Playing With Pleasure (25 page)

The love flowing between them was a living, breathing thing and was almost more than Muriel could bear. Her chest constricted and she nearly crumpled with grief for all she’d lost as well as a deep longing for the chance to share that kind of love again.

Watching the woman’s transformation from a loving wife to a devoted submissive who would crawl across broken glass if it would please her Dom, touched Muriel on a cellular level. Her inner submissive cried out with need, and Muriel squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears stinging the backs of her eyes from making an escape.

An ache in her hand drew her attention away from the couple and down to where she’d latched on to Lucas’s forearm so tightly her knuckles were white. She snapped her gaze to his, not the least bit surprised to find him watching her intently… knowingly.

Music from the bar flooded the lobby as the couple opened the doors and disappeared inside, leaving Muriel alone with Lucas and his all-seeing eyes.

She released his arm and squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t go in there…

But she also couldn’t leave without at least giving it a try.

“I’m sorry,” she said weakly as she brushed the wrinkles out of his sleeve. “I’m so confused. I know I need to get back into the game of life, but I don’t know how.”

He linked his fingers with hers and brought her hand to his lips. “You take baby steps, and let us help you feel your way along. Being here is a good start.” He stepped behind her and removed her coat, then handed it over to Chrissie. Returning to Muriel, he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “Everyone here loves you, and no one will allow any harm—physical or emotional—to come to you. You know that, right?”

“I know. I could never go anywhere else and do this.”

“There’s no need to go anywhere else.” A wicked shimmer lit his eyes, causing a surge of panic to mix with excitement that created a massive dose of trepidation. But before she could put the brakes on her rubbery legs and stop the forward momentum, he opened the door, pulled her into the cavernous interior of Pandora’s Playground, and said, “Everything you need is right here.”

*     *     *

Mathew Galindo always
figured he was on the fast track to hell, and tonight’s fun and games would certainly be an up-close and personal preview of the misery and suffering the fiery depths would bring. Nothing screamed
WELCOME TO HELL
louder than having everything he ever wanted laid in the palms of his hands… and rather than being able to hold the precious gift close to his heart to keep and cherish forever, he would have to force his fingers apart and let the promise of salvation sift through like dry sand.

Jesus.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and huffed with seething frustration. How would he ever get through the night with the little bit of humanity he’d managed to retain over the years still intact?

The beam of light from the lobby slashing across the bar’s hardwood floor as the door opened, along with the gasp of surprise and the ripple of excitement that rolled through the crowd told him the guest of honor had arrived.

But he didn’t needed to see, hear, or feel any of those things to know his personal Kryptonite had arrived. The burning in his chest from his seized lungs and the beads of sweat rolling down the back of his neck were warning enough.

Anytime Muriel got within fifty feet of him, his molecular makeup shifted and instantly realigned to her frequency. His body honed in on her like a guided missile and no matter where she was or how hard he tried to fight the pull, he stayed locked on her until she left the premises.

She hadn’t taken more than ten steps into the club before the members swarmed her. Standing just inside the doors, the light from the
EXIT
sign cast an unholy red glow over her blond hair and pale dress—which was appropriate for how he viewed the evening, but the image was all wrong for her. She might be the tormentor of his soul and the reason his life was a living hell, but she was the closest thing to an angel he would ever see.

Her long, blond hair, brilliant blue eyes, and a dazzling smile caught the attention of anyone within sight of her. But her wide open heart and deeply compassionate nature gave her an ethereal glow that drew people in and kept them captivated.

From the stark contrast of their physical appearances—her blond hair to his black; her blue eyes to his brown—to the cool, emotionless void of his inner being, she was his opposite in every way.

The first time he laid eyes on her, her light pierced his cold, black heart and he’d instantly recognized her as his mate.

The problem was she’d been on his best friend’s arm, laughing at his witty charm and looking at him with adoring eyes, completely oblivious that Mathew was even in the room. Ian had brought her with him when he stopped by the apartment he shared with Mathew to shower and change clothes before dinner. He’d asked Mathew to keep her company in his absence, and Mathew had been only too happy to act as Ian’s stand-in.

Hell, he’d been more than half-tempted to shove Ian out of their third story bathroom window, tell Muriel the bastard bolted, and take her to dinner himself. But it was obvious by the way her eyes lit up at the mention of Ian’s name that she was as into his friend as Ian was her, so Mathew stood in the back corner of the kitchen and watched his best friend walk out the door with the girl of his dreams. Then he hit the corner bar for some serious malt therapy.

