Fortune (7 page)

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I won’t answer.”

“If you don’t return my calls, if you don’t come to the club, I’ll be back here again in a week. Your mother loves me. I could eat dinner here every night if I wanted.”

“Okay, okay. Fine. I’ll come to the club. I’ll come on Friday.”

“And go out with me after.”

“After closing? That’s too late.”

“The storage room then.”

“Okay, fine,” she groaned. “God, why are you doing this?”

“Why do you think? I’ll see you Friday night, Ekaterina.”

“My name is Kat,” she corrected with a frown.

“Your name, Ekaterina Argounov, is whatever I want it to be. I’ll see you Friday night.”

Chapter Four

Ryan went home that night feeling happy and optimistic. Kat’s family was great, full of energy and life. There had to be hope for his dour princess and he planned to make her smile if it killed him.

Make her smile and make her do a lot of other things too, things that gave him massive hard-ons when he thought about them too long. His Dominant radar hadn’t failed him. She was a submissive all right, just in need of some training and a lot of unconditional love. He began making plans for her, plans for them. He wanted, first, to introduce her to the Dom/sub lifestyle and then he’d try to iron out her mental issues and her self-destructive drive. He imagined himself as a modern-day Pygmalion. He would sculpt her into a work of art, bring her to life. She would be his creation.

If she would cooperate, that was.

Like everything else about her, her relationship with him was ambivalent. She wanted him to take her, then afterward resented being taken. She found fulfillment and then pushed him away. She let him see the lost, flailing girl behind her gaze, but only for a moment before she hid again. He discovered at dinner that she was a translator, that she spent her days transforming English text into Russian. He would need to do the same magic—translate troubled Kat into his lovely Ekaterina. Translate her scowls into smiles.

He sat down to look over some notes, nursing a cup of coffee. He felt tired but invigorated. Soon his mind drifted into more whimsical fantasies. Pretty Ekaterina, the surgeon’s wife. She could bring him coffee every night while he went over his medical notes. He would keep her dressed in nothing but a collar and cuffs. Afterward, he could melt away the stress of the day with her. Hell, with what he made she wouldn’t even need to work. She could just stay at home and be his sex kitten, his sub. Their relationship would be based on power. His power over her and her willing agreement to submit to that power. And then, perhaps, marriage…children…

But not yet. For now, he needed to concentrate on making her his sub. His obedient, beautiful, pliant, emotionally available sub. His job entailed long hours, a lot of pressure and tension and she would provide a welcome outlet from the stress, although there was a hell of a lot he’d have to teach her to get there. She had a sassy streak a mile wide, not to mention a serious lack of confidence and a hiding problem. No matter. All of that paled in comparison to how aroused she got when he gave her orders, the way she’d reacted to his discipline, the way she moaned and turned to fire when they fucked. He had high hopes for her. When he was done shaping her she would be his prize, all the more special because he’d trained her himself.

He’d been with a lot of subs, trained a lot of girls the way he wanted them and been with a lot already trained, but they’d never fired him up half as much as Kat. Something had coalesced between them that night in the storage room. He knew it. She knew it. The difference was, she still fought it. Oh well, she’d see soon enough.

But he had notes to work on and phone calls to make and it was already late. He would let her simmer until Friday. Friday, he’d spank her again.

Friday arrived, though, and Kat wasn’t at the club as he’d told her to be.
You said if I came to that club I couldn’t act like a whore. And I love to act like a whore.
She was testing him. Common sub behavior. Would she dare pick up a guy somewhere else? There was no fucking chance he would allow that. He left Masquerade and checked a few other clubs where he thought she might be. Finally, he went to her house and sat on the stoop to wait for her to show up. It was a clear night, pleasant waiting weather at least. But if there was some stupid, drunk guy with her, he was in for the greeting of his life.

Ryan didn’t wait long. Just after midnight he saw her come walking down the block. Walking alone in her short little skirt, her tight sweater, her slut heels. She had walked from the club district here to Brighton all by herself. He was going to kill her. She slowed when she noticed him, too far away to see who he was.

Yes, you little fool. I could be a murderer or a rapist sitting here waiting for you.

She looked a little scared to find a strange guy blocking the way, but even more scared when she saw who he was. She turned on her heel and started to walk back in the other direction.

“No. Just…no. Go away,” she said when he fell into step beside her.

“I’m not going away. You’re a smart girl. You should have figured that out by now. Anyway, you don’t want me to. Not really.”

Her heels click, click, clicked on the sidewalk and she wrapped her arms around her waist. “I’m tired. I’ve been out dancing. I just want you to leave me alone.”

“Did you walk home from the clubs by yourself or are you coming from someone’s house?” he asked as calmly as he was able.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

He stopped her with a firm hand on her arm. “Yes, I would like to know and you’re going to tell me. Were you with someone else tonight?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I wasn’t,” she said, trying to pull away.

“You aren’t coming from someone else’s bed?”

“Let go of me or I will scream bloody murder until somebody comes.”

He released her and she started to walk again. He took her hand. She tried to pull it away the second he did.

“Just let me hold your hand,” he said.

“I don’t want to hold your fucking hand.” They struggled like two children thumb-wrestling.

“Cut it out! Jesus, you plague me, Kat. Just—” He finally trapped her rigid hand in his.

“You have an annoying habit of manhandling me.”

“And you have an annoying habit of irritating me.” She was silent but she stopped pulling her hand from his. “Why do you try so hard to avoid me? What have I done?”

