She's All Tied Up: Club 3, Book 2 (29 page)

Her friendship with Daisy and Sara and her introduction to the world of fitness and the satisfaction of being her physical best had helped a lot. Also, simply growing up, realizing that other women triumphed over all kinds of physical and emotional variables. She was a professional woman, with family and friends who loved her, so even if her dating life was not so great, she had hope she’d figure it out one day, meet just the right man.

Then she’d learned about dominance and submission and met Jake, and a whole new world had opened up. One that she felt had just been waiting for her to discover. One where she might just fit, where she was safe to be naughty and a bit wild.

Until he’d slapped her away verbally, shown her she was just a visitor in that world, and not an entirely welcome one at that.

Now, as she heard his deep voice at the front door, she glanced across at the sofa and nearly bolted out of her chair. Oh crap. Now he’d sit over there and she’d have to look at the floor to avoid looking at him. At least on the sofa, he’d have been beside her, and she wouldn’t have to worry about accidental eye contact.

“Come in,” Daisy said, her voice cool. “Carlie’s in the living room.”

“Thanks.” Just a single word, but closer now. In her sitting room. She stared fixedly at her hand curled in her lap. Then when no one spoke, she looked up.

Jake stood there, in front of her ficus tree, only a few leaves visible around his tall, broad frame. He wore a dark polo shirt, straining at his muscles of course, and a pair of plaid shorts. He looked dressed up, for him.

He lifted his chin in a nod, drawing her eyes to his face. A mistake, as his gaze caught and held hers. He looked wonderful. No, wait. She was done thinking that.

“Hey,” he said. “Thanks for letting me come over.”

She nodded.

“I'll be out on the back patio,” Daisy said. She gave Carlie a look that said,
If you need me, I’m nearby.
Carlie nodded.

Jake stood for a moment, looking around. “You’ve got a nice place,” he said. “Pretty.”

“Thank you,” she said and shifted restlessly as she looked around too. At her cream sofa, the abundance of needlepoint and flowered pillows, most with ruffles. She saw him staring at the vase of carefully arranged roses. Crap, maybe she should have hidden them. No, she was not hiding anything. This was her space. She hardened her voice. “Did you come to see my apartment?”

He was silent. Then he walked into the room and sat on the edge of the sofa across from her, his elbows on his knees, which were way too close to hers. Geez, why had she never realized how small this place was? She scooted back in her chair. He watched her do so, his jaw tightening.

“Came to see you,” he said, his gaze holding hers. “Came to say—and I know it’s only a start, want you to know I realize that. But, came to say I’m sorry. For how I treated you. At the club.”

“Thank you,” Carlie said politely. She watched his hands, fingers flexing nearly into fists.

He sighed, his fingers relaxing again. “Yeah. So, been doin’ some thinkin’. About why I reacted that way.”

Something snapped inside her.

“How you
reacted
?” she asked incredulously, her voice rising, her heart pounding with welcome anger. She stared at him. “That’s great, Jake. You reacted. Yeah, that sounds like I did something, you
reacted
to it, so that lets you off the hook somehow. Well, I’m sorry, but I did nothing except walk into the club to meet you. Wearing, I might add, four hundred dollars’ worth of stupid dress-up clothing I bought to please
you
.”

He listened, his gaze not leaving hers, taking in all she said. Then he nodded again. “You’re right. Bad choice of words. Although accurate.”

“Bad choice of words,” she mimicked, on a roll. “I think we can go with that. I think that’s a good way to describe the way you spoke to me. I dressed up for
you
, and you accused me of being a s-slut.” He winced at the word. Yeah, not so much fun having his words thrown back at him, was it?

She threw her hands up. “Where did that come from, Jake? What have I done to make you think I’d behave that way? Thrown myself at other guys at the club? Flirted with them? Slept around while I was seeing you? Done those—those scenes with—with other doms?”

His mouth twitched when she said “those scenes”, but he didn’t smile at her which was fortunate, because she would have lost it.

