Mastering Lexie (Stronghold Book 4) (13 page)

He grinned,
remembering how pissed Lexie had been when he'd shown up, tucked her under his
arm, and literally carried her away from the douche.  Drunken Lexie was a
little warmonger when she wanted to be.  Of course, she'd turned that on
him when he'd picked her up from Rick's over the summer.  She'd gone with
Angel and Maria to confront him about the fact that he was being an ass when it
came to Maria.  Not that it was her or Angel's business, but they'd gone
anyway.  Rick had texted Patrick and Adam, and they'd immediately shown
up.

Lexie had
ended up spending the night at his place, in his guest room, because she'd been
way too drunk to drive, and she'd refused to let him take her to her
apartment.  Of course, now that he'd seen it, he understood why, but that
night she'd insisted that she didn't want to go home and be alone. 
Thankfully, she'd passed out in his car before she could make a move on the
sexual interest that had been in her eyes when he'd first carried her out.
 

She'd slept
over.  Not for the first time.  In the morning he'd made her
breakfast and kept everything carefully platonic.  Just taking care of her
fed some of his basic emotional needs, if he was honest with himself. 
Just like having her in his club, under his control, did.  

Of course, on
Thursday he was going to have to deal with the other side of that equation.
 

With a groan,
he decided he was going to take a break for a beer.  The bar was looking
more sparse now as the couples paired off, hitting either the dance floor or
one of the theme rooms.  They tended to spend a fair amount of time in the
bar at the beginning and end of the night, but there was always some time in
between where everyone was otherwise occupied.  

Andrew stood
behind the bar, wiping down the gleaming wood surface in preparation for the second,
later rush.  He looked up as Patrick approached.  

"Beer?"

"Yep."

Reaching under
the bar, Andrew pulled out a bottle and popped off the top before sliding a
coaster in front of Patrick as he sat down and placing the bottle in front of
him.

"Thanks."

"No
problem.  So Lexie's back?"

"Yep."

"You're
gonna train her?"

"Yep."

Patrick took a
long pull of beer while Andrew ran his bar cloth over the same spot over and
over again.  Looking up to see his friend's expression, expecting the same
condemnation that Adam had felt, he almost groaned at the look of amusement on
Andrew's face.  Yeah, he was glad to see his friend acting like his old
self and becoming less serious and less depressed, but at the same time, he so
did not need to deal with his sense of humor.  At least Chris wasn't
here.  The two of them together were like two rowdy teenage boys
sometimes. 

"You sure
that's a good idea?" Andrew finally asked, but he sounded more like
someone anticipating watching a particularly entertaining movie rather than a
big brother protecting his sister.  Not exactly what Patrick had expected,
even from Andrew.

"Why are
you taking this so well?  I thought you didn't want her in the club."

Andrew
shrugged.  "I never said that, exactly."

"You were
trying to keep her out on Friday."

"That's
because she was with Michael."

"I
thought you liked Michael."  Dammit.  Patrick was starting to
feel a stronger urge to drink.  Talking to Andrew was going to give him a
headache.  The more frustrated he got, the more amused Andrew looked.

"I
do.  But I didn't think
you'd
want her going downstairs with
Michael."

Patrick jerked
his chin up challengingly.  "So you don't care if Lexie comes into
the club, gets tied up, whipped and fucked senseless, as long as I'm the one
doing it."

Coughing and
laughing at the same time, partially in shock, Andrew leaned against the bar
and gave Patrick a big grin.  Big enough that the corners of his eyes
crinkled.  "Better not say it that way to Adam or Justin, they're
liable to try and kick your ass."

"But not
you."

"I
haven't been around the past few years," Andrew reminded him,
straightening and grabbing his own beer from under the bar.  Apparently he
realized that Patrick was settling in for a long talk.  "Being up in
New York and then coming home... every time I visited there were major changes
in our girl.  You guys didn't see them, because you were around her all
the time, but every time I saw her I had to adjust to a new Lexie that was just
a little bit more grown up."  He shrugged.  "So I deal with
it better than the rest of you, because when the changes are gradual, it's easy
to miss them completely.  Plus, unlike the rest of you assholes, I've got
my own little sister to worry about, and Iris is a hell of a lot more trouble
than Lexie is."

Huffing a
laugh, Patrick lifted his beer in acknowledgment of that point.  All of
them knew that part of the reason Andrew had come home was to help out his
family.  His dad was getting on in years and having some trouble,
especially when it came to Iris, who had been running wild since their mother
died.  When Andrew and Katherine, his ex, had been together, Iris had
idolized her, and she'd taken their break-up pretty badly.  She'd also
blamed Andrew for the loss of a second mother figure to her.  

"Well at
least one of you isn't going to hate me for training her," Patrick said,
sighing a bit.  He didn't like to think of the stress that this was going
to put on his friendships.  "Although I can always hide behind Olivia,
I guess."  Both of them chuckled at that, because they knew Patrick
would never actually do that… but the truth was, she'd probably be even more
effective than him at putting the other guys in their place.

"No one
hates you, they're just worried," Andrew said.  His tone was more
matter-of-fact than reassuring though.  "They don't like the idea
that Lexie's all grown up, and they're worried about what she'll do to
you."

"What
she'll do to me?" Patrick asked, raising his eyebrows.  That was
definitely not what he'd been expecting to hear.  This little impromptu
chat with Andrew was digging up all sorts of revelations.  "Not what
I'll do to her?"

"Of
course not," Andrew scoffed.  "We all know you'll handle her
with kid gloves.  Heck, if anything, you're too lenient with her
sometimes.  Nah, they're worried what it'll do to you if things don't work
out.  Or if Jake has a problem with you training her."

