She grinned at the vodka gliding over its ice.
“Lucky for you, you got a cute babe. So it won’t gut you when I take all the rest,” Cam remarked.
“You can have them.”
That made her grin bigger.
“Brother.”
At the tone of that from Branch, she put the vodka down and didn’t move.
Neither of the men said anything more but she could feel the atmosphere around her turning warm and beautiful.
Branch’s voice was gruff when he finally broke the silence.
“It’ll be good to have you around.”
“Friend of mine recently slid over the edge. Never thought he’d get there. That fucker was far, far away. But he made it and he took the fall. Reckon, he could do it, since I’m better than him in just about everything, but the art of kicking ass, I could do it too.”
“Just sayin’, you better brace for second place, man. There’s only one Angie.”
“I know.”
She looked out through the jungle of plants around her kitchen window at her pool, which was a gorgeous pool in a normal home where a woman fell in love with an amazing man.
She would never guess that was what the farthest edge looked like.
But it was perfect.
* * *
Evangeline drifted through the halls of the Honey with a glass of champagne in her hand.
She was alone.
And she was taking her time.
The gang was all there, Penn and Shane doing their thing, but behind silhouetted shades, so she knew they were in their favorite playroom, but they were feeling the need for a bit of privacy.
She understood that.
Their wedding was happening the next weekend, now it was private time before the big celebration.
She couldn’t wait.
She figured they were more excited.
She didn’t watch Marisol long with her two subs because she never watched Marisol long. Marisol was talented, it was just that female on female wasn’t her thing.
She watched Talia work for longer. That Domme was relatively new but obviously no longer a newbie and she clearly enjoyed what she did.
Her sub, clearly, did too.
Mira and Trey didn’t offer up much of anything. Since she’d sold both their houses, they’d moved in together and Mira announced their engagement at the next book club meeting; they kept the silhouette blinds down when they played.
But Felicia was feeling playful, Evangeline knew, mostly because she came out of her scene with her handsome boy long enough to give Evangeline a wink.
As usual, when she saw Amélie at work with Olly, she skimmed right by.
It would be beautiful, she knew, but she still felt the need to give it only to them, even if they didn’t feel that same need. She would have done the same with Mira and Trey, Penn and Shane, if they’d kept their blinds open.
On the way to where she was going, she took a detour that would take her deeper into the playrooms and in the opposite direction to where she was going to end up.
When she arrived at her destination, although it was one of the playrooms that was out of the way, like Aryas’s room on the other side of the Honey, there was still a rather large audience.
Even though she knew what she would find in that room and it would normally have made her skim it, she found a place to stand and gazed in, instantly licking her lips at what she saw.
Sixx was working.
Her sub was spread-eagled and spread-armed, lashed to a table, on his stomach. His balls and cock were harnessed, both tightly. His ass was strapped open, the crease glistening visibly. He had a jaw harness on, forcing his head back, the chain leading from the back of the harness looped around the baton that was planted firmly up his ass.
And she was stroking him.
Not his cock. Not his balls. Not with his baton.
His body. Legs. Ass. Back. Shoulders. Arms. Hair.
Everything.
And she was doing it slowly, lovingly … reverentially.
She also did it looking like she was cooing to him, the expression on her face softening her usually remote beauty in a way that it was almost unbearable to look at her.
“God, he’s switched her,” Romy, standing beside her, murmured in awe.
“He has,” Evangeline whispered, doing it happily.
Sixx moved from him looking like she didn’t want to.
And she didn’t once cast a glance at a single member of her audience as she walked to the control panel by the door and they heard the whirring start as the blackout shades started to float down.
“Damn, would kill to see where she was taking that,” Romy grumbled.
Evangeline turned to her friend. “The queen needs privacy with her king.”
Romy stopped looking miffed and smiled. “Have you been around to see when he works her?”
She shook her head.
“The way he works her, totally go sub for him. Toe-tah-lee,” Romy declared.
“Stellan’s always been a king. He just needed to find his queen.”
She looked longingly at the blackout shades. “Wish he’d broken me into the splendors of being a switch.”
Evangeline watched her do that and did it smiling, knowing no way that would happen. Stellan was hot. He looked like an amazing sub. He just was an amazing Dom.
But Romy was a dyed-in-the-wool Mistress.
Romy’s attention came back to her and her head tipped to the side. “You know she had that in her?”
She shook her head.
“You know he had that in him?” she went on.
“I know that love allows you to go places you never thought you’d go and like being there a heck of a lot,” Evangeline answered.
