Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Avery
Thankfully, there hadn’t been much time for Domi and Rae to interrogate her before the show started. She’d barely had time to put in her dinner order before the lights dimmed, the music swelled, and the room had fallen to a hush.
She gave them a quick summary of everything that had happened once they’d left her in Olivia’s office. They hadn’t had time to respond, which was good because she wanted to get her thoughts and emotions in order before she had to answer any of the questions she’d seen bubbling in their eyes.
She wasn’t sure she had answers.
She wasn’t even sure she would enjoy the show, especially since she was hungry at the beginning of it.
When Will and Gina came out—Domi whispered their names to her—she got caught up in everything they were doing.
It was a flogging demonstration, and by the end of it, Will was using a flogger in each hand, moving around Gina in a circle while she hung from her wrists, her body practically shaking with pleasure.
It was beautiful.
It made Avery ache. Not just between her legs but over her whole body. She missed being flogged. Spanked. Dancing on the precipice of pain and pleasure, her body so caught up in the sensation, she could no longer tell which was which. Jealousy was the wrong word for what she felt; it was pure envy.
She wanted that.
Not with Will or a faceless Dom she hadn’t met.
No, she specifically wanted it with Nick.
Who didn’t even know if he was into kink.
God, she was so fucked, and not in the fun way. Though… maybe she could be if Nick actually went through with the class. But what if it turned out he really didn’t like kink? Or he forced himself to do it because he thought it was what she wanted, then he resented her.
Just once in my life, could I choose the easy path?
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Past decisions showed that wasn’t usually how she worked, though. Heck, she’d moved to a new city, miles away from her friends and family, for a job. A decision none of them had understood. Though when it came down to it, none of them had really understood her.
She’d felt more accepted and supported by Domi and Rae in the first few months of their friendship than she had by her friends back home, who she’d known since high school.
While she still loved those friends, they were leading completely different lives from her, and none of them seemed to understand why she hadn’t wanted the same for herself.
Maybe Avery could have been happy getting married young and having babies, but it wasn’t what she’d really wanted then, and now she was glad she’d made that decision.
Instead, she’d gone to culinary school, started working in restaurants, and finally made the move up here to work at Marquis.
Some of her friends back home seemed to take her ambition as a personal affront, as if they thought she was looking down on them for being stay-at-home moms, whereas she felt they started shutting her out when she hadn’t become one.
As the show finished with a bang—literally—Avery squirmed in her seat.
Yup, she wouldn’t have missed out on this for the world.
Olivia had been right—Avery was still kinky.
She missed this. She craved it. In fact, she would have given anything to be in Gina’s position, with Nick working her over and finishing her off.
“Damn.” Domi fanned herself as the lights came up, indicating the end of the show if the empty stage hadn’t already done so. “That was… well, let’s just say, Mitch is getting lucky tonight.”
“Lucky.” Avery wasn’t kidding. Mitch, Domi’s boyfriend and Dom, was an accomplished sadist. The two of them were adorable together outside the kinky stuff as well.
“Hey, maybe you’ll get lucky, too,” Rae said, winking at Avery before scooting her way out of the booth. “You’re supposed to talk to Nick tonight after his shift, right?”
“Right…” Avery hadn’t really thought about getting lucky. They were going to talk about kink and go over the hard limits list Olivia had given him. Did she want to?
Yes.
Was it a good idea?
Ugh. That depended on so many things.
“Scoot,” Domi said, poking Avery in the side. Apparently, she was planning on following Avery out of the booth rather than taking advantage of the open side Rae had vacated. “Let’s go downstairs and get a drink, so we can talk.”
That actually sounded really good. It would be way too hard to concentrate on any conversation up here, where people still occupied several of the booths and were enjoying themselves post-show. The moans and gasps were a little distracting. That’s where she was supposed to meet Nick, anyway.
They could sit in one of the booths downstairs, where the noise of the crowd would help filter out any of their conversation.
Restaurants could be gossipy places, and she didn’t want anyone overhearing what she and the others were saying.
On the other hand… she looked down at her corset as they walked into the lobby.