"Do you
think he will?" Patrick asked.  It was a moment of vulnerability for
him, because he would have never asked that question normally.  He went
through life confident, choosing his path and, once set on it, never
questioning his decision.  But Andrew had just reminded him that, out of
all their friends, he had the true big brother perspective and Patrick needed
to know.  "What would you think of one of us wanted to bring Iris to
Stronghold?"

"You're
all too old and perverted for her," Andrew said immediately, pointing a
big brotherly warning finger at Patrick in jest.  "Seriously
though?  I don't want to know that much about what my sister likes...
ah... in the bedroom.  I also automatically don't like any guy she
dates.  Then again, the guys she dates are all douchebags."

"Yeah,
but are they douchebags because they're assholes, or are they douchebags
because they're dating your sister?" Patrick muttered, taking another
fortifying swig of beer.  He could only imagine what hoops Andrew made his
sister's boyfriends jump through when meeting him.  

"A little
bit of both," Andrew admitted.  "I dunno... if one of our
friends wanted to date her, I'd struggle with it.  But that has as much to
do with the age difference as anything.  On the other hand, it might do
Iris some good to have a boyfriend that she couldn't just push around and bend
to her whim when she wants to run wild.  She could probably use a spanking.  Or
three."

"Well, I
guess I'll just have to hope Jake will be as open-minded as you are."
 Catching what he just said, Patrick coughed.  He hadn't meant to
admit that he wanted to date Lexie.  Even though he knew Andrew
knew.  It just made him feel better to leave that off the conversational
table until he had a chance to talk with Jake about it.  Jake should be
the first guy he openly talked about it with.  "I mean, about me training
Lexie."

"Uh
huh."  Andrew's dark eyes sparkled with suppressed mirth as Patrick
let out a little growling sound. 

"I'm
gonna take a walk around the club," he said, finishing off his beer and
pushing the empty bottle towards Andrew.  

"Sure
thing, boss," Andrew said.  He started humming along to the music
that was playing as Patrick stalked away.

He did feel a
little better after talking to Andrew though.  Sort of.  Hopefully
Jake would take the same viewpoint about Lexie that Andrew did.  Patrick
could wait out Jake struggling with the idea as long as, in the end, he got
Lexie.  Suppressing a groan, he realized that he was getting ahead of
himself again.  It was just so hard not to think of Lexie as
his
. 
But she wasn't.  She might never be.  That was the whole point of
training her first.  Plus, he wasn't exactly reassured knowing that his
friends were worried about the same things he was.  Namely, what would
happen if things didn't work out between him and Lexie.  The sexual
tension between them could easily become awkward, or even unhappy, and it would
spread to the group as a whole.  If Lexie couldn't be what he hoped for,
what he needed... it was going to hurt.  A lot.  On the other hand,
he didn't like to think what it would be like if he disappointed her.

He looked
around the Dungeon, which was empty.  Noises came from the themes rooms,
but, as usual, none of the swingers had wanted to utilize the spanking benches
or the Saint Andrew's crosses.  Standing in front of the chains where
Lexie had hung, less than a week ago, Patrick felt his cock twitch as he
remembered how fucking good she'd looked, trussed up and pink-skinned, with
weights hanging from her rings and her head thrown back in ecstasy.  

For Master
Michael.

Grimacing,
Patrick started planning.  Lexie had already had her Introduction scene,
so that's not what this Thursday was about.  He told himself it wasn't
going to be about topping that scene either, but he knew he was lying to
himself.  He’d sent the survey to her and already received it back, which had
given him plenty of ideas for what to do when she came in.

******

Longest. 

Workday.
 

Ever.

Normally Lexie
liked her job.  Okay, so being a receptionist at a Doctor's office wasn't
exactly demanding, although she had to deal with the occasional unhappy patient
(especially when the doctors got behind schedule, which they always did), but
it wasn't a hard job.  It also wasn't what she thought she'd be doing when
she graduated, but she hadn't really known what she wanted to do.  So
she'd picked up this job, and then just got kind of stuck.

That kind of
seemed to be the way of her life, honestly, ever since graduating
college.  She would start towards something she wanted, find a way to
settle until she could get it, and then get stuck on that settling point. 
Like working two receptionist jobs because she didn't know what she wanted to
do, or dating guys like Trevor until Patrick came to his senses, or working at
Stronghold instead of actually getting to attend the club.  

But tonight,
she was taking one major leap forward.  Not just settling.  She was
getting into Stronghold, for a
real
 scene, and she was doing
it with Patrick.  That was the key.  Because her scene with Master
Michael had been real in the kinky sense, but not in the 'this could lead
somewhere' sense.  In a way, that had been settling too.  

Except that it
had also been the catalyst for finally moving forward.  

Now she just
had to get through the workday.

Her phone
buzzed.  The little leap of her heart when she saw that it was Patrick
might be silly, but she couldn't help the way her body reacted.  She was
such a cliché sometimes when it came to him.

Be here at
8 pm tonight.  Wear the blue waist cincher that you wore to my
office.  No thong.

Oh heavenly
hot flashes... Lexie squeezed her thighs together as she stared down at her
phone screen.  It was all she could do not to whimper.  Why did being
bossed around and told what to wear and when to show up turn her on so much?
 

Still, the
snarky inner brat in her rose up as she texted him back. 

What about
the heels and trench coat?

The phone on
her desk rang and Lexie quickly slid her cell into her pocket, feeling
strangely guilty like she'd been caught doing something wrong even though she
obviously hadn't.  The patients in the waiting room couldn't even see what
she was doing unless they approached the desk, but all of them were involved in
whatever reading material they'd brought.  None of them knew that she was
texting about going to a BDSM club or that she was now officially horny as
hell.