He could practically see the wheels in Taggart’s brain working, looking for a weakness he could exploit. “I wasn’t aware you and Ryan were that close. I know you had lost touch for a couple of years.”
Because Ryan had gotten into trouble and wouldn’t let anyone help him out until very recently. There were other reasons he and Ryan weren’t as close as they had been when they’d worked together. Ryan was married and already talking about kids. Ryan was going to a place that Keith was never going to go.
Never again.
He liked being married to his job. His job never told him he was inadequate. His job didn’t lie to him. His job wouldn’t die on him if he fucked up.
“We’re as close as I get to anyone, Taggart.” He wanted to play here. Sanctum was by far the best club in Dallas, but he wasn’t going to open his head and let Taggart play around in it. “Ryan has referred me for membership. If you’re not accepting anyone right now, I would prefer you told me now so I don’t waste my time.”
“Touchy. I didn’t say I wasn’t going to let you in on a provisional basis. I was only trying to get a feel for how close you are to Ryan. Sanctum is a place for my friends and family to play, to relax. Ryan has become a friend, so I’m willing to give you a test ride, but I want to see how you work with subs. We’re more on the play end of the lifestyle. What type of sub are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for a casual play partner. That’s all. This is how I relax.” He spent all his time at work, buying and selling companies, stocks, funding new ventures. It was high pressure and stress. He needed to blow off steam, and D/s was how he did it.
Though the first time he’d seen Ashley, he’d thought about what it would be like to have a woman living in his house again, knowing that she would be waiting for him at the end of every day.
“So you’re not looking for any kind of permanent relationship with a sub?”
“No. If you’re trying to pair me up with a sub, you should know that I don’t believe in marriage. I’m not that man. I want a casual relationship.” It was all he could handle. It was absolutely all he deserved.
Taggart slapped his hand on the desk, the sound echoing through the office. “Excellent. All my guys are mushy assholes. They’re all getting married and spitting out kids. It’s disgusting. We need some manly men around here.”
“Didn’t you recently get married?” Ryan had told him about the collaring ceremony the big boss had participated in with his wife a few months back. It had followed some kind of vow renewal.
A groan came out of Taggart’s mouth before he sipped his coffee. “Nope. I got married a long time ago. I was way stupider then. I got lucky because she died, but then she came back. What the hell am I supposed to do? The only reason I let her back in is she buys me lemon donuts.”
Keith was pretty sure the guy was fucking with him, but with Taggart, he couldn’t be certain. “Well, I’m not interested in getting married.”
“Good because once my guys got married, they handed their balls over to their subs, and now I have the distinct problem of needing a couple of Doms who are available as play partners. I expect to lose Jesse at any moment. All a sub will have to do is offer him a sandwich and he’ll be hers forever. Seriously, the kid can eat and he’s got attachment issues. He attaches to everyone, and we can’t get rid of the little fucker. We have five regular subs who like to play and struggle to find a Dom for the night. Simon can’t tie them all up and Damon won’t work with more than one at once. Claims he can’t pay them proper attention or some shit.”
“If you’re looking for someone to play with the regulars, why are you asking me about Ashley? She’s not a submissive, much less a regular.” Now that he really thought about it, Taggart wasn’t making a lick of sense. The couple of times he’d come in as Ryan’s guest, he’d watched her and she’d never left the bar. “I’ve never seen her play so why is she involved at all?”
What the hell would he do if he had to watch her with some damn Dom? He wouldn’t be able to look away if she was naked. He would stand there and stare at her like a Peeping Tom.
“Because Ashley is an employee and if I choose to take you on, you’ll spend the first six weeks playing with her and her alone. Until I’m certain you’re trustworthy, you’re not allowed to play with the club members. Ashley is a newbie. The rest of the regulars have been in the lifestyle for a while. I want to see how you train a new sub.”
