Show Me, Sir - Chapter Four

 

Check out all the chapters by clicking HER(fix)E

CHAPTER FOUR: WHAT YOU SEE

He smiled.

Max was angry, he could tell.

Good.

But, before she could blast him with her temper, his phone rang. Amused at fate’s impeccable timing, he held up a finger for her to wait and answered his phone.

She balled her fists at her sides, silently stewing.

“Sir,” he heard his assistant, Elin Hwa, say through the phone’s speaker, “I just received a call from the private eye we put on Mr. Wayne.”

Unfazed by the odd-hour call, he said, “Did Marcus get the shots?” Grateful for Peter’s recommendation for the detective from Ramirez Investigations, he was eager to know what the resourceful man had found out.

“Yes, sir,” Elin answered. “Mr. Wayne and a hired girl were spotted entering and leaving the hotel.”

He smiled and shook his head as he thought of the smug restaurateur who’d been trying to intimidate his client for weeks now. He’d like to see how Wayne liked being the one threatened and browbeaten into submission for a change.

“Mr. Ramirez assures me that the photos are definitely incriminating,” she continued. “If and when Mr. Wayne files for an injunction for the construction of Ms. Hannings’s boutique, he can’t claim it damages community morality. Not without calling his own integrity into question.”

And wouldn’t that just ruin Wayne’s chances of being ordained deacon in his church next year.

“Good job.” He nodded. “Tell Marcus to send the photos to the office and to my phone—I want to see them now. Then let Hallie know I’ll call her in...” he checked his watch, knowing the night-owl seamstress would be up, “an hour.”

“Yes, sir,” his ever-efficient assistant said before she hung up.

That done, he hung up as well, tucking the phone back into his jacket’s inside pocket before turning to Max again. “Follow me,” he said when she opened her mouth.

He swept her out of his office and back into the club. Passing the bar, he grabbed two bottles of water out from the fridge before moving on through the noisy space.

He knew about her rule not to drink anything inside Donovan’s and the unfounded fear behind it—as well as Max’s constant advice to Kat to do the same.

And it wasn’t as if he thought it was a bad rule. It was logical and smart in today’s age of date rape drugs. And every woman had a right to protect herself however she felt she had to, just like everyone else. And, as a cautious man himself, he respected Max’s right, as well as her ability, to take care of herself.

But there was caution and there was overkill. From what Kat had told him, there was something more to her rule than safety. In tone and words, Max’s message had morphed from their time in college, from the idea that you could never really know who to trust to an assumption of outright guilt. It’d become less about cautioning that someone could slip something into your drink to a presumption that, if you let them, they would.

And Kat couldn’t help but notice that the timing of the switch coincided with her coming out to her friend about her kinks. It had, at least from her friend’s perspective, become less about protection and more about prejudice.

So, yes, it seemed important to break that rule, to crack the overblown distrust Max was determined to keep.

Handing her a bottle, he leaned against the bar and simply looked at her.

The woman was lovely. Small, but well-built. Curvy. Lush. His gaze settled on her dress’s sweeping neckline. Stacked. The woman had amazing breasts. With weighty hips to match.

Naked, she would look decadent. She had pale white skin like sculpted sugar. Her beautiful body was held hard and crystalline. He could just imagine how sweetly she would melt under his touch and tongue. The taste of her would stick and linger in the senses. Raising the bottle to take a drink, he looked into eyes rich and indulgent like wine-infused chocolate. “Cheers.”

She gazed at him warily as he swallowed, her dark eyes narrowing at his dare, before breaking open the bottle cap’s seal. Bringing the water to her red-painted, pursed lips, she took a sip. The sight was both sweet and tart. “There.” Her voice snapped with sass. Her kiss, he would bet, had bite. “Satisfied?”

Quite.

He tipped his bottle, clinking the plastic in a smirking salute. A toast. A time-honored tradition to new beginnings and new experiences.

He took her arm when she began to head into the swaying crowd, halting her. Pulling her away from the moving mass, he shook his head. Instead, he led her down a shadowed, hidden hallway. He had no plans to take her back into Donovan’s proper.

Tonight was not the time for proper.

No, Max Wells had quite enough propriety in her life already.

