Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1) (5 page)

Rae leaned down and asked Lizzy, “Is Dom
here?”

Lizzy and Georgie glanced around the huge
hotel suite.

The Dom was leaning with his elbow on the
bar, sipping from a highball glass and holding court, his bright
blond hair half a head above everyone clustered around him.

Lizzy’s heart flailed from a jolt of
adrenaline that made her hands shake. She almost stepped backward
and melted back into the elevator, and she nearly ran over to
him.

Lizzy glanced up at Rae. “I don’t see him.
Let’s dance.”

She slid her fingers into Rae’s hand and
pulled Rae and Georgie through the crowd to the dance floor in
front of the DJ like a chihuahua on a leash, dragging two
giants.

A crowd bopped on the dance floor, mostly the
younger Doms and their subs. A deejay spun old, old rock songs and
seventies disco just loud enough so that people could sing along
without fear of anyone hearing them sing.

Lizzy began to dance, and Georgie started
dancing, and Rae started doing that embarrassed shuffle thing that
Lizzy could have sworn they had cured her of last year.

Two wailing songs later, Lizzy told Rae, “You
need a drink.”

Rae nodded, obviously relieved to leave the
dance floor. Maybe Georgie has psyched her out with all that talk
about The Dom.

They drank jewel-colored, pucker-sweet girlie
martinis at the bar that ran the length of one wall. Lizzy stood
with her back resolutely to The Dom, feeling his presence six feet
away, even through the people clustered around him. With two steps
of those long legs and one reach, he could whirl Lizzy around and
kiss her right there. The back of her neck prickled as she listened
for any movement behind her.

Lizzy licked sugar off the rim of her martini
glass and asked Georgie and Rae, “What’s the difference between
dark and hard?”

Rae’s glance with those big, brown eyes was
bashful, but her grin was infectious. “I don’t know. What’s the
difference?”

“It stays
dark
all night.”

The girls laughed college-girl titters, but
Lizzy heard a low chuckle behind her. It wasn’t The Dom’s deep
chuckle, which she had only heard the one time, but it was
definitely masculine and amused.

They drank and talked for a few minutes, and
Lizzy ordered another sour apple martini for Rae. “What’s the
difference between light and hard?” Lizzy asked.

This time, Georgie humored her. “What?”

“A man can go to sleep with a
light
on.”

The girls laughed, and again, Lizzy heard
that chuckle behind her. Some guy back there liked juvenile dirty
jokes. She almost turned to take a look, but she didn’t want to
catch The Dom’s eye, so she stared at Georgie and Rae instead.
Besides, if she turned around, it would give the guy a fat head,
the bad kind.

Rae slurped rest of her bilious green drink
and signaled the bartender. “What kind of whiskey do you have?”

Georgie and Lizzy exchanged glances behind
Rae’s back. Georgie leaned in. “Slow down, pardner.”

The bartender finished pouring a beer and
raised an eyebrow. “The usual. What d’ya want?”

Lizzy rested her elbows on the bar.
“Something from the top shelf. Maybe that Johnnie Walker Blue, with
water.”

“Blue Label?” Rae asked. She squinted up at
the bottle the guy retrieved from the top rack of booze.

“Yeah, it’s good, but it’s a sipping whiskey,
not a shot.” Lizzy caught a glimpse of the guy behind her back who
had been chuckling at her jokes, but he was turned the other
direction. His dark blond hair seemed well-cut, shaggy on top like
he might not be too old, and he was holding a beer. His shoulders
were broad under his—
sigh
—black suit.

All the guys here were wearing dark suits.
The hotel suite looked like a convention of those government agents
who showed up after you saw a flying saucer to tell you that it was
a weather balloon. Lizzy turned back to Rae.

Rae sipped the Scotch. “This
is
good.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. Roll it around
on your tongue. Don’t drink it too fast.” Lizzy kept peeking out of
the corner of her eye to see what Chucklehead looked like, but he
was talking to some guy on the other side of him and never turned
back toward her.

With every sip, Rae’s paranoid stare slid
toward giggles.

Finally, Lizzy dragged them to the dance
floor again. This time, Rae danced like a sexy woman rather than a
teenaged giraffe.

