Soren’s eyebrows went up, and he was grinning. Did she just give him ideas? Jesus.
“This is you on a leash?” Ford said.
“Soren,” Cate said, and she was surprised to hear her voice. It was her lawyer voice. It was her leader-of-armies voice. And she was using it with the man who held her underwear in his pocket after he’d just pinned her to a wall.
“Cate,” he said. He was smiling.
“This is a woman you once cared about,” she said. “Think about that.
Because I might have to destroy her.
You have to decide if you’re ok with that.”
The smile on his face faded, and Cate felt something inside herself grow warm. Soren took this seriously; he didn’t like the idea of going after this woman, even though she was trying to hurt him. He really was that guy.
“Yeah, well, we’ll have to talk about that,” Cate said. “I don’t take it lightly.
Because if I have to destroy someone and I find out later that they were innocent?
That they had reasons to come after you?
Then
I
will come after you.
Both of you.
Screw the Bar and rules of ethics, I will come after you.”
Silence.
Where had that come from? Cate was breathing hard, her whole body wired. It tasted like fear, but it felt…different. It felt like fighting. And she couldn’t get thoughts of Jason and Cheedham out of her mind. One and the same, those two, and probably working together, and she was damn sure going to go after
them
.
Ford and Soren were still staring at her.
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Soren,” she said softly. “It’s just a warning I feel obligated to give. Please know that I do believe you.”
“Understood,” Soren said.
“Cate,” Ford said. “What the hell?”
She sighed. “Yes, Ford, this is personal. Don’t look at me like that, you should know better. You think I got to where I am without having to deal with real harassment from powerful dirty old men? Ford, you remember Professor Willis?”
Was it lying if she failed to mention her own ex-husband? Did it matter? She was already breaking enough rules, what was one more.
Ford’s face fell. “He seemed nice.”
“He wasn’t. And every time there’s a bogus lawsuit like this, women like me have to think twice about filing a complaint. Proving that it’s bogus won’t help, but it will make me feel better. And call me idealistic, but it irks me when people use harassment and abuse as a pretext for extortion. So basically everything about this annoys me, and I’d really, really like to take my annoyance out on Mark
Cheedham
, if that’s all right with you.”
Cate finally stopped talking and realized she was a little bit flushed, a little bit out of breath. She was, in fact, worked up. She was angry, she was determined,
she
was passionate. She was going to crush these jerks.
All of this was weird. She was normally controlled. Normally, she wore the mask.
She didn’t know what else to do, so she looked at Soren. Who was
smiling.
Seriously, seriously smiling, leaning up against the wall, his huge arms crossed in front of him, looking like he just won something.
“What?” she demanded.
“Where’s the retainer agreement?” Soren said.
Cate pulled it pete pull out of her jacket pocket, tried to pretend she hadn’t quivered at the sound of his voice, and smoothed it down on Ford’s desk.
Soren walked around until he face her across from the desk, reached for a pen, and said, “Look at me.”
The voice again.
He held her eyes. She saw a lot of things in those eyes. She saw triumph, she saw lust,
she
saw a promise.
He signed the agreement without ever looking away, and she knew exactly what that meant. She was doing both. She was his lawyer, and his sub.
What the hell had she just gotten into?
“See?” Soren said, walking toward her. He didn’t give her a chance to respond before he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to him, his big hand covering the span of her lower back, his hard body pressing against hers. He held them there like that for a beat.
Then he bent down and nipped at her neck.
“I told you that you could do it,” he whispered.
Cate shuddered.
More than that, she had completely forgotten that Ford was still in the room.
“Excuse me,” Ford said. “Soren, can I borrow your lawyer for a minute?”
Soren grumbled, but he let her go, leaving aching trails where his hands had been. “For a minute,” he said. “Cate and I have to set up a few meetings.”
He looked at her and smiled. “Tonight I’ll let you sleep, though,” he said softly.
Cate blinked. He’d
let
her…?
By the time she recovered, Soren was already gone. Just her and Ford.
In a room.
With Ford looking at her funny.
“Don’t tell me you’re shocked,” she said, trying to pretend she wasn’t shaken by being
outed
to Ford. It obviously had to happen at some point, she just hadn’t thought much about it. Apparently Soren had. “You see weirder stuff than that all the time, right?”
“I do,” Ford said quietly. He leaned back in his desk chair and watched her for an uncomfortable second. “I have to ask, Cate—Jason?”
She stiffened,
then
forced herself to relax. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t.
“I’m divorcing him,” she said.
“Amicably?” Ford asked.
Cate gritted her teeth. “Anything but. And Ispanp h. And Im handling it.”
