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  This aggressive-bordering-on-rude, stiff demeanor was new, but not wholly unexpected. He knew plenty of submissive women who were incredibly powerful and held weighty responsibilities during the day, which was why they turned to submission at night. BDSM was a great emotional release for pressure and tension.

  If the scene involved sex, the sex was also a release, but sex was a release—at least it should be—no mater what flavor it was.

  In BDSM even scenes done fully clothed with no sexual elements could be physically exhausting to the point of being another form of release.

  Mimicking his body language, she picked up the glass and took a sip—he noticed her copying him because he was a student of body language—but it was something she may not even realize she was doing.

  They drank in companionable silence for a moment, and when her glass was empty he poured her a refill. He was happy to wait in silence and sip his sparkling water, but unsurprisingly, after two or three minutes, it was Sarah who succumbed to the pressure of silence and spoke first.

  “So what kind of Dom are you?” She fiddled with the glass, twisting it back and forth on the table top. “High protocol? Brat tamer…” Her voice trailed off.

  “As I said, you can call me Dev, or Master Dev. Whatever works for you. So clearly I’m not high protocol. What’s most important to me is that both of our needs get met, and that can only happen with open and honest communication.”

  Sarah’s lips twisted in what might have been a smile, but looked more like a grimace.

  “You didn’t finish telling me about yourself,” he continued. “All I know is that you don’t like having your time wasted, and that, based on your statement about being naked, you prefer to scene in the nude.”

  “Not always,” she hedged.

  He leaned forward. “Do you want to scene tonight?”

  “What was your plan?” she countered.

  Outside of the club answering a question with a question was a trait he found irritating, but he completely understood why submissives did it. But what she’d just said had almost been a challenge.

  Interesting. He could make an issue of it, but chose not to.

  “My plan,” he said, “was to come here tonight and start off doing a little bit of work with the whip to get some stuff out of my system. Next, have a sit-down conversation with you.” He gestured back and forth between them once again. “And after we talked, finalize plans for the rest of the weekend.”

  “You already planned the scenes?” The question seemed accusatory, yet she sounded hopeful.

  “It’s Thursday night,” he said, redirecting the conversation. “Are you going to be available Friday and Saturday evenings?”

  She nodded. “Yes, my plan was to be here all weekend.”

  He wondered if that meant that she had already made plans to scene with someone else. If she had, it would be rude of him to expect her to drop those plans to play the checklist game with him.

  “If you already have plans…”

  “No.” She brushed her hair back. “I mean that no, I want to focus on the game for this weekend. There’s a time limit for completing our items. Not sure if you knew that.”

  “I did. And if you’re concerned about getting reprimanded by the overseers because of the timing, I’ll take care of it.”

  Mikel knew exactly what Devin did for a living. They’d met when Dev’s team had gone in to rescue Mikel who, along with several business execs, had been taken hostage.

  “So,” he went on, “if you want to just talk tonight, we can scene next weekend, and you can keep whatever plans you already had for this weekend.”

  She was shaking her head in a small, controlled motion before he finished speaking, her voice cool and haughty. “No, let’s get this over with.”

  Dev picked up his glass but didn’t drink. He tapped it gently on the tabletop, using the fidgeting action to once again master the urge to spank some manners into her. The subs he normally scened with would have accepted—and frankly expected—a response for a comment like that, but he didn’t have the right to touch her yet.

  “I don’t appreciate either your tone, or the rudeness,” he said softly. “I understand that we are assigned partners, and, apparently, you have no desire to scene with me.” He looked up, watched her eyes widen and throat work as she swallowed.

  “But,” he went on. “That is not an excuse for the attitude, nor does it make the way you’re speaking to me acceptable.”

  Sarah now looked stricken, looked like the version of her he’d first glimpsed in the courtyard.

  He was going to get whiplash trying to figure her out.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said in a rush. “I didn’t mean to be rude, but you’re right I was. I’m sorry.”

  He nodded in acknowledgement of the apology, but didn’t say anything.

  “I’d like to scene with you this weekend,” she said more slowly. “I…I need to scene this weekend, and I’d like to do it with you.”

  I need to scene.

  That he absolutely understood.

  “Okay, then let’s do it,” he said.

  She nodded in acknowledgement, but didn’t meet his eyes.

  “It would be my privilege to top you,” he added, meaning every word of it.

  Her inhale was shaky, and in that moment she aroused every one of his protective instincts, though he couldn’t exactly pinpoint why.

  Dev was poised to rise out of the chair and head around to the other side of the table—to offer her comfort and grounding in the form of touch—when her head snapped up, her expression back to haughty.

  Seriously, this woman was going to give him whiplash.

  “We should discuss our items,” she said.

  The paper copy of the checklist that had been waiting for him in his PO Box when he’d gotten stateside was back in his locker in the Den—the tops only section of the club.

