AMÉLIE
On Wednesday night, Amélie walked into the Honey early, going to the front desk to give them her purse to secure.
She hadn’t told Olivier when to meet her and she half hoped he’d be there, waiting for her, anxious to see her. But it was so early she suspected he would not be and that was good (in a way) as she had another reason for arriving early.
She’d heard word Aryas was back in town and she needed to speak with him about something she’d been rolling around in her head since the thought occurred to her.
When there was any space in her head that wasn’t taken by Olivier, of course.
He was consuming her.
This caused alarm.
She’d twice had toys she’d played with exclusively for long periods of time, as they’d pleased her greatly, but also, they had other attributes—looks, body, but mostly personalities—that called to something deeper.
Fortunately, before she’d dug into that something deeper to explore it, the first had shared he’d started seeing a woman in the mundane world who he’d found was “kinda into this shit” (his words). He did not wish to stop his sessions with her, but it was appropriate for him to tell her he had another partner.
A partner it was not difficult to see he felt could fit in his life in that world, whereas he didn’t feel the same about Amélie.
She hadn’t ended things on the spot, but their next session was a farewell one.
The second nearly hit more dangerous ground. Amélie was getting in deep, and their finale was much more awkward.
She’d begun to have feelings for him and was gearing up to share she’d like to explore a more expansive relationship when she saw him out to dinner.
With his wife.
He had not told her he was married.
As mentioned, it was appropriate, but also expected, that as their play deepened and the time they spent together lengthened, that he tell her he had another partner.
Therefore when she saw him with his spouse, he’d looked utterly terrified when he caught her eyes, as he should have been.
She’d been hurt, and in order to deal with that feeling, she’d twisted it to rage.
Rage that nearly made her do something highly inappropriate, not to mention tactless and unseemly. This being walking up to their table and exposing him for the cheat he was. For, clearly, he had not told his wife either (as he should) that he had needs that had to be assuaged, and if she could not do that, they had the discussion and his wife had allowed him his extracurricular activities.
Amélie had not exposed him to his wife.
She’d also never spoken another word to him, even when the bastard showed at the Honey looking whipped and obviously desiring an audience.
This kind of information was not shared on their profiles or in their notes. Why they were not there was obvious. What was in their lives outside the club’s walls wasn’t anyone’s business unless a member chose to make it someone’s business.
But it was an unspoken agreement between Master or Mistress and submissive, if their play went beyond casual sessions, to offer transparency.
In the ordinary world, his taking a lover without his wife’s permission was unforgivable.
In their world, it was his life, but in deceiving his Domme, not offering that transparency she would require for a variety of reasons, including the opportunity to keep emotions in check—she had no idea how it was in other clubs, but it was severely frowned on at the Honey.
As was her responsibility (in her mind, not contractually or expected in the scene), she had a quiet word in order to warn the other Dommes.
He had gone uncalled long enough that the last she’d heard, he was prowling places like the Bolt.
This, she knew, the other Dommes had done mostly out of respect (and in some cases affection) for Amélie, and as a show of support. Not all Dominants found transparency to be a requirement (though, if anyone had taken him again, as per the note Amélie placed in his file, it would only be with protection).
He was a high-powered attorney who came from money. The Bolt, he would feel, was beneath him.
A fitting punishment.
Far faster than the two that went before, Olivier had gotten under her skin.
If they were other people, their quick connection would give rise to Amélie staring at wedding magazines in their racks, finding her mind wandering to thoughts of if their children would have his lovely blue eyes and wondering how to find a contractor to build a large wall safe where they could keep their toys.
But they were the people they were, where thoughts like these had to be banished, for protection, until the golden time when connecting and sharing, openness and communication, brought them to the place where Mirabelle was now.
She and Trey had a planned session the next evening.
And if he didn’t take the reins, she was asking him out either before or after she was finished with him.
Amélie was nervous for her friend but more nervous for what was happening with herself, falling deeper and deeper under Olivier’s spell. His humor. His honesty. His warmth. Wanting more and more from him. Thinking of him constantly. Wondering where he worked. Where he lived. If he had any siblings. What he did for fun.
