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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Cecilia Tan

  Excerpt from Taking the Lead copyright © 2016 by Cecilia Tan

  Cover design by Elizabeth Turner

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

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  First Edition: January 2017

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-4555-3367-1 (trade paperback edition)

  ISBN 978-1-4555-3366-4 (ebook edition)

  E3-20161221-DA-NF

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  A Note from the Author

  A Preview of TAKING THE LEAD

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Cecilia Tan

  Praise for the Novels of Cecilia Tan

  Chapter One

  MADISON

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked Gwen as I swung the short whip back and forth, getting the feel of it. The whole thing was about as long as my arm, the braided black leather making it look like a cobra with one long loose leather piece at the tip. The catalog had called it a “quirt” but it was a whip for sure, a mini–Indiana Jones number, made for driving people, not cattle.

  “Oh, Maddie, it couldn’t be worse than the leather belt Mal likes to use,” Gwen said, her eyes lighting up like a cat’s as I flicked the whip in the air.

  I chuckled. “I think it’s you who likes the belt.”

  She blushed with a glowy smile. “Yeah. My favorite.” She and Mal had been engaged for a couple of months and they were the cutest sadomasochists I knew. She loved pain, he loved her, and they doted on each other. I handed her the quirt and she ran her fingers down the length. “I ordered one for each room. You think they’ll be too harsh for people?”

  “I guess it’s just that it’s an actual whip.” Visions of cowboy justice being meted out by sadistic sheriffs ran through my mind. I’d been playing at BDSM a long time. Not only had I worked here at the Governor’s Club for a few years now, ever since I’d moved to LA ten years before I’d always been involved somehow with kink or with sex-related jobs. Even my volunteer work had been on the margins: staffing a domestic violence crisis hotline. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen a whip before, but the big ones were typically only attempted by people who trained to use them for years. This one was small enough to be dangerous in some amateur’s hands. I trusted myself to use it responsibly but I wasn’t sure I trusted the members of the club not to hurt themselves, especially with all the new ones we had been bringing in lately. “Maybe we should test them out before we just put them in all the playrooms.”

  Or maybe I was worrying too much. “Ooh, I really want to find out what it feels like,” Gwen said dreamily, followed by a sigh, oblivious to my concern. “But Mal won’t be back for another week. What else is in the box? I ordered some stuff for the dungeon and some to kick-start your new column.”

  I looked up from digging in the box. “You did? You didn’t have to do that, Gwen.” I was due to start a weekly sex toy review column for the PlayPeople Network next week, partly writing and partly video blogging. It was a high-profile, well-paying gig, and I was a little nervous about it. Working in a sex toy store was one thing. Putting up videos of myself for the whole world to see was another. Well, it’s not like I was going to run for office, right? “Sex toy manufacturers will send me plenty of stuff once the word gets around.”

  She grinned. “I’m worried you’ll just get ten knockoffs of the rabbit pearl vibe and nothing interesting. I want to get you started off right, you know? I know how important the opportunity is to you.”

  “Aw, thank you.” I gave her a quick hug. Gwen and I had gotten really close since her grandfather had died. I’d been giving her BDSM and boyfriend advice and she’d been wanting to help me with my stalled journalism career. I still wasn’t sure if reviewing sex toys for one of the biggest “adult lifestyle” media companies was a great career move. I had a strong feeling my résumé being heavy with sexual topics was already the reason editors didn’t take me seriously; becoming a well-known video blogger was probably going to be the final nail in that coffin. Every time I did something sex-related, I seemed to succeed, while all my attempts to do “serious” journalism had been stymied. With my thirtieth birthday on the horizon maybe it was time to give up on doing something my parents could actually tell their neighbors about and just go with what had always worked.

  Being what my own mom called “a busty bombshell” had gotten me plenty of attention over the years, and while that attention might have been necessary—even welcome—when I was trying to get dancing gigs, it had mostly negative consequences in the journalism world. If you wanted to get into political reporting your best bet was to be a tall man with a square jaw.

  I dug into the box to find a new set of leather paddles. They were black with silver studs set in them: very punk rock meets the Inquisition. Under those were a few sets of shearling sheep–lined leather wrist and ankle cuffs and some other useful bondage items. Then I pulled out something white with that molded high-tech look. “This must be a vibrator?”

  “Oh, yes. You can remote control it with a phone app. I don’t know how that one is to play with solo but I’ve worn it while Mal’s had the control.” She grinned and bounced off to check the sheet and towel supply for the evening.

