Stronghold (Stronghold 1) (32 page)

He had the feeling that a couple of minutes
next to Angel, trying to keep his hands off of all that skin she was showing,
and he was going to forget both responsibilities. 

******

Her fingernails bit into the skin of her
palms.

I won't look over there again.  I won't.

As if the image of the pretty, petite redhead
pressing her breasts against Master Adam wasn't already burned into her brain.
 When she'd first walked in he'd looked up, seen her, and then turned
right back to his conversation with the redhead.  Smiling at the obviously
flirting submissive.  Encouraging her.  Not that Angel could blame
the woman for trying.  Master Adam looked particularly good tonight.
 Not at all Valentinesy, but she hadn't really expected that.  Even
from a distance she could tell that he was wearing leather pants with his usual
button down.  Which had been unbuttoned about halfway down.  Damn him
for looking so casually sexy.

Casual for him, that was. 

Had she misread his intentions that badly
last night?  Okay, so she didn't expect him to immediately break off mid-conversation
just because she'd walked in the door, but she'd been here close to ten minutes
now.  Surely if he was that interested in her, he could have wrapped up
the conversation by now.  Or did he plan on playing with more than one
person tonight?  The little ache beneath her chest that had started when she’d
first seen him with the other sub was growing larger.

But it's not like she had any real claim on
him.  Heck, she had no idea what he'd done with himself on the two nights
they'd scened together after she'd left.  After all, it's not like he'd
gotten off with her.  Maybe he'd gone and found himself a pretty redhead.
 There was nothing between them, not really, and so no reason for her chest
to feel so tight or like she was about to cry.  Just because she'd had him
in mind when she'd talked herself into wearing this ridiculous contraption.
 

Maybe it was a ridiculous outfit.  Silly
and not sexy.  Or just way too much.  She definitely felt silly right
now, coming by herself, looking like this.  Leigh was calling Michael tonight
and had said that Angel should definitely go to Stronghold because it could be
a really long conversation and she didn’t want to have to kick Angel out of her
own room for so long.  And Mike had a date with a submissive that he’d met the
week before, although they might show up later.  Still, she wouldn’t have come
alone tonight, especially not dressed like this, if she didn’t think that she
and Master Adam were going to do a scene.

"Hey there, beautiful."  The
deep familiar voice stopped her and Angel looked up, forcing herself to smile
into warm blue eyes.  Too bad those blue eyes didn't set her body tingling
the way the ones across the room did. 

"Hey Rick."  He'd told her
that she could call him that, even in the club, rather than having to refer to
him as Master Rick.  Only Master Patrick and Master Andrew insisted on the
honorific, for the former it was a way of maintaining his authority, for the
latter it was obviously to distance himself from any of the submissives.
 The rest of the group had all told her to call them Sir (in the case of
Justin) or by their first names.  "What's shaking?"

He studied her expression.  "Are
you okay?"

"Fine.  Wonderful."
 Taking a deep breath, Angel made her eyes follow her lips.  She was
an actress so it was something that she was experienced at.  A lot of
people couldn't smile from the eyes if they didn't mean it, but she was
practiced at forcing down one emotion to portray another.  Most important
was not to let her eyes stray over to where Master Jerkface was.
 "The club looks great doesn't it?"

"It does."  Rick's eyes didn't
move from her face and she had a feeling that she wasn't fooling him.
 "I think everyone likes it, which should make Lexie happy."

"There's a lot more people here than I
thought there would be."

He chuckled and she could feel herself
relaxing now that she had someone to talk to, someone to focus on and distract
her from the angry, jealous energy that had been pulsing inside of her.
 "There's a lot more people than we all thought there would be.
 I'm pretty sure Lexie's going to use that to try and convince Patrick to
allow her to plan more themed events for the club."

Angel grinned.  "Which will also
mean allowing her in the doors again."

"But not past the main floor."

She just shook her head and rolled her eyes.
 "Eventually you guys are going to have to give up on that you
know."

Instead of responding, Rick just held out his
hand.  "Wanna dance?"

This time she couldn't help it, her eyes
flicked over to where Adam was standing.  The redhead was still with him,
her hand on his arm, gazing up at him with adoring eyes.  Whatever.
 If he wanted to play with her first then Angel wasn't going to wait around
for him.  She'd dance with Rick and then she'd leave.  As long as she did
something before she left then it wouldn’t look too pathetic, she wasn’t going
to wait around for Adam to ask her to be second in his line-up.

"I'd love that."

It took a lot of willpower not to look over
at Adam again to see if he was watching as Rick pulled her out onto the dance
floor.  The music was what she'd once heard described as "industrial."
 It had a throbbing beat that was easy to dance to, not quite techno, not
quite club and completely enthralling.  The way the music flowed it
encouraged movements that were fluid, sexy.  

She wasn't sure if Rick did it on purpose,
but she found herself positioned so that Master Adam and the redhead were far
enough out of her field of vision that she would have to actually turn to see
them.  And there was no way she was going to do anything that obvious.
 It also meant she could just relax and dance and enjoy Rick's company,
because she couldn't see whether Adam was watching or what he was doing.  

Dancing with Rick was fun.  He didn't
engage in the erotic bump and grind that a lot of people around them were
doing, but his movements were easy to follow, and although their bodies were
occasionally pressed up against each other, it was usually because of how
crowded the dance floor was.  More than once he pulled her up against him
to get her out of the way of someone about to step on her or who was moving a
little too wildly and enthusiastically.  

When the song started to change, signaling
that whoever was DJing was blending it into the next song, hard hands came down
on her hips and jerked her back.  Angel automatically lashed out, her
elbow digging into what felt like a rock hard stomach. 

