Stronghold (Stronghold 1) (21 page)

"Again?!  That
bastard."

"No... It’s not the reason
you're thinking."  Leigh shook her head.  "He said he wants
to be ready to buy a house and to have a place for us and be ready to
financially support us completely.  I mean, I kinda liked that he wants to
take care of me, but I pointed out to him that I'm perfectly happy working even
though I'd like to be a stay-at-home mom, it's not like we need to have kids
immediately.  And that I don't need him to have all those things lined up
to be ready to marry him.  

"So then
he
 said
that I was pushing him and that marriage just isn't on his timeline yet.
 And I said that we've been together long enough that it should be, and it
just devolved into this awful fight, and all I could think about was what
happens if he loses a deal or his job?  Does that mean the timeline gets
pushed back?  I don't care if everything's fallen perfectly into place, I
just want to be with him.  I started feeling like maybe these were just
stalling tactics.

"I was getting pretty upset
and then I said that maybe we needed to take a break and think about this time
whole timeline thing... I meant a break from the fight, but as soon as I said
it he asked if we could see other people if we went on a break... I thought I
was going to strangle him as soon as he said it."

"You should have,"
Angel muttered.  Wouldn't have been much of a loss.  Trust Michael to
jump on any opportunity to try and get some experience outside of his high
school sweetheart. 

Ignoring her, which was probably
the best policy, Leigh went on.  "I asked him if he really wanted to
see other people and he said yes, and so I said that I couldn't stay in a
relationship with someone who wasn't completely sure he wanted to be with me
when I already knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.
 It's just... not... fair... to me..."  

Angel squeezed her friend, a few
tears leaking from her own eyes in sympathy to ragged edges of pain that were
in Leigh's voice as she broke down again.  

"Oh sweetheart, I'm so proud
of you… that's exactly what you should have said because it’s so very true."
 Angel murmured, comforting Leigh as best she could.  Sure some of
what she was saying was cliché, but in this case it was really all true.  

Eventually Leigh pulled herself
back together, pushing back up to a sitting position.  

"Sorry," she said, looking guiltily
at the water spots that she'd left behind on Angel's shirt. 

"Not a problem."
 Angel stroked Leigh's hair as her friend wiped her eyes again.
 "What else are friends for?"

"Hopefully for letting me
crash with them until I figure out where I'm going to live?" Leigh said,
looking a little guilty.

"Of course,
absolutely," Angel said firmly.  A thought popped up in her mind.
 "Ah, you'll have to fight with Mike over who gets to sleep in
my bed with me and who gets one of the couches.  He gets here on
Saturday."

"Mike's visiting?"

"Mike's coming back to
live," Angel corrected, and explained his situation.  While Leigh and
Mike were friendly, they weren't friends the way Angel and Mike were, but it
was a nice safe topic that distracted Leigh and allowed herself to pull
together even more. 

Angel just hoped that her
roommates would be okay with the extra guest.

Once Leigh had gone out to her car
to grab the suitcase that she'd packed, Angel went down to the basement to
explain the situation to the guys.  To their credit, each one of them
immediately pledged their support for Leigh and said she could stay there as
long as she wanted.  

"Is she okay?" Sam
asked.  "Should we be paying Michael a visit?"

"You've been watching too
many mafia movies," she told him. 

"SAMPSON!" shouted Q
and Mark at the same time, making her laugh as Sam rolled his eyes.  He
hated his full name.  

"You gonna pull out some
whoop-ass, Sampson?"  Q asked, his eyes on the screen where he and
Sam were currently brawling on SmashBrothers.  "Cuz you could use
some right now."

"Shut it, asshole," Sam
muttered, furiously pushing buttons to go on the attack.

Deciding that she could leave the
guys to her own devices, Angel went back upstairs to help Leigh get settled in.
 She'd forgotten that she'd pulled out some of the clothes she'd been
thinking about wearing to Stronghold and found Leigh examining one of her
corsets.

"Did I interrupt
something?" Leigh asked, holding it out as Angel entered her bedroom.
 

"Oh... no.  I was
thinking about going back to Stronghold tonight."

"I thought that you were
going to wait until tomorrow."

"I was.  I am.  It
was just a thought.  That's okay though, I don't have to go this
weekend."