He knew Max. Knew of her, anyway. Had heard of her even before Kat had petitioned for her membership. Hers was a name to know within their local professional circles, as well as their shared social ones. She was a shark in the waters of the adult services industry. She’d made early partnership in the beginning of this year at her publishing house by being headstrong, tenacious, and broadminded.

In a few short years at Elysia, she’d managed to change the way they did erotic literature. Scrutinizing their standards, she’d combined solid, structured stories and straight-up, no-holds smut. She’d also culled outdated tropes that strangled the genre like traps. Gone were the glossy covers of half-naked, over-muscled men. Gone were the cheesy, tongue-in-cheek titles. And, more than anything, gone were the stories of damsels in distress saved by big, brawny, conquering heroes.

Tired of a genre that refused to grow with the world modern women were paving for themselves, she was determined to offer the high-class, adult answer to the girl-power movement.

Max Wells had one-hundred-percent committed herself to fulfilling the PC fantasies of feminists. Filled with fierce, more diverse protagonists who owned and wielded their femininity and sexuality with impunity, conquering not only the worlds they lived in but the men and women within them. Repackaged and re-branded, Elysia Publishing was determined to turn high-end, empowered erotica into the literate woman’s required reading.

And, all in all, he respected her for it. He, better than most, knew the Herculean task it took to turn trash into treasure.

He supposed that was why he was taking her up the elevator to the executive floor that housed a suite of offices and private rooms. And an exclusive balcony that ran all along the outer walls of the club that few members outside the original founders ever had access to.

It took cunning, dedication, and an open mind to do what she had done. And Max Wells had all those qualities in spades.

But, he knew, after talking to Kat and Peter, and now to Max herself, that she’d closed her mind to this world. His world. It was a part of her friend—of, he suspected, herself—that she refused to understand.

Such a pity, he thought.

It would have been one thing had Max’s interests simply not included kink, if her tastes had lain in other directions. But he didn’t think that was the case.

No, Max was obsessed with kink. Ever since Kat came out to her, Max couldn’t stop thinking about it, learning about it. But in the absolute worst of ways. She was far too content to wade in the most dismissive stereotypes and misconceptions.

According to Kat, Max had read all about it in news and opinion articles and peered at it through the screen of so-called documentaries that sought to uncover the dangers and pitfalls of the lifestyle by talking about the topic without ever actually talking to the people who lived it. She’d done her one-sided research that only confirmed her worst fears. She’d filled her head with all this information yet refused to look at her subject too closely. Instead, she chose to blind herself to the truth and possibilities held here.

It’s time to open her eyes, he thought as he led her down the balustrade high over the club’s din.

Donovan’s, when renovated, had been designed to be the largest adult playhouse on the west coast, a sumptuous den catering to every whim and fetish its clientèle could imagine. And, from overhead, one could take an incredible tour on the private walkway. From above, one could look deep down into the dark shadows of humanity’s sexual subconscious.

“Oh God,” he heard Max murmur when they passed the cabaret stage show. She studied the barely-clad men and women performing perfectly choreographed karma sutra acrobatics for a costume-clad crowd. He tugged her elbow, keen to keep her moving.

Though he walked in front of her in the narrow walkway, his mind was acutely tuned in to her every reaction as they passed dungeons and playrooms. He listened to her giggle a bit as she watched partners in a black-lit room finger-paint on and peel liquid latex off each other’s shadowed bodies. He suppressed his own chuckle at her gasp when they passed a mat-covered room full of heroically nude men wrestling like—and less like—true Olympians. But he didn’t stop until they’d reached a small room at the far corner of the club.

“Why are we stopping?” she asked when he took their waters and set them off to the side.

Though this was his request—one she was grudgingly complying with—he thought of this as giving her a gift. Standing straight again, he waved an arm out. “Look.”

He watched her lean over the railing, her full, curving hips pressing into the hard wood of the ledge. “What am I looking at?” She blinked and squinted her eyes into focus. “Is that a mirrored room?”

“Four large one-way mirrors.” He came up behind her to whisper in her ear. She jumped a bit, her back straightening. He smiled at her skittishness. He knew she wasn’t used to men who pushed, men who ignored—scaled and stormed—her carefully erected barriers.

He stared at the tempting patch of skin between her shoulder blades, revealed by the back of her dress as she leaned further over the rail. “See the crowd gathering outside the room.” He leaned a bit closer to point. This close, he could smell her, warm and womanly. And, if he wasn’t mistaken, her scent held the hint and heat of welcome. “They can see in, but those in the room can’t see out.”

