Savage Hearts (Club Volare) Read online

  SAVAGE HEARTS

  A Club Volare Rockstar Novel

  By

  Chloe Cox

  Copyright 2013 Chloe Cox

  prologue

  “Tell me you can do this, Cate,” Soren said into her ear. “Tell me you’re mine, tell me you’ll submit, Jesus fucking Christ, tell me…say it…”

  Could she even speak still? Could she process what he was saying? It didn’t matter; she knew the answer. There wasn’t room for second-guessing, for rationalization, not when she needed like this.

  “Yes,” she said, tearing it out of her while her body begged him for release. “Yes, I can do this.”

  Then she put her lips on his ear and whispered, “Yes, sir.”

  She felt him stiffen.

  Then with a growl he rose up, catching her in his arms, spinning her, pushing her against the wall, and she was pinned. His mouth hovered over hers while he shoved her panties aside and she felt him inhale, felt the air drag across her lips to his, when he felt how wet she was.

  And then he was inside her.

  Cate groaned, buried her face in his neck, lifted her leg around his waist. Soren pushed two fingers in slowly, slowly, until she felt like she as about to burst, his huge palm resting over her clit, her whole body on actual fire.

  “Now,” Soren said. “Come for me...”

  chapter 1

  Cate Kennedy took a deep breath and did her best to hide.

  Which was completely freaking ridiculous, because, one, Cate Kennedy was arguably the best litigator in the state of California, which wasn’t exactly a job for shrinking violets, and two, she was not a coward. Cate Kennedy had never run from a challenge in her life. And Cate Kennedy certainly didn’t hide from anyone—except, of course, that she hid from everyone.

  Even Cate Kennedy herself found that part a little confusing.

  She actually thought of them as the Two Cates. There was the Cate she was at work and in public, the version of herself that she showed to the world. That Cate was a woman who could command a courtroom, stare down opposing counsel, and intimidate the hell out of witnesses. And then there was the woman she felt like the rest of the time, the real Cate that she kept hidden, constantly afraid that everyone would find out what a fraud she was, and who was the kind of woman who occasionally slouched down in the front of her own car, hoping no one would see her.

  Scared, hiding-in-her-car Cate was less fun. She hated being afraid just on principle, and she hated that she had reason to be afraid in the first place even more.

  But she had seen her husband’s golf buddy coming out of the Volare Venice offices just as she was about to get out of her car, and now she was stuck. It wasn’t Patrick that she was worried about, although she wished he would stop trying to chat up the Volare employee who clearly did not want to talk to him. What worried her was that Patrick would tell her soon-to-be-ex-husband Jason that he’d seen Cate at Club Volare.

  And Jason himself scared the shit out of her.

  The whole situation hardly seemed fair. Cate had been nervous enough just driving to the Volare compound in Venice Beach, feeling the beginnings of butterflies in her stomach, the kind of excitement she barely remembered from when she was a teenager, and that nervousness had almost allowed her to forget about the rest of her life. Every mile closer to Volare had felt like an escape from Jason and his threats and his cheating and the divorce that he still wouldn’t give her.

  The man probably had his hands all over some other woman at that very moment, and yet it was Cate who was terrified and hiding in her car because of what Jason might do if he thought Cate was with someone else. Not that Cate had plans to date any time soon. She couldn’t fathom the idea of a relationship, possibly not ever again.

  Yeah, not fair at all.

  It didn’t help that she’d secretly fantasized about Club Volare ever since the place opened up in L.A. Cate had barely been able to contain her reaction when Ford Colson, Volare’s lawyer and one of the founders of the L.A. club, asked her to consider representing a Volare member in some kind of civil suit. The man in question was apparently a rock star—Soren something or other—which made her feel old, because at thirty she apparently had no idea who the current rock stars were, and this one evidently had a reputation as a debauched womanizer. Like, distinguished among rock stars as a debauched womanizer. That he was apparently a Dom made the whole thing even more fraught. Cate hadn’t had time to do her normal research while she’d been busy closing up her last case, but she gathered that a recent book had exposed parts of the rock Dom’s private life and left him open to extortion disguised as a lawsuit. Probably something sex-based and salacious, requiring a big legal gun, which was why Ford had called on his old law school friend-turned-brilliant-litigator Cate.

  One Cate had relished the challenge. The other Cate had silently freaked about the idea of getting involved with Club Volare.

  And now that she was actually here? She didn’t know if her stomach was doing all those acrobatics because she was good nervous or bad nervous, but she knew it was definitely something.

  Because there were Doms in there. Actual, real-life Doms, the kind of men who did the things she fantasized about, and the kinds of things she feared. This was her problem: she was drawn to Club Volare and BDSM so much that she could barely think about anything else lately, and yet she was terrified of why she was drawn to it. But with her past, she had reason to be cautious. And with her husband, she had reason to be frightened.

  The whole messy combination meant that Cate had never felt so personally invested in a potential case, and as a result she’d never been so sure that she shouldn’t get involved.

