Page 62 of Brave
“She needs it.” He smacked her butt again. “Go on.”
She walked out of the room looking back at him over her shoulder. Just before vanishing into the bathroom, she tentatively smiled.
Smiles like that could make a man do any number of stupid things. For instance, for just a moment, he was tempted to invite her mother along too. Fortunately, common sense prevailed.
There were some levels of dysfunction that ran too deep even for him to want to tackle. Pony might be more than he could handle. He wasn’t sure he was ready to take on all three.
* * *
Judging by the look Danny gave them as Carlson signed them in for the night, Cynthia at his side and Pony trailing behind him, her head bowed and her back menagerie girl straight, he probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find Spencer in a less than convivial mood by the time they reached the dungeon bar.
“You’re late,” he said, and then added, “again.”
Frowning at Carlson first, his dark eyes roved straight over Cynthia and locked on Pony.
“We had, um,” Cynthia flashed a quick glance at Pony, who remained petulantly unresponsive, “a little trouble at the restaurant.”
A tic of muscle pulsing along his jaw, Spencer let it go. “Are we working tonight?”
“Yes, sir.” Turning to her sister submissive, Cynthia asked, “Do you want to come wash down the equipment with me?”
Pony stood there, staring at her hands. Silent.
Carlson met Cynthia’s helpless look with a frown, but he’d walked into this manipulation multiple times tonight already and he wasn’t about to give Pony anything she might twist into his taking command of her.
“It’s this way.” Hesitantly taking Pony’s hand, Cynthia drew her toward the stockroom behind the bar for rags and disinfectant. Carlson breathed a sigh of relief when she went.
“Okay,” Spencer drawled, “now I’m going to ask: What are you doing?”
“Biting off more than I can chew.” Scrubbing his fingers through his short dark hair, Carlson groaned, but he wasn’t even frustrated anymore. He was beyond frustrated, and he had no problem showing it as he yanked the nearest barstool close to sit down. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t intending to bring her here tonight. Cynthia called with a problem, so I thought, Pony’s been living cooped up at her mother’s house all this time—yeah,” Carlson confirmed when Spencer’s look switched from an unfinished eye roll to an ‘are you shitting me’ glare. “Oh, you don’t know the half of it, trust me. That entire living situation is the best description for dysfunctional that I have ever seen. Cynthia’s mother treats her like she’s five-years-old, and she can’t stand Pony. She hates her so much, she’s even told her so to her face. So here I thought, wouldn’t it be nice for everyone involved if I took the girls out for a while. Especially now that Ethen’s no longer in the picture.”
Spencer startled.
“Oh yeah. That happened last Friday. Ethen point-blank told them not to come back to the prison, he had no more use for them. Something Cynthia seems to be fine with…” Carlson held up a staying hand when the other dom’s surprise promptly narrowed into disbelief. “I know, I know. I’m on the fence about that one, too. She’s held that torch for a very long time, so it makes sense for there to be a little denial in play here. But she truly does seem okay. Pony on the other hand… So I figured, get them out of the house and away from Cynthia’s mother. I’ll be the first to admit, I should have thought that through a little further. It’s been a nightmare.”
Pulling up a stool beside him, Spencer sat down. “All right,” he sighed, folding his hands on the bar. “Hit me. What’s happening?”
“What didn’t happen?” he shot back, trying not to snap. It happened anyway. Just thinking about it made an afternoon of frustration in Pony’s company come bubbling back up again. “It started in the car when she refused to buckle up unless I ordered it. She refused to walk unless I ordered it. At the restaurant, she refused to talk to the waiter, or Cynthia for that matter. She would only talk to me, up until I realized she was only doing it if I said something that could be construed as an order.”
“She was trying to get you to top her,” Spencer mused.
“Yeah, well, I refused. I had Cynthia order for her, so then she refused to eat. She hasn’t spoken two words to me since. When she’s not looking at the ground, I swear to God, her face is fixed into the most blank, serene, and yet ‘fuck you’ expression I’ve ever seen. I just want to smack it off her.”
“She’s been without a dom since Ethen went to prison.”
“She’s never been with a dom,” Carlson scoffed. “Ethen’s not a dom. He’s a jackass who gets his kicks out of starving them for no reason other than to see if they’ll obey.”
“Thank you, love,” Spencer said when Klara brought them each a generous tumbler almost full of amber whiskey.
“On the house,” she said, “but you’re on restricted play for four hours if you drink it all.”
Both men scoffed.
“Your ass should be so lucky,” Spencer called as she retreated back out of earshot.
Carlson was too busy knocking back his glass to say anything at all. It was probably a mistake, but he drank half the tumbler in three gulps. It did not make him feel better.
“Uh,” Spencer said when he noticed.
