Private Dancer (Club Volare Book 12) Read online

  But with Bette, it was like he already did. Cole could read her body like a book, even if her mind was still keeping secrets.

  “Take your underwear off,” he said, releasing her. “And know that this is the last time you’ll be wearing underwear in this club.”

  He walked to the toy chest, flipped the lid. Located what he wanted in under two seconds. Club Volare spared no expense. Disposable panties with a remote controlled vibrator built in were a nice luxury.

  He turned around to find Bette standing there obediently, underwear in hand, breast still exposed. His cock pulsed. Good.

  “Put these on,” he said. “And then sit in this chair, facing me.”

  He dragged the fancy-looking armchair over by the bed, and sat on the edge of the bed. He watched her as she sat across from him, eying the remote he held in his hand.

  “You will maintain eye contact,” he said. “Or you will lose. If you move without my permission, you will lose. If you refuse to tell me what I want to know, you will lose. The only way to win is to tell me what I want, when I want, before I lose my patience. Otherwise you will be left on the edge, and you will not be allowed to come until I say you’ve redeemed yourself. And I promise you, you will not enjoy it.”

  Bette tried to hide a smile, failed.

  “If you say so,” she said.

  Cole didn’t say anything. Just pressed the button on the remote.

  Bette startled as the buzzing started, situated right over her clit. She remembered just in time that she wasn’t allowed to move, or to break eye contact, and tensed. Cole watched as it came on strong. Bette was surprised—she didn’t know how it would affect her to be watched, to be controlled. She was already close and struggling. Good.

  He turned it off.

  Bette made a tiny, frustrated little sound. She pressed her lips together, trying to hide her annoyance. Cole smiled.

  “You’re really not kidding, huh,” she said.

  “If you really piss me off,” Cole said, leaning forward, “we will repeat this every night this week, but on the floor of the main play room, where everyone can see, and I will leave your ass out to get spanked by any passing Dom who feels like it. And you still won’t get to come.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Yes you do,” he said. “There’s something you’re hiding, that you don’t want to tell me. That is unacceptable. I told you that you would open for me, Bette. I meant it.”

  He turned it on.

  Bette swallowed, the muscles in her jaw tensing as she pressed her lips together. Finally her breathing forced her lips open, and her hips began to writhe, ever so slightly. Her eyes pleaded with him.

  He turned it off.

  Bette groaned. Cole smiled.

  “How am I supposed to know what you want to know?” she said.

  “It’s the thing you don’t want to tell me,” he said. “The thing you don’t want to tell anyone.”

  He turned it on. He turned it off.

  Bette cursed. Cole laughed.

  He turned it on, leaned over, fondled her breast. Bette whimpered.

  “I can do this all night,” he said. “I know exactly how close to the edge you are. I can make your body do whatever I want it to, sub.”

  Heat flushed her cheeks, her chest, the tops of her breasts. She never looked away, and as he threaded his hand through her hair and got close, her eyes were watering.

  “This is the one place you are not in control, Bette,” he said. “This is the one place you can let go.”

  And he turned it off.

  “Damn it!” Bette shouted.

  Cole said nothing. Bette glared.

  “You are no shrinking violet, I’ll give you that,” she said, finally.

  “Me?” he said. “I’m a delicate little flower.”

  Bette laughed, and it ended in a little moan. She still hadn’t broken eye contact. Neither one of them had.

  “God, I still hate you so much right now,” she said, smiling slightly.

  “I know,” he said. “But you’re still my sub.”

  A beat.

  Something changed. Some last tension released, some last barrier collapsed behind her eyes. The bond between them seemed almost like a physical thing. Like he could reach out and touch it. Like he could touch the deepest part of her.

  “Tell me who hurt you,” he said.

  And she obeyed.

  14

  Cole had just given the order, the one Bette didn’t want to obey. The one she couldn’t refuse.

  “Tell me who hurt you.”

  There was a pause as he held her gaze with his own. She didn’t shy away from him. Didn’t try to hide. It was just his sub, disheveled before him on an armchair in a private playroom, going deep for him.

  “It wasn’t me,” she said finally. “It was my friend.”

  Cole inhaled. Good. It was the first crack in her armor.

  He stood up off the bed, bent down, dug his hands in under her thighs and lifted Bette out of that chair, all in one motion. She threw her arms around his shoulders, her face still locked on his as he lowered them both back into the chair, this time with Bette straddling him.

  Her breath caught as he squeezed her hips with his hands, but she never broke eye contact.

  Cole took her in. Instinct had told him she needed the contact for what came next, that she needed him touching her to feel safe. But the more he touched her, the more he started to feel like he needed it too. The way you need food, water. Oxygen. It breathed life into everything.

  Bette let her hands settle on his chest, her lips parting slightly.

  “You’re very observant, aren’t you?” she said, softly.

  “I’m a Dom,” he said. Then he smiled. “And it comes with job. FBI agent.”

  Bette’s eyes widened, and she blinked rapidly. She hadn’t expected that. Most people didn’t. But there was something else—some shift, some sense that she withdrew.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She swallowed. “I guess…I would have expected a cop to go nuclear by now, to be honest,” she said.