Training Ashley? God, it had been a terrible idea when he thought it would be a single encounter, much less weeks and weeks of having her at his command. Yeah, that was very likely a horrible idea. If he trained her, she would be under his direction, available to him. He would be responsible for her behavior, for her discipline, for her pleasure. He would have to touch all that sweet, soft skin. That ridiculously vulnerable skin. Young skin. Yes, she was too fucking young for him. He would have to remind himself of that every single time he looked at her. He was on the slow slide to forty and she was twenty-freaking-five. There was a whole decade between them.
And she had a baby. She was a baby with a baby.
All very good reasons to not train her.
“It would be a completely up-front relationship,” Ian explained, his words continuing even as Keith’s brain exploded with all the reasons why he shouldn’t listen to Mephistopheles in leather. “You’ll sign a training contract with her. She understands that you wouldn’t have any kind of relationship with her outside of the club.”
He stopped his inner diatribe. “Ashley knows about this?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t be here asking you if Ashley hadn’t already agreed to it.” He slid a piece of paper across the desk. “She’s already signed the contract.”
Holy shit. Ashley Paxon had actually signed a goddamn BDSM contract, and there was his name sitting right alongside hers. There was no way she was expecting someone younger, fresher, less jaded. She was expecting him.
He stared down at her signature. Her handwriting was pretty and feminine, like the woman herself.
He scanned the verbiage, each word meaningful to his trained eye. Taggart knew how to write a contract, and Keith wondered if he’d gone to a professional for it. He would love to see some of his tight-assed colleagues dealing with a D/s contract.
In short, the contract gave him rights to train Ashley, but only on the grounds of the club. For the brief time that the contract was to run, he could see her off grounds if she needed him for anything, but there would be no sexual contact outside of the club. He got to the part of the contract that read This means no touchy touchy.
No. Taggart definitely wrote this himself. No one who had spent three years and a couple of hundred grand on law school would ever write that.
Of course, it also left sex open to them as long as they had it at Sanctum.
He could fuck Ashley and it would be all right because she wanted to explore. He could fuck her and then maybe his head would be on straight and he could stop thinking about her twenty-four seven. Maybe when they were done, he could fuck someone else.
He knew he needed a sexual outlet. He’d kept several submissives over the years, letting each one go after the terms of their contract were over. He’d never written a contract for more than a few months and he never, ever extended one. He often found them new Doms, and several had married the men he’d found for them.
It should have been just another day in his life, but when he’d seen Ashley at Ryan’s house, he’d been hit with a bolt of lust like nothing he’d ever felt.
He hadn’t touched another woman since that moment, hadn’t even wanted to. He’d been celibate for six months, and it was slowly killing him.
Ian Taggart was handing him the keys to the kingdom. He could have her and see that she was like all the other women in his life, and he could send her happily on her way.
“What about her baby?” He thought the child’s name was Emily, maybe Emma. He didn’t like to think about the baby. Ashley’s youth, her inexperien
ce, her innocence he might have been able to handle, but he couldn’t handle the child.
I can’t believe you didn’t know. You should have known.
A vision flashed through his head. Soft, perfect skin, cold to the touch. How could anything so perfect be so cold?
He forced himself to look back at Ian. He wasn’t going there. He wasn’t ever going there again. Years were between him and the memory, but when he allowed it to, the remembrance came back as sharp and achingly bitter as if it were happening in the moment.
“You want to bring her baby into the D/s relationship? I have to say, uhm, I’m probably not going to allow that. Babies aren’t permitted in the club and when they try to sneak in, I have a long talk with their parents about their very bad behavior.”
Keith rolled his eyes. God, the woman who put up with this dude’s shit probably deserved a medal. “I was wondering how she was going to handle childcare. Club hours are late and her sister works here. She doesn’t have any other family.”
Somehow, he hadn’t thought Ashley would be irresponsible.
“So she should give up her sexuality because she bore a child? This seems to be a recurring theme of the day. It makes me want to have a vasectomy.”
