Beware Falling Ice Read online

  * * * *

  By the time Andrew left Venture a little after midnight, he’d helped spot a couple of suspension scenes, chatted with some acquaintances besides Glen and Wade, had three different submissive women hint but not come right out and say they’d like to play with him…but he hadn’t played.

  He would also be attending the Suncoast Society munch tomorrow night and catching up with friends there. Two of the women who’d hinted at play said they’d be there, too.

  He was forty-four and wasn’t going to waste time playing games. If someone wasn’t adult enough to come right out and tell him what they wanted, he wasn’t going to try to pry it out of them and later be called a predator.

  Kandy had put him off of emotional DIY projects. He wanted a functional adult for a partner, not a Dumpster fire he spent more time putting out than he did enjoying the relationship.

  Kandy had hinted around in the beginning.

  That was mistake number one, he realized. Falling into that trap and not recognizing the signs sooner.

  Rachel hadn’t hinted when they’d first met. They’d talked, built a rapport, and she’d outright asked him if he was interested in playing with her, and she clearly defined her hard and soft limits.

  Like a freaking adult. And that was after she’d watched him play with a couple of different people, and had asked around about him before approaching him.

  He’d kind of hoped maybe she’d show up that night and they could do something. If nothing else, Rachel was always fun to talk to. She left him smiling and relaxed him in a way not too many people did. They’d had dinner together several times, vanilla dinner, alone, where they’d talked not just about lifestyle stuff, but about…stuff.

  This was another reason he hadn’t outright asked the three hinters if they wanted to play. Had Rachel shown up, he wanted to be available to play with her. She was his preferred play partner lately.

  He loved that she had a job crunching numbers and data, something he could easily relate to. He was a work-at-home programmer for a software company and only had to go in to the office a couple of times a month for meetings.

  Most of his contact with real humans, outside of a conference bridge call or text messages, came from his lifestyle activities.

  And the practically literal flaming end to his relationship with Kandy, after he’d tried so hard to help her and invested so much time and effort into putting up with her bullshit, had really shaken his self-confidence in many ways.

  Maybe he wasn’t such a good Dom if he couldn’t even help Kandy when he’d been in a relationship with her.

  The world wasn’t his to save singlehandedly, no.

  But still…

  After bidding everyone good-night, he returned home, a house he was happy to see still standing and hadn’t been set on fire.

  Everyone assured him the more time that passed, the less chance there was of Kandy doing anything. If she tried to, she’d bring the wrath of Tilly and the gang down on her head faster than anything.

  Okay, so Tilly is really good for something. I can forgive her the matchmaking attempts.

  Because when Tilly had come flying out of the club that night, to see what the everloving fuckety hell—in Tilly’s colorful way of saying things—was going on, Andrew wouldn’t deny he relished the look of sheer terror on Kandy’s drunk-ass face.

  The woman hadn’t been so drunk she hadn’t been able to stumble back in fear, drop the lighter she’d held, and beg Tilly not to kill her.

  Tilly had lit into her, threatening to make Kandy regret the day she’d ever been born if she so much as even looked at Andrew again—a threat he was happy to stand back and let Tilly make for him—and that if Tilly ever set eyes on Kandy again around any of her friends, or the club, Kandy would be damned sorry.

  Then a couple of good Samaritans had driven Kandy home and made sure she got inside her house while Landry and Cris had finally coaxed Tilly back into the club.

  Andrew had blocked Kandy’s phone number, removed her from his FetLife profile and blocked her there, too, and moved on with his life.

  That’d been over six months ago.

  Six peaceful months.

  Maybe it was time to try to reach out again. The guys were right. Rachel was a nice woman. He could see if she wanted to play more often, or shift their hard limits. Or maybe do more…vanilla stuff.

  Friend stuff.

  Like see a movie or something.

  Hell, maybe he should take a solo trip somewhere. Anywhere. It’d been forever since he’d left the Tampa Bay area, other than a week in Atlanta for a training class two years earlier.

  I’m pitiful.

  Not wanting to sink into a needy or self-pity mindset, he tabled his mental discussions with his brain and headed for bed.

  Chapter Two

  “Please, Rache. You have to come. I need you there. I want you to be there. Please?”

  She rubbed at her forehead. It’d been three years since she’d last seen her little brother. Video chatting on Skype a couple of times a week wasn’t exactly the same thing.

  He continued when she didn’t answer right away. “If you can’t afford it, I’ll buy you a tick—”

  “I can afford it,” she said. “That’s not the problem.”

  The problem was, Justin had made the mistake of telling one of his cousins exactly when he was graduating from the University of South Dakota.

  The answer to that was in two weeks.

  Said meddling cousin had put it on Facebook as an event without even asking Justin first. Before Justin had turned around, their uncle had decreed it a family celebration, and half their extended family from South Dakota and Minnesota and other parts had all marked they were coming.

  Over thirty people.

  Now there was a huge-ass barbecue scheduled to be held at their uncle and aunt’s house after the ceremony, and Justin was sort of…stuck.

