Fearless (Elite Doms of Washington Book 5) Read online

  “Nah. It’s part-time. Assisting her with Christiana and Jonathan’s wedding—guests who wouldn’t mind the occasional reference to Accendos. She said her male clients often prefer other men in the room, that it calms their ruffled male egos at having to try on clothes.”

  “So, you like her,” Steffan said.

  “I do. She likes you, too. I think she just doesn’t know what to do with you.”

  “Believe me, the feeling’s mutual.”

  “The three of us could be good together. We could help her. She needs … something. Can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Yes.” Truth.

  “The Tribunal is making a decision about us this afternoon,” Laurent said. “I overheard her talking on her phone.”

  “Eavesdropping? Good man. I’m glad the Tribunal is making a decision. It’s about time.” He instantly got a second wind. “Hey, you get the groceries?” He’d texted Laurent that morning with a long list. His friend needed to stay occupied, and he supposed Sarah was helping him there with this “job.”

  “Yep. We feeding an army?”

  “What do you say to bringing Sarah dinner at Accendos? Interested?”

  “Always interested.”

  He rose. Action, that’s what Steffan needed now. Her recent move had the gears in his brain turning. Time to put the second piece of the puzzle in place. Current wisdom said Dominants attempting to couple would only sentence themselves to a relentless tug-of-war for power. Steffan wasn’t about to be lured into something he couldn’t control, but he also wasn’t one to follow popular dogma that stood in the way of what he wanted.

  He headed to the kitchen. A nice Moroccan stew should do nicely. Exhilaration replaced his earlier fatigue. There was more to life than work, and it was time to stop hesitating. Time to inject himself into the equation.

  19

  “These are for you. From Laurent.” Carrie held out a large glass vase overflowing with classic, red roses as soon as Sarah stepped from the Tribunal Council meeting room.

  “And another one falls,” Derek laughed behind her. “Wait ‘til Steffan does, too.”

  Carson gave a rare chuckle as he strode by. “Two Doms together? I’d have to see that to believe it.”

  “Like I said in the meeting, Steffan and I have played together before,” Sarah said matter-of-factly and pulled out a note tucked between the center blooms. She’d learned from Jonathan, the ex-politician, the surest way to stop gossip was to put the truth out front and center.

  The Club Accendos memberships for Laurent and Steffan had passed unanimously. She had known they would. Their dossier was so thick it made an audible thud when it had hit the table. No one could question their level of experience in the scene—together and apart. She smothered that nip of jealousy—so unlike her—that appeared when Derek had joked about the number of clubs Steffan, in particular, had mesmerized. After all, she’d had plenty of men and on her terms.

  “Can you put these in my room, Carrie?” She plucked one long stem from the center of the bouquet before Carrie spirited it away. She opened the note and stared at the elegant scrawl across the stiff white paper.

  Dungeon after the meeting? It’s not Morocco. It’s better.

  “They’ve been waiting for an hour,” Carrie said over her shoulder.

  She looked up to find herself alone with Alexander, the last to leave the meeting.

  “An hour …” Alexander chuckled. “Good of him to warn you this time.”

  “If this counts as a warning.” She folded the paper and sighed. “Quite presumptuous, don’t you think? Their membership might not have passed.”

  “Yet it did.” He eyed her. “Sarah, you know I don’t tell people what to do in their personal lives.”

  “But?”

  “You may want to test these waters. Steffan is interested in you. Now you need to decide if you’re interested.” He pecked her on the cheek and turned away, ending any more discussion. What would she have said anyway?

  She ran her finger along the edge of the paper. When she pictured Laurent, blood rushed faster in her veins. She did something then she’d refused to allow herself since Steffan had pulled her into that unexpected embrace. She shut her eyes and remembered when she’d first seen his ice blue eyes turn violet in those red lights at Club 501. God help her, desire soared up her torso and cascaded down her spine like lava from a volcano at the thought of reliving that night in London. She placed the rose petals to her nose and turned to the stairs leading to the basement.

