Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (32 page)

Rox was impressed. This Dom guy would have been a good litigator.

“Indeed,” The Dom said, “you’ve already booked her for this time slot. It would be impolite to cancel. I suggest you have a drink with her and ask what she thinks.”

“She’ll say whatever she thinks I want to hear,” Maxence grumbled.

The Dom’s blond eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “I doubt that.” A knock rattled the door. “Ah, here she is.”

Maxence flopped back in his chair. His wary glance at the door looked grim.

Rox tried to formulate a plan to get him out of this situation. Surely she could say something that he could pick up on so that he could escape.

A woman strutted into the office, her ebony ponytail twitching as she walked. Her black business pantsuit shone in the recessed lighting, and it took Rox just a second to realize that it was made of leather. Discreet silver studs sparkled at the pockets.

The woman smiled at the four men, her dark red lips contrasting her pale skin. She looked vampiric. “Gentlemen,” she said in a low, sultry voice.

Oh. My. God.

The Dom said, “Maxence, this is Mairearad.”

When Rox glanced back, Maxence’s dark eyes were wide, and his hands were knotted into fists on the arms of the chair. He didn’t look angry. His eyes looked hungrily at the woman, and he uncurled his fingers to clutch the upholstery, looking like he was holding on by his fingernails to keep himself from flinging himself across the room at her.

Mairearad’s smile at Maxence looked like she knew all his secrets just by looking at him. “Hello, Maxence.”

Maxence rose from his chair as if he were hypnotized. “I should like to ask you some questions. That’s all.”

“Of course,” she said and walked to the door. “Follow me.”

Maxence followed her. “I just want to ask you some questions,” he repeated.

She turned back, and her voice was more gentle. “Let’s talk in my office.”

Maxence’s shoulders drooped in relief. “Yes, your office.”

He followed her out and shut the door behind himself.

Arthur laughed. “How long do you think they will actually talk?”

The Dom checked his phone. “Ah, here comes your consultant, Arthur.”

The office door opened again, and another woman came in. This girl was wearing jeans and a silk blouse, buttoned all the way up to her neck. Her blond hair was tied back in a messy knot on the back of her head, and her loose-limbed gait looked like she was gamboling through her own house.

Rox blinked. The two women could not have been more dissimilar.

The woman smiled a brilliant smile that felt like sunshine on a summer’s day and looked right at Arthur. “Ready?”

“Oh, yes,” Arthur said, pushing himself up from the chair. “Hello, Chloe. I was hoping you would be free.”

She grinned and held out her hand to him, not like for a handshake but to hold her hand. He reached for her hand, and she led him away, asking, “What movie did you pick?”

“Another rom-com,” Arthur said, just before the door closed behind him.
“Love and Whiskey.”

“That sounds lovely! I’ve got popcorn ready to pop, too.”

“Splendid.”

Rox glanced up at Cash. “All right, I think I know what Maxence just got himself in for, but was Arthur speaking in code or something?”

“I don’t think so,” Cash said. “He was looking at movie reviews in the car.”

“I just can’t even—never mind. I don’t want to know.” Her voice still sounded shaky.

The Dom was watching her again. He thumbed something on his phone. “Casimir, you have your pick of rooms tonight, as it’s a Monday. Before you take Rox back, why don’t you peruse them and decide which one is appropriate.”

The office door opened, and Glenda stood there again, smiling at them. Rox didn’t know how she could breathe in that skin-tight suit, but at least it looked good on her. She didn’t have any pudge.

The Dom said, “Glenda can show you the options.”

Cash told her, “That’s a good idea. I’ll be back in one minute.”

Rox pointedly did not glance at The Dom over there on the other couch. “You think that’s a good idea?”

“There are some very different options,” he said. “I think I should look.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be right back.” Cash followed the small woman who pranced ahead of him on stiletto heels, and the door clicked shut behind him, leaving her alone with the very imposing figure of The Dom.

Rox glanced back at him, her eyes suddenly too wide on her face.

“I wanted to talk to you alone,” he said, his blue eyes right on her and staring again. They seemed bright blue again, so intense.

