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  When Nefertiti activated the intercom with a musical chime, Colleen hurried back to her chair so she could seem cool and composed when Chase came striding in. A former defensive tackle, he was tall and broad, muscled all over. Being out of the NFL for the past two years hadn’t hurt his physique any. His sandy brown hair and boyish good looks had made him almost as popular as his sack record had. Chase eased himself into the chair across from her desk.

  Why does he have to look so good?

  “I’m glad you were able to find time to fit me into your busy schedule.”

  “Try to kiss me again and I’ll have you thrown out,” she warned him. The last time he had been here was before a concert. He had managed to corner her in the VIP booth. And because they couldn’t be anywhere without fighting, their polite conversation had turned into a screaming match that ended up with them nearly fucking against the wall.

  “No promises,” he said, flashing his even white teeth.

  She sighed. “What do you want?” The quicker she could get him out of here, the quicker she could get on with her life.

  “You,” he said simply. “You have to admit there’s still chemistry.”

  Colleen angled her head in acknowledgment. They could set the drapes on fire. Right now, if she straddled his lap, they’d break the chair with their enthusiasm. It had always been like that. Hot, intense, deeply satisfying. She leaned back, crossing her own legs, and he tracked the smooth expanse of thigh she flaunted. “You have to admit there’s still animosity,” she pointed out. Just to tease him, she drew little circles on her thigh with her fingernails.

  Chase wet his lips. “I’m willing to work on it, if you are.”

  She drained her soda and tossed the can in the trash. “I’m not.” Been there, done that. And there weren’t any Alfies waiting in the wings to rescue her this time.

  “Okay,” Chase agreed, crossing his own legs with a slight wince. “If you insist.”

  “How’s the knee?” she asked, wishing the pang of sympathy would fuck off right alongside Chase Fairwood. He’d given in far too easily. He was up to something.

  He shrugged. “Good days and bad days. I do like what you’re doing here. You always had an eye for fashion. I’m glad your husband indulged you to explore your talent.”

  Squinting at him, Colleen tried to find the sarcasm in the words he’d nearly said through his teeth. “You don’t give a rat’s ass about fashion. You wouldn’t know a haute couture piece from a department store special.”

  “Want to put a little wager on that?”

  Colleen wondered what his angle was. She inspected his jacket and suit pants. Chase had never been the type to wear edgy fashion; he had on a traditional Gucci suit and Fratelli Borgioli wing-tip dress shoes. He wore them well, too. Like he was on a job interview. If he had been applying for a security job, she might have hired him.

  “I’m listening.”

  He tugged on his tie. Colleen wondered if he’d worn it just to impress her or if he really did want membership to Couture. She didn’t see him as the type to lie around a fashion resort mingling with designers and models.

  Well, maybe the models, she thought sourly.

  “I don’t want to be a sports announcer,” Chase said, shifting so his bad knee was at a better angle. “Doing the convention circuit gets a little old. I don’t have the chops to coach professionally. There’s not much else. I was an athlete. It was all I ever wanted to be. I didn’t bother to train in anything else. I got a free ride in college and was one of the first picked in the draft. I majored in communication, but that was so long ago everything is obsolete.”

  Colleen nodded at him to go on. None of this was news to her. “You could go back to college. Get another degree.”

  “In what?” Chase scoffed. He got up from the chair and headed over to the minibar set up in the corner. He had a slight limp she’d never noticed before. Colleen frowned and looked away, bothered that she cared.

  “You could do security. You’re big enough to be a bouncer. I wouldn’t want to tangle with you.”

  “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

  Colleen snorted.

  “Besides,” he continued, “I’m an easy target. All it would take is a hard shot to my knee, and ‘Timber!’ You got any beer?” Chase peered around the bar top.

  “In the fridge.”

  “Sweet.” He pulled out a bottle from one of the local microbreweries. He handed her another diet cola and she took it, making sure their fingers didn’t touch.

