My Wicked Valentine (Club Wicked 1) (3 page)

Too bad he could only introduce her to the world of BDSM and
not keep her as his own submissive. That thought made him pause. No, he didn’t
want a commitment like that. He’d promised himself years ago he would never
fall in love again, and so far he’d managed to keep that promise. He was happy
with his bachelor lifestyle and didn’t want to change it.

An image of Ms. Roa—Lucia—waiting for him in his bedroom,
spread out like a decadent chocolate and honey dessert came unbidden to his
mind. She’d be anticipating his arrival home after a hard day of work, eager to
submit to his desires, to be completely his. Suddenly the idea of going home to
an empty house didn’t seem so appealing.

An hour later he was still unable to concentrate on his
work, so he called Sara Florentine to see if Ms. Roa had contacted her yet.

“Hello, Isaac,” Sara said in her cultured purr. “How did
your meeting with Ms. Roa go?”

“I’m afraid I might have scared her off.” He sighed and spun
his chair to face the windows looking out over the Capitol in the distance. “Has
she called you yet?”

“No, she hasn’t. What did you do to frighten her?”

“Well, I offered to be her Master, and she immediately
assumed I wanted to have sex with her in exchange for the job.”

“Oh dear. That is a rather big mess-up. Did you try to explain
to her what you meant?”

“I did, but she wasn’t really listening to me. I asked her
to call you when she gets home.”

“And you want me to smooth things over.” She sighed. “Isaac,
darling, you need to take things slow with Lucia. She isn’t like the women you
normally cat around with.”

He took offense to that. “I don’t cat around.”

“Yes, you do. I’ve never seen you with any woman for more
than three weeks. In the past six months, you’ve gone through ten submissives
at Wicked.”

He snorted. “Keeping tabs on me?”

“No, but I’m the shoulder they come to cry on when you break
up with them.”

A twinge of guilt tightened his gut. “Before I play with
anyone, I always let them know, as politely as possible, that I’m not looking
for anything long-term or a relationship. It’s not like I go out, grab some
innocent submissive, and rob her of her chastity, then break her heart. My
submissives always agree to my terms.”

“Why are men so foolish about love?” He started to protest,
but she cut him off. “Here is what I suggest. Back off on the request to be her
temporary Master. Tell her instead that wearing your collar at Wicked is for
her protection, that if the Doms there believe she belongs to you, they will
leave her alone. Make it about protection, not possession.”

“That makes sense.” He stood from his chair and cracked his
neck. “I have a meeting to go to, Sara. If Ms. Roa contacts you, could you put
in a good word for me?”

“I will. Don’t worry, Isaac. I think she’ll come around.”

“I’m not worried,” he said with a grumble.

“Sure you aren’t, dear. I’ll stop by your office and call
Lucia from there. That way I don’t have to do any back-and-forth between you
two.”

“Sounds good, Sara.”

He hung up and walked over to the window, watching the world
beyond with unseeing eyes. The only image his mind would let him see was Lucia,
poised in the doorway to his office, a warm breeze in an otherwise cold and
sterile day.

He was in so much trouble.

Lucia kicked the door to her apartment closed with a
muttered oath. She tossed her briefcase onto the counter separating her tiny
kitchen from her miniscule living room and removed her heels before chucking
them through the bedroom door. On the subway ride home she’d been propositioned
for sex three times and groped once. The groper soon regretted his action when
she stomped on his foot with her heel.

Her head pounded, her feet ached, and she wanted to call her
madre
to complain about her day, but
explaining to her very Catholic mother the situation she found herself in just
wasn’t going to happen. She tried calling her best friend, Chloe, while she
took off her jacket, but there was no answer. A quick glance at the clock above
the long ago bricked-up fireplace showed it was still early afternoon.

Too many thoughts and emotions were whirling around in her
head, and she couldn’t focus on any of them. After rooting around in her almost
empty refrigerator, she found her last emergency beer stashed behind a gallon
of milk. After twisting the top of her bottle of Tecate with a practiced motion,
she sipped at the smooth beer with a sigh. She wandered toward the door leading
to her balcony, the main reason she rented this small, cramped third-floor
apartment.

