She's All Tied Up: Club 3, Book 2 (6 page)

“He is,” Sara agreed. “He’s so big.”

“I think it’s more the eyes,” Daisy said. “He’s got that ‘mess with me or my woman and I’ll tear you into little pieces with my bare hands’ look goin’ on.”

Sara shook her head. “No, it’s because he’s really big, but he moves like he can actually
use
all that muscle, you know? He doesn’t walk around with his arms hanging out from his body like some of the heavy lifters do.”

“Yeah, why do they do that?” Daisy asked, wrinkling her nose. “It looks so weird.”

“They’ve developed certain muscles at the expense of others,” Sara said, a PE teacher who knew a great deal about fitness. “Jake has all-around fitness, flexible as well as big.”

Daisy smiled demurely. “Dack’s flexible.”

Sara grinned back. “I’ll bet.”

“Carlie needs to find out how flexible Jake is,” Daisy went on relentlessly. “And report back to us.”

Carlie tipped her face back up to the sun, her eyes closed. “How many times do I have to say it? He’s. Not.
Interested
. He went off with some teeny little chick right under my nose, hel
lo
.”

There was a short silence. She opened her eyes, squinting against the sunlight dancing off the water, to see Daisy biting her lip. “I’m…probably not supposed to tell you this, but heck, girlfriends first, right?”

“What?”

“Swear you won’t tell Dack or Jake?”

Carlie crossed her heart without a word, and Sara followed suit, finishing up by miming zipping her lips closed.

“Okay.” Daisy leaned forward onto her hands, the move pushing her perfect breasts together in her aqua bikini top. “So, Jake’s over today to help Dack install a portable fire pit. Just before I left, I overheard them talking on Dack’s back deck.
Our
back deck. Geez, I can’t believe I actually live there now, y’know?” She smiled dreamily.

Carlie reached over and flicked her friend’s bare thigh with thumb and forefinger. “Daisy. Focus. You can moon over Dack’s perfection later.”

Daisy rubbed her leg. “Ow! Okay, so they’re talking about the club, and Dack says something about the membership, and Jake sighs, like a lonesome hound dog.”

She repeated the two men’s conversation, including the part about Carlie.

Sara grinned as Daisy imitated Jake’s deep voice, but Carlie sat, frozen.

“Oh my gosh,” Sara murmured at the end of Daisy’s recitation. The two of them looked expectantly at Carlie.

“What?” she demanded, bewildered.

Daisy sighed, as if put upon. “Carlie! Those three guys are like brothers. If Dack noticed Jake is attracted to you,
believe it
. Jake wants
your
curvy bod, not just ‘some real women’. He was trying to be subtle, that’s all. Except guys aren’t very good at that. Of course, Dack pretty much doesn’t even try to do subtle,” she grumbled. “He just tells me what to do.”

“Oh.” Carlie couldn’t manage to form any words more coherent than that. She thought Jake was pretty good at being subtle. He could express a world of disapproval or tease her relentlessly with just a look.

“So you could come with Dack and me Saturday night,” Daisy invited. “It’s not a theme night, so you don’t have to buy any special outfit, but it’s one of the busiest nights, so it’s a great choice for your first time. Lots of people there, so you can see what’s going on, see what you might like to try, you know? You have your paperwork done, right?”

“Uh-huh.” Carlie nodded absently. “Just have to hit Send.”

Sara rose from her towel, beckoning to them both. “Dais, I think her brain is on overload right now. Come on, let’s go get wet. Give Carlie time to process.”

Carlie tossed her straw hat aside and followed her friends into the chilly water. For once she didn’t stop to complain when it rose around her abdomen, the most sensitive part of her body when it came to cold water.

She was vaguely surprised when her feet stayed on the bottom as she waded out into the sluggish current deep enough to submerge her shoulders. Emotion rose inside her, effervescent as the bubbles floating by on the warm air. Excitement? Sheer terror?
Jake wanted her to come to the club
.
And oh, come to Papa, what she wanted to try with him.