It really wasn’t any of his business what went on with Ashley’s daughter. If she wanted to pawn the kid off so she could play at D/s, that was her problem. “Never mind.”
Taggart sighed. “You’re no fun. She works here three nights a week. She goes to school during the day. I think she’s getting some kind of degree in business. Ryan would pay for all of it, but Ashley insisted she needed to pay her way. This was their compromise. Ryan and Jill pay for her school. She lives in their guesthouse. She pays her car payment and all her household expenses. That’s why she works here. She can work here while Ryan’s mom watches the kid.”
It was a damn near perfect setup, the kind he liked. He could step in with an offer of his own. He could put her through school, take care of her, make her his submissive. Their relationship could be purely transactional. He could probably convince her. She was curious, and he’d been a Dominant for a very long time. He knew how to draw a pretty sub in. She could be installed in his home by the end of the week, learning how to please her Master.
Except for the problem of the baby. He couldn’t ignore the baby. It wouldn’t be fair to either one of them.
Taggart was staring at him, a deep frown on his face. “If you have a problem working with a woman who has a child…god… This is where I’m supposed to say something about how I’ll find a more suitable submissive, but what I really want to do is punch you in the face because I find you offensive.”
Keith held on to his temper. “I don’t have a problem playing with her. I simply know I’m not ready to be involved with a woman who has a child. It’s a serious responsibility and one not to be taken lightly. If you find that offensive, then maybe this isn’t the right place for me.”
Maybe it had all been a mistake.
Taggart held a hand up. “I misunderstood. I find the idea that a woman has to give up her sexuality when she becomes a mother offensive. I don’t have a problem with you knowing you don’t want to be a dad. Here’s the great news. No one is asking you to. All you have to do is walk a potential sub through the world to see if she likes it. But you seem to prefer someone other than Ashley. I’ll ask Simon to do it. I would ask Jesse, but I can’t handle another wedding. They make me vomit.”
Simon Weston. He’d met the man when he toured Sanctum the first time. Weston was a big Brit. He’d been dressed in leathers, but it didn’t take much imagination to see him in a perfectly pressed suit. Weston was younger than him. He was smooth and cultured. Weston was probably perfect for Ashley.
The idea of Weston touching her silky skin, introducing her to the pleasures of D/s, made him want to rip the fucker’s perfect male-model head off his body and kick it to the street.
“I’ll do it.” He signed his name to the contract before his brain could take over. His dick nearly sang a hallelujah chorus.
But signing the contract didn’t mean they would have sex. There were plenty of Doms who played with subs without spreading them wide and dipping their cocks into that sweet, soft pussy. Plenty of Doms would flog a sub without ever forcing them to their knees and pressing their cocks to pretty pink lips.
Yeah, he didn’t have to have sex with her, but he was damn straight going to try.
He stood up and shook Taggart’s hand.
“Welcome to Sanctum,” Taggart said. “And when you walk out, if you happen to see a stunningly gorgeous strawberry blonde about five eleven—she’ll have an anxious look on her face—well, if you see her, do a guy a solid. Lie.”
Keith turned, eager to leave the weird world of Ian Taggart. Two days. He would start Ashley’s training in two days and after the six weeks was done, he would have gotten her out of his system one way or another. He’d either screw her until the need passed, discover she wasn’t the sweet sub he thought she was, or he would realize that he needed to let her go.
One way or another, he’d be free.
He’d barely shut the door behind him when the blonde Taggart had mentioned showed up.
“Was he an asshole? He promised me he wouldn’t be an asshole,” the blonde said, a worried look on her face.
“He was a complete dick.” Keith smiled on the inside as her face froze in a mask of feminine outrage.
“Ian!”
Keith chuckled as he walked away, feeling more excited about the future than he’d felt in forever.
Chapter Two
Ashley touched the small silver necklace that she’d recently clasped around her neck. It was a training collar. It marked her as belonging to Master Keith for the duration of their time together. She’d found it on the top of the pile of fet wear that had been placed in her assigned locker. She was to wear it while she was in Sanctum.