“I have to ask for the sake of the club, Cate. Anything else,” he said, his eyes drifting toward the door Soren had left slightly ajar, “is not my business.”
Cate sighed. “It’s a difficult situation, Ford. Jason…” She
paused,
surprised that she still couldn’t bring herself to say it, even to a man who probably already knew. “Jason turned out to be a bastard. I appreciate your discretion.”
Ford looked at her for a moment, his face unreadable. She was asking him to hide her marriage from people, at least implicitly, at least by omission. It wasn’t a fair request, but Cate didn’t have the luxury of caring about that.
“Of course.”
Cate studied him. Had she ever really known Ford very well? She had heard
rumors,
back in law school, of a woman who’d hurt him, something with his family. But he’d always been so put-together, so remote, and Cate had had her own things to hide, it was as though they’d understood each other enough to give each other a wide berth.
And now she
was trusting
him with so much. They
were trusting
each other. It had been a week of trust falls, basically.
“You don’t seem surprised by what I said about Jason,” Cate said.
Ford got up and out of his chair, a faint smile playing across his lips, and walked over to where Cate stood.
“That’s because I’m not,” he said, and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Just remember that everyone has rules for a reason, even Soren. Welcome to Volare.”
Soren was waiting for Cate.
He hated waiting. It made him feel…charged.
And it made it damn hard to focus on this conversation that was going on around him, even though it was about him.
“Maybe it wasn’t so bad,” Molly said quietly. “Maybe nobody pays attention to press conferences. I mean, they have to know the other side is going to lie, right? That lawyers lie?”
The forlorn quality to her voice got Soren’s attention—no one ever wanted any of
their
friends to sound like that. Plus, she wasn’t her usual bright self. Instead she was slumped in one of Volare’s comfy chairs, distractedly picking at the label on her beer bottle.
Declan shot him a look that said,
Fix this now.
“Jesus, Molly, stop it,” Soren said. “Right fucking now,
stop
it. This is not your fault. We always knew this was coming,/fon right? They were going to do a press
conference,
they were going to tell lies. It’s not your fault.”
“Would there be a lawsuit without my book?” Molly countered. She looked miserable. “Can you honestly tell me this would have happened if I hadn’t written that book?”
“There totally would have been.”
They all looked at Brian, who was speaking up for the first time since arriving at Club Volare. Prior to this the man appeared to have lost all ability to speak, gaping around in wonder and delight at all the beautiful women and all the shiny equipment.
“What?” Brian said, wide eyed. “Soren whored around a whole bunch, in public, and he did it with whips and stuff while getting insanely rich. Someone was probably going to try to take advantage of that eventually. No offense.”
“None taken,” Soren said, leaning back and training his eyes on the entrance. He wasn’t going to miss it when Cate arrived. They hadn’t seen each other since the night he’d signed the retainer agreement, and Soren was in withdrawal. He’d been thinking about her nonstop. He’d known she would feel good, but he hadn’t known how
good
.
Goddamn, no one could be prepared for how she’d felt under his hands. He could barely think without wondering what it would feel like to bury his cock inside her.
Besides, Brian had a point. A man in his position, with his tastes, might as well have painted a target on his back. That it hadn’t happened before the publication of the book was just dumb luck.
“It’s not your fault, Molly,” Declan said softly. “You wrote the book we wanted you to write. You wrote the truth. And you brought the band back together. Stop beating yourself up.”
“God, it was just so…” Molly ran her hand through her blonde hair and looked at Soren again. She seemed constantly surprised that he wasn’t more broken up about the things people said about him on television. “Soren, it was brutal. It was hard for
me
to watch them say those things about you, I can’t even imagine…”
Soren just shrugged. Molly didn’t have to know he was used to it.
“I have a thick skin,” he said.
Declan gave him a hard stare. “Then what’s getting to you?”
Damn
.
“I, too, am curious,”
Brian
said, his eyes wandering briefly over a latex-clad lady. “Spill, bro. We’re in this together.”
“Perceptive sons of bitches,” Soren muttered.
“Wait, what’s going on?” Molly said. Even Molly wouldn’t pick up on something like this. You had to have been there with Soren from the beginning to get a feel for this kin
“Sonya’s been calling,” Soren said.
“Your sister?” Brian said, dumbfounded.
“You have a sister?” Molly said.
Declan was quiet. Thoughtful. “What does she want?”
Soren met Declan’s eyes. He didn’t need to say it. Sonya, Soren’s sister in blood only, had been Julia’s best friend back in high school.
The
Julia. The only woman Soren could claim to have loved, if he really had, if he’d really been capable, and the one he never spoke about. The one Declan had helped him get over.