Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1
RUBY
A few months later
“ H appy New Year!”
Cheers went up all around the club, nearly deafening in their volume. Loud enough, in fact, to drown out the sound of the cannons firing. Not actual cannons, of course.
Glitter cannons.
“ Charlotte Ann Duvall!”
A moment after Braden’s thunderous voice rose above the din, Lottie hurried up to the bar on her usual ankle-breaker heels. But instead of the mischievous smile Ruby was used to seeing on her co-worker’s face, now she wore a look of pure panic as she stopped to scan her surroundings. Looking for a place to hide, if Ruby had to guess.
She had to admit, Lottie made quite a picture. With her dark hair pinned up in an elaborate updo, her body wrapped in a curve-hugging dress of shimmering gold, and glitter falling around her like snow while the rest of the club devolved into chaos, she looked like some pagan goddess of mischief come to Earth just to fuck with the mortals.
Which was an apt description, from what Ruby had observed over the past few months of working at Club BDE.
Lottie’s wide, horrified eyes met Ruby’s from across the bar. “It’s so much glitter,” she whispered. “I didn’t think it would be so much glitter. Help.”
These days, Ruby Matthews considered herself a top-tier brat. But there were some Dominants even she wasn’t willing to cross.
And Braden Elliott was at the top of her list.
Even so, the Brat Code demanded she help a fellow brat in their time of need, so she waved, beckoning Lottie behind the bar. “You can hide under here, at least until he cools down a bit.”
Gratitude flashed in Lottie’s eyes as she hurried around the sleek wooden bar top. “You’re a lifesaver.” Dropping to her knees, she squeezed herself into an empty corner. Between the pour station, the ice bin, and everything else Ruby and the other bartenders needed for their jobs, there wasn’t a ton of room, and if Braden bothered to actually look there was no doubt he’d see her.
Hopefully for both of them, he wouldn’t look very hard.
Lottie got herself hidden just in time, because the man himself stormed up to the bar less than a minute after she’d curled up in her hidey-hole. He had his brothers with him, identical silver foxes, one of whom looked even madder than Braden while the other was obviously trying very, very hard not to burst out laughing. All three of them were covered in rainbow-colored glitter, and it took everything Ruby had to keep her own laughter in check at the sight of them.
“Ruby.” Braden brushed at a pile of glitter on his shoulder before locking eyes with a suddenly very nervous Ruby. “Have you seen Charlotte?”
Oh, man. Daddy B was big mad. “Um, she ran past here just a few seconds ago, Sir. She went that way.” Running through the options in her head, Ruby pointed toward the other side of the top floor, where the private rooms were housed.
“Thank you, Ruby.”
Turning on his heel, Braden strode away, with the two silver foxes trailing after him and Ruby sagged against the bar in relief.
“Where’d you send them?” Lottie whispered from her spot on the floor.
“To the private rooms. It won’t take them long to check, especially if they’re all booked, so if you’re going to make a move, you better do it now.”
“Thanks.” Pulling herself up, Lottie brushed at her dress and flashed a bright smile. “I’m going to go hide in Daddy’s office and pretend I have no idea what’s going on. Wish me luck!”
She hurried off too quickly for Ruby to point out that she had about five pounds of glitter in her hair, ruining her chances at plausible deniability. For her sake, hopefully Braden would have cooled off by the time he thought to check his office. But that was Lottie’s problem. Ruby had done her part by her fellow brat, so whatever happened next was out of her hands.
“That was very naughty, Ruby Red.”
A familiar, amused voice pulled her attention away from Lottie’s retreating form to the man leaning against the bar, watching her with a smirk on his ridiculously handsome face.
Nobody, and she meant nobody had a right to look as drop-dead gorgeous as Beckett Stone managed to on a regular night. And certainly no man had any right to retain that sexy-with-a-hint-of-dangerous aura Beckett had when that man was covered in sparkly, shimmering multicolored glitter.
