Page 5 of Brave
Chapter 3
Carlson Garvey sat down for what felt like the first time all day, and it had been a long one.
“Hello, stranger,” Pixie said brightly, sauntering up to his table in her next to nothing hot pink negligee. “I was really starting to get offended. You’ve been here since six and yet this is the first you’ve come to see me all night.”
“Dungeon monitors need to walk the floor, not socialize in the bar,” he reminded.
She mock pouted. “So you say.” Slit up the front, her outfit showed off the kind of body most men would ache to dominate, leaving only the thinnest sliver of a white thong to cover her sex. Her bob-cut wig and fake eyelashes matched the color of her outfit; so did her glossy, grinning pink lips. “Your usual, Gentleman Jack?”
“Please.” He stifled a sigh when she not so shyly bit her bottom lip, then trailed a playful finger over his shoulder before walking off to relay the drink order to Klara, Black Light’s best bartender.
It was no secret that Pixie had a crush on him. He also wasn’t above watching the sashay of her gorgeous ass playing peek-a-boo beneath the flowing hem of her outfit as she walked away. Someday, she was going to make someone a great submissive, but he was not that someone. She was barely old enough to be serving drinks in this place. She could have been his kid for crying out loud. He knew plenty of doms who wouldn’t even bat an eye, but he was coming up on forty now. His days of playing the field were done.
Hell, his days of playing period seemed to be done. It wasn’t even that he couldn’t find a partner when he wanted. Unlike in the beginning, Black Light these days was a pleasant mix of both doms and subs, with more than a few ‘service submissives’ ready, willing, and able to submit to anyone in need of a partner. Why he couldn’t be satisfied with that anymore, he didn’t know. But more and more these days, his problem seemed to be this increasing desire to find a partner who wanted to be with him outside the dungeon too. He wanted to date someone, damn it. He wanted to take someone out to dinner, talk to her like a real human being and have her talk back, preferably with something more than just what was going on in the world of video games or Pokémon Go.
No offense to Pokémon, but that was not Pixie.
Never in his wildest dreams had he ever thought he would be staring down forty and still be single. Having made his military career a priority for the last twenty-two years, he supposed that was to be expected. But he was Stateside now, and he had every intention of staying that way.
His priorities had changed. He wanted more.
He was tired of being alone.
Just not tired enough to settle for someone half his age and with whom he already knew he had little to nothing in common.
He looked around the dungeon as he waited for his drink. At just after one on a Friday night, Black Light wasn’t as busy as it had been earlier in the night. Only one other table in the bar area was occupied, and that was by two gentlemen deep in scene negotiations. It wasn’t hard to tell which of them was the submissive and which the Top. The submissive was blushing all the way up to his carrot-top roots. Ducking his head, he nodded at whatever the Dom just said and suddenly the scene negotiation was done. The Dom stood and walked around the table, collecting his submissive by looping a finger in a belt loop at his waist. Dragging the other to his feet, off they headed in the direction of an empty cross.
“And a good time was had by all,” he said softly to himself just as Pixie returned with his drink. Two fingers of Crown, hold the ice.
“Are you clocked off now?” she asked, plopping down in a seat beside him. She made a show of wiping down the table with a rag she then dropped beside her. “You look like I wish I felt: rode hard and put up wet.”
He almost laughed. Subtle.
“It’s been a day,” he agreed instead, although he didn’t share the details. Their relationship wasn’t really one that had ever been overly sharing, even of the positive stuff.
“It’s awful quiet tonight, isn’t it?” She stretched her arms and back, not-so-covertly pushing out her breasts. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so quiet this ea—holy shit.” Dropping the stretching act, Pixie snapped her arms down, mouth gaping as she stared past him.
Glancing over his shoulder, Carlson searched for something shocking enough to stop Pixie mid-word, but all he saw was a brunette he didn’t know coming through the door.
Nothing about her looked like a woman intentionally paying a visit to Black Light’s exclusive dungeon. She wasn’t dressed the part. Instead of sexy, her outfit consisted of pink yoga pants and a clashing orange t-shirt. Her long brown hair was twisted in a messy and crooked braid. Her hands were clasped over her stomach and judging by the tension he could read on her drawn face, she looked scared.
Newbie, he thought. Except that didn’t make sense either. Newbies were always given their first tour around by established mentors and very, very few ever came alone.
“Holy fuck!” Pixie erupted from her chair. “Do you know who that is?”
Without waiting for an answer, she bolted back behind the bar. Puzzled, he watched her fumble out the club’s business phone from under the bar and hunch down where she wouldn’t be seen. What in the world was she doing, calling security?
He startled when the chair closest to him suddenly bumped his knee under the table as the newbie woman who had just walked in pulled it back from the table. She didn’t look any less scared as she sat down, completely uninvited, despite the sea of empty tables all through the bar area, directly beside him.
Hands clasped tight in her lap, she stared at him the way he imagined a horror victim might pause to look at Freddy Krueger just before the knives came out.
“Hello,” he said, surprised and trying hard not to sound defensive or accusatory.
She swallowed, her eyes huge and just shy of apologetic. She said nothing.
At the cross, the two men were just starting to play, neither paying any attention to anything other than the flogging scene one was intent on giving and the other was equally intent on receiving. Behind the bar, Pixie was whispering into the receiver and peeking at them over the top, as if the scared woman was a bomb. Klara had just come out of the back with two new bottles of liquor in her hands. She stopped, surprised when she looked his way, and on the other side of the bar, coming swiftly out of the shadows of the short hallway that led to his tiny closet of an office, came Spencer himself. Black Light’s normally unreadable manager stopped stalk-still in the mouth of that short hall… and stared.
Hands gripped tightly, the woman looked only at him. Desperation crept into her stare as her breathing turned quick and shallow, her nostrils flaring at every ragged inhale.