Dammit. She hadn’t thought it through when she’d agreed to meet Nick at the bar.
“I can’t go down there in this.”
Domi and Rae paused, looked at her, then looked at each other.
All of them were wearing clothes appropriate for the second floor of Marquis, but not so much the first floor.
Well, Domi and Rae could get away with it in the bar.
At another restaurant. Avery might be willing to try but not at her restaurant.
They’d done a good job of hiding her as they came in. She wasn’t about to sit in the middle of the dining room.
“Oh right… shit.” The look on Rae’s face was hilarious. “I can’t believe I’ve gotten so used to dressing like this, I sometimes forget it’s not the norm.”
“You all look gorgeous,” Freddy said from his place behind the host desk, sounding amused. Avery jumped. She’d forgotten he was there. “Olivia has some wrap dresses in her office in various sizes if you’d like to change. I’m sure she’d be happy to lend them to you.”
Domi and Rae looked at Avery expectantly.
Well, that would solve the problem, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask Olivia for another favor tonight.
“You should go ask her. You’re the one about to date her boyfriend’s brother,” Rae said, nudging Avery with her elbow.
“Why don’t you go ask her? You’ve known her longer, and she was your teacher,” Avery said, digging in her heels, looking back and forth between Rae and Domi.
“Yeah, which means we know exactly how scary she can be. She’ll be nice to you.”
“I’ll go ask her,” Freddy interrupted, rolling his eyes and grinning with amusement. “And just so you know, we submissives almost never need to be scared of her. The Dominants, on the other hand…” He winked at them, sauntering over to knock on Olivia’s door.
All three of them watched him.
“Maybe she gets less scary the more you get to know her… or with long-term exposure?” Avery murmured.
“I think Freddy might be a special case. He’s worked here a long time. Did you know he’s a lawyer?” Domi asked, keeping her voice hushed.
Freddy opened Olivia’s door and leaned in to say something to her before turning around and giving them a thumbs up.
Ten minutes later, they were downstairs in Marquis. It turned out he hadn’t been kidding about Olivia keeping dresses for anyone who wanted to use the first floor and hadn’t brought a change of clothes—she’d had more than a few. She had an entire wardrobe in multiple sizes.
The blue wrap dress Avery wore didn’t fit her perfectly, but it was good enough.
Domi’s was a little big, and Rae’s was a little short, but no one gave them a second glance as they made their way to one of the booths on the far side of the bar.
It was late enough in the evening the floor was clearing out, which would give them even more privacy.
Only a moment after they slid into their seats, one of the servers came by to take their order.
While they waited for their drinks, they talked about Domi’s daughter and how things were going with her boyfriend, Mitch, waiting by silent agreement to talk about Avery and Nick.
Which was much appreciated since their server was Josie, one of the gossipiest members of the staff.
Once they had their drinks and Josie had walked away, it was on.
“Okay, so… how are you feeling?” Domi leaned forward, her hands clasped around the bottom of her beer glass.
Lifting the dry martini she’d ordered to her lips, Avery took a moment to let the burn glide over her tongue and down her throat while she thought about how to answer.
“Excited… nervous…” She sighed, putting the glass down and rubbing her fingers against the stem, not twirling the glass, but in the same motion. There was something soothing about it. “I’m really afraid of fucking up my job. I’m worried he’ll discover he doesn’t like kink… yet.”
“Yet you want him.” Rae nodded, sympathy emanating off her. “Sometimes, we want what we can’t have, but what’s the harm in trying?”
“Yeah, Rae, what’s the harm?” Domi murmured, making Avery giggle. Rae’s worst kept secret was she had the hots for Brian, one of the Daddy Dom members of the club, but she refused to acknowledge it.
Rae glared at her.
“If you remember correctly, I did try, but I decided it wasn’t for me,” Rae said tartly. Domi opened her mouth to say something—probably an argument—but Rae pointed her finger at her. “Besides, we’re focusing on Avery right now, not me.”
“Fine.” Domi rolled her eyes. “But we’re coming back to this, eventually.”
Ignoring her, Rae twisted in the booth, so she could look directly at Avery.