  I set about distributing all the new toys into the playrooms of the dungeon before the party guests could arrive. Gwen and her sister Ricki were the official hosts since the dungeon was in their family mansion—the family secret—while I was a mere employee, one of three paid hosts who kept an eye on the guests and, when necessary, kept things interesting. I made the rounds, checking on the safe sex supplies and plugging in one of the other new pieces of equipment Gwen had recently acquired, the Rotorvator.r />
  Everything seemed ready, so it was time to get dressed myself. As I entered the employee dressing room I was startled by someone rushing out: Paul, Ricki’s assistant. Inside the room I found one of my fellow hired hosts sitting on the shoe-changing bench, looking a bit sheepish. “Brad,” I scolded. “Aren’t you straight?”

  “Not completely,” he said with a shrug, and followed his—paramour? conquest?—out of the room. I hoped for low drama with whatever was going on there and opened my own locker. As I pulled my bag out to stash the toys Gwen had bought for me, my phone buzzed with a new voice mail message. I picked it up to see who it was from and cursed silently: a guy I had tried to land a writing gig with a year or two ago. Back then he’d been an editor at a big newspaper. Word was he’d been recently fired. What was he doing calling on a Friday night? No doubt trying to hit on me again. Loser. I made sure the ringer was off and stuffed my bag back into my locker. I got quickly into my usual work attire: an overbust leather corset, matching knee high boots, leather “tennis” skirt, and badass attitude.

  The attitude was second nature to me now. It was all about maintaining professionalism; before this I’d worked in plenty of sexually charged situations, including as a showgirl, model, and cashier in a sex toy emporium. Here at the Governor’s Club I did demonstrations of techniques and equipment with Gwen and Chita—getting naked from time to time—but I wasn’t technically there to have sex with party guests. Well, unless I really wanted to—and I typically did not want to. Everything went more smoothly if they remembered that. They were here to have fun; I was here to do a job. It wasn’t as if working in the dungeon actually got me aroused.

  Guests began to trickle in and I went to play hostess at the front door for a bit. I greeted Conrad Schmitt, one of the oldest members of the club, and inquired after his wife, who wasn’t with him. She’d caught a cold and had stayed home, he said. Lately it seemed fewer of the older members were attending, as more people who had been recruited by Gwen and Ricki joined. Next to arrive was Sakura, a close friend of Ricki’s who was also a part-time fetish fashion model and performance artist. “Maddie, so good to see you. Help me tighten my corset, would you?”

  “I was about to ask you to do the same for me,” I said with a laugh.

  After we’d helped each other tighten our laces in the guest changing room, Gwen caught up to us. “Sakura! Come see the Rotorvator! No one’s tried it yet.”

  “I’m sure if you keep showing it off, someone won’t be able to resist,” I told her as she led Sakura to see the contraption. I went behind the bar to pour drinks while people were still in social mode. Done in polished wood and red velvet, the bar ran along one wall, while a sectional sofa and some low, leather-covered seats lined the main socializing area, and the Catherine wheel dominated the far corner.

  I was startled to see Chino Garcia come in. I’d assumed if Mal was away that all the members of The Rough were out of town, but apparently not. Chino strutted into the dungeon like the cock of the walk. Or as my dad used to call it, the walk of the cock. “A bad boy like that just wants to stick it somewhere warm,” he had warned me.

  When I was younger I hadn’t heeded that warning. Bad boys were my catnip, the thing that made me roll on my back and yowl. But after years in Hollywood, years of cheaters and losers whose only redeeming quality was how good they were in bed, I was jaded to the tattoos and the macho saunter. Maybe if I’d spent less time being derailed by attempts at relationships with those guys, I’d be something more than a dungeon hostess and sex toy expert now.

  I watched Chino cross the room to greet Sakura and Ricki, and I saw Sakura look him up and down. Was she trying to figure out if that strutting attitude translated to dom or sub? I know I was. Since Axel’s bandmates had joined the club, I hadn’t seen Chino play. Oh sure, he joined in happily enough when it was Ricki’s birthday and Axel made her crawl through “the paddy-whack machine” like a kindergartner, or that time when one of the older executives’ wives had wanted all the men to do a circle jerk onto her. But being sexually adventurous didn’t reveal whether he was a sadist or a masochist, a top or a bottom, a dom or a sub. Usually anyone who came into the club identified themselves right away so they could find a partner. Chino hadn’t, and that bugged the hell out of me. I was used to doms being bossy and subs being needy and Chino was neither. My bet was he was just a poseur who liked hanging around with his kinky friends.

  He slipped off his leather jacket as he greeted Axel and Ricki. He was wearing nothing but leather pants and tattoos underneath. I felt as if a cool breeze had just blown across my own bare shoulders, goose bumps rising and my fingers itching to touch his ink all of a sudden.