Only one way to find out if he really wanted her. She was going to the club on Saturday night.

“Oh,
crap
!”

Daisy and Sara, both neck-deep in the green water, turned to her in astonishment.

Carlie clapped wet fingers over her lips. “Sorry. But I just remembered I have a date Saturday. Another freaking company dinner-dance at the Beaverton Revillion. I’m going with Gerry.”

“The man-slut?” Daisy demanded, curling her lip. “You finally caved, huh? Darn, I knew this would happen if we didn’t get you into the club.”

Sara bit back a grin. Carlie rolled her eyes. “I can keep him in line for one evening.”

“Well don’t
do
anything with him,” Daisy admonished. “He’s probably a sponge of STIs. At least the guys at the club get checked every few months.”

“You can borrow my purse-size predator spray to fend him off,” Sara offered and then ducked when Carlie splashed water at her.

“Hey,” Daisy squealed, caught in the middle. She splashed Carlie back. The cold water hit Carlie’s hot face, making her sputter. She sent a sheet of water at Daisy, and soon the three of them were in a splashing free-for-all, shrieking and laughing.

They waded back onto the beach, shivering, and sank down on their towels to let the sun bake warmth back into them.

Carlie slipped out of her sodden shorts and stretched out on her stomach. As Daisy did the same, Carlie peered at her friend through the dangling strands of her wet hair. “You’re…okay with me being there?” she asked. “I mean, I know Dack likes to…do stuff in public.”

Daisy grinned, although her elfin face flushed. “Likes people to witness his manly prowess? Yeah, I’m fine with it, really. I’ve gotten to be friends with other people at the club too. At first, it was easier that I didn’t really know any of them, but now…” She shrugged. “Everyone there is kinky, so it’s okay. And honestly, it’s really
hot
. I know that’s bent, but so what?”

She looked earnestly at Carlie. “But you don’t have to do anything public, if that feels uncomfortable. Jake’s not into that…far as I know.”

Carlie pushed her hair behind her ear, hoping fervently that was true. Sara listened with evident fascination as she smoothed lotion on her legs. “You know, maybe when I come back to Club 3, I’ll just stay out in the main area,” she muttered. “At least that way I know I’d be safe.”

Daisy looked up at her, face serious. “You know that after what happened to you, the guys installed new security, right? Cameras in all the rooms, as well as the locker rooms, which is where Kevin was coking up. They’re going to have someone monitoring the cameras all the time the club is open.”

Sara wrinkled her pert nose. “Really? Who’s going to be the spy?”

“Hey, it’s not spying, it’s safety. They already patrol, especially upstairs, but this is an added measure. All the doms will take turns—the three guys and others who’ve been around awhile, like Twila and Mason. It was Mase’s idea actually.”

“Mase is a nice guy,” Carlie offered, remembering her dances with him.

“He is,” Sara agreed. “There’s something about him… I wonder if he’s in law enforcement?”

Daisy shrugged. “Dunno. He’s nice, but he’s a dom and don’t forget it.”

“What’s it like kissing a guy with a mustache and beard?” Carlie asked, remembering Mason’s dashing facial hair. Dack wore a full beard and mustache too. Like Mase, he kept it short and neat.

Daisy smiled beatifically. “
So
sexy…”

“Oh, God, now she’s all mushy again.” Sara groaned, flopping back on her towel.

Daisy giggled. “Can’t help it. My big weightlifter is my dream come true.”

Carlie smiled at her, but her smile slipped away as she propped her chin on her folded hands, and dug her toes into the warm, gritty sand at the end of her beach towel.

She had dreams of her own—starring Jake. She wanted him so badly she had to press her thighs together and stifle a moan just thinking about him. Her vibrator was going to get some use later.

But while he supposedly admired full-figured women, she seriously doubted his admiration would extend to more than a night at the club.

Was it worth being with him, even though she knew this? Or would it hurt even more to watch him with another woman after she’d been with him herself?

She rolled her eyes at her own foolishness. Of course it would hurt—a lot. The question was, how badly? And was he still worth it? She had an idea he was.