  “Get a degree in anything you want.” Colleen tossed him a bottle opener from her desk drawer. “Law, business—hell, why not pre-med? You could go for a degree in sports medicine.”

  “I’m too old for that shit.” He winged the bottle cap into the trash and took a long pull.

  “Yeah, you’re ancient.”

  “You like older men.” Chase sat back down and threw her a smoky look that was just fringed with anger.

  “Is that a shot at my husband?” Colleen’s fingers itched for her riding crop.

  “Why did you leave Vegas to go with him?”

  Interesting. He’d never asked that question before. Had always danced around it. They were finally going to get into it. Colleen cracked her knuckles.

  Let’s finish this. Once and for all.

  “I wanted to.” Colleen shrugged. “He was good to me.”

  Chase’s fingers tightened on the bottle and she thought for a minute there was going to be glass all over the floor, but he eased up. “It hadn’t even been a month.”

  “A month since you cheated on me with half the cheerleading squad.” Coleen stabbed a finger in his direction.

  “You cheated first.” He leaned in over the desk, gently placing the bottle down.

  “I did not,” she shrieked in outrage, and slammed her fist on the desk.

  Chase rescued the bottle before it toppled over and took another swig. “Whatever.”

  “No, not whatever,” Colleen shouted. “You brought it up. Finish your bullshit line of logic.” She was nearly blind with apoplexy. How dare he? How fucking dare he accuse her of that bullshit? She had been stupidly head-over-heels in love with him. Chase had been on the road with the team more often than he’d been in Vegas with her, and she’d never strayed. Not once. She hadn’t ever been tempted. “Just because you have the morals of an alley cat, don’t paint me with the same brush.”

  Easing back into his chair, he stared over her head out the floor-to-ceiling window. “Forget it.”

  “I never slept with anyone else while we were together.”

  “What about other things?” He put his left hand on his chest and did a Bill Clinton voice. “I did not have sexual relations with anyone.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Chase?” Colleen resisted the urge to chuck the can of soda at his head.

  “I saw you,” he snarled, lunging across the desk so they were almost nose to nose.

  “Saw me what?” She got right into his face and stared him down. Uh-oh. They were close enough to kiss. But what she wanted to do was nip at his lower lip, pull his hair, and go tumbling to the floor with him. This wasn’t good.

  “My buddies and I went to Miranda’s Midnight House of Pain.”

  Colleen blinked. “Oh.” She sank back into her chair, stunned. Not what she had been expecting him to say.

  “Yeah.” Chase gave a half laugh, returning to his own seat. “Oh.” He swigged down some more beer.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” She wasn’t sure why he thought that had been cheating. The men hadn’t been allowed to touch her. She had always been fully dressed—unlike the cocktail waitresses.

  “Guess who the Mistress of Pain was the night we went?”

  This didn’t make sense. “You knew I had a bunch of odd jobs. I told you about being a phone sex operator. I told you I was training to be a professional dominatrix.” Colleen racked her brain to see what pissed him off so bad about her working at
Miranda’s. Hell, the cocktail waitresses got more action than she had at that place. More tips, too.

  “I thought the training wasn’t so hands-on,” he said.

  “I didn’t have sex with that man.” Colleen swore in frustration. Now she was the one who sounded a little like Bill Clinton. “He never touched me. He paid to get flogged, and that’s what I did.”

  “You were dressed like Catwoman, all in leather and showing so much skin you might as well have been naked.”

  “It was part of the fantasy. Jesus Christ, Chase, I was a stripper, too, and that didn’t bother you. What’s the deal?”

  “The deal was I never went to the club you were stripping at with my friends.”

  Colleen’s lips tightened, and she felt the alarming prick of tears at the corners of her eyes. “You were ashamed of me.” She blinked rapidly to get rid of the traitorous liquid. Only Chase could bring her from lust to anger to tears in less than ten minutes. To be fair, he could also bring joy and laughter, but it had been a long, long time since they were anything but adversaries.