The guy dancing next to them doffed his
shirt. He was around their age, maybe barely drinking-legal, and
his muscular chest and ripples of abs were shaved as smooth as a
seal. Lizzy would have liked to look at him a little longer, but
his Domme snagged the thick silver collar around his neck and
dragged him to her. She kissed him hard, holding the back of his
head, and Lizzy looked away.

Lizzy and Georgie danced close to Rae because
the crowd jostled and shoved them together.

Across the room, The Dom was still surrounded
by chattering people, but he caught Lizzy’s eye. He raised one
blond eyebrow at her, a question.

Lizzy pointed at Rae, who was shimmying in
that silver dress and gawking just a little at the Domme necking
with her boy toy.

The Dom shrugged with a muscular raise of one
shoulder and glanced away from Lizzy, turning back to his
conversation, obviously not interested in Rae.

Damn it, Lizzy had been wrapped up in her own
crazy all night, and she should have been figuring out how to get
The Dom interested in Rae.
Stupid,
she chastised herself.
Rae needed this job more than Lizzy needed to be coy around The
Dom.

Lizzy waved at him, catching his eye. He
glanced back.

She pointed more emphatically at Rae, a
demand that The Dom at least come over and talk to her.

He inclined his head, acquiescing, and tipped
the rest of his drink into his mouth before he began to extricate
himself from the crowd around him. When he made a move to leave,
most of the people focused on him, trying to keep him there. They
were all networking hard, trying to gain admission to The
Devilhouse.

The Dom meandered through the crowd toward
them, reaching the edge of the dance floor.

Lizzy pinched Georgie’s elbow and directed
her attention toward the The Dom making his way through the crowd.
Georgie nodded and watched him, too. He was taller than most of the
people there, taller than the tall men and the women perching in
spiked heels, and the recessed lights in the ceiling caught his
bright golden hair above all them.

The music slipped from ancient disco to some
British soprano singing about unrequited love.

Lizzy ducked into the crowd just as The Dom
slipped between them and Rae.

Lizzy and Georgie skulked off to the bar.
They could debrief Rae in the car.

Mannix listened to his sub dissect the
designer clothes that other people were wearing while he watched
the other Doms with their subs.

Down the wall, a Dom had his sub up against
the wall, his fist in her hair, and was threatening her with rather
severe punishment.

Mannix surreptitiously snapped a photo of the
man’s face with his cell phone. He would try to put a name to him,
later.

The Dom of The Devilhouse, that pale blond
man in the crowd, didn’t tolerate real brutality in his clients.
Mannix was at the party to spy on the prospectives. Couldn’t have
the wrong sort gain entry to The Devilhouse, even though Mannix
suspected that he, himself, was the wrong sort. He was just better
at hiding it.

“And that Domme,” Gina fluttered her hand
toward a statuesque woman wearing navy blue and brushed Mannix’s
long, black hair behind his shoulder, trying to get his attention.
“I can’t believe that she’s wearing Chanel. How staid!”

“Of course,
mon ange,”
Mannix
murmured, utterly bored.

His sub, Gina, could spot a designer at a
thousand yards. She sniffed at the people who wore the
international designers, lamenting their poor taste at wearing with
the usual suspects rather than choosing someone
local,
someone
interesting.

Local and interesting usually meant twice as
expensive as the international designers, Mannix had discovered. He
still wasn’t sure why cactus couture cost so much more than Chanel
or Armani.

Across the room, Mannix spotted a small woman
sitting at the bar, sipping a yellow martini. Her dress was as the
same hue of pale gold as her short, blond hair. The crystals caught
the light. She glittered.

Mannix had seen her around Devilhouse
functions, on Saturday nights and at these parties. He had asked
about her, learning that her name was Lizzy Pajari, that she was
employed at The Devilhouse, and some other information. He had
tried to get on her schedule, but the Devilhouse office had told
him that her list was closed.

He could see why she was in such demand. When
she laughed at something, her tiny body shook. She looked so small,
so fragile, so joyous.

Mannix bet that she would look even more
delicious tied up with her arms above her head, stretched hard,
while he manipulated her body until she screamed.