"What?  No, of course
you're going, don't be silly."  The mulish expression on Leigh's face
was much preferable to the devastated one she'd been wearing earlier, but Angel
still wasn't going to be convinced that Leigh was okay enough to be left
alone. 

"I'm not going to just ditch
you tomorrow night," Angel said flatly.  

"So we'll both go.  I
want to meet this Adam guy anyway," Leigh said.  "And it'll be
good to get out and go do something that I would have never done with Michael. 
I want to go out and do something I wouldn’t normally do."

Angel opened her mouth and then
closed it.  While she didn't think that going to Stronghold was something
that Leigh should be doing the day after her break-up, it wasn't like she was
an expert on long-term relationships and how to cope with them possibly ending
for good.  Possibly because she wasn't convinced that Michael wouldn't
coax Leigh back again eventually.  He was a master at it.  Although
this was the first time that Leigh had left him. 

As a member she could bring a
guest, although she would be considered responsible for Leigh and her behavior.
 Still, maybe if she could show Leigh something of what she was missing by
taking her around the club, showing her a world outside of her relationship
with Michael...

"Fine.  But I'm not
ditching you to go do a scene while we're there."

Leigh smiled wanly.
 "Sounds good to me."  She took a deep breath, looking
anywhere but at her suitcase which was propped next to Angel's closet.
 "Got anything to eat?  I'm starving."

"We can order Chinese, and
I've got some Ben and Jerry's while we wait."

"God I love you."

Getting Leigh dressed for
Stronghold was fun.  She looked incredible in a black lace shirt over a
black tank top with a fluttering navy blue chiffon skirt and very high black
heels.  Fortunately she and Angel fit into a lot of same clothing; even
though Leigh was much less busty than Angel, they had the same curvy
hips.  It did mean that Leigh didn’t fit into any of Angel’s corsets, and
she’d never allowed Angel to make her any, but the black lace shirt worked well
enough.  And it meant that Leigh was more comfortable, because she was
basically completely covered.

Angel grinned, wondering what
Leigh would think of Lexie, since the last two times she'd seen the younger
woman she'd been wearing similar tops to what Leigh had on now, but without the
covering undershirt. 

At least the clothing and getting
dressed was keeping Leigh firmly distracted.  She'd had small bouts of crying
all day, sometimes just her eyes filling up with tears over something
completely random - like the turkey sandwich she had for lunch - and sometimes
because she'd start fretting about what Michael was doing.  She didn't say
'and with whom,' but the unspoken sentiment always hovered in the air.

"Are you sure this skirt
isn't too short?"  Leigh asked, tugging at the hem as she turned to try
and see her backside in the mirror.  "I feel like my butt's hanging
out."

"It's not, it just looks
like it's
about
 to be," Angel reassured her.

Leigh made a face.
 "That's not nearly as comforting as you think it is."

"Stop it, you look
fantastic."  Angel raked her gaze over her friend and gave a sigh of
envy.  While she loved her curves, sometimes she looked at Leigh's
completely flat stomach and wished that she was maybe just a little bit less
curvy.  "Maybe I should re-think this whole bringing you
thing..."

"Shut it, you look like sex
on heels."

"Yeah, thank god for corsets sucking in
my stomach for me."

Her friend held up her forefinger and made a
face at her.  "That's one... you get to three and I'll give you a
spanking!"

"Sweet Jesus, what is going on in
here?"  The deeper masculine voice broke into the room, making both
of them jump.

"Dammit," Angel muttered when she
realized all three of her housemates were crowded into her doorway.  She'd
left the door open a crack - just a
crack!
 - and one of them must
have peeked in to see what was going on.  She sighed.  "We're
going to a club."

"Looking like that?"  Sam's voice
squeaked a little.  His style was pretty much 'stylish geek' as he liked
to call it and he was often taken aback by some of the more outrageous things
that Angel wore, but he'd definitely never seen her looking like this before.
 Every time she'd gone to Stronghold she'd put on her coat before going
downstairs.  

She put one of her hands on her hips and used
the other to gesture from her breasts up to her face.  "Up here
boys."  

Wow, a communal blush as all their eyes
flicked upwards.  Even Q with his darker skin was blushing - she couldn't
actually see the red but she could tell.  "Do we need to have the
'you don't get to tell me how to dress' discussion again?"

