Breathe (18 page)

Samantha thought of Elijah, of the way he’d taken her in the bedroom of his plane, and she flushed all over.

“There’s something to be said for vanilla.”

Maddy grinned at her and raised her glass to clink it against Samantha’s. Samantha felt the ice caused by Elijah’s rapid mood swing begin to thaw.

“Drink up. We’re going to need it to face whatever those men are devising for us right now.”

Samantha thought of the checklist she’d filled out at Pecado, the items she’d indicated she might be interested in, and felt heat suffuse her body.

“Do you . . . do we all . . . play . . . at the same time?” She felt ridiculous even asking the question, but beautiful as she found Maddy and cute as Kylie was in her long flowered skirt, Samantha was pretty sure she wasn’t interested in getting it on with other women.

There had been an item on that checklist, though—one that had mentioned watching two men together . . .

That was an intriguing thought. And it was one that she pushed right out of her mind, certain that a man as clearly into women as Elijah wasn’t going to even entertain the possibility of that one.

The other two women looked at each other with stunned expressions, then burst into laughter. The ice returned, a giant shard of it slicing right through her core as Samantha quickly began to feel like an outsider again.

“I’m going to go find Elijah,” Samantha began, rising stiffly from the table. She tensed when Maddy placed a hand on her wrist, keeping her from leaving.

“I’m so sorry. We’re not laughing at you.” Maddy swallowed most of her laughter, though an undignified snort escaped. Kylie still giggled, though her hand was pressed tightly over her mouth, as though trying to bottle her laughter inside.

“No. It’s the idea of Alex playing . . . like that . . . anywhere near where I am.” Kylie chuckled as she refilled her glass with wine the color of wheat. “We’re cousins. And not the kissing kind. I’m like his little sister. He’d be freaked out at the very idea.”

“It might be kind of fun to see,” Maddy mused. “Almost as much fun as seeing you tame Declan.”

The women grinned at each other, and this time Samantha didn’t feel left out. They still hadn’t answered her question exactly, though, and she said so.

“Alex and I will be in the club, but it’s hard to say if we’ll be playing or not.” Maddy pouted a little. “He’s not usually a fan of public scenes, though sometimes he gets in the mood.”

“Declan’s not a Dom. He’s only around if Alex needs him for security. And I only ever come for a drink,” Kylie adding, scowling. “But one night when Alex isn’t here, I’m going to come see what all the fuss is about.”

Though Samantha knew she shouldn’t have cared, the giant knot in her stomach began to loosen. She knew she shouldn’t have been jealous, but the idea of Elijah touching either of these women drove her insane.

Maddy tipped the last of the wine into Samantha’s glass. “Finish that. Then we’ll go see what mischief the boys are up to.” Maddy swallowed the rest of her wine and sighed happily.

“Best seven-hundred-dollar bottle of wine ever.”

“S-seven hundred?” Samantha choked and gaped at Maddy, incredulous. The other woman patted her on the hand and grinned.

“If you can’t get them to stop blowing scads of cash on bottles of wine, you might as well join them.”

•   •   •

“D
o you need anything else from me, Mr. Fraser?” Elijah watched as Declan shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Though this movement might have been nothing more than a twitch on anyone else, on Declan it signaled that something major was going on.

The man had been doing his best to avoid entering the play part of the club for the better part of a month now. Knowing him as he did—Declan had been with Alex for nearly as long as Alex and Elijah had been friends—Elijah knew he had a reason, but he couldn’t for the life of him imagine what it was.

“Go ahead and go home, Declan.” Elijah saw Alex cast a sidelong glance at him, likely to see if he had noticed Declan’s odd behavior as well.

He didn’t comment, instead stuffing his hands into his pockets. He was irritated with Alex, though he knew it was irrational.

When his friend had told Samantha that she was one of the first women Elijah had brought to the club in years, he’d insinuated that she was different. Special. And Elijah was the first to admit that she was unique.

But—even though the thought of her with anyone else made him see red—the thought of having more than an affair, however intense, made him restless.

“See you tomorrow.” Declan nodded as he left. The moment the bald man was gone, Alex opened the door to the play area, holding it open for Elijah as he frowned himself.

