Vulnerable [Club Pleasure 4] (Siren Publishing Classic) Read online

  Club Pleasure 4

  Vulnerable

  Elise Cooper has taken care of others and done good works, leading a celibate life for nearly fourteen years after escaping from a terrible marriage. Making her own way in the world, she is forced to be strong and independent.

  She meets Ross Lassiter, a Dom who is interested only in his work and the occasional weekend at Club Pleasure. Elise is drawn by Ross’s honesty, and by the idea of having someone to trust, to give up part of her burden yet ultimately hold the power. As Elise and Ross connect, she learns there is far more depth to his initial explanation of the D/s lifestyle, and Ross accepts that he is actually in a serious relationship.

  They come to know one another, and as their relationship grows, changes, and flourishes, there is joy, angst, hot sex, and a little despair, but ultimately, because they are soul mates, love prevails.

  Genre: BDSM, Contemporary

  Length: 46,329 words

  VULNERABLE

  Club Pleasure 4

  Allyson Young

  EROTIC ROMANCE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Erotic Romance

  VULNERABLE

  Copyright © 2012 by Allyson Young

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-61926-855-5

  First E-book Publication: June 2012

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Vulnerable by Allyson Young from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Allyson Young’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Young’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  For Beth, who deserved better.

  VULNERABLE

  Club Pleasure 4

  ALLYSON YOUNG

  Copyright © 2012

  Prologue

  Elise Lassiter strode down the hall to her husband’s office. It had been a difficult and sometimes tense eleven months, but it had finally happened. She was pregnant! They were going to have a baby at long last. She hoped Ross was out of his morning meeting and able to go for lunch so that she could share the wonderful news. He had been so patient and understanding with her anxiety and mood swings until the past few weeks when she had sensed him distancing himself from her. Oh, he denied it when she had asked, insisting that everything was fine, but despite her preoccupation with making a baby, Elise was attuned to Ross. Something was on his mind, and he was keeping it from her, probably to avoid upsetting her. She appreciated and loved him so much that she had committed to him, overcome her fear of being vulnerable, and that was huge. It hadn’t been an easy road, but Ross had prevailed, just as he had prevailed by planting his seed inside of her.

  She pushed open the outer office door and stepped into the room. Maura wasn’t at her desk, and Elise gave silent thanks that she didn’t have to deal with her husband’s secretary. Ross was happy with Maura’s performance, but Elise had seen the way the other woman looked at him and marveled that someone as astute as Ross could be so oblivious when it came to Maura. Still, that very fact only underscored her trust in him. He had a hot blonde under his nose every day and yet only had eyes for her.

  Her attention was caught by the sounds emanating from Ross’s office, and her brain registered what her mind rejected. Elise moved closer, and her earlier suspicion was confirmed. Someone was having sex behind that closed door. She could hear the woman exhorting someone to do it harder and could also make out a male voice groaning. They were having sex, or a porn movie was playing loudly. A cold hand clutched at Elise’s heart and squeezed. She shook the feeling off. Ross wouldn’t do that to her. Yet who was in his office? The noises were abating now. She debated leaving, but stiffened her spine and raised her hand to knock when the noises stopped. She froze in place, and the minutes crawled by, and then door cracked open. Maura peered around the jamb and her face stiffened in shock, and her eyes widened.

  “Mrs. Lassiter!”

  Elise gave her an icy smile and said nothing. Maura glanced behind her and then turned to smile back at Elise, an evil, calculating, bitchy smirk. The cold hand returned at the implication in that smile. Maura seemed to shiver, and Elise realized the woman was shimmying her clothes into place, and the smell of sex surrounded her. She then opened the office door just wide enough to exit and called back over her shoulder.

  “I’ll take care of it, sir.”

  Elise suddenly couldn’t breathe, and her vision narrowed to tiny black spots against a gray haze. She managed to open her mouth and force the words out.

  “I’d like to see my husband, Maura,” she choked.

  Maura smiled again and pushed her tousled blonde hair away from her face, giving Elise a clear view of her swollen lips, and then smoothed her skirt.

  “Perhaps you could give him a few minutes, Mrs. Lassiter.”

