“Wait. Back the truck up. Clubs? There are
clubs
for this stuff?”
Mark chuckled. “Yes, my friend. With my public profile, Rose and I can’t exactly keep a spanking bench and a St. Andrew’s cross in the corner of the bedroom. We’re fond of a few private places in town known for their discretion and private rooms.”
Dante let that sink in while he ordered a glass of water. Sobering up fast became a priority. He was exhilarated and perplexed at the same time. So much of the way he was wired now made sense. He was Italian, for Christ’s sake; sex had been part of his vernacular since he was a kid. But until Friday with Celina, it had also been a simple physical act he could leave behind as easily as a used condom. Now, he couldn’t stop thinking about what they’d done and how they’d done it. With this new chunk of knowledge, he felt like Columbus in the New World. Terrified to stay. Terrified to leave.
“And Rose goes to these places with you?” he queried. “Willingly? Knowing what she’s going to let you do to her?”
“What I’m going to do
with
her, yes. She’s my collared submissive as well as my wife.”
“Collared…” Recognition flared. “You mean that little choker she wears around the house—”
“Signifies that she’s committed to me as a sexual submissive. It also represents my commitment to her, as her Dom, that I’ll never abuse the gift of her surrender, and I’ll always make sure she gets what she needs from our dynamic.”
“When you go these clubs.”
“Most of the time, yes.”
Dante couldn’t help slashing an incisive stare at his friend. “And she’s fine with all this?”
“Kid in a candy store is more like it.” Mark chuffed and chucked a wadded cocktail napkin at him. “Don’t snort, asshole. I’m serious. Last month, she even surprised me for my birthday by securing an overnight suite at Dark Escape. It’s become her favorite club, I think. She likes the eucalyptus in the aftercare lotions.”
“Aftercare.” Dante leaned close again. “That sounds key. Explain.”
Mark paused, seeming to read him. Definitely knowing, as his best friend, that he didn’t bother to pick apart something with a hundred questions unless the subject was important. Really fucking important.
“All right, let me ask you this. What did you do for Celina when you were—er—finished with things on Friday night?”
“Cleaned her up. Gave her a massage.” He stopped just short of saying
the usual
, though that would’ve been the truth. As for after that? All right, those parts weren’t so usual. “All right, so I spent the night. Then I kind of made her breakfast.”
Mark nodded and gave a big grin. “Breakfast. Not bad.”
He shrugged. “Just a frittata.”
His friend’s eyebrows jumped. “A
frittata
?” He tossed his head back, laughing. “Inferno, just check this one off. You’ll have no trouble picking up on aftercare.”
The remark, meant as encouragement, wreaked an opposite effect. As the water flushed everything from Dante’s skull except a headache, another aftereffect of sobriety barged in.
Rationality.
What the hell made him think he’d be “checking” anything off Mark’s magical checklist anytime soon? Okay, he was a Dominant. It was a missing link for him. A huge one. It also explained why he couldn’t let go of the woman who’d helped him discover it—and brought him no closer to doing so than before.
Which made him wish he’d stayed shit faced.
“No,” he muttered. “I don’t think I’ll be ‘aftercaring’ anything or anyone soon, man.”
He expected the line to be the stumper for his friend. Instead, Mark nodded knowingly again. “Aha. Now we’re at the meat of things.” He tilted his head back. “Let me see if I can get this right. Your Celina got up and didn’t even look at your frittata. She looked at
you
like you suddenly had a pumpkin for a head, got you out the door as fast as possible, then hasn’t returned the hundred phone calls and three hundred texts you’ve left her since. And you think if you keep pounding at that door hard enough, it’ll cave, and she’ll be standing behind it, ready to change her mind. Am I close?”
Dante didn’t answer. He hailed the bartender and ordered another drink. A double this time.
“I’m that right on the money, huh?”
“It doesn’t change a thing, you fucker.”
Mark didn’t volley back to that. Dante assumed the bastard would finally let him return to a drunken stupor in peace, until the man turned on his bar stool and fully faced him.
“You want to know why I’ve got this so right? Because I went through the same thing with Rose. Okay, I didn’t cook her a goddamn frittata; you superachievers really piss me off sometimes. But the reaction? The terror in her eyes? The whole look that says ‘what the hell did I just let this man do to me, and why did I love it so much?’ Been there, man. Done that.”
