Val eyed Samair as she gestured over her body, trying to get them to visualize some outfit. She’d said being with two men was one of her fantasies, and he’d promised to fulfill those fantasies. He glanced at Karl thoughtfully.
The lights dimmed even more and the music lowered. “Time for the second show,” Karl announced.
Samair looked blank. “Show?”
“Wednesday nights is show night here at the Dungeon. Dominants put on demonstrations of their skills.”
Karl explained that the skills included everything from spanking to bondage to knife or wax play.
“Knife play?” She turned to Val. “Just so you know, knives will never play a part in
any
of my fantasies.”
He laughed and shook his head. “No arguments here.”
They turned their attention to the stage. A well-built guy wearing only a pair of tight black shorts was getting strapped onto an X cross. The statuesque woman at his side picked up a microphone.
“For some people there is a very thin line between pleasure and pain. It takes open communication, trust, and a deft touch to make sure that your submissive gets what he or she needs from you. Tonight I’d like to show you how you can use your basic household clothespins to get an idea of your sub’s sensitivity.” She stepped back and put the microphone down. Sexy saxophone music swelled gently and she began to work on her man.
Instead of watching the show, Val watched Samair’s reaction to it. She’d tensed up, her thumb had stopped stroking him, and she was leaning forward intently.
“Oh my God.” The color drained from her cheeks and she slumped back against the booth.
He met Karl’s curious gaze before speaking. “What’s wrong, Samair?”
“I know him. The guy on the cross, I know him.” She looked stunned. “I can’t believe it.”
“You’d be amazed at how many people are into different types of kinks,” Karl said softly. “Like everything else in the world, it takes all types.”
“Samair?” Concern swelled inside Val. She looked more than stunned. She looked . . . hurt. “Who is it?”
She turned her head and met his gaze. “My brother.”
22
S
amair didn’t sleep much that night. Shortly into the clothes-pin demonstration it had become obvious that Brett was getting a hard-on in his shorts, and that had just been too much information for her to handle. She’d only had to look at Val and he’d read her mind.
“Let’s get out of here,” he’d said, and slid out of the booth.
Surprisingly, Karl had thrown some cash on the table and left with them. All three were silent during the short walk to Val’s bike. When they got there, Samair noticed another big Harley parked next to it, this one red and chrome. Karl had beaten them to the bar, and she hadn’t even noticed the other Harley when they’d parked.
Mind you, Val had kept her pretty distracted by not giving her skirt back. Thank God her brother hadn’t seen her in there. She didn’t think she could’ve dealt with that.
While Val helped her onto the bike and fitted the helmet on her head, Karl pulled his from a small side storage pouch like the one Val had on his bike, before turning back to say good-bye. “It was nice meeting you, Samair. Take it easy.”
The men nodded to each other and climbed onto their bikes. Despite the fact that her mind was millions of miles away, trying to bury the sight of her younger brother strapped to a bondage cross, she’d noticed that Val and Karl had an ease between them that spoke of years in a close relationship. Almost like brothers.
The ride back to her place hadn’t been nearly as thrilling as the ride to the club, and when they got to the apartment, he’d walked her to her door, plastered her against it with his body, and kissed her until she was incoherent.
Then he’d walked away.
“What?” she’d sputtered at his back.
“I think you’ve had enough excitement for one night, babe,” he said from the stairwell five feet away. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
At first she’d been stunned, but once she was inside she realized he was smarter than her. She’d have happily buried all thoughts in mindless sex, but he’d known that wasn’t what she’d really needed. And
that
only added to her confusion.
She wasn’t sure she wanted him to know her that well.
Sleep had been elusive. After tossing and turning for an hour, she was up and pacing the small apartment, mentally ranting about people pretending to be someone they’re not.
Lisa, Kevin, Rosa, Brett. Shit, even
she’d
been pretending for a while.
No, she hadn’t been pretending—she’d been denying. There was a difference.
