The Lingerie Shop (10 page)

That made her feel a little better, but even so, she wasn’t giving an unconditional response to anything. “What kind of test?”

He put his finger on the key and met her gaze. “Freeze this in an ice tray. Change into something that makes you feel sexy. I’m thinking you go for the simple and devastating. A lace black thong and nothing else, except a necklace. A pretty choker.”

She had a jet bead choker. It was one of her favorites, reminiscent of the 1940s. Maybe because of the close fit around her neck, the caress of the beads, it always made her feel supremely feminine and sexy. She’d had an all-too-similar sensation when he’d closed his fingers around her throat.

She didn’t say anything, waiting for him to continue. She wasn’t going to tell him about the choker, and she definitely wasn’t going to get in an in-depth discussion about her underwear choices. But she didn’t tell him to stop.

“After the key is frozen in the ice, put on the cuffs. Take the ice and this deck of cards to an open space on your floor. Kneel.”

When he spoke the one word, her knees weakened. She thanked the gods she was wearing slacks that covered the reaction. With that penetrating scrutiny, Logan could probably discern an elevation in heart rate, let alone a visible quiver in her knees. “Fan them out in a circle around you,” he said, “and flip thirteen of them randomly. When you look at the images, think of them like breadcrumbs, leading you to your own fantasies. Then think about the type of breadcrumbs your store can offer people coming through your door, helping them reach their own.”

He was an expert in his field, so to speak. This was his milieu, and he was simply trying to be helpful. Being entranced by how he put the items back in the box, and how his fingers felt brushing hers when he handed over the box was incidental.

The carving on the top was the triskelion. As her fingers slid over it, he nodded to the symbol. “Do you know its meaning?”

“I know it represents BDSM somehow.”

“It can represent a lot of things. The three sections”—he placed a finger on one of them— “can symbolize safe, sane and consensual, the core mantra of BDSM. Or the three types of practitioners; Doms, subs and switches. A lot of important things in life connect to a trinity.” He shifted his hand, touching her knuckle as he did so. She didn’t move it away. Acknowledging it, he lingered there, teasing the soft, thin skin between two of her knuckles. She realized she was holding her breath again. She felt his eyes on her, but kept her own on their hands.

“The small hole in each section represents how the need for Dominance or submission can’t be satisfied alone.”

He touched her chin, lifting it so that her eyes met his. He’d said he liked that. “No one figures everything out the first day, Madison,” he said mildly. “Alice said you were a type A personality, a perfectionist. You have to give yourself time to learn.”

Alice was never afraid of making mistakes. Of course, why would she have been? Alice’s mistakes had a way of turning into successes, whereas even Madison’s successes often turned out to be failures in disguise. She was afraid of doing the same to the store Alice had loved.

“Thanks for the box.” Hugging it to her, she stepped back. “I might do it. It beats surfing cable.”

Or dreading another day of the polite, get-away-from-me looks from her customers. If this could help her feel better about that, it might be worth it. But she wasn’t going to make him any promises about doing it. “Thanks for all the lessons. Professor.”

He didn’t say anything and she frowned, looking down at the counter again. “You make me uncomfortable when you stare like that.”

“I don’t think making you comfortable is what you need from me, Madison. But I do like to see you smile.” Pulling a magnet off the antique cash register, he handed it to her. “On the house.”

“
Think of all the women on the Titanic who passed up dessert.
”
She couldn’t help it; she smiled, and it stayed there when his expression eased into the same.

“That’s better. I’ll walk you out.” He took her elbow. “When you stay late, you should move your car to the front, or let me know when you’re leaving, so Troy or I can escort you. It’s a safe area, but a deserted alley is still a deserted alley. Best not to take risks.”

Yet he and her dead sister had no problem pushing her to risk her sanity, with his not-so-subtle offers to unleash his Dominant side on her senses. Hell, he was already doing it, as if it was such an intrinsic part of him, he couldn’t help himself when he was around a submissive.

She flinched inwardly.
Stop thinking of yourself that way.
“It’s nice of you to do this, but I’m sure it’s fine.”

