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“I’ll deal with Faith and the overseers. Neither of us is leaving Las Palmas.” He paused, wanting to make one thing perfectly clear. “But we’re not playing the game. I’m not going to play with you…or punish you.”
CHAPTER 3
Benson was feeling mean, and there was no one available to spank. A whole BDSM club, and not an available sub anywhere.
The fucking checklist game was to blame.
Shoving his hair back out of his face—he needed to get it cut, but didn’t actually care enough to go to the barber—he eyed the small crowd in the Constellation Court.
The game was well and truly underway at this point. The holdouts—people like him who’d wanted nothing to do with the game—had caved and were now playing.
He’d been right to claim the pairings were far from random. He and Mal weren’t the only ones the overseers had tried to force back together using the game. There was a rumor that some of the pairings were matchmaking. Had to be Gabriella behind that.
The most ridiculous one, as far as he was concerned, was Hadrian and Saffron. Pairing Saffron with her ex was…well, actually it had been entertaining as fuck.
Hadrian hadn’t skimped on the punishment for the woman who was both his ex-submissive and his ex-wife. Benson had been there for the dining room punishment scene.
The usually elegant Saffron had not only accepted, but seemed to relish the intense, degrading punishment meted out by her ex.
The parallels weren’t lost on Benson, but his and Mal’s situation was not as similar as it might seem. Hadrian and Saffron had been married, and their breakup had involved not only the dissolution of their marriage and BDSM relationship, but tested Las Palmas’s membership rules and NDA structures.
He and Mal hadn’t even been ‘bonded’—the club’s term for a committed BDSM relationship—the way Saffon and Hadrian had been.
He glanced around again, arms folded, irritation making his jaw tight. Nope. Still no one available to have their ass paddled.
“Benson.”
Benson turned to the speaker, nodding in greeting.
Aram was a good, if strict, Dom. He elevated cynicism to an art form. Rumor was he was a divorce lawyer by day.
“Am I interrupting your checklist work?”
Benson snorted. “Not fucking likely. I’m avoiding it.”
Aram’s laugh was cold. “Best of luck with that.”
Yeah, that’s what he was afraid of. He should have resigned his membership that first weekend, or at any point since then. He and the overseers were in a state of detente. Benson avoiding thinking about why he was still showing up every weekend. Why hadn’t he taken action and resigned?
Or why he periodically checked with Master Mikel to find out if Mal was still a member. So far, she was.
They’d both offered to resign, each insisted the other person shouldn’t, and then… nothing.
He’d glimpsed her a few times since their fight, so he knew she was still coming to the club.
“Are Saffron and Hadrian getting back together?” Benson asked Aram, who was good friends with Hadrian.
Aram’s upper lip pulled up in an expression that Benson thought was somewhere between horrified and disgusted. “I would hope not. I would hope he’s smart enough not to make the same mistake twice.”
It was only then that Benson noticed the girl with Aram.
And “girl” was the correct word. The blonde was younger than most members, probably in her early twenties. She looked soft and a little wide-eyed. That sweet young thing was Aram’s partner? Fucking-A. The overseers were dicks.
Noticing that Benson’s attention had shifted, Aram made introductions.
“This is Charlotte. She and I have E. We just finished a rather intense scene, but unfortunately I have to leave. Will you take care of her?”
Benson eyed her. He wanted someone to spank but Charlotte looked too innocent to be spanked. Even to himself that sounded counterintuitive, because if you slapped a plaid skirt on Charlotte she’d be picture-perfect for a naughty schoolgirl roleplay. But spanking someone he mentally classified as “girl” rather than “woman” wasn’t what he was looking for.