Everything.
She drew in a light breath to calm her thoughts as she walked into the Honey.
She spied Aryas instantly, in the center booth at the wall to her left, a booth that was exclusively his if he was in the hunting ground.
He was sitting on the outside of the booth facing the entryway. A petite, African American toy with wide eyes and bouncing black curls sat close to him, her eyelids fluttering.
He was playing with her.
Aryas noticed Amélie, too, and although seeing him with a sub would normally change her plans for that part of the evening, avoiding him and allowing him his time with his toy, he surprisingly jerked up his chin at her.
That meant he wanted her to approach.
She did as he turned his bald head (the only place he was bald; he had a full beard and an unscaped physique) and said something to his toy. Her dreamy expression became petulant. He said something else, her mouth set into a pout, but as Aryas slid out of the booth, she slid with him.
“Mistress Amélie,” she greeted in a soft voice that stated clearly, in song, she’d be a gorgeous soprano.
“Pretty baby,” she replied.
The girl scurried away.
When she did, Aryas caught Amélie’s hand and lifted it to his mouth, brushing his lips against the knuckles, his short eyelashes that curled so perfectly it was impossible not to believe he didn’t use a lash curler covering unusual gray-blue eyes, as he murmured, “Amélie,” against her skin.
He could pull that off, Aryas. The only other man who she’d met in Phoenix who could do something like that without looking like they were trying too hard was Stellan.
“Aryas,” she replied.
Aryas squeezed her fingers, let them go, and reentered the booth, going in deep, but stopped at the side of the curve. He then patted the seat beside him.
Amélie slid in and twisted, touching him cheek to cheek and moving to do the same with the other side as he slid a hand curved at her hip and gave her a squeeze.
She pulled away. “Welcome back.”
“Good to be back, my sweet,” he replied through a grin.
“You didn’t have to stop playing with your toy for me,” she noted.
“My exquisite Amélie showing at my place at eight-thirty looking like she had something on her mind, I disagree.”
That was Aryas Weathers.
He was an utter gentleman. Even with his toys (to an extent).
Amélie had met his mother and knew why this was. The woman had entrenched respect, for men and women, the latter being of the gallant variety, in both her sons. She’d done this with an iron will, the only thing she could have when her husband left her, never to be heard from again, to raise two very big growing boys on the salary of a hotel maid.
She knew this was why Aryas was driven to use where his nature had taken him to build an empire. Starting in Phoenix, he’d expanded and now had clubs in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, and Vegas. They made him very wealthy. And they allowed him to take care of his momma in the way she always should have been by a man in her life that she loved.
“Your sacrifice is appreciated,” Amélie told him. “And as a return kindness, I won’t take up much of your time.”
He was still grinning. “I don’t have a baby here, Amélie, you can drop the Mistress shit.”
“Of course,” she murmured.
“You’ll still be formal. It’s your way. It’s sweet,” he replied. “Now, give it to me. What’s on your mind?”
“I wanted to talk to you about something that occurred to me in regards to Delia.”
His full lips thinned and his gaze went beyond her and into the club.
Amélie looked, too, an encompassing sweep, and she saw no Delia.
It was early and there weren’t many people there, though at that moment, Penn and Shane were arriving.
Honing in on their arrival, Amélie’s attention wandered.
A beacon of hope, Master Penn and his slave Shane were a couple outside the club, had met there, had been together now for nearly two years, and it was a widespread expectation they’d soon be declaring they were engaged.
Thinking on this, how well it worked, how they were living together and had been for over a year, how they still came to the club regularly, it took Aryas calling, “Amélie,” for her focus to move from the two men. “Delia,” he prompted when he again got her attention.
“She’s clearly claimed Tiffany,” Amélie informed him of something he probably knew.
He nodded.
“I’ve known Tiffany outside the club since she was young, Aryas. And I’ve kept an eye on her here. I even monitored Pasquel as she was training her. She seemed to settle in and be enjoying herself. Now, she seems pale and afraid. Tentative. It makes me uncomfortable.”