“How can you ask that? Do you remember at all pulling me into that storeroom and spanking me and fucking me against the door? Or fucking me in my parents’ own house while they all sat downstairs—”

“Yes, and I remember you enjoying both episodes immensely. I remember you falling apart in my arms.” She looked furious that she couldn’t refute his words but she bit back any false denials.

“So maybe I did. So what? It’s still wrong, it’s still—”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Perverted.”

“Like you.”

“I am not a pervert. You are.”

He sighed. “We both are, Kat. Don’t you realize that? That’s why things get so hot when we’re together. We both have something the other needs.”

“I need you to leave me alone.”

“Let’s just take that off the table. I’m not going to leave you alone because I don’t think you want me to. I think you say the exact opposite of what you feel as often as possible. Why do you do that?”

She stood facing him, her hands in fists at her side. Her expression was one of desperation. The angry shrew of the moment before had transformed into his lost girl, conflicted as ever. Her shoulders slumped and the tension in her face unwound, letting the mask fall away just for a moment. He tilted her face up to see green eyes gazing back at him with a frown.

“You know, Kat, this isn’t as scary as you’re making it.”

She pulled away from him, cool and wary again. “You don’t understand. You think you do, but you don’t understand how this feels to me. I’m really not into this stuff.”

“What ‘stuff’?”

“Relationships.”

“Why? You had a relationship that ended badly?”

“I just…don’t like relationships.”

“You’ve never been in a relationship at all?” She crossed her arms over her chest, pouting hard. He gazed at her in disbelief. “You haven’t, have you?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“That means no.”

“Fine. No, I haven’t. Like I said, I’m not relationship material, and to be honest I wouldn’t get into a relationship with you anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have a feeling you wouldn’t be easy to live with.”

Well. She hit close to the truth on that.

* * * * *

Kat wasn’t sure how they ended up at the all-night diner. He had a way of getting her to do things she had no intention of doing. She slouched in the booth across from him in her skimpy black club clothes, looking around at all the drunk, happy people. That might have been her if she hadn’t come home early and fallen into his clutches. But she’d come home because all she could think about was how bad she craved his fucking clutches, damn it.

She scowled over at him as the waitress poured their coffee, then busied herself emptying four packets of sugar and two shots of cream into her mug. He sighed when she reached for the fifth packet, resting his head on his hand. Was that supposed to impress her, his disapproving sigh? Of course Mr. Perfect drank his decaf black.

He looked around as she stirred her sugary concoction. She slid him a look from under her lashes. Lord. She thought by now she would be inured to his masculine perfection, but she was still taken aback by his sculpted arms, the strength in his shoulders. She was fascinated by the authority he exuded with nothing more than a glance or subtle movement. He was so intelligent, so important. A surgeon. Why was she sitting here with him? Good lord, he’d fucked her brains out twice already. Here in the brightly lit diner, sitting across from him, the realization blew her away.

He wore a white tee, simple but devastating when paired with his perfect biceps and pecs. His face had a symmetry that somehow remained handsome no matter his expression. He looked handsome when he was angry, he looked handsome when he was mild, and when he smiled at her…
damn
. She noticed all the other ladies in the diner casting looks at him. Some of the guys too.

But his annoying psychoanalysis unnerved her.
I think you say the exact opposite of what you feel as often as possible.
It was true. He had totally pegged her and it freaked her out. Unlike all the other men she collected and discarded like trading cards, he alone seemed to understand the unhappiness that dogged her. Which is exactly why she couldn’t bear to be in a relationship with him.

“Okay, Kat,” he said, leaning back with a sigh. “I’m going to talk, but you have to listen. You have to give this some thought. I know you. You’re going to close your mind to whatever I have to say. Try not to do that this time, for once.”

“You’re so irritating.”

“And the smart mouth—first things first. It’s got to go.”

“I like my smart mouth, and you have no right to tell me what to do.”

The waitress appeared before he could respond to that with anything more than a frown. He ordered first, an egg-white omelet with peppers and mushrooms. She barely restrained herself from making a gagging sound. “I’ll have a bacon and cheese omelet with a double order of hash browns on the side,” Kat said. He shook his head before she even finished.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you order that.”

She looked over at him, her mouth dropping open. “What?”

“I care about you too much to let you eat that. No. Order something else.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

He looked over at the waitress with a patient smile. “If you could just give us a minute.”

She smiled and sashayed away, obviously under his spell. His charm might work on her, but not on Kat. She glared over at him. “Who the hell do you think you are?“

“Now, Kat—”

“Are you seriously going to tell me what I can and cannot eat? Seriously? I am not fat.”

“I never said you were fat. You’re actually a little on the thin side in my opinion. But I’m curious what your arteries look like. Or your intestines for that matter.”

“Oh god,” she groaned, clapping her hands over her ears. “Please stop.”

“I’m only suggesting you order something a little healthier. Take care of your body. You’ve already put an entire day’s worth of sugar in your coffee.”

“An entire day’s worth? An hour’s worth, maybe. I like sugar.”

“You clearly like grease and nitrates too. But you’d feel better if you ordered something more nutritious, like some proteins and fruit.”

“You can take your proteins and fruit and shove them up your fucking—”

“Kat. Language. Please.”

Language?
Jesus. She stood up, intent on flouncing out of there, but he put his hand over hers, firm pressure and a squeeze.