Stronghold (Stronghold 1) (33 page)

"Come on."

Doing his best not to actually drag Angel, he
pulled her over towards the wall, nearer the entrance and completely out of the
crowd of people.  She only resisted a little bit before obviously giving
in, although she was still holding herself away from him.  Her body
language had completely changed again, going from wary but interested and now
she was so reluctant that she might as well have been holding a sign that said
'hands off.'

It was all very well and
good to be able to read her emotions, but not if he didn't understand why she
was feeling them or what she was reacting to.  She couldn't possibly blame
him for the fact that another woman had hit on him while she was there, could she?
 

******

This was so not happening. 
She might not really have a right to be angry that he’d basically told another
woman that they could scene together some other time, right in front of her,
but that didn’t stop her from feeling that way anyway.

Not tonight.

The response echoed in her
head.  Before she heard him say that, she’d managed to convince her emotions
that she was basically okay with the fact that he might be scening with other
women.  Ha.  Talk about living in a fool’s paradise.  She was totally not okay
with it and she should have realized that the second that she’d cared about
giving him pleasure as much as she cared about getting hers.  The fact that he
obviously wanted to scene with her one night and was willing to do that with
other women on a different night, and to blatantly say so in front of her, hurt
more than she had realized it would.

It was silly of her to
think that the first Dom she’d be attracted to would want the same things as
she did.  Sure, they got along and they had a ton of chemistry, but he was
obviously used to doing club scenes, with no emotional involvement.

Funny, but when she’d first
gone to a club she’d been so worried about being physically hurt that she
hadn’t even considered the emotional dangers. 

“You look incredible,” he
said, turning her to face him.  Angel felt herself a little warmed by the
compliment.  After all, he was obviously a highly in demand Dom and he wanted
to play with her.

For tonight anyway.

Yeah.  She wasn’t going to
be one of those girls who took whatever crumbs were offered to them.  That
wasn’t what she was about and it wasn’t what she was looking for.  Maybe if
they hadn’t already shared three incredibly intimate scenes that had seemed to
indicate that there was something more going on than just sex, but she couldn’t
keep doing scenes like that when she knew that he was scening with other
women. 

It didn’t cheapen what
she’d experienced with him, it just meant that she’d misinterpreted some
things.  But she’d learned a lot about herself and what she wanted already, and
after tonight she could regroup and come back to Stronghold and she would just
stop scening with him and find someone who wanted the same things that she
did. 

“Thank you,” she said, and
smiled back at him, determined that he not see the upset that was roiling
inside her.  But she was immediately aware that, while she’d been able to force
the smile to her eyes for Rick, she just couldn’t do it now.  And Master Adam’s
brow furrowed as he looked down at her, and she knew that he knew everything
was not okay.

When he touched her face,
cupping her chin in one hand and running his thumb over her bottom lip, it was
such an intimate, sweet gesture that it actually physically made her chest hurt
around her heart.  But she was an actress, she knew how easy it could be to
make such a gesture seem real.  Besides, he probably did care, in the way that
a Dom cared about a sub that he’d taken under his wing, but that didn’t mean
that he cared about her in a way that meant expanding past doing scenes
together.

“Are you okay?  I didn’t
hurt you when I grabbed you did I?”

“No.”  She shook her head
to emphasize that point.  Even though his fingers had been rough he hadn’t hurt
her.  Not then and not physically.

He opened his mouth to say
something back, when shouting on the dance floor made both of their heads
turn.  The words were indecipherable, but there was no mistaking the roar of
sound, punctuated by much shriller yips.  It was pretty easy to see where the
focus of the uproar was, every head in the place was turned, looking at
Patrick.  And from the glimpses of black hair, bouncing around him, Angel knew
that whatever was going on must have to do with Lexie and Trevor.

Adam cursed.  “I need to
find out what’s going on.  Stay here for a few minutes and I’ll come back and
we can talk.”

“Actually I think I’m going
to go home.”