Aryas nodded, he’d noted that too.
Even so, he suggested, “It could be part of her game, a darker side she needs to explore that she didn’t give Pasquel.”
Amélie didn’t move her gaze from her friend.
He knew better. “I’m monitoring Delia, Amélie,” he reminded her.
“Does she trip her occupancy switch when she enters a playroom?” she asked.
An ominous crease of his brows before, “She has to. To get a room, you have to reserve a room.”
“And if the blackout blinds are down, but the lights are on, you can see the lights around the blinds, so another Dom will know that room is reserved and avoid it. But you told me that the hallways have cameras that move on the monitors in the control room, too much hallway with all that needs to be observed to watch constantly. She could be missed slipping into a room. She could easily use it without being observed, her equals avoiding it because they see the lights.”
She got closer to him and continued.
“With all your staff has to monitor, Aryas, it would not be difficult to miss that a room was being used but the occupancy switch not flipped. She could disappear from the hunting ground and they’d lose track of her. Although you track arrivals, you don’t specifically require anyone to check in and check out.”
“Since she’s being monitored, Amélie, my staff in the control room would make a note if she reserved a room and watch closely what happens in it.”
“Her play can seem finished and she can turn off the occupancy and continue the scene, Aryas. A toy knows about the occupancy switch but it isn’t their responsibility. They might not notice it’s been switched off. The lights are still on, Doms avoid the room, your staff thinks the scene is done, and they’re missing something. Does your staff turn off cameras immediately?”
He looked to the club over her shoulder. “No. They turn them off when the players leave.”
Amélie sat back, murmuring, “Then I was wrong.”
“She could go back in.”
Amélie looked to Aryas when he said this.
“I’ll get my eye on that, sweetheart,” he promised.
“I’d like your permission to approach Tiffany,” she requested.
“Strictly speaking, and you know this and would lose your mind if I gave what you’re asking to another Dom, if she’s claimed by Delia, you need to ask Delia to approach Tiffany. And it’d be tough to make anyone believe you’re going in there out of interest. You’ve never played with a female.”
“Then perhaps I can talk to Mirabelle or Pasquel. They have. Ask them to make an approach. Or you can,” she suggested.
“I will,” he grunted, sounding perturbed.
“Thanks, Aryas.”
He nodded and focused on her, his lips lifting up and spreading in a wolfish way from his strong, white teeth.
“So, I hear you’re enjoying the stallion I approved for you.”
It actually felt like Amélie’s heart started to swell.
Aryas, a good friend, a kind heart.
“Would you not have approved him if not for me?” she asked.
His big smile got bigger. “Fuck yeah. I saw that big mountain of meat, I probably would have paid to have him in my club.” He bent closer to her. “But the second I saw him, darlin’, I knew we had to have him for you.”
“Well, thank you,” she said, putting her swelling heart into her words.
“Hear you’ve been having all kinds of fun.”
“I’ve been enjoying him.”
His body shook with his chuckle. “Mistress Amélie, a skilled Mistress at much, including the understatement. Heather asked for a raise after she had to clean up that load you made him blow on the floor. You may have been enjoying him but he probably would use different words.”
She hoped so.
Oh yes.
She very much hoped so.
She gave him an impudent grin. “I think so far he’s found me satisfactory.”
“Yeah. Bet he’ll be here in about two minutes to find you satisfactory again.”
She hoped that too.
“Speaking of which, we’re meeting and you have a sub to tend to so I’ll leave you.” She went in to touch her cheek to his and said in his ear, “So lovely to have you back.”
When she straightened away, he replied, “If it’s so lovely, you’d invite me to that book club of yours.”
She started laughing. “Aryas, it’s an all-female group.”
“Discrimination,” he muttered, eyes dancing. “Hear you mostly read erotica.”
“It is a genre that’s often chosen, yes,” she confirmed.
“Then I definitely want in.”
