Blue Desire (9 page)

“Yeah.
Your sub.”

“My what?”
He’d never even played with her, and
he’d played with a lot of women. He didn’t understand Brandon’s relationship
with Jessica, and he didn’t want to be involved. “She’s not my sub. I don’t
have a sub.”

“She
said you gave her a corset. Why would you do that if she’s not your sub?”

Suddenly
it all became clear. Kat must have talked to Jessica at Le Petit Mort, and
misunderstood. “I didn’t give it to her. I sold it to her.”

Kat
blinked.

“I
make them,” Brett added.

“You
made
that?
It was beautiful!” She had
a look of utter disbelief on her face, and she said it as if the fact that it
was beautiful made it much less likely he had made it.

Well,
fine. He could use that. “I could show you how I make them, if you like.”
Would you like to see my
etchings, ma’am?
It occurred to him the misunderstanding could have
all been avoided if he’d told her that fourth vendor table was his, but he hadn’t
wanted to derail the conversation. And he’d found it amusing, he supposed, if
he was honest with himself. Maybe it had all worked out for the best. It
depended on her reaction, which she seemed to be thinking over.

“Yes,”
she said at last. “I’d like that very much. I have to lug a few amps and talk
to Cindy, and then I’ll meet you here. Figure about a half hour, forty-five
minutes?”

“I
could help you move your equipment,” Brett offered.

Kat
hesitated and then nodded. “Thanks. Sure you can deal with following
directions?” She had a glitter of a smile on her face.

“Yes,
ma’am,” Brett replied back with a grin.

She
laughed and kissed him right above the eye where Angus had cut him with his
ring. That was a good sign, he thought. He followed her to the stage. Lisa had
definitely been right about him getting out.

They
loaded the equipment in Cindy’s SUV because Cindy lived in a house and had a
garage, and that was much better than keeping anything in a hotel. The other
side of that was that Cindy had a day job and had to keep her cell phone on and
answerable during practices. During gigs, at least, she could turn it off.

Kat
wasn’t that interested in
how
Brett
made the corsets. But she thought they were incredibly pretty and wondered how
they felt. She’d worn a corset—with plastic boning—before onstage, but she knew
that wasn’t “the real thing” in some sense. It looked hot, but it didn’t
squeeze the way an old-fashioned corset was supposed to. The women she’d seen
at Le Petit Mort looked different. They walked more stiffly, for one thing. She
wondered if they found it harder to breathe. As a singer, anything that made it
harder for her to breathe onstage was out. She wasn’t sure how she felt about
it off-stage. It was kind of hot, she supposed, but she didn’t want to go
fainting like some old Victorian matron.

“How
much does a corset cost anyway?” she asked. Cindy had been going to give her a
ride home—she was worried about Kat’s car breaking down on the way to the club,
even though it had made it all the way across the country, because it was way
overdue for an oil change and God knew what else—but instead Kat was riding
shotgun in Brett’s car.

“One of mine?”

“Yes.
For instance.
Jessica’s, say.”

“Well,
I made that one a while ago. But if I was asked today to make a corset like
Jessica’s, I would charge around three hundred and fifty dollars.”

Kat
didn’t mean to whistle, but she did. She had spent what money she had left on
sound equipment. The gig had paid decently, but she had intended to use that money
to repair her car. Maybe if the second gig went well, she could hire a lawyer
to try to get her money from
Kradle
, or she could
make sure she had a roof over her head for the next couple of weeks. With that
being the sort of decision she had to make, she definitely didn’t have enough
money to justify buying a corset.

If
she was being honest with herself, however, her interest was only partly in the
corset. She was using Brett again. She wanted to sleep next to someone big and
strong, and going to his home after midnight she doubted he’d insist on taking
her home. She didn’t think Angus would try to find her in her hotel room, but
she knew if she was there alone, she’d lie awake thinking about it. He wasn’t
stupid, nor was he easy to predict. He wouldn’t want to get arrested for
anything serious, although music could be a crazy business, and even bad
publicity could be good for sales. Heck, it would probably help get the word
out that she’d gone solo if she had a big public confrontation with him. What happened
in the Caravan Club would probably work to her advantage. The next meeting
might not. It could get out of control so easily.

He
glanced at her curiously, and she expected him to ask what she was thinking or
offer her a penny to share. He didn’t. Usually men were more nervous about
where they stood, and if she got lost in thought, they started wondering if
something was wrong. It was a nice change to be with someone more confident,
she supposed, but it started making
her
wonder if something was wrong.

He
parked on the street in front of a row of brick town houses after driving a few
minutes. “Where is this?” she asked. It was time she started to get to know the
area, and this seemed pretty nice for the middle of the city. Some of the
buildings were old, but there wasn’t the feeling of incipient violence she got
when she looked out of her hotel room late at night.

“It’s
called
Kalorama
Triangle.”

“Pretty name.”
She looked about. “It doesn’t even
look like we’re in DC anymore.”

He
nodded. “We’re very much in DC, but this area was developed before the city as
such got out here, so it’s not on the same grid plan as everything else. Over
that way”—he pointed down the street, but which street it was Kat didn’t
know—“are some very rich people indeed, and big houses with lawns that would
look at home in suburbia. Go the other way, and you’d get a mile before the
neighborhoods get decidedly dicey. But right here it’s what I guess you’d call
middle class. I’d rather have a small apartment here than a house in the ’burbs,
so I do.”