“A voyeuristic marvel,” she commented flatly, though her eyes sparked with that carefully contained fire. The woman liked to watch, whatever she told herself. He was stilling a smile when he heard her ask, “But why are we here?”

“Look,” he said again, “closely.”

———

“Oh my God.” Max covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “Is that Kat?”

“And Peter,” the man who she absolutely refused to call Sir added.

Oh God! She should turn away. She shouldn’t watch this. But, try as she might, Max just couldn’t look away.

At the center of the mirrored room, surrounded by reflected images of herself, was Kat. She was naked except for a green plaid schoolgirl skirt, knee-high white socks, and bitch-black, fuck-me pumps. Looking stronger, more in-control, than she’d ever seen her friend, Kat laughed as she flung a starched, white, button-up shirt across the room.

Max gasped. “What is she doing here?”

Though the answer to her question was plainly obvious.

Her friend reached up to let the long, bound mass of her hair tumble down her back. The look of pure hunger on Peter’s grinning face, while he watched the silken strands fall, shot through Max, even from her far-up distance. His raw desire was carnal, all-consuming, and all too clear. But there was something else there too.

Max, like everyone else, had seen her share of porn, but she’d never seen sex like this. Out in the open. Unashamed. It, unlike most of the porn she’d seen in her life, felt like what she dedicated her career to produce.

A celebration of sex. Real, honest, and hot as hell.

“It’s a Friday night.” The calm, collected man shrugged. “Date night.”

Max turned to stare at him incredulously. Whose idea of a date was this?

“They’re both regulars,” he informed her. “Peter’s been coming to Donovan’s—the real Donovan’s—since it was just a handful of friends playing in the basement of a bar.” His hand gently cupped the smooth, exposed curve of her shoulder, steering her attention back toward the room, before removing his hand. “When we finally came out of the basement,” he continued, even as her mind lingered on the ghost of that brief touch, “they were some of our first members. They’re here most weekends in one room or another. When I was informed you’d arrived here tonight, I had someone track them down.”

“Do they know I’m here?” Max felt worry wiggle within her though she couldn’t exactly pinpoint why. How could they know? She hadn’t told anyone she was coming tonight. In fact, she and Kat had picked a day next week for them all to come.

And, for that matter, she wondered, would it make a difference if they did know?

“No,” he replied. “But I was warned, several times, by both Kat and Peter, that you might show up early and alone despite the guidelines.”

Yeah, her friend knew her well.

And, now, so did Peter.

And this man.

Too well.

“So you’ve just been waiting and watching for me for days now?” Her membership papers had been mailed to her a little under a week ago. And, though again she couldn’t quite understand why, she’d itched to use them. She couldn’t explain the anxious anticipation that had burned through her all week or the strange satisfaction she’d felt flashing that neon pass tonight at Donovan’s door.

A part of her—a big one—didn’t want to try.

Surely, it was just intellectual curiosity. The professional study of a novelty. It was nothing more than a desire to look this world in the face and see it for what she’d known it was all along.

Then why did she feel like there was something else at play here? As if a part of her wanted to know why so many people—smart, relatively normal people like Kat—were drawn to this. Why they needed this. It was a question that, for all her study on the topic, she didn’t have a good answer for. And, as she’d slipped on her bracelet tonight, she’d wondered if she’d find her answer here.

“Yes,” the man answered simply, “I’ve had security keep an eye out for you.”

“Why?” Honest curiosity reflexively softened her voice.

His face flirted with the slightest frown before settling again into tranquility. “You interest me.”

She interested him?

She interested him? What the hell did that mean? Surely, it didn’t mean that he was interested in her. No, she was sure that, if he’d meant that, he was the kind of man who would have said so. No, this was a man who was precise and exact with his words.

Then what had he meant?

But, before she could ask for clarification, he backed away a step. Giving her a nudge, he nodded. “Enough questions for now. Watch.”

Not sure she wanted to push the issue, she let it drop, turning back to the room when Peter patted his lap, urging Kat to him. “Come here, Katherina,” Max heard Peter’s voice boom, the sound echoing off the walls up into the opened space overhead.

She watched her friend’s eyes—nervous with a titillated sheen—flit around the mirrored walls.