  Steffan leaned against the large etching of the dragon in the doorway, its wide wingspan showing on either side of him. Laurent knelt beside him. Muted red light, like that night in Club 501, washed the hallway. She had the odd thought she was viewing a living version of a Thomas Stothard painting. She couldn’t tell if Steffan was the devil from Satan Summoning His Legions, where the stunning blond devil called his followers forth. Or, perhaps he reminded her of the angel in the artist’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, where the shining angel bestowed a smile on the mortals gathered around his feet. From the lopsided grin he wore, he could be assuming either role.

  “We’ve been waiting for you. Brought you dinner.” He lifted a cloth market bag.

  She held up his note. “So you said. What did you bring?” The spicy, savory smell filling the hallway was divine.

  “Moroccan stew. Good dish to help celebrate.” He handed the bag to Laurent.

  “Awfully sure of yourself.”

  He pushed off the wall and shoved both hands in his pockets. “No more games, Sarah. Laurent wants you. I want you. Was it so bad two years ago?”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “So, what do you say? I owe Laurent a reward. Remember?”

  “Sharing a woman. I remember.”

  “And Laurent won’t go in without you.”

  She examined Laurent’s upturned face.

  “You’ve spoiled me for anyone else,” he said.

  Those words were flattering, alluring, and to Sarah, they signaled death. Painful memories of the past lurked like a succubus that could suck her lifeforce. How do you tell someone—two beautiful someones—who’d offered themselves that they shouldn’t have?

  “Whatever is holding you back from taking this gift, let it go.” Steffan’s voice, edged in a mix of compassion and command straightened her spine. She hadn’t lied when she said Steffan was a good Dom. Yet, she didn’t need to be topped. She needed absolution—something that would never come for her.

  He looked up at the ceiling and back at her. “Red lights. Remember?”

  “I remember everything.” That was what made him so dangerous.

  Affection warmed his eyes at her words.

  Well, the man had brought her food—maybe he could exorcize demons for a few moments. She took the bag from Laurent. “How about eating later?”

  She stepped to the dungeon door and placed her hand on the door lever. Turning back now wasn’t possible. She couldn’t resist their allure. Her erect posture sagged for a moment before she re-armed herself and straightened. “I said no promises. Take what I offer and don’t ask me for what I can’t give.” She swung open the door.

  20

  Sarah exuded a devastating self-confidence, but twice now, Steffan had gotten a taunting glimpse at a hole in her otherwise impregnable persona. Something had happened to her which he would uncover—later. For now, she was here. He was justified in pushing. Sarah wasn’t prone to ask for help, and his gut told him she needed it. She needed them. Another pompous thought, but whatever.

  They’d done little talking after they’d first entered the room—a spartan space lined in mirrors with a concrete floor and recessed lights in shades of blue and red. Hard-looking metal grids with various bondage points ranged across its ceiling. She’d called for Carrie who whisked her dinner away, something he’d have to address with her later. Her lack of eating wasn’t healthy. Still, he’d let her set the stage, first by placing Laurent in the center of th
e room, then by waiting for her to choose the type of play they’d engage in. It hadn’t taken her long to choose.

  Laurent, nude, stood under an impressive latticed grid she’d lowered from the ceiling. She circled him. His hair shone a dark purple in the crimson spotlight. His hands curled around one thick chain that hung overhead, and his cock jutted forward in anticipation. She hadn’t bound him, rather instructing him to strip and grasp the fat links. She’d then pinched those nipples between cloverleaf clamps and connected them to the chains overhead. A particularly evil move as they would inflict pain if his chest moved more than an inch or two from his current position.

  “You’ll stay like this, yes?” she’d asked.

  He’d acknowledged her request. Her choice was going to test him. He craved the helplessness of being bound, the utter and complete relinquishment of freedom. To him, to trust someone with his body so completely they could do anything to him, was the ultimate gift he could bestow on a Dominant. When that gift was acknowledged with a smile, a word that showed he or she was pleased, Laurent drifted into a state of pure relaxation. Steffan had watched Laurent succumb to this bliss many times. His near addiction to finding this state almost cost him his life in Amsterdam. He’d done all he could. Now with Sarah’s help, he would learn a new way.

