Submissive on the Run (1Night Stand): Carnivore Club Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Submissive on the Run

  Copyright 2016 by Tara Quan

  ISBN: 978-1-68361-076-2

  Cover art by Fiona Jayde

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

  Look for us online at:

  www.decadentpublishing.com

  Sign up for the Decadent Publishing Newsletter here http://eepurl.com/SQ75f

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Submissive on Display by Tara Quan

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for picking up Submissive on the Run. I’ve always been a huge fan of Cherise Sinclair and Kresley Cole. After losing myself for countless hours amidst their sexy Dominants and feisty submissives, I couldn’t resist creating my own adventurous pairs. Regardless of genre, I keep my stories lighthearted, the angst to a minimum, and the sex hot enough to make your face warm. In all my romances, I aim for a few laughs, a handful of clever twists, and a scorching happily ever after.

  The Carnivore Club welcomes all fans of BDSM romance. After penning my first contribution to this series, I received several hints to center a story around the kickass dungeon monitor from Submissive on Display. Unable to resist, I pitched Kim against Joss Bradlee—an abrasive lawyer with a habit of saying whatever he thinks. It turns out the two have a long and complicated history, and Madame Eve has one night to put their relationship to rights.

  If a sprinkling of humor and some creative interrogation techniques are your cup of tea, I hope you’ll give this romantic comedy a shot. If you stumble upon some side characters you think deserve stories of their own, drop me a line at [email protected], or connect with me on Facebook and Twitter. Obviously, I’m very responsive to reader requests.

  Tara Quan

  P.S. Interested in more spanking fun? Join my mailing list at www.taraquan.com/newsletter and get another naughty read delivered straight to your inbox.

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  Also by Tara Quan

  Delicious Delay

  Operation Owl

  Flirting With Fire

  Frosty Relations

  Fireworks at Midnight

  Submissive on Display

  Feline Valentine

  Submissive on the Run

  Obscene wealth and a toxic family taught Joss Bradlee to care about no one. He moved through life in a caustic shell, fending off gold-diggers with his sharp tongue and abrasive personality. But a stubborn submissive saw past his nonchalant act, and he fell hard and fast for a girl he didn’t deserve. When she accidentally stumbled into the line of fire, he moved heaven and earth to protect her, even if it meant letting her go. Ten months later, he ensures her safety and tracks her down, finally ready to claim the one person that matters. The only problem—she wants nothing to do with him.

  On the run for close to a year, Kim Tran receives a surprise call from the man who’d put her life in danger. His family hired assassins to kill her, but he’s somehow convinced they still had a chance. With their entire relationship built on a lie, she resists the instinct to sprint straight into his arms. Faced with a social divide no sane person would bridge, she cuts her losses and breaks her own heart. But the Dominant she loves has other plans, and he’s spent his entire life getting his way. Too late to run and with nowhere to hide, she faces an adversary well versed in all her weaknesses.

  At the Carnivore Club, two exhibitionists meet for a battle of wills, lured by a one-night stand service, misplaced cat, and several helping hands. With the aid of handcuffs, disciplinary measures, and a capture game, a reluctant sub rediscovers the pleasures of bondage, the thrill of display, and the ecstasy of surrender.

  Dedication

  To the readers and editors who’ve commented on Kim’s awesomeness, thus inspiring me to give my kickass dungeon monitor her own story.

  Submissive on the Run

  A 1Night Stand Story

  By

  Tara Quan

  Chapter One

  When rays of sunshine sneaked through the holes in her makeshift drapes, Kim Tran declared defeat. The more she chased sleep, the more it eluded her. Already losing the battle with the desert’s morning heat, her underpowered air-conditioning unit emitted a low whine punctuated by intermittent creaks. As she rolled onto her back and kicked the wrinkled bed sheets off her calves, she attempted to snap out of the unending doldrums.

  Wallowing in self-pity served nobody. Smile long enough, pretend hard enough, and happiness becomes reality. Until a year ago, her family’s generations-old secret to a lifetime of contentment had never failed her.

  But painting a false face and pursuing the illusion of optimism proved more difficult with each night she spent alone. She missed Boston, despite its blizzards and blistering winters. This month would have brought the end of spring, heralding a summer muted by cool river breezes and the occasional chill. New England’s temperamental climate couldn’t be more different from Las Vegas’s never-ending heat.

  A year ago, her major concern had been saving up for an apartment security deposit. With graduation on the verge of forcing her out of on-campus housing, she’d fretted about her senior thesis, crammed for exams between classes and part-time jobs, and siphoned away funds for certain extra-curricular activities. Instead of mentioning the “white boy” her parents would never approve of, she’d lied to them about her Memorial Day weekend plans, citing a school project as her reason for remaining in the city.

