Chapter 6
Gideon
I ’m sitting in my office in the Fairfax building, in downtown Manhattan, with Lucas sitting in the chair on the other side of my desk.
My son wanted to talk and so here he is, in my office, talking.
And fuck, it’s all the kids want to do these days, endless talking about their lives and processing of their feelings, and I don’t have the patience for it.
But he’s my son and I haven’t been there in the past for him, so here I am, listening.
Or rather, I’m pretending to listen, because my brain won’t stop thinking about something else.
It’s been three days since Odette stormed out of my hotel room, which usually means out of sight, out of mind, but she is not out of my mind. She’s been occupying it ever since that night and it’s getting really fucking annoying.
I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking about that night.
Can’t stop thinking of her, on her knees, her fingers stroking her exceptionally pretty and very wet pussy.
The flush in her cheeks, the darkness of her silvery eyes, the redness of her mouth.
The intense fight she had with herself about obeying my commands and how she didn’t want to do it.
The tears rolling down her cheeks, the battle she had with not wanting to trust me, and yet wanting to at the same time.
The war a sub has between her fears and her desires is such a fucking aphrodisiac to me, and I can’t say I wasn’t…
unaffected. In fact, that was the reason I had to get her out of there, because I was affected and I didn’t like it.
Getting hard is one thing, that’s easily solved, but the Dominant in me was hungry for her in a way that went beyond simple release.
I was surprised by her strength, and wanted to explore it.
Test it. Show her how that strength could give her the most intense pleasure.
And I wanted to find out what else was surprising about her, which was dangerous.
But you’re bored. You like surprises.
Yes, both of those things are true. Except I don’t want to get interested in a sub, especially not after a scene is over.
What happens in the playroom stays in the fucking playroom, and there’s no thinking about it later.
At least, I never have before and so I can’t fathom why the fuck I’m doing it now.
“So,” Lucas says, leaning back in his chair and putting one foot on the opposite knee. “What would you say to me dropping out of Yale?”
I force my attention away from Odette and bring it back to my son.
He’s a cocky little prick, but then I was the same when I was his age.
Young, rich, good-looking, with the world mine for the taking.
To be fair though, I was never rich. I had nothing but ambition and a steely desire to prove my asshole parents wrong, and it’s that which got me where I am today.
I stare at him from the other side of my desk. He’s studying economics with a view to taking over the business from me eventually, but being a college dropout does not feature in that plan.
I don’t react, though. I simply keep staring at him. “Why?”
“The truth?” He stares back at me with the same intensity, which naturally he got from me. “I’m bored. I need to get out of here, out of the country, and go and be in a different place for a while.”
He’s also inherited my stubbornness and while he’s never been without ambition, this was not what I was expecting.
“Lucas,” I begin.
“I’m going to put my studies on hold,” he says before I can go on. “But I need some time out.”
I raise a brow. “Are you asking for my permission?”
“No.” He lifts his chin, already being defiant, because he knows the answer to that. “This is purely for information’s sake.”
I have to hand it to him. Once he’s decided something, he does it, no fucking around.
I wonder if this has something to do with the fallout of his mother’s death and not for the first time, I regret not being there for him.
Maintaining a good relationship with someone is like putting money in the bank.
There’s a certain level of funds there, so that when withdrawals occur, you have enough money left to keep the account open.
But I don’t have enough money in the bank with Lucas and we both know it.
“It’s not what we agreed when you said you wanted to go to Yale,” I say. “You wanted to finish your degree before you did anything else.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says, still defiant. “But I changed my mind.”
He does not elaborate, but something makes me ask, “And Odette? What about her? Is she going with you?
His gaze flickers and he looks away. Every muscle in my body tenses.
She can’t have told him what happened between her and me, because I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t currently be sitting here talking to me if she had.
But who knows? She was very angry when I kicked her out, and she had every right to be.
I wouldn’t have done things differently, though.
Fifteen minutes was enough to tell me that despite the unexpected glimpse of steel in her, she still wouldn’t be able to handle anything more.
Not considering how she was crying after five.