She leaned into him again, this time eye to eye, hers, she hoped, holding kindness. “You’ve never mentioned it before but now, I imagine, you want in because we invited Talia.”
The dance went out of his eyes and another reason Aryas was so good at all he did, especially in business (and play), entered them.
His don’t fuck with me look.
“Don’t go there, Amélie.”
“Mirabelle is asking Trey out tomorrow night.”
His gaze flashed with pleased approval as his mouth said, “Excellent.”
“Talk to her,” she urged.
“She’s not my flavor, Amélie.”
“She subbed under your training, you require it,” Amélie pointed out.
“She did. Stellan did that part. He approved her performance. That’s all I require, I didn’t ask for details. It’s done. She’s topping exclusively.”
Stellan did that part when Aryas usually did that part because the temptation, and the frustration if Talia didn’t enjoy it, would have been too much.
“Perhaps you can work an arrangement where you share while working a sub together,” she suggested.
“Beautiful, I love you, you got a place in my heart, I dig where you’re going with this but only because of the why you’re going there. But this is the last time I’m gonna say we are not talkin’ about it.”
She sat back in the booth and fought crossing her arms on her chest and huffing out a sulky breath, deciding, since she’d irritated him already, to go for the gusto.
“Evangeline missed another book club,” she announced.
Even for Amélie, his eyes got scary.
Regardless, she persevered, but did it quietly, “I’m growing more and more worried, Ary.”
“As am I,” he bit off.
She snapped her mouth audibly shut.
That was all he needed to say. He was Aryas.
Amélie was uncertain with how to proceed to bring her friend back into their protective circle.
But if Aryas was worried, he would not be uncertain how to proceed.
When the silence after his statement stretched, and he didn’t fill it as she felt he should do as a gentleman, she narrowed her eyes at him.
“Stop being cute when you’ve annoyed me,” he ordered.
“Stop being annoyingly stubborn and male,” she shot back. “You can be such a little boy sometimes.”
He gave her a different smile in his arsenal, the charming one. “You’ve watched me play, darlin’. The meat I’m packin’, that’s an impossibility.”
He wasn’t wrong. He was as impressive as Olivier.
She decided to slide out.
“Amélie,” he called.
She looked to him.
“Good thought about Delia. Gratitude, sweetheart, for looking out for me and my babies.”
“Do not be sweet when I’m annoyed at you.”
“Take that shit out on your stallion, babe. I don’t take orders.”
She rolled her eyes but gave him a small smile to let him know her pique was just play and began to move to another booth, but Aryas’s words stopped her.
“And fuckin’ enjoy the shit out of,” his eyes traveled the length of her, “riding that stallion of yours, sweetheart.”
At that, she turned her head away haughtily and heard his laughter as she made her way to another booth.
She had dressed the part that night, of course. High-waisted, black, skintight, cigarette pants. A black silk blouse shimmering with gold thread, buttoned low to provide an expansive display of the cropped, black leather bustier she was wearing. Knee-high, stiletto-heeled, pointed-toed black boots she was wearing over her pants.
Not jodhpurs and a whip, but it sent a message.
She settled in and it pleased her greatly when Olivier arrived not ten minutes later.
He looked for her, found her and she gave him indication to approach when he did.
He stood at her side and looked down in her eyes before he looked down at her cleavage and his lips twitched.
“Mistress Amélie.”
“Olivier, bend to me,” she ordered.
His gaze came to hers before he bent and she lifted a hand to smooth it into the hair on the side of his head, running a thumb along his cheekbone.
“My handsome steed,” she whispered.
His face warmed but his eyes sparkled as he replied, “Looked forward to seeing you too.”
“Cheek,” she muttered.
He grinned, and when her hand dropped away, he straightened.
Glancing to her half-drunk cocktail, he asked, “Can I get my Mistress a drink?”
“No, please, slide in,” she offered, scooching over so he could slide in beside her.
As he did that, she gained the attention of a server, tipped her head to Olivier; the server nodded and turned to the bar.
Amélie twisted fully to Olivier and put her hand on his thigh, giving it a squeeze.
