone even tighter, grinning. “No, I just have a creative sub. She knows what she’ll get for that.”
Simone blushed and looked away, trying to hide her smile.
“Ok, well, if you two are done…”
Cole cleared his throat. “Well, this is unofficial,” he said. “I haven’t made my report yet, and I don’t know how it will shake out. But I think Crennel had a silent partner.”
Holt heard the words, but he was watching Simone. A moment of tension as the information hit her, and then…she let go. She didn’t look afraid. Didn’t look overwhelmed. Simone just sighed, slightly, and for a moment there was a sadness.
Then she looked up with just one expression: utter determination.
“You’re going after the silent partner, I assume?” she said. Even. Calm.
Cole looked at them both and nodded gravely.
“I’ll get him,” he said.
Holt shook his head, and held Simone a little closer. “We’ll get him,” he corrected.
He was looking at Simone as he said it, as he usually did. They’d gotten to know each other so well that he could read her face. Her body.
But this time there was something new.
This time, when Holt said he was back on the hunt, a shadow crossed her face.
“Good,” Cole said. “I’ll keep you in the loop as things develop.”
Holt was still watching Simone, trying to figure out what he’d just seen. He didn’t even notice Cole move away, just followed Simone’s eyes as she watched him walk back to where a gaggle of subs gathered.
“We should set him up with someone,” Simone said, thoughtfully.
Right out of left field. Holt burst out laughing.
“Do you know why we call him Cole, and not his first name?” Holt said. “Because his heart is blacker than—”
“I get it,” Simone said. “But…why? He’s not like that.”
“Cole’s not one to get attached,” Holt explained.
“Mmmhmm,” Simone said.
“Trust me.”
Simone just smiled sweetly. “I don’t think you know him as well as you think you do,” she said.
“You really are angling for a spanking, aren’t you?” he said, and mentally added it to the playlist for the night when Simone’s cheeks blushed a deep red.
She looked up at him and bit her lip.
Holt held her eyes again. There were all kinds of things he wanted to do to her, all kinds of plans he wanted to make. But first he’d need to know what was behind that hesitation. That shadow.
“I hope I’m not interrupting?”
Holt exhaled, prepared to tell whoever it was to go jump in a lake, and turned to see someone he never thought he’d see at a Club Volare event.
Rich Carlinson.
US Attorney Rich Carlinson, in the Club Volare garden, while behind him a sub was getting
flogged into ecstasy and a Domme was tying up someone’s balls.
“What the hell?” Holt said.
Simone laughed. “Hi, Rich,” she said. “It’s lovely to see you, albeit maybe somewhat surprising?”
“Understandable,” Rich said, grinning under his gray eyebrows like a little boy who’d figured out a new way to mess with people. “But I did get an invitation. And I wanted to show Holt here that things are changing.”
“Changing how?” Holt was still thinking about Simone, the shadow, and all the things he wanted to do to her once he got that out of the way.
“Well, I’m retiring,” Rich said. “And I’m here to offer you a job.”
Simone had been trying all night to work up the courage to tell Holt. Or to figure out if she should tell Holt. It’s not like there was anything to tell, yet, unless you included Simone’s feelings, and Holt would definitely include those.
It was just…hard. She basically turned to jelly around him, anyway, just like she always had, just like she always would. And now she was jelly who was supposed to somehow find a spine.
Of course, the hard part wouldn’t be telling Holt. It would be saying the words out loud. To herself. For the first time.
Simone looked up at the man she loved more than she ever thought possible to love someone, and realized, nope. Telling him was definitely hard. The stakes were too high.
And then every time she worked up the courage, someone would come over to talk to them.
“A job?” Holt was saying. “I’ve already got a job.”
Rich Carlinson shook his head. “I’m not talking about a government job,” he said. “I’m not retiring to spend eight hours a day on the golf course. I’m starting my own private security firm. Investigations, that kind of thing. High end. Big cases. Bad guys worth going after. Contract work, in some cases.”
This had Simone’s attention. Carefully, she eyed Holt to see his reaction.
He was already shaking his head.
“Don’t say no yet,” Rich said. “Think about what it means first. Your talents are wasted on the work you do now. I know you do good where you are, but the world would be better if you were free to go after bigger fish, and you know it. And the money is good. Very, very good. Plus an equity stake, regular hours, benefits. The kinds of things a man who is thinking about settling down might find attractive.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Holt said, and Simone knew, the way he looked at her—glanced at her, for just a moment, the way he did when he was checking in on her—that he was thinking about what Cole had just told them. “But I have a job to finish here first.”
Well that sealed it. Simone took a deep breath. It was now or never.
“Actually, Rich,” she said. “Can you excuse us for a second? Just put a pin in that and hold on, all right?”
Rich looked between the two of them, smiled slyly, and got out of Dodge like the experienced man he was.
Holt looked down at her with amusement.
“You know you were already cruisin’ for a bruisin’,” he said. “What was that about?”
Simone flickered her eyes up, then down, and took a breath. Why was this still so hard?
Holt saw. “This is about what you’ve been worried about all night, isn’t it?” he said.
Simone actually stamped her foot.
