Page 33 of Bad Enough

“Yeah, well, no ‘research’ I’ve ever done has left me so blissed out that a friend had to drive me home. You were so gone I couldn’t even put you in a rideshare.”

“In his defense, it was probably awkward. I don’t think it’s supposed to take that long to come back to life.”

“Hmph. It’s called subspace. And if you were there, he did his job well.” She paused. “Looking back, I guess I should have answered your questions instead of sending you to Lobo. After we chatted, I just thought a pure Dominant would be better than a switch. I should have connected you with a submissive. It literally never occurred to me that you two… that things would end like this.”

“Again, Tabitha, it’s okay. I definitely wasn’t expecting a relationship out of it. Not even a repeat performance.” She needed to get off the phone before she broke down. “Look, you have to get to work, and I have a deadline looming, so I’ll talk to you later. Don’t whip anyone too hard.”

“Ha! As if. I can’t remember the last time I picked up a flogger.”

“Bye, Tabitha.”

“Bye, Sylvan.”

Sylvan disconnected the call.

For the next six hours, she tried to write, but no words would come. Her characters still weren’t speaking to her. She tried everything she could think of to get back on track. She ate a whole pint of ice cream. She tried taking a nap. She tried watching an episode of Firefly. None of it helped. She didn’t write a single word—just stared at the mocking cursor on the page. When ten o’clock rolled around, her hand hovered over the keyboard to open the private chat room, and then she simply shut down her computer, crawled into her bed, and stared out the window into the darkness until she fell into a fitful sleep.

11

APRIL 19TH

TB

3105552376

What the hell is wrong with you?

3105552376

We need to talk.

TB actually winced as he looked at the message from his fake text account. He knew exactly why she wanted to talk.

He wasn’t surprised she knew about him ghosting Flame. What surprised him was that she hadn’t discovered his dumbassery sooner because he’d been to the club every night. Then again, he had been doing an excellent job of avoiding the club owner.

While avoiding her, he’d started conversations with the other Doms. The ones on contracts or in permanent relationships had few observations to add on the single subs. The ones who played around with a wide variety of subs had little knowledge because they were trying to remain unattached and didn’t often repeat with partners. Since Cosmos was overseas, it would have been a while before he’d known something was wrong.

He’d chatted up the submissives. That had been painful. Every one of them thought he was looking to play.

He talked to staff members who knew everyone and most of the gossip that people thought was private—after all, staff were often invisible as human beings unless a member was actively in need of one, and that was by design. However, members did come and go in waves, so no one thought anything of people they hadn’t seen in a while. Even Ryleigh hadn’t thought much of not seeing the girls in question.

Currently, he sat at the conference room table at Tribe Corporation, rubbing a piece of cream ribbon between his fingers, totally tuned out to the conversation around him. He’d found it in his pocket when he got undressed that night after being with Flame. Without thinking about it, he’d pocketed it every day, not able to leave his apartment without it.

Waters was briefing them on the upcoming trip tomorrow to Egypt to search for Zahra and Ka-Bar. Hell knew how long they’d be gone this time because he didn’t think they’d be coming back until they found at least one of them.

He didn’t owe Tabitha anything, but out of respect for her relationship with Flame, he would meet with her.

He owed Flame an explanation. And an apology. He wasn’t good at those. Most of the time, he didn’t give enough fucks to apologize for any of his actions. In fact, he couldn’t remember apologizing to anyone for anything. Ever.

Maybe it would just be better if you delivered your head on a platter. Or both of them.

It was then that he realized the meeting was over, and it was just him and Steel at the table. While the men worked interchangeably amongst each other to suit their strengths, Nemo and Demon tended to partner together, as did TB and Steel. Because of that, Steel was very attuned to his moods. Sometimes, it felt like he could even read TB’s thoughts.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

“What do you want, Steel?”

After a couple of moments, he nodded at the ribbon in TB’s fingers. “She’s really got your guts in a twist, doesn’t she?”

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