“
No
.” He held up his hand when she opened her mouth again, and she closed it. “Listen. After a few sleepless nights, I realized I wasn’t reacting to you, I was reacting to…hell, ancient history.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his head and dropped it again. “My mother.”

Carlie stared. “Your mother?” she repeated, as astonished as if he’d said she reminded him of the Wicked Witch in Oz.

He nodded, although this time without looking at her. He stared at the carpet between them as if something fascinating was taking place there. She peered down, saw him staring at her toes, which Daisy had painted blush pink with a darker pink polka-dot flower on her right big toe this morning, saying there was nothing like new nail polish to help a girl feel better.

Carlie was still miserable, but her feet did look great in her olive flip-flops that matched the leaves on her pale pink flowered sundress. She’d reached for a blouse and capris, but Daisy had ripped them out of her hands, telling her it was time to stop hiding and dress like a woman, not a nun. Now Carlie reached up to pull a lock of hair over her chest, to hide the hint of cleavage the dress revealed. Then she listened to Jake.

“I didn’t come from a nice background, Carlie. You? Baby, one look at you, few words out of your mouth, and anyone can tell you come from class. Well brought up, nice, soft-spoken. You’re a lady.” He lifted his head and looked at her, deep turmoil and trouble in his gray eyes. “My mother was about as far from you as a woman can get.”

“What—what do you mean?” she asked, afraid to hear his answer.

“She was a slut,” he said baldly. “A drunken whore. A married woman, a mother with a son at home and a husband, even though home was whatever dive apartment or broke-down trailer we were currently livin’ in. She didn’t care, ’cause she wasn’t there much. She fucked every man who looked at her, then she’d come back to my dad and persuade him to take her back. And every time, he did. Made him miserable and me too.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. She rubbed a hand over her chest, to soothe the pain behind her breastbone for the boy he’d been, suffering neglect when his mother should have been loving him, no matter their circumstances. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

He shook his head impatiently. “Lots of kids do, come out fine. I did. That’s not why I’m tellin’ you, baby. Don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I am who I am, thanks to a few good teachers, and to the Marines. The good part of me, anyway. The asshole part, the part that hurt you, that’s all on me.”

Remembering, hurt stabbed her again. “I’ll agree with that.”

He winced. “Thought you might.”

They gazed at each other for a moment. Then his gaze wandered over her face, her mouth, down over her in the blush dress. “You look real pretty in that color,” he said, his voice rough. “Same color as those roses.”

“Thank you,” she said politely. “They’re lovely.”

He nodded. Then he moved off the sofa to one knee before her. He braced his hands on the arms of her chair and looked up into her face. She felt breathless. What if he kissed her or something? What would she do? Her fists worked in her lap.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna touch you,” he said. “Just wanna ask—” He swallowed, his throat working. “You think you can find it in you to ever forgive me?”

She shrugged, looking everywhere but at him. Which was hard when there was so much of him, all rugged and tanned and in her space. And he smelled so good.

Like the jacket she’d worn home from the club. Finding it the next morning, she’d picked it up, then sniffed and realized it was Jake’s. It was the smell of
his
skin, his faint cologne that had comforted her the night before. How twisted was that?

With Daisy and Sara watching, she’d marched through her apartment, opened the front door and hurled the jacket down her steps. It fell on the walk in a heap of seasoned, soft brown leather, glossy in the morning sun. When she’d turned to her friends sitting at her small dining table, coffee and donuts before them, Daisy had shrugged. “Trace said to do what you want with it.”

“Guess you just did,” Sara added. “Want a donut?”

Carlie suspected one of them had rescued the jacket and returned it to the club, but she wasn’t about to ask.

Now she frowned. “I don’t know if I can forgive you,” she whispered. It might be the Christian thing to do, but the hurt was so big.

“Shh,” he soothed. “S’okay. You don’t have to decide anything now, baby. Sleep on it.”

