REVEAL - Scorpio & Harlan (Fettered Book 2) (3 page)

I
plunk down
on the office chair that sits in behind the old doors and plumbing pipe that serve as my desk and contemplate Harlan’s envelope. I can’t leave it lying around where some innocent bride might find it, because I’m pretty sure whatever’s in there is intended to rile me, and I don’t rile all that easily.

It’s also intended to pull me across a line I’m not sure I want to cross. The one where I’d be walking the walk instead of just talking a good game.

Trading words with Harlan is fun. Whatever he’s just given me, I’m pretty sure it isn’t words. I pick up the envelope and undo the neat little clips holding it closed. I’m a logistics person—I don’t leave things moldering on my to-do list. Which the sneaky man trying to drag me into his sandbox probably knows.

I empty the contents of Harlan’s envelope on top of the piles on my desk—and then I register what my eyes are seeing and I’m very glad I didn’t do this in the middle of our conference room. I push a few of the top photographs around so I can see the ones underneath.

Damn. Totally not safe for work.

Then again, I can think of more than a few brides and grooms who should look at a little porn together before they get hitched. Or after. I snicker. Maybe I can talk Emily into a totally new kind of post-wedding thank-you basket.

I pick up the small sheet of paper that fluttered out with the photos.
Pick a few images that make your nipples hard and that wouldn’t be hard limits for you in real life. If you want to play with me, give me those pictures. If you don’t, give this all back to Ari and tell her what you think of it as a brainstorming tool.

Shit. Even the damn note is making my nipples hard.

I don’t want to know that my nipples been having a freaking conversation with him. And I don’t want him sending me fucking porn at work.

I touch a couple of pictures, cranky and aroused all at the same time. I give Harlan credit—the stuff in here is just the way I like it. Artsy, explicit, open-minded, and real. Not all that easy to find, even if you know the right places to look.

Then I remember what he said. This is Ari’s baby, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that she does porn right. She might look like a sweet blonde cheerleader, but she’s seriously righteous underneath all that. A woman who knows what she wants and how to bend the big, bad Doms in her life over her knee and get it.

I grin as I see a photo that’s pretty much exactly that, and wonder what Harlan will do if that’s one of the ones I give him.

If I give him anything. Someone needs to learn to take no for an answer.

I sigh. That isn’t fair and I know it. I haven’t actually said no, and until I do, I can’t expect him to read my mind.

Although he seems awfully damn good at it.

I feel my nipples tightening, just like they did when he watched them earlier. I’m not used to being studied like that. I wish it felt like a turn-off, but it totally doesn’t. Lots of people don’t make it past my outer layers of punk-rocker, and they definitely don’t make it far enough to ask insightful questions about why I’m hesitating.

Questions I don’t want to answer.

“Whoa.”

I look up. Emily’s standing in the doorway and her eyes are practically bugging out. I curse the man who oiled my door hinges. I know it wasn’t Harlan who did the actual greasing, but I’m blaming him anyhow. I look at Emily and decide there’s no way out of this except straight through. “A little present from Harlan. I think he raided Damon’s porn collection.”

Amusement streaks in her eyes. “I got that part. Now tell me why he gave them to you.”

I raise an eyebrow at my boss. “You’ve changed, lady. Three months ago you’d have turned the color of your shoes or swallowed your tongue or something.”

She raises an eyebrow right back. “I hang out with the owner of a BDSM club and a bunch of people who run a betting pool on how long it will take them to make me blush.”

I didn’t know that. I study the amazing woman who has somehow managed to step into a totally different world and do it so well that the natives tease her like one of their own. I glance down at the photos sprawled over my work surface. “Maybe Harlan sent porn to see if he could make you blush.”

She snorts, which I’m pretty sure is something she’s picked up from Ari. “He’ll have to get in line behind the new clients I just interviewed.”

That’s not usually her job. “How come Meghan didn’t talk to them?”

Emily grins. “They want spankings as wedding favors.”

I laugh. “Poor Meghan.” Leo and I can at least talk the talk, and Gabby’s holding her own in some way I don’t even understand, but Meghan’s the least comfortable with our new associations. Not because she has a closed mind—she totally doesn’t. She’s just not a fan of the ground under her feet shifting, and Fettered registers pretty high on the Richter scale.