Carlie’s phone rang as she was stepping out of the shower after work. She did not usually shower after a day at the office, but today had been so steamy hot, the humidity climbing along with masses of white, puffy clouds on the southern horizon, that she felt damp and sticky.

She glanced at the clock on her bathroom counter. Six o’clock, Monday evening, which meant it was probably her mother. Paula Milton served dinner at six-thirty on the dot, which left her plenty of time to have a cocktail with Carlie’s father after he arrived home from his office. On Saturday and Sunday, her father either worked in the yard or in his wood shop, but dinner would still be at six-thirty.

This schedule also left Paula plenty of time to phone Carlie at six, when she knew her daughter would just be preparing her own dinner after work. Carlie’s lip curled. Wouldn’t put it past her mom to know with some spidey sense that Carlie planned to have a personal pizza and salad for supper tonight. With all the fat and calories from the cheese and meat, pizza was on Paula’s no-no list for herself and her daughter.

Carlie picked up the phone with one hand and swiped her towel down her wet torso with the other. “Hi, Mom.”

“Carlie,” her mother said decisively. She always spoke that way, and it still made Carlie tense, as if she were on the verge of receiving a scolding for some infraction. Despite being a “good girl” who spent much of her childhood acting out only in her head, Carlie had received plenty of scoldings for her food choices, such as taking cupcakes from the fancy decorative tiered dish her mother liked to have on the counter for her bridge club. Seth and his friends, who were always hungry and as thin as rails, had not been scolded for this.

Carlie had also been reprimanded for not putting herself out to make more friends herself, specifically boyfriends, and for daydreaming when she was supposed to be hanging on her mother’s every word.

“What have you been doing? Did you get out and about this weekend?” Paula asked.

Carlie swiped the towel over her shoulders, and then her breasts, dabbing up under the heavy curve. “Mm-hmm,” she answered. “An afternoon at the beach with friends.”

“Oh, anyone I know?”

“Daisy and Sara.” Carlie waited two beats, counting silently.

Sure enough, her mother responded with a sigh. “Oh, those two. I’m sure I told you Damon Roscoe is back in town. I saw him just this afternoon, driving a cute new sports car down the street. Didn’t have a girl with him.”

Carlie rolled her eyes. “Mom, Damon and I have never been interested in each other. We’ve known each other since we were seven, so I don’t think lightning is gonna strike now.”

And besides, he might manage a bank and his mother might consider herself the queen of Hillsdale Avenue, but Carlie didn’t like the smirks Damon had been giving her since she started to develop in sixth grade, so if lightning struck, she hoped it would jolt him into treating women like people and not walking sex toys.

She grinned to herself. Jake, on the other hand, just might be welcome to make her his personal sex toy. Because even though he irritated and flustered the crud out of her, when he looked at her, he saw
her
, not just her body. Okay, he saw a her he felt free to tease unmercifully, but it was in a way she could handle, not in a mean way, not in a way that made her feel less, just irritated and flustered.

Her mother sighed again. “Well, what a shame you won’t at least make an effort.”

“Mom, did you call to talk about Damon?” Carlie asked dryly. She finished drying herself, draped her towel over the rack and straightened it one-handed, then walked into her closet to select a fresh pair of panties from her bureau.

She knew what her mother wanted: to be able to announce Carlie’s engagement—to some fabulous catch—at her younger brother’s wedding, which would happen in November and was already being planned to the nth degree by Seth’s fiancée and her mother.

Her mother hesitated. “No,” she said. “No, that’s not why I called.”

Carlie hesitated with a pair of lacy white panties in her hand, foreboding clutching at her stomach. “Mom? What is it? Is something wrong?”

“Well,” said her mother evasively. “Why don’t you come and have dinner with your father and me? I know it’s last minute, but we haven’t seen you for nearly two weeks. I’m serving chicken tarragon.”

Carlie blinked. Her favorite chicken dish, made with creamy white sauce and served over rice. Granted, her mother had figured out how to siphon out most of the fat, but her light version of the recipe was still pretty good.