Chains and Canes (2 page)

But at that moment…

In front of everyone, under garish lights on a stage of sleek black, he wanted Remy to strip her. Control her. Hurt her.

She wants it so much, and I can’t give it to her.

Remy cradled her skull and pulled her into a half-seated position. His muscular thighs still straddled her waist. The music slammed to quiet. They held the pose as all but one light winked out.

Both of them breathed so fiercely that Daniel could see their chests rise and fall—could practically hear them sharing the same oxygen. In the shadows, Remy slid a lock of hair back from her forehead.

Then they were standing, in perfect position to take a bow. The houselights came up.

Dancers and bodyguards and a few early bartenders were their only audience, but the pair earned well-deserved applause. A few of the women began to pack up their duffels.

Declan turned. His mouth quirked. “You were right. She’s hired.”

“Toldja.” Daniel managed the reply, although his throat was parched and his cock was thick, throbbing, greedy.

“I’ll get you a drink,” Declan said, his smile deepening. “And a copy of the video.”

Chapter Two

Naya Ortiz had danced with countless male partners since she’d turned fourteen, the year a boy from the Ukraine enrolled in her great aunt’s dance studio in South Brooklyn. Kolya had been his name. He’d certainly learned to lift. Sometimes she’d teased him that he was the students’ own version of Coney Island’s Cyclone. Twenty girls waited in line for their turn to get thrown skyward and spun in circles.

She felt that way now. Remy Lomand’s audition choreography hadn’t included any lifts, but he might as well have plunged her into a spiral drop.

He held her hand as he led her stage left. In the dark behind the thick scarlet curtains, he pushed her against the nearest wall, front to front, as if they were still on stage.

“We’re not dancing anymore,” she said, hands on his shoulders. “You have other girls waiting.”

“Don’t want no other girls.”

Naya couldn’t hide a shudder that scared the holy hell out of her. She was engaged. Daniel was somewhere in the club right that moment. If he had any idea how that dance had affected her… He was a generous man. Powerful and patient and so fucking sexy. Sure, they’d tested limits. Once they’d included another man.

A total disaster.

That guy had wasted two hours trying to turn her on. Remy Lomand had needed less than two minutes.
Jesús Cristo
. Again she was thinking of roller coasters and rides she didn’t want to end.

“I’m sure you have other dancers to audition.” She had endurance like an Olympic swimmer. After all, Broadway demanded resilience. But her words were breathy and out of step with her thoughts.

Remy’s hands had slid to her hips as if they belonged there, even after the music stopped. “Auditions are over, girl. What’s your name again?”

“Naya Ortiz.”

“Well, Mademoiselle Ortiz, you just embarrassed the competition and made me the envy of every poor shit here.” He grinned. They were concealed in shadows, but that flash of white teeth was unmistakable. “That might include some of the gay boys.”

“So you’re not gay?”

He pushed her hair back from her neck. His soft exhales dove down inside of her. Rather than feathering across her skin, the feeling was deep and concentrated. He kissed her where goose bumps tickled her throat. She could feel his smile. “I take what I can get, darlin’. Right now, that’s you.”

Naya laughed. Outright laughed.

He jerked back as if she’d decided to reenact the improvised slap from their dance.

“Way to make a girl feel special,” she said, still feeling effervescent and airy. “You deserve every bit of the annoyance on your face.” She ducked under his arm. “If I’m hired, I want to hear it from Mr. Shaw.”

“He does what I tell him.”

“I doubt that.”

She was walking away, smiling, feeling bright as a soap bubble in the sunshine, when he caught her around the waist. Spun. Pressed flush. This time he didn’t work with slow brushes of lips against skin. He caught two tangled handfuls of hair and twisted.

Naya gasped.

Dangerous.

That was the most coherent thought she could conjure when he began to push her, slowly, with firm intent, toward the floor. Her loose, damp hair became his tool as her knees folded under the rush of submission. She sank into the sensation of it, the rightness, as rational thought was replaced by almost joyous excitement. Dimly she registered the press of hardwood against her kneecaps, but most of her senses—most of her world—focused on the intent way Remy Lomand stared down at her.

