Surrender to Fire: Maison Chronicles, Book 3 (2 page)

For now, teaching would be enough. It had to be.

In New York, Damien and Evan would have been out at their favorite BDSM club, Faust, by 10:00 p.m. on a Wednesday. It was their weekly Hump Day gathering—heavy on the socializing, light on the actual play—and it never failed to invigorate him for the rest of the week. So far, he didn’t feel that kind of vibe in Los Angeles and despite invitations from some local Doms he knew, he had little interest in going out just for the hell of it when he had regular demos on his schedule. Instead, he tossed his running clothes into the hamper, took a quick shower, then crawled under the sheets in his boxer briefs.

Though it had been months, he still missed not having a warm, soft body to greet him between the sheets. Remembering the rose-petal scent of his last submissive and the doe-eyed way she always greeted him at the end of the day, he went hard—despite the way their relationship ended. Not an uncommon occurrence lately. Not something he wanted to deal with at the moment.

When his cell phone rang, Damien grabbed it from the bedside table and muted the TV. “Hello?”

“Damien? It’s Jax.”

The grim tone on the other end didn’t bode well. Jax had been allowing his submissive, Lara, to help Damien with his demo lectures. “Hey, Jax, what’s up?”

“Lara’s in St. Joseph’s Hospital.”

Dread iced his stomach. “Is she all right?”

Jaxon’s heavy sigh crinkled across the phone line. “Yes. She’s got the flu pretty bad. Can’t keep anything down. They have her hooked up so she stays hydrated. Needless to say, she won’t be able to sub for your lesson this weekend.”

His disappointment was overshadowed by concern. “Of course. You tell her to get well soon. Anything I can bring?”

“No, man, we’re okay. She’s being bratty, so I know she’ll recover just fine.” A hint of a smile crept into the man’s voice.

When Damien had met the couple a few years back at a national convention, he’d immediately felt the love between them. It wasn’t something he’d often seen in full-time submissives, but they’d been together for years. It had warmed him, even as unwanted spikes of longing had invaded. “Thanks for letting me know. Take care.”

Lara and Jax did some of the most beautiful scenes he’d ever witnessed. Thinking about the sweet woman lying helpless in a bed, Jax unable to do anything concrete to help… He shuddered. He didn’t do well with helplessness. He’d send Lara flowers in the morning, maybe a nice bottle of Scotch for Jax.

Regret weighing on his shoulders, Damien called Katrina Lamont at the Maison Domine. She picked up two rings in. “
’Allo?
”

Her familiar French accent made him smile. “Hey, Kat, it’s Damien.”

“Of course,
chérie
. Only one man has your voice, like chocolate-covered sex.”

A muffled male voice grumbled in the background and Damien’s grin spread. “Bad time?”

A smack of flesh echoed through the phone. “For you? Never. My boy is just being naughty.”

“Just the way you like them.”

“How can I help you?” And she thought
his
voice was sexy. He knew Kat too well to see her as more than a friend, but he had a healthy appreciation for her as a woman—and a cautious respect for her whip hand.

“Lara Greene is in the hospital. Complications from the flu.” Frustration broke through his control and infused his words. “I’m sorry, but we’ve got to reschedule Saturday’s lesson.”

A sultry chuckle and snap of a crop filtered through the phone to slide down his spine. “Do not be silly. You will come up Saturday and I will find some wonderful woman to help you out. Your pretty little head should not worry so much.” A crack of leather and a deep groan reached his ears. “I thought Evan was the worrier. You leave this to me.”

“Yes, Mistress,” he said with pretend meekness. Her throaty laugh tempted his erection. When she hung up with an offhand “
Salut
,” he couldn’t do more than shake his head. Devil woman.

Relief filtered through his tension. Three more days, then he could let off some steam. He trusted Kat to wrangle in a submissive who would be able to work with him, taking what he dished out and helping him instruct the crowd.

Times like this, he was thankful he’d built up a store of patience beyond what he’d had as a younger Dom.