“That’s not a thing anymore,” Lucas says, picking at the fabric on the arm of his chair. “It’s over.”
I’m sure that’s not satisfaction rising in me. It can’t be, because why? I told her to go and find herself another Master, that I wasn’t available, end of story. I’m certainly not chasing her now she’s not with my son. I’m not that fucking desperate.
“Oh?” I ask, making sure to mask the curiosity in my voice. “Did you finally let her off the hook?”
“No.” Lucas jerks at the threads on the chair arm. “She…dumped me.”
I blink, aware of deep surprise. She told me that night that she wanted to explore her sexuality for Lucas’s sake, so what made her change her mind? Was it me? Was it what we did?
“What happened?” This time I can’t quite disguise the note of demand in my voice.
But Lucas doesn’t pick up on it — thank God for the self-centeredness of young people.
“Oh, she said it wasn’t working between us and that she thought it was better if we had some time apart.
” He finally looks up from the chair arm.
“It’s fine. We were kind of over each other anyway.
She’s clingy and super anxious, and I know that’s because of the attack, but?—”
“What attack?” I interrupt sharply as everything draws tight inside me.
Luc sighs. “Oh, it was a year ago. She was jumped by some asshole outside a bar and got hurt. She dropped out of college because of it.”
I struggle to keep my expression neutral as a flare of instinctive and protective anger licks up inside me.
Generalized anger at cowards who think hurting women makes them feel powerful is one thing, but this sharp needle of fury is quite another.
It feels almost personal, though there is no reason for it to be.
Apart from that one hour in my hotel room, I haven’t spoken more than a few words to her and certainly never spent time with her, so I don’t know why I feel this intensely about it.
Lucas is frowning at me and I realize that maybe I haven’t managed to hide my feelings as well as I should. “That’s unfortunate,” I say coolly. “Clearly security needs to do a better job.”
“Yeah, well, she was in a bad way for a while and I didn’t want to make things worse by dumping her in the middle of it.”
“You weren’t doing her a favor,” I can’t help but say. “Persisting with something that doesn’t work only makes things worse in the long run. You should have been up front with her about it, had the difficult conversation. She let you off the hook.”
Lucas stares at me. “Coming from you, that’s rich. You’re the king of avoiding difficult conversations.”
Fuck. Little shit isn’t wrong. Nothing like your children to find your weak points to slide the knife in.
“You want to have it now, then?” I say, because I can’t let that go unchallenged. “I’ve got nothing on my schedule. I’m free all afternoon.”
Lucas snorts and pushes himself from the chair. “Fuck, no. The moment when we could have had that conversation was years ago and you fucking missed it.” He starts towards the doors.
“Luc.” I don’t know why I want him to stop, turn around, and sit down again. Not when I have no idea what to say to him. Nevertheless, I do.
He stops and glances back at me. “Yeah, what?”
But I still have no idea what to say and in the end I say nothing.
“Thought so,” Lucas says, scathingly, and walks out.
Fuck. Another excellent interaction with my son.
I shove my chair back and stalk over to the windows, consumed with the need to move.
I’m pissed at myself. All the years in business gave me an extremely low bullshit threshold and after Gabrielle’s death that threshold only got lower.
I always mean what I say and I never second-guess myself, and the only regrets I have are around Lucas and Gabrielle, so talking to my son should not be so difficult. Yet it is.
As I stare moodily over New York City’s skyline, I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. I pull it out and look down at the screen. It’s a notification from The Club app that I have a new message.
My anger coils and tightens like a snake unable to find a target, and I know that when I’m feeling like this, I need to feed the beast. I need to setup another playdate with a pretty little sub.
Domination is simple when everyone knows the rules and there is no need to think of anything else.
There is only the sub and their obedience.
Their pleasure. Taking control of a sub is a rush I’ve never found anywhere else.
It centers me completely, puts me straight in the moment, and reminds me that control is everything.
Control over one’s body and one’s emotions.
It’s meditative sometimes, too, and when you can reduce a sub to a screaming, crying mess, you know you’ve done your job well.
Fuck, I need this.
I open the app and scroll to my messages.
