Wicked Charming (Wicked Ever After Book 1) Read online

  That's why I liked Celeste. She wasn't trying to get anything from me but a good night of fun.

  "You know, if she's someone who’s got you this twisted up, you don't have to do what you're told. You can have her, Charm. You can at least get to know her and find out if she's something you want to pursue.”

  I tilt a look at Beast. He’s finishing his cigarette, watching me pensively, and he isn't smiling. There's a disturbing lack of amusement in his eyes. "I like Celeste. If you do, fuck what your dad thinks. Fuck Mal. Do what will make you happy, man. She's a good girl, though, so don't fucking hurt her because you're too pussy to step up and take what you want because you're afraid of the consequences."

  I stiffen and glare at him, and get a wide, false smile in response.

  The bastard knew exactly what kind of response that'd get. He's laughing, when he stands and leaves me alone with a half smoked cigarette and way too much on my mind.

  When Celeste comes into the building, I’m in the office.

  Like some kind of creepy stalker, I’m watching the cameras, and I see her enter the club, flicking her blond hair over her shoulder as she listens to something another girl says to her. Her gaze flicks over the room a few times, and then settles into something like disappointment as she slides behind the bar, her smile a little dimmer than I'm used to seeing.

  "Who are you looking for, pet?" I murmur, watching as she begins slicing limes and nodding at whatever Jax is telling her.

  I frown.

  He was standing a little closer that I was actually comfortable with.

  Not yours. I grit my teeth and shove away from the desk.

  She wasn't mine, but that doesn’t mean I’m without opinions.

  Cora approached in the tiny screen, leaning against the tiny bar top, crowding into Celeste’s space, and I watched her stiffen, saw the way her eyes went a little wary.

  It infuriated me.

  Cora had been told to stay away from the submissive, knew that I’d had a scene with her, and she was still there, making my girl uncomfortable and undermining me as a Dom.

  Who gave a fuck if I wasn't collaring her? Until I said otherwise, Celeste was mine.

  I step out of the office and make my way to the bar, dealing with the few staff who stop me. I can feel Celeste watching my slow progress, just like I can feel Cora’s fury as I finally stand at her side and smirk at Celeste, who’s waiting with big eyes and trembling hands, across the bar from us.

  "Can I borrow you for a moment?" I ask.

  Cora probably doesn't appreciate just how quickly Celeste agrees, but I do. She tugs off the apron, wipes her hands on a bar rag, and then flashes an apologetic smile at Cora. "Jax will help you," she says, before slipping over to me. I don't bother addressing her, just turn and make my way back to the office, and trust that she'll follow.

  She does.

  Except, I didn't really think past this—past getting her away from Cora and back to me, and now that I have her and we're almost in my office, and what the actual fuck am I supposed to do with her?

  You could fuck her? a helpful voice that sounds suspiciously like Beast offers.

  Mal would probably kill me for fucking a girl in the office. That's why we have dungeons, after all.

  "Close the door," I say, and she nods. I hear the distinct snick of it closing and the solid thump of the lock engaging and then I can't really register anything except her. I edge a little closer to her, until she falls back a step.

  “What is Cora to you?” I ask, not stepping away from her. Bright blue eyes blink once, startled, and I can feel the tension she's trying to ignore.

  “Nothing.”

  I catch her chin, forcing her head up, my fingers hard on her skin. I murmur, “Pet?”

  She shudders, her eyes drifting closed as she leans into me, her breath hot against my finger resting on her lip.

  “You can stop this, Celeste,” I say quietly, shoving all the arousal and want out of my voice for a moment.

  Her eyes open. “Cora is...complicated, Sir. But she is not my Domme.”

  It’s all there, begging to be seen, the words practically thrown at me in a challenge.

  So I kiss her. I let my hand drift down so that it rests at the base of her throat, fingers a loose collar around her neck, squeezing just enough that her gaze goes soft and pleading, even as she presses herself against my hold. Her breathing is already going high and breathy, her body lax and boneless.