Chapter Two

After her miserable day at work, Camille spent her evening with a bottle of her favorite wine and a cupcake from Sprinkles. So what if it had taken her an hour there and back to get it? The dessert was worth every minute and promised Cam a perfect end to her shitty day.

She licked the last trace of buttercream frosting off her thumb. At least she hadn’t gotten fired—yet. Finnick had given her and Ian the ass-chewing of a lifetime—granted, his perfectly uptight British accent took some of the edge off it—but after reviewing their paper trail he agreed they’d taken every reasonable precaution against this kind of situation.

However, as he’d said with heavy resignation, the readers and reviewers were rabid. He’d suggested keeping a very low profile, then ordered his assistant to pull Cam’s contact information and Indigo’s author details from their agency site “for her own good”. It still stung, like they were embarrassed to have her as part of the company.

Two glasses of wine and a cupcake later, Cam was ready for bed. She shucked her clothes in a tipsy-sugared daze, tossing them in the corner with the rest of the laundry she’d have to do at some point. A tingle settled between her shoulder blades as she waited for a reprimand. A surge of vindication because of the mess washed it aside.

She’d just pulled on a nightshirt and crawled under the covers when her phone rang.

“Fuuuuck.” She groped for her cell where it sat in the charging cradle on the floor. Her lungs seized up, waiting for bad news. “Yeah?”

“
Chérie
, I just heard about that
bâtard
Shawn.” Only one Frenchwoman would start a conversation like that. Cam perked up—Kat was like her version of Santa Claus, owner of the most wonderful club she’d ever set foot in.

“Hey, Katrina. How can I help you?” She’d been to Maison Domine just that one time, but when other subs talked about it, she dreamed about returning. Shawn hadn’t been big on taking her out. Or spending money—on her, at least. Fury twisted her stomach, followed by nausea-inducing guilt. Maybe if she’d been a better sub, he wouldn’t have left.

“I do not mean to pry.” The woman paused. “That is a lie. I do intend to. But it is for your own good.”

Only Kat could pull a smile out of her on a day like she’d had. “Oh?”

“Indeed. So spill.” The Americanization sounded odd coming from Katrina. Cam laughed. That was exactly what she’d needed.

The whole sordid tale fell from her lips. Reliving it all in one piece hurt more than she’d expected—from her slow disillusionment with their relationship, her shifting priorities, her guilt and anger and the god-awful betrayal that, honestly, she’d been asking for.

An inelegant snort from Kat made her hesitate. Kat filled the silence. “You cannot be that dense.”

“Excuse me?” Irritation jerked Cam upright in bed.

“Shawn was an ass’ole.”

Her pronunciation was so quintessentially French, so comical, that Cam lost hold of her bemused anger. “He wasn’t that bad,” she protested. “We just wanted different things. I realized it two years too late, but better now than never, I guess.” She sighed and flopped back onto her soft cotton duvet.

“
Exactement.
So no more worries about that man,
oui
?”

Cam bunched her oversized T-shirt in her fist and yearned for another glass of wine. Fuck it, she was willing to bear the Thursday hangover. She padded out of the bedroom and snagged the whole bottle from her fridge. Who needed a glass on a night like this?

“It’s not that simple, Kat. Yes, his breakup note stung, but this started with me.” She hadn’t yet voiced her suspicions, but Kat’s patient silence pulled it from her. The woman had damn good instincts. “I really don’t know if I’m cut out to be a submissive. For the last few months, it’s been all ‘grin and bear it’. All the joy was gone. Serving him only brought me frustration.”

Kat made a very French, very noncommittal murmur. “I saw you here with him a few months ago. I could see the way you longed to play and Shawn was oblivious, sending you for drinks instead.
Parfait imbécile.
”

Ouch.
Cam started to protest, then slumped against the fridge. A swig of wine made it easier to answer. “Yes,” she whispered. “But at least then I was serving to please him. I just hoped at some point the rest would come, you know? We’d negotiated bondage and pain limits, the whole thing.”

“Oh my.”