“How did you figure that out?”
Holt grinned, and slid one hand up her arm until he could thread his hands into her hair the way she liked. Softly, with just a little sting, he gripped it in his hand, and tilted her face up to his.
“I always figure you out,” he said.
Simone laughed helplessly, and looked into Holt’s eyes. The same beautiful gray, the same flashes of light, the same tenderness mixed with domination. The same lust. The same love.
A love she knew would leave her limp, wet, and begging for more in about ten minutes, if she played her cards right.
But she still had to find the words…
“Little sub,” he murmured, and his other hand began to move. He found her hand with his and, just like he had in the gumbo shack, he slowly began to pull her hand behind her back until he pinned it there, just above the swell of her ass. His grip on her hair tightened, and he inhaled slowly, hungrily. Her body melted into his.
And her mind focused into a single point of light.
“Tell me,” he ordered.
“I’m late,” she said.
For the first time that Simone could remember, Holt blinked.
“Um, I don’t know yet,” she said, the words now tumbling out faster than she could control them. “I haven’t taken a test yet, because I wanted to tell you, and then I was like, shouldn’t I know what I’m going to tell you before I tell you? Like it could be absolutely nothing. It’s probably absolutely nothing. But then I realized…”
“I don’t want it to be nothing,” he said. His eyes went from wide to fierce, and his grip on her tightened. The love and protectiveness and desire in Holt’s eyes made Simone’s start to tear up.
Of course she was going to cry. Of course.
“Me neither,” she said.
Holt’s face broke out into a smile. It was contagious.
“You know I’m old fashioned in some ways,” he said.
“You?” Simone laughed, and ran her free hand up to his face. If he didn’t kiss her soon, she was going to do something that would definitely get her a spanking. “Name one way you’re old fashioned, Mr. Kinky McDomerson. Just one.”
“The marrying you kind of way,” Holt said.
Simone froze.
“For real? You’re not just saying that because—”
Holt silenced her with a kiss.
A long, slow, wet kiss that crowded out just about every other thought, feeling, or sensation in her body.
A kiss that reminded her she wanted this for the rest of her life.
“I told you not to talk like that about yourself,” Holt said when he finally released her. “You’ve been my future wife since the day I met you. Time to make that future the present.”
“You’re tired of waiting?” Simone teased him, when she could speak again. “Just like Luke?”
“Hell yeah,” Holt said. “The man has some good ideas, minivans aside.”
There was a beat. And then Holt seemed to realize he, too, might have to one day drive a minivan.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
She laughed.
“We can do an SUV if you promise me one thing,” Simone said, and paused. “Will you think about that job with Rich, and promise to let Cole go after whoever needs going after? I don’t want to think about Crennel, or his stupid club, or any of it. I just don’t want that to be my life anymore.”
Simone wasn’t sad, but somehow, as Holt touched her face with the pad of his thumb, she could feel the tears coming. She looked up.
“I don’t want it to be our lives,” she said.
“Then it won’t be,” Holt said. “Done. If you promise not to try to set Cole up with some poor sub, that is.”
Simone shook her head. “I can’t make that deal, Manning,” she said. “But I’m still going to hold you to your end, of course. Lady’s prerogative.”
Holt nodded, then appeared to give something some thought. When he looked back down, his eyes were dancing, and his face was stern.
“That is the third bratty thing you’ve said in the last twenty minutes,” Holt said.
Simone feigned innocence.
“Is it?” she said.
Holt growled. He took her mouth in another kiss, this one rougher, hungrier, while he pressed her body to his. When he pulled away, she could tell. She was in for it. She smiled and squirmed, just wanting to feel her thighs move against each other.
“Oh, you’re not getting off that easily,” Holt said. “I’m going to play with you for a long, long time before I let you come. And when you do, you’re not going to scream out my name.”
“I won’t?” she said, her
eyes already half-lidded, her nipples already hard.
“It’s your name now,” he said. “You are mine, Simone Manning. And I’m not going to let you forget it.”
Simone smiled as Holt kissed her one more time, and a warm light spread through her, a fizzing joy that spread to all the parts of her, even the parts she’d tried to hide. She had never been as happy as she was in that moment. And somehow, she knew it was only going to get better.
“Now get over to that spanking bench,” Holt whispered in her ear. “Bent over, ass up, legs spread. I’m going to spank some manners into you before this night is through.”
She was the luckiest woman in the whole damn world.
THE END
Thank you so much for sharing Simone and Holt’s story with me. This one was personal to me—I really needed to find a happy ending for Simone (and I want all the Simones out there to know happy endings exist!). And I had a ton of fun with the next Club Volare book, when Cole finally meets his match and finds out that his heart isn’t made of, well…coal. (I’ve been working on them at the same time, because I am a crazy writer, so it will be out soon!) If you want to know as soon as that book is ready, you can sign up for my new releases list here and I’ll shoot you an email as soon as it’s out. : )
And if you decide to leave a review for HER ONCE AND FUTURE DOM, shoot me an email at [email protected] with a link to the review on Amazon and I’ll add you to my reviewers list—which means I’ll send you a copy of the next book before it even comes out!