  It wasn’t every day someone in their family graduated as a doctor. It didn’t matter that Justin was a biologist specializing in cancer research, not a medical doctor doing patient care.

  That’d brought every last relative crawling out of the woodwork to put in an appearance.

  Including a few cockroaches.

  “Please, Rache?”

  She knew she couldn’t punish her little brother for the misdeeds of others. “Okay.”

  “Oh, my god, thank you!”

  “So what are you doing after graduation?”

  “I already have applications out at several labs. Minneapolis, Chicago, Indianapolis. I’ve still got a month at my current job before it ends.”

  “That’s good. That you’ve put out applications, I mean.”

  “Yeah. Gets me out of here. There’s another lab job open here at the school I can have if I want for next term, so worst case, I’m stuck here for another full term. Hopefully I hear back from someone before then.”

  “Well, that’s something.” She’d opted for a four-year degree in economics from USD, which she had parlayed into a career as the head cost analyst and financial auditor for Manasota Electric Co-op. It was a fancy way of saying “company bean counter,” but she wasn’t going to bitch.

  She had a job that paid her a better than fair wage, she had benefits, and she lived somewhere that didn’t require an engine block heater or ice scraper for half the year.

  “Thank you, sis. I really appreciate it. I know you and Uncle George don’t get along well.”

  That was an understatement of gargantuan proportions, but she couldn’t let him know that. At least, not yet. She’d shielded Justin from the worst of the old bastard’s bad side while they were kids. Justin knew she and their uncle didn’t get along, but he didn’t know exactly why.

  Once Justin graduated, she could tell their uncle to go fuck himself, and then she could walk away from all of them for good.

  Except for Justin, obviously.

  Justin was the only “family” she truly had left.

  The only fa
mily she’d willingly claim and wanted to remain close to, at least.

  They talked for a few more minutes before getting off the phone. Rachel stood and fetched her bottle of peppermint oil, rubbing some on her forehead to help with the headache. Sometimes she could stop a headache before it really cranked up good if she did that. It meant she wouldn’t have to resort to ibuprofen. She hated taking pills if she didn’t have to.

  She knew there were people who might think she was some sort of New Age nut, but she’d experienced a lot of help from natural remedies.

  Didn’t mean she wouldn’t give her left pinky for an Aleve if her cramps got too bad, though.

  It just meant she was willing to try the milder route first.

  “Medicine” was too much of a bad reminder of their mom.

  Reminding Rachel of keeping the meds out of Justin’s curious little hands.

  Reminding her of setting all the pill bottles out on the counter every morning.

  Reminding her of carefully counting everything out into each pill case every morning when she was only twelve, her mom too weak and her mind too fuzzy to reliably do it, their dad working hard, trying to pay for her medical bills and medicine.

  Reminding her of those final days, of flushing everything down the toilet after they got home from the funeral just a few days after her thirteenth birthday.

  Reminding her of the sound of the empty bottles as she dropped them into the garbage bag while their dad softly sobbed in the living room.

  Some things she just couldn’t deal with, and as an adult, she didn’t have to.

  So she set her course trajectory to avoid them.

  At thirty-three, so far, that plan of avoidance had served her well.

  Had served her well once she’d left South Dakota, anyway.

  Justin was only twenty-eight, had his entire life ahead of him, and she’d kept him isolated from the ugliest parts of their childhood. It was what a good big sister did.

  The least she could do was go watch him walk across that stage as he claimed his hard-won distinction.

  Somehow, she’d make herself go do it.

  She just wasn’t sure exactly how quite yet.

  * * * *

  Rachel had planned to go to the club that night and hopefully scene with Andrew, but her headache didn’t abate. She relented and took an ibuprofen, used more peppermint oil, and applied a cool, damp cloth to her forehead.

  That kept the miserable thing from drifting into migraine status.

  This was all from stress. She knew that.

  Didn’t mean she could control it.

  Maybe therapy is where I need to be.

  Not that she hadn’t done a lot of reading and work and support groups on her own already.

  She’d make herself go to the munch tomorrow night. She needed to get out and take some time for herself. Work had been stressful lately, with some routine audits that had been borked all to hell when the IT department decided to do an upgrade in the middle of their audit, and her department lost three days of work when it turned out their backups had failed. They’d had to go back and do it all over.

  The audit was now complete, she still had a job, she hadn’t been incarcerated for taking a page from Tilly’s playbook and threatening to kill anyone in the IT department who’d screwed things up for them, and she was due some vacation time anyway.

  So she’d have to spend a little of it in fricking South Dakota.

  There were worse places to spend it, she supposed. If it wasn’t for her brother, she damn sure might be tempted to try to find some of those worse places, just for the comparison.

  After adding some lavender oil to the diffuser by her bed to help her relax, she tried to go to sleep.

  * * * *

  By the time Rachel finally dragged herself out of bed Sunday morning, the headache had disappeared, but she was regretting promising Justin she’d travel to South Dakota for his graduation.

  Which made her feel like the shittiest big sister ever.

  She wasn’t a little girl anymore, though. She wasn’t a teenager trying to keep her head down and powering through every day and just doing her best trying to not lose herself.