He inhaled hard against the lead weight in his chest and returned his friend’s direct stare. “So what did you do to change her mind?”
“Kidnapped her.”
He waited for the I’m-just-shitting-you grin. It didn’t come.
“What do you mean?”
Mark shrugged and gave a lopsided grin. “All right, so I did let her walk onto the yacht under her own choice. But after that, she was mine.” He blinked only once. “I tied her up. Made her listen. Forced her to feel and experience the beauty of her submission, to accept that surrendering to me unlocked something in herself she couldn’t ignore.”
“The yacht,” Dante repeated. “So this was when you two were still at the training in the Bahamas?” When Mark nodded, he whistled low. “You don’t waste time, Marker Man.”
“Remarkable women don’t come along every day.” He leaned over and clapped Dante’s shoulder. “Let me guarantee you one thing. If you two really blew the roof off her place, then she’s still confused too. She still can’t stop thinking about it either—and you’ll never have a better opportunity to fight for her.” His brows kicked up a little. “
If
you want to fight for her?”
He returned his friend’s scrutiny so hard, his jaw ached from clenching. “What the fuck do you suggest I do? Kidnap a US Navy JAG officer, carry her off on a goddamn yacht, and tie her up until she listens?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Excuse me?”
“Methods should be modified for the subbie, my friend. I think your friend Celina might react to a more literal approach. And I believe I have just the secret weapon to help us achieve that.”
“What exactly is that?”
“Not what.” He pulled his cell out of his pocket and punched a button. “
Who
.” His smile deepened. “Hello, my pet. How are you? No, I’m still here with Inferno Boy. I’ll be home soon. I called to ask you a question. How would you like a field trip to Dark Escape?” He held the phone back a few inches as a high-pitched shriek erupted through the ear hole. “I think that means she’s in.”
Chapter Eight
Celina glanced at Eve and Reiley again as they hurried from the “L” station and crossed Jackson Boulevard, hunching their shoulders against the knife of icy wind cutting up from the river. The street banners flapped over their heads, making it look like the cartoon turkey on them had invented a new dance step. She wondered if the big guy would be boogying in some snow during his big parade this year.
She stopped and hesitated as they got to the doors with the gleaming letters declaring they’d arrived at the Willis Tower. The two of them must have spiked her coffee yesterday morning, because she still couldn’t believe she was here, tagging along for yet another party. “Because last week ended up so well,” she finished in a dark mutter.
“What are you grumbling about back there, Kouris?” Eve called above the beat of her platform party heels as she led the way into the building.
“Pascal, are you absolutely sure this is where Trev’s party is?”
She knew Trevin Nash was turning thirty. She also knew he’d do anything to make an impression on Eve. But a birthday bash at the most iconic skyscraper in the city, still called the Sears Tower by many because it was that famous, seemed out of budget even for their cocky coworker.
“Cel, just go with the flow for once, all right? This is gonna be…fun!”
Something felt weird about the pause in her friend’s statement. Eve was genetically wired to spit out the word “fun” every fifteen minutes or so. But her voice had definitely hitched, even if her sashay hadn’t. Celina shot a look of concern at her friend’s leather-jacketed back. Maybe she was starting to have cold feet about Lieutenant Nash and all his swagger. That was just fine by her. Just because the guy worked for the navy didn’t mean he wasn’t as flash hungry as a private-sector attorney. But bling was an irresistible siren to Eve too. On the other hand, Eve hadn’t watched what money could do to people. How it broke hearts and lives.
Great. Hadn’t she picked out the perfect mindset to bring into a building like this? Celina clomped along behind her friends in a pair of black high-heeled boots Reiley had persuaded her to buy on sale in June. Their footsteps bounced off the lobby’s gleaming floors and shiny walls, making the place sound like a basketball court, if basketballs were now made of million-dollar bills. She tugged at her skirt, now wishing she hadn’t also let Rei talk her into wearing fishnet hose with her outfit.
“Would you stop that?” Eve chastised as they got onto the elevator. “Your skirt’s so long, people can only see two inches of the hose anyhow. And I can’t believe you wore a turtleneck too.”
She glowered at them both. “I feel totally out of place. Like Julia Roberts at that polo match in
Pretty Woman
.”