She’d barely had the chance to look at him before her audition. Just a general assessment: great arms, sloppy dresser, fuck-worthy Cajun accent. The shadowy backstage accentuated the hollows beneath his cheekbones, his lower lip and the graceful sweep of his brows, one of which was pierced by a silver bar. A swatch of bright light caught the line of his jaw where bristling stubble was a shade lighter than his nearly black hair.

“When it comes to which dancers to hire, he does what I tell him. I’m through with girls who won’t listen.” That slippery-smooth accent was like hot honey. It should’ve been sweet and slow, but Naya burned with every syllable. “You’d listen,
chère
.” He tightened his grip on her hair, even giving her head a little shake. “Wouldn’t you?”

Naya was spinning and lost and oh, damn. So fucked. He’d needed one dance to learn what a few boyfriends had never discovered. He’d needed one dance to learn what had taken her four months to discuss with Daniel.

After another fierce tug, he laid one hand flat against her cheek. “And if you didn’t listen, my slap would land right there.”

He smiled at her soft moan, and she felt it happening—that moment when she gave up on being
here
. No matter what they’d tried, she and Daniel had never found that moment together. It should’ve been so simple. Step one, a little rough treatment. Step two, get her on her knees. Step three…

Make me beg and scream.

He’d wanted to make her happy, but he could never bring himself to be the one to hurt her. They left that to the professionals. It was enough.

She and Remy wouldn’t make it to step three, not backstage—although he appeared a breath away from making it happen whether she wanted him to or not. Even thinking that was enough to drag another little moan from her throat.

He hauled her up and held her to his chest when she staggered. Against her mouth he whispered, “We’re gonna have fun. I can tell.”

“I’m a dancer.” She pushed away, less steady this time. But she was angry. “I’m done right now if you’re going to pull that macho
mierda
with me again.”

“Here or after hours?” His grin was either the most enticing or the most maddening thing she’d ever seen.

Despite knees that felt like chocolate left in the sun, Naya preferred the risk of falling. To stay within his orbit was far riskier.

She breathed in, breathed out, and found some measure of balance by the time she returned to the club’s main floor. In four hours, the place would be packed with patrons. Now it was bare of all but the staff. Disappointed dancers straggled out the door, while a few arrived for the night’s performances.

Remy had been right. The auditions really were over. Had the decision been that clear? She’d felt like she was dancing with a live flame, so maybe that was her answer. She’d seen the best dancers in the world look like wet toast on stage, and she’d seen her untrained aunts and uncles throw sparks off one another at huge Puerto Rican family weddings. That sort of chemistry couldn’t be manufactured.

Except what Remy had tried backstage made her wonder if she should consider the job at all. Daniel had wanted her to branch out and take chances. That didn’t include dropping to her knees at the first hint of a dominant personality.

Her cheeks were hot. She couldn’t see straight—not from passion this time, but from embarrassment.

Daniel.

The man she loved. The man who’d believed in her for years, especially when her own confidence lagged far behind.

He was sitting at a table toward the back of the seating area. An individual bottle of Perrier was open in front of him. She walked closer, feeling like her skin was cellophane. He’d see right through her and know what she’d done in the moments between taking a bow and emerging on the main floor.

“Come sit,” he said quietly.

There. That was his authoritative voice. That was a voice to make men shake with fear—the deep, rumbling power she longed to hear when they made love. He was the money maestro. The marketing miracle worker. He was the man who’d transformed a tiny business housed in a working-class Baltimore garage into a multinational phenomenon.

Daniel Baker was authority in a three-piece suit. It just never translated to the kinky side of their sex life. They’d tried over and over to make that leap, but the gulf between his protective adoration and her craving for pain was too wide.

Naya made to pull a chair out and sit beside him, but he urged her down onto his lap.

She inhaled sharply. She caught his chin and looked straight into his clear eyes. “Daniel. You have something to tell me?”

“You know I’ve always liked watching you dance.”

Shifting slightly, she enticed a groan from his stiff lips. Stiff, like his cock. No wonder he hadn’t stood to greet her. He was as hard as metal, as hot as bright-red coals. She kissed him softly, then licked until he opened and drew her tongue inside. He palmed her ass and adjusted her body so that she straddled his lap. Cock to pussy. Mouth to eager mouth. They combusted as if they were back in third-date, gonna-get-laid-tonight territory.