  As I kiss her, I feel the shudder that goes through her, the way she presses forward, leaning into my body. I tighten my grip on her throat, until she sighs under my lips and settles back against the wall, head tipped back and lips parted for me. She’s quiet as I lick into her mouth, a tiny moan slipping free when I nip at her lower lip, a sharp bite of pain that I lick away.

  I want to kiss her senseless. I want to press against her and hold her still with my words as I hit my knees and worship her.

  Standing like this, touching her only where my hand collars her and my tongue fucks her—it feels wrong and somehow right.

  Her eyes are wide and glazed when I pull away and step back. I wipe my mouth and she whimpers.

  “Don’t move, pet,” I order harshly. She stiffens against the door and I retreat, until the desk is between us.

  She watches me, her eyes narrowed and petulant, and I laugh, softly. “Don’t pout, Celeste. I need to be able to think for this conversation.”

  “Thinking is overrated,” she says, her lower lip protruding, just a little.

  I grin at her and wave at the empty seats across from me. “Let’s talk, sweetheart.”

  She freezes, and frowns at me. “I don’t like that.”

  “No?” I sip the coffee I’ve mostly abandoned and nod at her. “Fair enough. I have a proposition for you.”

  She grins, wide and sweet, and I laugh. “Not that kind of proposition. I’d like to work with you.”

  It’s startling how quickly she shifts from a flirty minx to all business. “What kind of job?”

  “Mal and my partners want to host an...audition...of sorts. A submissive showcase.”

  Her eyes narrow, and she picks at a piece of hair hanging over her shoulder and nibbles it thoughtfully. “Who is looking for a submissive? It can’t be Beast—”

  Her words stop abruptly and her eyes go very wide as she stares at me. There’s something like hurt in those eyes and I hate it.

  I shouldn’t care, but fuck it all, I do.

  “You are looking for a submissive. A girl you can collar.”

  It’s a question but it isn’t. She knows.

  “You—I can find someone else. I didn’t think—”

  “I can be a professional and do my fucking job,” Celeste says, her voice a sharp whip of anger that I didn’t expect, not from her. My eyes narrow and she glares back, almost like she’s daring me to say something.

  I’m off balance and I know it. If we were a little less clothed, or she were mine and not just a girl I had done a scene with, I would know what to do.

  This is why I want a submissive. I’m fucking tired of always wondering where I stand. I’m a Dom for God’s sake. I shouldn’t be off balance all the damn time.

  “My parents, they want me to settle down. Apparently, it’s for the good of the company, and all that. I actually need to find a plus-one for a fucking Board dinner this weekend, and Mal thinks the Kingdom will benefit if at least one of us was in a serious relationship.”

  She’s quiet for a minute.

  “I can find someone else, Celeste. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No. I’ll do it. And I’ll be your plus-one at the dinner. He’s right. The club could use some stability, and you three don’t exactly inspire that.”

  She stands up, and nods at the door. “Can I go?”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  She hesitates and then shrugs. “I’m not mad. I’m just tired. And I really need to get back to work. We can talk about the audition and your dinn
er after, ok?” She bends, giving me a dizzying view of her cleavage as she scribbles her number down and pushes it at me. “Text me when you want to meet.”

  I nod, she flashes me a smile that feels too stiff, and then she’s slipping out the door and is gone.

  And I’m left wondering what the fuck just happened.

  Chapter 7.

  “You,” Wolf says, lazily, “are playing with fire, and I am going to laugh like hell when you get burned.”

  I flip him off and nudge Beast up. He moans, a noise that’s as much remembered pleasure as it is pain. He spent the night with his favorite Domme, a girl with a streak so brutal it made me look nice and Mal seem almost approachable, and he was feeling it today.

  We were at Wolf’s place, a place that all of us gravitated toward without ever really thinking about it.

  Here’s the thing: we’re all wealthy. Even Beast, although he’s the enigma of us—his wasn't inherited, but earned after a scholarship put him through an ivy league prep school.