She was the slightest bit disappointed that he hadn’t placed it on her himself, but then this wasn’t some grand romance. She needed to remember that.
“You look good, hon.”
Ashley started at the words, turning around like someone was about to kill her.
A gorgeous woman with black hair and brilliant blue eyes stifled a laugh. “I take that back. You look like a deer caught in the headlights. Did you piss off your Dom? Are you about to get your ass smacked?”
The woman in front of her was stunning. Roughly five and a half feet, she managed to be fit and womanly at the same time. She looked amazing in her corset and tiny undies. Her legs were sleek, running down to some killer heels that added like five inches to her frame. Ashley could barely walk in flats.
What was she doing here?
She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. I mean, I haven’t actually met him. Well, I met him but he wasn’t a Dom. Well, he was, but I didn’t know it. He was like an undercover Dom. Though I’m pretty sure that’s not his job. Undercover Dom. He’s not. He’s an investor guy. And a Dom.”
The dark-haired woman’s eyes widened and her lips curled up in a smile. “Oh, honey. Come here.”
She stepped up and pulled Ashley into a hug. Weird. She didn’t know the woman, but now she almost had her face in her boobs. And it was okay. Better really. She gave great hugs. Ashley hadn’t been hugged by an actual adult since her sister went on vacation. Tears threatened, but she finally wound her arms around the other woman and let herself settle in.
“There’s nothing to be scared of. Ian does a good job of picking the men he lets into the club. So if this guy tries anything on you, you talk to Ian.”
“I would be happy to never talk to Ian again. He scares me.”
A chuckle went through the woman’s body as she pulled back. Closer now, it was easy to see she was older than she’d seemed at first. Very likely in her mid to late thirties. There were tiny lines around her eyes and something in the way she looked that spoke of long years of caring. “Alex, then. There’s nothing scary abo
ut that big teddy bear Dom. Or you can talk to me. I might be submissive here, but outside this club I can take on anyone. I’m Karina, by the way.”
“Ashley.” She had to get it together.
“You look lovely, Ashley, but now your mascara is a tiny bit runny. Come and sit down and let me fix it.”
Ashley sniffled and let Karina move her to one of the dressing room vanities. Behind her she could hear the pregnant ladies talking and laughing. There were two of them and they seemed to always be together when they were in Sanctum. Serena Dean-Miles and Avery O’Donnell were married to founding members. They were also pretty far along in their pregnancies, so they spent most of their nights at Sanctum in side-by-side loungers, talking away while their husbands helped run the club. Serena worked on her laptop and Avery knitted.
They were calm and peaceful and looked so happy.
“There’s a wistful expression. What’s that about?” Karina asked.
“I was jealous. They seem so happy. I wasn’t happy when I was pregnant. I was scared out of my mind. I was ashamed. I was everything but happy.” She gasped a little. Why didn’t she ever think about what came out of her mouth? She vomited up anything that went through her head. “I’m sorry. That was probably more than you wanted to know. You don’t have to help with my makeup. I’m sure you have better things to do.”
The older woman stopped and stared for a moment. “Do you want me to go away?”
The question startled her. “No. I wasn’t being rude. I know I can be obnoxious sometimes.”
“Oh, you are going to get spanked. So you’re completely new to the lifestyle, huh?”
“Not exactly. My sister’s been in it for a long time. Her husband is a Dom. I’ve been working in the bar for a while.”
“Well, I’ve been on a case for the last couple of months. This is the first time I’ve been here in weeks. And you’re not obnoxious. I didn’t mean to be rude, either. When I asked you if you wanted me to go, I really was asking. Sometimes people try to get around saying what they really mean to say by phrasing it in more polite terms, like you being sure I must have something better to do. It could be your way of getting rid of a nosy woman who has zero sense of boundaries.”
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