Anna Leigh Keaton & Madison Layle - Incognito 08 - Conquering Connie Read online

  Anna Leigh Keaton & Madison Layle - Incognito 08 - Conquering Connie

  Incognito: Conquering Connie

  By

  Madison Layle & Anna Leigh Keaton

  Conquering Connie

  Copyright© 2007 Madison Layle & Anna Leigh Keaton

  ISBN: 978-1-60088-201-2

  Cover Artist: Sable Grey

  Editor: Devin Govaere

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  Cobblestone Press, LLC

  www.cobblestone-press.com

  Chapter One

  “Give me an Orgasm.”

  Tyrone Allen turned to see Connie Monroe prop her sexy ass on a bar stool and flash a wide grin. The woman was in fine form tonight, and he had a hard time not staring at all of her...assets...tightly tucked into a hot pink leather minidress.

  “Make it a double.”

  Hoping to hide his lapse, Tyrone winced teasingly. “A drink like that can only spell trouble.” He smiled. “Coming right up.”

  She gave him a wink and puckered up to blow him a kiss. Her glossy lipstick matched the dress and made him think of cotton candy. Damn, he loved cotton candy. He’d love it even more if those candy-coated lips were wrapped around his cock.

  He turned away while he mixed her drink, hoping the bar hid his growing erection. His cock never failed to harden whenever the busty blonde was around. His cousin, Alex, often teased him about his attraction to the stray sub who’d been a popular fixture at Incognito for as long as he’d tended bar, but even Alex agreed she was something special, if one was only willing to look.

  Everyone knew the woman had a thing for bondage and pain. Okay, society might like the term masochist, but he preferred pain enthusiast. Few, however, took the time to understand her motives for such unconventional pleasures. Tyrone knew though; a bartender could learn the secrets of the damn universe if observant enough. And tonight, it was no secret that she was here looking for a serious scene. He could see the need for more than a strong drink in her big, blue eyes.

  Must’ve been one helluva shift in the ER.

  He put the drink on the bar and held onto it just long enough for her to reach for the glass and brush his hand. Her gaze collided with his.

  Sheer intensity was evident on her face and in her posture, but he knew her expression would drift—mellow with each addition of pain or restraint, grow calmer with every tie to bind her limbs. Each sharp strike to flesh would tingle and ripple with a peaceful, erotic energy throughout her body, enabling her to feel more alive, freer than ever before.

  Damn, he wished he wasn’t working tonight. But that was always the case when she stopped by the club after a lengthy shift at the hospital.

  “Thanks,” she murmured.

  “If you need anything else, anything, you let me know.”

  One finely shaped eyebrow rose as she took the first sip of her drink. A smile played with the corner of her mouth, but then another voice intruded.

  “I see you’re being a very bad girl tonight.”

  Tyrone saw Randolph Schwartz slip his hand around Connie’s back, watched her dutifully drop her gaze and glance at the older gentleman out of the corner of her eye. He was a short, stocky man in his fifties who joined the club about five years earlier and found it rather funny when subs dubbed him Master Randy. Like Connie, he never brought a permanent partner to the club but, instead, picked up strays for what he called, “a bit of slap and tickle,” whenever he made his rounds.

  Tyrone bit back the sigh of disappointment and kept his hands busy by wiping down the bar.

  “You’ll have to be spanked for that.”

  “Mmm. Yes, sir,” she murmured and slid from the barstool.

  Randolph dropped a few bills on the bar. “Here ya go, slave. That’s to pay for the drink she wasn’t authorized to order.”

  While she let the other man lead her away, Tyrone stared at the cuffs on his wrists and fought the urge to ball his hands into fists. Each cuff bore the Incognito logo. Like Randolph, some members assumed they indicated submissive preferences, but most regulars learned fast enough that all service employees wore them while on duty. Since employees were also active members, the cuffs were required as more of a signal that one was working, and therefore couldn’t play, than a sign of sexual preference for top or bottom.