“She’s doing okay,” says Emily quietly. “I’m not going to let who we are change more or faster than we can all handle.”

That’s why she’s the boss and I’m just the chick who takes care of the details. “You’re a good friend.”

“I am.” She sits down on the other side of my makeshift desk. “I’m also
your
friend, so spill. Why’s Harlan sending you sexy pictures?”

I go with the easiest version of the truth. “They’re testing a new tool for Fettered members to use. Scene brainstorming.”

Emily’s eyes are bugging out again. “You’re going to play with Harlan?”

“Is that so hard to imagine?”

She opens her mouth to say something and then closes it again and runs her finger along the edge of one of the photos. “No, actually.”

That might be more disturbing than the answer she didn’t say. “He’s issued the invitation. I’m pretty sure these are just meant to torment me while I ponder.” And to plant very visual, very specific details in my head, damn him.

Emily’s surveying the pictures now. “So you’re supposed to pick what attracts you?”

“Something like that.” I give her the evil eye. “It’s not a group project.”

She laughs, but she hasn’t taken her eyes off the porn. “No, but I think I maybe need to get a set of my own.”

Oh yeah—Emily’s changed. Big time.

Which is part of my problem. I’m not sure I want to. Not all fast rides are heading in a good direction, and I don’t know where I want this one to go, or whether I even get to pick. Harlan doesn’t seem like a guy used to sharing the steering wheel. I sweep up the photos and stuff them back in the envelope, and then I swing past my startled, grinning boss and head for the door. “I’m going to see a man about a thing.”

If he can bring this to my turf, I can damn well take it to his. And I don’t need electrical tape as an excuse.

T
he walking distance
between our offices and Fettered is just about right to work up a good head of steam. I know because this isn’t the first time I’ve arrived at the club pissy and on edge.

I am, however, pissy and honest. Harlan sending me porn at work is not the problem here. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give him a free pass. I head in the front door this time and wave at Ari and Quint at the bar as I pass through the outer sanctum. “Looking for Harlan. I’ll catch you in a bit.”

Ari looks up from a stack of paperwork taller than her drink. “I don’t think he’s in the dungeon.”

Quint shakes his head. “He’s in one of the private rooms with Milo, installing the new sex chair.”

Ari grins. “That chair rocks. I need to find someone to lock me up and ravish me.”

Quint ruffles her hair. “Sorry, darlin’. I’m busy tonight.”

I grin at both of them. “You guys have really weird work conversations, you know that?”

“What?” Ari shrugs her shoulders and gives me an intentionally clueless look. “You can watch if you want.”

She knows I don’t want. “I’m one of those annoying types who comes here to drink your cocktails and mingle with the interesting people and doesn’t actually step up and do anything fun.”

Quint pours what looks like lemonade into a glass and pushes it across the bar in my direction. “You’re not a tourist—you’re a friend. There’s a difference.”

Damn the Doms of this place and their ability to see right through me. “Thanks.”

He nods his head at a stool. “Sit. Drink. I’ll let Harlan know you’re here.”

I give up and slide onto the stool. Quint makes killer lemonade, and I’m a smart enough tourist to know better than to walk into one of Fettered’s private rooms, no matter what the people inside claimed they were going to be doing.

Ari watches Quint walk away, and then gives me the kind of look that says I’m not out of the frying pan yet. “What’s up with you and Harlan?”

That’s not something I know how to answer. “He wants to know why I don’t play.”

She sips her lemonade. “Fair question. Do you know the answer?”

“Yeah.” I can lemonade-sip anyone under the table.

She waits a moment and then laughs. “Gee, Scorpio, do you want to talk about it?”

Probably not. “Tell me about Milo’s new chair.”

She flutters her eyelashes at me. “I can give you a tour later.”

Easily one of the coolest things about Ari is her flexible, wide-open generosity. She’ll consider doing almost anything that might help someone else be a more fulfilled human being, and even though she’s making this offer as a joke, I also know she’d be willing to make it real in a heartbeat.

I squeeze her hand. “Thanks.”