“Yeah.” Cam teetered back to bed, snapping up a second cupcake on the way. It wouldn’t make her feel any better just sitting on the counter. “What sub can’t find joy in serving her Sir? I’m just…done. But that’s not even the half of it!” She sighed, bit into her cupcake and washed it down with wine. “Did you hear about the Indigo Baumgardner scandal?”

“Of course. I think most of us in the scene have—it was refreshingly realistic after so much slapdash erotica.”

“She’s my client.”

Silence.
“Merde.”

“Yeah. So my judgment is seriously under question right now. I don’t know which way is up and even if I did, I don’t think I’d trust the direction.” Another mouthful of cake and frosting sweetened the bitter bile churning in her stomach.

“Come to Maison this weekend.”

Wine bottle halfway to her mouth, she froze. “Come again?”

“It sounds like you need some time to sort things out. And, actually, you would be doing me a favor. Our first cabin is almost finished and I would love your input on it before we start the subsequent ones. We also have a couple of new features you could review for me.”

Oh the temptation… “It’s really not a good time, with things at work the way they are.” The words hurt coming out, but she needed to be reasonable. A weekend away? Now?

“Please, Cam. None of it is kinky. I will even book you a massage, facial and body scrub in return.”

Her jaw dropped. Santa Claus, no. More like Fairy Godmother. “What’s the catch?”

Kat’s sultry laugh sizzled through the phone. “As I said, I would like your honest feedback. It would be immeasurably valuable.” Now she understood why Kat was such a swooned-over Mistress—who could turn down that voice?

“Fine, all right, okay. I’ll come up Saturday and stay overnight. But I won’t pull any punches on my assessment of the cabin.”

“It is a deal then. I will get you all set up. Thank you,
chére
.”

Excitement swam through her tipsy haze. Maybe she’d have to thank Shawn next time she saw him.

Despite the throbbing headache when she woke up the next morning, Cam’s excitement for the weekend grew. She scraped her black hair back into a ponytail, slipped into her favorite A-line dress, leggings and boots, and headed for work. Cam hid behind her oversized sunglasses, thankful, as she parked and hoofed it across the street for her morning coffee, that she didn’t need to fight too much traffic on her short commute. She grabbed her large iced Americano, Ian’s usual complicated latte and a scone, hoping the caffeine and sugar would stave off the worst of her headache.

Even with the bright LA sunshine stabbing through her tinted lenses, Cam couldn’t shake her anticipation. Maybe Kat was right—a weekend escape sounded like the perfect remedy for her current state of affairs, even if she couldn’t promise to completely disconnect while there. She still had her job and she’d be damned if she’d stop working.

Ian, ever grateful for the caffeine infusion, greeted her at the door. “Aren’t you magic.” He grabbed the cup then leaned back against the wall. “You’ve got a letter sitting on your desk, couriered in. Looks exciting!”

Cam blew him an air kiss and headed to her cubicle. The letter, in a pretty pink envelope, beckoned as she set her tote on her desk and took another invigorating sip of her drink. With one fingernail, she slit open the envelope and pulled out the perfume-scented letter. The cloying smell made her sneeze.

How odd.

After the first sentence, the room started spinning. Her cup slipped from her hand as she reached out to steady herself on the desktop. Warm coffee soaked onto the toe of her new leather boots.
You deserve what’s coming, you lying bitch.
She couldn’t make out the rest. Her brain was stuck on repeat, those seven words drumming over and over again like a bad baseline.

“Cam?” Ian’s voice echoed down a tunnel before her knees gave out. Strong arms locked around her waist before she could fall, then helped her down into her chair. “What’s going on? What’s in that letter?”

The white noise ebbed. She refocused her eyes. Ian crouched in front of her. “Cam, talk to me honey.”

“I think someone is pissed.” The letter fluttered in her hand until Ian snatched it away. The color faded from his ruddy skin as his eyes flickered across the page.

“Well fuck. Think this is about Indigo?”

She shrugged listlessly. “Guess pulling my information from the site was a good move. Too late, maybe, but good.” Nausea bubbled up inside her. She reached for her coffee to wash it away, then looked down at her sopping-wet, coffee-stained boots. “I really didn’t need that too.”