But he was turned on his stool, facing the entryway, and she’d barely walked in before his eyes caught hers.
She allowed her lips to curl in a small smile and lifted her chin slightly, telling him she wanted him to come to her.
After their conversation last night, she didn’t want him to come to her.
She wanted to take him right to the playroom she’d selected for the night and ravish him.
Literally.
But after tonight, she wouldn’t see him in more than a week and she wanted to enjoy a drink before they played, this allowing her to get to know her sweet beast.
Her very sweet beast, if the way he reacted and handled her after she’d told him what happened to her parents was any indication.
And Amélie was guessing it wasn’t any indication.
It was every one.
She wanted more of that time with Olivier over drinks, and as she moved through the room, watching him slide off his stool, grab his beer, and say something to his companions, she knew after he instigated last night’s phone call, he wanted that too.
That call, not chatting but talking, sitting in her living room with Olivier’s deep voice rapping a soothing tattoo into her ear, lulling her into sharing, lulling her into dreaming.
Amélie now understood, acutely, Mirabelle’s pain at feeling a connection grow with a sub that might blossom into something more in her life and the paralyzing fear such a gorgeous feeling could cause. Not to mention the desperate need that grew with every encounter to read every sign as hopeful as your mind screamed to be cautious and keep yourself safe.
Therefore she’d resolved to have their time together that night, and then their time apart (which hopefully would come with Olivier phoning her sometime during it), and when he came back to her they’d continue to explore what they were building.
Until their weekend.
At her ranch, they would play.
And they would talk.
Olivier moved in just behind her several feet from the empty booth where she was heading. When she felt him there, she reached back, searching for his hand, unsure if she found it or if he found hers, his fingers curling sure and warm, making her heart light even as something she wasn’t sure of felt heavy in her belly.
They arrived at the booth and she turned into him, tipping her head back to watch him move into her space and dip his chin down to catch her eyes.
“Olivier,” she said softly.
His lips twitched, his eyes traveled more than her face, taking in the slinky, deep V-neck (that had a deeper V-back) of her jet-beaded dress.
“Mistress Amélie,” he finally greeted, his gaze roving up to hers. “Want a drink?”
She tore her attention from him just enough to see the Friday evening crowd at the Honey was thriving. She wanted a drink and it might take longer to wait for a server than she wished to do.
“Please, Olivier.” She glanced down at his mostly drunk beer. “And refresh your own, if you like.”
“Gotcha,” he muttered then started with, “Swahsoh—”
“Soixante Quinze, darling. But you can say French 75 or just that you’re getting a drink for me. They’ll know.”
“Gotcha,” he repeated, squeezing her hand, perhaps to give her a squeeze or perhaps to remind her she was holding him and needed to let him go.
She didn’t wish to, could stand for an hour looking up into his eyes, but she forced herself to do so.
He moved off and she slid into the booth, the heavy beading of her dress slightly digging into the flesh on her buttocks and thighs, this reminding her of her plans for the evening, and she licked her lips in anticipation.
“I see your prized stallion can actually behave properly when it suits him.”
The surprise of Stellan’s voice coming from over her shoulder had her twisting her neck to look back at him.
He was standing there, leaning insolently against the side of the booth where she was sitting.
“I’m in no mood, Stellan,” she warned.
He crossed his arms and looked down his nose at her. “Then it would seem you’re in the wrong place, Leigh.”
“You know what I mean,” she rapped out impatiently.
“I know we need to talk,” he returned.
They did. He might not be her closest friend but they were more than acquaintances. They’d often sat together in a booth, sharing about themselves and their lives while they idly surveyed the specimens on show, both on nights when there wasn’t much that interested them as well as getting caught up in their conversation and not finding anything interesting because of it.
And he’d been to her house on more than one occasion for parties she hosted. She liked to entertain, to cook, to have people around her she cared about, and as her life wasn’t filled with much that she enjoyed, except the Honey, her pets, her horses, and that, she did it often.
“Perhaps,” she agreed. “But that won’t be happening now.”
“You’re still angry,” he said, but not accurately.
Since the incident, her thoughts had been on Olivier. How he’d reacted to what he heard. What he would do with that. The aching concern that assaulted her when he’d phoned, thinking at first he’d called to discuss it and put them on a different path than it appeared they were heading. Then, of course, her relief this didn’t happen and her struggles with tamping down the joy she felt that it was something else altogether.
None of those thoughts had been on how she felt about Stellan doing what Stellan had done.
“Actually, you’re wrong. After our altercation, I didn’t think much of it,” she told him and watched with deep surprise as he didn’t hide that her words stung.
His tone had changed a good deal when he cajoled, “We still need to talk, Leigh.”
She changed hers to quiet and cautious when she replied, “And we’ll find that time, Stellan. It just won’t be now.”
It was then she watched with stunned surprise as he lost eye contact with her, dipping his chin and bowing his head in a gesture that was inherently submissive, something she’d never, not ever, seen of a dyed-in-the-wool, extreme alpha-Dom.
