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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: LEAPS AND BOUNDS
Max felt charged, her whole body alert and alive. She’d never experienced a power surge like that outside of a boardroom before. Having that much control over a person was exhilarating. And it had been beyond rewarding working in tandem with the other women. It had been such a rush, all of them feeding off each other.
It was so weird. She wouldn’t have thought that she would like it. Hitting and hurting another person. Despite her assertive, sometimes aggressive, nature, she wasn’t a violent person. She’d only ever struck anyone out of self-defense—okay, maybe sometimes it was less self-defense as it was self-protection from offense. But it had always seemed justified in her mind. Coming from a place of righteousness and revenge.
But this.
This had been different.
This hadn’t been about righting a wrong or avenging some slight. This hadn’t been about violence—no matter what it’d looked like. This hadn’t been about causing pain—even though they had.
This had been about having a good time. About giving and receiving pleasure. About passion.
And, yes, about sex.
Max had been so turned on by it. Been so aroused by how turned on everyone else was by it. The way Cora’s dark eyes twinkled. The throaty chuckle that purred from Pip. The scent—sweet and so female—of Hallie’s excitement every time she’d come close.
And especially—despite his blustering protestations and exaggerated grumblings—the way Rand’s body had reacted to it all. The way he’d puffed out his body, bulging every muscle like some exotic bird on mating display. The way he’d arched into their touch, his body seeking contact, no matter if it were a stroke or a strike. The way he’d egged them on with teasing, taunting words, daring them ever onward.
It had been about pleasure. All of theirs. Together. Each feeding into the others, feeding off the others. Existing because the others existed.
It’d been, well, fun.
And she hadn’t been expecting that.
Was a little spun by it.
She wanted to talk about it with someone. Share it.
She wanted to share it with him. Her eye-opening partner-in-crime.
But she couldn’t find him anywhere.
At the end of the scene, she’d looked to the place where he’d been sitting. But, somewhere during the heated, heady play, the mysterious man had disappeared.
Max wondered where he’d gone.
Tentatively, still unsure of her way in the winding space, Max made her way through Donovan’s legendary playspace. It was so strange to walk its halls now.
Before she’d entered into Donovan’s, before this world had thrust its way into her life, she’d shrugged off the very idea of it. Wondered what the big deal was. Why people needed all the toys and trimmings. Why they couldn’t just be happy with sex as it was.
When she’d first walked Donovan’s halls, she’d stepped in with that mindset. Had looked at these people and thought it all a little much. Had scoffed off the appeal. She’d strutted in, completely confident that she’d known the full extent of pleasure. That she was knowledgeable. Liberated. Experienced.
And she had been.
She’d known passion and pleasure and the rush of heat. She’d enjoyed lovers and sex—knew herself to be worldly enough to know how she came and how to make her partners come. She’d had a good sex life then.
But now, after having gotten a good look at this world, she was beginning to understand. Just because sex—vanilla and in its basest form—was great, was fun, was fucking fantastic, didn’t mean that there weren’t other things that were just as great. That, added to that base form, made everything even better.
Max grinned and looked about the club, more than eager to explore this new world that beckoned and welcomed her.
“Max,” Kat greeted gleefully. Her best friend sounded a little winded from laughing as she, Rachel, and Reena hurried toward her. “You are just the woman we were looking for.”
Max bit her lip and hesitated at the roguishly giddy smiles all three women shared. Whatever those curious grins meant, it couldn’t be good.
But all Max could think to say when they grabbed her by both arms and led her through the hallways was “uhhh.”
Max instinctively dragged her feet and sputtered out unanswered questions, but they simply tugged her through the darkened maze. Her eyes widened as they approached the one-way mirrored room.
The room that had started it all.
And the huge hulking man standing tall and imposing in its doorway.
“Hey there, Red,” Rand said, now free and fully dressed again after their scene. He raised a cocky eyebrow at her and stood, his feet planted and his hands firm on his hips.
“One thing you should know about me,” he said when her best friend fickly shoved her at him. He loomed over Max while she instinctively cringed back before he grabbed her chin in his hand, pulling her closer. He grinned menacingly. “I always get even.”
Max swallowed with panic when he took hold of her elbow and all but threw her into the room. Stumbling, she turned around to face him, wondering exactly how a man like Rand got even.
However, to her utter confusion, Rand just chortled and shut the door in her face. Reaching for the doorknob, she tugged.
Locked.
Figured. Freakin’ figured.
For a long moment, she just stood there, slack-jawed, and stared at her own reflection in the mirrored door.