  The dude is a fucking dichotomy—strength and submission, genius wrapped up in a stupid smile, and filthy rich driving his beater from college. I sometimes think Mal tolerates him simply because you never can tell what shit he'll do next, and Mal is easily bored and endlessly curious.

  We're wealthy, but Wolf doesn't act like it. He drives a middle of the road car, lives in a middle of the road house, and doesn't bother to keep it in good condition. He mows when it suits him, cleans if something smells or my mother is dropping by, and usually forgets to put food in the house. Still, for all that it's a little run down and I have to bring groceries over, we seem to come here, a place that feels more like a home than the sterile, expensive condo I own or the townhouse Beast bought.

  “You hired that little sub,” Wolf continues.

  I give him a blank look and Beast’s head comes up. “Mal is gonna be pissed.”

  “He already is,” Wolf grumbled, flicking beer on Beast's back and earning a slight hiss for his troubles. “You can't fucking keep her.”

  “I'm not trying to,” I protest.

  Beast snorts and Wolf gives me a flat stare that speaks eloquently about my bullshit.

  “You know why, right? It's because of Cora and her sister,” Beast says into the pillows, his voice muffled and I straighten, my feet hitting the deck.

  “What about Cora? What’s her connection to Celeste?”

  “Cora’s her stepsister. Her mother—Cora’s—married Adrian a few years after his wife died in a car accident. The girls grew up together. Cora and her twin, Sophia, and Celeste.”

  I frown. “Sophia?”

  Wolf gives a lazy sort of smile. “Sophia. Good little sub. The girls seemed to get along, until Kathrine passed away two years ago. She left everything to Cora and Sophia. Celeste’s fortune was gone—she lost everything. Cora let her stay in the house, but her whole life changed.”

  I lean back. “She resents Celeste.”

  “I don’t think it’s that,” Beast says. He sits up, swallowing a groan that’s at odds with the dreamy smile on his face. “It’s the control. Cora thrives on it. She’s a Domme, but it’s about control with her, not the pain.”

  “Cora is her sister,” I snap, and Beast shrugs.

  “It's not sexual. It's control.”

  “Cora won't appreciate it and Mal has already given you his opinion of this. You’re playing a dangerous fucking game.”

  “You play dangerous games all the time,” I point out and he shrugs.

  “Mal expects me to fuck up. I've been doing it consistently since we were kids, and he's been cleaning up my mess. You're different. He expects better from you.”

  I know that. It's the truth that's been unspoken for the past few years.

  Mal demands a lot from all of us, but there is a difference in what he expects from me. More.

  But, “He's my friend and my boss and I admire the guy. I owe him a lot. But he isn't my Dom, and he doesn't get to dictate my life and how I live it.”

  Wolf gives me a curious sort of stare. “Would you actually go against him for her?”

  I should know the answer to this. She's just a girl, one I barely know. The answer is no, of course I wouldn't.

  I don't say that. I shrug and drink my beer and let my friends take from that what they want.

  It’s three nights later that Mal confronts me. I’m on the Floor, leaning into the hard comfort of my chair, focusing on the bustle of the club and not the pretty blonde sub serving behind the bar, her smile wide and free for everyone who wandered her way, but dimming when she glances toward me.

  “You girl is upset with you.”

  I sigh and looked up at Mal.

  That’s what has the Kingdom in an uproar. Mal runs shit, but he rarely bothers to come to the floor. He had no desire to find a sub here, and if he occasionally took a girl (or Beast) to his dungeon, it was done with quiet dignity and discretion.

  He wasn’t Wolf with his wild displays.

  So when he did leave his office and venture out among the plebeians, they tended to take notice and try to drag his attention to them.

  I wish I could tell them they were barking way up the wrong tree.

  Mal had been quietly waiting on the girl of his dreams since he met her almost twenty years ago. Even though I’d known him as a teen, I can’t remember a time when Mal wasn’t orbiting around Briar.

  “I think it bothers her that I’m looking for a full time sub.”

