Wicked Player

by Lynn, Stacey

  There was no way the man who had me blindfolded and restrained last night could have been the same man.

  My recently invigorated sex drive was simply confusing Gage’s appeal with the rough and dark stranger.

  But even as I tried to tell myself that, I wondered.

  Why else would I react to him so sharply? Even when he spoke, there was a roughness that hinted at familiarity as it filtered through my ears. Being blindfolded increased other senses, which was one of the reasons I didn’t mind wearing it, even around men I hadn’t played with before.

  But was his voice the same? It was hard to tell when he wasn’t growling commands in my ear in a quiet room, but speaking through a microphone in a vast ballroom.

  Still…there was something. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was distracting me enough I hoped five minutes of peace, quiet, and cool air would help me refocus.

  Connor’s continued presence only made everything worse. We dated for almost a year, dinners out and evenings at Velvet. It was where we’d met. We recognized each other as reporters from rival television networks and saddled up to the bar to enjoy a drink. He’d had me in hand immediately, strapped to the cross hours after the first teasing, verbal jab thrown about which nighttime news show was better.

  I’d screwed that all up by falling in love with him.

  God.

  Why hadn’t I anticipated him being around for this?

  “Stupid, so freaking stupid.”

  “You’ve always been a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.”

  My eyes closed and a shiver rolled through me

  Speak of the devil and he appeared. “Go away, Connor.”

  It was like I hadn’t spoken at all. He came up next to me, close enough the light, tender scent of his cologne wafted toward me, far enough where I could reach out and touch him. Except he wasn’t mine to touch anymore.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.

  I’d never known him to be a sadist, not in all the time we spent together. So why was he torturing me now?

  I turned away from him, gathered my courage which had somehow scattered to a puddle at my feet, before facing him.

  The man I’d loved. The man who, when I told him, not only didn’t return it, but had looked at me in the most pitiful way.

  “I’m not avoiding you,” I lied. “I simply don’t think we have anything to say to each other. Not anymore.”

  Not now that he was engaged to another woman. A woman I’d seen him talking to a few times before we spent that last, heartbreaking night together. He assured me he’d never cheated.

  I’d always believed he was a good enough man he wouldn’t have done that to me. And maybe he didn’t cheat physically, but emotionally?

  Breakups happened. I understood. People dated, they broke up, they found someone new. It was life, as much as it sucked, and I’d tried moving on.

  But why was this all happening the very week I decided to return to Velvet? The universe had a sick sense of humor and I wasn’t amused.

  He lifted out a glass of champagne and sipped his own while he waited for me to take it.

  “No thank you. I’m here working.” And I was smart enough to keep my senses about me. My mind was cloudy enough.

  Connor set it on the railing close to me. I tried not to stare at him, but it was difficult. His hair was dark, not quite brown, not light enough to be blond. It had a wave to it even when he styled it. A former college baseball player, he still had the body of one, tall, muscled but not bulky. Beneath his tuxedo coat and white shirt, there’d be the hint of a six-pack. Not bulging and in your face, but just beneath the surface, appearing only when he thrust into you over and over.

  Shit.

  I blinked away the image and before I could repeat my request for him to leave me alone, he spoke.

  “I miss you, Lizzie.”

  I couldn’t hide my flinch. “You have Mel.”

  “I know. And I love Mel. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss you, what we had.”

  He was killing me. How could he not see the pain that admission caused me? Or how inappropriate it was given the circumstances.

  “Connor—”

  “No, just listen. Please, Lizzie.”

  Damn him. He was the only one who’d ever called me that. The only guy I’d ever allowed to call me that. It had seemed too juvenile the first time he’d done it, but at the time, I’d been trussed up with rope and clamps, and he’d been torturing me with a feather of all things. God, who knew something so light, could cause so much pain to overheated skin? “Oh little Lizzie, the things I could do with you right now and you wouldn’t resist, would you?”

  I shook my head frantically. I wouldn’t. I didn’t just want this man inside of my body, I wanted him inside my heart.

  “Stop.” I lifted my hand. The memories too fresh, the first time they’d come to me in months. Damn him. I thought I was over this. Over him.

  What I fool I was.

  “Please stop.”

  He didn’t stop and he didn’t leave. Leave it to a Dom to do whatever they wanted regardless of the pain inflicted. He stepped closer and placed his hand on mine on the railing. It was warm but gentle.

  “I do love Mel, and I know that hurts you, Lizzie. But what we have isn’t what you and I had. I’m missing something and Mel knows it, and I know that what I’m missing is what you and I had.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Mel is…great.” He smiled softly, the true smile of a man in love. I wanted to slap it off his face. How dare he do this to me? Here? Of all nights? “But you, Lizzie…you gave me things she won’t, at Velvet.” For a split second, he looked embarrassed. “She has limits you didn’t, limits I need.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have left me and fell in love with her.”

  I yanked my hand back, sending the glass of champagne flying. It shattered all over the cement floor and a few small pieces landed on my feet.

  I stepped down and a small shard got stuck between the ball of my foot and my shoe.

  “Damn it!” I shouted. I lifted my foot but trying to free it made everything worse.

