Taking the Lead (Secrets of a Rock Star #1) Read online

  I decided not to mention it to Gwen. “Okay, you’re right. But one thing at a time. What else do we have to do to get ready for this party?”

  “Safety check is done,” she said, giving me a bit of a glare for how little I’d actually helped. “Just pick out a great outfit for hostessing in, it being the first one we’re officially in charge of? Everyone will be there.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’ll be there to look at what our staff are not wearing more than what we are.”

  She ignored my comment. “Do you think we should try to coordinate? Hey, could I have Sakura’s number? I want a pair of shoes like hers.”

  “If you’re going to wear those shoes we are not matching,” I said. Maybe a nice pair of knee-high platform boots, in a soft lambskin leather, though. That I could do. “Here. I’m texting you her number right now.”

  I sent the information from my phone to Gwen’s.

  “Let’s not do anything too matchy-matchy,” she said. “I’m going to aim for nice, and a touch on the wild side, but only insofar as fashion allows, you know?”

  “Like the shoes.”

  “Exactly. What about you?”

  “I don’t know.” I thought about wearing one of my nice power suits with the tall boots I had in mind, until I realized that would make me look exactly like a dominatrix. No.

  “Well, you’ve only got a few days to figure it out.” She clapped her hand onto the pocket of her shorts then, as her phone vibrated with an incoming call. She looked at who it was. “Ooh. I better take this.” She waved to me as she answered the call and jogged upstairs, talking excitedly to someone.

  I ran my hand up the padding on the side of the Catherine Wheel and felt the luxuriously soft shearling inside the wrist restraints. A shudder went through me and I looked around, worried that someone might be watching. No one was there, though. The mix of dread and excitement I felt was all my own. So these were the safe way to do bondage? I examined the safety release; I’d have to ask Madison how it worked.

  I climbed up until my feet were on the little foot rests and stretched my arms upward. Yes, the cuffs were just the right height for me.

  I imagined someone buckling the restraints, then I got quickly down. The someone had frosted blond streaks in his hair and a wicked smile. I felt a tug of desire deep in my center even as I tried to shake the vision.

  Okay, I admitted to myself that Axel Hawke had been hot. And sexy. And cute. And good at what he did. He’d gotten through my armor to the lonely girl inside. But even if there were some way to keep a relationship out of the public eye, even if we could make that work, I couldn’t tell him the real reason I didn’t want to go down that road with him.

  Fortunately, he seemed to have forgotten about me. I hadn’t heard a peep from Axel Hawke in weeks and that suited me fine.

  * * *

  The party should have been so easy. Things should have been a breeze. The staff, first of all, handled everything the way they must have a million times before so I don’t know why I even worried about that. And the old members—come on, the members must have also done this a million times. They each had their agenda: that new sex toy they wanted to try on their wife, that new chastity device they wanted to wear, to get blown, get off, etc.

  All Gwen and I should have had to do was play hostess. I should have been able to stand there in my knee-length skirt and librarian-ish blouse under the virtual “Under New Management” sign and smile and nod. But there were two reasons why it wasn’t so simple.

  Reason number one was Conrad Schmitt. He’d declined Gwen’s and my “invitation” for an executive session before the party, claiming he was too busy but he’d meet with us the week after.

  Reason number two: I’ll give you one guess who else Schmitt invited. I don’t mean Grant. Him I knew about. Not that he wasn’t a pain in the ass, too, hovering near me annoyingly, but that was minor in comparison.

  Yes, you guessed it. Who strutted in wearing a touchable-looking black silk shirt and leather pants that looked painted on? Axel Hawke greeted me with a floor-scraping bow and a pillow-soft kiss on the backs of my knuckles. I could barely breathe. So much for forgetting him.

  I pretended it didn’t affect me. “Welcome to The Governor’s Club,” I said, as if we’d just met. “Would you like an orientation tour?”

  “I most certainly would,” Axel said.

  “Great. Grant was just about to go through with Madison, weren’t you, Grant?”