  Stop it, I told myself. He annoys the fuck out of you and you’re better off steering clear of him. I didn’t appreciate how he turned everything into a joke. But when he threw back his head and laughed at something Sakura said, I found myself adjusting my corset as my nipples hardened against the supple leather. I stared at the long line of his neck, leading down a buff, well-inked chest. Playing drums kept him in ridiculously perfect shape.

  My hormones must have been peaking or something. I made myself tear my eyes away from him and went to do a rounds check of the rooms, to see which were in use and whether any of them needed a resupply of condoms or lube. It was still early in the evening, though, and while Kresley Palmer had strapped his wife over the new padded spanking bench in the Inquisition Room, everyone else was still socializing and warming up.

  When I came back Gwen was showing the new paddles to the group. “Can’t wait to find out what these feel like,” she enthused, “but I have to wait until Mal gets back.”

  Chino picked one up and swung it in slow motion like a tennis forehand. Then the annoying fuck made eyes at me. “Hey, Madison, aren’t you the one who usually shows off new things around here?”

  “You bet I am,” I snapped, holding out my hand for the paddle in challenge. Let’s see how fast this joker backs down. “I’d love to see how many you can take before you beg for mercy.”

  He twirled it by the leather loop on the handle instead of handing it over. “Is that right? Who do you think could take more, you or me?”

  Sakura’s eyes lit up and she came between us. “If you wanted a fair test, I could paddle you both.”

  Chino’s eyes were locked on mine, though. Not backing down at all. “Naw. I think the only way it’d be fair is if we take turns beating each other. You think you can take ten at a time? Twenty?”

  “Twenty per set, no bondage, hands on the wall, drop hands and you lose,” I said, staring right back at him. Oh, I was so on fire to put him in his place, to make him lose that smirk.

  “Agreed,” he said. “Should we flip a coin to see who goes first?”

  I clucked my tongue. “Tsk, no. You can beat me first to make sure this contest isn’t over too quickly.”

  He raised an eyebrow as if to say touché, and Sakura chuckled, looking back and forth between us. “Oh ho. And what does the winner get from the loser, hm?”

  “How ’bout fifteen minutes in private to do whatever we want,” Chino said.

  “Does the Rotorvator work on men, too?” I asked.

  “Definitely,” Gwen said.

  “Then I know what my fifteen minutes of entertainment will be,” I said with a wicked grin. “Lube up, drummer boy. Sakura, will you be the judge?”

  “Surely,” she said with a wicked grin of her own.

  Chino sketched a bow in my direction and then gestured toward the empty area of wall across from the Catherine wheel. “If you’ll assume the position, please.”

  I took my skirt off, revealing my thong underneath, and placed my hands on the wall. There was no way I was going to lose this contest. Gwen had nicknamed me “Iron Butt” after the first time she’d tested new hardwood paddles on me. I was sure Chino was either going to be all bravado and turn the scene into a joke, like he did every conversation we’d ever had, or he was going to turn out to be
a secret sub who was going to love being paddled…which might be more fun than winning. How long would it be before he was actually begging me to spank him?

  Either way I couldn’t wait to beat the smirk off his face. Those thoughts entertained me while I waited for him to start. I imagined his ink-black hair plastered to his neck with passionate sweat while he looked up at me from his knees…

  What was taking him so long anyway? I glanced back: he was gathering a crowd of spectators.

  And he’d stripped down to nothing. My jaw dropped. The real thing was even better than my imagination. His entire body was lean, hard muscle, not the chunky bulk of a weight-lifting nut but the powerful form of a man who actually used his muscles for something. He’d even stripped off his leather pants, revealing the dragon tattoo on his leg, but I found my eyes drawn to the graceful curve of his cock—already hard. Just from anticipation of paddling me? If so, there went my theory that he was a closet subbie.

  * * *

  CHINO

  I could feel the stiffened leather of the paddle in my hand and smell the leather of her corset, but the taste in my mouth was the rush of anticipation. Finally. I’d been trying to find a moment, an opening, an opportunity to play with Madison ever since I’d met her on the orientation tour of the dungeon. She put up a strong front—sexy independent woman—so I knew it had to be the right moment. And now, after months and months of waiting, she was finally right where I wanted her, submitting to me.

  Well, not exactly submitting, since at this moment—despite readying herself for an ass-beating—she wasn’t acting submissive in the slightest. “You ready?” I asked.

  She sneered. “Waiting for you.”

  Perfect. This was going to be fun. “So that’s how it’s gonna be.” I tucked the paddle under my arm so I could run my hands over her bare buttocks. Ample and round, ripe for a beating, and all mine to feel as I wished at this moment. She kept her hands against the wall and let me have my way. Apparently she didn’t mind being touched or I was sure I would’ve heard another comment from that smart mouth. She didn’t flinch and I wondered if I could get away with kissing her.