Page 13 of Dare to Love Again

His fingers tightened. “Stop struggling. I’m not in the mood for games.”

“Neither am I,” she bit out, her voice rising, all pretense of politeness evaporated. “I have asked nicely, but you won’t listen. I have said no repeatedly, but you must be deaf.” She yanked hard on her hand, which hurt, pinching her skin. “For the last time, I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

He stopped, oblivious to the surrounding people, in particular, the two women who skidded to a halt behind him and came close to slamming into his back. With a hard tug on her arm, he knocked her off-balance, and she fell against him.

His fingers dug into her arms while he pulled her up on her toes and snarled down at her. “I’ll enjoy whipping your back raw in repayment for your defiance, slut. Now, move your ass, and while you do, keep your mouth shut until I’m ready to shove my cock in it.”

“Red,” she called loud enough that despite the ambient noise he couldn’t miss hearing. The man blinked in surprise, acting as if he’d never heard the word before, which considering his swinish behavior Esme found hard to believe.

Suddenly, comprehension dawned. Still holding her in an unbreakable grip, she watched as his handsome features transformed into a scowl and fury flashed in his cold, blue eyes. When his fingers tightened painfully, she repeated the club safeword, crying “Red!” in a shout, this time at the top of her lungs.

The dom’s lips flattened into a hard, thin line and his nostrils flared. Everyone and everything around them came to a halt. With witnesses watching, he dropped his hands at the same instant a dungeon monitor arrived.

“What’s the problem here?” he asked her, not even looking at the enraged dom.

“I’m not interested,” Esme explained as she rubbed her wrist, the tender flesh he’d abused likely bruised. “But he wasn’t listening.”

“There is no problem, Finnegan,” the nasty dom replied, ignoring her comment and addressing the DM instead, though his angry gaze remained fixed on her. “It would seem I mistook her signals and the appallingly negligent lack of a ribbon.”

The monitor’s eyes dropped to her bare throat. Esme flushed.

Stupid, stupid.

Her hands flew to her corset, but she remembered she’d taken it out. Looking down, she spotted it on the floor where she must have dropped it when the jerk grabbed her.

Before she could squat to retrieve it, her rescuer bent and did it for her.

After seeing the other submissive’s response, she intended to put it back on, but she’d gotten distracted. Her lack of a ribbon should not have opened her up to a nonconsensual whipping by this asshole, however.

“Pink, I should have guessed,” the asshole muttered under his breath. “After this unpleasantness”—his nostrils flared, and he grimaced as though she smelled bad—“I find I am no longer interested. In better light, I see I made an error in judgment. There are many more beautiful submissives here tonight who will eagerly fall to their knees and beg to be under my lash.”

Esme couldn’t imagine who would be so incredibly foolish, but didn’t utter a word in response to his insult. Her only reaction was to move closer to the man with the bright-orange DM badge on his sleeve. Her rescuer was big and looked strong enough to snap a man twice the size of this insensitive, boorish dom in half, and he was far from little.

“Then I suggest you go find one, Carlos,” the big man stated smoothly, though there was underlying steel in his tone. “And I’ll remind you to keep your rude comments to yourself. Because a submissive doesn’t choose to scene with you is no reason to be nasty. Verbal abuse, unless negotiated in a scene is against house rules, something we have warned you about on more than one occasion.”

Having his prior infractions aired before her and the other members still gathered to watch the drama, so incensed the dom his face turned blood red. Esme was afraid his ears might pop off the side of his head.

Unfortunately, they didn’t, and he gave the DM no reason to snap him like a twig—also to her disappointment. Instead, he cast her a scathing look before stalking away.

With him gone, a wave of relief swept through her, but the incident left her shaking. She swayed, feeling weak at the knees, and jumped when her rescuer put a supportive hand on her back.

“Easy, lass. It’s over.”

Responding to his deep, soothing voice and authoritative presence, she inched closer, leaning into him to steady herself.

“Thank you.”

“Carlos is an ass,” he stated succinctly. “I’ll keep an eye on him the rest of the night. He’ll find someone else, but they won’t be who he wanted, and the scene won’t go well. We’ll have more trouble out of him tonight, of that I’m certain.”

“I can’t stop shaking.”

“It's a delayed stress reaction. Breathe deep.” The DM’s hand shifted to her chin, lifting her face for his inspection. “Do you need to sit down, little sub?”

For the first time, she truly looked at him. At five foot eight, she hadn’t ever considered herself little, but compared to him, she seemed petite. Aside from being several inches over six feet, he was broad-shouldered, muscular, but not bulging, like he was familiar with the gym though not obsessed with it. His thick, dark hair gleamed with strands of auburn and had a slight wave to it. It touched his collar in the back as if he’d been busy and was several weeks past due for a trim. She was tempted to brush it back off his forehead or finger comb where it curled around his ears.

He was strikingly handsome, but what struck her most were his green eyes, just a shade darker than her own, not quite a jade, and different from emerald. Unique, but oddly familiar, though she would have remembered this man had she ever met him before. Her body heated as a tingle of awareness raced through her, something that hadn’t happened in a very long time.

Feeling suddenly vulnerable, she averted her eyes, and in a self-conscious gesture, nervously tucked her hair behind her ear.

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