“Fuck you.”Ignoring us, he turned and gave a few brief instructions to the cook beside him before picking up a platter from the cold prep part of the line and coming around the counter to meet us.“Nina,” he said, grabbing a server as she went past.“Get someone to bring us a bottle of the Trevisiol.”
“Yes, Chef,” she said, changing directions to hurry off and do his bidding.
“Eat them before the ice melts.”He set the platter of oysters on the well-worn wooden table in front of us and watched while I lifted one of the shells from its bed of crushed ice.
I brought the oyster to my lips and tipped the entire thing into my mouth, not bothering to stifle my groan of pleasure as the sweet briney liquor hit the back of my palate.
“What is that?”I liked my oysters with cocktail sauce I knew better than to ask for, but what Matt offered us was something so much better.There was the clean taste of icy-fresh oyster combined with the sharp bite of citrus, topped with a heat that was more than simple pepper.
“Gulf oysters with kumquat and pink peppercorn granita,” said Matt.He picked up a shell and tossed back an oyster, smiling like someone immensely pleased with himself.“They go on the menu this weekend.”
We made quick work of the rest of the oysters while Nina returned with a bottle of prosecco and four stemless flutes.The crisp sparkling wine was perfect with the mineral taste of the oysters.I resisted the urge to wax on about the pairing.No reason for Matt’s head to get any bigger.He knew he was a master; reinforcing it just made him harder to live with.
He motioned to the older man expediting and four plates appeared, holding chunks of seared mustard crusted beef on a bed of white beans.Matt hadn’t bothered to ask how we wanted our steak cooked.I honestly don’t think he cared, which worked for me, I thought as I cut into the perfectly rare filet.
“Are you playing this weekend?”asked Ben after Nina cleared our plates and swapped our wine glasses for rocks glasses of Scotch.
I took a swallow of the Macallan, letting the earthy amber liquid roll around on my tongue while I waited for somebody else to answer.Since Julie left, I didn’t play as much as the others.I didn’t want to.Or I hadn’t until an hour or so earlier when the beautiful brunette fell into my arms, which was crazy.I wasn’t interested in anything serious.Fun maybe, but nothing that even whispered at a relationship.Ending things with Julie cured me of those impulses.
I’d never seen the woman before, which meant she probably wasn’t already in the lifestyle.It was a small enough community and I’d remember those big brown eyes.I loved the way her clothes screamed sex, but she still blushed for me.Her hesitation to meet my gaze and the way she’d softened in my arms made me think there was more there.Much more, but that could be my protective side.Seeing her almost fall and then catching her pushed every one of my buttons.Closet submissive or not, it didn’t matter.I wasn’t interested in being part of anyone’s BDSM Welcome Wagon.
“Maybe you can bring the woman who sidetracked you to the club,” said Jared.
It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me, and I shook myself back to the present.
“You hardly ever play anymore,” said Matt.“Not since she-who-must-not-be-named.”
Ben snorted.“He made a Harry Potter kink reference.That’s all kinds of fucked up.”
“I’m not wrong,” said Matt, his expression uncharacteristically sympathetic, which only set my nerves even more on edge.“It’s time for you to get back in the game.Someone new could be good for you.”
I hadn’t been to Bacchus since the clusterfuck—not the fun kind, either—months ago.I could still picture the expression on the guy’s face as the bouncers dragged him out of the club after he went too far with the woman he had bound to the horse.He’d kept insisting he’d known what he was doing.That he’d been trained.It seemed like every heterosexual guy in the world was turning into a self-proclaimed Dom and none of them knew what they were doing.I couldn’t do much about the glut of Dom wannabes, but I sure as hell intended to do everything in my power to make sure no one else got hurt.That was as far as my involvement in the club was going to go.
“I’m not interested in anything aside from this twenty-five-year-old single malt,” I said, determined to steer the conversation in a different direction.
I tried to call Julie’s face to mind to help me remember why jumping into something new was a bad idea.But instead of blonde hair and blue eyes, my mind filled with dark hair and brown ones.