The look he gave her was so
incredulous she almost laughed.  Geez… he really thought he was something
didn’t he?  Couldn’t believe that she was just about to leave him high and dry
when they had a scene arranged.  But that wouldn’t last long, she’d already
witnessed how easy it would be for him to arrange another one.

“But you just got here.”

“And now I feel like going
home.”

The muscle in his jaw
tightened, his head swiveling back towards the commotion in the middle of the
room before returning to her.  “We planned to do a scene together tonight.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

Cries spread out from the
center of the room, filled with shock and something like glee.  Lexie’s shrill
scream of “Stop!” was like the cherry on top of the noise sundae.  Adam cursed
again.

“Stay here.  Don’t leave.”

He turned and started to
push his way through to the center of the crowd.  As much as Angel wanted to
stay and make sure that Lexie was okay, she just couldn’t face Adam again
tonight.  Not if she wanted to stay true to herself and keep going after what
she wanted rather than scening with him again.

And she so wasn’t doing
that.

It took longer than Adam
expected to sort out the chaos that had exploded around Patrick, Lexie and
Trevor.  Especially when he and his friends were having to get third hand
accounts from the witnesses rather than any of the three who were actually
involved.  Patrick had shut down and gone stoic, Lexie was huddled in Hilary’s
arms crying, and Trevor was icing his jaw.  And eye.  And ribs.

And the kid was damned
lucky it hadn’t been more than that.

From what Adam could
understand, when Lexie had refused to try and sneak out of the main floor with
Trevor and head to one of the private rooms, her idiot boyfriend (and Adam
really hoped that the kid was an ex-boyfriend now) had decided that the middle
of the dance floor was just as good a spot to try and push things a little
farther with their relationship.  After all, wasn’t everyone else around them? 
Lexie had told him no.

He bet that Lexie hadn’t
wanted to get any extra attention and she’d probably thought that Trevor, not
being active in the scene and waiting for a safe word, would take the no as it
was meant to be.  Instead he’d kept pushing, and unfortunately for him ‘no’ was
a pretty easy word to lip-read, which meant that Patrick was there about two
seconds later.

It probably would have all
ended there except that Trevor had chosen to get into Patrick’s face about it
and had accidentally ended up pushing Lexie, at which point she tripped and
fell on the ground. 

Exactly at what
point and how Trevor had ended up with a black eye, swollen jaw and bruised
ribs, no one had been quite clear on.  The punk was lucky he hadn’t gotten
more.  Justin was guarding him with a grim look on his face, Patrick had
shut himself in his office, Jessica was standing over Hilary and Lexie and not
letting any of the Doms get close enough to question her, and to top everything
off, Angel seemed to have disappeared. 

Unfortunately
Adam wasn’t able to do anything about that until they got everyone on the main
floor calmed down, decided that Andrew would do the spanking demonstration
while Rick took over his bar duties, at which point Olivia came storming up the
stairs practically breathing fire as she headed straight for Trevor.

Which meant
that Adam spent another twenty minutes playing “keep-away” with Olivia and
calming
her
down. 

So by the time
he was finally able to go to the front desk and find out whether or not Angel
was in the club, it had been over an hour since he’d left her by the wall with
orders to stay put.  Which, apparently, was exactly around the time she’d
left.

Dammit.

He wouldn’t
have minded if she hadn’t stayed in one spot for the time that he’d been
distracted.  He did mind that she left the club without talking to him,
almost immediately after he’d told her not to do exactly that.  

Trying to storm
Patrick's office for her information proved unsuccessful, Lexie had already
left with Jessica, Justin and Chris, and Adam was reduced to texting Michael to
ask for Angel's number.  Which didn't help his mood any.  

Deciding it was
too late to call Angel, it was time to cut his losses and go home.  The
club was back on track and he didn't have to stick around for any further
duties.  Seeing yet another sub looking at him speculatively, Adam
high-tailed it to the door.  He didn't know what was going on with the
submissives tonight but he didn't like it one bit.

******  

This was such a bad
idea. 

Adam stared at the stairs
leading up to the bright red door of the house in front of him.  

Such a bad idea.