Honestly she thought their protective
instincts were pretty cute, considering that she didn't consider any of them
dominant to her.  Although they might occasionally try to act it.
 She appreciated that they acted like a pack of big brothers on occasion,
but it wasn't something she was willing to put up with in certain areas.  Matters
of dress was one of them.  One of the things that had made her wonder if
she really was submissive was the fact that she definitely bossed around a
whole house of men, now she knew that it was part perception and part how
people acted.

Her housemates were perfectly willing to have
her run the house about eighty percent of the time.  The other twenty
percent they would get riled up about something and try to tell her what to do;
sometimes she listened, sometimes she didn't.  Somehow she couldn't see
any of the Doms she'd met at Stronghold allowing her to push them around that
often.  Even the most easygoing were the type that would only follow if it
was already the direction that they wanted to go in. 

"Aren't you the one who always preaches
about not putting yourself into a situation where you might be in danger?"
 Mark said, his eyes flicking over to Leigh.  Sometimes Angel thought
he might have a crush, but she didn't think anything was going to come of it,
even if things between Leigh and Michael finally crashed and burned. 
“Those outfits look
dangerous.”

"Nice to know that you listened,"
she said.  "But the place where we're going, we will fit right in.
 In fact, we're a little overdressed."  She grinned at the
skeptical looks on their faces before turning and grabbing her coat.
 Leigh did the same.  

As she and Leigh headed down the hall towards
the stairs she could hear the guys muttering behind her.

"There's a guy."

"There must be a guy."

"Did she say anything to you?"

"No, you?"

"She's been way too quiet lately."

"Maybe we should-"

Angel purposefully blocked them out of her
hearing as she headed down the stairs.

******

The club was starting to fill up.  Adam
had gotten there pretty early because he wanted to make sure that he didn't
miss Angel.  Yesterday he'd come for a while as well but she'd never shown
up; which he had expected, since Thursday was a much quieter night around the
club, but he'd wanted to cover all his bases.  He'd decided that Olivia
was right, he'd been too hard on her.  The fact that his mom had called
this morning and chatted with him in her usual airy, breezy, but loving way
drove home to him that he did sometimes still hold onto his resentment over the
sudden way she'd left them.  She'd been unhappy and she hadn't spoken up
about it, not until the day that she'd left.  It was a kind of living
deception that made him incredibly sensitive to all deception.

Angel was the first woman he'd really been
attracted to in more than just a 'let's do a scene' way in a long time.
 He'd really enjoyed talking with her at Chained too; add in his
attraction and it was no wonder that he'd become a little bit obsessed with
trying to figure her out.  It had started with the mystery, but by the
time they'd scened together he'd also found that there was something more.
 

He figured he owed it to himself, and to her,
to at least scene with her again and see if the chemistry was still there or if
it was just a byproduct of mystery, discovery and anger.  That and,
despite knowing that she'd presented herself as something she wasn't, he still
hadn't been able to get her out of his head all week.  

Patrick stalked in through the main door,
past Will who was standing guard that evening, and immediately came over to
where Adam was sitting. 

"Bourbon shot," he barked at Lisa.
 She raised her eyebrow at him, tapped her fingers on the bar, and waited.
 Patrick growled.  "Please."

"Don't piss off the Dommes," Adam
said mildly.

"You'd think that eventually someone
would worry about pissing off
me,
" the big man grumbled.  He looked
as stressed as Adam had ever seen him.  For the first time, in a long
time, some stubble had actually dared make an appearance on his normally bald
head.  Patrick ran his hands over it, his head bowing for a moment before
Lisa returned with the shot of bourbon. 

Deciding the best policy was to remain
silent, because pointing out the obvious - that ninety-nine percent of the
people in the club were never going to risk pissing Patrick off - wasn't going
to actually help right now. 

"What does she see in that little twit
anyway?"  Patrick was staring at the small glass in front of him
rather than drinking it.  "If Jake knew I was letting her run around
with a little bastard like that, he'd probably come back home and kick my ass."

"I think he'd probably realize that you
can't control every aspect of Lexie's life," Adam said dryly.  He
studied Patrick's bleak expression.  "Unless, of course, you made her
your slave."  Patrick didn't want a 24/7 total power exchange, but out
of their group of friends he was the only one who wanted anything close to
resembling a full time Master/slave relationship.