Doing her best to ignore the sudden throbbing need between her thighs, Ruby greeted his smirk with one of her own. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
One dark eyebrow raised in a look that never failed to make Ruby’s knees weak. “Now you’re lying to me, too.” Letting out a heavy sigh, Beckett shook his head as he slid onto the seat directly in front of her. “Those tallies are adding up, naughty girl.”
For months, they’d been dancing around each other. Flirting and teasing, with her playing the brat and him hinting that someday, maybe in the near future, he’d take her to task for it.
So far, he hadn’t done more than shake his head and give her those butterfly-inspiring looks, much to her disappointment. From what she’d heard, Beckett Stone’s prowess with a flogger and other implements more than lived up to his smoldering good looks.
Tonight, however, she was feeling bolder than usual. Folding her arms on the gleaming wood of the bar, she leaned in. The move had their faces—and their lips—closer than ever and she could barely think with the adrenaline pumping through her veins. “You know, they say you should start the year off with a clean slate. What do you say, Master Beckett? Want to clear my tallies?”
He smelled… spicy, she decided. She’d never gotten close enough to actually smell him before, but whatever cologne he wore was weaving itself around her senses, teasing her with promises of things he’d been holding out of her reach for weeks now.
The few other times she’d thrown out a casual suggestion of a scene together, he’d shut down immediately. She should have given up on him long ago, but there was just something about him. There was the dominance he wore as well as the expensive designer suits he favored, but it was more than that. Beckett Stone was a challenge, and she’d never been able to resist a challenge. Especially where a hot, bossy man was concerned.
Tonight, however, Beckett didn’t pull away like he usually did. His head tilted slightly to the side and his gaze, unnervingly steady, stayed locked on hers. “Would you like that, Ruby Red? Would you like me to hurt you, so you can start your year with a clear conscience?”
She didn’t actually feel guilty about any of the ‘naughty’ things he’d supposedly been keeping tallies of. Not even about lying to Braden. But did she want him to hurt her?
Oh, hell yes.
Heart pounding, mouth drier than the Sahara, she gave him a raised eyebrow of her own. “If I say yes, are you just going to run off like you usually do when the topic of us doing a scene together comes up?”
Some Doms would be put off by such a forward question. But Beckett didn’t so much as flinch. “No. No, I don’t think I will, Ruby Red.”
Well… shit. That changed the game a bit. Normally, their dance ended with her casually daring him to follow through on some threat he’d made and him flashing her a charming smile as he turned her down. She hadn’t actually expected him to agree to a scene.
Now that he had, though, she couldn’t be the one to back down. Her pride was on the line here, just as much as her ass. So even though her heart felt like it might very well pound right out of her chest, she nodded. “Then yes, Sir, I would very much like for you to hurt me.”
“How badly do you want it?”
Fuck, if he kept talking to her like that, in that low, almost growly tone, she was going to need a mop for the puddle she was leaving on the floor. “Sir?”
“Convince me, Ruby Red. Make me believe you want me to clear your slate for you.”
A dozen scenarios ran through her head, most of which consisted of her on her knees, doing some very enthusiastic convincing . “What did you have in mind, Sir?”
“Come clean to Braden about helping Lottie hide and lying to him, and let him know I have your punishment well in hand.”
He could have requested she strip naked and do the hula in the middle of downtown Charleston and she wouldn’t have blinked. But tattling on herself to Braden?
Hard pass.
“Counteroffer. I don’t do that and you just beat me extra hard for not following directions.”
The shift in him was so subtle, she would have missed it completely if her entire being hadn’t been focused exclusively on him. But because she was watching him so closely, she saw the way his jaw hardened, the way his brown eyes darkened in response to her offer. “I don’t negotiate with brats, Ruby Red. Do you work tomorrow?”
“No. Well, not here, anyway. I am working tomorrow during the day but I have tomorrow evening off.” She was babbling, and she knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
Luckily, it didn’t seem to faze the man across the bar. “Good. You have twenty-four hours to make your decision. If you decide to come clean with Braden, I’ll be waiting.”