  She ran her fingernails over Laurent’s pecs and down his abdomen. God, he loved watching her stalk her prey—for that’s what she reminded him of, a rare lynx slipping through the bars of red light with claws out to mark her target.

  The first time Steffan saw Sarah, he couldn’t place her age or her nationality. Her beauty was in a class of its own, augmented by an unshakeable sense of self that ran so deep in her she had to have been born with it. He, on the other hand, had scraped together bits and pieces of confidence, laying them like pieces of chain mail until he had enough to deflect even the most outrageous attacks on his ego. In other words, he’d come about his maturity and confidence the usual way. Sarah’s had to have been a gift from the Gods. From the second he’d met her, he’d tacked her image on a mental wall and held up other pictures of women against hers. None of them had measured up.

  She flicked the clamps with her fingernails, and Laurent hissed.

  “Too much?” she asked him.

  “No, Mistress,” he said between gritted teeth.

  “Nicer than clothespins, don’t you think?” she asked him.

  “Yes, Mistress.” His bobbing cock authenticated his response. The pain aroused him.

  She strode back to the table of instruments and chose the largest, black leather paddle. They’d used it on the redhead the night they’d topped together. She handed it to him. “Care to do the honors?”

  Steffan took it without an ounce of hesitation. Laurent had a voracious appetite for impact play. He’d once flogged and whipped Laurent for two hours before Laurent gasped yellow.

  “His dossier says he can come from spanking,” she said.

  Laurent reacted with a feral moan.

  “Also from flogging, and serving a Mistress’s needs between her legs. I’ve seen Laurent eat out a woman dozens of times, his hands manacled behind him so he couldn’t touch himself or her with his come spurting over his belly and her legs.”

  When Laurent’s whimper sounded like a plea, her eyes sprang to him. Her eyelids dropped, and one corner of her mouth tipped as she placed her hands on his pecs. Did the thought of him going down on her make her wet?

  He circled Laurent. The man’s ass clenched as if in readiness for the paddle. Steffan knew it was more likely from his desperation to come. Sarah’s hands on him had to have the same impact as having his cock sucked. He’d known that sure, confident, and at times, compassionate touch of hers. Heady stuff for a Dom and impossibly arousing for a sub like Laurent. Pre-cum leaked from the head of Laurent’s visibly pulsing cock. The man was in a bad way and they’d barely gotten started. Steffan chuckled to himself darkly. He wasn’t any better condition, his cock beginning to ache just from being so near to Sarah.

  Tucking the paddle between his elbow and side, he unbuttoned his shirt, letting the two sides splay open, and rolled up his sleeves.

  A rustle of fabric drew his attention back to Sarah. She stood in a sheer nude thong with her skirt puddled at her feet. A dark trail of wet lined the seam between her legs and damn if his cock didn’t harden further. She unbuttoned that prim, white blouse—the kind that fired the imagination of fifteen-year-old boys with librarian fantasies. God, her dark raspberry nipples were easily visible through a bra made of the same sheer material as her thong. His mouth watered at the thought of how they’d taste. She stepped out of her skirt and reached down for it, not wobbling once in those heels.

  He’d asked her to keep those shoes on while he took her from behind as she lay over his quartz bar top. That memory of being buried between her legs, enjoying her, exploding in her, surfaced so clearly as it had many times over the last two years.

  Her eyes moved to Laurent whose fists clenched around links, his fingers whitening with strain. Her heels clicked against the concrete as she took careful steps toward him. She captured one of his legs between her knees and pressed her crotch into his thigh. “Feel my hot pussy, Laurent? That’s what I might let you have later if you’re a good boy. You did say once you wished to take care of me.”

  That’s all the man needed to hear to go all night, if necessary.

  “It would be my honor, Mistress,” Laurent said, half whisper, half gasp.

