Submit and Surrender (3 page)

“Shit,” she heard Lola mutter. Apparently she was the only one, because Corvis was smiling like a lunatic when Adra finally opened her eyes.

“Great! That’ll add some realism to the set,” he said. “Listen, I have to run to a production meeting, but Roman’s got all the details and the schedule and everything. I am so excited to work with you both. And Adra, you are just as lovely as I remember,” he said, sliding on his sunglasses.

Leave it to a movie producer to be manically cheerful about something as insane as asking a submissive to consult on a movie in which her ex-Dom was starring.

Corvis clapped his hands together, pointed at Adra and Ford, and said, “I will see you two on Friday.”

And then he was gone.

Ford hadn’t moved.

Like, at all. He was like a statue. A beautiful, frozen statue. And Adra couldn’t take her eyes off of him.

“Adra, I am so, so sorry,” Lola said for about the millionth time. “If we had known that Derrick freaking Duvall was your
ex
, I just…”

“But you didn’t,” Adra said. “And even if you had, it wouldn’t really have changed anything. Roman had a point. We do have an interest in making sure this movie is done right.”

“The publicity is already insane.”

“Tell me about it. I’ve been avoiding that giant wall of Derrick's face on Sunset for weeks. Thank God they’re keeping the location secret.”

Lola cringed. “Did I tell you how sorry I am?”

“Yes,” Adra smiled. “But I will accept further apologies in chocolate form.”

“Consider it done,” Lola said, digging in her giant purse. In about a second she had several chocolate-containing goodies for Adra to choose from. “What? I’m pregnant, I have a supply.”

Adra laughed and flopped down on the couch next to Lola. It was good to have her friend nearby again, even if it was under crazy circumstances. Recently her life had been kind of chaotic, as evidenced by the state of her apartment.

“What happened here, by the way?” Lola said, raising one eyebrow. “Natural disaster?”

“Hush,” Adra said, tossing a pillow. She looked around at the open-plan living room and sighed. Somehow everything managed to be out of place. Plus she kept finding dirty dishes in hidden locations. “I know, I feel like I should just…burn it all to the ground and start over fresh.”

“Was it a very specific earthquake?” Lola ventured. “An unfortunate misprint on a frat party flyer?”

“No, it was three boys under the age of eight,” Adra said, throwing her only remaining pillow at Lola’s head. “My nephews came to stay for a while, while my brother and his wife…worked through some stuff. I’m not totally clear on what’s going on there, but Charlie seemed to need the space, so I offered.”

Even thinking about her brother Charlie’s situation made Adra uncomfortable and sad. Sometimes it felt like Adra was more invested in Charlie’s marriage to Nicole than Charlie himself was, which Adra knew was spectacularly unfair to her brother, and was just old issues popping up. It was just that since Charlie had gotten married and had kids, he’d been like living proof that not all Davises had to ruin their shot at having a family. And considering how she and Charlie had grown up, that was maybe more important to Adra than it should have been.

Lola took another appraising look at the apartment.

“So this is what I have to look forward to, huh?” she said. “I can handle it. No kid can out-mess me. Roman, on the other hand…”

“Yeah, he doesn’t strike me as a casual mess kinda guy.”

“He is not,” Lola said. Then she raised an eyebrow and gave a wicked smile. “And he is easily provoked into providing much needed discipline when I ‘accidentally’ mess up his stuff. Which I guess will have to be restricted to the bedroom once this little one arrives.”

“Boy or girl, by the way?”

“Surprise.” Lola smiled. “You know, I really enjoyed those accidental messes.”

“I bet you did,” Adra smiled. She hadn’t seen Lola this happy in…well, ever, really. In fact, the last time she’d seen Lola, she was happily Domme-ing some guy back in New York as one of the few true switches that Adra knew.

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Adra said, leaning forward. “You’re a switch right? But I cannot imagine Roman as anything other than a Dom. Do you ever…?”

Lola popped a hazelnut chocolate in her mouth and smiled a mysterious smile. “We are not here to talk about
my
love life, lady,” she said.

“Oh, come
on
!”

“Nope,” Lola shook her head. “Why, you going to tell me all about Ford?”

That shut Adra right up.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Lola said. “So what’s the deal with Derrick? This going to be manageable?”

“I will handle it, Lola,” Adra said. “You don’t have to treat me with kid gloves.”

“Who’s got kid gloves? I don’t know if I could handle it if I were in your shoes. And I know Roman couldn’t handle it.”

“Big, tough Roman?”

“He would lose his
mind
,” Lola smiled. “He’d tough it out, but he’d suffer. It’s not too late to change the plans, you know. We did kind of spring this on you.”

“Thanks, but you know it is too late,” Adra said. “And besides, I knew he was going to be in the movie, so this was kind of inevitable. At some point Club Volare was going to be pulled into the
Submit and Surrender
craziness. The first major film about a BDSM relationship? Please, it’s going to be huge. I couldn’t avoid it forever.”

Lola winced. “One of those ‘avoid forever if at all possible’ situations, huh? I’d heard he was a Dom, I just didn’t know anything else.”

“I’m over it, really. It’s just…”

Adra hesitated.

“Just what?”

“It was a terrible relationship, and he didn’t treat me very well, and…he was still the one to end it.”

“Ugh. So he thinks he has the upper hand.”

“Yeah,” Adra said. “And sometimes I do, too. He
doesn’t
, I swear. I am…ugh, the idea of being anywhere near him gives me
hives
, but…”

“He got the last word?”