“Oh?” she asked, trying to steady her voice.

He said, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“I know that,” she said, shrinking back into the seat. If he came at her, she was a Southern girl and she could fight off any man, given half a chance. Her breath sped up, and frightened heat flashed across her face.

The Dom leaned forward and braced his forearms on his knees, clasping his hands. “I mean tonight, here, with Casimir. You have been shaking ever since you walked into the building. When you picked up your glass, the wine vibrated, and then you drank it as if you were trying to fortify yourself. You look pale and terrified. If Casimir is going too far, too fast, I can get you out of this. He will never know we spoke, and he won’t be upset at you. I will find some excuse. This happens all the time. It is neither a bother nor unusual. Do you want me to do this?”

Rox’s stomach uncoiled. “No, I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, still looking right at her.

“I’m sure. I’m here because I want to be.”

“If you change your mind at any time, just say ‘Not my cup of tea,’ and we will have someone to you very quickly. Can you remember that?”

“Right,” Rox said, breathing more easily. “Not my cup of tea.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you listen in?” she asked, horrified at what that might mean.

“We have security arrangements for everyone’s safety,” The Dom said, settling back in his seat.

“I suppose you have to for liability reasons.” She sipped her wine again.

His smile was a little less icy this time. “We are very careful, but we must be cognizant of liability issues.”

“That must be interesting,” she said, setting her wine glass back on the table and clasping her hands, the classic listening posture. “You must have interesting contract issues, too.”

“Why, yes.” He picked up his glass. “We’ll need you to sign a release, of course.”

“Oh, of course. I understand.”

“Casimir was instrumental in writing it,” he said. “There were problems early on with opening this place, and Casimir helped enormously on the legal end.”

“He’s a fantastic lawyer.”

“He is, indeed. I always have him look over my contracts, and I’d love to have him do more of my negotiations. He can talk anyone into anything, even if the idea is anathema to them.” He glanced at his phone screen. “And here he is.”

Cash opened the door, and Rox saw Glenda walking away down the hall. “I’ve secured a room for us.”

“Okay.” The trembling started in Rox’s chest again.

“You can drop by my office afterward, if you like,” The Dom told her, “for a drink or a cup of tea.”

WULF WATCHES

The Dom, for he even thought of himself by that name when he was in The Devilhouse, opened the door to the security room. “Mr. Jackson?”

“Yes, Sir?” Jeffrey Jackson answered.

His chief of security was half-reclining in a large office chair set before a bank of monitors. Each of the screens showed a wide-angle shot of a room on the premises. As it was Monday night, most showed a grainy image of unoccupied furniture or equipment.

The Dom watched the rooms that Arthur and Maxence were in for a moment. “They are all right?”

“All the usual,” Jeffrey said, pointing one stout finger toward the screen. “They just walked in.”

Casimir and Roxanne had just walked into Play Room Two, a fairly typical dungeon-style room.

The Dom watched the woman wrap her arms around herself. “I have concerns about that one.” He pointed to a screen where Roxanne stood, her arms hugged around herself. “I’ve given her a signal, ‘not my cup of tea.’ Someone should be stationed outside that door, and if you hear that, they go in immediately.”

He picked up his radio. “You think she was coerced?”

“I think Casimir could talk anyone into just about anything. I want her protected.”

“I’ve got a skeleton crew on tonight.”

The Dom paused. “We’ll use one of my private security for the evening. I’ll have Dieter pick up a radio.”

THE DEVILHOUSE

Rox followed Cash through the white hallways, trying not to look like she was gawking at every stupid thing in the sex club.

The hallway and doors looked so ordinary, so office-like, other than that the high ceiling hung much farther above her head than in an ordinary office building. The lighting fixtures were even higher up the walls than normal.

Oh, high ceilings.

When Arthur and Maxence had been joking about “high ceilings,” they had meant that Cash knew a lot about
sex clubs.
They must all be built with tall ceilings or something.

She snickered.

Cash turned. “What?”

“Nothin’,”
but she grinned at him.

He raised one eyebrow at her but kept walking.