  So of course she’d immediately said yes. Apparently she’d decided her life wasn’t interesting enough already. That, and maybe Cate had finally decided to do something for herself. All of which had brought her to Club Volare Venice feeling like she was about to throw up from both excitement and fear, hiding in the front seat of her car while Patrick Cross tried to hit on some poor blonde.

  Cate tried to shake her head, and banged it into the steering wheel.

  “Oh, come on.” She laughed softly to herself. “You know what? Screw this.”

  She poked her head up with every intention of finally getting out of the car, Patrick Cross and his big mouth be damned. She would get out of her car like a normal person, strut like a boss over to her meeting with Ford and Soren the mystery rock star, absolutely own that freaking meeting, and then she’d find the guts to ask about Volare memberships. That was the plan. But then she got one good look at Patrick’s face and she thought about what Jason might try to do to her career if he thought she was a member here. Or what he might try to do to her.

  She flinched.

  It was the real her, the inner her, that had an interest in Club Volare, not her public face. Maybe she wasn’t ready to have inner Cate meet the whole wide, mean world quite yet.

  “Compromise,” Cate said to herself, and scooted over the gearshift to the passenger side door.

  She only had to make it as far as the delivery truck where two men were unloading cases of high-end liquor before she’d get to the side door of the next building over in this ridiculously swank compound. She could duck in there and Patrick would never know. It wasn’t the Volare office building—in fact, it looked like it was the actual club part of Club Volare—but it was good enough for now. She still had time before the meeting, anyway.

  She took a big breath.

  “One, two…oh fuck it,” she said, pushed open the door, and barreled into the late afternoon sun.

  She kept her head down while t s down wshe did it, knowing her auburn hair might give her away if Patrick happened to look over. If she ha
dn’t, she might have seen the guy carrying a big ol’ box of bottles.

  But she didn’t.

  Cate crashed into a never-ending wall of muscle, tripped, and then knocked into the box itself, which hit the ground with the loudest crunch of breaking glass she’d ever heard.

  There was no way that Patrick hadn’t heard that.

  There was no way that most of Venice Beach hadn’t heard that.

  Cate didn’t even look to see if Patrick had recognized her. All she could think about was Jason and his ability to further ruin her life. Instinctively she ducked behind the unidentified wall of muscle that had been carrying the box, cursed, and said, “Please don’t move.”

  In the next few seconds, Cate noticed a few things. One, the man she was using as a human shield was even more built than she’d thought. Two, he was wearing a plain white shirt that Cate, for no reason at all, was gripping hard in her hand, like she could steer him around as the perfect shield with just a handful of thin, flimsy, does-nothing-to-hide-those-pecs shirt. And three, he smelled amazing.

  Normally she might have introduced herself, but for some reason those three things combined with fear-induced adrenaline and her irritation that another human being was now a witness to this absurd and embarrassing situation made her feel a little…tongue-tied.

  “Are you hiding?” the man said.

  That voice. Deep, resonant. Amused. Like it was a joke.

  But his words reminded her that she was, in fact, hiding, and not for entirely stupid reasons, either. Cate looked up. She was nearly blinded by the sun over the man’s shoulder, which meant she couldn’t see the man’s face, and she couldn’t see whether or not Patrick had seen her. She felt real fear begin to return. Jason would lash out if he knew. She was certain of it. He would come after her. She gripped the man’s shirt harder and willed her hand not to shake.

  “Actually, yes,” she said, and tried to keep her voice even.

  Didn’t work. She heard the tremor in her own voice, and knew what it meant. She was starting to panic, her muscles stiff and unmoving, her breathing coming fast.

  God damn her asshole abusive ex-husband.

  The man she was using as a human shield bent his head toward her and she heard him inhale. She knew he was looking at her, but she couldn’t look up, into his eyes—it was too much, the idea that this stranger might also see her both afraid and humiliated, on top of having to be ashamed of herself for being afraid in the first place. Then, as though he could sense her fear, the man turned and looked over his shoulder to where Patrick had been standing.

  She thought she heard him rumble.

  There was a pause, and she got a glimpse of longish blond hair before she suddenly felt big hands around her waist and she was being lifted up and spun around the corner of the building. Cate grappled wildly with the stranger’s arms as he set her down on a windowsill, her eyes wide and her body on high alert, and all of her now totally shielded from view of the office building.

  “Safe and sound and out of sight,” the stranger said.

  It took Cate a second to get her bearings. The window she was sitting in was open. She could lean back and fall right into Club Volare if she wanted to. There were shutters blocking her peripheral vision. And the strange man who’d put her here was standing, hands on either side of her, right in front of her.

  She had to look now.

  And oh God, his face.

  Oh God, the rest of him.

  He was beautiful. Norse-god beautiful. Except Norse gods probably didn’t have much opportunity to get a tan in Asgard or wherever it was they hung out; this guy had the SoCal thing down. Almost shockingly blond, shaggy hair framed a tanned, chiseled face, his features rough and craggy and beautifully masculine.

  He had ice-blue eyes.

  He was studying her.

  He was very nearly touching her. That body of his, that warm, hard body, was so very, very close.