More than that, it felt like Derrick had defined everything about their relationship and their break up. He’d been a bad Dom—Adra knew that now. Controlling in a bad way, and selfish. But for a while Adra had thought he was different. He was the guy to convince her that not all relationships ended terribly, that not all men leave. She’d opened up to him completely. Derrick had known so much about her, about her family, about her fears, about everything, and then when he left her it was like he did it in the most destructive way possible.

He’d just thrown her away like so much refuse and shacked up with someone else. Adra still got mad when she thought about coming home and finding all of his stuff just gone. She’d cried for three days straight, and she’d never been more certain that love was a sucker’s game as when she’d had to clean up that lonely house.

So Derrick was the first and last person she’d allowed herself to need since she was a kid. And she reminded herself every day what a stupid mistake that had been.

“Yeah,” Adra said slowly. “He got the last word, and it bugs me. Is that petty of me?”

“Please
.
That would drive me crazy,” Lola said.

Adra sighed. “Is there anything more annoying?”

“Not on this planet, no. Maybe,
maybe
, there’s some undiscovered insomniac shrieking bat species deep in the Amazon rainforest or something, but barring a major scientific discovery, I’d say no, there is nothing more annoying than a bad ex who undeservedly thinks you’re not over him,” Lola said. She looked sidelong at Adra and grimaced. “Except possibly one you have to work with.”

Adra started to giggle. The situation really did suck. “Except for that.”

“Did I mention how sorry I was?”

“About a million times.”

Lola got very quiet. She said, “So are you going to finally tell me about Ford?”

Adra fell back against the back of the couch, and exhaled loudly. “Yeah. Um. Ford. Can I get back to you on that?”

“Well, at least you’ll have the intense awkwardness of coaching your ex-Dom on BDSM scenes to distract you from the awkwardness of working with Ford.”

“I wish I had another pillow to throw at you.”

“I deserve it,” Lola said, leaning back against the other end of the couch and propping her feet up on Adra’s legs. “Are you
ever
going to tell me about it?”

For once, Adra didn’t quite know what to say. She didn’t find it difficult to talk about her past, necessarily, but Ford…Ford felt so raw. She could barely think about it, let alone find the words to talk about it.

“Maybe when I finally stop wishing that things were different,” she finally said.

“Don’t wait too long, honey,” Lola said.

Adra looked up. It didn’t seem like Lola was just talking about opening up anymore.

Lola raised a sympathetic eyebrow. “You’ll kick yourself for it later.”

Adra looked down and fumbled with her phone for a distraction, suddenly uncomfortable under the glare of Lola’s insights. There were a lot of things that Adra might regret, but that didn’t always mean she had the power to change them. Case in point: the texts waiting for her on her phone.

They were from Derrick Duvall. A phone number she hadn’t deleted just so she’d know to screen his calls if one ever came. It never had, until now.

“I hear we’re going to be working together again,” it said. “It will be good to see you, Adra.”

How exactly was she supposed to react to that? She’d had no contact with Derrick since he’d literally disappeared from her life. Was she just supposed to pretend this was normal?

Adra hated doing that, which was ironic, given her job as an agent. But, she was a professional. She could do the job. She could
always
do the job. And she could remind herself that even though Derrick Duvall had confirmed what she’d always known—that trusting men was a losing proposition—he did it because he was an ass, not because of anything Adra had done. He’d probably left a dozen women high and dry in the intervening years. Perhaps not admirably, that made her feel better.

And then she read the next text.

“Just an FYI, Ellen’s going to drop by the set the first day. Don’t make it awkward.”

Don’t make it awkward.

Wow.

Ellen Rice was the woman Derrick had left her for. Another sub in the same club at the time, some awful place that had long since closed, but the only place Adra had known about at the time. Derrick was still with Ellen. He hadn’t left because he was a serial abandoner; he really had left
her
.

“Well, if that’s not a kick in the fork,” Adra muttered.

“What’s that?” Lola laughed.

“Nothing,” Adra said, shaking her head. She plastered a smile on her face for Lola’s sake.

“You ready for Friday?” Lola asked.

“Ready to kick ass, ma’am,” Adra answered.

She even meant it, kind of. Didn’t mean she was looking forward to spending all that time with the two men who had rejected her most profoundly, even if technically Ford had only rejected her after she’d kind of, sort of rejected him. Somehow it was worse to lose Ford’s friendship than it had been to lose all of Derrick, but they both still stung. So no, she wasn’t looking forward to having all that loss shoved in her face all day, every day.

Except that was a lie. She always looked forward to seeing Ford. Even when it hurt.

Maybe she was a
little
bit of a masochist.

Ford cursed and jumped up to do another round of pull-ups on the bar he’d had installed in his office. He had never needed to burn off excess energy like he had the past few days, thinking about this freaking movie situation. No, not the movie. Adra and the movie.

The meeting with that insane producer had been bad enough. Ford had arrived on edge already, worried that something was wrong with Adra only to find out that if there wasn’t already something wrong there would be soon, because they’d have to work on this movie together.

He was pissed.

And then Adra had walked in just in time to hear Ford talk about what a mistake he’d made. Ford had been talking about the movie contract, but Adra didn’t know that. The look on her face had told him everything he needed to know: she’d looked hurt. Sad. Heartbroken. She’d assumed he had been talking about her. The worst part was that he
could
have been talking about her—sleeping with Adra the way he had obviously had been a mistake, because look at them now.

The difference was that was a mistake he could never bring himself to regret making.

Jesus, just looking at her. Just
thinking
about her made him insane with lust.

And then he’d seen her hurt, and it had hurt him about ten times more than he’d thought possible. He’d spent the rest of the meeting trying to find some damn way to let her know that’s not what he’d meant without embarrassing the hell out of her. Well, he’d managed to focus on that until the bomb was dropped.