Gina prattled on about clothes.

Mannix reached behind her and grabbed the
long, silver chain that hung from her collar to her narrow waist.
He tugged it sharply. “Be quiet.”

Gina was quiet.

Mannix continued to watch Lizzy.

She was endlessly fascinating.

After shoving a shocked Rae into The Dom’s
arms, Lizzy swung up on the barstool she had occupied earlier and
ordered a lemon drop martini from the guy tending the bar. With Rae
safely dancing with The Dom, Lizzy could relax for a few minutes.
It was all up to that girl, now. She could make or break her whole
future with this one conversation.

Of course, if Rae did fuck it up, she would
go home to her sweet little family and have to go to church. It’s
not like Rae would end up a sixteen-year-old runaway, trading
sexual favors for a fake ID so she could dance on tables or
anything. Seriously, how bad could having to go to church be?

But a job at The Devilhouse would be better
for her. Between the six-figure salary and the commissions, if Rae
worked for two years and saved her pennies, she could probably save
seven figures, enough to have her autism clinic.

The bartender slid Lizzy’s drink to her, and
she pinched it between her small fingers to catch it. She sipped.
The super-sweet lemonade almost covered the sting of the vodka.

Almost.
Soon that vodka would course
through her veins, drowning out all the crazy that tumbled in her
skull.

Perched on the tall barstool, Lizzy could see
over the crowd to the dance floor. Even though she had always been
the smallest kid in her classes at school and church and everywhere
and been down in the crowd her whole life, being at elbow-level
still made her claustrophobic. She tended to climb like a spider
monkey and perch on tall things, like barstools or counters.

Beyond the weaving crowd, over on the dance
floor, Rae and The Dom were
waltzing.

Lizzy held her martini just under her chin
and watched them.

They danced braced apart and looked perfectly
matched: strong, elegant, and tall. Rae’s supple back, bared in
that silver mermaid dress that Lizzy had picked out for her, bent
as they glided through the other couples. Her loose hair twitched
like dark fire as she said something to The Dom, and The Dom smiled
at her. His smile was that cold, disastrous smile that didn’t touch
his blue eyes.

Lizzy turned back to the bar. She was trying
to get Rae a job at The Devilhouse to save her butt from having to
leave college, but that didn’t mean that she liked watching another
woman dance with The Dom.

She could still feel his warm breath, hot on
the back of her neck.

She sucked a deep sip of the lemon drop
martini and sighed. Her tongue numbed.

She could use a few more of these.

Georgie had said that it wouldn’t be weird
anymore, but it was. She resolved to think about anything,
anything
else.

The man next to her was kind of cute, if you
like that middle-of-the-road, sandy-blond hair, lightly tanned,
medium
thing. She wondered if he was Chucklehead, the guy
who had liked her dirty riddles, or if Chucklehead had moved on
when she had left to dance.

She wasn’t particularly interested in him,
anyway. Medium Guy seemed normal. Nothing about him screamed or
brooded or even swaggered. Lizzy tended to go for the more extreme
male specimens, like the golden blazing mystery of the The Dom.

Medium Guy nodded at her and went back to
sipping his beer.

Lizzy spun her barstool around and glanced
over the crowd of Doms and their wussy little subs, avoiding
looking at the dance floor. The Doms tended to be tall,
broad-shouldered, and glowering, emanating enough attitude to
overpower a simpering little sub who probably couldn’t take half
the pain that Lizzy could. Sometimes the Doms reminded her of the
tanned gym rats back at the shore, like Gio.

God,
Giovanni,
what a stereotypical
name for a guy who she had thought was different than all the other
Guidos on the shore, but he wasn’t. He was juiced on steroids like
someone had stuffed hams into his biceps and thighs, tanned to the
tint of fine orange leather, and spent an hour blow-drying his hair
until he looked like a bleach-streaked troll doll.

Sometimes she thought that the Universe was
valiantly trying to give her clues because, evidently, she had no
clues of her own.

The crowd at The Devilhouse’s audition party
roamed like a herd of well-dressed wildebeests milling around
several alcoholic watering holes.