  Karma turned out to be a bitch. One little lie, and she’d landed on the opposite side of the country almost a year later, strapped for cash and unable to contact her family, all thanks to the man in question.

  If Joss hadn’t planned a weekend getaway at his boss’s beach house on Martha’s Vineyard, she wouldn’t have needed to borrow a computer. If she hadn’t borrowed the computer, she wouldn’t have spotted some odd-looking accounting software. Having studied to become an accountant, she hadn’t been able to resist snooping.

  If she hadn’t snooped, she wouldn’t be in witness protection—the shittiest kind, for crimes no one cared about. The kind where the US Marshals basically said, in somewhat nicer words, she was shit out of luck.

  Yes, it all led back to kinky sex. Okay, maybe curiosity and hacking proclivities had something to do with it, but she preferred to blame hormones. She should have listened to her mother and saved sex for after she’d earned a degree. Heck, considering her current predicament, she should have waited until after s
he’d earned a PhD in mathematics.

  To add insult to injury, one particular face persisted at haunting her waking dreams. She couldn’t talk to a Dom without making an immediate comparison to her former lover, couldn’t witness a scene without recalling the ones they’d shared. Since she worked as a dungeon monitor in Sin City’s swankiest BDSM establishment, she’d spent most of her nights reliving the past, which came with a problematic side effect.

  After close to a year of celibacy, horny didn’t come close to describing her current state. Alone in bed, her thoughts detoured to sexual fantasies with frustrating regularity. If she hoped to sleep a wink before her next shift, she had to take the edge off.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she sifted through countless images of male celebrities, recent and classic, hoping one would stick. She wanted to imagine a different face, a different man, a different Dom. But her mind skipped Jamie Dornan and Chris Hemsworth, dismissed the Star Wars version of Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt à la vampire.

  As always, her fantasy stalled on a too-familiar face, one with hard angles, an aristocratic mien, and a crooked smile equal parts vulnerable and wicked. Though she clamped her teeth on her lower lip before his name escaped, it was his pale tresses she envisioned lacing through her fingers, his jade eyes commanding her submission as a wall of muscle pinned her to the mattress. She turned her head to the side, relishing the scrape of his five o’clock shadow along her cheeks. When his tongue drew a scalding pattern down the column of her neck, she lifted her chin.

  With a moan, she slid her hand inside her dampening panties, searching and stroking, all the while pretending those fingers were his. She imagined him gripping her hips, his hard body scalding her naked flesh. Groaning, she clutched the sheets beneath her with her free hand. Her feet flattened against the rough fabric.

  As she spread her labia, she could almost sense him bearing down on her, his entry crushing and unrelenting. Her thighs parted, drew back as if he’d forced them down. When she circled her clit, her inner muscles clenched around emptiness.

  Edgy need built and doubled. Her harsh breaths echoed in the small room. She writhed until her T-shirt bunched up around her breasts, probed until moisture coated the juncture at the apex of her legs.

  With each breath, she drew in the tart scent of sweat and frustrated desire. But no matter how hard she sought release, it escaped her. She squeezed her lids tighter, willing the mental block to snap. She was so close—

  “Meeeoooaaaw”

  Jolting to a seated position with a muffled scream, she glared at the cat as he jumped onto the mattress. Rising to his haunches between her legs, Tiger swished his tail back and forth. After sniffing the air, he plunked his butt down and commenced licking his paw. The innocuous feline gesture somehow damned her as the worst sort of pervert.

  “That’s it. I’m never masturbating again.” With the whispered vow, she fell against the lumpy pillows, wiped her fingers on her T-shirt, and righted her panties. Coated in perspiration, she struggled to regulate her breathing as claw-tipped paws padded over her abdomen.

  Perched on her boobs, the overweight ball of fur forced her to stare into pale-green irises that reminded her of Joss—eyes that had compelled her, against all good sense, to take the feline off the streets. God knew she didn’t need another mouth to feed.

  “Don’t you dare judge me.” She wiped at the crusted tears above his little nose with the hem of her top. “You’re squatting. Polite squatters don’t intrude on the hostess’s privacy.”

  A low rumble emanated from the creature on her chest. His front paws commenced digging into her neckline as his tongue lashed out to groom her collar. Though probably less than eighteen months old, the white tabby, British shorthair mutt weighed enough to put significant pressure on her ribs. With his mouth inches away from her nose, she caught whiffs of cat breath, which reminded her of raw chicken.

  Turning to her side, she sent her companion toppling onto the rumpled sheets. From the far corner of her mattress, she spied her alarm clock’s digital readout. Having ended her shift at the Carnivore Club at 4:00 a.m., she’d spent the past four hours not sleeping. She’d once considered a full six hours of slumber a minimum requirement. On the night shift and possessing a circadian rhythm too stubborn to conform to needs of the service, she managed a few short naps on the best of days.