Before opening the sliding glass door, she put on the
knee-length sweater and warm boots she kept next to the door. She slid the
glass door open and stepped out onto her terrace, then took a deep breath of
the chilly air. A wrought-iron chair sat next to a mismatched table that looked
all too bare in the late winter months. During the summer she decorated her
porch until it almost exploded with floral colors. And for Christmas she wound
lights through the white-painted iron bars of the porch railing along with some
greenery. Most of the people living in the apartment building were elderly, so they
appreciated her efforts to brighten the place up. Unfortunately, at the
beginning of January, she really didn’t have anything to decorate for.

Unless she decorated for Valentine’s Day, which in her
present mood was not going to happen.

She took a deep drink of her beer, trying to ignore the cold
wind blowing up the edge of her sweater. Her anger still burned in her chest,
and she could practically hear her brothers teasing her about her hot temper.
Regret mixed with irritation, and she took another drink, trying to ignore the
little voice telling her she just messed up, big-time.

I work my ass off in
the hopes of getting one big break. Now I finally got that break, and I act
like an immature girl who’s never had sex. So those people like that kind of
thing, no big deal. It’s not like I’m scared or anything. Just because the
thought of Isaac tying me up and doing wicked things with me has my panties
soaked only proves my terrible taste in men.

The wind blew a drift of snow off the porch above her, and
it fell like glittering sand through the air, swirling on the currents of
breeze reaching between the buildings. Okay, so maybe she should have heard him
out, but she’d been so sure he’d been propositioning her that her temper had
slipped its leash, and he had gotten a taste of who her brothers liked to call
“Loco Lucy.”

She closed her eyes and leaned back against the brick wall
next to her patio door, the coldness slowly leeching through her sweater and
stealing her warmth. Dammit, she needed this job, desperately, and more
importantly, she needed to pay her workers. The guys who did all of the
organizing and maintenance of her supplies down at her warehouse worked hard,
and they deserved more than she had to give. It was only because of the
recession that she could find skilled workers at an affordable price, way less
than they were worth.

The seamstress, the baker, and the liquor company were all
getting impatient for her to settle up her debts. She did not want to gain a reputation
as a planner who didn’t pay on time. The job with Mr. O’Keefe paid an advance
of one hundred thousand dollars cash for party supplies; that amounted to nine
times as much as she’d ever made on an event. It was a staggering amount of
money to her, a life-changing amount of money. If she took this job, she could
write all her vendors checks tonight, but at what personal cost?

It wasn’t like she wasn’t trying to raise enough money on
her own. She labored all night at her parents’ restaurant as a waitress. Then
early in the morning, she’d wake up, head to her warehouse and begin working
the phones and Internet, trying to get word out there about her company. Then
there was the bill on her office in a seedy warehouse across town for the
quarterly payment for rent and utilities. The only way she could cover it would
be to sell the solid gold cross her parents had given her for her fifteenth
birthday, something that would break her dad’s heart.

When she went to take another drink of the beer, she sighed
as nothing more than a few drops hit her tongue.

Out of beer, out of money, and out of luck.

The faint sound of her phone ringing came through the glass,
and she quickly ran back inside, hoping it was a new client. When she saw Mrs.
Florentine’s cell phone number, she snatched it up, eager to find out what the
hell her mentor had been thinking. “Hello, Mrs. Florentine.”

“Lucia, I’m glad I caught you. How did your meeting go?”

“It went great. Other than the part where Mr. O’Keefe said
that he wanted me to be his party planning sex slave.”

Mrs. Florentine laughed, and Lucia gritted her teeth. “Did
he really say that? Those exact words?”

“Did you really send me on a job interview to throw a
Valentine’s Day party for a BDSM club?”

“Yes, I did. And I thought you would handle it better than
this.”

“He wants me to be his slave!”

“Did he say slave?”

