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  “Says the girl who learned that lesson after vowing to become the wicked witch just so she could shove the broom up my ass.”

  Tess gasped, but Emerald laughed. “It’s true. Every word.” She elbowed her man’s thigh. “But you loved every minute.”

  “Because I was already in love with you.”

  Tess curled her arms in and threw a scowl at the pair that only half teased. “Not helping.”

  “Bullshit,” Mika growled.

  She fumed but didn’t argue again. Partly because the Dom still scared her. Mostly because he was right.

  Emerald grabbed her hands and clenched her hard. “Listen to me, Tess. It’ll happen, okay? I simply look at your face, into these beautiful eyes, and I see the journey you’ve taken just to get here. Celebrate that distance too, okay?”

  Tess swallowed, ducked a fast nod, and mumbled, “Okay.”

  “Do it, baby. The journey ahead won’t feel so much like the highway to nowhere.”

  She nodded again, with a little more conviction. And prayed like hell that the woman was right.

  Chapter Seven

  “Sir? May I get you another beverage?”

  Dan forced an indulgent smile at the little blonde who dropped gracefully to her knees in front of the chair he occupied, in the darkest corner of the club where he’d agreed to meet Franz tonight. The woman’s breasts filled every inch of her corset, and her hips were lush beneath the schoolgirl uniform skirt beneath. She’d managed to let him know, through a series of equally practiced flounces, that she’d gotten rid of her panties about thirty minutes ago.

  In short, kinky flying conditions were perfect. Clearly, masked men with thick scruff were her type. And hell if she wasn’t completely his type.

  Or had been.

  What the fuck was wrong with him?

  Three days. It had been three damn days since he left Tess’s side, long enough to rinse her scent from his skin, her presence from his mind—and her effect from his cock. But while the first was easy to handle, the others were tenacious ghosts, badly in need of an exorcism—and damn it, he couldn’t figure out why.

  For the sake of his throbbing crotch, he prayed for the revelation soon.

  The usual suspects, regret and guilt, had nothing to do with it.

  He just had to keep telling himself that.

  Over and over and over.

  Wasted emotions, damn it. He didn’t regret a second of what Tess and he had shared at Catacomb, nor did he coddle any guilt about how he’d concluded it. They’d both walked into that dungeon with clear heads and clearer expectations—which were no expectations, other than the pleasure that was mutually given and received, so…

  Mutual pleasure.

  Christ.

  That was the trip-up, wasn’t it?

  Those words. Clinical, clean, polite—and a lie. Pleasure came nowhere near what he’d experienced in that room with Tess…or what he’d given her in return. Pleasure covered about their first five minutes—before the universe had imploded, morphing pleasure into things he’d never thought he’d find in a dungeon again. Awakening. Connection. Communication. Unity.

  Magic.

  The Dom space had been the best of his life—and fully reset his kink button. He was back. Master Dan had returned, new and improved, ready to flog some ecstatic subbie ass from one end of the valley to the next. All he had to do was wait a few days for Tess to clear out of his head, and…

  And he’d been a goddamn idiot.

  Three days, and she’d gone nowhere. Was still parked at the center of his frontal lobe. Still consuming the lock screen of his memory with her heart-shaped face and big, stunning eyes. Still teasing him with her impish gaze and taunting him with that sleek body…

  “Sir? That drink?”

  He looked up, stunned. The prompt no longer belonged to the curvy schoolgirl. Instead, he stared into the remorseless smirk of one goofy half Samoan. Franz’s huge shoulders shook with a laugh. The guy’s teeth flashed against the contrast of his sienna skin.

  Dan’s ire jacked by another notch.

  “Darling.” He gestured to the blonde. She scooted in like a kinky roadrunner. “Thank you, really, for your service and your sweetness…”

  “My pleasure, Sir. Completely.”

  “But I’m not going to be playing tonight.”

  “Oh.” Her shoulders slumped. He felt like shit. She was gorgeous and knew her lifestyle protocols. For a fleeting moment, he wondered what she was doing in a mid-Strip, lookie-loo poser club like this.