  His hands wrapped around my forearms. “Don’t move.”

  I didn’t listen. I couldn’t. Not with him touching me so firmly in that sinfully beautiful way of his. I forgot about the pain in my foot. I struggled, stepped all over the glass, it splintering beneath my heels.

  “Damn it, Lizzie,” Connor growled and his arms moved to my biceps. He picked me up like I was nothing and set me to the side. Bending down, he met my eyes. “I know what I’m saying is a shock to you, but you have to get it, Lizzie and I don’t want you to hurt yourself because you’re upset with me. Mel is okay with this. She knows where I stand and I should have done this privately but I know you wouldn’t have seen me and you haven’t been to Velvet…”

  Oh, how very wrong he was, but I was suddenly thinking of dissolving my membership completely.

  “Get off me,” I hissed and pulled like a maniac. “This is shitty. So shitty of you to do to this to me.”

  “I know. But I want what I want Lizzie and I think deep down, you still miss what we had, too. Just think about it. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

  “I think you should get your hands off her.”

  We both froze, heads flipped toward the opened door to the balcony.

  My jaw dropped at who stood there.

  Gage.

  Hands fisted. Shoulders tense. His jaw so hard it could cut granite as his gaze dropped to where Connor had my arms pinned at my sides, up to his face, and then over to mine.

  I could only imagine what he saw. I shook my head but strands of my hair stuck to my wet cheeks.

  I was flushed and hot, chest heaving.

  Connor was shocked enough he loosened his grip on me, and I stepped back, shaking my arms and rubbing them.

  Not because he hurt me but because I could still feel him on me and I hated I still love
d it.

  I was such a screwed up mess.

  “Gage,” Connor said. “Lizzie and I were just catching up. Beautiful night you have here. You should be really proud of yourself.”

  Gage didn’t respond with words. He didn’t need them. He crossed his arms over his chest and continued glaring at Connor. It said enough.

  “It’s fine,” I said. I wiped my cheeks and attempted to fix my messed up hair. “I think you have the wrong idea, but everything’s okay.”

  “And I think when a woman is struggling and shouting for a man to get his hands off her that man should listen.”

  Oh no. I’d been shouting? I whipped my head toward the restaurant. No one was there. Thank goodness.

  “We were just talking,” Connor said. He was getting pissed. And that was never good. Gage might have been bigger, but Connor was no slouch. “And maybe you should mind your own damn business.”

  “Press conference I promised to finish earlier will be starting soon. Perhaps you should go find your seat.”

  My bet was Gage was more pissed than Connor.

  Why did that make me feel good? Connor wouldn’t have hurt me. Not like Gage might have been assuming. He was mostly freaked about the glass I was stepping on. He hurt me with his words not his hands.

  Connor glared at Gage. Nostrils flared and from my view, both of them looked ready to brawl.

  “It’s really fine,” I said. They ignored me, continued staring each other down. I had no doubt who would win. Connor was fierce and strong.

  Gage was on a whole other planet of pissed-off male.

  Connor slid his eyes to me and they softened. “Please, promise me you’ll think about it.”

  I crossed my arms over my stomach. Perhaps it’d hold in my heart he was shattering all over again. I nodded, too afraid to answer him with words. It was just to get him to go away.

  His grin slipped and he nodded once. “We’ll talk later then,” he said. “See you inside.”

  I didn’t watch him walk away. My gaze moved to the skyline and the lights and the darkness settling over the city. I felt it when he was gone though because Gage relaxed.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “No.” The pain in my foot reminded me I’d done a bang-up job hurting myself. I wobbled to a nearby chair and sat. Unstrapping my shoes, I inhaled a sharp breath when Gage was there, kneeling at my feet.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You have blood all over your shoe. What happened?” His big hands brushed away my smaller ones and he went to work on the clasp, undoing it with impressive efficiency.

  “I dropped a glass. Stepped on it. I’ll be fine.”

  “You need to clean up. Let me get something.”

  “No.” I pulled my foot back. His hands fell between his spread knees where he was crouched down. And God. He was beautiful. I was a wreck, bloodied and teary-eyed and he was in front of me, practically on his knees. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “At least let me make sure you get the glass out.”

  “I’d rather take care of myself.” I sounded bitchy. I hated sounding bitchy. I wasn’t a bitchy person, but this wasn’t what I needed. “Please. Just go.”

  He peered at me, worry and anger mixed in his dark brown eyes and then he nodded, pressed his hands to his knees and shoved to his feet.

  “Wouldn’t be any better than him if you asked me to do something and I didn’t listen. So I’ll go, but I will send someone out here to clean the glass.”

  I focused on peeling off my shoe like I was performing neo-natal heart surgery. “Thank you.”

  I didn’t breathe until he stepped away, and jumped when he called my name.

  “What, Gage?” My tone defeated and with the weight of the world pressed on my shoulders, it took forever to lift my head to meet his gaze.

  “That guy. I heard what he said, and don’t do that with him. He’s a selfish dick, using two women to get his rocks off. I might not know you, but you deserve better than his scraps.”

  Goddamn. I was going to cry all over again.

