Linger (2 page)

S
carlett perched on a barstool inside In Vino Veritas, sipping at the glass of buttery Chardonnay that Luca had gifted her.

After the encounter outside, she had been unable to stop herself from searching for the handsome stranger once she was inside. A few male submissives had tried to catch her eye, but she found herself strangely uninterested.

“Look at me,” Scarlett whispered. She'd been watching the man for a good five minutes, but he hadn't yet looked her way. He hadn't looked anyone's way, actually, seeming focused on his drink.

As if he'd heard her speak, though, he turned and met her stare. Scarlett's fingers clenched on her wineglass briefly before relaxing. Butterflies began to do a wild dance of excitement in her belly.

He reminded her of a tethered animal, restrained but only just. A heavy rock settled on top of the butterflies in her gut when she realized that the chances of this man being her type—being sexually submissive—were slim indeed.

At least eight inches taller than her own five foot six, he wore his raw masculinity like he wore the faded denim that molded to thick, muscular thighs and a tight ass that made her want to sink her teeth into it. His hair shone gold in the low crimson lights of the club, glinting as he lifted a bottle of domestic beer to his lips and reminding Scarlett of nothing so much as an ancient Viking heading to battle.

When he lowered that amber bottle of beer—no fancy wine for him—and continued to stare at her with those piercing cobalt blue eyes, Scarlett felt the desire like a punch in the chest. She couldn't explain it and certainly hadn't been looking for it—she was looking for a playmate for only this one night, a willing submissive on which to test her newly minted skills as a Mistress.

Scarlett held his gaze, her heart pounding in her throat. She might have been fairly new to the games of dominance and submission, but it was still far from her first time in this club. And yet she'd never felt attraction like this before. Never. Especially not to a man who looked like he would eat her alive if she let him.

When the man finally broke the stare, casting his eyes to the ground, Scarlett frowned, feeling a bit perplexed. Had he lost interest? Because surely she hadn't imagined the indefinable connection between them, the one that had sparked outside and now only pulled tighter with each passing moment.

She knew it wasn't all one-sided. It couldn't be.

She let her stare drop as well, following his line of sight. Her eyes stroked over the biceps, the forearms that were tightly corded with muscle—the arms of a man who used them for a living. When she came to his wrists, she stopped short.

Wrapped around the narrowest part of the man's arms were yellow cuffs—golden yellow leather, with metal rings meant for attaching to restraints on the various pieces of equipment around the club.

These were the yellow cuffs that the club had their seasoned submissives wear—the cuffs that signaled that the man or woman who wore them was looking for a Master or Mistress to play with.

Inhaling shakily as adrenaline burst through her veins,
Scarlett forced the fingers that had unconsciously clenched once more around the stem of her wineglass to relax.

As she'd watched him, she had hoped he could maybe, possibly be a submissive. From the way he was dressed, she couldn't tell.

And he hadn't lowered his gaze when she'd first caught his eye, either outside or here in the playroom, which told her that while he might have marked himself as a submissive, he wasn't going to be taken down easily.

Subs like that could eat an unwary Mistress alive. But still, arousal made her flush. Could she really be lucky enough to have found what she desired so deeply—a man strong enough to dominate but who chose to walk the submissive side?

She might have been green, but she had no intention of screwing this up. Everything about the man attracted her—the way his size made her feel small, the intensity in his eyes, the feral energy that surrounded him.

Topping him would be like taming a lion, and she couldn't wait to get in the ring.

“He's an ambitious choice. You haven't been flying solo for very long.” A hand reached across the polished wood of the bar, catching the wineglass that she carelessly shoved away before she cracked the delicate stem. Scarlett turned to find her friend Luca leaning on the bar, the corners of his lips curled up in a dangerous smile, but concern in his eyes.

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. She'd known Luca for only a couple of years—since the first time she'd come to the club—but the big Dom was ridiculously overprotective of her. She knew it came from a good place, but still.

