Savage Hearts

“Tell me you can do this, Cate,”
Soren
said into her ear. “Tell me you’re mine, tell me you’ll submit, Jesus fucking Christ, tell me…say it…”

Could she even speak still? Could she process what he was saying? It didn’t matter; she knew the answer. There wasn’t room for second-guessing, for rationalization, not when she needed like this.

“Yes,” she said, tearing it out of her while her body begged him for release. “Yes, I can do this.”

Then she put her lips on his ear and whispered, “Yes, sir.”

She felt him stiffen.

Then with a growl he rose up, catching her in his arms, spinning her, pushing her against the wall, and she was pinned. His mouth hovered over hers while he shoved her panties aside and she felt him inhale, felt the air drag across her lips to his, when he felt how wet she was.

And then he was inside her.

Cate groaned, buried her face in his neck,
lifted
her leg around his waist.
Soren
pushed two fingers in slowly, slowly, until she felt like she as about to burst, his huge palm resting over her clit, her whole body on actual fire.

“Now,”
Soren
said. “Come for me...”

Cate Kennedy took a deep breath and did her best to hide.

Which was completely freaking ridiculous, because, one, Cate Kennedy was arguably the best litigator in the state of California, which wasn’t exactly a job for shrinking violets, and two, she was not a coward. Cate Kennedy had never run from a challenge in her life. And Cate Kennedy certainly didn’t hide from anyone—except, of course, that she hid from everyone.

Even Cate Kennedy herself found that part a little confusing.

She actually thought of them as the Two Cates. There was the Cate she was at work and in public, the version of herself that she showed to the world.
That
Cate was a woman who could command a courtroom, stare down opposing counsel, and intimidate the hell out of witnesses. And then there was the woman she felt like the rest of the time, the real Cate that she kept hidden, constantly afraid that everyone would find out what a fraud she was, and who was the kind of woman who occasionally slouched down in the front of her own car, hoping no one would see her.

Scared, hiding-in-her-car Cate was less fun. She hated being afraid just on principle, and she hated that she had reason to be afraid in the first place even more.

But she had seen her husband’s golf buddy coming out of the Volare Venice offices just as she was about to get out of her car, and now she was stuck. It wasn’t Patrick that she was worried about, although she wished he would stop trying to chat up the Volare employee who clearly did not want to talk to him. What worried her was that Patrick would tell her soon-to-be-ex-husband Jason that he’d seen Cate at Club Volare.

And Jason himself scared the shit out of her.

The whole situation hardly seemed fair. Cate had been nervous enough just driving to the Volare compound in Venice Beach, feeling the beginnings of butterflies in her stomach, the kind of excitement she barely remembered from when she was a teenager, and that nervousness had almost allowed her to forget about the rest of her life. Every mile closer to Volare had felt like an escape from Jason and his threats and his cheating and the divorce that he
still
wouldn’t give her.

The man probably had his hands all over some other woman at that very moment, and yet it was Cate who was terrified and hiding in her car because of what Jason might do if he thought Cate was with someone else. Not that Cate had plans to date any time soon. She couldn’t fathom the idea of a relationship, possibly not ever again.

Yeah, not fair at all.

It didn’t help that she’d secretly fantasized about Club Volare ever since the place opened up in L.A. Cate had barely been able to contain her reaction when Ford Colson, Volare’s lawyer and one of the founders of the L.A. club, asked her to consider representing a Volare member in some kind of civil suit. The man in question was apparently a rock star—
Soren
something or other—which made her feel old, because at thirty she apparently had no idea who the current rock stars were, and this one evidently had a reputation as a debauched womanizer. Like, distinguished among
rock stars
as a debauched womanizer. That he was apparently a Dom made the whole thing even more fraught. Cate hadn’t had time to do her normal research while she’d been busy closing up her last case, but she gathered that a recent book had exposed parts of the rock Dom’s private life and left him open to extortion disguised as a lawsuit. Probably something sex-based and salacious, requiring a big legal gun, which was why Ford had called on his old law school friend-turned-brilliant-litigator Cate.

One Cate had relished the challenge. The other Cate had silently freaked about the idea of getting involved with Club Volare.

And now that she was actually here? She didn’t know if her stomach was doing all those acrobatics because she was good nervous or bad nervous, but she knew it was definitely something.