  She was telling the truth, even if that wasn’t the whole truth. But more importantly—Cole had been right. Bette had been screwed by the system, somewhere, somehow.

  “And that’s why you didn’t get help from Holt,” he said.

  Bette blinked again, then laughed, a gentle pealing sound.

  “Are you actually psychic?” she said.

  Enough.

  Cole pulled her close, took her already exposed nipple in his mouth, and nipped at it. She hissed, and ground her hips into him. When he pulled back, he grabbed another fistful of hair, and held her where he wanted her.

  “Tell me about your friend,” he said.

  “His father was a drunk, and a jerk,” she said. “Liked to use a belt.”

  “And you didn’t stand up for him.”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t.”

  “He was important to you.”

  “He was the only friend I had,” she said. Her eyes softened, and Cole loosened his grip, gentled his hands. She smiled sadly. “I was an Army brat, only child,” she explained. “My parents were…unenthusiastic, as parents.”

  With that she made a dismissive wave of her hand, as though that wound was in the distant past. Cole could tell it wasn’t.

  “Anyway,” Bette said. “I try to stand up against bullies like that, when I can. But I almost never can. It felt like I was this time, until it didn’t.”

  Cole studied her. He still had his hands on her, could feel her breathing through his hands. It was uneven and shallow until he moved, until he touched her. Then she’d breathe deep and relax.

  There was something big behind her eyes, some painful ghost of pain that pressed in on them. Something that was just out of sight. She hadn’t just been reacting to Big Jim, or even to the memory of her childhood friend’s father. There was something now, something today, that threatened her.

&nb
sp; Whatever it was, it was fresh. Raw. And it was too much for her—he could see the panic, the overwhelm rising in her eyes.

  He played the natural rhythm of the scene, and backed off.

  “It’s never that simple,” he said. “Standing up, not standing up. That’s why I left Chicago. Dirty cops.”

  Bette’s eyes widened again. That same reaction as when he told her he was FBI. Interesting.

  “You have to know when and how to stand up,” he explained. “Or innocent people get hurt. I made that mistake back in Chicago. I don’t wish it on anyone. You do the best you can, and sometimes you screw up. Then you do better.”

  He’d said it to steady her, to give her some comfort.

  He didn’t expect her to look at him with understanding.

  No, more than that: like she saw him. Bette’s soft brown eyes got even softer, her body melted into his, her hand found his face. His cheek.

  “That must have been really hard for you,” she said.

  Cole growled, ran his hands on her thighs.

  “That what you do when you’re not trying to find a way onto the spanking bench?” he said. “You a therapist or something?”

  Bette smiled brightly, delighted, before she tried to hide how pleased she was.

  “Not yet,” she said. “Still working on my degree.”

  Another crack in the armor.

  “Then you know it wasn’t just about your childhood friend,” he said.

  She almost flinched. Her thighs tensed around him, for just a moment. Somehow he knew, in that moment: it was an ex that hurt her.

  It was always a fucking ex.

  “And you know that Jim and Robbie were working through their own stuff in that scene,” he said.

  To her credit, she didn’t try to break contact. Didn’t try to sever the connection between them. She stayed strong.

  And it was like she reached right into his chest and touched his blackened heart.

  Jesus Christ. Cole wanted to spread her out on the bed, strip her down, drive into her hard, over and over again, until she screamed his name. He wanted to fuck her to oblivion and back, then make love to her slowly, layering it between deep kisses until he led her back to a place where she knew, fucking knew, that she was safe. He wanted to find out what happened to her, and fix it. He wanted to do all the things he knew he couldn’t do.

  “How do I fix it?” she whispered.

  “You don’t,” he rasped. “You strip naked, get on the bed, ass up head down. And spread.”

  Bette was so bewildered by everything that had just happened that she didn’t even realize she was obeying an order until she was already half-naked.

  Her head was swimming with “holy crap” moments. It was Cole who had gone up against dirty cops? That’s why he’d had to leave Chicago? And he was a freaking FBI agent?

  But all of that faded away when he looked at her.

  Her top was off, her bra on the floor. Her thumbs hooked under the waist of her skirt, the torturous vibrating panties already around her ankles. She’d stopped there, though, thinking about how Cole managed to look at her like he knew her, like he already knew everything she wanted to tell him.

  “This wasn’t just about your childhood friend.”

  That’s what he’d said, matter of fact, confident, infuriatingly dominant. And he’d been right. And it had sparked something in her, some hope, some perverse desire to just tell him everything. About Mark and the custody challenge, about Faulkner and the blackmail, all of it. Confess everything, and let Cole decide what to do with her. The relief would be unimaginable, if temporary. It was like the call of the freaking void.

  And she could not risk it.

  “Sub,” Cole said. “I gave you an order.”

  Bette met his eyes, and saw the same naked, burning hunger she felt when she looked at him. The order. Right. How could she forget? She’d be fantasizing about what he’d said to her until the day she died.

