A WILDer Kind of Love (15 page)

Tess laughed softly. If a flock of nuns traipsed in here, she was certain Emerald would have
them
at ease enough to flash tits, too. “Guess I don’t now.”

“Here. Apply this cream a few times a day. It’s got calendula in it. You’ll want to apply ice to them every hour or so, too. Same with the lady parts. You’re probably a bit bruised, but because the skin is naturally darker on your nips and labia, it won’t show as easily.” She lowered the blanket further, rushing cool air across Tess’s legs. “Ooooohh. More pretties. Flogger, right?”

“Right.”

“Bet it was heaven.”

She blushed again, but it felt good this time. Like sharing a delicious secret with a friend. “Yeah,” she murmured, “it pretty much was.”

“These will heal faster. Looks like he just gave you a little taste this time.”

She barely refrained from gaping. A
little
taste? She wondered what one of his “bigger bites” felt like—and if she’d ever have the chance to find out. Sure, she could come back here next weekend and have more confidence when it came to mingling with people, but the idea of surrendering to anyone other than Sir Sexy…

No. It felt wrong. All wrong. From the moment his eyes had first glittered at her from behind his mask, her body had retuned itself to a vibration with his name on it…

A name you don’t even know.

A
man
you don’t even know.

A Dom who indulged you with a night of mutual pleasure and never promised anything more. Now deal with it, dammit.

“Thank you,” she finally said to the woman now softly cleaning her thighs with a cool, damp cloth. “For everything. You’ve been—very kind—and—”

And apparently, “dealing with it” now included a burst of the most embarrassing, ugly sobs she could imagine. Hell.
Hell.

“Ohhhh.” Emerald shoved the cloth to the table and yanked her into a fierce embrace. “You sweet thing. There now, honey. Just spill it out.”

“No.” But just hearing the ragged gasp from her own lips was another disgusting defense buster. “Oh God, no!”

Like that was effective, especially as Emerald yanked the blanket back up, cradling her close, stroking her hair—exactly what Sexy had done just a few hours ago.

Yyeeaahh, she was screwed. This shit was just going to happen. Right here, right now, with barely a shred of reasoning or an ounce of justification. Fighting it was like trying to tamp a stab wound with a Q-Tip.

“It’s okay,” Emerald soothed. “Perfectly okay, baby.”

“No,” Tess choked. “It’s mortifying.” She yanked out a dozen tissues from the box the woman offered. “It wasn’t like we blood bonded or anything. Last time I checked, I was calling him Hawkface, not Lestat.”

“Hawkface!” Emerald laughed it out. “Not a stretch, is it? He does have that intensity…”

“
Who
has
what
intensity?”

The demand was issued from the archway by a voice like high-end bourbon: robust, smooth, thoroughly masculine. Tess instinctively straightened as soon as she beheld a gaze of the same dark gold, matched by drop-dead gorgeous features covered in skin the color of luxury chocolate. The rest of the man was equally beautiful.

She knew exactly who he was. The transformation of the woman next to her spoke it clearly enough. Emerald turned an adoring smile up at the dark demigod.

“Master,” she greeted. “This is Odette.” She yanked on Tess’s hand, a wordless version of you’re-not-going-anywhere-yet. “Odette, I am honored to introduce the first half of my world’s center, Mika LaBrache.”

“I am honored, Sir.”

Mika gallantly bowed. “The honor is mine, sweet Odette. Lovely to meet you.”

Tess threw her gaze between both of them while echoing, “‘The first half?’”

The two linked hands, sharing soft smiles. “We have a little boy,” Emerald explained. “His name is Tristan.”

“And he’s fucking awesome,” Mika added. As Tess joined Emerald in a giggle, he continued, “And according to his nanny, is starting to fuss a little for mama.” He wrapped a hand around his woman’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “We should think about returning to Max’s villa, pet.”