“I’m sure it is. I’m still walking you to your car.”

He was moving her down the center aisle, back past the fasteners, hooks, ropes. She tried not to think of all the ways they could be used. Dom Depot, indeed. But the danger was never the sword, but who was wielding it.
Nice phallic entendre there, Madison. Alice would be smirking.

She set her jaw and stopped, pivoting toward him. “Even if I say no?”

She’d put the box under an arm and held out her other hand to bring him to a halt, which brought her palm in contact with his chest. He was solid muscle, and distracting curls of gleaming chest hair, revealed by the open collar of his shirt, tempted touch. They were only a few inches above where her fingers rested. She pressed them against his flesh, an attempt to quell the urge, and realized she’d conveyed something else.

He closed his hand over her wrist, then he closed the space between them. It was a gradual but inexorable movement, like tides rising. The words she intended to say went away as he held her gaze, a restraint as effective as the ropes behind her. Which kind of proved her point about the sword, but she wasn’t opening her mouth to make it.

Keeping his attention on her face, tracking her every reaction in a way that couldn’t help but make a woman feel like the center of the universe, he lowered her arm to her side. His grip shifted, and now that same arm was being slowly twisted behind her, her knuckles brushing her ass, then the small of her back. His knuckles pressed against the top of her buttocks as he held her hand. The position arched her body so the tips of her breasts almost touched his chest.

“
No
means nothing to me when it conflicts with your well-being, Madison.”

Her swallow was audible. “Let go of me,” she whispered.

“That’s not what you want me to do.”

“No, but . . . please.”

He did it with kindness, caressing her wrist before stepping back. “I’m walking you to your car,” he said firmly. When he gestured her to precede him, she turned back in that direction, trying to scrape up her shattered composure. As they moved toward the exit, he thankfully stayed quiet, though his hand settled on her back again. The gesture was so easy for him he couldn’t possibly know how raw and exposed it left her.

They were approaching her back door. He’d open it for her, and she’d get in her car like some dutiful puppet whose strings he’d managed to pull all the right ways, making him think he could do that tomorrow, and the next day.

She spun around and faced him, holding the box between them to ensure she didn’t make any unwise contact this time. “I get it. You think you’re some Master-Dom-guru who can bring people to the light through whips and chains. Well, that’s awesome for you. Go and start a cult somewhere. But I’m not signing up. As for what Alice told you, about giving me to you¸ that’s more of her bullshit. The type of things that made people think she was this amazing, quirky person who everyone wanted to be around, who everyone loved, who never had her heart broken . . .”

Her voice was shaking. She thrust the box at him. “You were her friend. You don’t have to be mine.”

He closed his hands over hers on the box and took it, but only to set it aside on one of her shelves. “I have no intention of being your friend, Madison. Not that way.” Then he curled his strong fingers over her nape, exerted pressure. “Come here.”

“I don’t want this. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do any of this.” She didn’t jerk away, just resisted him with counterweight, futile against a man who was twice her weight and at least half a foot taller. He put his other arm around her waist, using it like a lasso to bring her to him, one reluctant step at a time.

“Come here,” he repeated quietly. She’d never had a man talk like that to her, equal doses of irresistible command and compassion, gentle strength and authority, which had her body throbbing as much as her aching heart.

Once his chest took up her vision, he wrapped both arms around her, her hands curled tense against her sternum, mashed between them. “Just breathe. I’m sorry. That was too much, too soon.”

She stood in his embrace, rigid. But not withdrawing.

“I wanted too much, too quickly,” he said. “You have that effect on a man.”

“Yeah, right.” But she didn’t have the courage to look for the truth. Not right now. His arms felt too good. She should pull away. Instead, she leaned, a little bit.

“Did she . . . did she have a lot of bad days?” The words were muffled against his chest.

He sighed. “She said the good days always outnumbered the bad, until the end. That was when she called you. She loved you, Madison. You were the only thing she wanted, at the last.”

“Shit.” She closed her eyes tight, pressing her forehead against his chest. “I loved her, Logan.”

“I know that. So did she.”

“I don’t understand any of this. Especially what you felt about her, and how that relates to me. How that can be a good thing. I’m not her.”