  Cate’s mind went blank. Adrenaline always made her kind of dumb, and this was adrenaline with a chaser of impossibly attractive man. She couldn’t tell if it was the fear or the man that kept her heart pounding, but she supposed it didn’t really matter. She was now officially in Club Volare Venice. Or at least her butt was. She looked down to see that she was gripping the windowsill so that she wouldn’t fall backwards through the window.

  Holy shit, Club Volare.

  She didn’t want to be impressed. But she was. Maybe she could blame that on the adrenaline, too.

  Because this, right here, this place was the realm of fantasy for her, of books and message boards and late nights in front of her computer. Part of her hadn’t really accepted that any of it was real, but now that she was here, she couldn’t escape the knowledge that for these people, the members of this club, it was real. All of it. What would that feel like? To be so unafraid of what people might think, of how they’d react to your secret fantasies? Or of how you could be hurt? These people, this place, it was real. Was it just a world where people like Jason didn’t exist, where…

  Cate’s eyes met the Norse god’s, and her wandering mind slaat ing minmmed back to the present. The man standing in front of her was one of those people.

  Holy shit, the sequel.

  He’d just been watching her carefully, this whole time. Now Cate watched a slow, gentle smile spread across his face, and realized that she was no longer terrified. Apparently there wasn’t room enough in her head for both the Norse god and terror. Norse god won.

  “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Cate.”

  Some expression that Cate couldn’t quite place flickered across his face, gone before she could get a read on it. His eyes seemed to dance for a moment, and then his tone changed. Serious. Searching. Gentle.

  “So does this help, Cate?” he asked.

  Cate wanted to laugh. Was it possible this man knew how loaded that question was? The contrast between the way he’d picked her up and thrown her around and the way he was now very carefully asking if the manhandling “helped” was disorienting enough. Even weirder was that it had helped—besides getting her out of Patrick’s line of sight, it had also given her something else to think about.

  But the weirdest part was that this stranger had known that she’d been genuinely frightened, and he’d known what to do for her, even if what he’d done would look highly questionable to an outside observer.

  Cate was too stunned by that to do anything but tell the truth.

  “Yes,” she said simply. “It helps.”

  “Good,” he said.

  He didn’t move.

  He didn’t look at all uncomfortable with his proximity to a woman he didn’t know, either. In fact he looked like he was enjoying it, and like he didn’t care who knew. And yet just that question—“Does this help?”—made her feel like he’d back off if she even looked at him sideways.

  Cate studied him the way he was studying her. Something about the way he carried himself, his head high and his shoulders back, demanded attention. She was jealous of his easy confidence, his apparent calm, as though he personified the traits that Cate only felt she had when she was working. Everyone but Jason thought she was like this Norse god. No one knew about the way she felt inside, about the fear and the self-doubt and the way she put up with Jason’s treatment for so long. About the way she’d believed the things Jason said.

  Except, apparently, for this stranger. He knew. He’d just seen it. Or he’d just seen part of it, anyway.

  That was not fair. Cate straightened her spine. She hated being afraid, and she hated being exposed even more, and damn it, she was not going to do this. Part of getting away from Jason was actuallkne was acy getting away from Jason in her own head, which meant not running like a scared rabbit every time she saw one of his friends.

  If Patrick saw her, she would deal with it. And if Jason found out she was at Club Volare, she would deal with it. God damn it.

  She looked up to find the stranger looking at her with interest
.

  “Excuse me,” she said politely.

  The stranger took a step back and offered his hand. Cate took it, and hopped down from the windowsill. She took a deep breath, did her best to smooth her suit, and walked out from behind her makeshift hiding place.

  Two things happened: one, she realized she still didn’t know where to go, since Ford had only specified “meet me at the club,” which in a compound this extensive left far too many options, and two, she saw that Patrick Cross was no longer hanging around outside the office building.

  She looked back at the strange Norse god, who was still watching her. He’d had a perfect view of the office from where he’d been standing.

  “The man who was standing out there,” she said. “He’s gone.”

  “Yup.”

  Cate raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t about to let any bullshit fly. The Norse god had absolutely known who she was hiding from.

  She said, “You could have told me.”

  “You came out of hiding anyway,” the Norse god said. Then he grinned. “Besides, I didn’t exactly mind.”

  Incredibly, she blushed.

  “And he’s not gone,” the Norse god corrected. “His car is still there. He went back into the office.”

  Cate felt a chill run down her back and ignored it. She refused to let this affect her—at least in theory. She could see the man was watching, still, and he’d already seen her more vulnerable than she was entirely comfortable with.

  “So you want to wait inside?” the Norse god said. He leaned against the wall of the building, his arms crossed in front of his powerful chest, appraising her. “Or do you want me to go get rid of him?”

  That shouldn’t thrill her. But it did.

  “I have a meeting with Ford Colson,” she said. “If you could show me where to wait, I’d be grateful.”

  “No problem,” he said, pushing off the wall. “Give me a second.”

  She watched in a kind of daze as he picked up the box of now-broken bottles and led her into the building through the side door. What was p>