  “Uh?” Grant grimaced, looking confused, as well he should since I was totally making up the bit about the tour.

  Thank goodness Madison was a sharp cookie, though. She didn’t miss a beat when I said, “Maddie, could you show the gentlemen here the ropes?”

  “And the chains,” she joked smoothly. “Right this way.”

  She gestured and Grant followed in her wake.

  Axel, though, didn’t. He didn’t take the hint and stood there at the edge of my personal space, like a small sun emanating heat right through me. He made small talk. “So, how’ve you been since the awards?”

  I struggled to tamp down a rising maelstrom inside me that was a lot of lust, but mixed with a little anger and fear. Hadn’t I figured it all out with Sakura’s help? I’d thought I had a handle on this thing. Apparently not. I went into full ice queen mode and gave the curtest answer I could. “Fine.”

  He folded his hands like a choirboy, but looked far from innocent. “Will Sakura be here tonight? It would be nice to see a friendly face.”

  That was his way of telling me I wasn’t being friendly. It’s true: I wasn’t. But just because a guy has fucked you six ways from Sunday doesn’t mean you owe him the time of day. Even if looking at him makes you feel like you’re melting inside. “She had another engagement for tonight, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to adopt a kind of flight attendant voice—faux-compassionate and dismissive at the same time.

  He gave up. I had won that battle. “I better catch up with my tour guide, eh?” he said with a cocked eyebrow.

  “Yes. Please.” I gestured toward the hall.

  “All right then.” It didn’t look like a retreat as he sauntered in the direction Madison and Grant had gone, but I counted it as one. I savored my victory by watching him walk away. His ass cheeks moved independently of each other under the supple leather. Wow. I needed to sit down.

  I put myself onto a bar stool in the main social room and tried to catch my breath. Well, I had been right when I told Sakura that being in the same room with him would be a disaster for having a rational conversation. I’d barely been able to put a whole sentence together, as if that electric tingling I felt on my skin when I was near him was actually causing my brain to short-circuit.

  I tried to reason with myself. Of course he makes you weak in the knees—he makes millions of women and girls feel like that every day. That’s his job. Okay, but then why was I sort of angry with him, too? Was it just that I was afraid and being angry was my only defense? That’s it, I thought. You’re afraid of how he took all your resistance and fear away. You’re afraid you won’t be able to protect yourself.

  I stayed there in the main social room, the large central one with the Catherine Wheel and the bar. Gwen contentedly glided through the halls but I really didn’t feel comfortable seeing Kresley Palmer spank his wife, even if they were okay with being seen. Gwen had explained that people would shut the door to their playroom if they didn’t want spectators, and they’d leave it open if they did. I still didn’t feel brave enough to catch a glimpse. I was a little surprised that everyone seemed so … normal. The guests were cheerful and chatty, just like at any other party. I had been expecting more sultry eyelash batting and swooning. No, I was the only one who’d felt like swooning, I guess.

  Staying in the main room, though, meant that eventually a scene came to me. The other dungeon hostess on our staff was a dark-skinned, dark-eyed woman named Chita. She was short, fierce, and plump, and I noticed her talking with Grant in front o
f the wheel.

  “Your first time?” she said, loud enough to be heard throughout the room, where a few couples were socializing. “Well, then. The best way to learn it is to get up there yourself for a bit. How about this. I’ll flog you first, and then once you’ve got the idea, we’ll switch. Deal?”

  “Um, deal,” he said, slipping his blazer from his shoulders.

  I walked back to the main door while he got undressed, as if I might need to check on something, but Reeve looked bored at his post. When I returned to the main room Grant was down to black boxer briefs and black socks. Why he kept his socks on, I don’t know, but he was climbing onto the footrests on the wheel and Chita was strapping him in. She had a flogger with a handle about a foot long with a full head of heavy leather tresses hanging over one shoulder.

  Grant looked back at her, tugging at one wrist cuff a little. “The big one? You’re going to use the big one?”