Because there were Doms in there.
Actual, real-life Doms, the kind of men who did the things she fantasized about, and the kinds of things she feared. This was her problem: she was drawn to Club Volare and BDSM so much that she could barely think about anything else lately, and yet she was terrified of
why
she was drawn to it. But with her past, she had reason to be cautious. And with her husband, she had reason to be frightened.

The whole messy combination meant that Cate had never felt so personally invested in a potential case, and as a result she’d never been so sure that she shouldn’t get involved.

So of course she’d immediately said yes. Apparently she’d decided her life wasn’t interesting enough already. That, and maybe Cate had finally decided to do something for herself. All of which had brought her to Club Volare Venice feeling like she was about to throw up from both excitement and fear, hiding in the front seat of her car while Patrick Cross tried to hit on some poor blonde.

Cate tried to shake her head, and banged it into the steering wheel.

“Oh, come
on
.” She laughed softly to herself. “You know what? Screw this.”

She poked her head up with every intention of finally getting out of the car, Patrick Cross and his big mouth
be
damned. She would get out of her car like a normal person, strut like a boss over to her meeting with Ford and Soren the mystery rock star, absolutely own that freaking meeting, and then she’d find the guts to ask about Volare memberships. That was the plan. But then she got one good look at Patrick’s face and she thought about what Jason might try to do to her career if he thought she was a member here. Or what he might try to do to her.

She flinched.

It was the real her, the inner her, that had an interest in Club Volare, not her public face. Maybe she wasn’t ready to have inner Cate meet the whole wide, mean world quite yet.

“Compromise,” Cate said to herself, and scooted over the gearshift to the passenger side door.

She only had to make it as far as the delivery truck where two men were unloading cases of high-end liquor before she’d get to the side door of the next building over in this ridiculously swank compound. She could duck in there and Patrick would never know. It wasn’t the Volare office building—in fact, it looked like it was the actual club part of Club Volare—but it was good enough for now. She still had time before the meeting, anyway.

She took a big breath.

“One, two…oh fuck it,” she said, pushed open the door, and barreled into the late afternoon sun.

She kept her head down while t s down wshe did it, knowing her auburn hair might give her away if Patrick happened to look over. If she hadn’t, she might have seen the guy carrying a big
ol
’ box of bottles.

But she didn’t.

Cate crashed into a never-ending wall of muscle, tripped, and then knocked into the box itself, which hit the ground with the loudest
crunch
of breaking glass she’d ever heard.

There was no way that Patrick hadn’t heard that.

There was no way that most of Venice Beach hadn’t heard that.

Cate didn’t even look to see if Patrick had recognized her. All she could think about was Jason and his ability to further ruin her life. Instinctively she ducked behind the unidentified wall of muscle that had been carrying the box, cursed, and said, “Please don’t move.”

 
In the next few seconds, Cate noticed a few things. One, the man she was using as a human shield was even more built than she’d thought. Two, he was wearing a plain white shirt that Cate, for no reason at all, was gripping hard in her hand, like she could steer him around as the perfect shield with just a handful of thin, flimsy, does-nothing-to-hide-those-
pecs
shirt. And three, he smelled
amazing
.

Normally she might have introduced herself, but for some reason those three things combined with fear-induced adrenaline and her irritation that another human being was now a witness to this absurd and embarrassing situation made her feel a little…tongue-tied.

“Are you hiding?” the man said.

That
voice
.
Deep, resonant.
Amused. Like it was a joke.

But his words reminded her that she was, in fact, hiding, and not for entirely stupid reasons, either. Cate looked up. She was nearly blinded by the sun over the man’s shoulder, which meant she couldn’t see the man’s face, and she couldn’t see whether or not Patrick had seen her. She felt real fear begin to return. Jason would lash out if he knew. She was certain of it. He would come after her. She gripped the man’s shirt harder and willed her hand not to shake.

“Actually, yes,” she said, and tried to keep her voice even.

Didn’t work. She heard the tremor in her own voice, and knew what it meant. She was starting to panic, her muscles stiff and unmoving, her breathing coming fast.

God damn her asshole abusive ex-husband.

The man she was using as a human shield bent his head toward her and she heard him inhale. She knew he was looking at her, but she couldn’t look up, into his eyes—it was too much, the idea that this stranger might also see her both afraid and humiliated, on top of having to be ashamed of herself for being afraid in the first place. Then, as though he could sense her fear, the man turned and looked over his shoulder to where Patrick had been standing.