Instead of responding, Patrick picked up the
shot of bourbon and studied it for a moment before lifting it to his lips and
throwing his head back. 

Nonchalantly, Adam let his gaze drift over to
the lounge area, which was slowly filling up with the subs who wanted to play
and didn't have a current partner.  "You could always work out some
of that tension.  Plenty of subs available tonight."

"Is that what you're planning on
doing?"  Patrick asked, deflecting the issue back rather than
acknowledging that he hadn't done a scene in the club since Lexie had started
working there.  

"I'm waiting for a particular sub."

"Oh really?"  A little
half-smile lifted Patrick's face.  "Does this mean you're not going
to be doing Introduction Scenes anymore?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself."

The only reason Liam, Justin and Chris were
no longer doing Introduction Scenes was because they were in committed
relationships.  He wasn't anywhere near that with Angel.  Wasn't even
sure that it was what he wanted with her or whether she'd have anything to do
with him after last week, and he wasn't going to shirk his responsibilities to
the club unless it was for something that was definitely serious.
 Especially since that would leave Patrick shorthanded for the moment,
although he knew that the owner was already looking at some Doms to take over
some of the duties.  

"Well, next week there isn't one because
of that damn party Lexie talked me into throwing, and then Andrew said he'd
cover your next session since you covered his, so after he and Olivia take
their turns again it'll be about a month from now before you have one again.
 So let me know." 

"Right."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching
the subtle dance between patrons of the Club.  Ellie was in the Lounge
again, Tom was watching her from the bar before he went over and propositioned
Vicki for a scene.  Although he glanced at Ellie to see her reaction, she
wasn't even paying attention.  His gaze hardened and then he looked away
and smiled at Vicki. 

One of the older couples in the club, Walter
and Marianne came in.  They were both in their sixties and had been
married for over thirty years.  While they weren't the only retirees who belonged
to the club, and they weren't even the oldest, they were the longest running
couple.  They occasionally made use of one of the private rooms, which
they kept private by drawing the shades over the windows, but mostly just
seemed to enjoy being around people who indulged in the same kink that they
did.  Marianne saw Patrick and Adam and smiled and waved.  Seeing his
Mistress' attention, Walter peeked upwards and smiled at them as well before
ducking his head back down as Marianne tugged on his leash.  The stately
gentleman - because that's what he was - trotted meekly along behind her.
 

That was what Adam and his friends were
beginning to aspire to, he realized.  The relationship, not meekly
trotting behind some woman.  Although he'd noticed that all three of his
friends who were now in relationships had gotten... not softer exactly, but
just more indulgent of their submissives than they had been in any of their
shorter relationships.  He supposed that was just a symptom of being in a
relationship that you wanted to have a future. 

Not all of them wanted a relationship yet,
but the group dynamics were definitely shifting.  Rick was actively
looking, Jared was still trying to make things work with Marissa and even
Olivia seemed a little wistful when she looked at the couples lately.  Of
course Patrick was resisting, but Adam was pretty sure that was because the
woman he was most attracted to was definitely off-limits.  

The only real holdout was Andrew, and Adam
sometimes though that Andrew would be a holdout until the end of time.
 The crash and burn of his first and last relationship had left layers of
emotional scars on the man.  Somehow he'd managed to keep his sense of
humor, but ever since, there was a darkness to him that had never lifted.
 During scenes he could be almost cruel, and while that left some of the
submissives panting after him, so far none had ever managed to break through
the wall that he'd put up around himself.  

Patrick's elbow nudged into Adam's side and
he looked up to see a large group of their friends walking past Will at the
door, accompanied by Angel and another woman that he didn't recognize.
 She was drop dead gorgeous, with long flowing brown hair that swung
freely down her back, slim, leggy, and big eyes that dominated her face.
 Yet he barely took a moment to appreciate her beauty and how intriguing
she looked in her (comparatively) modest outfit before his eyes locked onto
Angel. 

She was wearing another one of those corsets
that offered up her breasts, although the shirt she wore underneath it this
time was much lower cut, showing a hint of cleavage.  The corset was a
deep violet, as was the shirt, worn with a black skirt and black high heels.
 The look of sultry innocence was completely absent from her attire,
replaced with an inviting sensuality that had his blood thrumming through his
veins.