A Roll of the Dice [Suncoast Society] (Siren Publishing Sensations) Read online

  She instantly relaxed and burst into laughter. “Nooo. Not in my brain at all.”

  He relaxed, too. “Okay. Because I figured if you did want that, we really needed to have a talk about that first.”

  She rose up on her toes to brush another kiss across his lips. “Don’t worry. Not what I want. At all.”

  “Okay.”

  He waited to let out his sigh of relief until she’d walked into the bedroom.

  Now all he had to do was not let his nerves eat him alive before Sunday night arrived.

  Because he didn’t have a single damn clue about why, out of the clear, blue sky, she wanted to explore this.

  Chapter Six

  By the time Sunday evening rolled around, Jenny had waffled back and forth about attending the munch. Other than his odd and slightly random question after she got home from her book club on Thursday night, Michael hadn’t said anything one way or another about it since agreeing to go.

  She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

  Part of her hoped he’d absorb all her desires by osmosis and know exactly what she was thinking and what she wanted.

  On the heels of that, she chided herself for her stupid thinking. Michael was a good man and an even better husband, but as well as he knew her, he was no mind reader.

  She didn’t say much on the drive down to south Sarasota. Michael seemed content to listen to the radio, the comfortable silence settling over them with ease.

  Then they arrived. He pulled into a parking space and shut the engine off.

  They sat in the car and stared at the building. They’d eaten here several times over the years. They’d always enjoyed the food, and the service was always stellar.

  They’d never had a clue it was the periodic meeting place for people conducting a BDSM munch.

  Jenny wondered how much of life had passed her by without her even knowing about it because she’d had her nose buried too deeply in the day-to-day activities of working and being a mom to even pay attention.

  “Well?” Michael asked.

  “I’m thinking,” she snapped back, immediately regretting her tone. “Sorry.”

  He kept his fingers wrapped around the steering wheel.

  The parking lot seemed to be filling up rather quickly.

  He cleared his throat. “If you don’t want to do this—”

  “I do,” she insisted.

  Getting her nerve up now that the opportunity was here proved a totally different matter. It’d seemed like a good idea at the time, when she eagerly devoured the information in Shayla’s articles and other items she found on the Internet.

  Then there were the books.

  No one in their book discussion group had come right out and asked Shayla if she and her husband really were involved in BDSM. A couple of them had debated it privately outside the woman’s presence, but no one in their group had gathered up the brass boobs to outright ask her.

  Shayla hadn’t volunteered it, either.

  Jenny really wanted to do this. Wanted to at least try it. But she felt terrified.

  And she couldn’t bring herself to admit to Michael that she wanted him to make the call on this. To step up and say yes, we’re going in there.

  To take control of the situation and confidently lead her in there by the hand the way the heroes did in the books she’d read.

  It was kind of the whole point of her fantasies, for him to take control, even if she couldn’t fully bring herself to verbalize it to him yet.

  * * * *

  “I haven’t seen anyone I know yet,” Mike said. The restaurant was located in south Sarasota. Had it been up in north Sarasota, or even in Bradenton, he might have thought twice before agreeing to do this. Despite Eliza and Rusty’s offer, the last thing he wanted to do was run into anyone they knew.

  Or worse, anyone either of them worked with.

  I do not want this getting back to my boss.

  Rationally, he knew what he did on his personal time, as long as it didn’t involve getting arrested or anything like that, shouldn’t be cause for getting fired.

  But his boss was a hard-ass when it came to expecting high levels of performance from his employees. Michael suspected if the man ever found out about what he and his wife were about to do, it would be the end of his career advancement at Asher Insurance, and only a matter of time before he’d be forced to find employment elsewhere rather than being stuck forever in his position. Michael had only been there for five years, but hoped to finish out his working career there. They paid well, had great benefits, and even though it sometimes meant long hours, overall he was happy working there.

  He also strongly suspected, now that he’d basically called Jenny’s bluff, she was regretting her suggestion. Faced with the reality of meeting people involved in BDSM, instead of just reading about it on her Kindle and discussing it in someone’s living room, she likely felt completely terrified.

  He heard her take a deep breath and push the button to release her seat belt. When he looked over at her, her gaze was still fixed on the restaurant’s front door as if she was afraid some demon hell monster would burst forth from it at any moment.

  While he would admit Jenny’s keen interest in all this had piqued his own curiosity a little, he refused to force her to do anything. He wouldn’t be an asshole. They’d stood by a few years earlier and offered support to Jenny’s younger sister, Kendra, when she went through her divorce to a controlling, narcissistic, abusive asshole.

  He refused to be like that.

  He loved Jenny. She was his wife and his soul mate. The love of his life. And if she wanted to explore something like this, he’d do his best to support her. But he saw the toll his sister-in-law’s ex had taken on the woman. How years of the asshole micromanaging Kendra’s entire life had worn her down to a depressed shell of a woman.