  She scowled at the cat. The little devil had wreaked havoc on her chances at a quick and easy orgasm. The cat’s superb ability to detect and respond to movement left her with scant privacy in the minuscule studio apartment. It’d been an eon since she’d gotten off.

  Resolving to crawl out of bed to warm up some homemade pet food—a twice-a-day chore since the feline princeling turned up his nose at any store-bought offerings—she reached over to scratch his round, whiskered cheek. Swiveling his disproportionately large head with remarkable speed, he nipped her finger. When she yanked her hand back, he ambled forward to sprawl on her hair.

  Grunting, she tried to tug the long, thick tresses out from under the fur ball. He refused to budge, trapping the waist-length black strands beneath his heft and giving her one more reason to look forward to next week, when she’d scheduled her haircut and annual donation to Locks of Love. Unlike in Boston, Las Vegas’ perpetual heat turned her one attempt at charity into a 24-hour torture device.

  She batted at the cat’s nose with her knuckles. “Do you want to eat, or not?”

  Tiger bared his teeth, whacked her hand, and yawned.

  “I’m guessing no.” Grabbing the spare pillow, she plopped it over her face to shield her from the intensifying sunlight and the cat’s morning breath. With a thud, Tiger pounced. Through the pillow, she detected one paw on her forehead and another on her cheek. His purr rumbling like a small engine, the feline shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

  Face massage, kitty-style. There must be worse ways to start the morning, but she struggled to divine a single one.

  As if in answer to her mental query, her cell phone trilled. With a whimper, she groped blindly along the left side of her mattress. Finding nothing, she extended her arm toward the floor, scooting it around until the side of her hand hit a vibrating hunk of metal. A shorter dropping distance for electronic devices numbered among the few perks of not owning a bed frame.

  She tapped her thumb on random locations at the bottom half of the screen until the ringing stopped. Shoving the phone under her pillow, in the general vicinity of her face, she grumbled, “Hello?”

  “I woke you up, didn’t I?”

  Bolting upright, she sent the cat tumbling down her chest and onto her lap. Ignoring Tiger’s claws as he scrambled up her boobs to perch on her shoulder, she held the phone against her ear with one hand and used the other to grab the baseball bat she’d positioned next to the mattress.

  When she vaulted to her feet, the far-from-nimble feline toppled off, leaving behind burning streaks as he attempted to slow his descent by digging his claws into her shirt. She stared past the kitchen area and focused on the door. Located in the basement of a four-story walkup, her place had a single entry point. For a long moment, she waited for something to happen, the silence absolute but for steady crackles as breaths hit the microphone on the other end of the connection.

  “How did you get my number?” No need to confirm the caller’s identity. Nothing could erase his voice from her memory vault.

  “The usual way—I hired someone. I have to say, the US government sucks at hiding people. Talk about a lazy ass name change. They added all of three letters—l, y, and g.”

  Given their general ambivalence, she’d been surprised they’d bothered to do anything beyond patting her shoulder and advising her to “stay safe.” Her borrowed identity came courtesy of a distant cousin, Kimberly Trang, who had gone on a prolonged walkabout to Australia. With no plans to return stateside, she’d agreed to exchange her driver’s license and social security number for a token donation to Green Peace.

  She glanced at
Tiger, who had managed to circumnavigate the kitchen counter to skulk in the gap between the refrigerator and wall. Logistical issues raced through her mind. All her clean clothes were already inside a duffel, a permanent storage solution ever since circumstances forced her into a vagabond lifestyle. Getting the cat into his carrier might prove a challenge, one she could overcome in less than five minutes if she didn’t mind decorating her arms with additional scratches.

  “Damn it, Joss. Tell me how long I have to get out of here.” With her fight-or-flight instincts shifting into overdrive, finding out how he’d tracked down her number fell off her priorities list. If he’d risked calling her after ten months of radio silence, then his family’s hired guns couldn’t be too far behind.

  She and Tiger needed to get the hell out of Vegas.

  “You don’t have to go anywhere. It’s over, pet. No one’s coming after you.”

  Her heart thudded. Her ears roared. Relief and uncertainty struggled for purchase. She wanted to believe him, but life-threatening stakes prompted her to hesitate. If what he said was true, why hadn’t the witness protection people contacted her? Given, the ones she’d dealt with hadn’t exactly oozed competence, but informing someone their life was no longer in danger didn’t strike her as a tall order.

  A reasoned reaction beyond her reach, she fell back on ingrained courteousness. “I…. Thank you for letting me know.”

  “You don’t believe me.” Despite the distance and time separating them, he read her with dangerous accuracy. His incredulity grated. After everything that had happened, why would he assume she’d trust him without question?