  Chita patted him on the backside. “No worries, pup. The big one’s the easy one! It’s the little ones that sting like a motherfucker. Here you go, nice and easy.”

  She stepped back and swung it slowly toward him and the leather tails slapped his back, barely making a sound. They both chuckled, Grant in nervous relief.

  “That hardly feels like anything,” he said.

  “I know, right? See, nothing to worry about.” She swung a little faster the next time, draping the tails down his back. He wriggled a little. “Think of it like an exotic back massage.”

  In fact, Grant sounded a lot like some people do when they’re getting worked over at a spa, everything from sighs and groans to the occasional excited yelp. Chita gradually increased how fast and how hard she was hitting his back, until the rhythm became hypnotic. She looked so focused, so competent. I stopped feeling nervous about watching and instead found myself wondering what it felt like.

  The thing is, I was sure that it would feel completely different to get that “exotic back massage” from one of the hostesses as a lark than it would to stand up there, half-naked, in front of Axel.

  At last Chita stepped back and wiped her brow. “I’m working up a sweat over here. You ready to switch places, Grant?”

  “Sure.”

  Before she let him go, though, she ran her fingernails up and down the pink skin of his back and shoulders and he shivered and made a ridiculous, delighted sound. I held in a tense laugh, not wanting Grant to think I was laughing at him. Even if I was. Especially because I was.

  They had to adjust the placement of the footrests and the wrist restraints because Chita was so much shorter than he was, and she gave him a few pointers on how to swing the flogger before she shucked the leather bustier she’d been buckled into. “You should probably start on my back,” she purred, “but if you do it nice, I’ll let you flog these next.” She cupped her voluminous breasts in her hands.

  I felt a shiver run through me at the thought. I’d have said it was a shiver of revulsion except the feeling that coiled in my gut was nothing like disgust: it was hunger. I wanted to be touched. I needed to be touched. I lived every day in a world where I had to fend off the inappropriate advances of men on one side and make myself seem like “one of the guys” in the boardroom so they’d listen to me, where I had to guard my reputation as tirelessly as my ideas. And I was tired of it.

  That’s why Grandpa Cy started the club, I realized. Because everyone deserved a place where they could let that guard down and let their true selves—their erotic selves—be free.

  But while the club could be that for everyone else, it couldn’t be that for me. Grant was a quick study, easily getting the hang of swinging the flogger, and egged on by her gusto. “Come on, baby, that’s it!” Chita exclaimed as he did as she had done, making the strokes harder and faster as he went. “Woo! Harder!”

  He switched from one hand to the other as I guess his arm got tired, and then when she was still shouting, “Yeah! Yeah! More!” he went to swinging the flail with both hands, like a lumberjack with an ax. Wow. The harder he hit her, the louder and happier Chita’s whoops got. The noise had attracted a crowd and she got them involved next. “That’s it, babe, that’s it! Okay now, ten more, y’all count down with me! Ten! Nine!”

  It turned into something like a scene from a New Year’s Eve party, with everyone counting down to zero in unison. Grant whacked her as hard as he could on each count and, when they got to zero, he practically collapsed against her back and she tipped her head back for a kiss.

  I bit my lip. Desire was raging through me now like I’d never felt before. Why did that make me so hot? I guess knowing that flogging was a thing people did had never affected me that much, but seeing it done right in front of me was a lot more affecting.

  It doesn’t mean anything, I told myself. Chita’s sexy as hell and you’re feeling her sexy fire, that’s all.

  Plus you haven’t been able to get off in a while so you’re extra primed for it.

  That thought didn’t actually make me feel any better, though. Not when the source of my torment was wandering around nearby. Probably getting his dick sucked by some wife-swapping executive’s spouse, I thought bitterly when I looked and saw he wasn’t in the room.

  In fact, where was he? He was one of the only ones who hadn’t come to watch the Grant and Chita show.

  Maybe it was time to finally take that walk around the playrooms, now while they seemed mostly quiet. I threw my shoulders back, took a deep breath, and marched down the hall.

