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Even knowing Rick was trying to get a rise out of him, Adam couldn’t help but growl a little bit under his breath. He took a sip of scotch to hide his bristling.
“I liked her,” Hilary announced.
“Me too,” Jessica said. Both of them looked expectantly at Adam. He met their gazes blandly. Jessica scowled at him and turned to Rick. “She’s going to be back next weekend. You’re looking for a sub, right? Maybe you should try a scene with her.”
“No.” Adam bit out the word, an automatic reaction which had him cursing internally the moment he said it, leaving Jessica looking smug and some of his friends looking at him with speculation in their eyes. Clearly, they’d all been on board for teasing him, not all of them had realized how interested he was in Angel.
Heck, he hadn’t realized how interested he was in Angel until this very moment when he thought about her being with one of his friends. Doing a scene with another Dom in the club would be bad enough, but if she did a scene with Rick and Rick decided he wanted her, then Adam would feel honor bound to keep his hands off. The idea made him feel even more out of control, verging on panicky.
Damn Jessica anyway. He glared at Justin, already knowing Chris was going to be of no help when it came to keeping their girlfriend in line, not on this subject. Her other boyfriend was barely holding in his laughter, exchanging knowing glances with Andrew.
“Come here, sweetheart, time to stop teasing Master Adam,” Justin murmured, reaching out and yanking his girlfriend against his body. Twisting her head around, she looked up at him and then sighed, slumping against him. The honorific had been included specifically to remind her of where she was. In the club, she could—and would—be punished for bratty behavior. Justin gave him a long look, the hint of a smile on his face. “I think we’re going to go find a place to play.”
The group started to break up. Jared headed out to the lobby, probably to call Marissa and find out where she was, Patrick headed back to his office, and those in relationships disappeared downstairs. That left Olivia, Rick, and Adam to keep Andrew company at the bar.
“Are you interested in Angel?” Rick asked, drumming his fingers on the table. The muscular blonde’s face had gone serious. “Because if you’re not... I wouldn’t mind scening with her. But not if I’m stepping on your toes.”
“I don’t know... doesn’t it bother you she lied about being a Domme?” The fact everyone else seemed to accept her immediately was making him feel like he was being unreasonable.
Rick shrugged. “Not really. I mean, it did at first, but we were talking about it a bit before you got here. Chris thinks of it as a huge practical joke, but Jessica and Hilary both pointed out we don’t exactly understand how scary it was for them. Putting yourself out there as a submissive, especially when you don’t have anyone around to show you the ropes—so to speak—or answer questions and soothe doubts... we were all pretty lucky. We’re all naturally take-charge kind of people and we all knew each other. But Jessica went to the school, rather than the club to explore, where she knew other people would be there expressly for the purpose of trying new things, and she wouldn’t have even done that if Olivia hadn’t pushed her. And Hilary would have never gone anywhere near BDSM without Jessica.”
“She naturally defers to others,” Olivia put in. “Even though she obviously thought she was being a burden to Justin before I showed up, and on me once he passed her off, she couldn’t bring herself to remove the ‘burden’ once we told her no. I think she’s the type to take a mile if you give her an inch, but the whole way she’ll be wishing you’d pull on the reins.”
“I liked her at Chained,” Rick said. “She probably had her reasons for wanting to explore the scene and see what a club was like before going into one and entrusting someone else. Especially since she had no one to watch her back or to introduce her. But you seem more possessive of her than you seem angry about the fact she misled us, so if you want her...”
“I—“ Adam cleared his throat. He felt his friends’ eyes on him like heavy weights. “I thought you didn’t want to do a long-distance thing.” Why was it still so hard to say he was interested in her? Maybe because, in some ways, he didn’t want to be. He didn’t like the way she upset his equilibrium, but the chemistry between them had been so strong he didn’t want to give that up without exploring it either.
“I’ve started submitting my application to some of the school systems up here,” Rick said easily. “If things go the way I want them to I’ll be moving over the summer.”
Great.
“Yeah,” he finally muttered. “I’m interested in getting to know her better. I don’t know if it’s going to go anywhere though.”
Rick nodded and Olivia smiled. A knowing, smug kind of smile. “Good,” she said. “So that’s settled. I’m going to find someone to go play with. Rick?”
He watched his friends walk off. Sure, he could go find an available submissive. Do a scene. Keep his hands off but still get some kind of satisfaction out of the evening by giving a submissive some pleasure.
Instead he said goodnight to Andrew and headed out, passing Jared and Marissa on his way as they came into the club. The big, genial Dom had a frown on his face and his sub was somehow managing to pout and look gleeful at the same time. Great. Trouble was brewing again in that area, but there was nothing he could do about it for the moment.
He needed to go home and think about his own trouble.
Adam
By the time the middle of the week rolled around, Adam was more than a little amped up. Fortunately, Wednesday was his usual day for going into Liam’s Kung-Fu studio for more than classes. He tried to make it to class at least a couple of times a week, although he ran through his forms every evening at home as well, but Wednesdays were special; they were the days for individual attention and, quite often, sparring.
Adam was the only one of their group who made it nearly every week. Justin and Patrick came some of the time, and the rest of their friends attended rarely.
Adam liked the mental and physical discipline involved. He liked the flow of his body and the way it felt when he was completely in tune with himself. There wasn’t a substitute for a good, physical fight with an evenly matched opponent. A bit primitive, but he always felt better after Wednesday night.
Heck, he felt like he’d been waiting for this Wednesday ever since last Thursday.
Liam knew it too.
The redheaded Dom took one look at him when he walked in and pointed at the mat. “Stretch and then we’ll get to it.”
By which Adam knew he meant spar, not the regular forms and exercises they normally did before sparring. As he began to loosen his muscles, he felt his tension uncoiling, like wire coming undone from around a spring, just from the anticipation of a good fight. Liam was already loosened up from teaching classes, so he went through some of his forms while Adam stretched.
“Okay, I’m ready.”
