Masters at Arms (23 page)

“I’m sorry. May I start over?”

“Certainly.”

Come on, Karla. You need this job. Don’t blow
it.

She went back to the CD player to start Track
One again.
Deep breath
. She ran her clammy hands against the
brocade dress covering her thighs, then returned to the microphone
center stage. Unable to sing while he stared at her with that
all-consuming gaze, she closed her eyes and felt the music flow
through her.

For you, Ian.
She almost felt as if
Ian was watching over her. Not the sadist club owner in front of
her, but her brother.

Then she sang Tarja’s
I Walk Alone,
as
if she really could bring Ian back.

* * *

Adam closed the checkbook and crossed to his
filing cabinet to lock it away. Aerosmith’s
I Don’t Want to Miss
a Thing
blared from the speakers. He’d been trying to drown out
the noise from the auditions, but that song put him even more on
edge. Damn. One of Joni’s favorites. She’d play it almost every
night he was home on leave.

They said time would heal the pain of her
loss. Nine years had only managed to dull it. Rather than the sharp
knife point he used to feel jabbing into his heart, the pain now
felt more like his heart being squeezed in a vise.

God, I still miss you, Joni.

A particularly discordant note from the
latest audition brought him back to the present. He hoped he hadn’t
made a big mistake with this whole live music thing. He’d barely
been able to hear himself think while trying to concentrate on his
bookwork. How the hell would he be able to focus on his sub during
Dom/sub demonstrations with that racket in the background?

Of course, there were the private rooms, but
he liked to do demonstrations in the great room for some of the
newer Doms. He usually worked with Grant as his sub. She’d shown up
at the club six months ago, after hearing about it from Damián. She
usually topped submissive women and men—but she liked to switch
things up with her former master sergeant. Unfortunately, she
wasn’t submissive so much as subordinate. Not the same as what he’d
shared with Joni, but he didn’t expect to find that kind of woman
again.

Now that his accounting was done and the
bills paid for another week, he opened the door to his office and
went back to the desk to check his e-mail account. If anyone had
told him while he was in the Corps he’d become a keyboard jockey in
retirement, at his laptop several times a day to keep his business
records up to date or to cruise the Internet, he’d have shot them
for a fool.

During a lull between his classic-rock
station’s tunes, new music wafted through the door from one of the
acts auditioning in the bar. Nice. A woman’s voice. He actually
understood the words. For some odd reason, thoughts of Karla Paxton
came to mind. He still pictured her as a pink-haired Goth, although
she’d sworn to him in her letters that had just been a rebellious
teenage phase.

Karla had written to him as promised since
he’d said goodbye to her at the airport that Thanksgiving weekend.
She’d often send something she’d made, including the most
incredible chocolate-peanut butter brownies he’d ever eaten. He
felt guilty, as though that thought was disloyal to Joni. She’d
never been too interested in cooking or baking.

Then, during Karla’s senior year in high
school, he’d received an MP3 player with a few songs saved on it
that she’d recorded. Nearly every night in Fallujah, he’d lain
awake in his rack and listened to her sweet voice through his
earphones. She’d kept him sane, especially after the disaster
there, reminding him there still was innocence and beauty left in
this fucked-up world. Somewhere.

He’d been so proud of her when she went on to
complete a music degree at Columbia. Thank God she’d found a safe
way to get to New York without having to pull another runaway
stunt.

He drew his brows together. Why hadn’t she
replied to his last two letters and numerous e-mails? That wasn’t
like her. If they didn’t both keep such crazy hours, he’d have
called to check up on her. Adam decided if he didn’t hear something
this week, he’d make sure she was all right. He worried about her
singing late at night at that club in Manhattan. Although she said
she’d taken martial-arts classes after her encounter with Dickwad
and friends in the Chicago bus station, she was still a tiny little
thing.

The voice of the woman in the great room
called to him like a siren’s song. The quivering lilt reminded him
so much of Karla’s voice on her MP3, but then the woman auditioning
belted out the chorus in a well-trained adult’s voice. She stirred
something in Adam. He picked up the remote and muted the
stereo.

