Bound and Determined (2 page)

brightened. “If he's into teaching, he might even get off on it.”

Sterling didn't think that being a teacher necessarily meant that you were

willing to train someone in the finer arts of being a Dom in your spare time, but

he didn't point that out. There were a lot of ifs and maybes to be dealt with, but

he was too much his father's son to let hesitation and uncertainty stop him

from reaching out for something he wanted. The worst that could happen was

that Sawyer would say no, and a no could always be changed into a yes if you

knew where to apply the right pressure.

He noted that Sawyer's glass was almost empty. “I'm going to buy him a

drink and say hi,” he told Alex.

“Sounds like a plan. I'll get a beer, and I'll be over there if you need me,”

Alex said, gesturing to a corner table where three men sat chatting animatedly

to each other. He patted Sterling's shoulder solemnly, a glint of a smile in his

blue eyes. “Go and get an A for assertiveness.”

The seat next to Sawyer's was conveniently empty—Sterling slid into it as

the blonde woman walked off, looking disappointed, and said as smoothly as

possible, “Hi. Come here often?”

He'd almost forgotten how cold Sawyer's gray eyes could get when he

wasn't happy about something. Almost. One flickering, disinterested glance

and Sterling was on his way to being hard and feeling combative, responding to

being ignored the way he had in class when Sawyer had dismissed his take on

a poem as juvenile or ignorant or both.

“I asked you a question,” Sterling said.

Sawyer swallowed the last of his drink—whiskey by the look and smell of

it, poured over ice that had melted enough to lighten the amber of the liquid to

a pale straw—and set his glass down on the bar. “And I was remarkably kind

and pretended that I didn't hear it or notice your presence in a bar when you're

too young to drink.” Sawyer stared at him directly for the first time, a hint of

anger in his eyes but not a shred of embarrassment. “Go home, Mr. Baker. You

don't belong here.”

4

Jane Davitt & Alexa Snow

“You don't get to decide where I belong,” Sterling retorted. “And I'm not too

young to be here. To drink, sure—though not for much longer—but not to hang

out. I came with a friend. How about you?”

“I don't come here to make friends,” Sawyer said, his voice crisp. Listening

to it felt like biting into an apple just picked off a tree; Sterling's mouth wanted

to water. “You
do
know where you are, don't you?”

Sterling frowned. “Yes—I'm not stupid. Which maybe, if you weren't old

enough to be getting senile, you'd remember. I know you didn't like me when I

took your class, but since our grades weren't based on your personal opinion of

our character, I
did
get an A.” He sighed and rubbed a hand across his face—

this wasn't the way he'd imagined the evening going. “Look, can we start over

again? Let me buy you a drink.”

“No, thank you. And I remember you from my class very well,” Sawyer said

flatly. “You were cocky, arrogant, and you owed your grade to the fact that

when you wrote your papers for me you dropped the attitude and actually

produced something worth reading.” Sawyer picked up his glass and swirled

the ice in it, watching it clash against the side of the glass. “You surprised me;

I assumed you'd paid someone to write them initially, but a phrase here and

there echoed something you'd said in class…” He put the glass down and

gestured to the bartender for a refill. “So forceful in public, so keen to correct

me…but when you were alone, not surrounded by your clique of admirers, you

wrote in a way that showed you'd listened to me closely.”

Sawyer's drink arrived, passed over with a smile that held a hint of the

same adoration some of the subs in the room were showing their Doms. Sawyer

took it with a nod of thanks and stood. “Enjoy your little field trip to the zoo—

and, yes, some of the animals here
do
bite.”

Fine, Sterling thought, watching the man's perfectly shaped ass as he

walked away. Who cares? I can find someone else to show me the ropes—

someone a hell of a lot nicer than that bastard.

It was all a little too forced, though, and he wasn't in the business of

pretending, not even to himself; he had to admit that it bothered him that

Sawyer didn't like him. Sure, he could be kind of cocky sometimes. He was

sharp as a tack, and he knew it. Growing up under the watchful eye of his

father, the esteemed and respected William Sterling Baker II, he'd had to learn

fast and protect himself faster. He could handle someone like Professor Sawyer.

If he wanted to.

Eyes searching the room, Sterling found Alex and went over to join him

and the small group of people he was talking to.

The table was big enough that there were two empty seats, and he took

the one next to Alex, who turned and greeted him with a smile that quickly

turned sympathetic when he saw Sterling's face. Sterling didn't want

sympathy, and he really didn't want to talk about his failure. He gave the men

at the table a friendly nod and got some interested, appraising looks back that

were soothing, even if he wasn't drawn to anybody in particular. It didn't

Bound and Determined

5

matter. He wasn't here to pick someone up; he was here to find a guide

through the maze. He slid his hand over Alex's thigh under the table and

reminded himself that even if things hadn't gone as planned a few nights

before, the sex between them was still okay as long as they kept it vanilla.

The noise level at the table rose as one of the men, a slimly built redhead

with sparkling green eyes, recounted some gossip that was met with laughter

and then capped by the man beside him, who was snickering too much for

Sterling to follow what he was saying. Alex turned away from the table slightly

and murmured, “So what did he say? I asked about him while you were at the

bar, and he's definitely got a good reputation; he knows what he's doing.”

“Apparently he's even more of a jerk than I'd remembered,” Sterling said.