  A frown twists his lips and he props a hip against my chair, half sitting. “She’s a distraction.”

  “We kinda deal in those, brother.”

  Mal huffs a laugh and a ripple goes through the Kingdom, whispers and rumors already taking form. “You’re being stubborn, Charm.”

  I shrug because I am. There’s no use denying that.

  “Just... Be careful. Collaring a submissive isn’t a bad idea for you, and I don’t want you to sabotage that because a little sub turned your head for a few days.”

  “Mal,” I say, tight with warning, and he goes still, watching me, and I suppress the urge to shudder. When Mal stares at someone like that, it’s usually him determining how the hell he’s going to fuck them.

  When he looks at me like that, it’s the same thing, without any of the fun benefits. And while I might love power play, I don’t like being on the other side of it, and sure as fuck not with my best friend.

  “I like her,” I force out, “I haven’t fucked her, and even if I did, it’s my business. I’m going along with the Audition because I know it’ll happen whether I like it or not, so I’m making the best of shit. But don’t fucking insult her because you don’t get it.”

  He laughs, a loose, happy noise that startles me into looking up at him, and nods.

  It’s almost approval.

  Chapter 8.

  There are rumors. I hear them, see the echoes of them in Beast’s gaze when he frowns at me.

  The club is concerned about my fascination with Celeste.

  The thing is, I am very good at ignoring things I don’t want to deal with, and the popular opinion about me taking up with a bartender is definitely something I don’t want to deal with.

  I’m still happily living in denial when the day of our first date—dinner with the Board—rolls around.

  I wear a blue suit, so dark it's almost black, and drive a black Mustang.

  Mal gives me shit about my car, but I like it—and I’ve never needed to prove shit to him or anyone else.

  Celeste is waiting when I pull up. The house is a sprawling mansion in Druid Hills. So this is where Cora calls home. It’s bright and pretty, and a little bit too manicured.

  I sigh and shove out of the car.

  “You,” Celeste says, stepping out of the house before I reach the door, “look like someone pissed in your cornflakes.”

  I grin at her and shrug. “Nothing a pretty girl can’t improve.” She gives me a flat stare that doesn’t match the amusement in her eyes,
and I take the second to look her over.

  I’ve seen Celeste in uniform, sexy as hell, and I’ve seen her naked in my bed, so goddamn gorgeous it’s almost insane. I’ve never seen her like this.

  She’s wearing a pink dress that drapes over one shoulder, leaving the other bare and enticing. The hem of the garment flirts just above her knees, the pleats full, kicking each time she takes a step. Her hair is tamed and flat, pulled up into a sleek ponytail, her eyes dark and grinning at me.

  She’s wearing heels. Of course she is. They’re dainty white things that give her four inches of height and she’s still shorter than me, grinning up at me from under her lashes and biting at her lower lip.

  She’s gorgeous and I want, pretty damn desperately, to tug her into my car and slide that pretty skirt up and find out what she’s got on under it.

  Her smirk fades, and something hungry and knowing fills her gaze as she stares at me. “You’re gonna get me into so much trouble,” she whispers, and I nod once.

  Ditto, pet.

  I kiss her instead of answering, and she makes a pleased little noise in the back of her throat, her hand coming up to rest on my shoulder.

  She doesn’t usually touch me. I don’t usually let her, but then, we aren’t in a scene, tonight, and I’m enjoying this—her lips, the tiny sigh she gives as I lick into her mouth, the way she whines when I nip at her plump lower lip.

  She presses forward, and I pull away from her lips just enough to groan. “We’re gonna be late,” I murmur and she nods, leaning forward to press a quick kiss to my throat, and then steps away.

  “Then we should go,” she says.

  I kiss her again, quick and full of promise, and then step away, a hand at her back to usher her to the waiting car. I don’t ask why she met me outside and she doesn’t volunteer any information. Instead, she checks her lipstick in the mirror, mumbling about smudges before focusing on me.

  “Tell me about this thing,” she orders, leaning back against the seat.