Hell, calling Angel without
asking for her phone number had seemed like a pretty bad idea, which is why
he'd put that off last week.  Then he'd gone and broken that this morning,
calling her at least five times.  But at least he'd gotten her number from
Michael and not from the club, that was less creepy right?  

Of course now he'd gone way
beyond the creeper factor by showing up at her house, uninvited.  When
Angel hadn't answered her phone or texted him back, he'd ended up getting a
little panicky and had called Michael to make sure that she'd gotten home okay
the night before.  She had, and was still at home, holed up in her room
with the music turned up and her bedroom door locked. 

He really didn't like the
idea that he'd done something to upset her enough that she would react that
way.  On the other hand, she might just be a crazy drama queen that was
acting like this to get his attention, but he didn't think so.  A part of
him was still pretty doubtful as to her intentions, leftover feelings from when
he'd found out she'd been posing as a Domme, but he wanted to find out.  

And if it did have to do
with him, and it wasn't something unreasonable, then he wanted to fix it.
 

Sitting around his house
and waiting for her to call him back was just not how he dealt with things; he
was definitely hands on and looking for immediate results.  Which is how
he'd ended up at the address that Michael had texted to him.  It looked
like a pretty nice house.  She'd mentioned housemates but she hadn't said
how many.  Several, probably, going by the size of it.  

With a sigh, he picked up
the book he'd left on the passenger seat and put it in his pocket.  It was
the first book in Robin Hobb's
Assassins
trilogy.  He'd really
liked talking to Angel about books and she'd seemed interested in the authors
that he'd told her about which she hadn't read before.  Robin Hobb being
one of them.  If it turned out that she wasn't just being a crazy drama
queen and that she had a reason for leaving the way she had last night and not
answering any of his calls this morning, then he figured this was a pretty good
peace offering. 

Knocking on the door, he
heard the low mutter of male voices.  Was Michael here?  Did he have
friends over? 

Adam didn't particularly
like the idea of the other man feeling so comfortable in Angel's house that he
had people over.  

The door opened and Adam
found himself looking eye to eye with a rather disheveled looking
twenty-something wearing a Cthulu t-shirt.  He looked Hispanic, with dark
hair and eyes and slightly tanned skin.  They weren't the same height, it
was just that the man was standing up a step.

Crap.  Had Michael
given him the wrong address?

"Hey, are you here for
the LAN?  You're a couple hours early."

"Um... no."
 Whatever response Adam had expected, that wasn't it.  "I'm
looking for Angel Jones."

The man's eyes narrowed and
swept up and down Adam's body, as if sizing him up.  "She's upstairs.
 Come on in."

Adam stepped through the
door, but the guy only backed away a few steps, obviously standing between Adam
and the rest of the house.  Because of the couch that was on his immediate
left, facing a gigantic television that was hung up on the wall, there was no
way Adam could get by him without using brute force.  Which told him that
the guy hadn't really wanted to let Adam in the house, but he hadn't wanted to
leave him out in the cold either.  

"Hey, who's
this?"

There were two guys sitting
on armchairs on opposite sides of the room, playing what looked like a first
person shooter game.  One reminded him of a mini-Jared, stocky and
muscular, with a similar chocolate-colored skin tone and a shaved head.
 The other one was a skinny, gawky looking white guy with glasses.
 They glanced over at Adam.    

"Are you here for the
LAN?"

Before he could answer the
question, the guy who'd opened the door answered for him.  

"He's here to see
Angel."

The game immediately paused
and Adam found himself on the receiving end of three fairly hostile stares.
 Great.  Now that the game was paused he could hear the faint strains
of music coming down from the second floor and he assumed that was where Angel
was, which meant that he had to get through these guys first.  Maybe he
could get some information from them, since they seemed to know something was
up, before he decided whether or not it was worth it to try and get by
them. 

But before he could ask
anything, the mini-Jared stood up to face him, still glaring.  "Are
you the cowboy Casanova?"

"Excuse me?"

"The cowboy
Casanova," the guy repeated.