“Katherina,” Peter ordered again, making Kat visibly jump.

Max gripped the smooth, shined wood rail hard in her fists as she watched her friend step forward, her eyes still on the room’s reflective walls.

Kat climbed up onto the bench’s smooth, sleek surface, so she straddled the rough material covering Peter’s lap. Max heard—felt—the lawyer whisper in her ear. “Kat enjoys this room best.” The smooth sound of his voice and the softly scratching material of his suit that brushed the exposed skin at her back made her jerk. “Naturally on the shy side, the appeal of unknowingly being watched appeals to her, I think. The idea of strangers watching her is as attractive as it is terrifying. This allows her the thrill while maintaining a certain amount of modesty.”

Max stiffened and raised an offended eyebrow. “What makes you think Kat’s shy?”

He lifted his own brow back at her. “You think she’s not?” He shrugged. “I mean, she’s certainly come out of her shell a lot since I first met her but, even so, she’s hardly gregarious.”

“That’s true.” She shook her head and shrugged. “I guess I’m just so used to people taking one look at her and assuming things that aren’t necessarily true and certainly aren’t any of their business.” She’d seen too many people take advantage of her friend that way. By seeing her as prey ready for the taking.

The man just nodded. “Because she’s Asian?”

Her lips thinned.

“Max, I’m Asian,” he pointed out “It’s not as if I’m not fully aware what the stereotypes are. Or how inaccurate they can be.”

Max shook her head. “Some of the worst offenders have been people of her own race.” Of her own family, who thought her too weak, too naive, too helpless to make her own decisions. Max remembered the number of relatives—older, more conservative ones—who’d refused to come to her wedding to Peter, because he was white and they didn’t approve. And, sure, it wasn’t as if she really approved of their marriage either, but not because of that.

“True enough.” The man nodded. “Let’s just say that I realize her shyness, while just as innate as her race, is not because of her race. Any more than my own would be. After all, I can’t think of anyone who would think of me as shy.”

She snorted. Certainly not. Sly, maybe, but never shy.

“But it’s inevitable that we all fall into some stereotype or another,” he said, leaning back against the railing. He shrugged again. “I received excellent grades in school and I cannot be trusted, but I hardly think the way I look or where my family came from has anything to do with that.”

She narrowed her gaze at him. Did he just say he can’t be trusted? Was he kidding? That felt vaguely racist. Calling to mind orientalism at its worst, with horrifically offensive World War II propaganda cartoons of Japanese soldiers or bad 90s’ action movie villains.

Which she supposed was his point. It was racist to assume that he must be a certain way because of his race. But it was just as racist to dictate that he couldn’t be or had some kind of responsibility to not be a certain way because of it too. He was who he was—unapologetically—and his race was just a part of that. Not the cause and certainly not the whole.

He was…interesting, to say the least.

She turned to really look at him, bit her lip, and tried to figure out if there was a polite way to ask him what she was dying to know. “Yet you play into the stereotypes.” She gestured to him. From the bleached, tied-back hair to his contact-colored eyes. Even to the suit in a kink club. He looked like a freakin' Bond villain. “You’re hardly discouraging the idea that Asian people aren’t what we see in anime and movies.”

He shrugged. "Depends on the movies and media you're watching."

She supposed. There was plenty of media that portrayed Asian men as awkward, desexualized, effeminate men. And, Lord knew, no one would ever attribute any of those words to this man. This man exuded masculine sensuality. Maybe not in a mainstream way, but in a way that Max couldn't deny.

Much as might she want to.

He smiled knowingly. “People will think what they want to think. They did so long before I changed my appearance. At least, now, I have a little more say in exactly which stereotypes they see when they look at me.”

She let out a laugh, more than a little impressed. He’d had to deal with people’s prejudices all his life and had figured out a way to make them work in his favor. A literal self-made man.

Yeah, she could see the appeal behind that.

“Okay,” she said, leaning in a little to touch the ends of his ponytail, “so why this look in particular?” Narrowing her gaze at the look of discomfort on his face, she wondered, “Why blond?” It, like his colored contacts, was such an odd choice with his skin tone and ethnicity. So blatantly, in-your-face fake. “Just wanted to have more fun?”

He blinked and turned his head, so his hair flicked out of her hands. “If I were a woman,” he said casually with a shrug, “would you even ask me that question?”