Thirteen years later, she still had the same effect on him. The only difference was, rather than being Ian’s date, she was his wife… his widow.

And Mathew was still a son of a bitch for coveting her.

Lucas, however, was an even bigger SOB for making Mathew an accessory in tonight’s scheme.

“We need to get Muriel back in the game,” Lucas said late one night the previous week when they were at the club working on their secret project.

Mathew froze, an awkward addition to the life-sized replica of the Three Graces Statue he and Lucas had just settled in place. Intuition told him what Lucas was insinuating, but there wasn’t any way in hell he could be an active participant in any kind of plan that involved Muriel.

Needing to respond in some way, so he wouldn’t look like an even bigger idiot than he already did, he forced his limbs to move and stiffly walked to the crate the statue had been packed in. Shoving the broken packing material and wooden support brackets back into the shipping container, he said, “How do you propose to do that?”

“When we reveal the Roman tubs, we’ll use the evening as an opportunity to draw her out of the shell she’s crawled into. Who better to reintroduce her to the lifestyle than us? She’s more comfortable with us than anyone. We’ve played with her before, and she trusts us. We need to do this for her.”

No… nonononono, Mathew silently screamed while panic clawed at his chest.

Throwing the pieces into the container with far more force than he intended, he ground out a correction. “She’s played with you, never with me.”

Lucas huffed. “Because you never showed up at their play parties.”

Damn right he’d never gone, Mathew thought again, as he ground his teeth and watched Muriel mingle with friends from his reasonably-safe distance across the room.

“Playing with Muriel” was an oxymoron as far as he was concerned, and it had been a line he’d resolved, years before, to never cross.

Where she was concerned, sex, especially when combined with Dominance and submission, wasn’t a game. She took it seriously, and if she was his submissive, so would he. He’d always known if he was ever put in the position of “playing” with Muriel, he’d be playing for keeps. And her marriage to his best friend wouldn’t have mattered.

Yeah… he was that big of a bastard.

For that reason, he’d spent the past thirteen years dodging invitations to Ian and Muriel’s play parties, and usually found a reason to be out of town so he didn’t look like a complete ass for always declining. He’d gone out of his way to ensure he never found himself in this exact kind of hellish situation.

The first time Lucas broached the subject of easing Muriel back into the lifestyle, Mathew skirted around it. During subsequent conversations, he’d politely declined, claiming Muriel would be more comfortable with Lucas alone, especially since she’d never been with Mathew, or, as far as he knew, two men at once.

But Lucas did what he always does—twisted things around so even though Mathew knew he was being manipulated, he still capitulated and agreed to the whole massively-fucked-up plan.

Basically, Lucas asked Mathew to tie himself to the train track, then engineer the train that would leave him emotionally mutilated and scarred for life. Hell, it would be easier and less painful to turn himself over to an evil Domme for six hours of cock and ball torture.

His gaze slid to Mistress Sadie and her boy toy of the week. He winced as she grabbed his nuts and squeezed until the poor boy stood on tip-toes, gasping for breath, apologizing profusely for whatever offense had her so angry.

Okay, fuck that. Mathew wasn’t into pain—giving or receiving—and in the end, he’d only be switching out one kind of pain for another. He might as well keep rolling with the emotional ass-kicking he’d grown accustomed to over the years.
That,
at least, he knew how to handle.

At least he thought he did.

He’d convinced himself he could man up and get through the evening, for the most part, unscathed. As soon as his feet hit the floor this morning, he’d begun reciting his new mantra…
Keep your distance…
and had continued repeating it throughout the day until it became an unconscious mental loop.

By the time he arrived at the club, he felt pretty good about his ability to pull off the impossible task of working with Lucas to remind Muriel of her place at the club and convince her it was safe to come back to the home-away-from home she’d loved so much. It wasn’t the same without Ian around, but it was still a great place to go to be with friends.

But as he stood off to the side and watched the members of the club welcome her back, he began to think he might’ve been overconfident in his abilities to see this through.

The persistent hollowness in his chest, along with his innate ability to be cold and nasty in the courtroom, had convinced him years ago he no longer had a heart. But as he watched the lights of the bar glimmer off her golden hair, he was forced to face the truth.

The painful, erratic thumping in his chest was his cold, long-forgotten heart, and he was a damned liar. There was no way he could pull this off tonight without being totally eviscerated.

And then, he truly would become nothing more than an empty shell.

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