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As a mechanic in an independent garage, she was in a traditional male environment. Dirty jokes, sexual innuendo, and schoolyard teasing were all part of it. If she got hurt—notunusual when dealing with engines, which could be like wild horses, hence the term horsepower—she took pride in the scars. No one had to play the damsel-rescuing hero around her.
It was the type of place her dad had run before his heart attack. Tiger’s crew were gearheads and bikers. Customer repairs and maintenance paid the bills for their shared love of modifying and restoring the same.
Tiger had employed another female mechanic for a time, but she hadn’t lasted. Last Maryshka had heard, she’d found work with a corporate tire center chain, probably one with an HR department and clean waiting areas sporting a wide screen TV and the smell of Febreze. Not the heat and oil of the garage wafting in to mix with the scent of cigarettes when the guys came and went from the front office.
Her dad had showed her she didn’t have to deny her girl side. She’d learned how to fix cars at his side, but he’d also taken her dress shopping for her sweet sixteen party. Even helped brush out her hair and tied the bow on the back of her dress. A man with callused hands, gruff manners and a soft heart. He’d died a year later.
She’d been left without a compass for a while, but Tiger had helped her get it back. Then she’d met Andrei. With him, she could be vulnerable. Nervous. Cry even. The first time he wiped them away after a session, he told her tears made a woman stronger.
He also didn’t play at being a Dom. Which he proved now by easing her back, brushing his knuckles across her face. “Come with me,” he said, taking her hand in his.
“But—”
“I will spank you in front of everyone here,” he promised, inthatvoice.
She followed him, trying not to do the girly thing and bite her lip, though sometimes that turned him on, when she did it justfor that reason. They didn’t do Daddy Dom exactly, but they’d played on the edges when they were in the mood for it, and it was fun.
This wasn’t that moment, though. She tried not to let her feet drag, because Andrei didn’t issue idle threats. Public humiliation wasn’t her thing, and it really wasn’t his either, but he wouldn’t hesitate to use it as a reminder of what he expected of her as his sub. It reinforced what she needed from him, too.
Always a circle. The give and take of what people did when they understood one another. And fuck, she’d needed what Andrei could give her this past month. She’d thought her world ended when her dad died, but violence had shown her a whole new level of what loss could be.
Nicole lying on the pavement, blood draining out of her. Staring eyes. Aubrey screaming in Maryshka’s arms, fighting to go to her mother. The smell of the garage burning, a callused hand tight on Maryshka’s arm as Larry dragged them away from a powder keg of flammables.
Red had stopped to hoist Nicole into a fireman’s carry. Then the explosion picked them all up, threw them. Nicole’s corpse had flown through the air like a ragdoll, landing her near her Jag.
That was the part Maryshka couldn’t stop remembering. It should have left her alone.She’s dead, no more need to fling her around, break her. She’s as broken as broken is going to get.
She was so glad Tiger hadn’t seen that part. Or Aubrey, her face pressed smothering tight into Maryshka’s shoulder.
She wished she hadn’t seen it.
“Baby.”
Andrei’s hand was on her face. She was shaking. She gripped his fingers, feeling the rough nicks from his metal sculpting. His interest in art was sort of how they’d met. Tiger liked to put together odd-looking structures from old car parts, and he hadan assortment of them behind the garage. In his opinion, they were amateur stuff, but if people liked them, he’d give them away for a twenty-buck donation to the local charity jar in what used to be their front office.
Andrei had been a new customer, and had come to pick up his car. While waiting for it to be ready, he’d wandered around to the back to look at Tiger’s work, at the same time Maryshka pulled in for work. They struck up a conversation and connected. Learning he was a Dom at Progeny had explained some of why she’d felt drawn to him, but learning even more about him had deepened that connection.
“I’m okay. Damn it. I’m okay.”
Tiger had helped put her world back together after her father’s death. She needed to do it for him. That was why she was here. She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin. “I need to do this,” she said aloud. “It will help.”
“Yeah.” Andrei studied her closely. “I think it will.”
As they headed toward the lounge’s back corner, he kept her at his side. He probably was nervous about talking to the dragon queens, as she thought of them. However, the calming stroke on her back when he reached the large round booth, and his tone as he addressed the four women there, didn’t show it.
“Ladies.”
A man might be intimidated by the assembled arsenal of female power and beauty, but Maryshka suspected a woman felt the impact twice over. She sure did.
The four Mistresses didn’t just form a power squad here. They were top management at Thomas Rose Associates. Many people at Club Progeny used scene names, usually for two reasons. The first was to protect privacy. But TRA had been featured in multiple media outlets as one of New Orleans’ top boutique marketing firms. Since the all-female executive teamhad been profiled in those pieces, anonymity here was a moot point.
The second reason was to provide a mental shift to get more fully into a Dom or sub identity, enhance that focus within the club walls. Several of the women used Tiger’s garage for their vehicle servicing. Based on those interactions and right now, standing within target range of their uber Mistress vibes, Maryshka could vouch for the fact they didn’t need a scene name to do that. At all.
Rosalinda Thomas, TRA’s CEO, was sitting on the right side of the booth. She wore a black pencil skirt, blue blouse and a pair of black pumps with a blue lightning bolt and glittering starburst along the upper. Ros loved her shoes, and never seemed to wear the same pair twice. Her blond hair with black tips was cut in an artful silken bob to her shoulders. Manicured nails stroked the faceted glass of her lowball tumbler.
A magazine had once approached her with the happy news that TRA was going to be included in a spread highlighting NOLA’s top ten woman-owned businesses. Ros told them to come back when TRA had earned a place in a top-ten business list that had nothing to do with her vagina. Quote, unquote.
A year later, TRA’s sales and customer base landed it in the number three spot for the city’s most successful boutique businesses. Hence the business news coverage that had expanded to make her and her team recognizable here.