“You got the job, by the way.”

Naya jerked her head and found Declan Shaw standing just behind Daniel. Arms crossed, he was smiling in a gently smug way.

She tried to scuttle off Daniel’s lap, but he held her squarely. Firmly. If anything, he was harder now than when she’d sat down. Was it something in the water that afternoon? She was used to dancing with guys, not being tossed between them. Her body was singing a happy, greedy symphony that threatened to drown out what remained of her brain.

“I suppose Remy already told you that,” Declan continued. “He knows talent.”

“That I do. The girl is the real deal.”

Naya dropped her head to the safety of Daniel’s collar. That Cajun accent was going to hunt her down and make sleep impossible. She could practically feel his hands still tangled in her hair.

Declan made his excuses, leaving Naya with her fiancé and her new dance partner. So subtly—so slightly that no one else would notice—Daniel thrust his hips. Naya was nearly soundless when she whispered directly into his ear. “What are you doing?”

“Trust me.”

How could she not? She trusted Daniel with every cell in her body and every secret in her heart. Once they were alone and ready to ride this unexpected wave of arousal, she’d tell him about Remy too. They didn’t keep secrets. Telling the truth was what kept them alive, vital, together. They couldn’t have arranged their sex life as it was without a bedrock of trust.

She gave a little nod and pulled her face up from that refuge of warmth and smooth, expensive cologne. Catching his gaze again, she took a deep breath. He was so handsome, with pale brown hair that was nearly blond. And he was unbelievably direct, in his stare and his demeanor. Daniel Baker liked what he liked.

You know I’ve always liked watching you dance.

She knew that without a doubt.

He reached past Naya and offered his hand to Remy, who came around to take it. They sized each other up with a combination of competition and curiosity. It was all she could to do bank shiver after shiver. Daniel thrust again. So fucking restrained. She was going to explode.

“Daniel Baker.”

“Remy Lomand.”

“Your reputation precedes you.”

“I live up to the hype.”

“And all without a shred of arrogance,” Daniel said with a barely there grin. “Truly amazing.”

“Naw. We’ll leave words like amazing for your girl here.”

“We’re engaged, but Naya is her own woman.” The way his hand flexed at the small of her back said otherwise. She’d never known Daniel to stake his territory.

Remy caught the gesture. She saw it in the way his eyes sparked with gleaming laughter. “Course she is. Though being engaged explains that rock cuttin’ up my hand when we danced.”

“I bet you’ve survived worse,” Naya said.

She’d meant it playfully, but an unexpectedly foreboding expression swept across Remy’s breathtaking features. He smiled away whatever it was, but the grin looked like a mask. “You’d be right. See you tomorrow,
chère
.”

He wasn’t a boogeyman or some monster. He was an exceedingly gorgeous, talented dancer who made her feel just the way she wanted to feel when the mood for rough edges grabbed her hard and didn’t let go. And he was the man she’d be working with come morning.

Dios mío.

“Mr. Lomand.”

Daniel’s voice rumbled into her chest as she watched Remy walk away. The man with a deliciously potent hard-on and the man who’d pushed her to her knees squared off.

“Would you like to have drinks with us tonight? Late is fine. Our penthouse.”

“Penthouse, eh?” He eyed them both with a canny expression, half cynic, half thrill-seeker. “Suppose I can’t refuse that. No more than your girl here can resist a little spank and tickle.”

“I—!”

She expected Daniel to say something, to defend her honor. If such a notion still existed, he’d be the one to carry the torch. Instead he fished a business card out of his suit coat and stretched it toward the Cajun. That strange, wary expression was back on Remy’s face, quick as lightning. There, then gone.

He took the card. “I’ll be there at one. After my show.” Remy turned and walked away with an arrogant swagger.

This time Daniel didn’t stop him. He urged Naya off his lap and led her out the back entrance, toward the employee parking lot. His driver, Mr. Parker, had been waiting there for the last three hours, probably playing
World of Warcraft
the whole time. He fired up the town car as soon as he caught sight of Daniel and Naya.