Riveted

The small club was drenched in shadows. A single spotlight slanted across Mason’s left hand and part of his legs to highlight the brown-eyed beauty staring up at him from the floor. She tried to make out the details of his face and failed. People who knew his every feature couldn’t see him from her position. It had been tried and tested to perfection.

Dark hair cascaded down her back in lazy curls that Mason could easily imagine wrapping around his hand and using to maneuver her curvy body any way he wanted. Her lips were a bit thin for his taste, but wide, which made up for it. She wore money like she’d been born into it. He tried to picture her wrecked, all of her expensive perfections shattered by pain and drenched in pleasure.

But she was trying too hard in all the wrong ways. Designer perfume choked the air between them, and the low cut of her dress gave away all of her and Victoria’s secrets. Mason had been dominating the same game for too long not to have cultivated particular expectations. It only took one interview to know if a woman met his standards or not.

With a lift of his finger, his head of security, Pete emerged from the shadows, and the woman panicked. She glanced between them and started talking faster as if that would help.

“Miss Lovell, I’m afraid you’re not a good fit for us,” Mason cut her off cold. The fantasies she’d been detailing in an attempt to seduce him became an echo of defeat through the quiet building. “I do hope you find a place that suits your needs, but we’re not it.”

“But, how do you know if you haven’t seen what I can do?” she asked, trying to cover the sting of rejection with feigned sultriness that was anything but provocative.

“I just know.”

“That’s not fair. I went through all of the steps—!”

“Which were just to get you to this stage, Miss Lovell. An interview with me. But you were warned from the start that my word is final,” Mason reminded her firmly.

They were all warned, that was standard. The word ‘exclusive’ was overused, but Mason upheld it to the very core of its definition. If he couldn’t see himself working with a submissive, then they didn’t gain access to his club, and he wasn’t an easy man to impress.

Dominants seeking membership went through a similar process that landed them in front of his business partner, Deston, instead. No one got into Riveted without going through one of them first. It was the one responsibility they never delegated to others.

“I have money,” Miss Lovell continued as Pete herded her toward the front door. “I can pay double the membership fee every month!”

Ignoring her, Mason grabbed his phone from his suit pocket and called Deston.

“How did it go?”

“Is Jed on drugs?” he demanded, never one to beat around the bush.

Deston didn’t laugh. He should’ve laughed. The dread was already in Mason’s gut before he got the expected answer—which, was tired and ridiculously abused at this point.

“It’s Natalie. She’s got him all twisted up, Mace.”

It grated on Mason’s nerves because he hated the shit Jed was going through, but Deston never treated the man with business gloves, only familial ones, and Mason feared it would be their ruin one day.

“I understand, but he needs to tell us if he can’t do this,” Mason pressed, standing his ground. “If he wants to step away for a while, get this all sorted, that’s fine. It would be a hell of a lot easier to handle a delay than give every damn applicant the green light. Not only is it a waste of our time, it’s building a list of men and women who are now pissed off at Riveted for getting rejected, and we all know how vicious scorned trust fund babies can be.”

“I know. I’ll talk to him tonight,” Deston vowed. Relief eased some of the tension in Mason’s muscles because his best friend was a man of his word. Always. “I take it your last applicant didn’t score too highly.”

“Try subzero,” Mason scoffed. “She didn’t have a submissive bone in her body. It was all about her and what she could get out of the membership. She’s vain, spoiled, and looking to be adored for her sexual prowess, which—trust me—made the most vanilla, B-rated porn flick look appealing.”

“Harsh.” Deston laughed.

Mason didn’t give a fuck. He wouldn’t apologize for his standards, and neither would Deston when it came down to it. Which, was why they were so good at running Riveted together.

“Keep me posted with Jed, please,” Mason requested before they ended the call.

At the bar, he poured two glasses of Scotch. The comedy club they used for the final membership interviews belonged to one of their friends and long-standing members. It was conveniently closed during the day and allowed them to keep Riveted’s location a secret.

A matter that was becoming more imperative of late with the way Jed was stacking up angry, rejected applicants like fucking dominoes.

“Wow,” Pete remarked of Miss Lovell when he returned.

His expression was perplexed as he accepted the Scotch Mason held out to him.

“Yeah.” He laughed humorlessly. “I put a call into Deston. He’ll be cornering Jed tonight, so hopefully, that was our last major waste of time this week.”

“I would toast to that, but we’ve got another one due any minute,” Pete reminded him.

Mason frowned into his empty glass and poured a double, his expectations at an all-time low. He’d just polished the whiskey off when the knock came from the main door. With a heavy sigh, he returned to his armchair in the shadows.

His position on stage was vital to keeping his identity hidden, but it put him at a slight disadvantage of not being able to see their new arrival until Pete was guiding her into the spotlight. Due to its brightness, she lifted a hand to shield her face until she was closer to the stage and able to see that someone was sitting there, waiting.

It was at this juncture that Mason usually asked for a name. Indeed, he’d drawn a breath to do so when she lowered her hand. The palest blue-green eyes blinked up at him as a nervous smile tugged on the sexiest mouth he’d ever seen in his life.

The same eyes and mouth that had been plaguing his dirtiest fantasies for seven fucking years.

Paralyzed by shock, the present fell away, and suddenly Mason was a senior at university all over again. And every sensation, every ounce of pleasure he’d experienced in just one night with her came flooding back as if it had just happened.