“I've never wanted easy. You know that.” Scarlett spared Luca only the briefest of glances before turning back to the object of her affection, who was now leaning against the back of a chair. The posture forced his pelvis forward, giving
Scarlett a glimpse of flat stomach and the sexiest hip bones that she'd ever seen.

Her mouth watered. She wanted a taste of him
now
, but she owed Luca the chance to say what he was clearly going to say regardless. They were both Dominants and therefore equal, at least here in the club, but he was a friend as well as her mentor in the BDSM lifestyle.

“No, you certainly don't do things the easy way,” Luca agreed, and Scarlett flicked one more glance toward the massive sadist who had taught her everything she knew about being a Mistress. He was as large as the man whose presence kept calling to Scarlett, but though his wicked good looks attracted more submissives than he knew what to do with, Scarlett had never felt anything more than a mild buzz of attraction around him, even when they'd played during her training.

“Is this where you tell me to choose my subs carefully?” Scarlett forced herself to give Luca her full attention this time. Her mind was made up—she had to at least try—but she owed it to Luca to listen.

“I would never presume to direct a Mistress's choice of slave,” Luca said with a twinkle in his eye, and Scarlett huffed out a breath of exasperation.

“Like hell.” She fought the urge to turn around, to see if her mystery man was still watching her. “You're the bossiest Dom I know. You'd put
me
in a cage if you thought you could get away with it.”

“And you'd deserve it, brat.” Luca affectionately tugged at the tight coil of Scarlett's long hair. “You were the worst sub I've ever had.”

Settling his not inconsiderable weight onto his elbows, Luca's expression turned thoughtful.

“I know him.” He nodded toward Scarlett's target, and she fought the urge to twist in her seat and look again herself.
“He's not an easy sub. Not an easy person. An alpha who chooses to be beta in the bedroom, for the Mistress who can control him.”

Scarlett knew he wasn't necessarily trying to deter her. Luca knew as well as she did that control was a heady aphrodisiac for Scarlett, a way of adding discipline to a life that had been chaotic until adulthood. Still, his tone annoyed her a bit.

“And you don't think I can?” Scarlett raised an eyebrow at her mentor, mildly insulted.

Luca shook his head, a grin playing over his lips.

“If anyone has a shot at taming that beast, Scarlett, it's you.” He nodded toward where the man stood, gesturing with his hand at the same time. Something—was that guilt?—flickered over his face. He parted his lips as if about to say something, then closed them again and shook his head.

“What—” she began to ask, but was distracted by his next comment.

“I'd hurry up and make your move, little one. Looks like Mistress Avery has her eye on your tasty cowboy, too.”

If anyone else had called her an endearment that sounded so much like he was talking down to her, Scarlett would have found herself grinding her teeth with irritation. But Luca had topped her while she was undergoing the vigorous training that the club required of their neophytes, and the term had stuck.

“Catch you later.” Scarlett was off her barstool before the words had even finished leaving her lips. Mistress Avery was one of the club's most notorious Dommes, an androgynous-looking blonde around whom subs were never quite sure whether to beg for mercy or to ask for more.

She also had a reputation for convincing the most reluctant of submissives, male or female, that they wanted to play with her, although
coerced
might have been closer to the truth.
When Scarlett saw that the other woman was indeed making her way toward the delicious specimen of man, she hurried her stride, though she made sure to still keep her stiletto-heeled saunter deliberate.

BDSM was a game of control . . . even if something inside of her said that this connection, this man, was more important than most.

She sized him up anew as she made her way across the crowded club floor, trying to get some kind of handle on him before she reached him. Her intense attraction to him puzzled her a bit, because he wasn't entirely her type. He had that dominating presence that she had craved, yes, but Scarlett was typically drawn to Latin-lover types, men who groomed themselves impeccably and had suave charm to spare.

