First Night Read online

  First Night

  A Club Volare Novella

  Chloe Cox

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  One

  Thank God she was an actress.

  Olivia Cress was, truthfully, very happy for her new friends, Adra Davis and Ford Colson. They ran Club Volare LA together, and over the course of helping Olivia prepare for her last movie role as a sexual submissive, they’d fallen in love. Or admitted they were always in love. Or something.

  Whatever that whirlwind had been, this, right here, was definitely their equally whirlwind wedding. They’d decided in the middle of the party that Roman and Lola — another Club Volare couple! — threw for their baby’s christening to get married, as soon as possible, and now they were all there at the hotel, with a justice of the peace and everything. Olivia was there to be a witness, along with a few other Club Volare people, and one unbelievably hot, huge, muscled, and dark-haired man.

  Gavin Colson, the groom’s brother.

  The truth was Gavin was more than all those things. There was something about the way he held himself in the world, the way he moved. She’d met a bunch of Doms over the course of filming Submit and Surrender at Club Volare LA, but none quite like Gavin. Perfectly angled cheekbones above a two-day beard, piercing black eyes that seemed to almost glow. They seemed to see everything. She hadn’t realized how much comfort she got from being able to hide how she felt, or what she was thinking, until she’d had a conversation with Gavin Colson, and he’d taken that ability away.

  He’d kissed her on the cheek when they were introduced, and she’d almost grabbed onto him, breathing deep. The way he smelled was incredible. Smoky and woodsy and…manly. It seemed to follow her, demanding that she confront the way this man made her feel.

  Which was totally, completely insane.

  Maybe if her life had been anything approaching normal, Olivia could appreciate standing next to an obvious sex god. But instead, Olivia had to summon every last acting skill she had to get through this wedding, because she was not going to let on that she had been dumped.

  It had actually happened months ago, and the fact that it was a secret was kind of a big deal. It was also the only thing keeping her sane. Her ex-fiancé, Brandon Greer, was what Olivia liked to call famous famous. Olivia was a C-lister, maybe B-lister after this next movie, but Brandon had become one of the biggest stars in the game. Then he’d dumped her, via text message, and disappeared to go shoot some action movie in a desert somewhere.

  A text message.

  So that made weddings hard. Plus she didn’t want to admit how uncomfortable this Club Volare BDSM stuff made her. Not because she was weirded out, but because she was the opposite of that. Turned on, kind of. Ok, a lot. But her sex life had always been kind of blah, even when she was with a man who was officially one of the most attractive people on the planet, so she’d felt kind of like a fraud the whole time, too.

  So she was already acting her pants off when Gavin freaking Colson entered the mix.

  Now?

  She could barely concentrate. Hell, she could barely see. If she looked up, or around, or at anything other than the floor, she would end up staring. She could practically feel the waves of heat coming off of his body, right next to hers.

  “You ok?”

  Damn. Even his voice was sexy. Especially low like that. Especially next to her ear. Olivia shivered, and tried not to give anything away. The ceremony, such as it was, was over, and all that was left to do was sign as witnesses. Roman and Lola, who ran the New York club, were ahead of them, wrangling baby Emma between them.

  Olivia and Gavin were next.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered, and tried to give him a quick smile.

  Oh Jesus look at those eyes.

  He was watching her. She couldn’t remember a word of their conversation, that’s how rattled she’d been. She remembered laughing, and she remembered that slow heat coming over her, and nothing else. It was like some sort of sex blindness; she felt like an idiot.

  Which was extra ridiculous, because she’d never been what any of her exes had considered super sexual.

  “We’re up,” he rumbled.

  Olivia rushed forward to get it over with. Adra and Ford were already lost in each other’s eyes, and they probably wouldn’t notice if a marching band came through, while Roman and Lola had a new baby to worry about. She just wanted to see Adra and Ford off and then go home, where she could stop pretending and just go nurse her still-sort-of-broken heart.

  She signed the marriage license, and looked up. Adra and Ford were already in a deep kiss.

  “Do they even know we’re here?” Lola wondered. The redhead caught Olivia’s eye and smiled a little wickedly.

  “They do not,” Roman said.

  “Everybody out,” Gavin said. He was standing behind Olivia as he said it, and his voice rolled down her back like warm rain.

  When she turned around, he was looking right at her again. Grinning, just a little bit. He had a tiny silver scar that cut his upper lip, and made that grin just a little bit more mischievous.

  “Time to give my brother his privacy,” he said.

  He was still looking at her. Only her.

  She had to get out of there.

  Olivia was pretty sure she was polite, sort of, while fleeing, but it almost didn’t matter. She had hit her limit, and was about to overload. Gavin Colson was simply too much to handle when she had this much on her plate.

  She darted out of the dressing room attached to the banquet hall where Roman and Lola had thrown a party for their little girl, a party that was still mostly going on, and made her way back to the main entrance. It was slow going in a dress and heels and with a bunch of people who wanted to say goodbye.

  But she made it.

