Chapter 13
Frankie
“ O h my god! Frankie! ”
Lottie’s excited squeal cut over the din of conversation and laughter in the upstairs restaurant area of Club BDE, reaching Frankie a moment before a blur of silver and white crashed into her.
Stumbling back, she bumped into the solid wall of Holden’s chest, which vibrated with laughter as he steadied her with his hand.
“Careful, Lottie-bug,” Braden, Lottie’s next-door-neighbor-turned-Daddy scolded gently. “You nearly knocked them both down the stairs.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Pulling away, Lottie wiped at the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m just, I’ve been so worried and I-I just missed you so much.”
Emotion lodged in Frankie’s throat. “I missed you too, Lottie-baby.”
“Okay.” Dragging in a deep breath, Lottie fanned her face to dry her tears. “We’ve got a table with all the subbie girls and everyone’s waiting for you. Come on.”
“Charlotte.” Her name was part sigh, part warning as Braden raised a dark brow. “Perhaps you should check with Frankie’s Daddy and see if he has any plans before you drag her off for the evening?”
Wrinkling her nose for a moment before widening her eyes in the most adorably hilarious pleading look Frankie had ever seen, Lottie turned to Holden. “Can Frankie please come sit with us for a while, Master Holden?”
From the corner of her eye, she saw his lips twitch before he nodded. “If that’s what Frankie would like, then of course.”
Rising up on her tiptoes, Frankie pressed a kiss to his scruff-covered cheek. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“You’re welcome, little siren.” A wolfish grin spread across his face as he lowered his head to whisper in her ear. “I’ve reserved a room for us at ten. You may have one drink, and you will eat a full meal with at least one of your forbidden foods. Am I understood, Francesca?”
That low growl seemed to be connected straight to her pussy, which clenched in immediate response. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Good girl. Go have fun with your friends.”
Without giving Frankie a chance for another kiss, Lottie grabbed her hand and dragged her away toward a large circular booth in the corner where their friends were all waiting. Well, with the exception of Cordelia, though Ivy was there, along with Ruby and Silver.
All three greeted Frankie with squeals of excitement at only a slightly lower decibel than Lottie, and some of Frankie’s nerves eased as she slid into the booth with them.
“Hey ladies. Where’s Delia?” she asked, craning her neck to look around the room in search of Ivy’s girlfriend and Domme.
Ivy rolled her eyes and gestured to a table off to the left of theirs where Holden was just taking a seat. “Apparently she’s more interested in hanging out with the other Doms than with the girls tonight.”
“Weird.” In all the time she’d been friends with the Club BDE crew, she’d never known Cordelia to pass up a chance to sit with Ivy.
“She wants to give Holden the third degree.” A sly smile tugged at Ruby’s lips as she sipped a glass of wine the same color as her name. “I overheard her and Beckett talking before we left for the club.”
Frankie frowned, her gaze locked on the other table. “The third degree about what?”
“You,” Ruby said with a shrug. “And the fact that you’re basically living with him now. Which, to be fair, is what all of us want to know, too. She’s just getting it from a different source.”
Apparently there would be no beating around the bush tonight.
Picking up the wine Lottie nudged toward her, Frankie eyed it for a moment, mentally calculating the calories. Deciding she needed the courage more than she cared about the calories, she swallowed a large gulp of the dry liquid. “All right. Cards on the table.” Dragging in a deep, bracing breath, she lifted her gaze, meeting each set of curious eyes as she scanned the table. “When I was in high school, I developed an eating disorder. It was really bad and I ended up in rehab. Got better, figured that was the end of the story, but it wasn’t. Turns out, med school was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it was going to be and I flamed out pretty spectacularly. All of that stress, and feeling like everything was out of control, triggered me really hard and I relapsed. Bad enough to put me in the hospital.”
“Oh, Frankie.” Tears glistening in her eyes, Ivy reached across the table to grip Frankie’s arm. “I’m so sorry. Are you better now?”