She leaned her hip against her kitchen counter. “No, not
those exact words. He wants me to be his subservient.”

“Submissive?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Darling, he is hardly asking you to be a sex slave. He is
extending his protection to you within the club.”

Her spine stiffened. “I don’t need anyone to protect me. I
know how to handle myself.”

“I’m explaining this badly. Lucia, Isaac called me after you
left. He is very upset that you went away with the wrong impression and would
like to clarify a few things with you. Would you be so kind as to give him a
chance to explain?”

Part of her wanted to give this a go, to see how far she
could take it. The other part said if she went around these people, she’d be
labeled a slut and someone who would have sex for a contract. Then again, when
she really thought about it, she didn’t give a fuck what other people thought.
They didn’t pay her bills, they didn’t live her life, and they didn’t have the
right to judge her.

“Lucia?”

“Yes, I’m here. Did Mr. O’Keefe clarify things to you?”

“Yes, he did, but this is not high school. If you want to
know what a man has to say, you need to talk to him yourself.”

Chagrined, Lucia sat in the faded mauve chair next to the
bricked-over fireplace and curled her feet beneath her. “Oh God, no, don’t put
him on the line!”

“Lucia, just talk to the man.” Just the way Mrs. Florentine
said her name made her feel silly, like she was a flighty girl.

“Okay, fine. I’ll talk to him.”

“Good, here he is.”

“Wait. What?” No, no, Mrs. Florentine couldn’t have called
her from his office.

Oh God.

“Hello, Ms. Roa. Sara, Mrs. Florentine, has left the room,
so our conversation is strictly between us. Please feel free to speak your
mind.”

Isaacs’s smooth voice made her whole body tighten with a
delicious wave of desire even as embarrassment burned her face. “Hello, Mr.
O’Keefe, and thank you, I will.”

“I’m so sorry about the misunderstanding earlier. To tell you
the truth, you caught me off guard, something that doesn’t normally happen to
me.”

“I’m ready to listen to what you have to say now.” Pride
filled her at how steady her voice was when inside she was in the middle of a
panic attack.

“Excellent.”

His voice warmed considerably, and she almost giggled. What
the hell was wrong with her? Even talking to the man on the phone was making
her into a simpleton. “Before you start, can I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

“Let me be honest with you, Mr. O’Keefe. If this is going to
work, we need to be honest with each other, correct?”

“Yes, I agree.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m going
to be on the level with you. I know that if I can land this party, I will be
able to finally pay my employees what they are worth instead of what I can
afford to pay them. If learning about something kinky is what I have to do,
well, shoot, I’m glad I’m the boss and can’t get fired for inappropriate
behavior.” Her heart hammered, and her palms slicked with sweat, but she pushed
on. “I never feel more alive or happier than when I’m making someone else
happy. I love looking out into a crowd and knowing they are having a good time
because of me, because of what I did. Party planning is more than a job for me,
Mr. O’Keefe. This is my dream.”

There was silence on his end except for the faint sound of
his breath.

“Mr. O’Keefe?”

“You’d better start calling me Isaac.”

“Pardon me?”

“If I’m going to teach you about BDSM in six weeks, we’d
better get started tonight.”

“Tonight? What are we starting tonight?”

“I agree to your terms.”

“My terms?”

“Yes. You said you are willing to learn, and I am willing to
teach you. I want you to think of this more as a partnership than a boss and
employee relationship. Please feel free to speak your mind around me. I value
your opinion, Lucia. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be hiring you, no matter what Mrs.
Florentine wants.”

“Okay, I can do that.” A small amount of tension left her
body, and she leaned farther into the chair. She frowned and sat up straighter.
“I’m still not having sex with you, partners or not.”

He chuckled. “I never said you were. I won’t do anything to
you that you don’t ask me for, and no matter how much you beg, I’m not going to
fuck you.” His deep laugh made her libido perk up. “By the way, around my
friends and partners I have a rather foul mouth. Please forgive me.”

“No fucking problem.” She let out a giggle that sounded a
bit hysterical. Oh God, what had she just agreed to?