Exit Strategy (7 page)

Carmelo looks back at me dubiously. “You want to talk to him?”

“No, and he shouldn’t be within a hundred yards of me, according to the
restraining order
.” I emphasize the words as a reminder to Byron, who seems to have forgotten that little detail.

Carmelo turns calmly back to Byron. “You have your answer, dude.”

Byron looks as if he wants to say something else, but when Carmelo  pushes his sweater sleeves up on both arms, Byron gets the message and storms away.

I flash what I hope is a reassuring smile at Carmelo as he takes his seat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t have time to tell you what was going on before he was over here.”

“What happened between you two that necessitated a restraining order? I always thought that brother was wound a little too tight.”

I want to answer Carmelo’s question, but Byron’s confrontation was the last straw. I am so exhausted emotionally that I am physically tired. “Can we just... get out of here?”

He eyes me with concern but acquiesces and signals the waitress for our check. “Sure thing.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Tristan

Trolling his club in search of a one-nighter who would only serve the purpose of a temporary sperm receptacle has to be the most pitiable of all the activities he’s ever engaged in, bar none. Tristan frowns at the level to which he’s sunk. There is no dearth of willing young women to select from, but he’s being more selective than usual. The three women he’s met so far tonight have not met his exacting standards.

The most disconcerting part of the whole ordeal is the fact that he’s never found himself in this situation before. Usually he’s the one who ends things with a fair amount of premeditation on his part. Therefore, he would’ve invariably already taken steps to replace his displaced submissive.

If he were honest with himself, he wants Keisha, but she doesn’t want him, and he’s not one to grovel, nor does he entertain do-overs. With some reluctance, he requested the dossiers of several possible new submissives and looked them over, but something was lacking in each of them. Thus, his foray into Wicked tonight. 

A leggy brunette at the bar has her eyes trained on him.

Too angular.
Before Keisha, she might have been just the body type he would’ve selected—excellent rack and almost as toned as a female body builder. But no more. Now he craves softness. Curves.

He shares his private section of VIP with a rock band and their entourage, but he might as well be alone for all the attention he pays to them. One of the groupies he conversed with earlier, a busty blonde, has given up on him and set her sights on the band’s drummer.

Tristan stands near the glass wall, nursing a scotch, and looks out over the club patrons dancing below. There are hundreds of women in this venue, and he can’t find anyone suitable for his needs?

He’s all but decided to go home since he’s been unsuccessful in his quest to find someone—anyone—to provide him with much needed release. As he looks down over the throngs of writhing bodies, he sees Sara Fielding on the dance floor, his sub from three years prior, who notified him of her renewed availability at the KSR Party.

As much as he loathes revisiting where he’s already been, he may just make an exception tonight. She knows the score, unlike a stranger he’d have to bring up to speed and handle all that time-consuming secrecy business. His balls feel heavy, almost to the point of pain. If he doesn’t do something soon, he might explode.

Before he can settle into the acceptance of his decision, his eyes fall on Sara’s dancing partner.

Motherfucker!

Tristan signals a waiter.

“See that blonde down there on the right in the gold dress?”

“Yes, Mr. White.”

“Please, offer her an invitation to come up here on my behalf. No one else is to accompany her.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tristan takes out his cell and calls Velasquez. “How the hell did McCaskill get in here?”

“Fuck!” Velasquez swears under his breath before he responds. “Not sure, sir, but I’ll take care of it.”

“He’s on the dance floor, first floor, eastern quadrant of the building.”

“Consider it taken care of.” Velasquez says.

As Tristan turns back to gaze upon the partygoers below, he sees McCaskill pull Sara to him and kiss her neck. The waiter taps her shoulder and delivers the message in the nick of time before the predator goes into action.

As Sara gives her regrets and follows the waiter from the floor, Byron looks around warily, and seeing Velasquez and a couple of bouncers headed his way, he bolts for the door. Tristan wishes he were in the mood for hand-to-hand combat; he would’ve handled McCaskill himself, but he has other needs that warrant attention first.

He pastes on a smile as Sara approaches him, her hands reaching for his. She kisses him on both cheeks, European style, and then on the lips.

“So, you’ve been languishing up here all this time while I’ve been suffering downstairs among the masses?”

Tristan shrugs off her rhetorical question. “I didn’t notice you were there until just now, and it’s a good thing I did.”

“Why’s that?”

“That scumbag you were with likes to drug women and cart them off for his nefarious purposes.”

Sara’s eyes widen theatrically, exaggerating her heightened fear. “I had no idea.”

“I thought as much.”

“Then I owe you a reward for saving me.” She moves in close, pasting the lower half of her body to his.

Tristan smiles, only to put her at ease—to make the result easier—not because he’s enjoying being in his former sub’s company so much. “I might have to take you up on that. What can I get you to drink?”

“Vodka and tonic. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

“Maybe marriage has changed more than your last name.”

“Hardly. I resumed use of my maiden name. ‘Nicholas’ wasn’t as classy as ‘Fielding.’ ”

Drink orders out of the way, Tristan loosens his tie and relaxes into the leather seat in the booth they’re occupying. Sara moves close to his side, ostensibly to make conversation easier over the music, but her proximity makes him uncomfortable.

