Chapter LEXI
LEXI
Wait. What? There’s no way he just said that. As usual, the filter between her brain and her mouth was useless.
“What?” She didn’t mean to sound shrill, but she heard it. “There’s no way you just said that. You can’t just hire a sub. I mean, I don’t think. Don’t they call that something else? Like prostitution?”
Lexi was sitting at the edge of her seat, feet planted and ready to launch off and escape if he made so much as one wrong move. Grayson held his hands up in front of him.
“I should have phrased that differently. I meant for you to pose as my sub, not that you would actually be my sub. Nothing sexual would be expected from you.”
She relaxed somewhat, and he leaned forward, resting one elbow on his knee. That he was so animated; moving his hands around as he spoke, told Lexi how passionate he was about the idea.
“If you date, I would need you to keep it out of the club, or even out of town if you can. I’d want you to fight at least two fights a week, including a weekend night. When you’re with me, you’ll wear my collar, but I’ll expect you to treat me as you would your regular Dom.”
Lexi had sat back in her chair again, and considered him with her head cocked to the side. Maybe he was crazy. Maybe he was brilliant. Maybe now was the time to tell him she’d never had a real Dom before. But he was rolling on so fast the moment passed.
“We have fights scheduled right now, only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. There’s a locker room with showers-”
“Whoa.”
Lexi held up a hand to stop him, a bit concerned she might get swept along. His enthusiasm was compelling, and not a little contagious.
“Before we hit the showers, tell me why you’re not just setting this up with a real sub.”
Grayson’s only response was to lift his eyebrows at her. Lexi rolled her eyes.
“You know what I mean. Like one of yours. Are you afraid of them getting hurt or something?”
Lexi wondered if he preferred his women dainty, or worse - fragile. The whole damsel-in-distress appealed to some, she knew. Especially Doms sometimes.
“I don’t currently have a sub, and I’m not interested in maintaining one just for the sake of this.”
Oh. Maybe not. Still, she cajoled herself, her concern shouldn’t be on his dating - or sub - preferences. In the silence as she thought, Grayson continued.
“You’ll be paid whether you win or lose, but if you win, then you’d keep the prize money too.
I want to know how things go in the locker room.
I want to see whether any subs are being pressured into fighting.
Are opponents being appropriately matched and judged?
If subs are being treated differently outside the arena when they’re not fighting, I want to know about it. ”
“So not just to fight, but to spy,” Lexi said.
Her eyes were drawn to where his jaw tightened.
“If you want to call it that, yes.”
“Why?” Lexi asked.
“Why what?”
“Why would you need to know all this just to run the arena?”
Grayson stared at her for a longer moment than she liked.
“I’m not a hands-off kind of guy.”
“I bet,” she murmured as she took a sip of water and he leaned towards her.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” she said, feigning innocence.
He nodded and sat back, tapping a finger on his watch. His gaze grew a little distant, and she could tell that he wasn’t really looking at her.
“The Reverse Gladiator is mine, Miss. Lexi.”
His voice had become so intense she didn’t bother to make a face at the ‘Miss’.
“All of it. Win or lose, profit or loss, all of it is mine. It was my idea. It’s my design, and every single sub that fights will be in that ring because of me.”
He looked back at her and she was pinned to her seat by his intensity yet again. A warm flush was making its way up her neck to stain her cheeks pink.
“I consider every single submissive that’s ever in this club my responsibility, Miss Lexi. The ring, even more so. I refuse to let it fail, and I think you can help me.”
A fissure of awareness raised a chill along her spine, and she shivered in her seat.
He stared at her for several moments, and his eyes seemed to draw her in, until all she saw was green and black.
Breathing suddenly didn’t seem all that important.
She raised her hand to take a sip and noticed her water bottle was empty, so she swallowed hard on a parched throat.
Eyes glittering with potency never left her; he never blinked.
She wondered for a heartbeat if he was this intense in other areas of his life, and after a moment, shut that line of thought down.
This guy took being in control to another level.
It made her glad she wasn’t his sub. But if he was being straight with her, his responsibility factor overshadowed that, or at least leveled it out somewhat.
She finally broke eye contact and inhaled a long breath that felt shaky.
“No one could know we wouldn’t be for real,” he added.
Lexi looked back up to see him still staring at her, but with less… voltage, she decided. It was like he’d dialed down some internal setting, and his eye contact was nothing extraordinary. His eyes were a normal green now. Well. Almost normal.
“Not anyone I work with, nobody from the club, not your friends; no one. Are you okay with that?”
Lexi shrugged.
“To be honest, I have so little personal life that any of my friends would just be happy I was doing anything with anyone.”
Grayson frowned.
“Really?”
He looked confused. Why, because she wasn’t a kiss-all-the-frogs-till-you-get a-disease kind of girl? Her voice was dry as dust.