Lisa and Kevin had deceived her, intentionally. Rosa had deliberately claimed Samair’s work as her own, which was why she’d quit. They’d been pretending. They were liars.
What category did Brett fall into?
He was the youngest in the family. The only boy and the one who
should’ve
been the wild child. But no . . . he’d been a good student and an even better athlete. They’d been close when they were growing up; Brett hadn’t cared that Samair was always in trouble.
“With you always in detention and mouthing off to the parentals, they don’t pay attention to my being half an hour late for curfew,” he’d once said with a laugh.
Hockey scholarships had paid for his education and he was already making a great name for himself in the junior leagues. He was expected to go pro as soon as he graduated from university the next year.
And he was apparently into a bit of pain.
When four o’clock came and went Samair realized that Joey wasn’t going to make it home, and that she wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on the design ideas she’d come up with at the Dungeon until she talked to Brett. She took a couple of aspirin and crawled back into the empty bed and lay there, hugging the pillow and cursing herself for letting Val walk away.
23
T
he sound of Joey’s off-key singing woke Samair up a mere three hours later. She rolled over with a groan and buried her face into the pillow. Then she lifted it and sniffed the air.
“Bacon?” she called out hopefully.
“And pancakes,” Joey called back.
She dragged her ass out of bed and stumbled to the breakfast bar. Joey, angel that she was, already had a glass of ice cold Diet Coke waiting for her.
Samair sipped her cold caffeine and watched Joey flip a pancake. A minute later she turned from the stove with a huge stupid-ass grin and set a plate full of food in front of Samair. “We didn’t have sex.”
Samair bit into a piece of bacon and waited.
“I went home with Mike after work last night, and he made us coffee and we talked all night. Well, not all night, since we didn’t get done at the bar until after three, and he had to get ready for work at seven. He has a day job, and he lives with his brother, but his brother is out of town right now so we had the place to ourselves. You know I don’t normally drink coffee, I prefer tea, and I never drink coffee at three in the morning, but Sammie, he told me straight up that he wasn’t interested in just fucking me. He said he wanted more. More than one night. More than just a lay. It was incredible.” She gave a dreamy sigh, then straightened up and looked Samair in the eye. “Now don’t think I’ve totally lost it. I mean, he’s just a guy. And guys play games. But he was so sweet and sexy at the same time.”
Samair watched her friend in amazement. Energetic, sassy, and slightly raunchy Joey Kent had a new soft edge to her. Like a schoolgirl in love. It looked good on her, too. “Sweet
and
sexy. It’s a good combination.”
She grabbed another piece of bacon to munch on.
Joey quieted down and fiddled with her fork, not meeting Samair’s eyes. “Do you think maybe he’s scamming me?”
Samair’s heart clenched. She looked so happy . . . and so scared. Kevin had been a “nice guy,” and look what had happened with him. Her brother was a “nice guy” who got off on pain-pleasure stimuli. Yet she looked at Joey, so hopeful, and she couldn’t bring herself to vent to her all her thoughts about fake people.
Besides, she’d never exchanged more than two words with the bouncer. Who was she to judge? “What do your instincts say?”
“I don’t know,” Joey shrugged. “I think he’s for real. I really do. But what guy says no to sex so that he can have more than one night? I mean, that’s the way girls think, not guys.”
“That’s a true but very narrow point of view.” She frowned at Joey. “Aren’t you the same person who always encouraged me to stop doing what was expected and do what I wanted to do?”
“Yeah.”
“It seems to me that maybe Mike
is
doing what he wants, going after what he wants—that would be you—instead of doing what people think he should do—which would be jumping at the easy sex.”
Joey’s mouth gaped, then she snapped her jaw shut and color flooded her cheeks. “You’re right.”
“I know.” Samair grinned and dug into her pancakes.
Their eyes met and they both laughed. “So how was the Dungeon?”
Samair thought about it for a minute. “Educational.”
Joey snorted.