“Of course,” Emerald replied. “Though your eagerness wouldn’t have a thing to do with the new three-sixty swing in Max’s home playroom, would it, Master?”

The innocent blinks she threw up at him were countered by his amber gaze in narrowed form, promising of a spanking or twelve—a look so intimidating, it was hot. But when Mika turned toward her, all Tess felt was the same warm comfort she’d received from Emerald.

Which was why the new boulder in her throat made no damn sense. Nor the fresh tears that brimmed. No. They
did
make sense, but she was ashamed to confess it to these strangers who were sharing such kindness with her. In the middle of the night. When they had a
baby
waiting for them.

The truth? She was jealous as hell of them. Of the collar around Emerald’s neck, outshone only by the devotion in Mika’s eyes. Of their constant awareness of each other, as if bound by an unseen electrical field. Of the way they teased each other about fucking swings and spankings the way other couples joked about who got to pick the rental movie next and what direction the toilet paper should unroll.

With their truth, she grasped another piece of
her
truth.

She didn’t just want a Dom.

She yearned for a Master.

Longed for him with a need that dug into her soul, and hurt in her heart. Ached for him in the valley between despair and hope, unsure which one to pick. Somehow, Emerald saw all of that. The way the woman initiated a new hug, fierce and fervent, spoke the statement for her.

“I get it, doll. I really do.”

Tess snorted. “Is that so?”

“You think I locked eyes with this luscious hunk of caramel on my first tango in the dungeon?” Her snort put Tess’s to shame. “I had to chew a lot of bad candy first, baby. And I made matters worse by being my own worst enemy. Even after the candy went rotten, I didn’t toss the shit away like I should have. I let it muck up the floor all around me so that everywhere I stepped, the rotten experiences from my past glued me down. Until I scraped it all up and tossed it away, I wasn’t free to see my value as a submissive, or even a woman in a healthy relationship.”

“So you’re saying…that tonight…I did this to myself?”

“I’m saying this is a journey, not a ride on a bullet train. Sometimes it’s magic and sometimes it’s hell, but you don’t know the difference between either unless you walk the path first.
You,
Odette, not anyone else. This is your story to discover, your gift to give, your happiness to embrace—and tonight was only chapter one. Regrettably, I don’t know of any books that jump from chapter one to happy-ever-after.”

“Says the girl who learned that lesson after vowing to become the wicked witch just so she could shove the broom up my ass.”

Tess gasped, but Emerald laughed. “It’s true. Every word.” She elbowed her man’s thigh. “But you loved every minute.”

“Because I was already in love with
you
.”

Tess curled her arms in and threw a scowl at the pair that only half-teased. “Not helping.”

“Bullshit,” Mika growled.

She fumed but didn’t argue again. Partly because the Dom still scared her. Mostly because he was right.

Emerald grabbed her hands and clenched so hard, she had no choice but to look into the woman’s captivating namesake gaze. “Listen to me. It’ll happen, sweetie. I simply look at your face, into these beautiful eyes, and I see the journey you’ve taken just to get
here.
Celebrate
that
distance too, okay?”

Tess swallowed, ducked a fast nod, and mumbled, “Okay.”

“
Do it
, baby. The journey ahead won’t feel so much like the highway to nowhere.”

She nodded again, with a little more conviction. And prayed like hell that the woman was right.

‡

“S
ir? May I
get you another beverage?”

Dan forced an indulgent smile at the little blonde who dropped gracefully to her knees in front of the chair he occupied, in the darkest corner of the club where he’d agreed to meet Franz tonight. The woman’s breasts filled every inch of her corset, and her hips were lush beneath the schoolgirl uniform skirt beneath. She’d managed to let him know, through a series of equally practiced flounces, that she’d gotten rid of her panties about thirty minutes ago.

In short, kinky flying conditions were perfect. Clearly, masked men with thick scruff were her type. And hell if she wasn’t completely
his
type.

Or
had
been.

What the
fuck
was wrong with him?