“And if I don’t? Are you going to tattle on me?”
“No. If you don’t tell him, you’ll just have to live with that little pit in your stomach. The one all subbies get when they know they’ve done something naughty and deserve to be punished for it.” Straightening, he tapped the bar, his expression still hard as steel. “Twenty-four hours, Ruby Red, and then the deal expires.”
Scowling, she watched him saunter away as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb right on her head.
She did not have a pit in her stomach over lying to Braden. She did not .
Unfortunately for her, she was much better at fibbing to Doms than she was at lying to herself.
Dammit.
Beckett
“You’re looking rather pleased with yourself.” Elias ‘Ice’ Turner, the man Beckett considered his closest friend, raised an eyebrow as Beckett slid back onto the bench at the VIP booth they’d reserved for the night.
“Do I?” Leaning back against the padded bench, Beckett shrugged. “Maybe I am.”
From her spot curled up under Ice’s arm, his girlfriend Silver grinned. “What’s her name?”
“Why does it have to be a woman?”
“You only get that look in your eye when you’re about to get lucky in business or in your pants. And since it seems unlikely you landed a major client on your trip to the bar, I have to assume it’s your dick that’s getting lucky.”
“Your Daddy doesn’t spank you nearly often enough,” Beckett muttered, more for form than anything else. It was difficult to be annoyed by her observation since she was right, the little brat.
Bottom lip puffing out in a pout, Silver reached behind her to rub at her ass. “Trust me, he does.”
“Uh-oh. Did someone get herself in trouble tonight?” he teased, hoping to distract her from giving him the third degree about who he was ‘getting lucky’ with.
“She did.” To Beckett’s surprise, Ice’s voice held none of the playful warmth he’d been expecting. “Apparently, Ace has been texting her since before Christmas and Silver didn’t seem to think that was information her Daddy needed to know.”
Fear, primal and more familiar than he was comfortable with, gripped Beckett by the throat. The kind of fear that came from knowing someone he cared a great deal for had put themselves in danger, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Ace was not only Silver’s ex-boyfriend, he was the man who had put her in the hospital and nearly ruined her career as a professional drummer. His was one of the faces Beckett saw in the nightmares that had become more and more frequent over the past few months. Along with a dozen other images he thought he’d buried long ago.
Pinning Silver with a stern look, Beckett slowly raised a brow. “Is that so?”
Red bloomed on Silver’s face as she shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable with all the attention being directed her way. “Don’t say it like that, Beckett.” Her voice pitched up to a whine. “I already got my ass blistered for it.”
“Good.” He didn’t gentle his tone in the slightest. “You don’t need to have any contact with that piece of human excrement. I swear I’m tempted to take you down to the pit myself.”
‘The pit’ being the main play area of the club. It was a wide-open space on the bottom floor, with all of the podiums perfectly situated so that the voyeurs in the bar-slash-restaurant area of the top floor could sit and watch the entertainment.
“If it happens again, I’ll give you a call,” Ice said, his tone still hard. “But it’s not going to happen again, is it, Amanda?”
“No, Daddy. I’m really, really sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
Everything about Ice softened at her apology. “I know, baby. You don’t have to apologize again. Clean slate and all that.”
Clean slate . Just like he’d promised Ruby. He wasn’t even sure what had possessed him. For weeks, he’d been avoiding a scene with her, even though she’d made it abundantly clear she would enjoy one.
But she’d been an itch under his skin that entire time. And maybe it was the excitement of New Year’s Eve, maybe it was the way she’d looked at him when he’d playfully scolded her. Whatever it was, something had prompted him to do more than just tease her tonight.
Twenty-four hours. She had twenty-four hours to either come clean with Braden and accept the consequences. Or not.
And Beckett wasn’t entirely sure which option he was hoping she’d choose.