Romy’s face got soft with happiness for several of her friends, Evangeline knowing she was one of them. “Yeah.” More happiness came in when she asked, “Leigh tell you Olly popped the question?”
That, Evangeline knew, made her own face get soft.
“They had us over to dinner last week. Gave us the news.”
“The ring is impressive,” Romy remarked.
“It was his mother’s,” Evangeline told her.
“God,” she whispered. “How sweet.”
It was. Amélie had shared Olly was close with his mom, who had sadly died. So it was tremendously sweet.
As luck would have it, the ring was also beautiful. Elegant. Very much Leigh. And the rock wasn’t anything to sneeze at.
“You’re not going to play?” Evangeline asked and Romy looked down the hall.
“Right. Damn. Best get back to my well-hung boy.” She shot Evangeline a wicked look. “He’s probably tired of waiting.”
Evangeline just shot her another smile.
They gave each other quick hugs and Romy went one direction, Evangeline the other.
She ran into Aryas on the way to her final destination.
“Good, there you are,” he said, coming right to her.
Damn, after seeing Sixx with Stellan, she was impatient to get where she was going.
“Aryas—”
He interrupted her. “Got the matter of a bet to settle and you keep dodging me.”
“You gave me free membership for a year,” she reminded him. “And that’s more than our bet.”
“No, I didn’t,” he returned. “Family of staff get membership gratis.”
“That’s not true,” she guessed, because she didn’t know if it was and Branch didn’t share a lot about work because it was nearly as confidential as all the other jobs he’d had in his life.
Aryas had chosen well.
“Okay, so the woman of my operations manager gets membership for free because he’s so fuckin’ good at his job, I’m afraid I’m going to open a random new member file and see the pictorial results of a recent colonoscopy.”
She giggled.
“I’m not joking,” Aryas said in all seriousness.
She tried to stop giggling
and didn’t manage it so her next was shaking.
“Okay, then, just consider us even.”
“I cover my debts.”
“My man’s stupid six-month lease is up on the apartment he’s spent approximately forty-five minutes in since he signed it”—and that forty-five minutes had been as long as it took him to give her an orgasm with his mouth while she writhed on his kitchen island before he took his own climax with his cock, giving her another one along the way—“so he’s moving in next week. In other words, like I said, my beautiful, beautiful man, consider us even.”
Aryas’s eyes warmed and he pulled her into one of his big, strong hugs.
But into the top of her hair, he said, “Don’t bitch, you get a shit-hot wedding gift.”
She arched back over his arm in order to look into his face. “I’d never bitch about that.”
He lifted a finger to touch it to her nose before he fully let her go, gave her a lift of his chin, and strolled away.
She strolled to where her mind had been the last half an hour.
The red blinds were down, blocking out the view to what was inside.
She took the key out of the cleavage of her little dark blue dress, inserted it and unlocked the only door in the Honey that had a lock.
She looked left, right and again before she opened the door and quickly slipped inside the only room that was occupied that had no camera running.
She locked the door again behind her.
Then she looked to the bed and drew in a deep breath.
Branch was naked on his back in the middle of the red satin sheets. His arms were lifted over his head, wide, wrists lashed with silk cords to the bedposts.
She’d gotten fancy and tied his lifted bent knees spread wide to the top posts, also swinging out his feet in stirrups that were secured to the bottom posts.
His eyes had a blindfold over them. His mouth was gagged with a black silk scarf.
His ass was lifted on pillows covered in red satin, his cock ringed, the tail running through his balls, the bullet up his ass, all of this working, set on medium low.
His nipples were tightly clamped with the chain running between them, dragging them down, as it was hooked around the end of her jewel, which was winking.
She went to the side of the bed and watched him turn his head to follow the noise of her movements.
She took a last sip of her champagne then set it aside.
After that, she unzipped her dress and pulled it over her head. She tossed it on the bed, the soft sound of it landing drawing Branch’s attention.
Then off went her panties and her bra.
She kept her high-heeled, strappy sandals on.
She entered the bed on her knees and rested a hand light on his chest as she bent her lips to his ear.
“I want you watching.”
On that, she pulled off his blindfold.
His heated gaze met hers.
She smiled at him and bent close, brushing her lips against his gagged ones, feeling the touch as it was with his gag throb through her clit.
Then she shifted down him, ducking under his leg, and getting between both.
She put her hands to his abs, flat, gliding them up, until her fingers touched the chain just under the clamps on his nipples.
She gave it a sharp tug and gloried in the grunt, the blaze in his eyes as it stayed locked on her.
She let the chain go and slid further up him, tipping her ass.