  She could suck it up and deal with it.

  And with Uncle George.

  She lived in a small one-bedroom condo, so it wasn’t like she had much to do in the way of chores. No yard work, no gardening. She thought about heading over to the beach but realized it was a Sunday in spring in Sarasota. If the beach wasn’t chock full of spring breakers, it’d be chock full of straggling snowbirds who hadn’t gotten the hell out of the Sunshine State yet.

  In the middle of pondering her options, Terrie called.

  “You’re going to the munch tonight, right?” Terrie asked by way of greeting.

  Rachel immediately felt like she was on her guard. “Probably. Why?”

  “I need backup.”

  “I thought Mark was coming?”

  “He got called in to work, and I need an extra set of arms to wrangle Lynn.”

  Rachel relaxed. “Ah. Okay. Yeah, I’ll go.” She didn’t need a lengthy explanation about what Terrie meant.

  She knew.

  “Good. I’ll come get you first. Lynn won’t be able to back out on both of us.”

  That meant backing out at the last minute wouldn’t be an option for Rachel, either. Hopefully Andrew would be there. She’d thought he said he was going. “You sure dragging her out to a munch is the best thing?”

  “It’s been nearly two years. If we don’t drag her out to events, she won’t come. It’s hard enough to force her out of her Evil Writing Lair of Evil as it is.”

  Terrie was Lynn’s best friend, as well as her author PA. Rachel was good friends with both women, but they were closer to each other than Rachel was to them. “I’ll back you up.”

  “Good. I’ll be at your place about six. That’ll give us plenty of time to force her into the shower and real clothes if she’s not ready to go when we get there.”

  “Sounds like you have a plan.”

  “I always have a plan. Kind of part of my job. See you at six.”

  Well, that sealed it. No way Rachel would back out on Terrie. Especially if it meant helping get Lynn out for an evening.

  She headed to the bathroom. That was a chore she could do, clean the bathroom.

  Busy work.

  Get-her-out-of-her-head work.

  * * * *

  Rachel was waiting when Terrie wheeled into a parking space in front of her condo five minutes early. Rachel got in. “How bad is she?”

  Terrie didn’t need clarification. “She was doing better for a while, and I honestly thought maybe she’d finally turned the corner.” Terrie started backing out of the parking space. “But then I realized she’s still wearing her collar.”

  “Maybe it’s a comfort.”

  “At this point, it’s an unhealthy crutch.”

  “Has anyone heard from him?”

  “Nope. He completely dropped out of the community.”

  Rachel studied her friend’s face. “Aaannnd?”

  “Busted, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She doesn’t know it, but I did some poking around one day while I had to look up something else on the county clerk’s website. Apparently, he filed for divorce several months ago.”

  “Maybe that’s why she’s still wearing her collar.”

  “No, she doesn’t know about that. She would have told me immediately if she did. She just won’t move on.”

  Pot, meet kettle. “There’s no law that says she has to move on in a certain amount of time. People don’t just magically heal from a broken heart.”

  “Don’t you tell her I looked that up, either. I’m not saying I’m trying to shove her into some random Dom’s arms, but she’s almost completely withdrawn from life. She’s self-medicating.”

  Rachel frowned. “Drinking? Drugs?”

  “Writing.”

  Confusion set in. “U
m, isn’t that how she makes her living?”

  “Before all of this, she used to have a set schedule, take time off. Free time. Now, she barely sleeps. She’s lost over thirty pounds. I had to force her to go shopping for new clothes with me because her old ones were falling off her body.”

  “Well, maybe it’s how she’s handling it.”

  “It’s not healthy,” Terrie insisted. “And I swear he shows up around here, I’m going to rip his balls off myself if Tilly doesn’t beat me to it.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Rachel said. “Remember, she and Cris got back together.”

  Terrie’s expression turned dark. “That’s different.”

  But Lynn was ready when they arrived. The woman certainly did seem far more quiet and subdued than usual, although Rachel had only seen her a few times over the past several months, usually at vanilla get-togethers at Terrie and Mark’s house.

  “We’re going to be really early,” Lynn said from where she’d climbed into the backseat. “Why are we so early?”

  “You know me,” Terrie said, glancing at Rachel. “I don’t like to be late.”

  * * * *

  They made a stop along the way for Terrie to top off her gas tank, which put them at the restaurant at exactly the right time, just a few minutes early.

  Which made Terrie happy.

  They walked inside and took a moment to see who was there and which tables still had available seats. Terrie led the way and walked over to talk to Tony and Shayla while Rachel glanced around.

  Then Rachel spotted Andrew at one table. When he looked up and smiled, he waved to her.

  And yay, there were still several chairs left at his table.

  “I got our spots,” she told Terrie before she headed over.

  He stood for a hug. She loved how despite him standing about seven inches taller than her own five five, her body fit perfectly against his. His brown hair bore the barest traces of grey, even though he was forty-four. And his brown eyes could look either adorably playful or deep and mysterious, depending on what “mode” he was in—Andrew the friend, or the Dom who could make her weak in the knees when they played.