“He thinks I don't belong here and I should run along home and play with my

LEGOs or something.” He rolled his eyes, hoping he was acting convincingly

nonchalant about the whole situation when, in fact, it was bothering him

enough that he had a gnawing ache in his gut.

Alex's jaw dropped slightly, but he made a quick recovery. “Maybe it's a,

uh, test or something and he wants to know if you're serious?” He scratched

his jaw pensively. “I wasn't staring at you or anything, but from here you

looked kind of, well…”

“What?” Sterling demanded, unwilling to admit that he hadn't even gotten

as far as asking Sawyer to train him.

There was a couple walking by, the sub, tall, muscular, his arms bare,

faded jeans clinging to his thighs and ass, walking a few steps behind an older

man in a suit expensive enough to remind Sterling of his father. The sub

looked unhappy, his head ducked down, a flush on his face, but as his Dom

turned and looked at him, his head came up and he smiled tentatively, the

happiness returning to his eyes as the older man, his face impassive, made

some minor adjustment to the fit of the collar the sub wore. It was as intimate

a gesture as a kiss.

“Like the guy
not
in the suit,” Alex said succinctly as the couple walked

away.

“What?” It came out sounding disbelieving, which was how Sterling felt.

“Seriously?”

“Well, yeah.” Alex shrugged and patted his shoulder. “Sorry, man, but it's

true. I'm not saying it means anything—it's just how you looked.”

Sterling sat back in his chair and thought about it for a minute as

conversation continued around him, the music in the background blurring into

the other sounds until all of it became meaningless. Which was what Alex's

theory was. Wasn't it?

His whole life Sterling had struggled to come out on top in his relationship

with his dad, and although the distance that going away to college had created

made things easier, it didn't eliminate the conflict. Sterling's entire existence

6

Jane Davitt & Alexa Snow

revolved around not letting himself play second fiddle to anyone, so it made

sense that, drawn to the BDSM lifestyle the way he was, he'd be a Dom.

Of course, until a few weeks ago, BDSM had been nothing more than a

term, one that brought to mind men in leather masks whipping people

stretched out on a rack with blindfolds over their eyes and gags in their

mouths. It had been a cartoonish concept; that was all.

Then Sterling's roommate Brian had dragged him, somewhat unwilling, to

an off-campus party on a Friday night. Brian had hooked up with some little

red-haired girl almost immediately, leaving Sterling surrounded by straight

couples who were making out on every available surface and no way to get

back to the dorm unless he wanted to walk. He'd been on the verge of deciding

to do so, even though it had to be at least six miles, when he'd noticed two

guys slipping downstairs. Following them in the hopes that there was a flat-

screen TV and a DVD player down there,
something
to help kill a couple of

hours, he'd found only a bedroom door, ajar several inches, and sounds that

told him the two men were doing something a lot more kinky than getting ready

to watch a movie.

He hadn't been able to make himself leave. Instead, he'd stood there,

watching what he could see, his cock rock-hard in his jeans as the bigger man

ordered the other—who'd turned out to be Alex—to suck him off. The words

he'd used had been explicit, but it was the submissive yearning in Alex's voice

as he'd answered that had made it clear this wasn't just two guys hooking up.

Afterward, still hard, Sterling had crept back upstairs and waited on the

front porch for one of the two to reappear. Brian and the redhead left for her

place, offering to drop him back at the dorm, but he'd shaken his head and

stayed until Alex, blond hair mussed, had come outside and lit a cigarette with

hands that trembled.

“Hey,” Sterling said.

“Hey.” Alex inhaled blissfully. “You want one?”

“Sure. Thanks.” Sterling had only smoked a handful of times, but he felt

instinctively that he wanted to create some kind of connection, and he'd take

what he could get. “I'm Sterling Baker.”

“Alex Ross.” Alex lit a second cigarette and handed it over. “God, I'm

wrecked. What time is it?”

“I don't know. Two, maybe?” Sterling took a drag, exhaled without

coughing, and steeled himself. “Can I ask you something?”

That had been the start of their friendship, and now, with the background

noise of the club sharpening again, Sterling looked at Alex with a mixture of

affection and gratitude. He
needed
this, he knew it deep down, and Alex was

the one who'd opened his eyes to this new world.

“It has to mean something,” he said finally. “Just not what you're

implying. Maybe it's because it's
him
and I'm remembering how it used to be

when he was in charge of me in class. Sort of a conditioned reflex, you know?”

Bound and Determined

7

It was a lame piece of reasoning, but Alex seemed to buy it, if his vaguely

encouraging nod was anything to go by.

Sterling might have allowed himself to be convinced if he wasn't thinking

about the few times he'd tried to give Alex what he needed and fallen well short

of what they'd been aiming at. Faced with Alex on his knees, an expectant look

in his eyes, his features settling into a serenity that was absent at other times,

Sterling had panicked. Orders that needed to be voiced with utter certainty had

been stammered, his voice hoarse and wavering. He'd contradicted himself,

snapped at a patient Alex, frustration at his own failure sour in his throat, and

ruined the mood spectacularly. The second attempt, a few nights later, had just

been boring, though there had been the sense of something tantalizingly out of

reach that kept him awake for hours, staring into the darkness of his room, his

body aching, hungry.

Submissive. The one thing he
wasn't
and never had been. No. He just

needed some experience, that was all, needed to soak up the atmosphere here.

He'd always been a quick learner, observant, imaginative; every report card

he'd ever had bore that out.

“We can try again tonight, if neither of us gets lucky,” Alex murmured, his