Making a face, Avery took another sip of her martini.
It was a little disconcerting to have both of them so focused on her.
She knew she was the third wheel in their bestie friendship, and she was okay with that.
Partly because she was used to not having a best friend and partly because it was hard for her to open up to people.
Best friends tended to expect to be told all sorts of secrets.
Avery didn’t have any earth-shattering ones, but she wasn’t great at sharing much about herself.
Maybe because she got out of the habit back home when it seemed like anything she said was judged or misinterpreted.
The kinksters in Atlanta she’d met had been friendly, but none of them had sucked her into their friendship circle the way Domi and Rae had.
“What’s the worst that could happen if you and Nick do the class together?” Rae asked.
Avery’s stomach twisted. Even making herself say the words was hard.
“He could decide things wouldn’t work out between us because I’m messed up in the head for liking kink, everything becomes way too awkward in the kitchen, and he fires me.
” She kept her voice low, wincing as her eyes dropped to the table.
Looking at her friends to see their reactions was as hard as saying the words out loud.
There was a moment of silence, then Rae reached over to touch Avery’s arm gently.
“Sweetie, you know there’s nothing wrong with you for being kinky, right?”
Avery straightened in her seat. Yeah, of course, she knew that, but…
She’d only told one friend back home about her interest in kink.
Shannon had stared at her in horror and suggested Avery see a therapist. After that, she hadn’t tried to talk to any of her friends about it.
Pressing her lips together, Avery nodded.
It wasn’t her fault Shannon hadn’t seen things the same way. They hadn’t seen eye-to-eye on a lot of things before Avery left home. She hadn’t realized how deeply that one had dug in until this moment when she admitted she didn’t want Nick to think that.
“The job stuff is a little harder,” Domi said thoughtfully, a finger tapping against her glass. She leaned onto her elbows. “Does the restaurant have a policy against fraternization?”
“No…” Avery drew out the word and made a face. “But if we started something, and it fell apart, he could make working here miserable for me.”
“Do you think Nick is the type of guy who would do that?” The question was said with more curiosity than anything else. Domi’s head tilted to the side, her curls bobbing slightly with the movement.
“I… no.” Probably not. At least, she couldn’t imagine him doing so. If anything, he’d be icy cold but civil. Polite. Which would hurt after how close they’d become and their current good rapport, but it wouldn’t be unbearable. He wouldn’t actually fire her because they broke up.
Considering he worked for Marquis, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense that he would think she was sick in the head for liking kink, even if he didn’t understand it.
If he really thought people who were into it were sick, he wouldn’t work here, no matter how much they paid him.
And he’d probably be on a mission to rescue his brother.
Instead, he would be willing to try things out.
Shouldn’t she be?
“You guys are making too much sense,” she grumbled.
“Cheers to that!” Rae lifted her glass, filled with a pink Dirty Shirley Temple, and grinned.
Laughing, Avery lifted hers as well, gently clinking her glass with Domi and Rae’s before taking another sip.
All three of them nearly choked when Nick suddenly appeared at the side of the table. None of them had seen him coming. One moment, no one was there, then he was there, like a freaking ninja. Was it already that late?
“Hi,” Avery croaked, looking past him to the wall behind the bar.
Just after ten. She hadn’t been paying attention to the time, but even if she had, she would have expected Nick to come out closer to eleven.
Things had died down in the dining room, but service wasn’t over yet, and he was a control freak who had trouble stepping away.
“Hey.” His gaze flicked to Rae and Domi before returning to her. “You ready to talk?” There was just enough uncertainty in his voice to make her realize he wasn’t as confident as he’d appeared earlier, which made her feel a little better.
“We’ll go sit at the bar,” Domi said cheerfully, scooting out of the booth, Rae following only a moment behind her.
“Just shout if you need us.” Unlike Domi, Rae sounded threatening and narrowed her eyes at Nick before she went.
Nick slid into Domi’s vacated side of the booth, setting down the papers he was holding. Avery had been so discombobulated by his appearance that she hadn’t realized he’d brought them. She really needed to get it together.