  “No.” Chase shook his head. “Embarrassed. I didn’t want the guys to recognize you, but of course they did. You weren’t wearing a mask.”

  “I wasn’t hiding,” she said through her teeth. “And I wasn’t cheating on you.”

  “It looked more intimate than stripping.” He folded his arms across his chest and let out a big sigh.

  “It is,” Colleen said, and thought of the senator again. The bond between Domme and sub didn’t have to be sexual. In most cases it was, but more often than not it was mostly about letting go of control and trusting that it’d be safe to indulge in dark fantasies that the mainstream population wouldn’t understand. Safe, sane, and consensual was the code she lived by. “A pro Domme usually doesn’t have sex with her clients.”

  “Usually?” Chase snarled.

  “I didn’t have sex with my clients. I didn’t jerk them off. I didn’t suck them off. I didn’t fuck them raw. Is that clear enough for you?”

  “Whatever,” Chase said.

  “Don’t be a passive-aggressive asshole. You started this.” Colleen crossed her arms over her chest. “Explain how you think our breakup was all my fault.”

  “I got pissed. Paid you back with the cheerleaders. I figured we’d get over our mad and go on from there.”

  “Except I didn’t do anything wrong.” Colleen had to try hard not to crumple her can in frustration.

  He gave another half laugh. “Turns out I didn’t, either. I was too drunk to get it up.”

  It felt like time had stopped. Colleen wasn’t sure she was even breathing anymore. For the past ten years she had been able to cope with losing Chase because she thought he had been untrue. Her heart beat loud in her chest. For a moment she got lost in his hazel eyes. They were flecked with gold and green. It was getting hard to breathe because it felt like a boa constrictor was squeezing her chest.

  “I’m not saying that when I sobered up and the chicks were still there that I wouldn’t have tried to get even. But then you were there. Did you have to leave me naked and broke?”

  “Yes,” Colleen said. The pain in her chest was fading away to numbness. Two prideful idiots—that’s what they had been. Communication never had been their strong point.

  “You nearly broke my jaw.” Chase rubbed it as if it still hurt.

  “Good.” You broke my heart. She almost rubbed her chest at the phantom pain. Then she shook herself out of the stupor and went for the attack again. She couldn’t let her guard down around him. “And I think you’re glossing over the fact that you and I were in a committed relationship and you felt it was all right to go out to a BDSM show with your friends.”

  He snorted. “You didn’t care about shit like that.”

  “Then don’t play the double-standard card.”

  “I was there for the beer and to hang out with my friends,” he said.

  Now it was her turn to snort. “Then you could have picked a thousand other casino bars. You picked a sex show and you had the nerve to be pissed at me?”

  “I wasn’t up there with my tits on display crawling around a bare-assed tourist.”

  “You could have been.” Colleen shrugged. “Hell, you could have been the tourist. We asked for volunteers from the audience. Why didn’t you just wait for me backstage instead of pulling a hissy and staying out all night? I could have shown you the difference between sex and dominance.”

  Still could. But they were having this conversation ten years too late.

  “Because by the time I got over being angry, you had moved to Texas with that old fart.”

  Colleen held up a hand. “Don’t you ever say anything against Alfie.”

  Chase pushed to his feet. “Yeah, he was a real saint.”

  “I’m warning you, Chase.”

  He finished his drink staring at the wall. Tossed the bottle into the trash, where the bottle shattered.

  “Everything all right in there?” Istvahn’s voice grumbled over the intercom.

  “Fine,” she said, toggling the speaker off. Nefertiti must have called him in when their voices got too loud.

  Closing her eyes, Colleen tried to drive back the if-onlys. “Let’s try and get this conversation back on track.” She needed to get him the hell out of her office until this vulnerable and achy feeling went away. “Why do you want to be a full member of Couture? You’re not a designer.”

