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Octavia.Octavia. It was not a common name. Normally he wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but that was a weird, gossipy conversation—and it was about Quinn.
Why the hell did he know the name Octavia?
Leigh retreated to the kitchen again. When she returned this time, she set a gorgeous cake and heaping bowl of fresh, cut fruit at each end of the table. He watched absent-mindedly as the realization hit him.
Octavia’s. If his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him, it was some kind of S&M place, a club.
She was going to a kink club? Not Quinn.
Pull my hair. Slap my face.
He had been so careful with her. Would others be?
He reached into his breast pocket, took out his phone nonchalantly, and unlocked it, hoping no one would notice.
Leigh did, a disapproving or perhaps insulted eyebrow subtly rising.
“I’m really sorry—my producer is still at the office and in a bind. I need to answer a text.”
Although he had sworn he would not lie again after lying his ass off to Delphine, tonight he made an exception. His fingers tapped out “Octavia’s” in the browser search bar.
Sure enough, Octavia’s was a dungeon, a BDSM club.
He recalled the night he now thought of as their turning point, the night she leaned against him. How, earlier that evening, she had continued to ask for more and more strikes from the slapper, how she could hardly stand after the full-tilt speed of the vibrator, how she lay blindfolded and spread-eagled in front of him as he dripped melting ice over her breasts, how the inside of her pussy felt when she was about to come.
He thought of how other nights he had ended their play because it seemed like too much sensation, too much pain.
He stood and pushed in his chair. The surrounding conversations dropped to a lull as everyone looked up. “I hope you’ll all excuse me—my producer ran into a snag with the next episode, and I need to give him a hand at the office. It’s been a pleasure.”
He went around to Leigh and kissed her on both cheeks, French style. “I’m sorry to eat and run,” he offered lamely.
“Duty calls. I’m glad you could make it.”
“Thanks for understanding.” He hadn’t pulled it often, but on those few occasions when he needed an out, no one argued with a two-cheeked kiss or an urgent, if imaginary, text from his producer.
“When Quinn returns my calls again, I’ll let her know you asked for her.”
Oh, I’m definitely asking for her.
He pictured some expressionless, burly bouncer outside Octavia’s that he would somehow have to bypass to get to her. “Please do.”
Really, he should stay away, leave well enough alone. The other shoe he always worried about had dropped. She had ghosted him; their whatever it had been was over.
So why was he jogging down the street toward Octavia’s to look for her?
While waiting at a crosswalk, he confirmed the address on his phone. He had no idea if she would be there, but he had to check. The thought of her at some kind of dungeon—vulnerable, alone, asking other men to do what she had asked him to do . . .
Shit. He hissed under his breath as he looked at the web page. The bold type, he hadn’t noticed that earlier.
At the other side of the intersection, he moved out of the flow of humanity and paused to fill in a fake name and other details so he could score the golden ticket or secret code or whatever the fuck he needed to get in. But at least they were making some attempt at security.
He shook his head as if to dislodge the jealous thoughts. It was not only jealousy; he felt protective of her. He’d felt that way since that very first night when he laid eyes on her coming out of the kitchen, clutching a glass of red wine so tightly he worried it might shatter in her hand.
The feelings that arose in him that evening, they were hard to put words to, but he had been in—and screwed up—enough relationships to know that some whys were impossible to explain.
One thing he knew was that seeing her, thinking about her, gave him the strangest, warmest, most wonderfully disorienting feeling in his chest. And that ignited an overpowering urge to take care of her, to protect her, to please her, in spite—or maybe because—of her obvious strength.
She would not be pleased with him tonight.