“What’s eating you, man?” Alex asked.

Elijah kept his face carefully blank as they made their way to the bar, where Luca was polishing wineglasses.

The giant of a man grinned when he saw them approaching.

“Heard you’ve got yourself a pretty little strawberry sub tonight, E.” Luca nodded toward where Charlotte was locked into the stocks just out of earshot. Her ass was a fetching shade of pink, and her behind was the only side of her that was visible. “She the one you tore up the backyard for?”

Elijah ignored the question—after all, he would hardly call building a discreet glass studio tearing up the backyard. But when he’d informed his partners of his plans for Samantha’s temporary studio, they hadn’t been able to resist poking at him mercilessly about it.

“Your handiwork?” Alex asked as the three men watched Charlotte, his voice bemused. Charlotte was known for acting up—no one would be sorry that she was paying penance in this way, least of all Luca, who loved nothing more than leaving his mark on a beautiful ass.

“You know it.” Luca laid a small flogger on the top of the bar, then nodded at Elijah. “Thanks for sending her my way.”

“Did she tell you what she did?” Elijah felt his small frown turn into a full-fledged scowl.

“She said she had been disrespectful to you.” Luca smiled wickedly.

“She propositioned me in front of my sub.” Elijah growled. Here was the root of his discomfort—he was already more attached to Samantha, more possessive of her, than he’d ever intended to be with anyone ever again.

Beside him Alex whistled through his teeth. Elijah knew what he was thinking—it was a serious breach of protocol for a sub to proposition a Dom at all, let alone in front of the sub he was with. To insult the sub was to insult the Dom.

All three men looked at the bratty sub, considering, and Elijah knew that none of them had the curves of her ass on their minds.

“You’re the one who was wronged, E. You want to use the flogger?” Luca offered it, though his friend had to know that Elijah would refuse even before he shook his head.

“No, man.” Elijah didn’t mind dispensing a bit of pain when it added to a sub’s pleasure, but he’d never been fond of corporal punishment. Just another reason that Samantha seemed like such a good match for him—she wasn’t overly interested in pain, either. “You go ahead.”

“I’ll take care of that right now, then.” Whistling a jaunty tune, Luca flipped the flogger in the air, caught it, then strode over to the woman whose ass was about to get even pinker.

The two old friends watched as Luca circled the stocks, said something to the woman, and smiled grimly.

He might have put on a good show, Elijah knew, but none of them liked doling out discipline when fun wasn’t involved.

“I don’t think Charlotte’s brattiness is what’s bothering you.” Elijah watched as Alex rounded the counter, then searched the wooden wine rack that was reserved for the three owners. It wasn’t a surprise that he selected a bottle of Mouton Rothschild—Maddy’s favorite—and held it up for Elijah’s inspection.

Elijah nodded, and slid two glasses down the polished surface of the bar to Alex.

Once his glass had been filled, Elijah leaned over the bar, resting on his elbows, his face pensive.

“You remember Tara.”

Alex nodded, joining Elijah in sipping at the dark red liquid in their glasses. Elijah knew his ex-wife was hard to forget. Exceptionally beautiful, incredibly kinky, she’d fascinated them all, but it was Elijah’s heart she’d captured. He’d thought he was the luckiest man in the world, a Dom new to the scene who had found a beautiful sub willing to fully explore the dark side of BDSM.

But Tara hadn’t been submissive at all, not really. She’d enjoyed sugar kink, true enough, but hadn’t been interested in submission outside the bedroom. And though he’d never admitted it to his friend, he’d also come to suspect that Tara had been more interested in his money than in building a life with him. When he had used financial domination as a way to try to get her to submit, she had turned into the biggest brat any of them had ever seen, making Elijah discipline her when she knew he’d never enjoyed it—
because
he’d never enjoyed it, even.

By the time the dust of the divorce had settled, they were both miserable. Elijah had even doubted himself and thought for a time that he was a failure as a Dom.

“Samantha’s not . . . She’s not your typical submissive.” Elijah was pensive, staring down into his wineglass as though it held the secrets to the universe. “I’m still not convinced the lifestyle will be right for her. She responds to my commands, but they don’t seem to subdue her, not in the way a sub is normally dominated.”