He straightened, holding her away from him to give her a look that had an edge to it. “I told you I know that already.”

“Yeah, but what people say and what they understand about themselves are pretty different. For a long time I told people I wasn’t anal and I actually believed it.”

His lips twitched at that. Then his expression sobered and she suspected he was considering his next words carefully, a shift in the air that brought the tension back between them. She still didn’t move out of his grasp. The touch of his hands was something she couldn’t resist.

“At one time,” he said, “I found Alice very intriguing. Fascinating. I even entertained the idea of a romantic relationship. But as colorful and passionate as she was, she was really quite grounded.” He shook his head. “She explained she genuinely loved everyone so she didn’t have to risk her heart on loving someone. She told me
you
were the brave one. Despite having your heart broken, shattered and stomped upon, you kept looking for the right person to care for it. She said if you ever found the person you could trust enough to let go—the person who deserved your trust—you would finally find that.”

He cleared his throat. “She knew me better than anyone, Madison. She told me I didn’t want her. I wanted you.”

She didn’t know how to deal with that, but tears were brimming, a response to hearing what her sister had thought of her. He took the hem of his shirt and dabbed her eyes with it, making her choke on a half chuckle. One nervous hand landed on his bare abdomen. Her fingers pressed into the hard ridges as his head lifted, a different awareness in both their eyes now.

“I need to get home,” she said, pulling back from him. She didn’t wait for his reply. Instead she grabbed the box off the shelf and pushed out the back door, aware of him standing in the entrance, watching her until she got into her car and drove away.

She felt as though she were fleeing the scene of an accident.

* * *

Hearing Alice’s perspective of herself floored her. She’d never really thought about it, because Alice had always seemed to have a lover . . . or two. But she’d never talked about marriage or commitment. Had she ever?

Madison was still pondering that when she fell asleep. She slept better than she had thus far, alone in Alice’s house. She’d slept in her clothes, Logan’s sawdust and aftershave scent lingering in her nose. When she woke, she found her arms wrapped around herself, and recalled a dream of strong male arms surrounding her, the way he’d held her at the store.

Usually when she had such dreams, the arms constricted, choking the life out of her. Alice had called them her emotional claustrophobia dreams.

She decided to stay at the house today. Thinking about Logan’s overly developed sense of personal responsibility, she realized she’d better call or he or Troy might show up on her doorstep. It was too early for them to be open, which relieved her of the possible chance of talking to him. If yesterday was an example of what being next door to him every day would be like, she wasn’t sure how she was going to cope. Or stay away.

As she listened to his voice on the answering machine, she told herself she would
not
call during off hours to hear that sexy timbre encouraging her to leave a message, telling him what she needed.

“Uh, hi, this is Madison. I’m going to work at the house today. I figured you’d wonder where I was if I wasn’t there, and I didn’t want you to worry.” The words sounded wrong to her, like yesterday had been a far deeper connection than it was, but there was no way to take it back, so she added, awkwardly, “I mean, I know you feel a responsibility toward me because of Alice. So that’s why I thought I better call. Bye.”

God, she was an idiot. Turning off her phone, she considered what she could do at the house, now that she’d committed her day to it. She didn’t have to hang out here. She could go into Charlotte, go shopping, go to a museum. She honestly didn’t want to pack up more of Alice’s belongings, decide what to keep and what to donate to the local charities.

Going upstairs, she stood outside the one room whose threshold she hadn’t yet crossed. It was the spare guestroom Alice had converted into what she called Wonderland, a quirky play on her name. Madison cracked the door, saw a glimpse of color and sparkles, and closed it again.

They’d loved playing dress-up as little girls. The fact they never gave it up had been their shared secret. Every time she came to visit Alice, they would spend at least one night in that room, with a great deal of wine and a full 100-count box of Russell Stover’s, playing dress-up with the vast array of costumes. Alice had started the collection with what she kept from her college theater days. The role-playing costumes she bought for the shop had augmented it considerably, things she’d liked enough to buy an extra in her own size. Fortunately it was the size she and Madison shared as adults.