That was when she lost his gaze. It went right to the mirror over the bed.
She knew what he saw.
Ice blue winking.
And she knew he liked it when the fingers he had wrapped around his bonds yanked at them.
“Me inside you,” she whispered. “You inside me.”
She heard what sounded like a muffled, “Angie.”
She ignored it.
“You’re going to watch me fuck you now, Branch.”
The noise that came from behind his gag was not a word, just a stifled growl.
She rubbed a thumb hard across his nipple, watching his jaw clench and a muscle jump up his cheek.
So … fucking … pretty.
“Ready to slip over the edge with me, baby?” she asked.
He made no noise to that but the ice of his eyes burning through hers told her everything.
Her Branch no longer surfed the edge.
He lived the one they shared.
And he loved it there.
As did she.
She moved down, kissed his throat, nipped hard on each nipple and felt the pulse of the jolt of his body each time race up her pussy.
Then she moved down.
And she took him over the edge.
He watched in the mirror, his body straining, bucking, swaying the posts.
But he lost sight when he went over, taking her with him, his head digging back into the satin as his cum arced in a stream over his chest.
BRANCH
Branch’s eyes opened to see nothing but dark and his body froze.
It relaxed when he felt Murphy stop roaming and settle on their big bed at Branch’s feet.
But he heard Elsa, their German shepherd, who slept sprawled behind Angie’s legs, give a soft woof.
“It’s okay, girl,” he murmured quietly.
Another soft woof and then he felt Elsa settle in.
Loki, he had no clue. The damn cat was probably in the secret control room he’d created through a panel of one of Angie’s walls, communicating with his cat brethren in his effort to take over the world.
Alternately, he could be single-mindedly shredding the wicker of one of the chairs in the Arizona room, a favorite nocturnal and diurnal pastime.
Angie’s warm, soft little body was pressed to him, and through all this, she didn’t move.
She hadn’t felt a thing.
She slept and she slept deep, having no clue what terrors there were out there that were real.
And she never would.
He carefully gathered her closer so he wouldn’t wake her and closed his eyes.
Branch heard a big dog sigh.
And the harsh smoothed out of his face when he fell right back to sleep.
Stay tuned for the next book in the Honey series coming soon
Check Kristenashley.net for details.
Also by Kristen Ashley
The Deep End
PRAISE FOR KRISTEN ASHLEY
“I adore Kristen Ashley’s books. Her stories grab you by the throat from page one and … continue to dwell in your mind days after you’ve finished the story.”
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—Jill Shalvis, New York Times bestselling author
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—Publishers Weekly
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—Kati Brown, Dear Author
“When you pick up an Ashley book, you know you’re in for plenty of gut-punching emotion, elaborate family drama, and sizzling sex,”
—RT Book Reviews
“Reading a Kristen Ashley book, it’s a journey, an adventure, a nonstop romantic thrill ride that is absolutely unparalleled in the romance world.”
—Aestas Book Blog
“Nobody starts a book off better than Kristen Ashley. And while I’m on it, nobody ends a book like Kristen Ashley, either. Precious. Poetic. Perfect.”
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e with a warning that says, ‘You may become addicted to KA books.’”
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about the author
Kristen Ashley is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than fifty novels. She lives in Arizona and can be found at kristenashley.net, or sign up for email updates here.
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contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Of Course I’m Going to Kill You
Chapter One: Set Up a Meet
Chapter Two: I’ll Still Get Him
Chapter Three: Fun and Done
Chapter Four: The Pound
Chapter Five: Ma’am
Chapter Six: He Was Fucked
Chapter Seven: Domesticity
Chapter Eight: Asshole
Chapter Nine: Hope for Something
Chapter Ten: I Don’t Regret It
Chapter Eleven: I Do Not Share
Chapter Twelve: See the Light
Chapter Thirteen: Evenly Matched
Chapter Fourteen: A Good Man in Her Life
Chapter Fifteen: Yes, It Was
Chapter Sixteen: If It Was from You
Chapter Seventeen: Win or Lose
Chapter Eighteen: Promise Me That
Chapter Nineteen: Absolutely Right
Chapter Twenty: Fools
Chapter Twenty-One: Taking This Ride Until It’s Right
Chapter Twenty-Two: Double Whammy
Chapter Twenty-Three: My Name Is Branch
Chapter Twenty-Four: Soft Against Hard
Chapter Twenty-Five: Played
Chapter Twenty-Six: Match Point
Epilogue: Jungle of Plants
Also by Kristen Ashley
Praise for Kristen Ashley
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.