  She stepped into the tiny little entrance vestibule, the one that led out to the hotel proper, and almost crashed into Gavin freaking Colson, all over again.

  “Are you kidding me?” she muttered.

  Gavin grinned again, looking down at her over that impressively broad chest.

  “You keep running away, but we seem to find each other anyway,” he said.

  Olivia smoothed her hair and glared. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes,” he said. “You do.”

  She blinked. He was again looking at her like he knew her secret, like he knew all her secrets, and he was smiling. With his too-long dark hair and his bright eyes, seeing right through her, making her heart hammer in her chest and her blood pump…everywhere.

  It was the arrogance of it.

  She raised her chin. “What, you say things like that and expect women to just throw themselves at you? Does that ever work?”

  Gavin laughed. “You’d be surprised how often the truth does the trick.”

  Then he shifted, like he was going to step forward and get the door for her, and something in Olivia rebelled. She darted forward and grabbed hold of the door handle herself.

  “I got it,” she said. “Thanks.”

  Then she opened it.

  And out there, in the hallway of this fancy pants hotel, waiting, was a freaking photographer.

  Olivia shut the door as quickly as she could, locked it, and then plastered her back to it. This was bad. This was worse than bad. Literally the only reason the paparazzi would have any particular interest in her, especially the kind of interest where they paid someone off to find out where she was, is if her big secret was no longer a secret at all.

  The news was out. She was officially Dumped. Whic
h, in a sane universe, wouldn’t matter to anyone but her and Brandon, but because Brandon was Brandon Greer, it meant her ability to land roles and gigs was possibly in danger.

  And also that her life was about to become hell.

  “You know, you’re blocking the door,” Gavin said easily. He was still standing there, looking like an outlaw in an expensive suit. But his eyes had softened. Or was she imagining that?

  “That’s the idea,” she said.

  Gavin didn’t say anything at all. Just looked at her.

  And Olivia finally gave in and looked back.

  Good Lord, he was an attractive piece of man. Even more so than she thought. He was wearing a gray suit, no tie, his collar unbuttoned. He must have played football or something, and then kept in shape, because she could see the swell of his muscles under that expensive suit every time he moved. And every time he came close to her, she swore she could smell something that worked like a drug.

  And suddenly she was aware of the ridiculousness of the situation, of her life, and of wanting this man who, besides being the only man to make her think spontaneously about sex, was also a Dom. She was just not on his sexual level. Her life was falling apart, and here she was, staring at Gavin Colson with her tongue practically hanging out like a cartoon character.

  Gavin was grinning again.

  “If you want me to stay, all you gotta do is ask,” he said.

  Olivia tried to glare at him again.

  “Or beg,” he said.

  This time, his voice reverberated down to her core. Beg. Her palms started to sweat on the door handle, and her skin felt flushed. It was weird, and it kept happening around him.

  “You know that was just a movie,” she said, rather hopelessly. “I’m not really a submissive. And even if I were, wouldn’t that be—”

  “Inappropriate?” he offered.

  Olivia closed her eyes briefly. That was another word that sent her mind to places it definitely should not go.

  “Not any more inappropriate than trapping a bunch of people in a banquet hall, I can tell you that much,” Gavin said. He was outright smiling now. “Anything I can help you with before you set us free?”

  “Is there another way out of here?” she asked. “I don’t want to get into it, but I just…need another way out of here.”

  Gavin watched her again, just for a beat. It was unnerving.

  “Go through there,” he said, pointing to a door hidden in the sidewall. “Make a right, go through the door. Take the stairs down to the parking garage.”

  “Perfect,” she said, and pushed off the wall. She bent down and took off her heels. She might need to make a run for it. “Thank you.”

  And then she allowed herself one last, long, pervy look at the hottest man she’d ever seen, and ran off.

  Olivia’s plan had been to get to her car and get out of there and then drive around until a solution magically presented itself, or until her agent called and told her it was all a mistake.

  That plan did not account for a dude with a camera hanging around her car.

  So now she was ducking down behind the first row of cars in the parking garage, trying to think of a way out of this mess. She felt like a spy. This was all completely ridiculous, but for the moment, before it ruined her life, it was almost kind of fun? She’d gotten to flirt, kind of, with a man who actually made her melt, and made her feel…normal, really. Just normal and attractive. And now she was going to totally outsmart this dude with a camera.

  Somehow.

  Maybe she could throw something at the other end of the garage. In the movies the bad guy always ran to go investigate the suspicious sound, giving the brave heroine enough time to get in her car and speed away, and she was pretty sure she wouldn’t hit another car. She bent down to look for a rock or something.

  There were no rocks on the ground whatsoever, but when she bent over to look she did drop her keys. Loudly.

  “Oh, come on,” she whispered.

  When she stood up, Dude With A Camera was looking right at her.

  “Olivia!”

  She turned heel and ran, almost blindly, in the other direction as fast as she could, still gripping her shoes in her hands, her bare feet stinging with every step on the rough concrete. The parking lot was a blur, but there was a sign for the stairs at the far side, and…

  A little side hallway?