What the hell was going on?
And then she heard it.
A cough.
Max turned around.
And saw him. Sir.
Gagged.
And tied up.
To a chair.
Max blinked blankly as their eyes met, a frustrated fury blazing in the bound man’s briny eyes. He was seething, she could see that. Could see it in the hot slash of color across his severely chiseled cheeks. In the sharp, shallow breaths that heaved his chest. In the flex of each tensely held muscle now held captive by cuffs at his ankles, elbows, and wrists.
Even though he sat perfectly still, Max could recognize when the wildness inside him was too close to the surface. It was now.
“Uhhhh.”
What the hell was going on?
She walked up to him and tugged the gag out of his mouth. “What’s happening right now?” she asked him, rather demandingly for someone who, for all appearances, seemed to be in a position to know less than she did.
But, because she knew better—knew that this manipulative man knew everything that happened in his club—she tapped her toe in impatient expectation.
Flexing his jaw, he slanted her a rather wry look, his eyes flashing with as much dark amusement as frustration. “Rand felt it a shame that he was the only top to have volunteered for,” he paused for a moment before settling on, “service to the cause.” He turned to look down at himself and the cuffs holding him to the chair, then to the table of toys laid out next to him. “He decided to enact a draft policy.”
She really needed to have a chat with Rand about the finer points of consent.
Later.
For the moment, Max’s gaze followed the lawyer’s to the table and its array of implements. Laid out in meticulous fashion were everything from floggers to whips, from dildos to cock rings. There were several things that Max couldn’t even identify or begin to fathom why they were there, like an ornate Chinese fan and…was that a coatrack?
She did not want to know what someone could do with that.
“At any rate,” he bit out with a shrug that looked far more like a halted bid for freedom, “I suppose I’m reporting for duty.”
Whether he wanted to or not.
Max’s eye shifted upward to the security camera that sat unobtrusive but observing in the corner of the room. She bit her lip and met its red, blinking eye.
“We fixed the security problem,” he promised in a low tone she was sure was meant only for her. “Lock Stock fired the men involved and secured the feed so the only ones privy to it are Donovan’s and the president of the company. Peter is also making certain those men never bother you or anyone else ever again.”
You’re safe here.
He wouldn’t say it. Because the words didn’t mean anything unless she felt them. Unless she instinctively knew them to be true.
She shut her eyes, shutting out the camera’s unavoidable watch.
She was safe.
She did know that.
But not because of cameras or security or strike-back blackmail. Don’t get her wrong, it was nice—an added layer of protection.
But her safety came from not hiding anymore. From being completely and unabashedly transparent and honest. Anything that camera caught, anything it could show the world…Max could take it now. Today, she’d taken away its sting.
Openly acknowledged truth made for lousy extortion.
Max opened her eyes and peered at her reflection, proud and strong, mirrored back at her everywhere she looked.
Ironically, by exposing that part of her life, she’d protected herself. They couldn’t hurt her with it anymore. They couldn’t make her ashamed of something she didn’t—couldn’t bring herself to—regret.
She stared one second longer into the camera’s lens, letting herself get used to the weight of its gaze—silently daring it to do its worst—before she turned back to the trapped man before her.
It was tempting to leave him like that. To have her wily way with him helpless under her hands. To have this powerful man made weak before her. She was sure that they both would have enjoyed it immensely.
But today was about freedom.
“Let’s get you out of this.” She heaved a resigned sigh and knelt down to untie him.
She ignored the loud, hissing boos and the protesting pounds on the room’s walls. Her audience was unhappy.
Tough.
A part of her smiled as she reached for the cuffs’ buckles.
“You don’t have to do that,” he told her quietly and bent his head, his lips nearly touching her ear.
She turned to him, his stormy gaze hot with encouragement that bordered on challenge. He knew she’d enjoyed tonight. That she’d discovered something in herself. Something that, for her, he would suspend his own desires—his own inclinations and needs—in order to fulfill hers.
Max grinned.
It was a humbling gift from such a proud man.
One she hated to refuse.
———
She deftly undid all the cuffs without a word before she stood up to face him. He rolled his wrists and ankles, grateful to be free, but slightly disappointed. It may not have been the most comfortable position for him to be in, but a part of him wondered what it would have been like to be at Max’s mercy.
“Thank you.” His voice was calm even though his lips still frowned at the lost opportunity. He moved to lever himself up.
Max stopped him with a hand to his chest, halting him mid-motion. Giving him a gentle shove, she forced him back into the chair. “I said I’d untie you,” she told him, her voice clear and precise, almost businesslike. “I never said we were finished.”
