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  He took a step back, and for a shocked moment she didn’t move, the fabric of her robe pulling taut on her back and sides before she gave in to the pressure, taking a small step forward.

  He led her into the open space near the middle of the courtyard. Sarah’s brain was buzzing and her midsection tense with the chaotic emotional mix of alarm and arousal. He stopped, releasing her robe and then drawing the whip through his hand, dusting off any dirt it had picked up. When he was done, he looked at her, and now the light was on his face enabling her to see his expression, to see the hard-set lines of his features.

  He looked stern and dangerous, but there were laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. He looked like the kind of man who couldn’t be swayed from a course of action. The kind of Dom who would let her beg and bargain and reason, but then smile and carry through with whatever devious punishment he’d promised.

  When Sarah inhaled it was shaky, and though she had so many questions, the most important of which was “how do you know my name?”, all that came out when she released her breath was a soft, quavering moan.

  One corner of his mouth kicked up.

  “I know you,” he repeated. “After all, we’re partners.”

  Her checklist game Dom had finally shown up, but it was late; she’d been here for hours already. Why hadn’t he contacted her? Apparently he had been more interested in putting on a little demo than letting her know what the hell was supposed to be going on.

  A third emotion joined alarm and arousal. Anger.

  The Dom, her checklist game partner, who had ignored her, forced her to wait, and whose name she didn’t even know, flicked his arm. The whip snapped out into the night, the crack shockingly loud when she was this close.

  He didn’t look at her when he ordered, “Take off the robe.”

  Absolutely not. No way was she going to just start stripping because a Dom told her to. She submitted by choice, not by default. They needed to have a come-to-Jesus meeting. She needed to tell him how unacceptable it was that he hadn’t contacted her. They needed to talk about what their letter was, what items they had, and go over some ground rules. Though all of the tops at Las Palmas were responsible, and everyone operated under the RACK code—risk-aware consensual kink—it was a best practice to discuss and plan all scenes in advance.

  Sarah opened her mouth, but before she said anything, a quiet voice reminded her that she was no hot commodity. It had been months since anyone had been interested in scening with her in any meaningful way. The checklist game had only made that lack of interest worse, because the assigned partners aspect meant most people already knew who they were going to be playing with.

  She needed to take what she could get and be grateful for it.

  Silently, she slipped off her robe, letting it fall to the ground around her feet.

  The Dom grunted, and she couldn’t tell if that was a noise of approval or disapproval. Maybe he was one of those types who wanted her to pick up the robe and fold it or maybe she should have added a “Yes, Sir,” or “Thank you, Sir.”

  “Is your safe word still watermelon?”

  “Yes…” The word “Sir” hovered on the tip of her tongue but some stubborn, anxious part of her held it back.

  “Confirm for me that whip play is something you are interested in.”

  Six months ago, in an effort to try and make herself a more attractive scene partner, she’d gone to the overseers and requested to review her checklist. As part of that review, she’d changed nearly everything to “yes I am interested in this.”

  Even things that were, in reality, “hard no” items for her she had changed to “willing to try”. She’d figured that in order to get somebody to scene with her, she had to make herself seem like the most willing submissive in the club. It hadn’t worked, but she knew that’s what her checklist said.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice thin.

  He paused, looking her up and down. “Sarah, do you want to do this?”

  No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.

  “Of course.” That was the only safe answer.

  “Good. Arms up, spread your legs. Hip width apart, make sure your knees are bent slightly.”

  She sighed in relief as his words—and the promise they contained—spiked her arousal, drowning out the anger she felt but couldn’t express, and the slimy feelings of shame and undesirability.

  Mimicking the statue, she rested her forearms on the crown of her head, fingers cupping her elbows. She planted her feet, made sure not to lock her knees, and then looked at him.

  Their gazes met and for a moment she thought he looked almost tender, his expression softening.

  Then he shook out the whip, his expression hard and focused.

  He raised his arm, Sarah held her breath, and then the whip cracked in the air, the sound terrifyingly loud.

  She shrieked, an instinctive reaction not to any physical sensation but to that sound. The sound and her scream both happened a split second before the whip actually touched her, thumped against her belly low enough on her torso that it touched not bare flesh, but her leather underwear. The whip wrapped around her twice, the tail end flicking softly against her hip at the end. There was no sting, no pain, only a very slight pressure.

  The physical sensation was underwhelming, but the emotional and psychological impact had goosebumps rising along her arms.

  There was a taut moment of silence and then a smattering of applause from the people watching. Sarah sagged, her shoulders drooping so her arms felt heavy on her head, her eyelids falling, as the tension she’d held in preparation faded, running down her body to seep into the ground beneath her feet.

  The whip dropped away, slithering down her legs. A soft touch to her chin made her open her eyes. Once again he was backlit, so she had no idea what expression went with the tender way his fingers held her face.

  “Dev,” he said. “I’m Dev. Master Dev or just Dev. Your preference.”

  The words seemed deceptively casual but his tone of voice was cool and measured.

  “I-it’s nice to meet you.” She winced at the dry-mouthed stuttering of her own voice.