“
I walk alone. Every step I take, I walk
alone.”

Damn. Adam stood up, drawn toward the open
doorway where he could hear her better. His hand drew instinctively
to the scar on his neck. What the fuck? He forced his hand back
down to his side.

The hallway to the great room wasn’t that
long and before he knew he’d even moved, he found himself standing
at the side of the stage. The woman’s thick, black curls hung in
disarray over her shoulders and back. She looked as if she’d just
tumbled out of bed. His cock throbbed at the thought of holding her
beneath him by fists full of her gorgeous hair as he buried himself
deep inside her.

Jesus. What’s gotten into you, old man? She’s
a little young for you, isn’t she? Okay, a lot young.

Still, unable to take his eyes off her, he
circled around behind the table where Damián sat. He hadn’t had a
gut-wrenching response to a woman, well, since Joni. Sure, he’d
participated with Grant in demonstrations for various scenes and
techniques and occasionally took a submissive under his wing until
she hooked up with her own Dom. But that was merely physical. No
emotional attachments. Exactly as he planned to keep it. No one
would ever stir his interest in being a committed Dom the way Joni
had.

“
Go back to sleep forever.”

He stopped and stood in front of her, about
ten feet away from the stage. Eyes closed, tears spilling down her
cheeks. His chest tightened. He fought the urge to go up on the
stage to pull her into his arms to comfort her.

Little girl lost.

A distant memory sent his hand to massage
that spot on his neck again.

“
No one can help you.”

Tall, probably five-ten. She looked a little
gaunt. Dark half-moon circles curved below her eyes. They didn’t
look like make-up, although it was hard to tell with a Goth. Her
breasts filled out the dress nicely, her curves exposed. Lovely
breasts he wanted to press his lips against. Her hips flared
beautifully under the loose dress, as well. At least she wasn’t
gaunt all over.

If they hired her, she’d definitely need to
wear something a little more provocative than this Maid Marian
costume.

He tried not to think about removing the
dress to expose her body to his gaze. But his mind had other ideas.
He imagined taking her nipple between his teeth and tugging at it.
With her gaze cast downward, much of her face hidden by her hair,
he found himself wanting to push the curls away from her face so he
could look into her eyes.

When the song ended, she drew several deep
breaths, her breasts rising and falling gently.

“Well done, Miss Paxton,” Damián said.

No. Couldn’t be. No fucking way!

As if in slow motion, Adam watched her brush
away the tears and raise her gaze to Damián’s. She smiled. Just as
he remembered, except that her blue eyes didn’t sparkle anymore.
Then her gaze shifted as she noticed Adam for the first time. Her
smile faded. What little color she had in her face drained
away.

“Adam?”

When she swayed on her feet, he rushed to the
stage and caught her in his arms before she collapsed. His heart
pounded. Had she been sick? Was that why she’d lost so much weight?
Adam felt a vise of a different kind around his heart as he lifted
her and carried her to the loveseat near the windows. He laid her
down, propping her head and upper back against the armrest and
pillows there. Kneeling beside her, her framed her face with his
hands, hoping to infuse some of his warmth into her. Her face was
so cold.

He reached for an aftercare subbie blanket
from the basket beside the loveseat and wrapped her in it. Her body
began to tremble.

“Adam? How did you know I would be here?”

“I didn’t.” When she looked even more
confused, he added. “You’re in my club.”

Her eyes widened and skittered from the
chaining post in the center of the room to the manacled ottomans.
Good thing she couldn’t see the theme rooms
. She shouldn’t
be in a place like this. Damn. Shifting from horny perv to
paternalistic thoughts did nothing to shrink the raging hard-on in
his jeans.

“So, I gather you two have met.”

Adam had forgotten about Damián. When he
turned to look up, his surrogate son held out a bottle of water.
Adam noted a bit of disappointment in the younger man’s face, but
didn’t want to think about Damián taking Karla under his thumb.