“Is she acting out? Do you have to discipline her?” Alex asked.

Elijah frowned at his friend’s words.

“Not really, not more than a little nudge here and there. I’m just . . .” Elijah trailed off and stared across the bar, watching Luca flick the flogger across Charlotte’s backside.

“I’m falling hard, Alex. And I need someone who is truly submissive. I can’t help worrying that if this goes south, it will damage both of us.”

Alex seemed to weigh his response carefully.

“A true submissive doesn’t necessarily mean she’s going to look away whenever you glower at her, E.” Elijah knew that Alex was thinking of his fiancée as he spoke. “Take Maddy. She’s absolutely submissive, beautifully so, but she speaks her mind to me whenever she feels the need. I respect her submission all the more because of it.”

But ever since Tara, Elijah knew he’d had a hard time separating the lines between spunk and bratty behavior. He still questioned his ability to be a Dom when a scene didn’t turn out as planned.

It was one of the reasons he was surprised that he enjoyed Samantha’s outspokenness as much as he did. But with Samantha, it seemed to be a true part of her, not an act put on for his benefit.

“It could be that she has something in her past that caused her to become so strong willed. To stand up for herself. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

Elijah wondered what Alex was thinking, a slight frown marring the space between his brows. His fingers tightened on the stem of the wineglass until he thought it might snap.

“That’s the other thing, Alex. She’s hiding something from me. She thinks I don’t know, and she’s not ready for me to push her yet. But at the end of this month, if I can’t get her to open up, I’m going to have to walk away. You know I will.”

“Another one bites the dust, huh?” His friend’s voice was wry, and Elijah opened his mouth to protest. But over Alex’s shoulder Elijah saw the doors that led into the play area swing open, and watched Maddy and Samantha come through.

Elijah locked eyes with the woman who was his for at least the next month, and felt a surge of possession unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

He slugged back the rest of his seventy-year-old wine, his attention focused solely on his submissive. “I just hope like hell that I don’t fuck this one up.”

•   •   •

S
amantha’s eyes found Elijah as soon as she entered the room. He was standing by a bar that was a lot smaller and more casual than the one in the wine bar, his hair standing on end as though he had raked his fingers through it more than once.

His eyes were impossibly blue, even in the dim light, and they were focused entirely on her.

She forgot all about Maddy as he moved toward her in the darkened room. Metallica played on speakers discreetly hidden overhead, giving the entire room a Gothic, darkly sexual feel.

Samantha felt desire pooling low in her belly, just from the way he was looking at her. She watched as he reached into his pocket and pulled out two unattached yellow cuffs.

“Give me your hands.” His touch burned her skin as he snapped first one cuff, then the other, around her wrists.

“These mean that you have a Dom. No one else will touch you unless I give them permission to.” Grabbing her by the elbows, he lifted her again, just as he had in the entryway to Veritas.

“Do you understand? You are mine. Mine.”

CHAPTER TEN

“W
hat is— Is this a dog toy?” Samantha stared down at her hand, in which she clasped a red rubber toy shaped like a bone. Some of the heat that had flared when Elijah had clamped the cuffs around her wrists and carried her across the play area floor seemed to cool. “Is this another guard dog joke?”

Elijah snorted in the most undignified sound she’d ever heard come out of such a suave man. He paused in the act of sifting through the large leather satchel he’d referred to as his “toy bag” and, leaning over, squeezed the toy in question.

It squeaked. She looked from the toy to Elijah, and back to the toy again.

“You won’t be able to speak for what I have planned for you.” Elijah smiled at her in a way she loved, that decidedly sinful curve of the lips that caused the space between her legs to ache with desire for him. Wariness combined with the heat, waking the nerve endings all over her body.

“I won’t be able to speak?” She craned her neck, trying to see what he was taking out of the bag. A tub of what she assumed was some kind of lotion, a leather strap with a circular ring in the middle of it, a pair of—were those tweezers? Two silky pink scarves followed, causing her to raise an eyebrow.

“Pink?” she asked. Samantha was reminded of the polo shirt Elijah had worn that first time he had come to her house, the time she had shown him how to breathe life into glass.