"He doesn't know what
that means, Q."  The white guy, who was still sitting in his
armchair, groaned.  "It's a song.  She put it on repeat for two
hours this morning.  
Two hours.
  I can deal with the
angry-girl-country shit, but not the same song over and over again.  I
almost cried with relief when she finally switched over to the Dresden
Dolls."

"So are you?"  Q
demanded again.  Adam might have taken offense except that he suddenly
realized he was facing what he and his friends probably would look like if they
ever got the chance to interrogate one of Lexie's boyfriends.  Obviously
these guys cared about Angel and knew she was upset, which meant that he had to
soothe their ruffled feathers before he could get any useful information from
them.  One of them must be one of her housemates and the other two friends
that had gotten close to her.  He hoped none of them were harboring a
crush.

"I don't know,"
he said evenly.  "I've never heard the song."

"
He's just a
good-time, Cowboy Casanova leaning up against the record machine
," the
guy in the armchair sang.  

The guy to Adam's right
chuckled and joined in, while Q just looked disgustedly at all three of them. 

"
Looks like a cool
drink of water but he's candy-coated misery,

he's the devil in
disguise a snake with blue eyes

and he only comes out at
night;

gives you feelings that
you don't wanna fight,

you'd better run for
your life
."

They stopped singing and
looked at him expectantly, waiting for an answer.  Adam's lips twitched.
 This was not at all how he'd imagined this visit going.  He didn't
really think that the translation of the song to the situation was literal, but
he had to admit that he liked the sound of 'feelings that you don't wanna
fight.'  The rest of it didn't sound so good though. 

"I really hope
not," he said. 

That made the guy in the
armchair chuckle.  "What'd you do to her anyway?  She hasn't
gotten pissed enough to play the Dresden Dolls for months.  Normally we're
just subjected to the country."

"At least she hasn't
switched over to O-tep," muttered the guy next to him.  "I never
want to see her that pissed again."  He sighed and looked Adam over
again, some of the tension draining out of him.  "I'm Mark.
 This is Q and Sam."

"Adam."  He
shook hands with Mark.  "I actually don't know what she thinks I did,
I came over hoping to find that out.  Any hints?"

"All we know is what
the music tells us," said Sam.  Q glared, first at Adam, then at Sam.
 Sam was obviously the chatty-Cathy, Q was the most protective and Mark
fell somewhere in the middle.  That or maybe Sam was the housemate and so
he knew the most.  "This morning she was upset, something about
Cowboy
Casanova
 must have been cathartic or she wouldn't have put it on
repeat for so long, and now she's moved on to being pissed. 
Really
pissed.  That's what the Dresden Dolls means."

He filed the information
away for future consideration.  Although, like her body language, knowing
what her emotional state was didn't tell him how she'd gotten that way.  

"Does she have any
reason to be pissed?" Q asked, still obviously not mollified by Adam's
civility.

"Not that I know of,
but that doesn't mean I'm right," Adam said, earning a small smile from
Mark.  "We were kind of on a... date last night and it got
interrupted by some drama going on with my friends."  Which was
partially true, although something had been going on in Angel's head even
before that. 

"How'd you get this
address?  You've never come by here before."  Maybe Q was the housemate.
 That would explain the protectiveness.  

"Michael gave it to
me."

"You're friends with
Mike?"  It didn't escape Adam's notice that Q also used the shortened
name, even though Michael had definitely stated his preference when he'd met
the group at Stronghold.  Because Q knew Michael through Angel and so
that’s what he knew him as or because it would annoy Michael? 

"Yeah."
 Close enough anyway.  His turn for a question.  "Ah... so
which of you are Angel's housemate?"

Sam waved his hand around
the room.  "We're all Angel's housemates.  It's the three of us
and her."

A hard knot seemed to form
in Adam's stomach.  Which he had no right to feel.  It didn't mean
anything that she was living with three guys.  And had a close guy friend
staying with her.  But good God, didn't the woman have any female friends
other than Leigh?  He'd never really considered himself a jealous person,
but he didn't have any other label for the emotion that was surging through him
right now.