Something she would never guess anyone would receive from Stellan.
To be honest, it was something she wouldn’t even think he could do. If his mind didn’t stop it, his body would instinctively rebel.
And he was an extreme alpha. She knew what he did for business. She knew he was a shark. Cutthroat. Aggressive. Proudly open about being insatiably greedy for money or anything he could acquire.
In business.
And in play.
She had not been wrong during their quarrel. If his subs didn’t bend to his will, and he, like she, picked those who were a challenge, he could be a tyrant.
He could also be unbearably sweet, even romantic, definitely chivalrous, anything he needed to be to get what he wanted, whatever that may be.
And at that moment by her booth, he said no more. Didn’t even lift his eyes to hers. He just straightened with his gaze toward the bar, his jaw getting tight, and turned and walked away.
Amélie looked to the bar and wasn’t surprised to see Olivier standing there, his attention on Stellan, his expression sharing openly that Stellan being close to his Mistress did not make him at all happy.
Suddenly, Olivier’s focus shifted to her.
She shook her head and gave him a soft smile.
It took a moment before he nodded, only once, and she watched him turn back to the bar where the bartender had put her drink and was now turning to pull Olivier a fresh beer.
But as he moved, something caught his attention because he did a double take, and she could just make out in his profile that his eyes had narrowed.
She followed his gaze and saw the back of Delia, Tiffany pinned to the wall just visible beyond the Domme (who was, like Amélie, also tall, though Amélie would guess she had at least two inches on Delia).
That creeping sensation came back as, even with th
e little she could see of Tiffany, the girl looked scared out of her brain.
Seeing that, Amélie had to tell herself that Aryas was aware and would no sooner allow any danger to come to any of his members than he’d allow his own balls to be cut off. This was true before what happened to Evangeline, but especially after.
Whatever was happening there, Aryas would discover if Tiffany wanted it.
And if she didn’t, he’d deal with it.
Olivier came back with their drinks and she slid over when he did. He slid in beside her, setting her champagne glass in front of her.
“Enjoy your beer, mon chou,” she gave him leave to drink as she reached for her own. “And thank you.”
“My pleasure, Amélie,” he muttered distractedly.
She finished the sip she’d been taking as he spoke and looked to him to see his attention was still across the room where Delia and Tiffany had been.
“Olly?” she called.
“That shit ain’t right,” he stated.
She put her drink down and put her hand to his thigh, giving him a squeeze.
He turned his head her way.
“Sorry, Mistress,” he murmured. “Something I saw—”
She nodded. “Mistress Delia and Tiffany. I’ve noticed too. So have many others. Aryas is monitoring the situation.”
Amélie had to admit that Olivier’s notice of this was a vague relief to an even vaguer nagging feeling that Olivier had not only experienced unskilled Mistresses in his past but he’d not had very much experience at all.
A rookie sub might not notice or translate what was happening with Delia and Tiffany.
He caught it immediately.
“Figure Weathers’ll fuck her up, she’s fuckin’ up one of his subs,” Olivier noted.
And again, that nagging feeling came back as there was the green.
Amélie got closer. “Weathers is usually Master Aryas in this room, Olivier.”
Olivier got closer, too, and as he was mercifully always able to do, he quelled her nagging feeling by saying, “I know, baby. I’d be cool to his face if I was talkin’ to him direct or anyone else could hear me. Respect. Who he is in this scene, just this scene being this scene, and what he’s created for the players, which is the shit. But gotta ask, when it’s you and me, just sayin’, that shit doesn’t sit well with me.”
“A lot won’t, as a sub, as you know,” she replied, watching him closely.
“Leigh-Leigh, what I’m sayin’ is,” his big hand folded around hers at his thigh, “this is you and me.”
“Ah,” she breathed out, understanding him.
They were in a booth, sharing a drink and talking. This was Olly and Leigh. Not Mistress Amélie and her toy.
“You down with that?” he asked.
“You’re asking a great deal, Olly,” she answered.
His face softened at the name she used. “I know, sweetheart. I’m still asking, you down with that?”
She liked Leigh and Olly so she gave in.
“If you show respect to my equals, mon grande, then yes.”
“That asshole gets in your space again, Amélie, you gotta know, the others, I’m in the game. Him. You gotta take care of that for me because I can’t be sure I’m gonna be cool with him.”
He was talking about Stellan.
She nodded. She already knew that.
“You’re heard, Olly.”
“Good,” he muttered, turning back to his drink.
He took a sip and she watched his mouth quirk as he put the drink down and spoke again.
“Hear your girl’s out on the town tonight.”
She leaned into him and he turned to face her again.
“Yes,” she said, trying to shove down her excitement, and her apprehension, neither she thought Olivier missed as his eyes crinkled when he looked into hers. “Mira and Trey are on a date tonight.”
And they were. Another phone call Amélie got last night that made her happy. Mirabelle had barely left the club when she’d called, phoning Amélie in the car on her way home, ecstatically happy, telling her Trey not only wanted to go out with her but shared that he, too, had been looking for an in to ask Mirabelle out.