  With an elevator sign?

  Perfect. She could escape up to some random floor in the hotel, and then regroup. She didn’t even care that she must look like a total crazy person, sprinting through a parking garage in her bare feet, although admittedly it helped that there was no one there to see her like that, except for the paparazzo she was running from. Small blessings.

  Then she turned the corner at full speed, and smacked right into Gavin Colson.

  Again.

  For a moment she was too stunned to speak. She’d run right into his broad, powerful chest, and she’d practically bounced off of him. He was just a wall of muscle under those expensive clothes. A wall of hard, strong, firm muscle that practically burned through that suit, if the effect it had on her was any indication. Olivia looked up, knowing she shouldn’t, and was paralyzed by those dark, flickering eyes.

  Gavin just smiled, and looked down at her with a raised eyebrow.

  “Ok, now you have to be kidding me,” she said.

  The elevator door opened to their right with a smooth hiss. Olivia didn’t have time to explain. She just pushed him—or pushed on him, until he decided to move on his own—into the elevator, looked over her shoulder to see the paparazzo looking the other way, and then spun herself around the large, muscly body until she’d managed to pin herself in the elevator.

  Gavin’s huge back almost completely blocked the paparazzo’s view, even if he were to look right at them. Unfortunately it also meant that Gavin was facing her, and standing incredibly close, while her back was pinned to the elevator wall.

  For a second, she forgot to breathe.

  Then she reached around him, and maniacally pushed the elevator buttons, which, for the first time in recorded history, actually worked. The doors closed.

  But the elevator didn’t move.

  And Gavin hadn’t moved. He was still standing so close they were practically touching, just watching her with a sort of amused curiosity. Instinctively her hand found the lapel of his suit jacket, an old habit. She saw what she was doing and dropped it.

  He still hadn’t said anything.

  Her breathing sounded loud, ragged. She could feel his eyes on her.

  For a moment, anything was possible.

  And then he took a step back, separating them. The look in his eyes was something she would never forget.

  Oh God.

  Finally he wrenched his gaze from her, and turned around to deal with the immobile elevator. Olivia was suddenly aware of her surroundings. Of anything other than Gavin.

  It was a fancy elevator. There was leather, everywhere. A decidedly fancy elevator.

  “Why aren’t we moving?” she said.

  Calmly, Gavin reached into his suit pocket and produced a small silver key. He inserted the key into a keyhole she never would have known was there, turned it, and pushed the button marked “PH.”

  The elevator came to life with a soft, mechanical purr and began to rise.

  Gavin stepped back again, until he was standing side by side with Olivia as they rose through the air. She waited.

  He looked up at the illuminating floor numbers innocently.

  “I thought you weren’t going to throw yourself at me,” he said.

  Two

  Keeping his eyes off of her was an effort. Keeping the proper control of himself as a Dom, in her presence, was an effort. Doing anything but pinning her back against that wall was a goddamn effort.

  It was unsettling.

  Gavin forced himself to look forward, though he’d watched carefully to see how Olivia Cress took teasing. She’d cracked a smile, which
was good. Because otherwise the signs of distress were pretty damn clear. He would know she was in trouble even if she hadn’t fled, then pushed him into an elevator and hid behind his body.

  Though that was a pretty good clue.

  The way he wanted her was like a fever. This had never happened. Gavin’s mind raced, breaking the usual calm of his thoughts with an endless churn of every piece of information he had about Olivia Cress, every brief memory, every sensation. He watched over it with iron control and some curiosity. He hadn’t thought he was capable of this again.

  He looked down at her once more, and saw something else. Her body language was odd. He’d seen her shy interest in the Los Angeles Club Volare in the way she talked about it, but it had been coupled with a fear of it that spoke to an insecurity. In that way, she was the classic submissive who hadn’t yet figured out that they were a sub. But none of that matched what he saw in her now, standing next to him with her head high and her skin flushed.

  She was brave, was what she was.

  And she wanted to talk. She kept opening her mouth, closing it again. Fidgeting. For Gavin, silence was comfortable. For her, it wasn’t—and he was interested to see what she’d do with it.

  “Ok, where are we going?” she said, finally.

  Gavin smiled. “My private suite. I was going to stay the week.”

  “This is a private elevator?”

  “Yup.” He looked down at her again and took pity. “You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong, but you should know I can tell that you want to.”

  Olivia looked at him.

  “That is so rude,” she said.

  “Am I wrong?”

  “That’s not the point,” she said, flustered. “You didn’t even say whether you want to know, you just told me what you think I want. Which is weird and rude and probably other things that I can’t think of off the top of my head.”

  She crossed her arms, and Gavin turned to look at her fully.

  “You’re right,” he said finally. “I do want to know.”

  Whatever Olivia expected, that wasn’t it. Her beautifully expressive face went on a miniature roller coaster ride of emotions. Disbelief, pleasure, anger, worry. How she felt that much and didn’t need to take a nap afterwards, he didn’t know.