Prologue
One Month Earlier
Iris
Hello again, consequences of my own actions… how I loathe thee.
Slumped in the chair in front of Master Patrick’s desk, arms crossed over her chest, Iris felt as if she was in high school, sitting in the principal’s office all over again.
She’d spent an awful lot of time there as a teenager, and she didn’t like it any better now as an adult.
Schoolgirl role play would never be her fantasy for that reason alone.
Although it really wasn’t a fair comparison.
She had absolutely no attraction to Master Patrick, who was currently standing in as the principal figure, but she absolutely had an unwanted attraction for the man standing next to him.
He was scowling as if he was her eleventh-grade history teacher and she’d just thrown a spitball at him.
Why she found Master Law so hot when he could be such an uptight prick, she didn’t know, but he made her tingle in all the right places, even when he was lecturing her.
And man, did he lecture her a lot.
Which was also her own fault since she’d been volun-told to be a submissive for the Dominance 101 class.
It was supposed to remind her of all the things she’d learned in her Subbie 101 class.
The upside was she’d met some new friends.
The downside was she’d been reminded on a weekly basis just how attracted she was to Master Law, who only noticed her when she was acting up.
That seemed to be her lot in life—men who only cared about her behavior when she wasn’t behaving.
“Iris, I thought we talked about this.” Master Patrick—she made a point of thinking about him with his honorific when she was at Stronghold and not as her big brother’s friend Patrick—ran his hand over his bald head, rubbing the back the way he did when he was extra annoyed but trying to be calm.
“You cannot interrupt people’s scenes, even if you don’t like what’s going on in them. ”
“I’m sorry,” she muttered. She really was sorry this time.
The Dom hadn’t deserved the way she’d yelled at him.
Humiliation kink was not her thing, but she shouldn’t have interrupted the scene.
She got it, and she really hated having to have it rubbed in her face that she’d done the wrong thing with the best of intentions.
Again.
She would never like humiliation kink, but next time, she’d remember to look and make sure the submissive really wasn’t okay with it before she jumped in. Probably.
“If you were anyone else, we’d be having a discussion about kicking you out right now.” Master Patrick’s gaze met hers, and Iris sat up straight in her chair. He wouldn’t… would he? “The fact is, I have been far too lenient with you because you’re Andrew’s little sister.”
“You aren’t going to actually kick me out, are you?” she asked worriedly and saw his gaze soften.
Others might look at the kink club owner and find him intimidating—considering he was well over six feet tall and built like a linebacker, plus the scar that ran down his face thanks to a childhood incident involving his best friend and some swords—but Iris knew he was a teddy bear.
It didn’t hurt that his submissive, Lexie, had a soft spot for Iris, but Lexie wasn’t here right now, and she couldn’t help but wonder if that was deliberate.
Behind Patrick’s chair, Master Law shifted his stance slightly, but she didn’t look at him.
If she saw hope on his face, it was going to crush her.
Not that Iris wanted to be bad or didn’t want to be liked, it was just something that kept happening.
And Mr. Burly, Brooding, and Hot really got under her skin.
“I’m not kicking you out,” Patrick said, and Iris sagged back down with relief. Patrick raised his eyebrow at her. “But you’re running close to your last chance, no matter who your brother is.”
Yeah, that was bullshit, and they both knew it. Andrew would throw a fit if she was kicked out and ended up going to some of the other local clubs, where he wouldn’t know whether or not she was safe. For that matter, she was pretty sure Lexie would throw a fit.
That he would say it meant he was down to his last nerve with her, and the last thing she wanted to do was cause an issue between her brother and one of his friends.
Andrew already thought she was a fuckup of massive proportions, no matter how hard she’d tried to clean up her act, so she didn’t need to give him more ammunition.
“Okay, so what now?” she asked, pressing her fingers together nervously in her lap.
Master Patrick leaned forward, holding eye contact with her. His dark face was serious, without a hint of humor or his hidden teddy bear interior. If he wanted to make her nervous, he was doing a good job.
“You’re going to spend the next month as a server at Stronghold.
For free. You will not be allowed to scene.
While you are there, you will spend one hour of every shift watching scenes in the Dungeon and taking notes on what is happening in the scene and how the submissive is reacting.
Not how you are reacting, how the submissive is.
” Master Patrick’s lip quirked slightly when she made a face, but she didn’t protest.
The ‘punishment’ was more than fair, and it fit the crime, as it was.
If Iris had paid more attention to how the submissive was reacting to the name-calling from her Dom, rather than just hearing the words and seeing tears, she might not have jumped in.
Because the submissive had been way more embarrassed by Iris interrupting the scene than she had been by being insulted.
“Yes, Sir,” she said, nodding.