She sobers, and her eyes are smart and wise and compassionate. “It’s gotten real, huh?”

It has. I hear footsteps behind us, and know without looking that real has just arrived. Ari slides off her stool and picks up her paperwork and lemonade. “I have stuff to go take care of.”

Harlan’s voice rumbles at my back. “Milo could use help testing the restraint mechanisms.”

Ari snorts. “This time I’m locking him up first.”

I laugh. I’ve heard that story. Being Milo’s alpha tester is a risky job.

She slips away, and the footsteps behind me get closer. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

I slap his envelope down on the bar. “Really? You bring me porn at work and figure I’m just going to obediently drop a few pictures in your mailbox?”

He shrugs, pours himself some lemonade, and slides onto a stool beside me. “Maybe.”

Being this close to him is like holding an electric guitar right before the first chords rip. He’s always made me sit up and take notice, but it’s getting more potent. I’ve never had a problem appreciating a big, sexy bad boy—muscles and ink are both in my happy zone. But this is more than that.

He sees me, pushes on me, and those are a totally different kind of electricity.

He puts his hand on the envelope. “Did you look?”

“Yeah.”

He drinks his lemonade and doesn’t say anything.

He also knows when not to push, and that makes it a lot harder to stay pissy. “I was at a wedding a couple of days ago. Brittany, our old receptionist. She hooked up with a grape farmer and now she’s heading off to Tuscany to eat spaghetti and have many babies and be stupidly happy.”

He’s grinning. “Some parts of that sound pretty good.”

I close my eyes. One smart-ass comment and he’s nailed it. “That’s just it. There are parts of that I want.” I sweep my hand around the club lounge. “And parts of this I want. And parts of the punk-rocker musician thing I did for ten years that I want. But none of them are mostly right, if that makes any sense.”

I open my eyes to find him studying me, intense and serious. He lifts a hand and barely touches the nape of my neck. “Why’d you stop the music?”

The man who sends me porn and makes my neck yearn probably deserves something more than my usual pat answer. “I loved making music. I played lead guitar, was a solid back-up singer, wrote some of the songs. My band was pretty good—good enough to keep ourselves fed if we worked hard at it.” Most musicians couldn’t say the same thing, so by our own standards, we were a success. “It was the in-between that was hard. We rode the good edges with the music, and too many of the bad edges when we weren’t playing.”

Still with the intent eyes. “Drugs?”

“That and a bunch of other stuff. Not my thing, mostly, but I watched a lot of friends self-destruct. There was nowhere good and fulfilling to go between the music. Nowhere to live that wasn’t an edge. Too much emptiness and too much bleeding.” I can feel the exhausted loneliness rising in my ribs just talking about it.

His hand slides down my back. “So you found a way out.”

“One day Emily overheard me sorting out gig logistics with some guy at a bar and offered me a job. I thought she was a raving lunatic.”

Harlan’s cheek dimples. “But you took it.”

I shrug. “The pay was good, and she promised I could wear whatever I wanted to work and use as many curse words as I needed to get the job done.” And something in her eyes had promised to be my friend.

She still doesn’t know that’s the part that sealed the deal.

His hand is stroking my back like I’m an oversized kitten. “That’s why Damon opened Fettered.”

I blink, and finally meet his intense eyes head-on. “What?”

“Lots of people in the BDSM world are living edge to edge. Fettered supports doing that safely, but it’s also the good and safe place to come in between. That’s why we have squishy couches and
Pictionary
nights and people dropping in all the damn time just to talk.”

I’d seen all that and assumed it was just part of Damon’s very smart marketing plan. “It’s a family.”

He nods. “Yeah.”

The rest falls into place. “And you’re the den mother. The one who keeps the edges safe when people choose to play.”

He’s ducking my gaze now, and he almost looks embarrassed. “Yeah. Something like that.” His fingers trace over the lines of his tats. “I know what it is to need edges. And to need something in between.”

I look at the strong, beautiful tribal lines of his ink. It’s time to ask where he’s trying to drive this thing, because if I don’t want to be a passenger, I need to get off this bus really soon. I put my hands on the envelope. “So what’s this?”