There are a few from subs looking to find a new Master, but that’s not me, so I ignore those ones.
A couple from subs I’m familiar with, who want a playdate, and yet even as I’m thinking about responding, I’m ambivalent.
I know them already and they know me, and once you’re a known quantity, can there ever be surprises?
I know their boundaries and they know mine and the tension of uncertainty, of trepidation, that can make a scene so fucking hot, is lost.
I scroll past them, dissatisfied, and just then a new message arrives and instantly every muscle in my body tenses.
It’s from Artemis.
What the fuck? I told her she wasn’t ready, that she needed to find someone else, so why the hell is she pushing? I don’t do brats.
My thumb hovers over the message, ready to delete it without even opening it, yet I find myself hitting open instead.
It’s a photo. She’s on her knees, entirely naked.
Her white-blonde hair cascades down around her shoulders, and far from being sleek like I’d imagined from her ponytail, it’s curly.
She’s staring into the camera, her gray eyes steady.
Her skin is pale, the nipples of her small breasts a delicate pink, and she has her hands on her knees, palms up, like an obedient sub should.
Above the photo are the words: I’m ready, Sir.
And all the blood in my body rushes down to my groin, my cock getting hard.
The Dominant in me stirs restlessly, remembering that night and the intensity of her reaction to me.
Her tears and her arousal, our battle of wills.
The surprise and satisfaction I felt when she jerked her panties down and touched herself, even though she didn’t want to.
The silvery glitter of fury in her eyes as I told her to leave…
Yes, she’s ready. She was ready back in that hotel room, and you knew it the moment she put her fingers on her pussy.
I grit my teeth, trying to force the desire down, deny those thoughts. She was crying and didn’t want to do what I told her to, so of course she wasn’t ready.
You’ve pushed other subs to that place before. It’s not about her readiness. It’s about yours.
I scrub a hand across my face, wanting to reject that idea yet not being able to. A weeping, emotional sub isn’t unusual for me, but being affected by one certainly is. That hasn’t happened to me before, and I can’t think why it did with Odette.
Was it only the lure of the forbidden? Her being Lucas’s girlfriend? Or was it something else?
Perhaps you should find out?
It’s impossible, of course. That would mean going back on what I told her, that she should find another Dominant. It also means allowing myself to be manipulated by that pretty photo.
She needs another lesson.
Fuck’s sake. She really does, but I don’t teach new subs and I don’t train them, no matter how badly they want to be taught or trained.
Christ, did she dump Lucas so she could message me? It that why she’s ready? Not that it matters. She was his girlfriend and she’s so much younger than I am, and then there’s the attack that Lucas mentioned…
So many reasons why I should delete her message.
Yet I don’t. I stand by the windows, looking down at the photo, my cock hard while my Dominant side, impatient with my scruples, wants to set up the playdate already.
Are they scruples? Or are they lies?
I don’t want to think about it, because deep down I know the truth.
They are lies. If I’d truly not wanted her, I’d have deleted her message and set up a playdate with one of the other subs.
I wouldn’t be staring down at this photo of a lovely naked woman, thinking how good her tits would look with a pair of jeweled nipple clamps.
It’s wrong, especially considering the attack that Luc told me about.
The very last thing she should want after that is a man being hard with her.
Then again…I was hard with her three nights ago and even though she flinched, she didn’t back out.
There was steel in her. And it’s not unprecedented for some subs to work through violence issues with a Dom.
If that’s what she’s doing, she really needs to be with someone who knows how to assist with that…
Christ, perhaps it’s a lie I’m telling myself to make it okay, but I can’t let it go. There are good Dominants in The Club. They wouldn’t be there if they weren’t good— yet I still don’t like the idea of her going to someone else, someone who might not know what happened to her.
The nagging tightness in my groin is undeniable and I reach down to adjust myself. Fuck’s sake. It’s ridiculous to be hard for a woman who has no idea what she wants or what she’s getting into, and yet I am. So maybe that’s why I make my decision.
One night. One night only. That’s all she needs and that’s certainly all I need.
I hit reply and send her a message.