Page 8 of Brave
“Not a problem.”
“Take your time,” he added. “I don’t want it to get here before I get back.”
He hurried, jogging all the way back to the locker rooms where he grabbed his coat, and then headed back to Danny at the check-in desk. The security guard was studying his display of monitors with a book lying face down on the desk not far from his phone.
“Look at that,” he said, pointing at one. “Do you see that? Who’s walking the floor tonight? That can’t be safe.”
Distracted as he was, Carlson gave the monitor a quick glance. He recognized the two men from earlier. No longer at the cross, the submissive was hanging suspended from a noose-like rope tied up over the fully elevated hoist bar. His hands were captured in restraints that also bound his thighs. His fully erect cock was standing high against his belly, despite the crop-wielding Dom who circled him, slashing first at his shoulders, then his ass, and even giving his cock two light flicks with the very slapper tip.
“It’s fine,” Carlson almost immediately dismissed. “Look at where the rope goes. They’re using the hoist for leverage, but the submissive is choking himself.”
Bending closer, Danny peered at the black and white monitor. The mood lighting in the dungeon was turned down low, but even so, it was possible to see the end of the rope in the submissive’s own bound hand. “Oh. I see. Thanks.”
“No problem. Can I borrow your coat for a minute?” he asked, shrugging into his own.
Sitting up a little straighter, Danny pulled his coat off the back of his chair and handed it over.
Knocking a quick thank you on the desk, Carlson rushed back up the tunnel toward the Psychic Shop. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised to find the dark shop empty and no sign of Puppy at the windows where he’d left her. Looking outside, he finally spotted her, tucked up in the shadows of the building next door. She was trying to stay out of both the wind and the light, and the only reason he spotted her was because she kept stealing nervous peeks around the corner back at the Psychic Shop door.
“Naughty girl,” he said under his breath. His instinct was to go out there, either drag or coax her back inside, or at the very least to wrap her in Danny’s heavy winter coat until the cab got here. The last thing he wanted to do was spook her worse than she already was.
She was hugging herself, and while she was too far away for him to be sure, he knew she had to be shaking.
He had no business forcing his help on someone who clearly didn’t want it. He should let this go, and he knew it, but oh how it went against every dominant, protective instinct he had to take that first step back from the door, rather than shove his way through it.
He was on the verge of turning around and walking away, when she suddenly dropped from standing to squatting. Covering her head with both hands, she rocked first, punched her own thigh twice, and then jumped up again. She tried to come back to Black Light, but just as quickly lost her nerve and retreated to her hiding spot again. Hugging her arms, she squatted down against the cold, and before he could stop himself, Carlson shoved his way out the door into the chilly night.
He strode across the extra wide city sidewalk, heading straight for her with Danny’s coat draped over his forearm and nothing but instinct driving him. This wasn’t his first rodeo, not by a long shot. And yet there were so many reasons why he never should have marched up to her, clamped his hand onto the back of her neck, dragged her to feet before wrapping Danny’s coat around her shoulders, and landing a single, hard swat to her butt to get her moving back inside.
There was a history here and it didn’t take knowing it for him to tell that she was obviously broken. But sometimes, broken people just ought to stick together.
To him, this felt like one of them.
Chapter 4
Swaddled in someone else’s coat, once more Puppy stood in the Psychic Shop entry, staring at the man who’d ventured out into the cold just to drag her back inside. He’d even swatted her butt. It hadn’t been gentle. It hadn’t been particularly hard, either. Cold as her skin was, that was probably to blame for why she could still feel his handprint tingling on the surface of her bottom. But for the life of her, she honestly didn’t know how she felt about it. Not that she was insulted or even offended. She just didn’t know why he’d done it.
Carlson Garvey, he’d said his name was. Trying not to be obvious about it, she stole peeks at him through her lashes, this veritable mountain of a man who could not have physically been more different from Ethen had she’d ordered him out of a catalog. Ethen was tall, but Carlson looked taller. Ethen was slender, possessed of a lean and wiry strength; Carlson was broad in the shoulders, lean in the hips and waist. He stood military straight and tall, with burly arms folded across his chest and legs slightly braced apart; Ethen was more a hands-in-pockets kind of guy. He liked suits and ties; Carlson was dressed like a dom about to scene, in full-out black leather pants and long-sleeved black shirt, buttoned at the wrists, as well as all the way up to the very top of his neatly folded collar.
His black shoes were polished to a shine. His belt was thick black leather, with the only spot of color on him being the shiny silver buckle and the flecks of salt in his pepper-dark hair.
“So,” he said, settling in with one eye on the four-lane street as they waited for her taxi. “What brought you to Black Light tonight? Surely it wasn’t just to come say hi to me.”
Fidgeting her fingers in the overlarge coat, Puppy knew how odd her behavior must seem. She couldn’t help it. Every thought she’d had from the moment she’d stepped out of the back of the cab had been fixated on proving to herself that she could still do this, that she could find her way back to normal, that she didn’t have to be Ethen’s anymore.
That she didn’t have to be afraid.
It had taken every nerve she had just to walk into the building. And then again, to talk to Luís and then walk down the tunnel to the security desk where Danny sat waiting to check members in. Not only had he granted her access to the club, but he’d been very professional about it. And thank God really, because it was that professionalism that had given her the courage to show him her ID, and just like that, she was in.
She’d stood in that doorway with the shop at her back, so stunned to be back in Black Light once more that she almost couldn’t think how to proceed.
Talk to someone. That was the mantra that had dragged her out of the house tonight. Just say hello to somebody—anybody—and then get her ass home so she could be safe again.
There hadn’t been a lot of people to choose from tonight, which had suited her just fine. She’d picked the first guy she’d seen and after that, the entire thing had happened like dominos falling in a line. Had she known he was going to chase out after her, she probably would have picked somebody else. Or, hell, never even come at all.
This was all so nerve wracking.
She’d already thrown up behind the stairs, she was so stressed, and all because she’d dared to break the rules. Ethen’s stupid rules.