Three days. It had been three damn days since he left Tess’s side; long enough to rinse her scent from his skin, her presence from his mind—and her effect from his cock. But while the first was easy to handle, the others were tenacious ghosts, badly in need of an exorcism—and dammit if he could figure out why. For the sake of his throbbing crotch, he prayed for the revelation soon.

The usual suspects, regret and guilt, had nothing to do with it.

He just had to keep telling himself that.

Over and over
and over
.

Wasted emotions, dammit. He didn’t regret a second of what Tess and he had shared at Catacomb, nor coddled any guilt about how he’d concluded it. They’d both walked into that dungeon with clear heads and clearer expectations—which were
no
expectations, other than the pleasure that was mutually given and received, so—

Mutual pleasure
.

Christ.

That
was the trip-up, wasn’t it?

Those words. Clinical, clean, polite—and a lie. “Pleasure” came nowhere near what he’d experienced in that room with Tess…what he was pretty damn sure he’d given her in return. “Pleasure” covered about their first five
minutes
—before the universe had imploded, morphing “pleasure” into things he’d never thought he’d find in a dungeon again. Awakening. Connection. Communication. Unity.

Magic.

The Dom space had been the best of his life—and fully reset his kink button.
He was back
. Master Dan had returned, now with a new-and-improved Zorro flair, ready to flog some ecstatic subbie ass from one end of the valley to the next. All he had to do was wait a few days for Tess to clear out of his head, and—

And he was a goddamn idiot.

Three days, and she’d gone nowhere. Was still parked at the center of his frontal lobe, consuming the lock screen of his memory with her heart-shaped face, big eyes, flushed cheeks, and ruby lips. Teasing him with her impish gaze. Taunting him with that sleek body…

“Sir? That drink?”

He looked up, stunned. The prompt was one gender and eight octaves off from belonging to the curvy schoolgirl. Sure enough, he stared into the remorseless smirk of one goofy-as-hell half-Samoan. Franz’s huge shoulders shook with a laugh. The guy’s teeth flashed against the contrast of his sienna skin.

Dan’s ire jacked by another notch.

“Darling.” He gestured to the blonde, bringing her forward again. She scooted in like a kinky roadrunner. “Thank you, really, for your service and your sweetness…”

“My pleasure, Sir. Completely.”

“But I’m not going to be playing tonight.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders slumped. He felt like shit. She was gorgeous and knew her lifestyle protocols. For a fleeting moment, he wondered what she was doing in a mid-strip, lookie-loo poser club like this.

Which begged a bigger question.

What the fuck was
he
doing here?

He already knew the answer. His clenching gut confirmed it. Catacomb was off-limits—also due to an answer he already had.

“Maybe some other time?” the schoolgirl offered. “Do you come here a lot?”

He pressed his fingers into her scalp, a kink version of a meaningful hand squeeze. “Some other time,” he offered.

“Okay!”

“Go get yourself something at the bar. Put it on my tab.”

She’d barely moved out of earshot before the Samoan shifted forward. “You’re so full of shit.”

He snorted. “Takes one to know one, Captain Franzen.”

“Sperm to worm besties, Agent Colton.”

“
Besties
?”

“Like it?”

“That does it. I’m wiping all the Broadway musicals off your Spotify.”

“Not if
she
has anything to say about it.”

He followed his “bestie’s” gaze, to where a new arrival in the club had already garnered attention on her way over. The goth princess from the other night at Catacomb, with her near-white hair, black lips, and slinky sepulcher fashion, slid onto Franz’s lap.

“Greetings,” she murmured to him.

“Greetings.”

The second Franz echoed it, they went for it. As in,
went
for it. Tongues down throats, hands under clothes. Dan attempted to focus on his Scotch and the gyrating bodies across the dance floor but Franz and his girl were a lot more captivating—and a lot less difficult to ignore once he started imagining how beautiful Tess had been beneath him, making so many of the same sounds.