An inferno sparked through his veins, threatening to render him ash from the inside out. She was even more breathtaking than he remembered. Or perhaps, she’d grown more beautiful with age, as some women did. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected to see her again, no matter how much he’d longed for it. Mason had thoroughly believed he’d lost that chance when she’d snuck out of his dorm room in the early morning hours, then refused to see or talk to him ever again.

He’d scared her away with his depraved, kinky needs; that’s what he’d finally come to terms with, and it had remained his single greatest regret in life.

But she was there, standing in the spotlight with hair so light brown it appeared blond toward the ends. Mason’s gaze drank in her high-waisted black slacks that ended about a foot above golden, six-inch heels on pedicured feet. A halter-style blouse of rose-gold silk left her arms and shoulders bare, revealing skin gently touched with a natural bronze hue, courtesy of the foreign heritage mingled in her DNA.

Mason was no sooner overcome with the need to keep her from running away again when he remembered exactly where they were... and why. She was there to request membership to Riveted, and he was the Hard Line. Only he had the power to grant her wish to be a submissive within the walls of his club or turn her away.

The fuck if he wanted either of those things to happen. He needed to think.

“Kneel,” he ordered, his tone a touch harder than he’d intended, but it didn’t matter. She’d been warned, just like everyone else, that he was demanding and difficult to please. “Head bowed, hands on your thighs.”

The moment she knelt to his specifications, more hot blood rushed to his cock and pounded in his temples. Mason climbed right off the stage and started circling her like a wolf stalking his prey. His gluttonous gaze gobbled her up without shame, even while Pete’s heavy stare locked onto his completely exposed features, undoubtedly wondering if he’d lost his fucking mind.

He had, honestly and truly, yet it wouldn’t stop him. A small rush of anxiety in the pit of his stomach warned him that he was about to do something stupid and reckless. Something he might end up regretting.

“Don’t move,” he commanded sternly, then walked right out the front door.

The fresh air and sunshine felt alien on his skin after being in the dark club for so long, but it did nothing to cool his blood. Pacing up and down the sidewalk, he fished his phone free and dialed Jed.

“Hey—”

“I need to know everything about Miss Carlisle,” Mason demanded, cutting off his greeting. “Her background information. I know you ran it.”

“Of course, I ran it,” Jed replied with a smirk to his tone. He was quiet for a moment, presumably searching for the information. “Age twenty-six, native to Washington State, attended U-Dub, got hitched her junior year to some corporate stiff named Reese Ellingston. Divorced three years later, no children.”

Mason’s jaw tightened so much, he was surprised it didn’t snap. He hated that piece of information so profoundly, there were no words sufficient enough. Though, it was telling that she’d reclaimed her maiden name following the divorce. Hopefully, that meant there weren’t any lingering feelings for her ex-husband—a man Mason now despised strictly on principle for reasons he wasn’t altogether comfortable with.

“Shortly after, she started her own staging business called Upstaged,” Jed continued. “Which, is apt considering she’s helped sell some of the most affluent properties in the entire Seattle Metropolitan area. Seriously, her website testimonials are from all the local legends”

That was intriguing. It also explained why she wanted access to his club. Only those seeking absolute anonymity from the outside world came to Riveted. They were the ones most willing to pay the steep membership fees, after all.

“Shit, she just staged Aston’s condo six months ago,” Jed added. “Guess we know how she learned about us.”

It took a lot of willpower for Mason not to snarl into the phone as he imagined Aston Torque trying to persuade Desi into submitting for him. Would she even be open to Aston’s kind of kink?

“How long has she been in the Lifestyle?” Mason asked, instead because that was the biggest mystery of all.

In college, she hadn’t been able to run from him and his fetishes fast enough. Now, she was seeking entrance to his exclusive kink club?

“A year,” Jed answered. “And she’s only actively participated in one kink scene.”

There was a jump in Mason’s chest he recognized as an evil, self-serving thrill. Desi was still a newbie. That gave him the perfect justification to follow through with the plan he’d already been formulating.

“Oh, sorry, make that two. She said her first experience was in college, but she hadn’t known anything about the Lifestyle then,” Jed amended, surprising the hell out of him. What did it mean that Desi had given that information to a stranger so freely? “Within the last year, though, she only participated in one spanking session at a group lesson when the Dom hosting the demonstration asked for a newbie volunteer.”

“Who was it?”

“Don’t know, didn’t ask,” Jed replied. “Wouldn’t be one of our members.”

He was right. Riveted’s members always used the club during the daytime for lessons, workshops, or demonstrations. Their memberships included discounts that beat outside vendor pricing. And in turn, it provided another source of revenue for the club.

“So, you letting her in or what?” Jed asked.

“I’ll let you know.”

Mason disconnected before the man could press him for details. It didn’t escape him that he hadn’t called Deston—the one person who could talk some fucking sense into him and possibly keep him from making the huge mistake he was about to dive right into. But Mason didn’t want to be talked down from his plans. He couldn’t risk being sensible. Not again.

With a rough hand over his mouth, he walked around the corner and down the block. It might be paranoid, but he always parked far from the entrance. He worried about rejected applicants possibly sticking around to follow him or learn his identity from his license plates.

Some people couldn’t take no for an answer. Mason was currently one of them because he refused to accept that he might end up watching the same girl walk away from him yet again. As co-owner of Riveted, he had the upper hand. As the Hard Line, he had the final say.

If Desi Carlisle wanted membership to his club, then her submission would be the price. She was either going to give it to him or leave Mason standing in the ashes of a second chance he’d never expected to get. At least this time, he wouldn’t be left wondering why.