Chapter One #5
She wasn’t interested in listening to platitudes.
They both knew she was an exceptional Domme, popular with the guests, and an integral part of the club’s inner system.
She’d become mother hen to a lot of the younger staff, a guardian to some of the single, quieter submissives, but in the end, she was replaceable.
Wasn’t that how it always ended for her?
Something better, younger, more experienced came along and erased her from memory.
As she descended the stairs, Violet flipped Eli the bird through the banister railings.
She was already toying with the idea of just packing up her things and disappearing into the night.
There was something restless brewing inside her, and it wasn’t telling her to return to Louisiana—not that she would go home.
No, she’d found the courage to abandon her old life; she was not going to return to it with her head bowed and pride in shambles. Onwards and upwards was the saying—if she left Serenity, she would move forward, not backward.
There were a great many cities in the country, a lot of opportunities. Hell, maybe she could stop off in Phoenix for a few weeks and visit Avalon—the Masters and their families there seemed like good people.
It wasn’t like she needed to work, at least not for a while. Her savings would keep her afloat for several months if she stretched them to meet her needs. If she sold her car and utilized public transport, she could travel for at least a year on trains and buses until she found where she belonged.
Violet stopped at the bottom of the steps, her chin lifting as a scent caught her attention. Equal tugs of delight and dread knotted together in her stomach as she inhaled deeply.
Spice. Tobacco. The warm, sweet, slightly woodsy accent…
Creed Centaurus.
It couldn’t be possible, yet she could smell a lingering trace of it on the air. Every single memory she had of him was tied to that fragrance. She’d spent hours with her head on his shoulder, her face pressed into the hollow of his neck and collarbone, breathing him in.
It was fucking synonymous with him.
There was no goddamn way he could have found her here, not after the effort she’d made to ensure no one from Louisiana knew where she was for that exact reason.
Blood still boiling despite the chill worming through her veins, Violet stomped over to the bar doors and wrenched them open, poking her head through to study the patrons but finding no one resembling her ex-Dom.
Ignoring Liam’s curious frown, she retreated and gave the dining room the same suspicious treatment, scouring her gaze over the diners.
When no one hit her radar, she relaxed a little, and strode back to the reception desk.
“Good afternoon, Mistress V.”
Not Jennifer today, but Abigail. A perky little blonde barely over the legal limit, she’d been homeless until Callie spotted her on a shopping trip to the city and convinced Evander to offer the girl a job, a home, friends.
Being a massive softie unable to say no to his wife, Evander had brought Abigail into the fold, with the caveat that she didn’t step into any of the play areas for at least a year.
“Hey, Abigail. Can you run a client record for me, please?”
“Of course. What name?”
“Fontenot.” A shiver of anticipation clawed down her spine as she said the name she’d vowed never to utter again in her lifetime. “Boudreaux Fontenot.”
“One sec… Fontenot, Fontenot… I’m sorry, Mistress, we don’t have a record of any Fontenot in the database.”
Violet drummed her fingernails on the desk agitatedly.
Maybe she was just imagining things—that scent was uncommon, but it didn’t mean her ex was the only one who wore it.
“Have you seen a guest around here, around six-three, broad shoulders, wide hips? He dresses sharply, business attire.” Smells like sin. “Short black hair, blue-green eyes?”
Abigail stared at her, mouth open. “No, ma’am. Is he available?”
For an appointment with the devil, sure.
The surge of paranoia ebbed, leaving her cold and empty. Stupid, stupid, how she reacted to even the notion of him after all this time. He’d been her first and only love, but his true colors had hollowed her out completely. “No, sweetheart. You wouldn’t want him to be.”
“He sounds dreamy.”
Violet’s jaw tightened. Oh, he was, in the beginning. Smooth, sophisticated, attentive. He’d made falling for him easier than breathing, luring her in with beautiful words crooned in that alluring accent—Louisiana French—designed to wind into a woman’s nervous system and take control.
“Forget I said anything, Abigail.”
“Okay… Would you like me to let you know if anyone matching that description arrives?”