  Elise’s world came crashing down in that moment. She had pushed Ross into this. This office affair. Ross was fucking his secretary because she had been so totally involved with making his baby that she excluded everything else from their lives, including meeting his dominant needs. She had turned sex into a job. A task. Ross hadn’t been able to be the Dom for months in truth. She had sensed something off with him, and he had denied that anything was wrong. Well, of course he ha
d. Husbands normally didn’t tell their wives they were getting some on the side, because wives tended to find excellent divorce attorneys, even if it was their fault. She knew her role in their relationship, and she had shirked it with her obsession to procreate. Her gut cramped, and she automatically laid a hand protectively over her abdomen. Her baby came first. That thought put the steel back into her spine, and she was able to reply to Maura.

  “Have him call me then, Maura.” Elise spun on her heel and walked away from the love of her life, the man she had trusted, and the person to whom she had totally given herself.

  Chapter One

  Eighteen months earlier…

  “Who’s the newbie?” Sean Taves asked.

  Ross looked over at his friend and shrugged. “There are several newbies tonight, Sean. Be more specific.”

  Sean winked at him. “The Amazon, Ross. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed her. She’s something.”

  Ross perused the group of women clustered in the waiting area. He really hadn’t been looking, intent as he was on the work messages on his phone. He stared at the women, watching them shift and come together, then part, like prey seeking safety in numbers. A little blonde and two brunettes stepped aside as one, and he saw her. She was draped casually over the arm of a club chair, speaking earnestly to another woman huddled on the seat. Ross dismissed that woman immediately. There was always one who had second thoughts and would soon leave, having thought better of possibly being naked in front of others and treated to erotic pain and insane pleasure by a complete stranger. The Amazon, for indeed she appeared to be well beyond average height and size, looked up, maybe feeling his gaze on her, and their eyes met. Ross later was able to describe that connection as electrifying, but at that moment, he had immediately tried to fight against it. He had no time for anything more than training weekends, sometimes filled with hot sex, at this point in his life.

  This was one of the evenings that the owner, Patrick Morrison, arranged every six months or so to provide the opportunity for initiation of subs. Some of the women and men who were initiated continued to attend on a more regular basis, and some of them chose not to, either deciding the lifestyle wasn’t for them or finding other clubs. Club Pleasure had a core membership that catered primarily to established couples or threesomes, and sometimes there was an almost familial atmosphere evident. Well, it would be that kind of atmosphere if the family had some rather interesting tastes. Ross had been trained by Patrick and his house Doms, Graham and Jordan, and he frequented the Club when he had the inclination to exercise his dominant sexual personality, not to mention the fringe benefits of safe sex, his way. It had been the perfect arrangement, and Ross knew he was an apt pupil.

  Patrick had even asked him to consider replacing Graham when that man bowed out of the lifestyle to become both a father to a surprise love child and a husband to a woman who wasn’t the mother of said child and who challenged Graham each and every day if the rumors were true. Ross had been flattered, but this was a hobby for him, nothing more. Now thirty-eight and on the cusp of starting his own company, he could focus the bulk of his time on his job and spend less of the balance pursuing and wooing women, because there was usually one available at the Club, and few preliminaries were required. The ones who came here on these nights knew the score, and he was rarely refused. Subsequently, he could call those women for periodic training or scenes without any messy emotional complications. It salved Ross’s conscience, as he convinced himself that the casual sexual connections at the Club meant no harm, no foul. He liked women and respected them and didn’t want to cause any of them grief. He rarely paused to wonder at the dearth of long-term relationships in his life.

  The Amazon had a bounty of dark-blonde hair that spilled over her shoulders and nearly to her elbows, caught back at her temples by some kind of bandana thing. It was a mass of curls and waves, and he itched to run his hands through it and use the silky weight as a rope to guide her mouth as she sucked his cock. Her mouth was wide and full like the rest of her and would likely be perfect for him. Broad shoulders, a solid waist, and high, full breasts faced him. Ross was sure that when she stood up, her hips would swell to balance those shoulders and that her ass would be round and fleshy. Ross found that he sometimes worried about handling small women, despite realizing that most of them were far less fragile than they appeared. But the Amazon was right for him, right for his six-foot-eight-inch-large frame. She wouldn’t break, although she might break him. Ross couldn’t wait to find out.