She wouldn’t. Max pursed her lips and nodded concedingly. If he were a woman, changing and playing around with hair color, eye color, clothing, all of that would be just another thing Max would have taken for granted. It would have been her right and privilege. By today’s enlightened standards, a woman’s body was her own; she could do whatever she liked with it. And Max would fight for that right without question and with a ferocity that couldn’t be contained.

Did the rules really change because he was a man?

Not knowing quite what to say next, she turned back to the mirrored room. Unknown to the couple within the room, a crowd of people gathered to watch. Feeling a part of them despite the distance, Max watched too as her friend hid her flushed face against Peter’s shoulder. He ran his hand up and down the smooth skin of her thighs. Her friend’s legs quivered beneath his touch when, with each pass, his hand drifted higher and higher. Max’s breath caught with anticipation when his hand coasted along the smooth expanse of Kat’s flesh beneath her skirt.

Then, without warning, Peter flipped her skirt up high.

The crowd gathered closer to the window. Even Max felt herself lean further off the rail.

Panty-less, Kat’s firm, round behind was exposed as Peter tucked the hem of her skirt into the waistband, holding the pleated fabric in place. Max and Kat gasped at the same time when Peter’s hand brushed across barely visible, red marks crisscrossing along the revealed skin.

Max should have been horrified—really tried to be at the evidence of Peter’s abuse. But, instead, she found herself panting softly, her breaths hot and heavy through parted lips, her eyes drawn to Kat’s lustful reaction to his touch. She shivered when her friend arched into Peter’s sweet, adoring, almost worshipful caress. As if that simple touch alone was an untold privilege and pleasure for them both.

Max wondered if she’d ever been touched like that before. Had John or Nick or Rob ever adored or worshiped her body like that? Would she have even allowed it—allowed a man to glorify and sexualize her body like that—if they had?

She frowned.

Was that the answer? Was that the appeal? To be touched and loved like that, did a woman have to give up her principles? And was it worth it to lose herself just to gain this?

“Bend,” she distantly heard Peter tell Kat. “Lean into me.” His voice was a gravelly rasp in her ear. “So they can see you properly.”

With a shudder, Kat did, allowing the barest hint of her naked sex to peek out between her thighs.

“That’s enough.” Peter stilled Kat’s motions, holding her in place with an arm wrapped firmly around her waist. “Just enough for them to see how wet you are,” he said against Kat’s neck. Then his arm slid down around her ass and dipped between those taut cheeks to touch her slick labia. “How hot that pretty pussy gets for me.”

Again, the crowd tittered while they watched, studying Kat and Peter like art connoisseurs at a gallery show. A tall woman with Windsor glasses perched low on her nose stepped up to the glass, tracing a finger along the smooth surface while she commented softly to her companion, touching the glass gently as if she were touching Kat. A man in machinist goggles and chain-draped, skin-tight lycra intently stalked the windowed walls determined to examine the scene from all angles as a blond Lolita in pigtails and a baby-blue baby-doll dress knelt expectantly at the glass, peering in with her palms pressed against the pane.

Max watched Peter’s other hand move to Kat’s waist, urging her to sway to the throbbing, pulsing music that piped in throughout the whole club. “I want them to see how damn sexy you are.” He ground her hips against him, his breathing growing harsh and heavy. “You want to show them too, don’t you, love?”

Max was embarrassed for her friend. Exposed as she was, Kat was vulnerable in a way Max had never known. In a way she didn’t think she wanted to know.

But Kat didn’t look embarrassed. She looked excited.

“Yes.” Kat groaned and her hips began to move on their own, with Peter’s hand no longer controlling but simply holding onto her undulating body. “Yes.”

“What do you want to show them?”

Max wondered that as well. It was clear—frankly, more clear than Max was comfortable with—that Kat wanted this; Max still didn’t understand why.

“How I move.” Her back arched rhythmically in time to the beat. “How my slippery body can slide,” she said, her breath catching on the words, “and glide against yours. How mine was made to move over yours.” Her hands came up to bury needy fingers into his hair before she pulled herself close until her lips barely brushed against his. “How hot it makes me and,” she purred as she sunk her weight down, pushing her gyrating hips down onto his, “how hot it makes you.”

“Yes,” he ground out. He leaned forward to kiss her.