“How did you know?” Amélie asked Olivier.
“Everyone’s yammering about it.” He took another sip of beer and said, “Everyone seems to dig her. Him too.” He grinned at Amélie. “They see good things.”
“I hope so,” Amélie replied before she took her own sip.
“You hope so, you like this dude for your girl, I hope so too.”
She smiled up at him.
His grin turned boyishly playful and she immediately decided to rank his smiles.
This one, for the moment, was on top.
“My Mistress likes watching men tackle each other.” He arched his brows. “You in a fantasy league?”
She laughed, leaning ever closer. “No, but I’ve been known to whip up some nachos for friends on a Sunday as we watched games.”
He didn’t hide his surprise. “You eat nachos?”
“There are many culinary delicacies a spoiled rich girl enjoys, Olly,” she teased.
“Never heard nachos described as a delicacy.”
“Then you haven’t had any that have the exact perfect balance of sour cream and guacamole.”
His smile turned amused and took the top spot.
“Maybe not, though not for lack of trying,” he returned.
And now she wanted to make him nachos while they watched football.
Damn.
“You got friends?” He lifted his beer to indicate the room. “Outside this place, I mean.”
Amélie didn’t know how to take a question that seemed oddly offensive.
“Of course,” she answered, moving back a smidge.
“Leigh,” he called the instant she did, taking her attention from picking up her drink to look at him, and she knew he read her retreat even before he spoke again. “You own this room, gorgeous. Even if everyone didn’t say it, you’d know it just watching you walking through it. The life, this life, it’s a part of you.” He erased the distance she put between them by dipping closer to her. “It’s sexy as fuck, Amélie, not just how you reign supreme in this joint, but how you live the life honest, totally and openly cool with who you are and what you like.”
“That’s sweet, Olly, but still, my sexuality out there in the ordinary world does not define me, like it doesn’t anybody. I have a life outside this space. Including friends who mean a lot to me who know nothing about this part of my life.”
“Okay, but you could see how it would define you, though. How it’s a part of you where anyone who’d know about it and think shit about it or say shit about it would just get a ‘fuck you.’ And you also know enough about this part of life and the people who live it that that’s amazing, Leigh.”
She squeezed his thigh and noted aloud what he’d been giving to her during play, “You struggle.”
He looked to his beer, and before taking a sip, murmured, “You know I do.”
“So it’s more amazing that you have that struggle, but you don’t let it stop you. Instead you’ve still got the courage to be who you are.”
He didn’t respond.
“It’s amazing, Olly,” she pushed.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
She decided to let that go for now. Outside the battle waged during play—being with her in the hunting ground, phoning her—that didn’t seem a battle for Olly.
That came easy.
For both of them.
“I do have friends outside the life,” she shared to get them beyond what had become awkward. “My book club is all Dommes, however.”
He turned back to her. “My hot-as-fuck Mistress makes nachos, watches football, and has a book club. Careful, baby, I’m gonna start thinking you’re a real person and not an angel sent from heaven to jack my shit.”
She started laughing, through it saying, “I’m sure you’ll agree I’m no ang
el.”
He moved his face close to her. “Don’t know about that.”
Amélie got closer to Olivier. “Stop flirting with me, Olly, or we won’t finish our drinks.”
“If you think I got a problem with that, just sayin’, you’re wrong.”
That set her inner thighs to tingling.
She pressed closer, sliding her hand from the top of his thigh to the inside and up, very close to his meat.
“Does my Olivier want to play?” she whispered.
His eyes dropped to her mouth and he whispered back, “Yeah.”
“Then take one last sip, my beast, and we’ll go to our room.”
He held her gaze then did as told. She did the same and let his thigh go as indication she wanted him to move out of the booth.
He read her sign, slid out, and offered a hand to help her out.
She took it and didn’t let go. They again held hands as they walked through the hunting ground, through the door to the playrooms and the halls she guided them through to get them all the way to the back room. A special room. Aryas’s room. A room designed specifically for his appetites, where Aryas did the majority of his playing.
However, on the way, it was Olivier who stopped Amélie. Not with a tug on her hand. When he halted and their linked hands stretched out their arms when she kept moving.
Amélie looked back at him to see his attention had been taken by a scene. She moved closer and as she did, he curved their arms so their linked hands were held behind her back and he tucked her into his side.
A lovely, intimate gesture she liked greatly.
But he did this with his attention firmly directed to the scene.
Amélie gave it the same and saw Talia working Bryan again. He was strapped, legs up, fronts of his thighs to his torso, knees bent, calves to the backs of his thighs, all of this bound to his torso. He was thus curled into himself in restraints and also restrained to a high bench, arms also strapped, but straight over his head. His buttocks and outer thighs were red in a way that stated he’d taken a whip or cat.
And Talia was fucking him rhythmically and clearly enjoyably (for both of them) up the ass with a strap-on.
“You ladies like your ass,” Olivier muttered.