  He pushed up from his chair and strode toward her, leaving Sean in midsentence. The movement caught the attention of the group of women and men, and they all watched him like wary deer. His cock thickened behind his leathers as the Amazon never took her eyes from him. Even in the soft lighting, Ross could see the deep brown of her irises darken to nearly black and a faint flush rise from her cleavage. A scoop-neck, stretchy top in a light-peach color was paired with a flowered skirt, and Ross noted the strappy, heeled sandals on her feet. A tall woman not inclined to downplay her height. He liked that. She was wearing more than most new subs chose to dress in, and he also liked the fact that she was modest. Not that she would hide anything from him, although that would be in private, unless of course she needed to have others witness her submission. It was, after all, about what subs needed and for their Doms to determine and provide it. Ross welcomed the challenge, somehow thinking that this woman was going to prove to be a huge one. He believed he just might be up to it. No pun intended.

  “I’ll claim you tonight,” he said.

  The Amazon stared back at him in a disconcertingly assessing manner while the little blonde beside her squeaked. Time seemed to stretch interminably, and Ross found he was holding his breath. It was insane, but he didn’t think that he would take it if she rejected him.

  “Why?”

  Ross was surprised. Surely all of these potential subs had rudimentary training about D/s etiquette. They were supposed to do some reading on the lifestyle and attend a couple of orientation sessions before the meet and greet. That served to weed out most of the timid and the looky-loos. This intriguing woman could refuse his claim, but to question his motives? Hardly sub material. He should move on before he had to provide Submission 101. He found himself answering.

  “Because I trust my instincts, and it’s you I want tonight.”

  She patted the nervous blonde on the shoulder and came up from the arm of the chair in one lithe motion. Ross’s cock sprang totally to attention, and he was lost in lust. He remained silent as she approached him, cataloguing every physical attribute while trying not to leer. She was a perfect physical match for him, and he wasn’t going to waste any more time to see if the connection went beyond the physical. He held out his hand to her, a deliberate, studied move that demanded her compliance. It insisted that she put her hand in his and accompany him. Instead, she took it and shook it briskly, the strength and firmness evident even as he processed the softness belied by the calluses on the ends of her fingers.

  “I’m Elise Cooper,” she introduced herself.

  Ross said, rather faintly even to his own ears, “Ross Lassiter.”

  He immediately sought to regain the advantage and didn’t release her hand. He gently tugged her closer and watched her eyes widen before she set her feet and resisted. He persisted and stopped only when she stood toe-to-toe with him. It had been a small battle of wills, and he had bested her, but only just.

  “I’m claiming you, Elise Cooper,” he advised. “Choose a safe word.”

  Elise tried to step back, but he captured her other hand and held her in place. Her head was tipped back, but only slightly, to meet his gaze. Maybe six feet in bare feet, he thought. So she would be over six feet in those sandals. And she smelled incredible, like soap and woman. The rest of the Club faded away, and there was only the two of them standing there.

  “There’s been a mistake,” she said, her voice no longer quiet, no longer pitched low. Ross watched a
s her eyes filled with something that looked like panic. He stroked the back of her hands with his thumbs, and she immediately settled. It felt rather like soothing a nervous horse, and Ross had a sense of relieved accomplishment. Certainly he had calmed and encouraged other women as they came to give over, but something felt different. This felt like his something.

  “I came to give Emily moral support.” Elise nodded back to the club chair where the blonde sat as if transfixed by their conversation. “I guess I’m here without permission.”

  “But you’re here, and I’m claiming you.” Ross began to shepherd her toward the member rooms.

  “I’m not into this kind of thing,” she protested, even as she walked with him. “I don’t even pretend to understand it, but Emily was determined, and I was worried about her.”

  “So you slipped in with the crowd. Come along, Elise, let’s take this somewhere private,” Ross cajoled.

  Elise pulled away from his grasp, and he backed her against the hallway wall, basking in her scent and the heat of her body. He didn’t want her to run, and he knew that if he didn’t push this thing, whatever it was, and push it hard, he might never have the opportunity to explore it with her. A large shape loomed in his peripheral vision, and Ross realized it was the house Dom who had replaced Graham. Jonathon Stone had a reputation for being on top of things and extremely conscious of the rules. Ross knew that he wasn’t pleased with these meet and greets and had considered resigning until Patrick had a private discussion with him. Business was business, and Stone must have come to an understanding with Patrick.