  He glanced up just in time to see Connie disappear down the hall to the voyeur rooms. He checked the time and cursed.

  When his break finally arrived, he went straight to the crow’s nest, as his cousin liked to call it. The crow’s nest was actually an upstairs room that had been outfitted with the best in electronic surveillance technology. After an abusive Dom beat the shit out of a stray sub in the semi-privacy of one of the voyeur rooms, Mistress Katriona decided to take every precaution possible to ensure it never happened again.

  Panic buttons were installed in the voyeur rooms, and members were informed that a new surveillance policy was in place. Although they could curtain off the voyeur windows in the rooms for some privacy, unidentified security personnel could still rotate through the rooms to watch for problems via hidden cameras.

  That’s how his cousin, Alex, landed a job at the club after he’d returned to civilian life following two deployments to Iraq. Instead of searching for snipers on rooftops, Alex now kept an eye out for trouble at the club by manning the security console behind a locked door.

  Tyrone knocked on that door. “Open up.”

  A few seconds passed, and the door cracked open. “What’s the password?”

  “I’m gonna break your face if you don’t let me in.”

  Alex chuckled and held the door open until he stepped inside. “You could’ve at least brought me something to drink.” After locking it again, he returned to his captain’s chair in front of a console of over a dozen six-inch, closed-circuit monitors that cycled from camera to camera throughout the club and parking lots. The monitor in the center was a full-color seventeen-inch.

  Tyrone rolled his eyes and took up a post off to one side.

  “Hey! You’ve gotta check this out. Did you see the woman Bastian’s hooked up with? Mmm mmm! We’re talking Halle Berry hotness.”

  He punched a few buttons to pull up the camera in the voyeur room decorated to resemble a barn.

  “Alex...”

  “She’s not as bootylicious as your Barbie doll bombshell, but he brought her in and headed straight for a private room. There. Look, man. I think the dude is a goner. Only reason I can figure for him to be dressed in chaps...and I’m talking nothing but chaps.”

  Tyrone peeked at the screen and did have to grin. He’d never seen Master Bastian bring someone to the club, much less go to such lengths to protect and pleasure a sub. Until now.

  He forced a straight face and eyed his cousin. “You know you’re sworn to secrecy about what you see—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. I signed the contract. Don’t sweat it. You’re talkin’ to someone the U.S. government trusted with a security clearance, remember? I know how to keep quiet.”

  Satisfied, Tyrone nodded. “Good. Now, let me see my girl’s room.”

  Alex smirked. “Your girl? Does she know that?”

  He sighed. “She will.”

  “When?” Alex quirked a brow at him.

  “Soon.”

  “Uh huh. Is that as soon as when you’re gonna tell Aunt Blanche you’re the one who stol
e her undies and hung ’em from the apartment complex flagpole?”

  Tyrone gritted his teeth. Alex had a memory like a steal trap. He should’ve known he’d never let him live that down even though it happened over twenty-five years earlier. “Just show me the damn room.”

  “You got security clearance?”

  “Man, don’t make me smack you.”

  Laughing, Alex punched a few buttons and pulled up a view into one of the other voyeur rooms—the chosen one decorated like a schoolroom.

  The laughter stopped abruptly when the scene appeared.

  Connie was still clothed and bound in a bent-over fashion to a teacher’s desk at one end of the room. Although she appeared unharmed, her distress was apparent. Her frantic struggles to get loose and the man lying prone at her feet sent both cousins racing from the crow’s nest.

  * * * * *

  Connie yanked against the binds that held her wrists immobile. She jerked against the cuffs that bound her ankles to the desk. It was useless. Neither the ropes, cuffs, nor the sturdy wooden desk would give.

  “Master Randy?” She bucked again. The cords bit into her already raw skin. “Randolph, answer me!”

  Panic surged through her as she struggled to reach the man who’d collapsed before he had a chance to do much more than tie her up. Her training as a nurse and years of experience in emergency rooms were wasted as long as she couldn’t get to the man who needed her.

