Unless he had the right Mistress to lead the way.
Damn it all, she was getting wet.
“Five grand?” she snapped.
Aryas pressed his lips together and she was too peeved to get more peeved that he did it to suppress his amusement.
He unpressed them to confirm, “Five grand. But Leenie, babe, just to get it straight, he walks away from you at first meet, we’re even. It’s only if you get a crack at him the bet is on.”
She lifted her nose at the same time she snatched the paper from his hand, declaring, “He won’t walk away.”
“He might,” Aryas said gently, and his sudden loss of humor and careful tone made her focus on him again. “Beware of that. He’s done it before. In some ways, he doesn’t give a shit about anything. In some ways, he can be frustratingly choosy.”
“If I want him, he walks away, I’ll still get him,” she announced.
Aryas stared at her, a light in the backs of his eyes gleaming.
“You and Sixx and our Leigh. You beauties love your challenges,” he finally muttered.
She leaned forward, slapped the paper down on the desk and grabbed a pen lying close. She set her drink on a coaster, and not reading a word of it, she signed the paper, snatched it up, as well as her coffee, sat back and crossed her legs like she was spending all day in his office.
She turned back to Aryas, offering the agreement to him.
“I want a copy of that,” she demanded.
“I’ll get on that right away,” he replied, his words shaking with humor, his generous lips surrounded by his thick, black beard tipped up.
Aryas took the paper, got up and walked out of the office, likely to find a copy machine, because it was doubtful the man had ever done his own copying.
When he was gone, Evangeline hauled in a deep breath before she took another long sip of her coffee and wondered what the heck she’d just done.
three
Fun and Done
EVANGELINE
“Okay, just as long as you don’t mind I’m only on chapter three of the book,” Evangeline said in her car, hesitantly.
“My darling, if you’re back at our book club, you can set fire to the book, we girls won’t care,” Amélie replied.
Evangeline felt warmth fill her chest.
Even so.
“Leigh, I—”
“Don’t, chérie,” Leigh interrupted her, hearing the tone of her voice, and as a talented Dominatrix, but mostly as a friend, Leigh read it even over a speakerphone in a car. “We take up where we left off. You must know all of us understand.”
“Thank you,” Evangeline replied quietly.
“Please, don’t say that. There’s enough gratitude everywhere. It doesn’t need to be verbalized. You’re feeling it, and we are too, now that you’re back. Just show up at Romy’s and again we’re a big happy family.”
Emotion overwhelmed her, which probably wasn’t good, considering she was on her way to the Honey to meet Branch, Aryas’s “guy” (she’d been let in on his name, only the first one, after Aryas had given her a copy of the NDA, something she’d eventually read, which she knew from all the legalese she had to go over with her work was exhaustive and ironclad).
However, Amélie had phoned her on the way there to follow up on the text Evangeline had sent sharing she was coming to the book club meeting the next evening, even though she probably wouldn’t finish the book.
Evangeline had missed enough calls from her friend (“missing” meaning she’d avoided them by not answering). That was done. She’d taken the coward’s way out, texting in the first place.
It was time to be a big girl.
In a number of ways.
She pulled herself together and said, “Okay. Agreed. One big happy family. I’ll call Romy to see if she wants me to bring anything and I’ll see you tomorrow night at seven.”
“Can’t wait, darling.”
“Me either, honey.”
“Until then,” Leigh bid as farewell.
“Yes, until then. ’Bye, Leigh.”
“Goodbye, Leenie.”
She drew in breath, heard the disconnect and focused on what was to come.
She had a clear slate, no meetings, no showings, no work, not for the next three hours.
If this guy struck her fancy, she had a small bag of goodies sitting next to her on the seat that would be used for the first time in nearly a year.
And the dratted part of it was, she was looking forward to it.
She didn’t want to be. She wanted to be able to tell herself by showing herself that she could move on from this. She could live this part of herself in her mind with a toy in her hand and be good with that.
She’d taken that risk, thinking she’d had it all with Kevin, a sub who could also be the man in her life. Take out the garbage (which he did, though with some coaxing). Set up appointments to have her tires rotated (which he did, with no coaxing). And get in her face about keeping it because apparently tire rotation and anything to do with a car was the end-all, be-all of living an ordered life.
They’d been talking about moving in together.
Now, okay, in thinking on it (almost nonstop) the last couple of days, maybe it was extreme and perhaps even ridiculous to say she’d never have another man in her life.
And in the last couple of days Evangeline had given in to those thoughts and she’d found she was okay with moving on with that in her head, and maybe in her life.
But more, she’d come to understand that Kevin was screwed up. That was abundantly clear. And to allow whatever was twisted in his head to twist her life so she didn’t find some kind of happiness with a man in it was weak and just plain wrong.
But the man she might find might be into a little bit of kinky. A little bit of fun. A little bit of different.
And she hoped he was.
But she wouldn’t count on it and she wouldn’t look for it.
If he wasn’t, she’d settle for vanilla.
And find a waterproof vibrator so she could have her fantasy life in the shower.
Yes, with all the thinking she’d done the last couple of days, she decided she may have a go again at finding someone, but she was firm that someone wasn’t going to be in the life.
Maybe that was extreme too.
But when your man slams you into a wall, cracking your head against it so stars explode in your eyes as pain sears through your skull, and then smashes his fist in your face repeatedly, and his (thankfully bare) foot in your stomach (and face), Evangeline felt it was okay if she shied away from opening herself up to that kind of relationship again.
She knew she wasn’t screwed up. She’d been intrigued by the life since she was fifteen, when she found her mother’s copy of Goodbye, Janette, read it on the sly and she just knew. Who she was. How she was. What she wanted.
Seeing as her mom had that book and read it openly in the house, it never occurred to Evangeline that what was in it and what it made her feel might not be “right” or “normal.” It was just what it made her feel, and from the time she could, she sought out more of it.
That didn’t mean everyone in the life was like her, like Amélie, Aryas, Damian.
Sure, it could be said that men out in the mundane world could have triggers to trip where they’d lose their minds.
But it wouldn’t be her tripping those triggers. It wouldn’t be her holding that guilt she’d led someone she loved to a dark place.
Amélie had told her that it had taken less than five minutes for Aryas’s men to break into that playroom.
And in that time, Kevin had broken her nose, cracked four of her ribs, and both of her eyes had been swollen shut for over twenty-four hours (she hadn’t been able to see out of the left one for three days because it took that long for the swelling to go down). She’d also had a fractured cheekbone and a mild concussion.
All this damage in five minutes because she’d flipped a switch that she should have seen, not as a girlfriend, but as a Mistress, she shouldn’t have flipped.
Meeting Aryas’s “guy” and having a little fun with a man that she knew would be nothing but fun, as well as her type, because Aryas wouldn’t offer up anything else for her …