“Educational? Okay, I get that you might’ve seen some things, maybe even done some things . . .” She raised her eyebrows at that. “But that’s a weird way to describe a night at a sex club with a stud like Valentine Ward.”
Samair needed to tread carefully. She didn’t want to talk about Brett and open that whole can of worms until she’d had a chance to talk
to
him.
“I went there to look at the outfits, remember?”
“Yes. And I remember who you were going there with.” Joey stuffed a forkful of pancake in her mouth and stared at her expectantly.
“Have you ever been on a Harley?”
“Oh yeah. Baby those give good vibrations, don’t they?”
And just like that, the conversation moved on.
B
rett was already at their favorite sushi restaurant when Samair arrived. She’d called him right after Joey had floated out of the apartment on her way to work, and asked him to meet her for an early lunch.
She was five minutes late, and he was already seated at a table near the window. She tapped on it, and waved on her way past, laughing when he jumped.
Ignoring the stares, Samair swept past the hostess and plopped down in the chair across from him with a tight smile. She still hadn’t figured out how to broach the subject foremost on her mind.
“So, little brother, how’s life?”
Brett grinned, his blue eyes bright. “Pretty good, pretty good. You’re looking pretty cheerful for an unemployed and homeless bum.”
She grimaced. “Is that what Cherish is calling me, or Mom?”
He laughed. “C’mon, they wouldn’t say something like that. You know they prefer to speak in euphemisms. ‘Samair is just planning her career right now.’ ‘She’s between boyfriends at the moment.’ ”
“Actually I have some big news on the career front, but I don’t really want you to share it with the family. Think you can keep a secret?”
“Hey, I never told Cherish that it was you who plastered that photo of her and Chris Salter all over the school locker rooms.”
“True, and I appreciate that.”
The waitress arrived and took their order, practically ignoring Samair and flirting with Brett shamelessly. When she walked away, Samair watched Brett check out the girl’s swinging hips and bit her tongue.
“So, what’s the news?” He lifted his coffee mug and grinned at her. “You submit an application to be on
Project Runway
and get accepted?”
Samair laughed. “God no!”
Brett could always make her laugh. Somehow, he always managed to cut through the bullshit and make her smile. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d have run away from home by the time she was fifteen.
“Better. I got asked to host a fashion show, featuring my own line of lingerie, at a private party at Club Risqué.”
His eyes widened. “That’s huge, sis!”
Brett lifted his mug to her and she clinked it with her glass. He really was a great brother. Always there for her.
He stared at her a moment, eyebrows slowly drawing down into a frown.
“What?”
“Why don’t you want the family to know? This would be the perfect thing to get them to lay off and let you go for it.”
“The theme for the show is Fetish and Fantasy. Not exactly the type of show I think Mom and Dad would enjoy.”
“No shit.”
She stirred the ice in her glass with the straw, watching him from under her lashes. “Do you think they’d freak?”
“I think they wouldn’t understand.” He sat back to let the waitress refill his coffee, but he didn’t even look at her, so she walked away when she was done. “Mom and Dad, and even Cherish, they’re not bad people . . .”
“I know that.” She did. She knew her family loved her; they just didn’t understand anything, or anyone who didn’t want the same things they wanted.
Ding, ding, ding.
Brett knew what she knew. That their family wasn’t as perfect as everyone liked to believe, and that some things, some dreams, some
desires
, were better kept to oneself.
He wasn’t lying about who he was or pretending to be someone he wasn’t. He was just keeping his own business to himself. She could understand that. She didn’t want to tell the whole world she was working her way through an imaginary list of fantasies with an older man she barely knew.
A weight lifted from her shoulders and she relaxed back in her seat. Brett was barely twenty-six years old. Old enough to make his own choices and be his own person. She could respect that.
“Are they still harping on your hockey?” she asked with a wry smile.
“Yeah. Dad keeps trying to set me up on interviews. The I’m-not-done-with-school-yet argument is only going to work for another few months.”