But she moved back with a coy smile that had him snarling hungrily. Leaning back, she laid her hands on his knees so her back arched, thrusting her small breasts high, her hard nipples jutting. With a grin of his own, Peter grabbed her hips in both hands, pulling her forward so he could thrust his hips up against her. She threw her head back and gasped with almost painful ecstasy.

“Turn, Kat.” Peter grunted. “Turn around so I can get at that sweet ass of yours.”

Max inhaled sharply and turned her face when her friend did as she was bid. Max may be willing to watch her friend give a rather explicit lap dance to her husband, but she drew the line at watching them fuck.

But, when she turned, she was startled to see the lawyer standing behind her, staring at her as he leaned against the balustrade. Faced with him while he studied her silently, her cheeks felt flushed. In fact, her whole body felt warm. Too warm. Hot, really.

“Enjoy the show?” He handed her the water bottle again, his eyebrow cocked at an almost arrogant slant.

“No.” She snatched back the bottle from him before brushing her hands over the front of her dress that was now obviously and obscenely wrinkled from hanging off the banister edge.

A smug smirk spread across the lawyer’s face. Cocky prick.

She turned away from him in the direction of where they’d come. “Was that all you wanted to show me?” She unscrewed the water’s cap. Damn, she needed a drink. A real drink; one with a hell of a bigger kick than water, but she’d settle for this. For now.

So it’d been arousing. So watching that little scene had been a turn on. So what? As with most things that weren’t good for people, just because she wanted it didn’t mean she should.

Taking a swig, disappointed when it didn’t quench the thirst inside her, she turned on the man again. “Well?” she asked. “What was this all about? Why bring me here?”

“To look,” he said with a nod. “To see.”

Tired of his cryptic crap, she rolled her eyes. “Okay, I’ll bite.” The twitch of his lips made her regret her words. “See what?” she asked before he could make some kind of cheesy kinky biting joke.

“Turn around,” he requested.

“No thanks.” She gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’ve watched enough.” As it was, she didn’t think she’d ever get the image of Kat and Peter together out of her head.

“Please.” The word, said so plainly, didn’t sound quite like an appeal but still wasn’t exactly an order.

“Why?” she argued, standing her ground.

“I want to know what you see when you look at them.”

Max scoffed. “I don’t need to turn around to tell you that,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I see. I see my friend being exploited, used like some sex worker by her husband,” she spat at him over her shoulder, “at a club that uses contractual coercion with pride.”

She sighed and shook her head. So this was what all the fuss was about. This was what had Kat coming back again and again. To Peter. To this place. She’d play some submissive role, be someone’s plaything, to feel cherished and desired.

If Max were honest, she could almost understood the appeal. It was tempting to be wanted like that. To have someone look at you the way Peter looked at Kat. It was the perverted promise old-school fairytales and romance novels fed to women. Fit the man-made definition of a woman well enough—be the fulfillment of his every want and need—and he’ll be yours forever. All that was required to gain a good man was to sacrifice yourself.

And that price, for Max, was too much. No matter how attractive it looked—how, for a brief moment, it’d preyed on the lonely places of her heart—it was still something she wouldn’t be willing to pay.

She heard him sigh, the sound full of disappointment. “Look closer.” But when she didn’t move, he huffed. “Ignore the crowd. Ignore the club and the room. Look at Peter.” He reached out to grasp her shoulders and turn her. He leaned in close to her ear. “Look at Kat.”

Max humphed, her lips pursed. Fine. Rolling her eyes, she looked.

She sucked in a breath.

The sight of Kat upon Peter’s lap, riding him with a fierce lust, was shocking. Her hands clutched his knees as she threw her head back, resting its crown on the sturdy altar of his strong shoulder. Her mouth opened wide on an ecstatic cry and her eyelids fluttered wildly as her climax hit her in waves. A deep flush colored her dark skin, damask rose blooming beneath sweat-soaked flesh.

As her pleasure passed, her tense, tightly held face smoothed into serenity, into a perfect bliss. Then her taut body fell slack, her limp limbs losing their strength while her lungs fought for breath. “My God,” Kat whispered huskily, the benediction slipping weak but sweet from her hoarse throat.

Max watched strong arms wrap around Kat’s waist, holding her up. Gently, so gently, Peter lifted Kat’s weak form, turning her around to face him. Pulling her close on his lap, he wrapped her legs bonelessly around his waist as she slid her arms around his neck.