He angles himself to make conversation easier, yet keeps her from being glued to his side. This already feels like a mistake, but he’s thinking with his aching balls, not his brain, as he continues to entertain her.

After a drink and about thirty minutes of the most inane conversation this side of creation, he levels her with his winning smile and that’s all it takes. She follows him to the private lounge he’d already reserved for what he hoped would be an opportunity to do a brief scene and take the edge off.

Sara is eager to play, and admittedly, it’s easier to do this with someone who knows the score than a complete newbie, like Keisha had been.
Fuck!
He doesn’t want his mind to go there. Not now, when he needs release. Afterward, perhaps he’ll think clearer and make the decisions necessary to get Keisha Beale out of his system for good. She made her choice. It’s about time he made some serious steps toward replacing her.

Sara will be as good as any in the interim until he’s able to move solidly in that direction. The moment they enter the private lounge, Sara sinks onto her knees into a submissive posture. After locking the door, he chooses a couple of floggers from the case of toys he’d brought with him in case the opportunity presented itself. And present itself it had.

He takes the instruments, whipping them through the air and testing their weights. These elk hide mops will do nicely and will have him where he needs to be in no time, and they are the perfect weight to create the desired amount of sting and thud for a seasoned masochist like Sara.

“Don’t just sit there. You haven’t worshipped at my feet in years. Is this how you greet your Sir?” he says with a snarl.

Sara was a humiliation whore. She loved it more than she loved being merely submissive. In fact, it was her penchant for bodily excretion play that sent him in search of someone more suitable. He had ejaculated in every crack and crevice of her body, yet she’d been insatiable, begging him to urinate on her, among other things. That memory makes the present scene rather distasteful to him, but he’s too deprived and depraved to care.

Sara scrambles over to him and kisses his size twelve custom Berlutis like she’s making love to them. Were he in his Grotto, he’d make her take off his shoes and kiss his naked feet, suck his toes, but though the carpet in the private lounge looks clean, he doesn’t plan on baring his feet on it. Sara will have to make do with the expensive leather.

He’s too impatient to allow her to slobber over his feet for long, so he nudges her chin with the butt of one of the floggers. She raises her eyes to his, and he can see the hunger for the pain he’s prepared to dole out. “Stand up. Skirt up. Feet apart. Ass out. Hands against the wall.”

She follows every order with precision almost as soon as the words are out. This is familiar to Sara. It’s what she loves. What she craves.

Tristan looks down at Sara’s derriere. The thong she’s wearing leaves her feeble assets bare. It’s not nearly as contoured and gorgeous as Keisha’s, but it will suit for now. Damn, that little vixen had gotten under his skin, but he’s about to perform a subcutaneous exorcism. He’ll get Keisha Beale out of his mind and his heart if it is the last thing he does.

Taking the floggers firmly in hand, he flagellates Sara’s bottom until it’s rosy red and his cock feels as though it’s the consistency of granite. As he completes his first Florentine flogging in over a year, he’s ready to fuck Sara until she can’t walk, but when he reaches into his pocket ... he doesn’t have a goddamned condom.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” he rasps. He’s breathing hard from the exertion of wielding the two floggers, his shoulders moving up and down as his lungs quickly expand and contract. He pulls every pocket in his pants inside out and then opens his fly so roughly that the button pops off his slacks and bounces off the wall.

“Turn around,” he barks. “Your mouth will have to do for now.” When Sara turns, he doesn’t have to make a demand. She takes him into her mouth until he hits the back of her throat. Then she devours him as though she hasn’t had a meal in days. However he is as hungry for release as she is to service him. Taking her head in his hands, he guides himself in and out, her teeth grazing him every other pass, but that’s okay because he isn’t milking this for longevity. It’s a means to an end, and that’s all.

When he spills his seed into her hot, wet mouth, she clamps on him like a vacuum and swallows it all down. Sara always had passably good oral skills, but he’d taught a hazel-eyed, caramel-skinned beauty how to eclipse her. He’s not even flaccid before he realizes he doesn’t want to fuck Sara Fielding anymore. That experience would be as lackluster and fall just as short as the inferior blow job he just had.

Sara wrangles for an invitation to his home and into his Grotto, but Tristan refuses to take the bait and insists on dropping her off at home, citing work. Ever the gracious host, he offers her a drink from the limo bar.

“Were we going to your place, I might ask for water. But since that’s not a possibility, I’d like another gin and tonic, please,” she says.

He fixes her drink and grabs a bottle of water for himself.

He might have considered changing his mind and having her over had she not been so curious about the current state of his arrangement with Keisha.

“So, what happened to Kwanisha?”

“Her name is Keisha, Sara.”

“Well, I only met her one time. Besides, all their names tend to sound alike. You’ve heard one of them, you’ve heard them all.”

“You know, you’ve always been a snobbish bitch,” Tristan says as unflappable as you please, almost as if he’s paying her a compliment.

“We’re cut from the same cloth, baby. I don’t know why you thought things would work out between you and her.”