He raised an eyebrow, his gaze igniting again at her tone. “What do you mean?” He was intrigued if a bit wary.
Max’s lips curled, excitement flashing in her eyes, and her body practically hummed with the sparking start of a scheme. He smiled. He couldn’t help it. Not when she looked like that, so excited, so eager. Oh yeah. This was how he liked her. How he wanted her. He never wanted her more than when she was raring for a fight. When she was squared off and ready to face him, no holds barred.
She narrowed her gaze as plans glittered in her dark eyes. “I want to make a deal with you.” She sauntered forward to stand just in front of him, her feet braced and her hands fisted on her hips. She moved to stand between his legs. He bit back a lusty moan when her legs forced his thighs apart, so solid and strong yet so fucking soft he wanted to grab her, wanted to hold and stroke and touch and take every inch of her body that she so recklessly pressed against him.
Instead, he leaned back, staring steadfastly into those brash, brown eyes and focused on her words.
A deal, huh? She wanted to play, did she?
That was his Max.
He nodded and steepled his fingers in front of him as that savage, pent-up part of him suddenly woke and prowled inside, responding to the similar spirit—that matching mix of reckless nerve and desire so great it bordered on greed—in her.
He settled back in his chair, aiming for the capable calm he wore like armor everyday at his desk, even though his heart pounded and his lust raced. “What kind of deal did you have in mind?” His tone was clipped and toneless, giving away nothing.
She spun on her heels, walking away from him. And, though he yearned to pull her back to him, pull her under him—where she belonged—he let her walk away, steeling himself in his seat. Holding fiercely to the cool civility their game required, he reminded himself that a good opponent never struck this early in play.
She smiled as if she saw it. Saw his struggle. And approved.
That shouldn’t have pleased him so much. He’d never much cared about others’ approval or acceptance before. But Max’s acceptance—her understanding of all that he was—was important, if only because it wasn’t easily won.
“You like to look.” She turned around slowly, letting her suit jacket slide down her shoulders. She grinned when his eyes instinctively traced the sweep of her shoulders before watching the cloth flutter down her lushly curved body to the floor.
Fighting to not match her satisfied smirk, he caught her slight shiver while his gaze travelled back up her body, stroking up the length of her legs, the curve of her hips, the dip of her waist, the fullness of her breasts.
His gaze stuck on her pale, vulnerable throat. She swallowed hard and waited until his burning eyes met hers again. “Wanna see more?” she asked, her voice a low, if a bit shaky, tease.
Hell yes.
He nodded, the movement slow and deliberate. A strained effort to move without leaping. To accept without taking. To let her set the pace. “Show me.”
Max’s expression brightened. “Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “You want a peek,” she said, unhooking the top hook of her underbust vest, causing the tight material to gape, “you’ll have to give me something in return.”
“I’m guessing it’ll cost me more than a piece of paper this time.” His eyes zeroed in on the flash of flesh she’d revealed, imagining more. He gripped the chair’s armrests, his hold a surer restraint than the cuffs had been. His fingers dug into the padded wood.
She walked closer, the sound of her stilettos clicking on the tile ringing in the room. She let another hook slip. “Favors,” she said simply, walking around him out of his line of sight. He should have turned. It made him feel too much like prey to have her stalk unseen behind him.
But he couldn’t let go of the chair. Not without grabbing her. Not without ending their game before it had even begun.
So he sat stiffly when she lay her hands on his shoulders and bent down to whisper in his ear, “I’ll take off one item of clothing for every favor you fulfill.”
The lawyer took a deep breath and considered her bargain, feeling the tilt of power shift.
Feeling their roles reverse.
It was a strange feeling. He wasn’t a man used to giving up power, to giving up control. But, like he’d told her, Max was worth the effort.
And, if he admitted it, there was something tempting about letting her take the reins. About seeing, given the chance and the choice, where she would go. What she would do. What she would take.
“Do you agree?” She came around to face him again, her cocky gaze assured. Almost. A flicker of worry flashed in her eyes, giving away how much she wanted this.
Odd as it felt, so did he.
“I have a stipulation.” He eyed her shrewdly. “I get to decide the item of clothing.” He’d make her deal, but he’d make sure it was a good one for him too.
She made a great show of considering it before nodding, like he knew she would. “Agreed.”
“So,” he asked, more than ready for their game, “what’s your first request?”
She stood back and smiled, so sure and smug that he really ought to have seen it coming. “Strip.”
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