Leaning in to brush the hair off her face, Peter kissed her forehead, her cheek, her chin, her lips while he shielded her nudity from the unseen crowd that still watched behind their windowed wall. “Mine,” he murmured against her ear. The word was both soft and unyielding—at once, domineering and true. “Mine.”

Behind her, Max felt the man let his hands drift down her arms as his breath blew softly over her cheek. “What do you see?”

Love.

That was what she saw when she looked at them, now that the ravaging lust had waned. It was in every look, every touch, every whispered word that passed between Kat and Peter.

Kat was in love with Peter—beyond games and roles, beyond rules and reason—and he was in love with her. It may not make sense to Max. May not make sense in the real world. But, here within the walls of Donovan’s, within those four mirrored walls, it made perfect sense.

Looking at Kat now, it didn’t seem like a sacrifice. Didn’t feel like a price to be paid. Even though Max was sure—everything she’d ever believed convinced her—that a love like that must come at a cost. She couldn’t understand how it couldn’t. In her mind, she could still see the marks—the evidence—of what Peter had done to her friend. None of it made sense, leaving her with more, not less, questions than before.

She shut her eyes and shook her head. She turned to face him, shoving him back with one hand. “There, I did what you asked; I came, I drank, I saw. Can I have my file now?”

He sighed, still disappointed. She tensed, wondering if he’d keep his word.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out her file, the folder bent and creased. He held it out to her.

Good.

She took it. “What about the digital files?”

“Excuse me?” He raised an eyebrow.

She tucked the folder under her arm. “Most of the forms I filled out were online and I assume the rest were scanned into your system.” She straightened her spine. “I’d like those as well.”

He shook his head. “Our agreement was for that file,” he said, pointing to it. “You have it as requested.”

He was kidding, right? Her jaw tightened “I was referring to all my records.” And he knew it. “This one paper copy is meaningless if you can print and distribute endless copies from the digital one.”

“We’d never do that.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Your information is safe with us.”

“I’d feel safer if it was with me.” She fought the urge to scream. “Besides, I’ve earned it. I did what you asked.”

“For the file now in your possession. And I gave that to you, as agreed."

She gave a derisive scoff. Yep. She was going to scream.  A terrible thought suddenly struck her. Frowning, she opened the file. Snapping her accusatory gaze up at him, she spat at him. "These are copies!"

He shrugged. "Noticed that, did you?"

She stared at the plainly photocopied paper. "Give me my original file and the digital file."

He shook his head. "You never mentioned anything about original or digital files until just now.”

She was going to kill him. “You knew what I meant. This goes against the spirit of the arrangement.”

“The spirit? That sounds awfully vague. If that was what you wanted, you should have been more specific.” He shrugged. “Weren’t you the one who said we needed more explicit clarity in negotiations?”

She was going to scream and then she was going to kill him. “And exactly what will that cost me?”

He frowned thoughtfully. “I’ll have to think on that.”

“You need to think about it?”

He nodded. “Yes.” He turned and began walking back, forcing her to follow him again. “I should have an answer for you by Monday.”

Monday! “You’re joking.” She was not going to be held hostage by this man for three days.

He gave her an admonishing look. “Max, you of all people should know that negotiations take time. Your petition process itself took more than a month from start to acceptance; what’s a few more days?”

He was ransoming her reputation; she would not let him get away with that. But she needed time to regroup too. “Fine.” She sneered at him. He had no idea what or with whom he was messing with. “Monday.”

The corners of his thin lips lifted in a far too satisfied smile for such a small gesture. “Until then, Max Wells.” He nodded back “But I want you to do something for me.”

She snorted. “A favor?” Of course. What did he want now? She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her toe. “What do I get in return?”

He laughed, the sound making her smile just a bit too. He stepped closer to her. “All I want is for you to think about what you’ve seen tonight.” He reached out to touch her arm. “Remember the look on Kat’s face. On Peter’s. Think about their touch.”

Gliding lower, his hands gently gripped her wrist—not restraining, but somehow possessive. Though still too shocked to move, she was surprised that she allowed it, that touch that felt too much like owning. “Think on that, until we meet again.”

READCHAPTER FIV(fix)E

 

WANT MORE?

FIND MORE STORIES HERE