  No fucking way in hell would he ever do that to his wife. He loved her too much for that. Any man who did something like that to a woman who loved him was an asshole, as far as Mike was concerned.

  And to hit a woman?

  No.

  Fucking.

  Way.

  Fiction never truly reflected facts. He’d heard buzzing about some erotic books that had become bestsellers, but books were just that.

  Fiction.

  Spicing stuff up in the bedroom a little? Okay, absolutely he’d get behind that. No problem. Hell, if she wanted a blindfold and some of those stupid fuzzy handcuffs, he wouldn’t begrudge her that. Talking dirty to her? Again, hell, no problem there.

  He also wouldn’t deny that Jenny’s recently amped-up libido was probably due in no small part to those books she and her book club were discussing and that she now devoured every night. He wasn’t an idiot. He saw the Amazon charges showing up on their bank statement, sometimes two or three a day.

  It wasn’t like she was breaking the bank. She was spending far less on Kindle books than she had in gas and extras over the years for Mikey’s activities and her volunteerism.

  He’d gladly accept that trade-off without giving her any hassles over it. They could easily afford it.

  Hell, it was saving him money at this point.

  Then again, she could knock herself out and buy all the dirty books she wanted if he was going to be the recipient of her renewed romantic interests.

  But there were some lines he wouldn’t cross. Lines that repulsed him.

  The way his own father had treated his mom before she finally pressed charges and left the son of a bitch was enough to drive that home. He’d been young, only seven or so, when his father went to jail. And he’d been happy when his stepfather had adopted him and his little brother a couple of years later.

  His mother had spent the rest of her life since then being happy, content, and well cared for. And as far as Mike was concerned, that man was his father, not the sperm donor who got out on parole and disappeared a few years earlier.

  But he would never forget the haunted fear in his mother’s eyes w
hen he was a kid.

  And there was no way he’d be the one to put that look in his cherished wife’s eyes.

  No.

  Fucking.

  Way.

  * * * *

  The longer they sat in the car, the more Jenny realized if they were actually going to eat dinner in there and attend the munch, she was going to have to be the one to make the call.

  She suspected what they went through with her sister was part of Michael’s unwillingness to take any kind of lead in this. The other part was likely due to his own childhood. While her husband didn’t talk much about his biological father, she suspected from the limited things his mom had said about the man that he’d been an abusive asshole.

  Jenny knew her husband was anything but an abusive asshole. And she didn’t know how to verbalize her needs to him, her desires, her longing to explore this path with him.

  But hell, she supposed if she couldn’t even be brave enough to have dinner with him at a public restaurant with a bunch of other people, she’d never be able to open up to him in private and reveal to him what was on her mind.

  Maybe meeting some like-minded people might help loosen her own tongue, give her a way to start this discussion with him.

  Maybe even give her someone to point at and then whisper in his ear, “That. What she said.”

  If nothing else, it would—hopefully—assure herself she wasn’t some one-off freak of nature for feeling the way she did, no matter what the books she’d read and the articles she’d perused on the Internet said. The stuff she’d learned so far deeply resonated with her.

  If I could stand up to that ass-kissing bitch Cassidy Falwell at the PTO meetings, I can damn sure make myself go to dinner with my husband at a public restaurant.

  She reached for her door and heard Michael unfasten his seat belt, too.

  Yep, she’d have to take the lead here, like it or not.

  It sort of defeated the whole purpose of why she’d wanted to come tonight, but they had to start somewhere.

  This was as good a place as any.

  She now had a mind filled with fantasies, fueled in no small part by the books she was eagerly devouring every night, and her discussions with her book club. Well, and what she’d researched on the Internet. She knew a lot of what she read in some of the books was pure fiction.

  Still, there was just enough truth in them that she knew this could be a new direction for them as a couple. A way to super-charge their relationship like never before.

  If she could show Michael the way and get him to take the lead.

  He met her around the front of the car and hit the button on the key fob to lock the doors. Automatically, her arm slipped through his as they started their walk toward the restaurant’s entrance. She’d instinctively snuggled close to his side, as she always did when they walked together.

  Even in this basic, mundane act, she always found a little bit of quiet perfection. From the way their bodies fit together, to the way their gaits seemed synced. He was just six feet tall, and she was four inches shorter than him.

  When they got to the door, he reached out and pulled it open for her with his free hand, allowing her to go first. Nerves set her stomach fluttering as her eyes struggled to adjust in the darker interior.

  A young woman stood at a podium in the foyer and smiled at them. “How many for dinner?”

  Jenny forced the words out before she lost her nerve. “We’re here with…the computer group. It’s our first time.” That was the code phrase the website said to use to be directed to the munch group.

  She didn’t know what she’d expected the hostess to do. Maybe laugh, or gasp in shock and horror. Instead, the woman warmly smiled and waved them to follow her. She walked them around the corner and into the dining room, then pointed at a door on the far wall through which a waiter was just disappearing.

  “Right in there, in our private meeting room. Open seating. The hosts are already there and they’ll greet you when you go in. Have a nice dinner.”