“A lot, thanks to Holden. And since I’ve already done the recovery bit once, I know what to do this time around. It’s been a rough few weeks, but I’m feeling a lot stronger than I was.”
“What can we do to support you?” Silver, her dark eyes filled with concern, watched her from the far end of the table. “Are there things we shouldn’t say or do around you?”
Frankie sipped her wine again, mostly to give her suddenly overwhelming emotions time to settle. “Not really. I don’t want anyone to change their behaviors or feel like they’re walking on eggshells around me. Accountability helps, but I have Holden for that.”
“And me.” Eyes blazing with stubborn righteousness, Lottie linked her fingers with Frankie’s. “You always have me.”
“I know.” And just like with Holden, she knew damn well it was more than she deserved. “But you’re supposed to be planning a wedding, not babysitting me. Speaking of, do we have a date to go look at dresses yet?”
It was a ploy, and judging by the way Lottie’s eyes narrowed, she knew it was one. But she went along with it, easily changing the subject to her upcoming Christmas nuptials.
“There’s a little boutique downtown that works with a few of the designers I like. I was going to make an appointment for next weekend, but I wanted to be sure you’d all be available.”
Ruby’s face fell. “I have to work at the coffee shop and also here all weekend since Tara is on vacation. But y’all should go ahead without me.”
“Absolutely not. I'm not going without all my girls.” Pulling out her phone, Lottie scanned her calendar. “What about the following weekend?”
It took nearly twenty minutes and several calendar checks, with Ivy juggling both hers and Cordelia’s schedules, before they finally decided on a date. Face lit with excitement, Lottie tapped out an email to the boutique and bounced excitedly in her seat. “Oh my god. We’re going wedding dress shopping!”
Just as Frankie joined in, cheering and lifting her half-empty glass to clink with the others, a wave of pleasure coursed through her and she froze, heat rising to her cheeks as the vibrations in her panties increased.
“Frankie?” Worry colored Ivy’s tone and filled her eyes. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” But even to her own ears her voice sounded strangled.
“Doesn’t sound like nothing,” Ruby said, her lips dipping down into a frown.
Looking over, Frankie’s gaze latched onto the Dom table, where Holden leaned back in his chair, looking just as calm and relaxed as could be while he chatted with his friends. Without even looking in her direction, the hand hanging by his side moved and the next wave of vibrations came even faster, harder than before, making Frankie gasp audibly.
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” she muttered, swallowing another large gulp of wine.
“Who?” Lottie’s voice pitched up, worry turning the words shrill. “What’s going on?”
“Holden. He made me put on these panties and they have a vibrator in them and he just turned it on, the sick son of a bitch.”
Silence descended on the table, but only for a moment before Silver smirked. “So, what are we going to do to get him back?”
For a moment, the excitement of payback rushed through Frankie’s veins. Until she remembered what he’d said he would do if she took the panties off. Assuming he wouldn’t hesitate to come up with something just as devious if she tried to get some kind of revenge on him, she sighed and shifted in her seat hoping it would ease some of the tortuous pleasure he was forcing on her. “Can’t. At least, not tonight. I’m trying to be a good girl.”
“Pity,” Silver said with a sigh of her own. “I’m in a mood to make some trouble.”
“Well, whenever you decide to get payback, I wouldn’t suggest retaliating in kind.” Pink blossomed on Ruby’s cheeks. “I tried that with Beckett after he made me edge myself in the bathroom and it ended with us parked on the side of the road while he fucked my face in the front seat of his car.”
“Wait.” Holding up her hands, Lottie stared at the newest member of their group. “He made you edge yourself in the bathroom? Here?”
“Ah, no.” The color in Ruby’s cheeks darkened. “At a restaurant a couple towns over. I had to bring myself right to the edge five times in a row. And I had to record it for him.”