  The first door I came to was closed. Okay, fine. In the next one I could see a couple sitting on the floor, wrapped in a blanket like maybe they were cuddling afterward. Axel wasn’t one of them, anyway.

  The Inquisition Room was empty. So was the bedroom next to it, or so I thought at first. The door was open and I could see the cabinet on the far side of the room had been left open. I crossed the room to close it, then froze as I heard the door to the hall shut behind me.

  * * *

  “Ms. Hamilton,” came Axel’s voice.

  I took another deep breath. “Axel.”

  “Why don’t you call me Mr. Hawke for now? Since you seem determined to keep us on formal terms.” He sounded slightly stung, but went on lightly. “You can have ‘Axel’ for a safeword.”

  I swallowed. “You mean that? If I call you Axel again right now you’ll … let me go.”

  “Of course. That’s how it works.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you get to find out what being flogged until you come is like.”

  Oh. That sounded like the best thing I could imagine right at that moment. The voice in my head that kept trying to tell me not to do this was being pretty well drowned out at that moment. Once again my resistance was melting away in the face of temptation. What could it hurt? Get off. Take advantage of the offer, of him. It didn’t have to mean anything.

  Yeah, Ricki, stop turning everything into a federal case. Just have some fun. After all, that’s what this club is for.

  “If it’s too confusing to use my name like that, we can go back to the other way,” he said, as if that might be the reason for my hesitation.

  “N-no, it’s fine.” My voice quavered a little as I asked, “What do I have to do?”

  “Nothing but exactly what I tell you.”

  Huh. That sounded so easy. I didn’t have to be in charge. I didn’t have to try to figure out what to say or how to act. I swallowed again before I said, “Yes, Mr. Hawke.” When I said those words, it was like the light in the room changed. Or maybe it was me that changed. I felt like I had just slipped into a hot bath, all resistance gone.

  Axel let me soak in it for a minute. Or two. I started to get nervous, wondering what was going to happen next. Was I supposed to be doing something? I started to turn my head to look at him.

  He made a warning noise. “Ah-ah. Didn’t you play Simon Says as a kid? Mr. Hawke didn’t say to do anything.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Hawke.” It felt like the blush on my ch
eeks went all the way down my whole body! I was so embarrassed at having to be scolded, and yet all it did was rev up the excitement running through me even more.

  I heard his footsteps as he crossed the thick carpet. “I like what you’re wearing. You know what’s excellent about skirts? They make your parts so accessible. Bend forward, please.”

  Somehow when he said “please” it made what he said sound even more like a command than if he hadn’t. I locked my knees and put my hands on them as I bent over. He still hadn’t touched me. I found myself starting to tremble in anticipation.

  I felt the edge of my skirt move against my legs and then the fabric flip up, over my back. He must have been staring at my stocking-clad ass, then. I waited for him to run his hand over my flesh—or to smack it—but again, nothing.

  I heard something go click. “Turn to your right. Take hold of the footboard of the bed.”

  I stayed bent over and gripped the smooth, rounded edge of the foot of the bed. It was mahogany, an antique, sturdy and fine.

  It was a good thing I was holding it or I probably would have fallen over as the next thing I felt was my waistband pulling. The sound of fabric tearing sent my heart rate soaring. He was cutting away my stockings and panties with a knife—or his razor-sharp claws for all I knew.

  And then, at last, a touch. A soft finger tracing the very edge of my exposed flesh. Okay, so he didn’t have claws. I knew that. But my imagination wanted to run away with me.

  His touch kept me there in the moment though, tracing one side of my labia, then the other. As minimal a touch as I could imagine. Then his fingers moved a little closer toward my throbbing center, the hot places I wanted him to touch.

  But he didn’t give me what I craved. Just a few quick brushes. “There,” he said. “Just making sure your clit is exposed.”

  My knees began to shake. I don’t think I’d ever had a guy talk to me about my clit before.

  “Stay still.” I heard him move away and the cabinet doors open.