  “Our list is surprisingly short.” He didn’t need the paper to have this discussion. “And two are items that arguably aren’t separate, but rather opposite sides of the same coin.”

  “I’ve been trying to remember,” Sarah admitted. “The one I kept thinking of was…orgasm.” The stiff, haughty expression disappeared for a moment, and she wiggled her eyebrows while leering suggestively.

  Dev let out a bark of laughter.

  Sarah put a hand over her eyes. “Sorry, sometimes I’m an idiot.”

  “No, you’re not an idiot. Not an idiot at all. That was charming.”

  Sarah dropped her hand, looking absolutely startled by what he just said.

  He still didn’t know exactly who this woman was—which version was her more authentic self—but the fact that she seemed so shocked by receiving a compliment was speaking.

  “Orgasm is on there,” he said. “Orgasm is the item I mentioned that I think could arguably have been listed as one.

  “This weekend we’re going to be practicing orgasm control and orgasm denial.”

  He waited for her response, expecting something fun, but instead he got a stiff nod.

  Disappointed, he continued. “The others are oral and anal play. It says in parentheses right after that, rimming, so I have no idea why they don’t just have ‘rimming’ listed under R, but there you go.”

  Sarah winced, but it was a very slight movement and if he hadn’t been watching her so closely he wouldn’t have noticed it.

  “You marked that item as a ‘yes’,” he said.

  She nodded, but didn’t meet his eyes.

  If her checklist said this was a ‘yes’ item but in reality it was not something she enjoyed, as her expression and reaction would indicate, then that was something he needed to know. He could not effectively run an op, or a scene, without complete information. Dev thought about pushing her, but decided to put the issue aside. At least for now.

  “Another one is ‘over the knee spanking’,” he said.

  “How is that not just listed with spanking?” She sounded exaspera
ted…but a little breathy at the same time.

  Dev leaned forward, elbows on the table.

  “The final item, and the one that I’d planned on us focusing on first is ‘outdoor scenes’.”

  “Outdoor scenes?” She frowned. “That’s it?”

  “Yep.” He shrugged. “That’s all it says.”

  “Half the scenes in the club take place outside in the courtyards,” she said.

  “I’m thinking of this one as dealer’s choice.”

  Sarah started to say something and shook her head, her lips twitching with a hint of a smile. But then, as she’d done time and time again, she stiffened, pulling on that haughty veneer. “If planned correctly, we could take care of most of these items with a single scene.”

  “Back to worrying about me wasting your time? Want to get this over with?”

  She hesitated. “No, I just think that having a scene where the focus is just one of these activities might not make for the most dynamic scene.”

  “Accusing me of wasting your time, and being boring?” Dev shook his head. “That’s rude no matter who you are, but seems especially rude for a submissive to say here in the middle of the club.”

  The tendons in her neck flexed as she swallowed, but though he gave her a minute and waited, she didn’t say anything.

  Dev let the silence stretch out again. He wasn’t pissed at her, or offended. Because Devin was pretty sure he had Sarah figured out.

  Sarah was one of those submissives who had a hard time letting go of control, letting go of the aggressive personality she’d no doubt been forced to adopt in order to be taken seriously in whatever high-powered, male-dominated job he suspected she had.

  Brats were sometimes deliberately insulting to push the Dom’s buttons and provoke a reaction, but he thought that what was happening here was that she hadn’t been able to turn off her defense mechanisms.

  He needed to help her into her submissive mindset.

  When they’d been in the Iron Court and she’d been watching him working with the whip, that visual display probably made her feel submissive, or crave submission, which was why she’d reacted differently, and seemed softer, out there.

  She needed to be compelled to let go of the shields that she held. He suspected that once he did that—and he knew he could get her there with just a few modifications to the outdoor scene he’d already planned and prepped for—she would be able to let go of that snobbish defensiveness. Then he’d be spending the rest of the weekend with the fun flirty woman who’d wiggled her eyebrows at him.

  “We’ve established your safe word,” he said. “Do you want to also use a stoplight method for check-ins during the scene?”

  “Do you?”

  “I read body language. I haven’t met you before, but we’ve been talking for a while, so I feel comfortable using a combination of observation of your body language, and asking you point-blank how you’re feeling, to assess during the scene.”

  She nodded, a jerky little head movement, and her breathing was a little deeper than it had been a minute ago.

  “I’ve reviewed your checklist, so I know what you want and what you enjoy. I will not be doing anything that you marked on the list as being something you are only ‘willing to try’. When you’re with me, we will only be engaging in activities for which you gave a definite yes.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Her head was tipped ever so slightly to one side with a small frown line between her brows.

  “You can ask; I can’t guarantee that I’ll answer.”

  “Are you, or were you, in the military?”

  He inclined his head.

  “I figured,” she murmured. “I mean you just sounded like an officer there for a second.”

  It seemed that he wasn’t the only one trying to figure out the person on the other side of the table.

