“My fucking what?” Forget the frown. He replaced it with a fume and wasn’t sorry. “And excuse me, lost? And flustered?”
The dickwad waited a second before humming—humming!—in his ear. “I know exactly what I said and how I said it. The question now is, what are you going to do about it?”
Brick pulled away and glared at the device in his hand. Fat chance of Z getting the force of his long-distance aggravation, but he had to try. “You think I know that fucking answer?”
Another puke-worthy snicker across the line. “Ahhh, maybe you do. But damn it, Brickster, I really hope you don’t.”
“Do I dare ask why, or just start concocting the retaliation plan now?”
“Bring your empire and strike it back any time, pretty Palpatine. Won’t change anything about what you’ll have to go through now. The decisions only you can make.”
“Which will only land me on the dark side, anyway?” he retorted. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Throttle back that TIE fighter, man. Haven’t we been championing the dark side for quite a few years now?”
“Goddammit, I hate it when you’re right.”
“Hmm. About most things,” the guy drawled. “But not all. And maybe I’m wrong about this too…”
“But?” Brick supplied the word that was clearly coming anyway.
“But I can say, even from the jumpy footage they’re showing on the news feeds, that I’ve never seen you look at any other female like you do at Jayd Cimarron.”
A scowl set in. “Which I’m supposed to do what with? Aren’t they showing the shit from that pub in Paris? In which I’m supposably gunning down a stranger in cold blood?”
“Not all of it,” Z qualified. “There’s the twenty to thirty seconds before everything goes to hell.”
“In which I’m doing what?” he volleyed. “Just…being different?”
“If I could explain it better than that, I would. But I can tell you about what I’ve learned over the last few years—most notably about fate and the fun little schemes she spins to wake us up when we most need it.”
Funny how easily a scowl could turn into a groan. “Crap on crackers, Hayes. Are you getting quixotic on me?”
“Maybe a dose of quixotic is exactly what you need right now, brother.” His answer came with scary swiftness. “And maybe you also need to hear that I never thought any of that shit had a place in my life either. That I was fine being a big bad Dom, trying to flog and fuck my way through every willing submissive in Seattle without attachment or connection—until the day connection kicked me in my massive, arrogant ass. Until the one night, and the one woman, I least expected to be wielding that cosmic boot.”
“Okay,” Brick groused. “I got it. I got it.” The main gist, at least. Nobody knew Zeke long before getting an earful of his adoration for his wife, who’d also been the most surprising submissive of his life. “But not everyone gets the kinky fantasy and then the rosy sunset too,” he persisted. “You and Rayna are the exception, not the rule. A lot of us came to the D/s lifestyle because of some piece that went missing, some ending that never got written. We’re lucky if we can reclaim some of those pieces in the dungeon, but few of us will get the chance to really cross the finish line.”
He paused, slowly shaking his head, once more holding the phone away as if Z could somehow see him.
“You land the bonus points for believing, man—because I know you really do. But most of us have accepted that the fairy tale doesn’t happen for every lifestyle dreamer.”
“Yeah,” his friend agreed—once more with too much serenity. “Unless they happen to wake up in a palace, with a princess down the hall.”
“Christ. Come on, Z.”
“And oh yeah…a princess who was also caught on security cam footage, glancing up at said dreamer like he’d just hung the moon and the stars.”
Brick grunted. It was a good substitute for his first inclination: to call utter bullshit on the bastard. Glitches galore there, topped by one important detail. Z wasn’t shooting frothy blanks. He already heard it in the steady surety of the guy’s voice.
That left only one viable option for what to say now.
“Fuck.”
“Well.” Z softened the figurative blow with a rough chuff. “You kind of walked into it, man.”
Smart ass. “Fine. All right. I did.”
Z joined him in a contemplative grunt. “Beats tumbling over a cliff, yeah?”
“Speak for yourself.”
Because right now, tumbling off a cliff seemed a whole lot safer than the ledge he was nearing, step by precarious step. A scarp where the wind was strong yet sweet, the vista dizzying but stunning—leading to an abyss that made his heart thunder up his throat and his skin crawl with panic-driven fire ants.
As an aqua-eyed princess led him closer and closer to the edge.
Chapter Five
Strange times called for strange measures. And since this was, hands down, the strangest week of her life, Jayd refused to feel guilty about giving into her matching measures.
All right, perhaps strange was only the start of it. There were other descriptors too—expressions she had always heard back at Stanford but never quite understood. Expressions like “thrown down the shit pipe,” “picking up the pieces,” and “my favorite mistake.”
Except that Maximillian Brickham had not been a mistake. Yes, even during those last awful moments a couple of days ago, in his room still so cruelly close to her suite—it still felt nothing close to a mistake. Every stressed muscle in her body confirmed it. Every brutally exposed nerve ending was on the exact same page.
They had an expression about that at Stanford too, right? More specifically, about the best way to fix it?
A hair of the dog that bit you.
Yes! That was it.
Except…that it was not.
Because unless the Creator had fashioned a dog that could make her ache like this without seeing him for three days, Maximillian Brickham had nothing in common with any dog she knew. Except for the possessive growls that vibrated his whole chest. And the way he gripped her body, his hands like brutal paws, when his desire manifested as full arousal. And the bestial look on his face as he plunged his body into hers, before taking her to another plane of existence…
And there she went again. Right back down that hideous hole of memories. A pit she had to stay out of, no matter how ruthless the gouge in her belly or the ache in her heart.
She had to forget the Force of Nature.
And had come up with a brilliant plan for doing so.
Not even Requiemme’s twisted expression, wielded via the big bathroom mirror in Jayd’s suite, could sway her from the determination. If anything, her friend’s wary frown was perfect for solidifying her resolve. Perhaps, at last, she had found a diversion that would work longer than an hour, without exacting a hangover in return.
She waited, calmly and patiently, for her maid to totter over, her steps ginger because of her knee-to-ankle cast. If Emme noticed Jayd’s obscenely bright grin, the woman ignored it. Jayd simply waited for the woman to fully stop before the long marble vanity counter.