Being hostess and participant, even with only a few guests left, I couldn’t imagine why she was looking out for me.

Maybe it was because she’d scoped out the new Doms and she thought one of them would suit me.

On this thought, suddenly, I wanted to put the car in reverse and go.

This wasn’t right.

Because it wasn’t Boone.

And that thought was just plain stupid.

He wasn’t mine.

He would never be mine.

And after that morning, I wasn’t even sure I liked him.

And he was less and less sure he liked me (buh).

What I knew, though, was I no longer felt like getting laid.

I didn’t feel like socializing either, going in for a drink, getting looked over.

This was a bad idea.

I didn’t even know what’d I’d been thinking.

But there was no getting out of it now. I’d RSVPed, Corinne saw me and was waving me in.

It’d be rude not to go in for a drink.

I’d do that, then I could go home to my vibrator and later, get my ass to a kickboxing class and work the rest of it out of my system.

I got out and walked up the winding flagstone walkway.

“Hey there, I think I texted this, but had a shift at the club, that’s why I’m so late,” I greeted when I got close.

Corinne opened the door further, and I wondered if she’d done her thing with whoever she’d chosen, because she was not in her normal, classy, form-fitting dress and heels. She was in lounge pants, a tank and a fashionable, zip-up sports hoodie, with bare feet.

“Not a problem,” she muttered, looking down at her toes.

Weird again.

Doms, and Dommes, were all about eye contact.

It was a sub who often wasn’t allowed to look their Dom in the eye, depending on their instructions.

Though, Corinne had a rule that her common space was free space. Getting-to-know-you space. You slipped into your scene only when you were in her play space.

I stopped in her foyer with its enormous chandelier, looked into her brightly lit, humongous, but vacant great room, and turned in confusion as she closed and locked the door.

It was when she caught my eyes, a chill trailed down my spine, and she whispered, “I’m sorry. He’s a client you don’t say no to.”

“What?” I whispered back.

And that was when I felt a cold press of steel against my temple.

My eyeballs shifted left and I saw the gun.

My first inclination was to freeze, which I did.

The second was to run, which I did not.

What was happening?

“He’s in here and he’s waiting,” the man holding the gun stated.

“He…who?” I forced out.

He (thankfully) took the gun from my skin and used it to indicate a direction.

I looked in that direction.

There were double doors that had always been closed when Corinne had parties.

Now they were open.

“Let’s go, he’s been waiting a long time,” the man said.

I looked to him, glanced at Corinne in a way I hoped made her mess herself, wondering if Pepper was right about this life, it was filled with all sorts of losers and I should be done with it.

Then on lead feet, I moved toward the double doors, not knowing, or wanting to know, what lay beyond.

I mean, had I been looked over by these assholes and was now going to be sold into slavery, disappeared, never to see the kids again, my mom, my brother, my posse, Smithie…

Boone?

Was I going to be forced to be some kind of drug mule?

I mean, the possibilities were endless and the ones that ran through my head in those moments I walked across Corinne’s stately foyer were all unfun.

Until I hit the double doors and saw a man who was called Cisco sitting in one of two accent chairs in a semi-circular alcove in what was definitely a luxe home office.

He stood and smiled at me like we were old friends who ran into each other on the street.

Instead of what we were.

A couple months ago, he’d kidnapped me, Evie, Pepper and Hattie.

And some time before that, he’d killed a cop.

So we were not friends.

We were nothing.

At all.

“We meet again,” he declared expansively.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Come in and sit.” He gestured to Corinne’s accent chair that was opposite his like he’d picked it out himself.

“I don’t—”

“Kathryn, come and sit down. It’s late. I’m tired. And the longer I’m here, which has so far been a long fuckin’ time, the more exposed I feel, and I’m not likin’ that.”

Cop killer, kidnapper, bad guy Cisco not liking something, I didn’t know, I didn’t have a lot of experience with fugitives at large, but I reckoned that was a bad thing.

I didn’t seem in immediate danger he was going to bust a cap in my ass, or elsewhere, so I moved in.

I stopped and twisted when his henchman closed the double doors behind me with said henchman on the other side.

“Kathryn, you’ve been dancing. You gotta be tired. Come. Sit down,” he invited.

I looked back to him, then walked cautiously his way and sat down.

He sat down too.

“You look well,” Cisco noted.

“Uh…thanks,” I replied.

I did not tell him he looked well.

There were, I imagined, a number of women who would find someone attractive who looked villainous and pugnacious. And he had a good body. Not to mention, he was tall.

I just wasn’t one of those women.

“I like your lipstick,” he noted.

Ugh.

“Again, thanks,” I mumbled.

“I’ve been in hiding,” he shared.

“Yes, I imagined,” I muttered, considering the cops had his gun, with his prints, a weapon that he used to kill another cop.

I would hide too, if I did something so hideous, and the cops, literally, had the smoking gun.

“How’s Evan?” he asked.

Oh shit.

I forgot he had a crush on Evie.

Was that what this was about?

“Uh…good. Happy. All moved in and loved up with Mag. Starting school in a couple of weeks. Gonna get her degree. So she’s real good. Better than ever.”

He tipped his dark head to the side. “You like this Mag guy for her?”

“Yeah.” I bobbed my head. “Totally. Great guy. He loves her a lot. Shows it. Protective. Takes good care of her.”

“Mm,” he hummed, slouching back in his chair, putting his elbows on the arms, linking his fingers in front of him, appearing like an overgrown, sulking child.

“I…uh, am I here so you could ask after Evie?”

His focus had dimmed, but my question made his attention sharpen on me.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “And I wanted you to tell her I said hey.”

I sat there, immobile, and stared at the man.

Corinne had somehow faked a BDSM party that I foolishly RSVPed to. I was here. It was closing in on four o’clock in the morning. I’d had the single worst day of at least my last five years of life (maybe ten). And some fugitive from justice crime lord arranged all this just so he could use me to tell my girlfriend he said hey?

“You know, it’d be a big favor, especially to Evie, and I hope you take no offense,” I began. “I hope you get this is coming from a sister looking out for her sister, but she’s happy. She’s had a shitty life. And now she’s happy. Honest to goodness, day in, day out happy. So it’d be cool if you let her have that happy without messing it up.”