Reiley glared. “You look like Julie Andrews, circa
The Sound of Music
.”
“Before she left the convent,” Eve added.
“Way before,” Reiley asserted.
The elevator got to their floor. Celina didn’t even pay attention how high they’d come in the building, but if her mild vertigo was an altitude barometer too, she guessed they were well past halfway. She got off the elevator after her friends and entered a lobby that dripped of opulence, elegance, and a classic Hollywood vibe of romance. Indigo and red velvet drapes were complemented by matching settees and understated lighting. The black carpet was so thick, it felt like treading on memory foam. Music played through hidden speakers, a throbbing dance beat turned soothing by strings and a singer who mixed Madonna’s eroticism with Adele’s soul.
Not the kind of music she’d expected to hear at Trev’s birthday bash.
Not the kind of place she expected Trev to pick at all, actually.
“This is weird,” she murmured. “You guys, don’t you think this is weird? Is anyone even here? Are we sure this is the…right…”
She stammered into silence as a figure seemed to materialize from the curtains. A black T-shirt outlined every hard striation of his tapered torso. Charcoal cargo pants covered the endless inches of his legs. Leather biker boots encased his feet. His ink-dark hair was a rough tumble against his set jaw. And then she confronted that deep-as-midnight gaze, shaded with just a hint of indigo, enduring its probe straight into her psyche, trembling as it stabbed right into her sex.
And fuming as Dante lifted a slow smile.
He knew. He just knew, didn’t he? He could see her thoughts, knowing that every moment of Friday night flooded back to her in a dizzy rush.
She stumbled backward and grabbed for the curtains. Like that helped. The room turned into a fun house anyway, tilting wildly on her. She tottered again, feeling ridiculous as a clown in that fun house. Guess that was what fury and exhilaration did when they hit like taunting squirt gun blasts.
Her mortification doubled when he closed the gap between them in three strides. “Easy,
cara
.” He braced her arms like she weighed no more than a feather. “You okay?”
“Easy.” She threw it back from tight teeth. “Easy? You’re daring to use that word on me right now? Really?” She squirmed, but he didn’t let go. She swung out a glare at both her friends. “Don’t
either
of you even think about some half-baked apology right now!”
“Who says we’re sorry?” Eve countered.
A giggle—a giggle!—spilled from Reiley, who hadn’t even left the elevator. She adopted a coy pose, holding the button to keep the doors open. “I’m just sorry we’re the ones who have to go.”
Celina ripped a stare between both of them. “Ohhh no! Wait a second! You guys aren’t—”
“They’ll be right up the street, stellina.”
Eve nodded. “Trev’s party is actually at Muldoon’s. It’s right around the corner. We’re a phone call away. Honest.”
Celina huffed. “‘Honest’ isn’t working so well for you right now.”
“And ‘denial’ hasn’t been working great for you this whole week, Cel.” Damn it, the little redhead pulled out her I’m-right-and-you-know-it stance. “He wouldn’t have had to resort to this if you’d just returned a phone call.”
“Thank you,” Dante murmured.
“Shut up,” Celina snapped.
“Damn it, Cel.” Her friend added a glower to the pose. “Why don’t you give him a chance?”
Celina dropped her head. She refused to let them all see the conflict that was certainly twisting its way across her face.
Because I gave him a chance already. In a moment of hormones, pheromones, and crazy, I gave him way more than a chance. And I liked it. No, I loved it. And I can’t love it again. I can’t let him in again. I’m not a key acquisition for Dante Tieri’s relationship portfolio!
He dissolved the diatribe with his next words, given in a low, sincere tone. “One hour.” He slid his grip down to her hands. “Celina.
Cara
. Sixty minutes is all this will take. After that”—he nodded toward Eve and Reiley—“you’ll call your friends, if you want to.”
“What do you mean,
if
I want to?” She snapped another glare as Eve stepped back to the elevator. “Would you two stop laughing?”
Reiley tossed her hair over one shoulder and waved with her fingertips. “Mr. Tieri? If she turns down the request, I’m available.”
Eve high-fived her for that, but Dante acknowledged it with only half a smile. The focus of his gaze and the pressure of his grip never veered from Celina. Both intensified as he stated, “It’s not a request.”