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Chapter One
“Come on. I don’t want to go alone.”
Seated around a table on high-back chairs in the quaint little rowdy bar, sparkling with festive lights and cheer, Peyton Adams took a patient sip of her hot chocolate while she eye-balled her whining best friend.
“I’m not going with you to a kink club, Ellie. Can’t you see what a prude I am? I’m drinking hot chocolate in a bar,” Peyton said, gesturing toward her hot beverage topped with marshmallows and sprinkles. Perks of the owner, Ralphie, of Ralphie’s Busy Bar being an old family friend Peyton grew up around. He’d been making her these special hot chocolate drinks every year around the holidays for as long as she could remember.
“You don’t like the taste of alcohol; that doesn’t make you a prude. We’ll just go and look. No touching. It’ll be so much fun. We’ll dress up. We’ll wear masks. No one will know us. You won’t regret it.”
“I will,” Peyton said, laughing. A kink club was not on her radar in the near future at all. Or any future, for that matter.
Ellie Katz, her lifelong best friend, three years older than Peyton, had embarked on an active exploration of the world of dominance and submission and discovered she loved it. She’d been trying to get Peyton to go to a club with her as long as she had been trying to set Peyton up on dates.
Her efforts on both fronts failed repeatedly. She called Ellie an aggressive romantic when it came to her nonexistent sex life.
Having ticked off Christmas with her family, Peyton had a few days to catch up with her best friend before her mother’s mega New Year’s Eve party. She usually missed this event, which suited her best because she always had to travel back to Washington for work.
But this year, she decided to stay.
Well, actually, she allowed her parents to talk her into it. And given the state of her emotions, she caved easily enough, which is something she rarely did.
Maybe because it was also the night she was expected to make the biggest decision of her life, just thinking about it made her flustered, though—not in a good way.
And yet, the more she thought about it, the more sayingyesjust seemed like the appropriate answer. Perhaps it was the right time after all. She was twenty-six years old and had no idea what she was waiting for anyway.
She hadn’t yet told Ellie about the latest developments circling the status of her supposedly non-existent love life. Once Ellie knew, Peyton felt she would be putting it out there, which would make it real—too real—because while everything pointed to her saying yes, some tiny part of her still felt as if she belonged elsewhere.
And that was the stupidest thought she ever had because she was pragmatic and a realist and didn’t believe in serendipity or love at first sight. She was expected to possess intelligence, practicality, and level-headedness. Not live her life based on an event that had happened seven years ago.
“I’m not going to stop begging. I’ll get down on my knees… Holy fucking hell on two legs—”
“What?” Peyton asked as she turned to see what got Ellie all wide-eyed and speechless. She scanned the crowd until her gaze fell on the man who had just entered the bar.
She couldn’t explain the volcanic heat that seemed to radiate out of her pores when he sauntered into the establishment, looking entirely out of place with his bespoke suit and coat. But there was something about him that struck every part of her all at once, deep in her soul, and she couldn’t understand why.
She immediately turned back around and sipped her hot chocolate. He wasn’t her type, not that it mattered now anymore, and her reaction was probably her projecting her inner emotions the wrong way.
She had to deliver the most important answer of her life on New Year’s Eve, and it was messing with her head.
“Oh, my god, he’s coming this way,” Ellie, who had remained transfixed, whispered after a few moments, mindlessly pinching Peyton’s arm.
It was the scent of his cologne that whispered against her first as he neared and made her skin sizzle before she heard his voice. Her nipples pebbled, and she couldn’t blame the cold.
“Peyton Adams?” he had asked, his gaze undressing her, his voice smooth as silk yet with a dusting of ruggedness. He already knew who she was before he said her name. The heaviness in her breasts turned into an ache, and so did the odd and sudden tightness between her thighs.
Stuff like that didn’t apply to her. She didn’t make a habit of becoming attracted to strange men on sight. No. At that point, she mentally shook her head to clear it of all that frivolous nonsense.
Despite being unbelievably polite, she couldn’t deny the dangerous glint just beneath the surface of his manner. Some people would find that alluring.
She found it suspicious.
Something about him continued to bother her, though more intensely than when she had spotted him from across the bar as he made his entrance.
“Can I help you?” she asked instead, having to work at keeping her tone neutral. How did he know her name when she didn’t know him at all?
“My name is Declan Foster.”
Peyton unconsciously slid off the high chair as she held her breath. Trepidation slithered down her spine. Her mind tripped over a hundred thoughts at once before she instructed herself to analyze the situation. That was what she did for a living.