  She pushed off him, a smile forming on her face. She turned to him and the woman of endless surprises, surprised him once more. She winked. Steffan stood feet away from someone he desired with unprecedented strength and who turned him away repeatedly. He was here now. He’d make the best of it.

  “Such a beautiful man,” she said under her breath.

  “Told you,” Steffan said. “Falling in love. It’s inevitable.”

  “Me? Or you?”

  My, how quickly she’d entered his brain.

  “We’re Dominants,” he said. “We want it all.”

  She laid a hand across Laurent’s cheek and smiled into his eyes. Laurent tensed from anticipating the endorphins she’d cause, not fear of pain. Laurent flourished by proving he could endure whatever a Dom handed out—another reason Steffan trusted only her with Laurent.

  For a split second, he wrestled with a thought that it was her unshakable adherence to safety that both comforted and irritated him. She shielded herself with protocol. It kept him from cracking her heart. Was that what he wanted to do? Yes. He wanted inside her emotions. He wanted her to lay down her defenses.? As she stood proudly in those heels, her eyes flicking to him as if waiting for his participation, how could he have deluded himself he was only here for Laurent?

  Laurent groaned when she cupped his balls with her other hand. “I’m going to leave this free, Laurent. You are not to come until I say so.”

  “I won’t.”

  Steffan pulled back and landed a crack across his backside.

  “I won’t, Mistress,” he corrected.

  She turned and placed her back against Laurent, capturing his cock between the small of her back and his groin. “Whenever you’re ready, Steffan.”

  Inventive, he thought. Laurent was going to get to feel her body but not have access.

  Steffan pulled back and landed another blow against Laurent’s ass, pitching him into her. He hadn’t used his full force. He didn’t want Laurent to send her flying off her feet and into the mirror. He shouldn’t have bothered to be careful for she had planted her feet wide, and Laurent would make sure his Mistress wasn’t harmed. That, he knew for sure.

  Laurent dropped his head so his face got closer to her hair and inhaled. When he lifted those eyelashes that women swooned over, Sarah was staring back at him in the mirror wearing a half-smile. This was going to be torture for both him and Laurent, and she knew it.

  Laurent stared at him in the mirror. Don’t you dare hold back, Steffan, his e
yes relayed. That little bit of nonsense earned him a light blow, as a warning.

  “Don’t even think about calling the shots here,” he whispered into his ear. The warning had its intended effect. Laurent lowered his eyes.

  For long minutes he rained blows on Laurent. The man’s hips banged against the small of her back, his cock rubbing against her with no hope of release. Laurent’s grunts grew more frustrated as she pushed herself against him, her hair teasing his chest, her scent rising from the friction between their bodies.

  “More,” she instructed, and raised one leg, placing her heel against the mirror, giving them both a view of her pussy, glistening and wet. She expertly balanced on one leg while pushing herself against Laurent’s body for leverage. He was sure Laurent was having the same reaction inside—let go, drop everything, wrap arms around her to steady her. Yet, if either did, she’d be pissed.

  Sarah began to undulate against him, and Laurent’s back muscles strained. His ass clenched, a strangled please on his lips evident. To be mashed against such a glorious body but not be able to touch and bound only by his self-discipline had to be excruciating for him.

  Steffan paddled Laurent, hard, for an excruciating twenty minutes, not relenting until his ass was deep purple in the red light. He almost stopped when Sarah slipped her fingers into her panties. He mastered himself quickly, or fuck him, he would come in his pants from the sight in the mirror. He pulled out every trick he’d ever used to keep himself from spewing. She panted hard as she worked herself. Laurent’s chest rapidly expanded and contracted. His fists clenched so hard on the chains above Steffan worried he might tear the skin.

  She brought her leg down and pivoted so fast Laurent tumbled forward, a cry bursting from his lips as the nipple clamps hit the end of their chains. She removed the clamps from his nipples and left them to dangle. She leaned against the mirror and widened her stance.

  “Laurent, let go of the chains and drop to your knees. Taste me.”