  Which begged a bigger question.

  What the fuck was he doing here?

  He already knew the answer. His clenching gut confirmed it. Catacomb was off-limits—also due to an answer he already had.

  “Maybe some other time?” the schoolgirl offered. “Do you come here a lot?”

  He pressed his fingers into her scalp, a kink version of a meaningful hand squeeze. “Perhaps some other time.”

  “Okay!”

  “Go get yourself something at the bar. Put it on my tab.”

  She’d barely moved out of earshot before the Samoan shifted forward. “You’re so full of shit.”

  He snorted. “Takes one to know one, Captain Franzen.”

  “Sperm to worm besties, Agent Colton.”

  “Besties?”

  “Like it?”

  “That does it. I’m wiping all the Broadway musicals off your Spotify.”

  “Not if she has anything to say about it.”

  He followed his “bestie’s” gaze, to where a new arrival in the club had already garnered attention on her way over. The Goth princess from the other night at Catacomb, with her near-white hair, black lips, and slinky sepulcher fashion, slid onto Franz’s lap.

  “Greetings,” she murmured to him.

  “Greetings.”

  The second Franz echoed it, they went for it. As in, went for it. Tongues down throats, hands under clothes. Dan attempted to focus on his Scotch and the gyrating bodies across the dance floor, but Franz and his girl were a lot more captivating—and a lot less difficult to ignore once he started imagining how beautiful Tess had been beneath him, making so many of the same sounds.

  Fuck.

  By the time they pulled apart, Franz wore most of the black lipstick. Princess Goth ran a thumb across his lips, smearing the shit even more across his face. “There,” she declared. “Perfect.”

  From hooded eyes, Franz growled, “Perfect for what?”

  Dan coughed. Loud. “Okay. This is really the part where I tell you two to get a room.”

  “Don’t mind if we do.” Franz smiled. “By the way, man, this is Infinity.”

  “Of course it is.”

  Infinity laughed, making it harder to dislike her. “I wish I could say my parents were high, but they were just weird.” She extended the hand not covered in black lipstick streaks. “Nice to meet you. Johnny’s told me a lot of cool things about you.”

  Dan shot up both brows. “Johnny?”

  “It works.” Franz worked a hand around her nape. “Outside the play room, at least.”

  Infinity nudged Dan’s foot with a pointy-toed boot. “Let it slide, and I won’t make any funny mask jokes.” To Franz, she cracked, “I had a few, but I’ll save them.”

  Franz laughed and nudged her to her feet. “Better idea? Why don’t you go and check on that room he told us to get?”

  “Excellent idea,” she returned. “Though you sure this place can handle us? Pretty sure the bouncer who let me in was dangling a Target special flogger off his belt.”

  “That’s why I brought my own toy bag, beauty.”

  She nuzzled more black marks into his neck. “I get so wet when you say ‘toy bag,’ Sir.”

  “You can prove that in a few minutes, toy girl.”

  He smacked her bottom playfully as she strutted toward the meathead in the corner playing the club’s dungeon master. As he turned back to Dan, the pleasantry faded. “Wish I could send you the same
promising juju for your night, but you already let that ship sail right out of the harbor.”

  “Thanks for the enlightenment.” He matched his sneer to the one already flung at him. “But you forgot about the kittens I drowned and the angels I shot down while I was at it.”

  Franz spread his hands, emphasizing the expanse of his chest. “Doesn’t matter to me if you let Kate Upton get up and walk out. Just need to be sure you’re okay…okay?”

  Dan chuckled. The mirth didn’t come close to assuaging the unfinished business that still lurked with Tess, but it still felt good to smile in public. Why hadn’t he thought of the mask thing earlier? It didn’t exactly work for grocery-store trips, but during a night out in a place like this, where at least ten other guys in the place wore masks, it was serendipitous. “I’m fine, man. No secret flights scheduled for Mexico tonight.”

  “Good.” His shoulders relaxed a little. “That’s good.”