  Once more she thought he might have smiled, but she didn’t hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Let’s get a drink and talk about our letter.”

  Dev picked up her robe, carefully brushing off the dust before holding it out for her as if it were a coat. She turned, sliding her arms into the sleeves and then wrapping it closed over her body. She felt him looking at where her folded arms held the robe closed, and for a minute she thought he might demand that she leave the robe open.

  Instead Dev retrieved his shirt, pulling it on. She wished for a second that it was appropriate for submissives to make requests about clothing or lack thereof, because losing sight of Dev’s chest and arms was a shame.

  He coiled the whip, this time into a much smaller circle and hooked it onto a strap on his belt. It made him look like Indiana Jones, and honestly that did something for her too. However after the lumberjack fantasy that led to her thinking about flannel that led to her laughing at how inappropriate flannel was at Las Palmas, she very deliberately steered her imagination away from the image of Dev wearing an Indiana Jones hat.

  He put a hand at the small of her back, guiding her out of the Iron Court towards the library room, which was more practically a combination bar and lounge.

  “Dev,” she said, testing out the name.

  “Yes?”

  She had actually meant it to be a question, but to cover up her awkwardness she quickly scrambled to say something. “What’s our letter?” God, she was such an idiot.

  “O,” he answered.

  “O.” She glanced at the whip then briefly at his face. Still a little shocked by everything that had happened in the past fifteen minutes, she wasn’t able to think of a term that started with the letter O that involved a whip.

  When she said as much, Dev smiled. It was her first time getting a good look at his smile, and sh
e almost stumbled to a stop. In the light she could better see, and confirm, that he was good-looking, with medium brown skin and dark hair and eyes, but that smile… That smile made him drop-dead gorgeous.

  “The whip,” he said with apparent relish, “has nothing to do with our letter.”

  The hint of humor in his voice had something inside her relaxing. Not that she didn’t enjoy playing with super strict high protocol silent tops, but if she had been allowed to ever pick out her ideal partner, it would have been someone who wasn’t quite so serious.

  But then again, she didn’t usually think of tops who liked six-foot whips as easygoing.

  “So… The whip was just because?”

  His expression hardened into that stern Dom look he’d had on his face in the Iron Court, with one critical difference. His eyes seemed to sparkle with a little bit of that terrifying kinky delight that was unique to tops.

  “Sarah, there are a lot of things that I plan to do to you, ‘just because’.” He leaned in, his body seeming to loom over hers though he was only a few inches taller than her. “Just because I can. Just because I want it. And most of all, because I think you need it.”

  Damn it, no. Everything he just said sounded too good. Yes, she wanted to be used, wanted him to use her to meet his own needs. As a submissive she found that fulfilling, and always had, but that didn’t negate the fact that she did have her own needs and desires. There were relatively few full power-exchange “slave” style submissives at Las Palmas, with the obvious exception being Master Carter and Pet. For the most part, other subs’ needs, and their limits, actually drove the scene far more than the Doms’ wants. But, again, that was other subs.

  He’d ignored her. Kept her waiting. And now she didn’t want him to imply a promise to put her needs front and center only to break that promise.

  “Because I need it?” she asked softly.

  His lips quirked and brows drew together in a puzzled expression. “You think I won’t be able to meet your needs?”

  Able? Yes. Willing? No.

  She dropped her gaze, because she didn’t want him to see what she was thinking. He could interpret the lowered lashes however he wanted.

  If there was one thing she knew for certain, it was that she was forgettable. Ignorable. No matter what he said now, she knew how this was going to play out. Something about her made tops behave differently, and it kept happening no matter how many times she tried to change.

  Dev probably thought he would do what he just said, probably believed that he would take her needs into account, but bitter experience had told her that it just wasn’t going to work that way. Not when it came to her. She was simply too easy to ignore.

  For her own safety–not physical, but emotional–she was going to pretend he hadn’t just promised that her needs would be met.

  “We’ll talk more once we’re sitting down.”

  Sarah nodded in response and let him lead her to the library.

  He found them a seat, and she watched as he went to the bar to get them drinks. Something inside her ached as she watched him, and despite the lecture she’d given herself as they’d finished the walk, part of her wanted to believe that he would do exactly what he said. That the most important driving factor in their checklist game scenes would be her needs.

  As Dev headed back, a bottle of sparkling water and two glasses of ice in hand, a wild, stupid idea slipped through to the front of her brain.

  Maybe she could pretend to be the kind of submissive who wasn’t ignored. The kind whose needs and limits shaped a scene. The kind of woman who could hold the attention of an interesting, dangerous Dom. A man who, in the space of fifteen minutes had made her anxious and aroused and angry.

  Maybe there was a way to be…

  …to be someone else.

  CHAPTER 3

  Dev poured Sarah a glass of water, then one for himself, and leaned back in his seat.

  Sarah wasn’t what he’d expected based on her picture and her checklist answers.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t look like her picture. The woman sitting in front of him was a medium-height blonde with an athletic build. There was definition in the muscles of her arms, and she had seriously sexy calves. But the smiling woman in the photo he’d been given, combined with a checklist that was “yes” or “willing to try” for every single item, had given him a mental picture of an outgoing, daring woman.