Mine.

Where the hell had that thought come from?
Karla was just a kid. Hell, he was old enough to be her father, as
he’d told her all those years ago when she’d professed her love.
Adam took the bottle, then opened and handed it to Karla. “Yes. A
very long time ago.”

“He was my knight in shining armor.” Adam
didn’t appreciate the look of hero-worship on her face. He’d never
been anybody’s hero and didn’t plan to start now.

“I did what anyone would have done.” She
quirked the corner of her mouth, as if to say
“
bullshit
.
”
No, she wouldn’t use language like
that.

When her full lips wrapped around the bottle,
he tried not to think about them wrapped around anything other than
the lip of that damned bottle. Still, his other head ignored his
paternal censors. What in the hell was he going to do? No way could
he hire her and have her so near while he entertained perverted
thoughts about her.

“When can you start, Miss Paxton?” Damián’s
words felt like a sucker punch to his solar plexus.

Shit
.

“Wait here,” Adam said to Karla. Then he
stood and turned to Damián. “I need to have a word with you.” He
knew Damián followed him to the bar without having to look, then
turned to face him. “She’s not working here.”

“What?”

“She doesn’t belong in a place like
this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? This is a
decent club compared to most. Besides, she has a great voice. We
need her. The other acts were crap. She’s the last one on my list.”
Adam remained silent and Damián rattled off the list of reasons
they should hire her. The younger man then pulled out his trump
card. “You gave me hiring authority. I’m hiring Karla.”

What the fuck am I going to do now?

“Who the hell
is
she?”

Adam shook his head, then ran his hand
through his hair. He wouldn’t go back on his word to Damián. Maybe
he could just make himself scarce and avoid her.
Just how the
fuck do you plan to do that? This is your god-damned club.

Adam sighed. “Forget what I said. Make sure
she’s okay. Then send her to my office to fill out the paperwork.”
He needed to get his dick under control, even if he couldn’t
control anything else anymore. Not trusting himself to go anywhere
near her, he escaped to his office.

Good God, what the hell are You doing sending
her here?

Then again, maybe it wasn’t God’s fault.
Maybe he was being punished for all the things he’d done wrong in
his life.

* * *

Adam doesn’t want you here.

Karla couldn’t mistake how quickly Adam had
run away from her. She’d made a royal mistake coming to Denver.
Tears stung her eyes as she sat up on the loveseat, swinging her
legs to the floor and pushing the blanket away. At the back of her
mind she wondered why you would have blankets in a nightclub. Well,
she was in Denver. Maybe it got cold here at night.

She wiped her eyes, trying to compose herself
before having to face either of them again. A facial tissue dangled
in front of her field of vision. She looked up to find Master
Damián holding the tissue out to her. For someone who looked like a
sadist, he sure had a gentle side to him. Somehow gentle sadist
just didn’t go together.

She accepted the tissue and dabbed at her
eyes. Good thing she hadn’t worn full stage makeup. She’d look like
a raccoon right now. Just as she had when she’d cried for Adam in
the Chicago bus station all those years ago.

“Sorry. I’m just really tired. I only arrived
from New York early this morning.”

“Well, the club won’t be open again until
Friday night. Your first set will be at seven o’clock. Get some
rest between now and then.”

“You mean, he wants to hire me?”

“
I
am hiring you, Karla. But Master
Adam asked me to send you to his office to fill out the paperwork
so we can get you on the payroll PDQ.”

Master Adam. The title caused warmth to
spread into her stomach, then lower. She realized she didn’t really
know much about Adam at all. How had he lived this separate life
and not even intimated at such in his letters?

Because he still thinks you’re a
kid
.

Master Damián extended a hand and helped her
to her feet. His grip was firm, warm. When she swayed, he steadied
her by holding her elbows with both hands.

She wished Adam’s hands were holding her.
Another tear ran down her cheek. He obviously wanted to have
nothing to do with her. How could she stay here?

How could she leave?

“Could you point me in the right
direction?”

“Better yet, I’ll take you.”