“Have you found a weekend we can play, Olivier?” she asked, and cursed herself the minute it came out.
It sounded too eager.
He turned his head to look at her and stated, “My friends, people I care about … Amélie,”—a hesitation—“they call me Olly.”
She felt her belly clench and release, her hand gliding down to his inner thigh doing the same, as warmth spread from her middle, moving up and to the left, rather than down.
“Is that an invitation?” she asked, not quite able to control the breathiness of her question.
“Do I get to invite you to do something?” he teased.
“Certainly,” she replied.
“Then yeah. It is.”
She leaned to him, her breast to his arm. “I accept.”
He gave her a grin and she tipped her head to the side.
“Olivier is not a common name in the States. It’s French,” she noted.
“Yep,” he agreed. “Mom … strike that, Mom’s grandparents were French. As in French from France. Makes her still French in a way but not like they were. She doesn’t speak the language, all that kind of shit was lost. But they have that tradition. All my aunts and uncles, cousins. My little brother is named Jean-Luc, but we call him Luc. My baby sister is Collette, but we call her Letty.”
“You’re the oldest,” she remarked.
His eyes twinkled. “Right again.”
“Are your father and brother as big as you?”
“Brother, mostly, a couple of inches shorter, but about twenty pounds heavier.”
“Oh my, that’s a big boy.”
He was still grinning as he replied, “Though, not strictly the good kind. Since college, he let himself go. Then again, no reason to maintain an offensive lineman’s body when he’s no longer an offensive lineman. Got himself a woman who likes a teddy bear so it’s all good. Dad’s big as a house. My height, beer gut. Mom liked a teddy bear too.”
Amélie liked a beast.
“Did you play football?”
Tipping his eyes up to look at the server when he placed Olivier’s beer in front of him, he turned his attention back to Amélie.
“High school, college, Luc followed in my footsteps. But I was defensive end.”
She’d made that call accurately.
“Not feeling like being a teddy bear?”
He dipped closer. “Baby, I’d teddy-bear you in a heartbeat. But not with a gut.”
Suddenly, for the first time in her life, Amélie wanted to be teddy-beared.
Even though, with all her experience, she didn’t know what that was.
“You like to stay fit,” she commented.
He pulled back and something crossed his face she couldn’t catch when he replied, “Working out clears the mind. Gives focus.” He gave her a smile that appeared forced. “And I gotta lug all this meat around. It’s taxing. Dad and Luc are good sittin’ in their loungers, watching football, drinkin’ beer and eatin’ nachos. I’m good with that too. But not all the time.”
She wanted to know what else he did the times he wasn’t working out or being worked by her.
She was trying to figure out a way to ask that when he got there first.
“The accent, Amélie. You French?”
She shook her head. “Half. The other half American. But I’ve lived in the States all my life.”
He turned more fully to her. “But you got an accent.”
“My mother was French.” She smiled, giving his thigh a light squeeze. “As in French from France. Up until I was five, she took me to France often and we stayed extended periods of time. She claimed I was fluent then, but now, I can often get by when someone is speaking French to me, I understand what they say. It’s irritatingly awkward attempting to reply in the same language. Though, I’ve kept some words, mostly endearments my mother called me, or my grandparents or aunts and uncles called me, each other, or my cousins.”
In all that, Olivier honed in on one thing.
“Up until you were five?”
She gave a slight shrug of one shoulder. “My mother and father divorced then. She had little here and part of their issue was she was terribly homesick and never got over it. So she went back to France. The divorce and custody battle were quite ugly, from family lore, but Dad won. I stayed in the States and as I grew older, it became harder to go visit her, with school, outside activities, friends, and the like.”
“Tough, Amélie,” he murmured, more warmth in his face.
“Not really, my chevalier, my mother was not an affectionate person. My father was. Even when I was young, I was closer to him. But she loved me and part of that loving me was not making me leave my friends and things I liked to do here and force me to go to France. She came often to visit me, often enough I knew she missed me and I mattered to her.”
