All First Chapter Samples

“Is Landon going on a date or helping someone move? I can’t tell if he looks chic or homeless. The tattoos make it go either way.” My mother meant well, she really did, but she wasn’t exactly helping my confidence any.

“Shh, he’s going to hear you. Be nice.” Laura shouldn’t have wasted her breath. Nice had never been my mother’s default setting.

“I’m being honest, not mean.” That had been my mother’s mantra so long she believed it.

I heard her moving around the kitchen. “Where did he say he was taking his date? Do you even know her name? He’s being stubborn and won’t tell me.”

Because she was somewhere between a bulldozer and an unhinged moose.

Walking louder up the basement stairs, I called out so they could stop the painful discussion. “All fixed.”

“If you get any more naked, I’m leaving and taking the numbers with me.” My threat might have held more weight if Austin were more curious about the finances to begin with.

“There is no point in obsessing about the numbers until we start getting revenue in. You know that as well as I do.” He danced around the room wearing a fluffy skirt and not much else. “Once we start getting members, that’s when we need to begin focusing on the money. We’re not spending more than we can afford and it’s all necessary expenditures at this point.”

He was right, but since he was nearly naked and not paying a damned bit of attention to the meeting we were supposed to be having, I wasn’t going to admit it.

“We have a list of things we were supposed to discuss, Austin.” And he was too distracted to go over any of it.

“Then skip to something less boring.” He came to a fluffy, sparkling halt in the middle of the living room. “Silas will be here in an hour and we have a full evening of fuckery planned that doesn’t involve to-do lists.”

“You’re deliberately trying to drive me insane because I wouldn’t let you out of this meeting.” Asshole.

“He’s basically the gatekeeper for the littles. Don’t piss him off. Wear clothes. Don’t try to bribe them with junk food.” The dramatic sigh that followed the frustrating sub’s lecture almost made me smile as I watched the littles in the playroom. “They get to control the crayons. I know. It’s a ridiculous rule but Jarrett is very firm about enforcing it.”

Austin was the gatekeeper into the rest of the club, so I thought it was only fair that he had to share control of the playroom. But I wasn’t going to point that out to the crazy half-naked omega who seemed to own a large portion of the world.

“Thank you for the information.” I wasn’t sure what else to say, and that was partly because I wasn’t sure what I was doing there to begin with. “Jarrett said the littles don’t have an issue with visitors.”

Shit.

Did that make them sound like prisoners or zoo animals?

“What the hell, Calen? Are you drunk? It’s not even eight o’clock in the morning!” Garrett’s angry words echoed off the office walls as Calen walked in.

Why couldn’t Garrett have gotten in late? He had a new sub and a wonderful relationship. Surely there was something else he could have been doing this morning. But no, he had to be waiting right there at the front desk on the very morning when what Calen needed more than anything else was coffee and some space.

Melissa looked back and forth at the two men, then shook her head before focusing on her computer looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. The office was usually fairly calm. They all did their best to keep things businesslike and push their more aggressive tendencies to the side. Melissa seemed to understand this wasn’t going to be the most civil discussion.

Not that Calen felt like arguing this morning. He was tired. Fighting with Garrett was the last thing he wanted. Why couldn’t Garrett figure out that he simply needed to back off?

He knew he should stay away, but he couldn’t. Something about the couple had called to him from the first moment he’d seen them. He’d tried to leave them alone and find someone else that attracted him, but it wasn’t possible.

Watching as Troy carefully wrapped a still-shaking Oliver in a soft blanket, he told his feet they needed to walk away from the intimate moment in front of him, but the traitors kept taking him closer. Inch by inch he worked his way toward the darkness.

The sounding scene had been for the audience at Bound & Controlled as well as the men, but now that it was over, the aftercare was only for the two of them. It was intimate, private. Every rule and piece of etiquette he’d ever learned screamed at him that he needed to leave them alone and give them their space, but something kept him orbiting their private world.

Bound & Controlled was a gay BDSM club that was open and accepting, but there were rules and boundaries. Bryce knew he should find someplace else to be, but it was impossible. It didn’t matter that he was supposed to let them have their space after a scene. Bryce couldn’t leave them. He’d managed to walk away in the past, but it was quickly becoming impossible.

Everything changed when she left us.

Dad always said that she was taken from us, maybe that was a better way to look at it, but I could never see it that way. She was always so strong and such a fighter, how could anyone have taken her from us? Dad just shrugged and said cancer didn’t always care how hard you fought or how tough you were.

Cancer sucked.