His
apartment was in a four-story old town house, and they had to climb three
flights of stairs in a narrow dark stairway to get to it. She’d been wearing
the boots too long, and the heels were starting to get to her, but walking up
was better than walking down. There were two nondescript doors at the landing,
one labeled 41 and the other 42. He unlocked 42 and let her in.

“
Life, the Universe and Everything
,” she
murmured, as she walked into the apartment. He wasn’t lying about small, but it
was bigger than her hotel room. The kitchen was open to the living area, and
she could see a single bedroom off that through an open sliding door. On the
table in the living room there was a sewing machine, bolts of colorful fabric,
and bits of shiny metal. There was a table for two near the kitchen that she
presumed was used for eating.

“Douglas
Adams,” he said. “You read much science fiction?”

She
smiled.
“Yeah.
You?”
She
looked about for a bookshelf, but there wasn’t one.

“Yep.
Mostly the classics.”

“Where
are your books?”

He
pointed to a leather-clad e-book reader, which sat on top of a couple of
library books. “Used to have two bookshelves full, but they took up a lot of
space. So I donated them all to the library book sale and bought electronic
copies of most of my favorites.”

We seem to have some
things in common
.
But that pleasant thought only reminded her of what was nagging her since she’d
seen him in the club. “Why were you at my concert?”

“When
I saw the ad in the paper, it clicked with me where I’d seen you before.
On a CD cover.”

So it wasn’t just a
line, after all, when he said he’d seen me around before
. She didn’t think of
herself as a person who jumped to conclusions, but it seemed she had a streak
going with him. She looked around for his CD collection and realized it had
probably gone the way of the books. It was getting so you couldn’t figure
people out by snooping around their houses anymore. She giggled.

“What’s
funny?” he asked.

“I
think I’m in the habit of looking around people’s homes and checking out their
books and their music and whatnot to see what they’re
like,
and you’ve thwarted me.”

“You’re
curious as to what I’m like?” He grinned at her.

Well, that was
forward
.
She blushed. “Fuck,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say. It was
lousy reason to swear, which she tried to do only for effect. He was right,
though, about her curiosity. “Show me about the corsets, please.”

He
nodded and gestured for her to sit on the couch while he sat cross-legged on
the other side of the table. The table everything was on was very low, and she
realized the only way he was at the right height for it was sitting on the
floor.

He
used corsets in various stages of progress to explain how things all went
together: the metal pegs and hooks that made up the busk in the front of a
corset, the way he sewed the seams so that flat steel could be inserted to give
the corset structure, the grommets for the lacing in the back. But her
attention was drawn by what looked like a completed corset lying next to the
ones in progress. The fabric was in two shades. The predominant one was a shade
darker than a royal blue and took maximum advantage of the shine of the silk.
Mixed with that were delicate vines and flowers of a midnight blue that she
thought at first was black. As lovely as the corsets she had seen in the club
had been, this one was perfect.

“I’ve
lost you,” he said.

“I’m
tired,” she lied. She ought to be exhausted, but she wasn’t. The evening’s
performance had been exhilarating. The incident with Angus had been
nerve-racking. Between the two, she was about as far from sleep as she could
get.

He
looked at her for a moment, and she had that feeling again that he could tell
when she was lying. “It’s not finished,” he said. “I still want to sew some lace
around the edges. But it’s wearable, and it’s about your size. Stand, take that
shirt and your bra off, and I’ll show you how it feels.”

He
stood up. She stood also. She locked eyes with him. He hadn’t asked, and she
wasn’t there as his sub. The moment stretched. As they stared, it became clear
they were in a contest of wills. He didn’t look like he’d blink first. If she
obeyed him without a fight she was tacitly admitting his dominance over her,
although she could take the edge off that by an offhanded, “Sure, whatever.” Or
she could bring it out into the open by asking if they were going to play.
But the idea of him taking control again made her heart beat faster
and her skin warm.
She remembered the last time in the club, and how
good it had all felt until she thought he was in a relationship with that
blonde woman.

She
lowered her gaze and lifted her shirt. She didn’t look at him while she took
off her bra either.

“Lift
your hands. I need them out of the way,” he told her, and she obeyed, closing
her eyes to avoid looking at him. She wasn’t ready to surrender completely, and
the way he read her untruths made her reluctant to look straight at him. Her
nipples were stiffening and her skin was probably getting pink and she
was having
to concentrate to make her breathing sound calm.
He didn’t need to see her eyes to see how he affected her. She was giving off
way too many clues as it was, and she knew it. And he seemed psychic anyway.

The
fabric felt soft as it brushed against her breasts, but it didn’t stay soft. He
wrapped the corset around her and tugged at the laces in the back until it was
tight enough not to slip. The fabric might be smooth, but there was far too
much steel in it for it to be called soft. He adjusted it, the silk slipping
against her skin until he had it perfect. She opened her eyes and looked down,
peeking
at her cleavage.
Not bad
. A long length of lacing, not unlike a shoelace in width,
hung down and tickled her leg.

“How
does it feel?” he asked.

“Smooth.
Stiff. Not as tight as I thought it might.”

“Look
up to me when you talk to me.”

Damn
. She looked up.

He
met her gaze. “Will you submit to me tonight, Katrina? I’ll let you go in the
morning, but I’d very much like to have possession of you for the evening.”

She
wondered what it was like to be able to talk so frankly about your desires. She
always found she could speak best in music, and even there she made a game of
it, using symbols and turns of phrase and letting her listeners decipher what
she meant. She tried to come up with a way to do that now.
A strong woman would say yes. But oh how lovely it would be to be able
to say no and still get what I want.