  Why did getting that confirmation from him feel so darn good?

  “You don’t know—”

  “I know what Velvet is,” he said, cutting me off. “And I know exactly what he’s meaning even if I don’t know the specifics, so yeah, I know exactly what I’m talking about. He loves a woman, he takes her as she is, which means he doesn’t love the woman he’s with any more than he cares about you. He’s an asshole and not worth your time.”

  What was there to say to that? Nothing. He’d stolen any intellectual or witty response I could usually think of.

  Instead, my jaw slack from surprise at his bluntness, I nodded once and slipped off my shoe.

  “I’ll see you inside. But stay away from him. I get the idea he’s a man who doesn’t stop until he gets what he wants.”

  He left, and I waited several moments after his footsteps evaporated when it hit me.

  He knew what Velvet was. Which meant he knew I liked it there. And I liked something different if he was smart enough to put two and two together depending on how much he’d heard.

  He didn’t look at me like I was some freak or like there was something wrong with it.

  Instead, he’d done what he’d done and said what he’d said for the sole purpose of taking care of me and trying to make me feel better.

  Damn. Gage Bryant wasn’t only hot and sexy and kind and had a big sincere heart, he was caring and could be gentle despite his size. He could probably be brutal and arrogant and stubborn, like most men, but despite the professionalism I was trying to maintain around him, I really wanted to learn a whole lot more.

  Eleven

  Gage

  I walked the hall alone this time, assuring Tristan I didn’t need assistance. The hallway was dark, lit with sconces on the wall probably meant to be seductive and yet I was always creeped out by them. They reminded me of haunted houses, and coupled with the ecstatic sounds filtering beneath the other private room’s doors, it was easy to understand why people into the vanilla lifestyle would find this evil. Wrong. Demoralizing.

  I thought of it often. What would happen if my love of rough, dominating sex was revealed to the public? What would it do to my reputation as a philanthropist? How embarrassed would my own family be? What would the consequences be for my own dad and his congregation?

  It’d been years since I had a real relationship, not since college when I was just discovering that soft and sweet lovemaking with the college girls didn’t get me off like it should have. Sure, I got off, but there was always something missing. A fire. A passion. The first time a girl I dated asked me to tie her up, something completely different in me sparked to life.

  It was that. The missing piece finally found when I had a woman tied to her bed, helpless to get away from me, forced to be under my control. Memories of that night still made me go hard. The girl, Claire, had found someone different shortly after, our short fling a purely physical thing most college students embraced.

  We separated with no hard feelings.

  After college graduation when fame and followers and photographers became a part of my life, reporters declaring me a role model for children, my own hometown naming a street after me, the attention on me forced me to hide my proclivities.

  There was too much at stake in my life: my career, my family, the organizations I supported through volunteer and donating efforts, to risk having any woman proclaim a consensual night of intense fucking was anything different. Too many women in my life had made it clear they found me hot, but was it me or my money?

  Funny how I grew up wanting fame and fortune and a long list of football records, but that came with a price, and the cost was trust not coming easily.

  Which meant the fact that little miss reporter Elizabeth Hayes, currently waiting for me in the room at the end of the hallway, could possibly be the most epically horrible decision I’d ever made.

  Too bad that after three days, I sti
ll couldn’t get her out of my head.

  Which was why I called Tristan immediately following our win over Atlanta this afternoon. The game was hard fought, too many errors and penalties on both teams. It was ugly and vicious. The winning touchdown coming with three seconds left, a pass I caught in the end zone, thrown by our quarterback Beaux Hale. It was ridiculous how he could land the ball straight into my hands when I was double-teamed by Atlanta’s best defenders.

  The amount of adrenaline still heating my veins was insanity.

  Which meant tonight would be even more adventurous than the other. And if Miss Hayes still enjoyed it, then I’d have to figure out what to do afterward.

  I knocked once to let her know I was coming. The instructions had been the same. Blindfolded and sitting on the bed, however this time I’d requested she remains clothed.

  I craved the idea of undressing her, revealing her flesh to me in incremental measures while I bathed her skin in my kisses and torture. Exactly like I’d wanted to do at the dinner.

  Hot damn. I was already rock hard at the mere thought of the beauty waiting for me.

  I opened the door and stepped in. Like last time, my heart stalled for a brief moment and it took me a second to remember how to breathe.

  So damn beautiful. Toes painted a light pink curled into the plush white rug at her feet. Simple black dress rode high on her trim thighs. A low scooped neckline showed off her throat. Beautiful and long, tight sleeves, drew my gaze to her hands clasped elegantly in her lap.

  “You’re stunning,” I said.

  She lifted her head so if she wouldn’t have been wearing a blindfold, her eyes would have met mine. A tiny hint of a frown line peeked out from above the top of the black satin coming from between her eyes.

  My spine straightened as she nibbled her lip. Did she recognize my voice after hearing it in person over the last weekend?

  I’d been close to her too many times. When that asshole reporter, Connor, made her uncomfortable at the dinner Friday night. She had several opportunities to link my voice with the man who made her scream. Plus, she was a reporter. She was trained to sniff out news and follow her instincts.