"Ow!"

Her only consolation was that Adam apparently
hadn't been expecting that either, which left him gasping for breath as one
hand immediately covered the place where she'd jabbed him.  In front of
them, Rick burst out laughing.  Putting her hands on her hips, Angel
glared at Adam. 

"What part of 'I teach self-defense' did
not get through to you?" she shouted over the music.

Adam's lips thinned as he straightened, still
rubbing his stomach.  "Come over here where it's quieter."

Giving them both a salute, Rick melted into
the crowd as Adam wrapped long fingers around her arm and steered her through
the gyrating people and over towards the bar.  The acoustics in the club
were amazing; the music was still loud but it was completely possible to have a
conversation unless you were on the dance floor. 

Yanking her arm out of Adam's grasp, she
glared up at him, crossing her arms beneath her breasts.  For a moment his
eyes flitted down to the way her curves were hefted up by her position, but she
ignored that.  Well, not ignored, since it made her insides flush with
warm pleasure, but she didn't let it distract her.

"What makes you think you can just come
up behind me and grab me whenever you want?" she demanded.  

There was a long pause and she wondered if he
was going to try to do the Dom thing on her - not that she was going to go
along with that, at least not without a serious attempt at resisting - and
reprimand her for her tone, but then his big body just seemed to drain of
tension. 

"I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have done
that," he said, his hand straying back up to where she'd elbowed him.  A
little rueful smile crossed his face.  "Although you got me pretty
good."

Dammit, why couldn't he have stayed hard and
mean?  That little smile he was giving her made her want to smile back,
and the apology sounded completely sincere.  Plus she liked that he was
man enough to acknowledge that she'd got him good instead of trying to play it
off like the elbow to the gut hadn't affected him at all. 

"I'd apologize, but you kinda deserved
it for grabbing me."  She scowled at him, but she knew that she'd
lost the edge and intensity to her anger.  The little smile that played on
his lips said that he knew it too.  Damn observant Dom.

******

"Yes I did."

He knew that he'd grabbed her too hard the
moment he'd done it.  The only defense he had was how out of control she'd
made him feel.  Again.  Watching her dance with Rick had been like
exquisite torture, because she was beautiful to watch but he'd been roiling
with jealousy the entire time.  At first he'd been grateful that his friend
had given her someone to talk to, he'd been all too aware of the dominants that
had been eyeing her from the moment she'd walked in, but he'd needed a few
minutes to control himself.  

So he'd taken the time to chat with Laurie
for a few more minutes, pointing out some of the other Doms that might be to
her liking - ironically Rick had been one of them.   

That had taken care of Laurie, but by the
time she'd trotted off to approach one of the Doms he'd pointed out, Angel and
Rick were already on the dance floor and another submissive had come up to see
if she could "serve" him.  What was it with the submissives
tonight?  Normally that kind of thing wasn't the way interactions at the
club were handled; the subs were supposed to wait for the Doms to come to them.
 They could show interest, of course, with looks or smiles or whatever,
but they weren't supposed to be the first to approach.  It had taken him
another few minutes to let her down gently and by that time he'd already
reached his limit when it came to watching another man dance with Angel.

Even if the other man was one of his friends.

"So why did you?"

"Why did I what?"  Crap, his
mind had completely wandered, he'd been looking over the straps covering
Angel's body again.  Although "covering" might be too strong of a
term to use.  They weren't covering a whole lot, but the caged look was
hot as hell, especially now that he was close enough to see that she was
wearing matching red leather gladiator sandals.  He didn't have a foot
fetish, but he really liked the way those looked. 

"Why did you grab me?"

Not a question that he wanted to answer
really.  It made him feel too vulnerable.  So he decided to give her
a partial truth. 

"I wanted to arrange that scene we
talked about last night."

Her mouth made a little 'o', as if she was
surprised.  Which didn't make any sense, but that round little opening
made the blood surge to his cock, as if it wasn't already hard enough from
looking at her, remembering exactly how he'd used that sweet mouth last night.

"Excuse me, Master Adam?"  

With a sigh he turned to see a leggy brunette
standing next to him, looking up at him with obvious admiration.  Although
he'd seen her in the Lounge area before, he'd never talked to her and he didn't
know her name; she'd shown up around the same time he'd met Angel, so right
around the time he'd stopped playing.  She was about the same height as
Angel, dressed in nothing but a lacy red thong, black high heels, and dangling
hearts from her nipple jewelry.  Feeling decidedly impatient, especially
as he sensed Angel's start to turn away, he reached out and snagged her arm
again.  Too bad if she thought he was being grabby.  At least this
time he didn't get an elbow in the gut, she just stilled and waited for him as
he raised his eyebrow at the interrupting submissive. 

To her credit, the brunette blushed, her eyes
going back and forth between him and Angel as if just realizing that she was
interrupting something.  Then she ruined it by drawing herself up and
tilting her head at him in an inviting manner. 

"I heard Master Patrick was going to do
a spanking demonstration this evening... I was hoping that maybe you could give
me a more intimate spanking demonstration?"

A low growl built in his chest, but no one
would be able to hear it over the music.  He didn't know why the subs were
propositioning the Doms tonight or why they kept pestering him, but he didn't
like it.  Still, he wasn't about to be cruel.  

"Not tonight," he said curtly.
 "I suggest you speak with Master Will over there."  He
nodded at the handsome Dom who was currently at the bar chatting with a few
other tops.  "He's very good at spanking scenes."

"Oh, thank you."  The brunette
looked disappointed, but that wasn't his problem.  No, his problem was
with the other brunette standing very stiffly next to him.  Dammit, now
what had he done wrong?