Getting Dom'd

Chapter Three

All he wanted to do was go downstairs to the large open convention room and find someone to relieve the throbbing, aching hard-on he'd been sporting for the past six hours. Sean looked at the connecting door that led to Ashe's room. His palms itched as he focused on that doorknob. It wasn't locked—he'd checked. He could go through that door and...

And what? He couldn't go and do all of the nasty things he really, really wanted to do. She would slap his face and never talk to him again. As big and bad as he'd like to think he was, the thought of making her upset, of seeing her cry, of never hearing her voice again made his chest ache. That could knock him to his knees quicker than anything else in the world. She was like a sister to him; he had to remember that.

She's not even close to being your damn sister, the devil on his shoulder hissed through his brain so loudly he looked around to see if someone else was actually in the room. She's yours—go take your woman.

A loud knock on the hotel room door was all that saved him from going and doing just that. Man, he needed to go get laid, and quick. The guilt alone would be guaranteed to keep him well away from Ashe for the weeklong trip. For reasons known only to the deepest recesses of his brain, he always felt like he was cheating when he'd been with someone else. Made absolutely no sense, but he couldn't shake the feeling.

Scowling, he threw open the door. He needed to stop thinking about her. Otherwise he was going to drive himself mad.

"Dude, you need to come downstairs now."

Sean, Axel and Kuresh had been friends since middle school. Kids of professors tended to stick together in the smallish suburban community where they'd grown up. The three of them had always stuck together, always looked out for Ashe, though four years her senior. It had always been understood, though, that Ashe was his. Kuresh was now nowhere to be found, and Axel looked like he was about to shit a brick.

Nothing but nothing scared the huge German, so it had to be bad.

"Did something happen to Kuresh?" Sean didn't hesitate to grab his card key and follow Axel towards the elevators. When one of them was in trouble, they all were.

"Kuresh is watching Ashe. Downstairs."

Sean felt this blood freeze in his veins. "What about Ashe?" His voice began quiet, understated. A sure sign he was about to lose it. Ashe was supposed to be in her room until he came for her. That was why he'd spent the last forty-five minutes staring at her fucking door.

"She's downstairs, wearing...something. Surrounded by a ring of, uh, interested parties."

Normally Sean stayed the hell away from anyone Ashe was dating, seeing or might be interested in. It was safer that way. After he broke the nose of her prom date, he realized he just couldn't handle seeing her with any other man. Hell, he wanted to punch Axel and Kuresh whenever she smiled at them. The thought of Ashe surrounded by a bunch of horny Doms while wearing—what the hell was she wearing if even Axel danced around the issue?

Each step closer to their destination increased Sean's growing sense of dread. His ears began to ring, his vision slightly overcast with a shade of red. Heaven help any poor slob stupid enough to touch...

Oh hell no! She did NOT bring her little ass down here wearing—what the hell was she supposed to be wearing? While most of the women trolling the area were encased in leather, Ashe just had to stand out, didn't she? Despite the fact they happened to be in freaking Denmark during full freaking winter, Ashe was wearing a little baby doll dress that stopped right below the cheeks of her ass. With thigh high nylons held by satin garters with little pink flowers. Mary Jane shoes with three-inch heels completed the little ensemble, and she had the nerve, the unmitigated gall to be wearing a fucking pink bow in her shoulder-length hair. She looked like the personification of a sweet little sub just waiting to be claimed.

But that wasn't even what had his sight going from a slight red glaze to full on blood I'm-about-to-kill-some-fucking-body red. No, it was the asshole who thought he had the right to touch her and was currently caressing her bare neck. Sean could see the vision the man had of placing his collar there, of making her kneel. Of taking what was his.

He was behind her before he could blink, wrapping hanks of her hair around his fist.

"Taken," he growled to the man who had been touching her. Had been until Sean had yanked her hard against his frame.

"I see no collar," the man retorted with a heavy accent. German. He cast a quick glance at Axel and Kuresh, who quickly moved in to place themselves between her and the stranger, Axel explaining in quick, crisp German that Ashe was being bad.

Oh yes, she was being very bad.

"Oh, hi, Sean. I thought you were resting." She had the cheek to look at him with wide innocent eyes, her juicy lips lightly coated with gloss that smelled like strawberries.

"And what exactly do you think you were doing?" Sean was proud of the way he kept his voice slow and even. She had yet to realize how much trouble she was really in. He was walking a fine line—one wrong word and he wasn't really sure he would be able to hold back.

"Research, of course. That guy was about to teach me about the lifestyle. He was about to take me over there and show me what all that equipment and stuff is for."

Sean stopped dead in his tracks. "He was going to teach you? Is that what he said?"

Ashe had the nerve to blink those insane lashes up at him, looking all innocent and pure. "Yeah. He said if I wanted to know he would show me."

"Did he say teach, or show? What exactly did he say?" Her next answer would seal her fate. Sean knew it and prayed she'd say something along the lines of just explaining the Saint Andrew's Cross, the Tower, the Stocks, the Spank Bench. The really sad thing was, he prayed just as hard she would say the wrong thing, the thing he knew would push him right off the cliff.

"Well, actually his exact words were along the lines of 'training' or something like that. But now that you're here, I suppose you can— Umpf!"