Page 25 of Dare to Love Again

“Think someone will snatch her up before she escapes into the lounge?” Eric asked.

Keiran ignored him, not sure what he was yammering about.

“You can cut her off at the end of the circuit by the doors if you hurry.”

He gave his business partner an annoyed sidelong glance.

“I’m supposed to be monitoring the stations, not angling a little action for myself. Besides, you wanted me to scope out your troubled widow, remember?”

“I do. The bigger question is, do you?”

Again, his comment made no sense, so he brought up an incident that happened earlier, one that couldn’t wait any longer. “Before you arrived, we had a minor problem on the floor. An asshole overly enthusiastic with a tawse, the same one I rescued the little redhead from last week.”

“Carlos?”

“None other. I thought you were going to suspend him, or make him repeat Dom 101 basic training?”

“That was my plan, but I haven’t seen him to do either. I left orders up front for him to be detained until we had our little chat, however. Damn,” Eric sighed and reached up to rub his eyes. “Who’s on the doors? Not Tristan. Nothing gets by him.”

“Alicia was the only one in the lobby when I arrived a little before ten.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. “How bad was it?”

“Carlos has always been rough, but tonight he really stepped it up. By the time Thomas and I arrived to haul his ass out, the male sub he had up on the cross had bruises, and according to witnesses, that was after only three strokes. Carlos denies it, but the man’s a sadist. He’s got a cruelty about him. If he’d had a female up on that cross, they would have wound up in the ER. My take—he needs to go, permanently.”

“Agreed. Why didn’t you call me?”

“You and Val were busy upstairs, so we handled it.”

“My thanks, and Valerie’s. It’s the first chance we’ve had to use the Sultan’s Chamber in a while. I’ll inform Mr. Hernandez he is no longer welcome at Decadence LA first thing tomorrow. If I find out Alicia let him in, she won’t escape punishment, either.”

Lapsing into silence, they watched as the pretty redhead stopped by the picture frame and gaped at Mistress Emily, exacting some pretty intense CBT on her long-term submissive. Shifting uncomfortably at the notion of a metal cage clamping down on his boys, he didn’t blame the little nymph for stopping and staring, but she appeared a little green, as though queasy.

“Did you decide not to take Esme on?”

He shot his friend a sidelong glance, his vaunted patience nearly exhausted. “I told you I haven’t had time to meet the lass yet. I looked for her earlier, but no one seems to know who she is.”

Eric tossed his head back and howled with laughter.

“You’ve gone daft,” he muttered, his Irish slipping.

“After running this place for two years, you might be correct. What I found amusing is that the tempting little package you’ve been staring at for the past thirty minutes is Esme.”

At this revelation, he scanned the crowd near the doors until he found her again. She appeared flustered while talking to Tristan, another Rossi man.

“I’ve seen her approach no less than four Doms in the past hour. I thought you said she was sweetly submissive. She looks the part but seems rather aggressive, and she’s hardly stuck if she’s the one approaching to negotiate. Maybe she’s a switch.”

“She’s as dominant as you are submissive my friend. Do you remember me saying I was considering ending her membership?”

“I’m not muddled in the head, Dupree. Of course, I do. It was only just Saturday that we spoke.”

“Well, I may have left out the ultimatum I gave her.”

“What ultimatum?”

“Either she finds a dom by the end of her intro phase, which is this weekend, or she’s suspended until Pax returns.”

“The hell you say.”

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