Page 2 of Falling for Her Grumpy Boss

"Yes, Mistress."

I hold Kate's gaze for one last moment before I turn away. The familiar sounds of Indigo settle around me as I make my way across the floor. By tomorrow, this place will already belong to someone else. Tonight, it still belongs to me.

Michael stands exactly where he has been instructed to be near one of the quieter seating areas. His fingers twist together until he notices me approaching, then they fall apart as if he's been caught doing something wrong. He looks less like someone visiting a private club than a man waiting outside the principal's office.

"Good evening." I stop a comfortable distance away and offer him a small smile. "I'm Mistress T."

He nods so quickly I wonder if his neck hurts.

"I'm sorry. I... I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. I probably should've read more first." He lets out a nervous laugh that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "I don't want to waste your time."

The words tumble over one another, each apology chasing the last. We practiced this during training often enough that I recognize it immediately.

He isn't talking to me. He's talking over the silence. His breathing stays shallow. His shoulders creep higher with every sentence until they almost brush his ears. By the time he finally stops for air, his hands have curled into tight fists.

I lift one hand between us.

His mouth closes and the quiet settles almost immediately, the steady pulse of the music filling the space where his words had been. His gaze stays on mine, uncertain at first, then searching, as though he's waiting for me to confirm every fear that brought him here.

"You don't have to earn your place here." I tilt my head and make stark eye contact. "You already belong because you chose to walk through the front door."

He lets out a slow exhale before rubbing the back of his neck. "I really do apologize too much."

"You do." A smile slips free before I can stop it. "Let's start by fixing that."

The tightness around his eyes softens. His hands uncurl. The restless energy that surrounded him when I walked over settles into something quieter, steadier, and I feel my own lungs expand with him.

Thoughts of Iron Ridge drift back to the corner of my mind where they've been waiting all evening. Monday I'll start worrying about first impressions, executive calendars, and whether Clara Bennett and I will get along.

Not tonight.

Tonight, I'm still Mistress T, and Michael deserves nothing less than my complete attention.

Dylan

The bass settles deep, a slow, steady rhythm that hums through the floor and into my bones. It doesn’t overwhelm the room. At Indigo, the sound is just enough to dull the edges of thought without taking it away. Light pools low and warm over polished wood and dark leather, catching on skin, on glass, on the quiet movement of bodies that know exactly where they are and what they came for.

I lean back into the chair, the leather firm against my shoulders, one ankle resting over my knee. The weight of the glass sits easy in my hand, cool against my palm, but I haven’t taken a drink. My attention is already elsewhere, drawn without effort, locked across the room before I even register the shift.

I still don't know why I let Mitch talk me into this.

For years he'd invited me to Indigo with the same infuriating patience he seemed to reserve for people he knew would eventually come around. Every time I'd declined. BDSM wasn't my world, and I had no desire to pretend otherwise. I liked certainty. Control. Rules I understood. Everything I'd heard about clubs like this sounded like people playing games with power they didn't actually possess.

The truth was, I wasn't looking for another distraction.

I already had plenty of those.

Another city. Another hotel. Another woman whose name I'd remember long enough to order breakfast before we went our separate ways. I'd built exactly the life I'd set out to build, yet somewhere along the way success had started feeling like motion instead of direction.

What I missed wasn't sex.

It was belonging.

Not the locker rooms or the stadiums. Professional football had been a business long before I'd retired. I missed Friday nights under the lights in Iron Ridge. Jeremy. Caleb. Logan. Asher. Four idiots who'd once believed they'd always find their way back to one another, no matter where life took them.

Somewhere along the way, that stopped happening.

"You're looking in the wrong direction," Mitch had told me over dinner a month ago. "You think this place is about sex. It isn't. Come spend one evening watching instead of judging. Don't worry. Nobody's expecting you to pick up a paddle."