  “Help! Somebody...please!”

  Oh, God, he’s dying, and I can’t do anything.

  She’d given over her control, but the release she’d expected to attain, the freedom she longed for, was never going to happen. Relief from the worry and tension of constant life and death struggles in the ER was unattainable now. Her dream of letting go, if only for a brief time, had become a nightmare from which she couldn’t escape. She’d never felt so helpless, so guilty, in all her life.

  Tears slid from her eyes as the debilitating sense of futility took hold.

  “No!” She battled with the urge to give up and fought with desperation against the ropes that prevented her from aiding the man whose only deed had been to offer her freedom from the stress of her daily life. She couldn’t give up on him, wouldn’t surrender...

  “Randolph, stay with me. Somebody, help!”

  The door burst open. Tyrone and Alex stormed in, the first coming to her aid, the latter dropping to his knees next to Randolph.

  She wanted to scream and cry and rejoice all at once, but her training once more kicked in.

  “Get me loose,” she ordered, although it was unnecessary. Tyrone was already working on her cuffs.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She gave him a quick nod. “It’s not me. It’s Master Randy.”

  “I don’t have a pulse.” The shattering announcement came from Alex.

  No! The instant she was free, Connie went straight to Randolph’s side. Alex had already turned the man over and begun CPR, so she joined him, silently working as a team to try and save the fallen man. Alex did chest compressions, calling out the count like a cadence, while she gave mouth-to-mouth.

  Meanwhile, Tyrone used his cell phone, called 911, and explained the emergency to the operator. After a moment, he announced, “An ambulance is on its way.”

  Connie and Alex didn’t stop in their efforts to revive Randolph.

  “One, two, three...”

  “Come on, Master Randy,” she said, awaiting her turn to give mouth-to-mouth. “Come on... Live.”

  She vaguely heard Tyrone talking to others and realized Mistress Kat and Master Dalton, the club’s owners, had come in. Tyrone stood with them by the door to keep the gawkers at bay and the hallway clear.

  “Here they come. Let ’em through,” she heard Tyrone say.

  Alex continued. “...fourteen, fifteen...breathe.”

  She blew into Randolph’s mouth, watched his chest rise, fall, and repeated the process once more. EMTs entered with a stretcher, and she checked for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  Chapter Two

  Alex leaned back in his captain’s chair, feet propped on the console, and glanced over all of the monitors. It was a quiet night, for which he was grateful.

  His main concern was Connie. Tonight was the first night she’d returned to the club since Randolph dropped dead of a heart attack at her feet three weeks earlier.

  He pressed a button and zoomed in the camera that focused on her—the image displayed on the main monitor. Instead of her usual perch at the bar, she sat alone at a small table, twirling a drink straw between her fingers, but not sipping from it. She kept her gaze on the table, and so far he’d seen her turn down four offers.

  Folding his arms over his chest, he sighed. And watched her. She was so beautiful and had always had such a zest for life. A twinkle in her eye. She’d always seemed to enjoy her time at the club, but Randolph’s death had killed something in her.

  The change in her personality, the evident depression, tore at his heart.

  He might jerk Tyrone’s chain about how his cousin lusted after her, but Ty wasn’t the only one who cared. Ever since he started working at the club almost a year ago, he’d watched her on these monitors and wanted her as much as Ty did. But his cousin had first dibs on her. He’d known her longer and made it clear she would be his—whenever he got around to claiming her.

  Alex frowned at the monitor as another man approached Connie, said a few words, and walked away after she gave a small shake of her head. What the hell would bring back her vibrancy? Her sparkle? That special something that made her a favorite of male club patrons?

  A muscled, dark-skinned arm entered the scene and set a glass of what looked like ice water on the table next to Connie’s drink. Alex zoomed the camera back to see Ty standing next to her. She looked up at his cousin and gave a slight smile, but it slipped from her lips all too soon. Ty said something to her, and she shook her head yet again. His cousin laid his hand on Connie’s shoulder in a motion that looked more brotherly than anything else.