He rose and walked away, across the sitting room. “Bye, Dais,” he called.

“Bye, Jake,” Daisy called from outside.

Jake looked back at Carlie, a long look, as if he were memorizing her. “So you know,” he said, his voice full of steely determination. “I’m not givin’ up.”

Then he nodded and walked out of her apartment. Of course, being an idiot, she craned her neck to watch as he jogged gracefully down her stairs and along the walk to his truck.

Slapping her hands on the arms of her chair, Carlie rose and walked out to join Daisy on the back patio. She flounced into the patio chair beside her friend and scowled at the beautiful summer scene.

“Jerk,” she said fiercely. “Thinks he can make me feel sorry for him, and I’ll forgive him. Huh.”

Daisy put her warm hand over Carlie’s and squeezed. “Men are put on this earth to drive us crazy,” she said. “There is no doubt in my mind.”

Carlie nodded. This was true.

“Only a few things make them worthwhile,” Daisy added. “Their big, hard cocks being one. And lifting heavy things. Oh, and checking out scary noises at night.”

Carlie smiled, just a little. “Taking out the garbage when it’s raining.”

“Mm-hmm. And thinking we look pretty even first thing in the morning.”

Carlie looked at her. “Really?”

Daisy nodded, smiling to show this one was true. That was nice.

She made a fist and bumped Carlie’s knuckles. “And don’t forget groveling with flowers.”

Carlie scowled again. “I’m thinking there may not be enough groveling to cover this one,” she muttered.

Jake called her, as he’d promised. And out of curiosity, or self-flagellation, Carlie wasn’t sure which, she answered. The first time he simply asked how she was doing, how her week had been, told her they had some new weights at the gym she might like, then said good-bye.

The second time, he asked her to go to supper with him.

The main reason she agreed was because if she didn’t, she was going to have to appear at her parents’ for supper that evening, and she was still angry with her mother. This way at least she could say she had a date.

Also, Sara had mentioned tentatively that Jake looked like he’d lost some weight, and she had watched him work the weights at the gym until he was staggering with exhaustion, Dack finally going over, obviously annoyed, to tell him to quit before he hurt himself. So, maybe it was time for the two of them to either try to get past this or move on.

And Carlie found that despite the way he’d hurt her, she couldn’t bear the thought of Jake driving himself that way. What if he injured himself?

Then Daisy phoned to announce, with a tinge of awe, that Jake had not set foot in the club since that night, even though Trace and Dack were pissed off at him for neglecting his duties there, Dack so frustrated he’d told Daisy he was just about done with this shit, even if Jake was like a brother.

Jake had stopped going to the club? He wasn’t there, screwing other women or even spanking them? Carlie had asked Daisy if she knew the blonde. Daisy didn’t and said Dack would only tell her
“just someone Jake knew, end of subject”
.

Carlie had a lot of questions, which, if she didn’t like the answers, she and Jake were through, no matter how he made her insides go all soft and needy. So when Jake invited her to dinner, she accepted.

They met at Monroe Ales. This was a brew-pub a few blocks from the gym. A nice one, though, with indoor and outdoor seating and such good food even nondrinkers came for that. Jake had offered her the choice of going there or to Stanford’s, a very expensive steakhouse in downtown Portland. But although she loved Stanford’s, that felt too much like a serious couple date to Carlie, so she chose Monroe Ales. She insisted on driving her own car, even though Jake’s voice when he agreed to this was clipped.

Carlie wore a pair of slim black slacks and a deep pink halter that was cut high in the front but left her back bare. She covered it with a short, snug black cardigan and stepped into her favorite black platform sandals. She started to twist her hair up in a French roll, muffed her first try, and then took some hair paste, fluffed her fingers through her hair until it was a mass of wild waves around her shoulders, pulled the front up and back with a clip, and fixed her makeup. She put on a little dark pink lipstick, looked at herself in the mirror and put on a lot more. Since she wasn’t going to be doing any kissing, she wasn’t worried about it smearing.