They all stared at her in shocked silence for a moment before Silver let out a disbelieving laugh. “Holy crap and I thought Ice was devious. Maybe I should be more concerned about them being friends.”
As her friends discussed their Daddies and their deviously creative minds, Frankie clenched her teeth together, desperately doing everything she could to avoid coming right there at the table with all her friends.
Finally, just when it felt like she couldn’t hold back any longer, the vibrations eased, and she let out an easy breath. Looking over at the other table, she glared at Holden, who had turned to watch her, a smug, satisfied smile on his face.
Oh, yeah. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, she was definitely getting her revenge.
Right after she got her orgasm.
Holden
“Why does Frankie look like she’s about to murder you?”
Cordelia’s question, asked in that slow, almost-bored-sounding drawl of hers, pulled his attention away from his furious babygirl and back to the conversation at hand.
Grinning, he held up the remote. “She’s been a brat all day, so I thought she could use a reminder as to who is in charge in our relationship.”
Across the table, Cordelia raised a brow. He had no doubt that look could have any little subbie quaking in their boots, especially since he had to fight the urge to shift in his seat and he was as far from submissive as they came. “Oh? And you think that’s you?”
Annoyance ran up his spine, prickly as the Wartenberg wheel he had stashed in his play bag. On either side of him, Beckett and Braden sat up straighter in their chairs, and Ice’s eyes widened slightly as he shifted his gaze from Cordelia to Holden and back again. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. Just that from where I’m sitting, it looks a bit like your ‘little siren’ has you by the balls. She led you on a merry chase for months, teasing you and shoving her wannabe suitors in your face. And the second she calls you crying, you drop everything to move her into your house.”
“She needed me. What the hell was I supposed to do?”
“And that’s just my point.” Leaning in, Cordelia jabbed a finger in his direction, her blonde hair swaying with the movement. “She needed you. If she hadn’t ended up in the hospital, she’d still be playing hard to get and you’d still be chasing after her like a lovesick puppy.”
“I don’t give a fuck how she ended up in my bed. All that matters is she’s where she belongs.”
“But for how long?” Beckett raised his hands in mock surrender when Holden turned to glare at him. “Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just asking a question. Yeah, she needed you and I don’t blame you for stepping up. God knows I would have done the same thing in your shoes. But what happens when she’s better? Have you guys talked about that?”
They hadn’t, because he hadn’t wanted to think about a future without her in it. “She’s been sick,” he said, dodging the question.
A move that did not go unnoticed, judging by the look his friends all shared.
When Cordelia spoke again, her tone was significantly more gentle. “Look, Holden. I don’t want to fuck things up with you and Frankie. But… I think you know, deep down, I’m right.”
“Yeah? What makes you think that?”
“Because if you really thought you had a future with her, she’d be wearing your collar right now. The Holden I know never would have let his babygirl, his real, true, forever babygirl, anywhere near this club without the proof of his ownership around her neck.”
Shock had him going still as he processed her words. Because she had a fucking point, and he knew it. The first time around, he’d put his collar on Frankie before ever letting her step foot in the pit. He’d wanted it very clear to anyone who so much as glanced at her, that she belonged to him .
Why hadn’t he done that tonight? Why hadn’t he even thought to put his collar on her before they’d left the house?
Was it because, as Cordelia said, he knew deep down that this situation with her was only temporary? “Fuck.”
“Sorry.” Cordelia’s expression turned sympathetic. “I know I’m being a bitch, but you’ve always been the kind of guy who responds better to straightforwardness. And I consider you a good friend, Holden. Someone I care about too much to watch you neglect your own needs for a woman who may or may not break your heart again.”
“Don’t apologize. I needed to hear it.” And really, wasn’t she only asking the same questions he’d asked himself back at the hospital? Questions he’d pushed out of his mind because his babygirl had needed him?
Running a hand through his hair, Holden blew out a breath. “Problem is, now that I’ve heard it, I don’t know what the fuck to do about it.”