She pressed closer to him, fighting her desire to share more but thinking it was too early, so she didn’t.
And anyway, it was definitely too difficult a subject to get into when she’d prefer this getting-to-know-you session to be lighter, so they could segue into their getting-to-know-you session without anything heavy weighing on their minds.
“The accent,” she continued, “was mostly from being around her and her family at a young, impressionable age, not to mention going back with some frequency. It was something that just happened. I noticed it when I was old enough to notice it and, I will admit to you, mon grande, I purposefully hung on to it. It made me different. It set me apart. And I like to be different.”
He was watching her closely, another expression on his face she couldn’t read, when she realized she’d again been remiss.
“You can drink your beer at your leisure…” she paused, feeling bizarrely shy, before she finished, “Olly.”
That got her the warmth back and he turned to his beer.
Taking a long pull, she decided not to share just how enchanted she was with him to the whole room by allowing herself to be entranced by the muscles working in his throat.
She took a sip of her own cocktail, seeing him put his beer back to the table.
“And explain that poison,” she heard him demand.
She looked up at him. “I’m sorry?”
“What you’re drinkin’, Amélie.”
“Soixante Quinze,” she answered.
“Uh … come again?” he asked, smiling.
“Soixante Quinze. French 75. It’s gin, champagne, lemon juice, and sugar, with a twist.”
He made a face that made her smile and press closer.
“You’re a beer guy,” she noted.
“Beer, rum, or bourbon. A good scotch whisky’s to be had, I won’t say no.”
Whisky.
She started stroking his thigh.
He cleared his throat and reached for his beer.
“I doubt I need to ask, but did you come prepared for me tonight, my chevalier?”
He put his beer down after his sip and again gave her his gaze. “Yeah, Mistress.”
“Good,” she murmured.
“And we got off track. To answer your question, I can’t do this weekend, or the next, but if you got the next one after that free, I’m in.”
Not only planning their weekend, having already checked his schedule and being able to do it two and a half weeks from right then, indicating they’d have two and a half more weeks of fun, not to mention their weekend together.
She had to fight not to start purring.
“If I’m not free, I’ll arrange it so I am,” she promised.
Though he didn’t know it, it was more of a vow.
He nodded, shifting his beer this way and that with his fingers around the bottom of the glass, before he said, “And it fucks me to say this, baby, but I can’t do next week. I gotta work. Back to regular schedule the week after, though.”
So much for two and a half weeks. All next week she wouldn’t have him.
She fought pouting or even frowning and lifted her own drink for another sip.
“Sorry, Amélie,” he said quietly, like he wasn’t sorry but deeply sorry.
She put her glass down and again gave him her attention.
“Work is work, mon chou. It is what it is. There’s no need to be sorry.”
That said, Amélie wondered what he did that took him away a whole week.
Perhaps he traveled for business like she sometimes did.
Not that she really had a business, as such.
As such, she really didn’t do much of anything. At least anything important.
Before thoughts that had been nagging her for some time about that part of her life could come to the fore, Olivier bent his neck to get closer to her face. “Doesn’t mean I’m not still sorry.”
She lifted a hand to cup his jaw. “My sweet beast.”
“You can, I’m free tomorrow and Friday. Saturday until the next Sunday, Amélie,” he shook his head, “no go.”
“Then let’s meet again Friday,” she decided.
She watched his eyes crinkle. “You’re on.”
“You are very correct, Olivier, as I do believe it’s time we begin to make our way to our room.”
His eyes didn’t crinkle at that. They started burning.
“Would you like to finish your beer?” she offered.
“Fuck no,” he answered.
She tipped her head to the side.
“Unless my Mistress wants to finish her crazy-ass, pretentious drink,” he went on.
She forced her look to be severe. “It isn’t pretentious. It’s delicious.”
“Whatever,” he muttered. “You wanna finish it?”
“Yes, chevalier.”
He sat back and lifted his beer. “As you wish.”
She was beginning to have a lot of wishes.
Worse, she was beginning to long for the possibility they would come true.