This man, who looked to be in his midthirties to her twenty-four years, looked like a rough-and-tumble Norse god. His pale hair was weeks past needing a haircut, and matching stubble covered the strong line of his jaw.

Hair dusted that wide, solid chest, too, and a trail led from beneath his navel into the low-riding denim. It made Scarlett's mind stray to all of the wicked, wicked things she wanted to do with what lay at the end of that trail.

Instead of wearing briefs or latex, or any kind of fetish wear at all, he wore those faded blue jeans, ones that were worn from actual use and not as a nod to fashion. His feet were clad in equally scuffed cowboy boots.

And there, she realized with delight. There was her opening.

She curved her lips up in a predatory smile, feeling herself slipping into the role. When Scarlett reached the man, she caught a whiff of his scent. She was glad that she'd planted her high heels firmly on the ground when the combination of soap, spicy aftershave, and raw male hit her senses.

This was it—
he
was it. She couldn't have explained it, but
she wanted him more than she'd ever wanted any other sexual partner in her life. Her experiences with the submissives that she had topped before this had all felt generic and unsatisfying.

But with this man . . . she had the feeling that it would all be different.

She waited for him to raise his eyes to hers, something only a poorly trained or very stubborn sub would do. Thanks to Luca's warning, she knew he was the latter.

As she'd suspected, he did, and she again felt the power of their inexplicable connection surge when his incredibly blue eyes met her own gray ones.

“I'm Mistress S, sub. And we have a problem.”

L
ogan felt a wicked surge of excitement as the small Mistress planted herself in front of him, hands on her hips. Very sexy hips, he noted yet again, ones that flowed into a slender waist and the curves of full breasts. He'd felt a deep sense of satisfaction to find that she appeared every bit as interested in him as he was in her.

Something in him again warned him to find a different partner for the evening, one who would be satisfied with administering a flogging, then sharing hard, impersonal sex.

Every other part of him wanted the woman currently standing in front of him, though he knew somehow that she was going to push him further than he was comfortable. Just having met her had thinned the barriers he always kept in place.

He hadn't been in the club for very long, but he was already feeling the pain from being trapped in the crush of people. A scary-looking Mistress—or Master, he wasn't quite sure—had started bearing down on him at the same time as
the tasty treat in front of him, and he'd felt as if the walls had been closing in on him, stealing away his air.

But it was different with this one . . .

An experienced submissive, he could tell that she was a fairly new Mistress. The nerves were there, in her eyes, around the corners of her mouth. Still, despite the sweet features of her face, dominance seemed to seep out of her very pores, an exotic perfume that caught his attention like a dog with a steak.

And then there was that strange pull between them, the one that had snapped into place the second his arms had wrapped around her outside. The one that made every other Dominant woman in the room seem dull and unappealing.

It was an irresistible combination for a man who ran the show everywhere besides the bedroom.

And he couldn't ignore the fact that, since she'd introduced herself and glared at him with that bitchy expression that made his cock hard, he'd found it a little easier to breathe.

“What's the problem, sweetheart?” He grinned down at her, his expression deliberately cocky. He needed to keep his defenses up from the start around this one, to keep her from sneaking too far into his psyche.

He waited to see if she would dismiss him immediately for his rudeness.

She arched an eyebrow at his term but didn't comment on it, which left him mildly disappointed. Instead she nodded at his feet, looking like nothing so much as a wet dream of a stern schoolteacher.

“Bottoms go barefoot in Veritas, sub. Remove the boots.”

Her voice was whiskey smooth with an undercurrent of sin, at odds with the girl-next-door face. Logan found himself wanting to fall to his knees and obey, to please her, and despite how much he wanted her, the notion didn't sit well with him.

A Mistress had to work much harder than saying a few
words and looking pretty to earn that kind of response from him.

He'd felt the punch of attraction when their eyes had first met, but now he was wary. What kind of hold did she have on him already, to make him want so badly to please her?