  “I like the idea of being a clothes hanger.” He hung his arms out like he was the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.

  She smirked. “You’re too big for most designers.”

  “Most. Not for your brother-in-law’s line.”

  “As much as I like Max’s designs, he’s just starting out.”

  “So am I.” Chase spread his arms in a large shrug.

  “You can’t be his clothes hanger exclusively.” Colleen tapped a pen on her ledger. “If you’re serious about a career in modeling, I can make a few calls and get you some interviews with agencies.”

  “I’ve got an agency. They’re searching for opportunities for me, but they said it couldn’t hurt to get some experience. So I figure having a membership here would look great on my resume. If it’s the money, I can pay triple the fee, or pay for membership in full a year in advance.”

  “It’s not about the money, Chase.”

  “Of course not. Granger hooked you up when he croaked.”

  Slamming the pen down, she got up from her desk. “Get the fuck out of my office. I don’t need to hear shit like that from the likes of you.”

  He held up his hands in surrender. “You’re right. I’m being a dick. I just can’t picture you and him together.”

  “So stop picturing it. Stop thinking about me in bed with anyone. It’s ancient history.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  “Yeah, it pretty much does,” Colleen said. Especially if he got freaked out over Miranda’s Midnight House of Pain. “You’re going to have to trust me that joining Couture would be a big mistake.”

  “Why?”

  Colleen considered how much she wanted to tell him. “Couture is a lot of things to a lot of people,” she hedged. “There are areas that you would be prohibited from entering, and I know you, Chase—you’d keep at it until you uncovered every last secret corner. Quite frankly, you’d be disappointed with what you find.”

  Some of the dungeon scenes made Miranda’s Midnight House of Pain look like Little House on the Prairie. Actually, some of them were based on Little House on the Prairie. Pa and Nellie cosplay was more popular than one would think.

  “I’m a sophisticated world traveler.” He came around the desk.

  “You’re an ape in a twenty-five-hundred-dollar suit.” She met him chest to chest. Unlike when she was close to Dante, Colleen’s heart was racing, and she craved the danger that was coming off him in waves.

  “What are you afraid of?” He dragged her against him so hard her feet nearly came out of
her Manolos.

  Losing my heart again.

  Colleen could have stepped on his expensive leather shoes with her sharp heel. She could have lifted her knee and nailed him one in the jewels. Hell, Istvahn was just a shout away. But Colleen lifted her arms around his neck and met his mouth with a savage lust that propelled them back into the wall.

  Just this one kiss.

  The morning’s frustration with the senator and Dante vanished under the heavy press of Chase’s mouth. He tangled his fingers up in her hair, holding her head at an angle that was just short of pain. She pressed her belly into his erection. The hard, hot length of him made her want to toss him to the floor and have her way with him.

  Why not?

  A traitorous thought. She moaned into his mouth. Colleen hadn’t indulged herself since letting go her last sex slave. Lust and deprivation caused this. She ruled the nightlife of the hottest sex club in the country, but the last time she’d gotten laid was sometime last season. There was always a crisis to handle, always a problem to fix. No men measured up to her standards, and training a new slave was becoming too much like work. But here in Chase’s arms, with his tongue filling her mouth, all that existed was the two of them.

  He reached under her suit’s skirt, pushed aside the thong.

  Colleen hooked her leg around his knee to give him better access, even as she muttered, “Damn you.”

  When he dipped a finger inside her molten heat, she tightened her leg.

  His flinch was a dash of cold water, and she shoved away from him.

  “That’s my bad knee,” he said, bringing his finger up to his mouth to taste her. “You taste like honey.”

  She watched his talented tongue swirl around, licking her wetness off his finger, and she nearly went back for more.

  Don’t be an idiot.

  “You’re going to have two bad knees if you don’t stop kissing me,” she warned, heading toward the door. She was still shaking with the need to strip them both and spend the afternoon having wild sex.