  “Thanks,” she said, clutching just a little more tightly to Michael’s arm.

  It felt like the dining room lengthened as they walked toward the closed door. She also changed her mind about going through with it at least twenty different times before they actually arrived at the door.

  “Ready?”

  She looked up and found Michael staring down at her. He wasn’t smiling, either. The expression on his face was one she thought of as his “I’m doing this for you” look. The same look he wore during tedious PTO meetings, Boy Scout banquets, and her holiday office parties where the doctors’ wives—and sometimes the doctors—usually drank too much and got too loud.

  She nodded.

  He pushed the door open for her and they walked through. As she scanned the room, she felt more than a little relief that she didn’t recognize anyone.

  A woman who’d been talking to another couple broke away from them and walked over to Jenny and Mike. She offered them a warm smile. “Hi! Is this your first time here?”

  Jenny clutched her purse tightly against her. “Hi. Yes, it is.”

  “Well, I’m Loren.” She pointed across the room to a man who was talking to someone else. “That’s my husband, Ross. We’re the hosts tonight. Feel free to sit anywhere, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Jenny and Mike.”

  Now her nerves threatened to take away her appetite. Before Mike could make a move, Jenny angled toward a table in the back. The round tables were set up to seat eight people each, and several seats around the room were either occupied, or obviously claimed by people laying the cloth napkins over the backs of the chairs or tipping them forward against the table. There were already about fifteen people in the room.

  As she settled in the chair on Mike’s left, she breathed out a sigh of relief. They were here, they were seated, and, so far, people had been perfectly lovely to them.

  I can do this. I want to do this.

  * * * *

  Mike warily studied the other people in the room.

  So far, so good.

  No one familiar in any of the few faces already there, and Jenny had picked them a corner where he could keep his back to the wall and face the room.

  As the minutes ticked down toward the listed start time and people began to fill the room, he relaxed marginally. They would eat, get through chatting, she’d get this out of her system, and they’d go home. Maybe even have hot sex tonight.

  Hopefully, this would be the end of it. Having gotten it out of her system that it was a lot more boring and mundane than her books, maybe she’d be happy with leaving it be.

  That would be fine with me.

  It looked like nearly three quarters of the seats were filled when the door opened again.

  That’s when Mike’s heart nearly stopped. His boss, Tony Daniels, walked through the door, a woman following him.

  Jenny leaned in, excited. “Oh! There’s Shayla, from our book club!” Before Mike could stop her, Jenny raised her hand. “Shayla!”

  The woman looked around and beamed when she spotted Jenny.

  As Mike had to force himself to keep breathing, Tony turned and their gazes locked and stayed that way even as the man followed the woman who was obviously his wife over to the two empty seats next to them.

  Jenny and Shayla hugged. “I guess you figured out how to find one of these,” Shayla lightly teased.

  “Yes, and I loved your articles! This is my husband, Michael,” Jenny said. “I don’t think you two have ever met.”

  Shayla gave him a bright smile. “No, but nice to meet you. This is my husband—”

  “My boss,” Michael said, hoping the sick-feeling smile he gave her didn’t look nearly as sick as he felt.

  “Oh?” Shayla looked up at her husband.

  Tony nodded and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Sit here, pet. We’ll be right back.”

  Then he crooked an index finger at Mike, tur
ned, and without waiting to see if Mike followed, he headed toward the door, his message clear.

  Walk with me.

  Mike slowly pushed himself up out of his chair and on numb legs trailed Tony out of the room.

  Chapter Seven

  Mike envisioned his career at Asher Insurance going up in flames as he followed Tony outside to the parking lot.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck!

  Oh, he was soooo fucking screwed. He’d seen that look on Tony’s face before.

  Usually just before Tony dropped the ax on someone and booted them from his department for repeated acts of terminal stupidity or laziness.

  Tony walked out past the entrance, to the second row of cars, so they were nowhere near the front door, before he turned.

  “Is this going to be a problem?” he asked in a low voice.

  Mike blinked. “Huh?”

  “This.” Tony pointed at the ground. “Tonight. Is this going to be a problem? Because if it is, we need to get it out in the open right now. I will not under any circumstances tolerate any discussion of my—or your—personal lives at work. This aspect of our personal lives, I mean. Do I make myself clear?”

  He blinked again. “I’m not fired for this?”

  Tony frowned. “Why would I fire you for this?”

  “I mean—” His mouth snapped shut.

  Tony leaned in a little closer and dropped his voice into the “do not fuck with me” tone Mike had heard him use on vendors before. “I repeat, when we are at work, not only do we not discuss this, this did. Not. Happen. Any of it. Live and let live. You try to burn me over this? I will take you down with me in a second, don’t think I won’t. When we set foot in that data center building at work, or we are around coworkers, this does not exist. If I even hear a hint of you having talked to someone else about my private life, you are gone. I will extend you the same courtesy and privacy. Live and let live. Understand?”

  Mike nodded, relief flooding into his brain.