Fall Into You. Roni Loren

behind Charli held barely restrained violence. She closed her eyes, wishing she could fall through the floor or wake up. This all had to be some bizarre nightmare, right? Dancing orangutans would twirl through the room anytime now. But of course when she opened her eyes again, Grant’s hand was still on her shoulder. And she was still in the middle of some odd How to Be a Sex Slave class.

      His breath was a hot tickle against her ear. “You have three seconds to stand up and come with me before I embarrass you and let everyone know you’re an intruder here.”

      Her jaw clenched, but when she caught Kelsey’s curious gaze, Charli tamped down her smart-ass reply. She didn’t want to make Kelsey look bad. Plus, the thought of being exposed as an outsider suddenly seemed too much to stomach. She was in that role way too often in her life already. She rose to her feet—at least a little more smoothly than she had the first time.

      Grant seemed huge next to her all of a sudden, as if being in this place somehow made him even taller. He grasped her upper arm and none too gently led her from the room. After shutting the door, he tugged her again like she was some disobedient puppy and guided her down the hallway. “Not a word until I get you behind a closed door.”

      The clipped command sent both a whisper of fear and some other unidentifiable emotion through her. She shivered beneath his grip, which apparently didn’t go unnoticed by him. He gave her the side eye and the hard line of his mouth dipped into a full frown. But he stayed silent until they’d gone up an elevator, down another elegantly decked-out hallway, and into cozy sitting room, complete with a stone fireplace. Through another open door, she could see a bigger room with a desk and large plate-glass windows that looked out onto the black night. Grant’s office.

      He let go of her arm and shut the door they’d come through, then pinioned her beneath an iron gaze. “Sit.”

      “I’m not a dog.”

      “Charli, it’s been a long night. You’re trespassing after I explicitly told you not to, and you’ve taken me away from something important tonight. Do you really want to play word games right now?”

      She sat, suddenly feeling the true extent of his anger. He was always a bossy son of a gun but here, at this place, she sensed that part of him had dialed up from low buzz to rattle-and-hum mode.

      Then it hit her.

      Grant was like Colby.

      She remembered the way Grant had made her hold the bar in the shower, the way he’d taken control.

      He was one of the men who made women kneel for him.

      Charli thought of pretty, subservient Stella, and her stomach plummeted like she’d been thrown from a bridge. No wonder Grant had left last night. She was everything girls like Stella weren’t.

      She looked away from him, staring at the unlit fireplace. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have come over here.”

      “Damn right, you shouldn’t have,” he replied, his angry voice hitting the wood floors and reverberating around her. “What the hell were you thinking? I told you I have security. You didn’t think the staff would see someone hopping the fence?”

      “I thought this was a swanky resort for rich families,” she protested. “I didn’t think I was going to stumble into some, some…”

      “Some what, Charli? Say what you think this is.”

      She glanced up at him, meeting the challenge in his eyes. “Some, I don’t know, sex club, brothel, God knows what.”

      He smirked. “You think I’m running a whorehouse?”

      “Why else would you be training people how to kneel?”

      He closed his eyes briefly, as if reining in the desire to shake her. “Because those people are submissives who want to learn how to please a dominant. This is a fantasy resort. BDSM being our speciality.”

      Her brows lifted. “BDSM? Is that the same as S and M?”

      He blew out a breath, sinking onto the couch opposite her, the fight visibly draining from him. “That’s the older term for it. But yeah, basically. Bondage, dominance, submission, and sadomasochism. And this is supposed to be a place where I guarantee people the highest level of privacy to practice it. If my members knew that I’d allowed some nosy reporter to sneak onto the property…” He leaned back in his seat. “It could ruin my entire reputation.”

      Her teeth had gnashed together at the nosy reporter comment, but she tamped down her response when she saw how weary he looked. This was obviously a very big deal here, and she had been the one to break the rules. She pushed back all the snarky things she wanted to say. “I’m sorry. Really, I am. I’m not going to pretend I understand all this, but I had no right to come over here. Sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me.”

      He eyed her. “You think?”

      “Damn. Okay. I get it. I said I’m sorry. What do you want me to do? Grovel for forgiveness?” The words were out before she could snatch them back.

      His head tilted, mischief in his eyes. “Not a totally unappealing idea. Maybe you learned more in that training class than I think.”

      Her neck burned, the heat traveling up like mercury in a thermometer.

      “What were you doing kneeling in the intro class anyway?”

      She studied the tops of her hands, his inquiring gaze suddenly too much to take head-on. “I sort of got persuaded by Kelsey.”

      A soft chuckle. “Ah, Kelsey. She’s new to my staff, but a very promising domme. If she can persuade you to do something, maybe she deserves a raise.”

      Charli’s head lifted, her eyes narrowing. “Right, of course, because I’m nothing like those women in that room.”

      He leaned forward, forearms braced on his thighs. “No. You’re not.”

      For some reason, the words pierced her like barbed wire. She herself had been thinking in the session she was nothing like those women. But hearing him say it with such conviction lashed at the same battered spot her boss had created when he’d told her she hadn’t gotten the on-air position. Not good enough. Not pretty enough.

      She hauled herself up from the couch as if the furniture had caught on fire beneath her. The telltale stinging sensation of impending tears seared her throat. “I want to go back to my cabin.”

      He mouth dipped. “We’re not done here. We need to talk about last night, and I need to know that you’re not going to—”

      But she was no longer listening as she moved toward the door. She had to get out of here. Right. Now. She wasn’t exactly sure why she felt ready to fall apart. All she knew was she was not going to do it in front of Grant.