Cash stopped at a door, opened it, and stood to the side, holding it for her.

She walked in and stepped aside, keeping close to the wall. Hot air wafted around her.

Odd, that the room was so warm. Her business suit seemed like too many layers of thick cloth for the small room. Anybody wearing normal clothes in here would sweat through their clothes in no time.

Oh.

She got it.

They had evidently come in the back door of the dungeon because the first thing that Rox saw when her eyes adjusted to the gloom was an enormous, carved door on the opposite side of the room like a doorway to Hell.

Cash closed the door behind them. When she turned around, the door was camouflaged, painted into the stone-bricked wall. Sconces on the walls glowed with orange bulbs as if they were pitch torches.

And there were apparatuses stationed around the room, odd skeletal structures like weird gym equipment that were empty of weights.

Her arms warmed, and she realized that Cash was standing right behind her, touching her.

She said, “I don’t know how anything in here is supposed to work.”

Cash ran his hands up her neck. “I do.”

His voice was about half an octave lower than usual, and it had a calmness, an unswaying determination that he didn’t usually have.

She cleared her throat. “Somehow, that isn’t reassuring.”

“It should be.” He stroked the back of her neck with his fingers. “Dilettantes get hurt in places like this. You’re safe with me.”

“Am I?”

“You’re always safe with me.”

“I’m a little scared,” she admitted.

He wrapped his arms around her from behind. “We can leave. We’ll go have a drink with The Dom and wait for Arthur and Maxence.”

“Give me a minute.”

The black iron and silver contraptions jutted into the air, shining and yet dark at the same time. Ropes and whips and spiked metal torture things hung in glass cases.

Rox clasped her hands in front of her. “Do you want to hurt me?”

“No.”

“Those things over there look like they’re for hurting people.”

“That’s not the point,” he said. “Unless you are both into that sort of thing, you shouldn’t hurt the other person just to hurt them.”

“And you’re into that sort of thing, hurting people.”

“No. I don’t like sadism or masochism. Everything done here should heighten the other person’s reaction so that when the pleasure comes—and it should—it is that much sweeter and more intense.”

Cruel whips and ties and chains and metal bars crowded the room. “Just looking at all this is making me nuts.”

Cash gently turned her around so that she faced the wall. “Then don’t look.”

“It doesn’t mean that all that stuff just disappeared. Just because I’m not looking at it doesn’t mean that it’s not there. Just because you refuse to acknowledge something doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to happen.”

He pressed her shoulders, moving her closer to the wall, and then blocked her view of the room with his broad shoulders. “But most of it doesn’t concern you. On your first day at Arbeitman, Silverman, and Amsberg, I didn’t hand you a stack of contracts and tell you to have them annotated and back to me by the next morning.”

She shook her head. “We sat down together, across from each other at a table, with several contracts and talked about important paragraphs and how you wanted me to handle something like that.”

“And how did you feel about that, afterward?”

“Confident,” she said, closing her eyes at the memory. He had gazed at her with those glamorous green eyes of his all day and spoken softly, smiling when she picked up on something. “Like I knew what to do and how to do it.”

“Safe,” he whispered.

“Yes.” Her voice was as breathy as if she was hypnotized.

“I always keep you safe.”

Physically, yes.

Professionally, absolutely.

She nodded, holding all the exceptions inside.

His breath brushed the back of her neck, and the cinnamon and musk of his cologne swirled around her. “In the rest of your life, you take care of everyone, and you are responsible for everything.”

“Yeah. I’m an adult. That’s what adults do.”

“For a few hours, give it to me.”

“What?”
That
scared the hell out of her.

“Give it all to me. Don’t worry. Don’t think. Don’t plan. Don’t manage. Lay down all your responsibilities and your fears. For a few hours, just
feel.”

He lifted her arms and pressed her hands against the wall above her head, palms against the cool stone.

“That sounds so old-fashioned, so—” Dang it, she couldn’t quite think of the right word, not with his heavy body warming her back and pressing her against the wall. “Let the man do whatever he wants to you. Lie still and think of England.”