“You will not interrupt any more scenes. If you do see a submissive in distress, you will get a Dungeon Monitor. And you will listen to and respect all the dominants in the club.” There wasn’t any discernible change in Master Patrick’s voice or his demeanor, but suddenly he was very much Master Patrick, and Iris felt herself sitting up straighter without thinking about it. Some Doms could have that effect.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Now get out while I have a discussion with Master Law.” Patrick waved his hand at her, the switch flipping back off again as soon as it had flipped on.
“Thank you, Sir.” Iris bounced to her feet and booked it to the door before he could change his mind. Unfortunately, she wasn’t fast enough to outrun the sound of Master Law’s furious exclamation as the door to Patrick’s office started to swing shut.
“Are you serious, Patrick? That girl is nothing but trouble.”
Iris winced, pressing her lips together against the emotion that suddenly welled in her chest. It wasn’t like the first time she’d heard someone say that. It wasn’t even the hundredth.
So why did it hurt so much more to hear Master Law say it?
Her mood, which had been a lot lighter after she realized Patrick would not kick her out or go to her brother, plummeted.
Law
Normally, Law would never even think about addressing the owner of an establishment in such a tone, but he was at the end of his rope.
Iris Baez was practically the poster child of special treatment at Stronghold.
In any other kink club, she would have already been spanked to true regret and turned into a very sorry submissive. One that was intent on behaving.
Everyone was hands-off merely because she was the sister of one of the owner’s friends, which grated on his last nerve.
Any other submissive interrupting a public scene would have received a public punishment.
Though he supposed Patrick would argue that her punishment would be public, it was lenient.
All three of them knew it, and so would everyone else.
Granted, Law understood how hard it could be to subvert expectations in the club—hell, he’d started thinking of himself as “Law” rather than Lawrence, thanks to the submissives who had given the nickname and made it stick.
Swiveling around in his chair, Patrick leveled a stern look at Law, who refused to be intimidated, even though Patrick was practically a head taller than him.
Law was of perfectly average height, just below six feet, which made him the tallest person in his family, but size wasn’t everything.
He’d never allowed himself to feel smaller because of someone else’s height.
“She’s not trouble. She’s just constantly in trouble because she acts before she thinks.”
“That amounts to the same thing.” Law felt a muscle in his jaw tick.
Iris was the epitome of the phrase ‘Ready, fire, aim.’ Sure, she might feel bad for going off early afterward, but by then, it was too late.
The damage had already been done. From the way things were going at Stronghold, apparently, she would never be held to a standard that required her to learn to think before acting.
Yet again, she was getting off easy.
“She’ll learn. But I agree that I’m too soft with her. Most of the Doms that I would normally assign to her are going to be.” Patrick leaned back in his chair, elbows resting on the arms, fingers steepled in front of him.
Crap.
Law sensed the danger too late. He’d walked into an ambush. Sighing, he reached up to rub his hand along the scruff on his jaw, knowing it was already too late.
“I think, as someone who is friendly but not friends with Andrew and does not have a personal history with him or Iris, that you will be the perfect person to oversee her.” Patrick grinned wide, white teeth flashing in his dark face like a shark’s grin. Chomp, chomp.
“Why not Julie?” Both he and Julie, who was a Domme, had run the recent class, and he hadn’t noticed Julie taking any shit from Iris.
“Because Iris doesn’t have any trouble with any of the dominants who don’t identify as male.
Besides, Julie definitely has a soft spot for Iris, even if she doesn’t allow it to show.
You, on the other hand, will have no problem spanking her ass if she deserves it.
” Patrick pointed at him, still grinning, clearly pleased with himself.
“That makes you the perfect man for the job.”
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Patrick was right, although Law hadn’t really thought about it before.
Iris behaved for Julie in a way that she hadn’t for him. She’d even behaved for Samantha, a switch exploring her Domme side in the class, in a way she hadn’t for him.
“You think she has a problem with men, and you want me to figure it out for you?” he stated flatly. It didn’t take a genius to read between the lines, especially when Patrick was half spelling it out for him.
“That’s part of being a Dom sometimes.” Patrick flashed him another grin and turned back toward his desk.
Exasperated, Law moved around to the front of it so he was still facing the other man.
“She’s not my submissive.”
“Nope, but she’s a club submissive, and you’re one of my Dungeon Monitors, which means you get the extra duties.
” Patrick gave him a thumbs up. “By the way, thanks for agreeing to take that on. It’s appreciated.
And hey, if you can help her find a Dom, you can pass along that responsibility to him instead. ”
Dammit.
Law didn’t have a good argument against that. Helping the club submissives was one of the duties he’d agreed to take on. Normally, it was the exact thing he loved to do and gave him some fulfillment and some peace.
Thinking about doing it with Iris did not give him feelings of fulfillment and peace.
Probably because he was attracted to her, and he really didn’t want to be. He needed serenity and calm in his life. Not a hot mess who liked to push all his buttons.