What was the point? Obviously, one sniff of that scent was enough to freak her out; she couldn’t spend the next month looking over her shoulder until she convinced herself the boogey Dom was far, far away, ruling over his kingdom as though she’d never existed.
“Thank you, but it’s fine.” She shook her head, turning away, only to stare at the girl when she cleared her throat. “Yes?”
“Don’t forget you have a session in the Dungeon at three,” Abigail said quietly, using her pen to point at the clock on the wall. “I know you like to prep for a scene, Mistress, and you’re cutting it close.”
Goddamn it, so she was. Twenty minutes wasn’t nearly enough time to adequately prepare herself and the area. “Who booked the session?”
“That would be James W., Mistress.”
It took her a second to sort through the numerous James’ in her mental files. While clients were encouraged to use pseudonyms when playing, many preferred to keep their own name—which was fine, unless there was an inordinate number of one particular name on her roster.
However, James W. was easy enough to please if she remembered correctly. She hadn’t seen him in a couple months, but he was some kind of fancy travel blogger, spending weeks at a time abroad gathering new tidbits of information for his greedy online fans.
Little did they know, he also spent a lot of his free time with his cock wrapped up neatly in various forms of predicament bondage, reveled in exhibitionism, and was happiest with a toy up his ass—Domme’s choice, of course.
Simple pleasures.
Heaving a sigh, Violet glanced down at her dress. It was meeting attire, not work, yet it would have to do… with a few alterations. Plucking a pair of scissors from the catch-all jar beside the keyboard, she pinched the material mid-thigh and snipped without mercy.
Abigail’s gasp would have been funny if not for Violet’s dour mood.
Fabric ripped when she pulled, shortening the dress by a hefty six inches.
There was no longer a hem, and it was no longer even as the material came away at an angle, leaving the back of the dress slightly longer.
The sleeves were next, cut at the shoulder seams and ruthless yanked down to leave her arms bare.
Her cleavage was ample enough to titillate, she supposed, and refrained from widening the dip between her breasts.
Sliding the scissors back into the jar, Violet handed the scraps of material to Abigail. “Dispose of those, please.”
“Yes, ma’am. Can I be like you one day?”
“If it’s who you’re meant to be.” God help the girl if it was, Violet thought. If the powers that be were kind, Abigail would become a lesbian and avoid all the misery and drama that came with asshole men. “If Elias asks where I am, tell him I’m unavailable.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
Mood still circling the drain, Violet strode out, trying to shove the altercation with the sadist from her mind and concoct a scene worthy of a loyal guest. Simple was better with James W.—submission and pain were his main objectives, which meant she wouldn’t have to deal with inane chatter.
Relocating and taking an extended vacation was sadly becoming more appealing.
Boudreaux
It was risky, following Violet to the Dungeon.
Still, over the past couple of days since his arrival, he’d taken greater ones, and almost been caught out. More than once, their paths nearly crossed prematurely due to his need to simply see her.
Unfortunately, it was blatantly obvious how unhappy his beignet was here—whether her unhappiness was new or an ongoing problem, he didn’t know, but right now, she was as miserable as he’d ever seen her.
A few things were different, however; the old Violet wouldn’t have been as quick-tempered, using her voice to vocalize her displeasure—she had often disguised her anger in silence, burying it where she couldn’t hurt anyone with a curt tone or harsh words.
Somewhere during his absence in her life, she’d matured enough not to care about such trivialities, or perhaps the emotions trapped inside her were too strong to contain.
Reaux wondered when she’d last gotten laid—his beignet needed regular release to keep her emotional balance in check. Of course, he was tempted to hunt down and snap the neck of any man who possessed intimate knowledge of her body—she was his, after all, and only his.
Did she think of him when she was beneath another man, coming on an interloper’s cock? Were the soft whimpers and moans, the throaty cries he adored, offered to someone else?
The thought was infuriating.
If his beignet wanted another cock inside her, he might consider it; he wasn’t an unreasonable man, and sharing a willing woman wasn’t unheard of in their circles.
There would be stipulations, of course, and she might get more than she bargained for—sex for him was an opportunity to explore what the human body was capable of achieving through trust, connection, imagination, even coercion.
It seemed some of his darker traits were inherent in Violet, too.