  She smiled at him again, only this time it seemed a bit more genuine. Ty touched her cheek with a fingertip, and Alex read his lips. “I’m here if you need anything.”

  Connie laid her hand over Ty’s and pressed her cheek against his palm, closing her eyes. The motion was so...

  He and Ty had shared women in the past on occasion. They had the same tastes, similar needs, and Connie was the epitome of everything they both craved. He’d never been jealous of his cousin before this moment, but he wanted to be the one down there with her, touching her, if only to lend comfort.

  Instead, he was stuck here in the crow’s nest. Hidden. Separated from her. Prevented from any action beyond watching, waiting, and dreaming of the impossible. He’d only met Connie in person a handful of times. She probably didn’t even remember his name.

  Tyrone moved out of the camera’s view, and Connie slouched in her seat. She wasn’t even dressed the same as she normally was. Tonight she wore loose-fitting jeans and a baggy sweatshirt which hid her luscious curves. Her thick, long, blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and her face was almost clean of makeup. The changes brought out another kind of beauty he hadn’t seen in her before. A softer, sweeter one he could imagine coming home to every night.

  A knock sounded on the door. “Open up,” Tyrone said.

  Alex got up and opened the door for his cousin. After handing him a mug of coffee, Tyrone stepped inside and relocked the door.

  “Thanks,” Alex said as he resumed his seat. “How’s she doing?” He sipped the bitter brew and sighed.

  Tyrone joined him in front of the console and stared at the monitor for a few long moments.

  Alex glanced over the other monitors to make sure all was still well, then swiveled his chair to look up at his brawny cousin. The two of them had grown up as close as brothers. They were only six months apart in age and looked enough like each other they used to be mistaken as twins.

>   Now, though, they’d both undergone a lot of physical changes. Tyrone spent hours in his home gym, pumping iron and bulking up. Alex preferred to spend his free time outside—jogging on the beach, surfing, hiking, fishing, or taking out his wave runner. He was leaner than his cousin. Rangy, he’d heard himself described. And his two tours in Iraq had hardened his features in a way that was beyond his control.

  “She’s scared,” Ty said, never removing his gaze from Connie on the monitor. “Terrified, but she’s trying to hide it. She’s struggling to make her way back, but the fear is overwhelming her.”

  Alex knew his cousin had a deep insight into people—a gift he’d never possessed himself—but now he frowned. “You lost me. Why should she be terrified? She’d never been in any danger here.”

  Ty turned his head and met Alex’s eyes. “She’s an ER nurse. Her job is to save lives. No screw ups, always in control, able to handle the pressure of looking death in the face and beating it day-in and day-out. It’s a lot for someone to carry, so she comes here to escape all that. Then her master for the night drops dead, and she’s tied up, unable to do what she’s trained to do.” He shrugged. “Something inside her broke when Randolph died. She still needs the release she gets from a heavy-handed master, but she’s terrified of what might happen the next time she’s tied up.”

  Alex knew that tone of voice. Ty was developing a plan. He leaned back in his chair and waited for his cousin to continue.

  Ty paced the length of the small room then turned back to him. “She needs to feel safe again. Safe enough to give up her control.”

  He nodded in agreement.

  “Yet she needs a master who’s not afraid to bring her the kind of release she requires.”

  Alex shrugged. “She can get spanked and fucked without getting tied up.”

  “No. Being tied up is vital. It’s not about sex or punishment. Guilt doesn’t drive her to S&M. She needs the binds to find catharsis, the pain to feel alive. It’s more about completely giving up control for her. If she’s not bound, she retains the power as well as the responsibility that weighs heavily on her in the ER. But she can’t let go now for fear that whoever ties her up might need her.” He ran his hand over his shaved head and sighed. “She needs to be double teamed.”