  Naked. On the bed. Ass up, head down.

  And spread.

  Echoes of the first night they met. It sent a shiver down her spine, and a wave of pleasure between her legs. And just like that night, Bette was going to have to find a way to resist the ultimate temptation.

  Focus. You can do this.

  Shaking, she quickly stripped down to nothing, and made for the bed. Suddenly she was acutely aware of her actual nakedness. She felt gangly, awkward as she climbed on top of it, which made her want to laugh and curse at the same time. She was a stripper. She was a lot of other things, but she was also a stripper, and she was damn good at it, too. Her literal job, at this time in her life, was to move seductively for a male audience.

  And with the one man she cared about, she turned into a nervous, awkward wreck.

  Wait, do I care about him?

  That insane thought flitted through Bette’s mind just as she reached the middle of the bed. She shooed it away, spread her knees, watched her hands spread out on the oh-so-soft sheets, and slowly, slowly, lowered her torso until her nipples brushed those sheets.

  God. She was naked for a living, but she was never naked like this. She could feel her wetness, exposed to the cool air, and just the knowledge that Cole could see it quickened something inside her.

  It was then that she heard him flipping through that freaking form.

  She didn’t dare move, even though she wanted to. He hadn’t told her to move. But he hadn’t told her not to talk, either.

  “Are you going to punish me?” she heard herself say. “For earlier?”

  “No. I’m going to discipline you. Do you know the difference?”

  She shook her head.

  “Punishment,” Cole said, tossing the form she’d filled out on the table to her right, “is an act of control and retribution. Discipline is a tool for teaching and guidance. Keep your position, Bette. Or you will be punished.”

  God, why did that turn her on so much?

  Bette dipped her head until her forehead rested on the bed, and tried to muddle through her thoughts amidst the blaring, primal need that was growing between her legs. Except that every time she thought about the man who currently had her naked, spread, and obedient, she felt this light fizzing inside her that threatened to bubble up and spill out, and it scared the crap out of her.

  Like he could read her mind, Cole threaded his fingers through her hair and turned her head to face him. His face was calm, but serious. He had her full attention.

  “I have a rule about liars, Bette,” Cole said. “I’m making an exception for you because you seem to have a good reason to hide. But I will get the truth out of you.”

  She couldn’t say how long they stayed there like that, eye to eye, with all of Cole’s intentions laid bare. Her heart hammered against her ribs and she thought about using her safeword maybe a hundred times, because the truth was the one thing she couldn’t let him have.

  Cole was the one who broke the silence. “Anything you want to say, sub?”

  Everything. She wanted to tell him everything.

  “No,” she whispered. “Sir.”

  Cole straightened, let go of her hair, let his palm rest on the back of her neck for a beat. Then he moved out of sight—to the foot of the bed, she knew—and everything started to buzz.

  She felt his weight on the bed.

  All on their own, her fingers gripped at the sheets.

  And then his hand was on her.

  He slid his hand from the top of her ass crack all the way down, until his palm pressed against her tender asshole and the tips of his fingers pressed against her aching entrance. Bette stifled a moan, and then he pushed two of his fingers into her, gripping her with his big hand like she was made for him to do that.

  “I said ass up, sub,” he said.

  And with that grip, he pulled her ass higher.

  This time, she moaned.

  Behind her, Cole chuckled. He swirled his fingers inside her, just shy of her g-spot, and Bette found her ass moving even higher,
offering itself up to him.

  “Better,” he said.

  She didn’t understand what happened to her, when he touched her. Her mind empty of everything except the need to please him, to never disobey him again, to be fucked by him.

  And then he put his hand right over her wet, swollen pussy and pushed his thumb into her.

  Crying out, she dug her fingers into the bed.

  With his other hand, he pressed down on her back, pinning her belly to the mattress, and worked his thumb deeper. In and out and back in again, squeezing her vulva in his palm with every push.

  She was already so close. So close.

  “Who do you belong to, sub?”

  “You.”

  “Good.”

  Suddenly his hand stopped. Paused. She wanted to sob.

  “You don’t come without my permission, sub,” he growled in her ear. “I’ll decide when you’ve earned it.”

  And then he removed his hand.

  Bette wanted to howl in protest, but something kept her silent. Her swollen pussy pulsed with every beat of her heart, every cell in her body screaming for release, but she held it together. She buried her face in the bed and held it together. It was fucking torture.

  Cole moved back up to the head of the bed. He threaded his fingers through her hair again and pulled her up, stripping her of that hiding place, too.

  “This is what’s going to happen,” he said, looking down into her eyes. “I’m going to show you exactly what you took away from that sub downstairs, and then I’m going to take what I want from you.”

  15

  Cole moved his free hand to his belt and worked it loose, and everything inside her went liquid. Her breath came out in rough, harsh bursts.

  His hand stilled there, wrapped around the metal buckle of his belt, forearm flexed to pull the leather free of its loops. The front of his pants strained over his cock, which was so thick and hard, she could actually see the ridge of his crown shaping the fabric.