  “So you’re saying it’s good?”

  The guy picked up a piece of snack mix from the glowing bowl on the table and lobbed it. “Cocky-ass spook.”

  “Paranoid soldier boy.”

  “Like you’ve given me reason not to be?”

  He sipped more Scotch before conceding, “Fair enough.”

  “No shit, especially with the buzz that came down today from Langley. Figured that once you heard, you’d be in the mood to blow off some steam, and—”

  He slammed his glass down so hard, the snack mix lurched. “What news that came down from Langley?”

  Franz inhaled. “Shit.”

  “Shit what?” He leaned forward, ripping off his mask. Missing any nuance on the guy’s face wasn’t an option right now. “Christ, Franzen. If you tell me Stock was able to get a call out from the hospital and—”

  He refused to finish it. If any of that was true—if Stock had bribed his way into getting even a single phone call, even in max security custody—he’d be able to buy his way out of the rest of it. The dick nozzle would once more hit the game reset button on them—only this time, he’d run a lot farther than Mexico.

  “No,” Franz insisted. “No. Stock is right where we left him, chained to a hospital gurney, staring at the prunes between his legs. This time, it’s Newport.”

  Dan stiffened. Newport. As in General Kirk Newport, another member of Stock’s groovy Scooby gang who were behind the freaky genetic alterations on Shay Bommer, Ghid Preston, and at least a hundred more unwilling subjects, finally resulting in the men joining forces to hide the mutants—and the “experiments” that were nothing but sanctioned torture—in a top-secret “research facility” inside Area 51. After Shay went deep undercover to expose the operation, Newport was apprehended, jailed, and awaiting his due process by the military powers-that-be.

  Or so they’d been led to believe.

  With fury attacking his gut like a doomsday virus, Dan snarled, “What about him?”

  Franz pulled in a measured breath. “Trivia tidbit. What other living general has more knowledge of Russian internal affairs than Kirk Newport?”

  “Would that be the same zero as the one in front of his moral character rating?”

  Franz scowled. Not just any scowl. Dan had only ever seen that look when the guy was in battle gear, getting ready to kick scumbag ass. “New math is going down, buddy. Zeros have no bearing. With things as tense as cock clamps between Moscow and Washington right now, the buzz says they’re talking to Kirkie-poo about a downgrade on sentencing if he cooperates with sharing the intel in his head.”

  Dan swore under his breath. “So, a rabid wolf with a pile of new chew toys.”

  Franz nodded. “Let the carnage begin.”

  He downed the last of his drink. The bottom of his glass wasn’t an encouraging sight. He was about to flag down a waitress for another but set down the tumbler and let out another string of profanity instead. Tying one on wasn’t the magic bullet right now—not when he felt like the damn wolf, prowling and savage, yearning for a full moon to rise and morph him out of the skin he was stuck in.

  Trouble was, that moon now bore a name.

  A moon who hadn’t returned his texts or phone calls in three damn days.

  One more time. Maybe he’d try just one more time.

  Pathetic putz.

  So what? After Franz’s bomb drop, a dip into the pond of pathetic didn’t seem such a horrifying option.

  “Hey.” Franz’s baritone yanked his head back up. “I can rain check things with Infinity, if you just want to sit here and get polluted.”

  He jammed up his middle finger, their way of expressing thank you and fuck you in one clean package. “Pollution’s bad for the soul. And I’m going to be as much fun as an ex at a wedding. So go, damn it. You kids have fun.”

  At least somebody would tonight.

  After “Johnny” cleared out to join his little Goth, Dan threw down some more bar mix, hoping the shit infused his gonads with enough steel to try punching Tess’s number again. When he caught a trio of miniskirted girls eyeing the table, he rose and gestured them over. “Damn. I’m a pig. Sorry for hogging the table.”

  The tallest of the girls, a brunette with legs so muscular she likely bench-pressed more than he did, tilted a blinding smile. “No sorries necessary, hot stuff.”

  Dan threw a glance back before realizing she spoke to him. “Errr. Okay. I was just leaving. It’s all yours.”

