Page 48 of Fearless
Yeah, well, Noah wasn’t here, she told herself. From here on, she was going to have to learn to do things on her own.
“Did you not like it there?” Hadlee gently pried. “Did you and Noah not get along?”
“It was time to come home.” Kitty did her best to offer what she hoped was a believable smile. The way Hadlee’s was fading, she suspected she might not be as good at hiding things as she used to.
Garreth wasn’t smiling at all. A tic of leaping muscle played along his clenching jawline as he drew himself stiffly upright. “Does Noah know where you are yet? Because he didn’t have a clue when he called us last night.”
A tiny fist of guilt took squeezing hold inside her chest. “He called you?”
“Yes, he did,” Garreth said sternly, still not smiling, arms still folded. “One might even say he was worried about you.”
“I left him a note.”
“A note?” Hadlee echoed, shoulders sagging, eyes widening. “What did he do?”
“Nothing!” Kitty recoiled, the fist squeezing even tighter because that was the conclusion they’d jumped to. “He didn’t do anything wrong at all. In fact, he did everything right!”
“Then why would you run away?” Garreth demanded, the lash of his disapproval knocking her back a step.
“The whole point was to stop running away!” Kitty protested, once she’d recovered her shock. “Everybody’s so busy trying to clean up my mess, and I appreciate the help, I really do, but at some point, don’t you think I should be trying to clean it up too?”
Hadlee caught her arm, glancing back toward the secret passage where the distant noise of someone else crossing under the alley could faintly be heard. “Let’s not talk about this here,” she said, and turned pleading eyes to Danny, who was no longer on the phone.
“Are we good?” Garreth asked.
“She can enter tonight so long as she understands her membership is being put under review. Also”—Danny held out his hand—“cellphone, please.” His was a thin, impersonal smile. “Sorry, but if it’s not in my hand, you don’t go in.”
Digging through the duffel bag that held her few belongings, Kitty passed him her cellphone. It vibrated when she first touched it, signaling she’d missed a call. Multiple calls, she saw when she glanced at the screen. That she hadn’t heard it ring didn’t surprise her, she’d muted it the day she boarded her first plane, the one that had taken her to Noah. Afraid of accruing traveling fees she didn’t have the money to pay, she’d kept it off… until yesterday’s ill-fated decision to call Ethen. She checked the return number, half expecting Ethen’s to pop up on the screen, but it wasn’t. It was a mess of numbers instead, an international call. Noah.
“I texted it to him before I ever put you on a plane,” Garreth said, solving the mystery. “I texted it again after we found out where you were going. I was hoping he’d be able to talk some sense into you.” He got the locker room door for her, and he did it with the utmost disapproval. “Store your things. We’ll go to the bar.”
She didn’t want to have this conversation with him any more than she wanted to have it with Noah. Leaving her luggage in her assigned locker, she followed her friends out to Black Light’s play area. The lights were low, even around the bar where the infamous black lights lit the array of liquor bottles and drinks as they were served, amplifying the club atmosphere. Submissive men and women dressed in little or, as was the case of one slender red-head, nothing at all as they wove through an audience of voyeurs and players in pre- or post-scene negotiations. Garreth chose the table, a quiet place in the back, while all the sights, sounds, and smells of the once familiar club dungeon swept over her.
For once, her first gut reaction to the smell of leather and massage oil didn’t seep into her like an old haunt. Kitty slid into a seat with her back to the wall, but it felt more like slipping into a warm bath, with the low erotic thump of the music keeping time with the beating of her heart and the fleshy smacks of impact play happening in coincidental tandem both on the St. Andrew’s cross and in the medical play area clear across the room. Another woman was being double-fisted as she hung upside down from the ceiling hoist, her body trussed in black and red predicament bondage ropes and, God help her, a submissive kitten on hands and knees crawled on a leash behind her owner. Kitty caught a glimpse of her as she was led through the curtains of an aftercare alcove, her sapphire blue fox tail swishing across the backs of her naked thighs.
In that instant, Kitty forgot where she was. No longer was she sitting in Black Light with Hadlee on one side of her, mouthing to Garreth to be nice, and Garreth on her other, fighting to take deep breaths so he could ‘give her space’ as if she were still so… fragile. The way she’d been fragile right after she’d left Ethen. Not like she’d been in Australia, with Noah who’d forced her to ask for the strapping she’d received when she’d bent over the foot of her own bed. Who hadn’t hesitated over punishing her when she’d broken his rules. Who’d spent all day making her a tail, paws and ears, for no other reason than because she’d said she’d been a kitten once.
The low thump of the music crawled up through Kitty’s chair and into her flesh as she remembered the feel of his arms, the heat of his chest, the press of his fingers as he lubricated her ass and stretched her open. Her stomach quivered, the way it had quivered when she’d been presenting herself to him, asking without words for the privilege of his own hand pushing her new tail into her.
The thump of the music became the low, heady thump of her own blossoming arousal, even as notes of sadness wound their way through her. She’d made the right decision, she told herself. For all the reasons she’d already told herself, both before she’d left Australia and again, over and over throughout the long flight that had brought her home again. To sitting here, with Garreth and Hadlee. To them, she was still fragile, but that wasn’t how she felt. She wasn’t the same Kitty that she had been the night she ran away from Ethen.
Across the floor, coming through the shadows, she recognized Jaxson’s grim face. Chase wasn’t with him, but his pretty and pregnant submissive, Emma, was. She trailed along behind him, a huge smile on her face and one hand resting on the swell of her belly.
“Wow,” Kitty marveled.
“Big as a house,” Emma exaggerated with a smile and shrug. “I know. Twins. Fortunately, being in a poly relationship means there will always be someone available to change a diaper and I can stay in bed.”
Having only reached the table, Jaxson stopped and gave his wife a Look. Beaming back at him, she bounced once on her heels and then changed directions.
“I’ll go get some water,” she said and headed to the bar.
Oh, how things did change in the short time since she’d been gone. Kitty didn’t remember Emma sporting so much as a baby-bump at the Roulette party. But then, the only thing she’d been paying attention to that night had been Ethen’s rapidly souring mood.
She was going to have a baby bump like that pretty soon, and then she wouldn’t be able to hide it anymore.
On the heels of that thought came another, every bit as startling: She missed Noah.
She missed the gentle brush of his hand on the small of her back and the touch of his lips on her forehead. She missed the way he’d wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her back into the cradle of his body as he’d slept. She missed the way he accepted her—her sad pathetic side, her kitten side. Her everything side.