  “My turn to ask a question,” he said. “Do you have any current physical limitations that I should know about? Injuries?”

  “I have an old ACL injury on my left leg, but it was repaired surgically about three years ago, so unless there’s going to be really complicated shibari rope bondage, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Shibari was on your ‘willing to try’ list, and as I said, all those items are off the table as far as our checklist game scenes.”

  “All right. And…” Her voice trailed off. “Thank you for asking.”

  “Open and honest communication. Agreed?”

  Sarah nodded, but her eyes were on her glass. She lifted it to her lips and drank the last sip of water. Then she sucked an ice cube into her mouth and chomped on it with an audible crunch.

  Dev thought about making a joke about people who were sexually frustrated and chewing on ice cubes, but refrained. He’d been in this lifestyle long enough to know that quite often sexual frustration and a lack of fulfillment were what drove people to start looking into kink, and in doing so, discover sexual needs and preferences that they might never have acknowledged if they hadn’t been frustrated in the first place.

  Dev rose and went around to the other side of the table, standing over her while she remained seated.

  Standing close enough that he could smell the clean scent of her perfume, feel the heat of her body, and look down on the lovely curves of her breasts, aroused him.

  That arousal deepened his voice, adding a husky edge. “I want to touch you now, and once I do, the scene starts.”

  She turned in her chair, looking up at him. She studied his face for a moment, and if he’d been looking at someone else, someone he was more confident about reading, he would have said that her expression was a mix of worried and hopeful.

  If there was one thing he’d learned so far this evening, it was that Sarah wasn’t easy to understand. It was going to be his pleasure and his privilege to help strip away those walls she’d built up.

  “Ready?” He gave her one more out.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Dev slid his hand under her hair, cupping the back of her neck. He squeezed gently. “Then let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Dev was good-looking, charming, and a great Dom.

  If Sarah were smart, she would have bottled up her anxiety and insecurities long enough to give Dev the fair chance he deserved.

  Instead, she’d assumed the worst.

  Instead, she’d done a spectacularly terrible job of muddying the waters by pretending to be the type of submissive whom she thought men wouldn’t ignore or forget about.

  That performance in the library was really an objectively terrible bit of acting.

  Looking back, it might have been better if, when he asked if she was a brat, she changed tactics and said ‘yes.’ She’d gone through a bratty phase when she was getting into kink, but hadn’t really enjoyed scening with brat-tamer style Doms. Weirdly, they were often too serious for her.

  Dev led her out of the library, his hand on her shoulder, palm heavy and warm through the thin material of her robe. Next door was the dining room, and the smells of the catered food the club had brought in made her stomach rumble. She thought about suggesting that they have some dinner first. Maybe during dinner she could find a way to walk back some of the lies she’d just told. In the end she dismissed the idea. Not only was she too much of a coward to admit what she’d done—what she was still doing—but scening on an empty stomach was better than trying to feel sexy while full and lethargic from a food coma.

  The club was a sprawling estate of connected courtyard-style buildings. Of the three main courts, the one most commonly used was the Constellation Court. The open courtyard in the center had various setups that provided options for outdoor scenes as well as lounge furniture for relaxing, waiting, or watching.

  “I need to run and grab my stuff.” Dev shifted to face her as he spoke. “You have the option to wait here, or if you want to go get anything, meet me back here in five to ten minutes.”

  “Is there anything in particular that I need?” She grabbed the edges
of her robe and yanked them open like a flasher. “Will this work for whatever we’re going to do?”

  Dev grinned. Damn, that man is cute she thought and she smiled.

  Wait, would the submissive that she was pretending to be have done that? Probably not.

  She was a moron, and this charade—which, again, she wasn’t even good at—was undoubtedly going to blow up in her face. He was still grinning but inside she was wincing. The question was when this was going to go bad, not if.

  Hopefully she’d get a few scenes out of it first.

  “What you’re wearing is perfect.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Sarah crossed the front panels of the robe over her midsection, holding it closed with her arms.

  “Does that mean you’re planning on staying here?” Dev asked.

  “Oh, um, yes.”

  “Then I’ll get you settled.”

  “No, you don’t have to do that.”

  “I am aware that I do not have to.” Dev’s voice was a little lower, a little harder, than it had been a moment ago. “But it is my right and my privilege to take care of you, and to ensure your physical and emotional needs are met.”

  Sarah closed her eyes, heart thumping in her chest. This man was too good to be true. No, that wasn’t fair. She’d been with plenty of other Doms who were responsible and forthright, caring and responsible. The problem wasn’t the Doms, had never been the Doms. It was her.

  “Here.” Dev walked her over to a small outdoor couch, the wood arms and back glossy under the outdoor lights that illuminated the space, while the dense canvas-covered cushions were a creamy-gold color that blended in with the sandy ground.

  The far end of the couch already had occupants. The woman was straddling the man’s thighs, her hands behind her back, while he idly played with her breasts and nipples.