  Warrior Girl’s friend, another brunette with a pixie haircut, smiled wider than her friend. “But we wanted the table because you came with it.”

  “Huh?” he returned. “What?”

  She’d strutted up to his right. She had to see the scars. Surely they weren’t the reason for the fascination in her gaze. “You heard me…hot stuff.” Sure enough, she lifted a hand, directing it right toward his mottled skin. He jerked away on instinct, lungs slicing on breaths that suddenly felt like…fear. “Ssshhh, honey. It’s okay. We just want to have fun. We’re all freaks of the night here, right? Let me be the beauty to your beast, Quasimodo.”

  Dan grabbed her slender wrist. Heaved it away as fast as he could—but not as fast as the fear twisted into something worse. Something uglier than his face.

  “Enjoy the table.” He snarled it with enough venom to drain her smile and drop her hand. As soon as she did, Dan rose and bolted.

  How much crazier could this night get?

  He wanted to forget the question had ever crossed his mind.

  He needed the one person who could help him do that.

  Out in the club’s lobby, he palmed his phone and took a deep breath. The space was a throwback to Vegas’s early days, with a curved reception desk, velvet ottomans, and a chandelier out of a Ray Bradbury novel. Appropriate, given that he suddenly felt like Frankie Avalon, nervously calling his Annette Funicello for the fiftieth time.

  He sat in a corner and punched in her number at once. If he was calling in a special from Lady Luck, might as well reach for the big brass ring.

  One ring. Two. Three. Four.

  Shit.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  As her voice filled the line, he silently promised Lady Luck a huge-ass kiss. “Hey!” His greeting sounded as awkward as the goat guy too. “I…uh…wasn’t expecting you to pick up.”

  “I know.” An apology threaded it. “I’m really sorry. I saw your calls and texts. It was just…a weird weekend.”

  He shoved up from the ottoman. Considering how her weekend had started off, alarm bells clanged in his blood. But Emerald had called him on Saturday, ensuring she’d waved goodbye to a peaceful and happy Tess. What the hell had happened since?

  “Weird? How?”

  “I…” She broke off with a flustered sigh. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Ruby.” It was a command, not an admonishment.

  “Forget it,” she snapped. “How are you? What’s up?”

  He attempted a laugh. Textbook lame. “Ohhh, no. I’m not chasing after that squirrel so easily. Why do
n’t you just back up and try that answer again?”

  She whooshed out a breath over the line. “Damn it. I have no secrets from you anymore, do I?”

  Not since I had you naked, clamped, and moaning beneath me, little girl.

  “You’re evading.”

  “I’m not evading. I’m…thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “‘About what?’” she slung back. “What the hell kind of a counterattack is that?”

  “One that needs an answer.”

  “I want some Colton sarcasm first.”

  “And I want an answer.”

  She huffed. The line scratched as if she’d angled the device away. “You all really are like hawks with their prey.”

  Warmth instantly bloomed through him. Unbelievably, it spread faster than the first time she’d uttered the accusation—in that zap of a moment, surrounded by the candlelight of Catacomb, when her spirit reached out and wrapped around his, intoxicating him, making him want more.

  A lot more.

  Fuck.

  Might as well come clean, man.

  You haven’t shaken a goddamn thing about her.

  Dominating Tess, and fucking her on top of it, had accomplished exactly the opposite. Just hearing her voice again confirmed it. The vibrations of it, smart and sexy and sassy, torched his blood, ignited his mind, sent shock waves up his cock…

  Until her sob burst across the line.

  “Tess?”

  Silence. Too long and too thick.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s been almost three days. Anything could’ve happened in that time. A weekend emergency at work. The toilet broke at her place again. Bad hair day. That time of the month.

  “Tess.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Was that meant to reassure me?”

  “I’m sorry.” A scuffle filled the line, like she’d picked up a Kleenex and tried to suck up her emotions. “God. I’m really sorry. This is stupid. I mean, it’s been three days. I need to get over this!”