  Instead, the in-person Sarah seemed almost unsure. He’d been warming up in the Iron Court with the whip to get some of the aggression out of his system. He hadn’t wanted to bring that month-plus dry spell energy to their first in-person meeting or any subsequent scenes.

  Practicing with a six-foot single tail whip took an incredible amount of concentration, and—thanks to both the potential power of the instrument and the sound that it made—was a great aggression release.

  He hadn’t planned for her to see him, but when he caught sight of her in the crowd, and recognized her, he’d started thinking about how to approach her.

  Then he’d heard her laugh, but it hadn’t really been a laugh. It had been more of a giggle.

  If it had been a full-on laugh, he might have thought that she was being rude. That she was making fun of him or putting him down. But that giggle had been his first inclination that the Sarah he’d built in his mind based off the paperwork and the photo was going to be different than in-person Sarah.

  She’d clearly been shocked when he’d pulled her out of the crowd, which could be explained by the fact that she didn’t know who he was. While Doms had received information packets, the submissives had not been given information about their letters or partners.

  “Tell me about yourself, Sarah.” Dev wanted to figure this woman out, to correct the mental picture he’d created of her, and then use this new information to assess if he needed to change his plans.

  She shifted in her seat. The robe had fallen open, framing her breasts. Her nipples had been hard and visible through the thin material of the halter top when they were outside, but now that they were inside he could no longer see her tight little peaks, and the urge to rush this conversation so that he could start stripping off her clothes was riding the back of his mind.

  “You make it sound like a first date,” she replied.

  “Well, isn’t it?”

  She shook her head. “No, because on a first date you don’t know for sure that you’re going to see the other person naked by the end of the night.”

  “That’s not assured here either,” he countered, not liking the implied assumption that he might be presuming rights over her person just because of the game.

  Much to his confusion, for a moment her shoulders hunched and she looked to the side.

  It was as if she were retreating into herself, as if he’d somehow hurt her with his words. That had him sitting up a bit straighter, gaze raking up and down her upper body as if he could look at her long enough and hard enough to figure out what the problem was and where he’d gone wrong.

  The ability to stop, assess, and pivot from Plan A to B, all the way to Z had been one of his greatest skills while in the service. It was equally as valuable in his current job as a K&R—kidnapping and ransom—and repatriation specialist.

  But before he could pinpoint what that had been about, Sarah shook herself and straightened her shoulders, her chin lifting. She met his gaze and it was as if the previous moment, that huddled in on herself posture, had never existed.

  He blinked in confusion, but forced himself to relax. Maybe he was bringing his own assumptions and experiences into the conversation, seeing something where nothing existed. To him, that huddled body language had been an indication of fear or defeat. Plenty of times in his career he’d dealt with someone curled in on themselves and had to pull them out. Both out of the emotionally dark place where they were, and physically out of whatever situation they were in.

  He took a minute to think about what he wanted to say before speaking. “This checkl
ist game that the overseers came up with doesn’t negate the fact that anything we do has to be agreed upon by both parties.”

  “Except the things we’re going to do are things off the checklist. Well, things off the checklist that start with the letter ‘O’.”

  “I wasn’t at the meeting, but the way it was explained to me was that the purpose of the checklist game is to push us. To get us to try new things, because so many people have fallen into a rut. We aren’t limited to only the things on that list, and we still have to agree to scene together.”

  “Oh, you weren’t at the meeting?”

  “No.” He frowned, wondering why it was that she hadn’t known that. The overseers would have explained that he had been out of the country, right? She spoke again before he could follow up.

  “Well, my time is precious. So I don’t want it wasted, and the fact that you don’t think anything will happen tonight is worrying.”

  Dev pursed his lips and tapped his fingers on the table until the urge to turn her over his knee and spank some manners into her passed. They weren’t in the scene. He had no right to dominate her.

  Yet.

  “Brat?” he asked instead.

  “Any submissive who speaks up is by default a brat?” she countered, all stiff, haughty attitude.

  “No, of course not. And there’s nothing wrong with being a brat, I just want to know going in who I’m scening with. That’s the point of this conversation.” He gestured back and forth between them. “A conversation you seem to think is a waste of time.”

  “I didn’t say this conversation was a waste of time, I said I don’t appreciate my time being wasted.”

  “I see. So the fact that I don’t assume that I will have you naked, on your knees, and begging by the end of the night, makes you think that I’m wasting your time?”

  As he expected, that got a reaction.

  Sarah touched the tip of her tongue to the center of her upper lip then took several measured breaths.

  Devin felt himself relax, his dominant urges briefly pacified by her reaction. He leaned back in his chair, then raised his glass of water to hide the fact that he was smiling. He was smiling because, damn it, he loved submissives. But he wasn’t sure if Sarah would understand his smile, even if he explained. The more they talked, the more he was starting to think that while his first impression based on the paperwork and picture was definitely wrong, the second impression, formed half an hour ago in the Iron Court, also missed the mark.