“Yeah. Really. How do you think I wound up on a date with Lord Asshole?”
Grayson smiled; it was that same wide, unguarded smile he’d given her the night before, and it was doing some serious damage to her insides.
He stood from his chair and perched on the wide arm of hers, leaning over her. She inhaled his woodsy scent again and sat back in her seat so she wasn’t craning her neck to look up at him. Fortunately, the wide chair was large enough that she had the room.
“What do you think, Miss Lexi?” He asked. His voice had dropped, and she put that voice on par with his smile; dangerous for her insides. Even with the A/C inside the building, with him towering over her and all but pushed back into her seat, she felt a little warm.
“Friendly, aren’t you?” she asked, once she found her voice.
“Testing,” he countered.
She looked beyond him to the impressive arrangement of colored bottles standing up on the glass wall. Six blue, three green, so many clear. A few things were bothering her. The most important, however…
“I don’t like-”
Her voice died coming out of her mouth. She had turned back up to look at him and without warning he dropped closer. He braced his hand against the back of her chair and leaned down.
“What don’t you like?”
His voice had lowered, and her breath came a little short. She could only stare up into the green that had regained their intensity.
“Tell me,” he commanded, his voice a little louder.
She spoke without thinking about it.
“The idea of being an optional freaking plaything for the winner’s Dom. That turns it into something else, and that’s not something I’d be a part of.”
Grayson had retreated a bit, and she let out a quiet breath. What was wrong with her? She sparred and worked out with men bigger than her all the time. They were closer than Grayson was to her now, almost every day.
Sure, this one was better looking than most, but he was still just a guy. They just had some chemistry, was all. She thought she could work around that. Maybe if she stood up? Regained her equilibrium?
She shifted forward and went to stand, but he didn’t move. Pushing off the seat, she made sure her movements were deliberate, and wouldn’t be seen as running away.
It felt like he would be the type to chase, and she wasn’t sure what he’d do if he caught her. As she stood, her gaze wandered up the length of him as he sat.
“What if,” he started, then paused.
Now that she was standing right in front of him, their faces were only inches apart. What if, she thought, she leaned forward? It felt like it was happening already anyway. Her body was leaning, ever so slightly- he cleared his throat and leaned back.
“What if that part was on a person-by-person basis? Completely optional.”
Her brain kicked back into gear. She was grateful it overrode her hormones before she’d made an idiot of herself.
“And if they say no?”
Grayson shrugged and stood up as well.
“Then it’s just the fight and the money.”
Lexi nodded, wondering about the details. She was sure there had to be more to it than that.
“Are you interested?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? This is happening soon, Miss Lexi. I’m going to need an answer soon. What can I do to convince you this is a good idea?”
Lexi walked over to the bar and snagged a cocktail napkin. From her leggings pocket, she withdrew her ever-present ballpoint pen. She clicked it several times in time with her pounding heartbeat.
Her cell number was scrawled on an aqua blue background and she went to hand it to him before she could overthink it.
“Come to the gym this week,” she said, holding it out. “Let me know the night before, okay? Come in workout clothes. I need to go. I’m getting some dinner.”
“Does this mean you’ll fight for me Miss… Alexis?”
Shaking her head, she didn’t correct him on her full name.
“I don’t know yet.”
What she knew was that her system was in overdrive and she didn’t care for it. He hadn’t even done anything threatening.
There was no reason for her to be hyper aware of his every breath, or how many feet she was away from the door. She should certainly not be aware of how many little black lines spiraled out of his pupils. She’d counted twelve. It was time to go.
“And why would I be meeting you at the gym?”
Grayson’s tone was level, but she sensed something behind it. Was he annoyed at her for something already? If he was, this was going to be a very short-lived relationship. As she walked away - dammit, it felt like a retreat - her body was sending conflicting signals.
Her brain wanted her to run away as fast as possible. And instead of making her way towards the door, her body wanted her to be walking back in his direction. To cover her level of discomfort, she beamed.
“You’ll see when you get there!” she said.
Grayson rose from his perch in one fluid movement, standing stock-still with her number still cupped in his hand.
“I’m afraid I don’t much appreciate being told what to do, Miss Alexis,” he said.
“Oh, okay. Thanks for clearing that up. Good thing I’m not your sub. See you!”
With her head held high, she strode out of the room. Her first deep breath was on the steps out the back door, and she wasn’t breathing regularly until she was two blocks away. What was wrong with her? Normally, her PTSD didn’t make itself known in ordinary conversations.
Okay, she amended mentally, maybe that wasn’t the most ‘normal’ conversation she’d ever had, but it wasn’t threatening. Exhaustion had to be it, she reasoned.
There was no other reason it had felt like she was being backed into a corner. Or worse, feeling those last few moves fighting on the ground where she knew she was about to be pinned.