Worth The Wait: A Nature Of Desire Series Novel Page 11

  Her body did land hard, metal jabbing into her back, but her head didn’t bounce off the stage floor. It was caught in a very capable and unexpectedly familiar palm. She was staring up into Desmond’s face, which would have been a very welcome visage to see, except she couldn’t breathe. Her head was starting to swim and her leg and shoulder hurt, blood damming up with nowhere to go.

  Des was snapping out orders and people were scrambling, pulling at the broken frame, but someone stepped on something that jabbed one of those fallen metal pieces into her leg. When she choked on another painful cry, his snarl sent them all skittering back like a startled flock of birds. He yanked out a knife sheathed at his belt, something that looked much sharper than what he’d used to scrape wax off of her. The flicked out blade flashed like a prop in West Side Story.

  “Sorry for this, love.”

  He forced his fingers roughly under the noose at her throat, slid the flat of the blade in the space and cut through it. A light burning sensation told her he’d had to make a shallow cut in her skin, but she had no complaints because she could breathe again, a relief so overwhelming she hyperventilated, trying to pull in too much breath at once.

  Billie was at her head, kneeling, saying things in a soothing voice, stroking her shoulders as Des sliced the rest of her rope off her. As he moved her off the wreckage and to the floor next to it, putting her on a folded blanket someone had produced to cushion her, he rubbed her inner thigh briskly. It eased the sudden painful rush of blood and re-established its flow.

  He checked her arm, which was tender but had full mobility. She hadn’t dislocated it. “Easy,” Des said. His touch was so gentle. Since she was shaking like a reed in a typhoon—the aftereffect of realizing she’d just had a damn close call—she needed it. When someone tried to approach he held up a warning hand, backing everyone out of her line of sight but him. She was glad for it. Though she wasn’t having fuzzy feelings for Pablo right now, she liked these people. Some of them, like Billie, she liked immensely. However, while she tried to pull herself together, she just wanted Des, not a bunch of people staring at her.

  He had come from a job, because he was wearing his stained dark jeans and a T-shirt frayed at the collar. A bill cap was pulled down over his brow, his hair bound back in a short tail. He had dirt in the creases of his neck and elbow, and the combination of sweat, shingles and other construction odors was stronger than that first day, but it was all welcome. He was giving her a more thorough examination now, his penetrating eyes covering every inch of her face and body, his fingertips performing the same thorough appraisal. She was able to move or rotate everything he asked her to do, which relieved her as much as it seemed to do him.

  “You might have some nasty bruises here,” he said, hands settling on her throat, stroking her as if he was also monitoring her pulse. She lifted her chin, needing to feel his touch there, his hold. His eyes darkened, as if she’d said something meaningful to him with the gesture, and she supposed she had.

  “We’re getting you to an urgent care. You need to be checked out.”

  She shook her head. She was fine, she was sure of it. Bruised and battered maybe, but nothing broken. She gripped his arm, indicating she wanted to sit up. He didn’t deny her, thankfully, lifting her into a sitting position and adjusting so she was leaning against his kneeling body, her back against his one propped leg.

  “Are you able to draw a deep breath? Get air in and out of your throat okay?”

  “Yeah,” she rasped. “Now that the rope’s off, I can breathe just fine. I promise.”

  “Okay then. Okay.” He ran a hand down her back, gripped her hand. “Billie?”

  The drag queen appeared. Harris was hovering as close, his eyes hard with worry and mouth set, an echo of the look Des had, but only an echo. She wasn’t sure anyone could look the way Des did right now. His voice was strangely even as he spoke to Billie. “Stay with her.” He glanced down at Julie. “It’s okay. Just relax here a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  He rose and moved across the stage. Pablo was standing by the ruined frame, staring at it. Julie wondered if he was in shock himself, because his gaze was locked on it as if he were in a trance.

  He saw Des approaching, though, because he lifted his head and cleared his throat. “Man, this is going to take a while to put back together,” he said awkwardly.

  “Oh, you poor dumbass,” Billie murmured.

  Julie wasn’t sure what he meant, but the others had registered Billie’s dismay, if the frozen looks and indrawn breaths meant anything. Though no one moved, it was as if everyone else’s energy drew back and away from the young rigger, clearing out of Des’s path.

  Des nodded in a neutral manner and picked up one of the broken metal rods. In a movement too fast for Julie to follow, he grabbed Pablo by the shirt front. Despite the man having more mass and height, Des dragged him down the three stairs off the stage and slammed him against the wall. He had the bar against his throat. Pablo’s eyes bugged out and he struggled, but Julie wasn’t the only one discovering how strong Des was.

  “Feel that?” Des hissed at him. “Notice how you can’t breathe? I’m putting no more pressure on your windpipe than it takes to dent a soda can. You suspended her from a frame that wasn’t properly balanced or anchored. I’ll bet you didn’t even test it with your own weight first. Your ties were sloppy. You didn’t isolate the sections to prevent tension in other areas. They slipped, forming a noose around her neck. You could have snapped it. Her larynx could have fractured. You were cutting off her femoral artery.”

  Pablo choked and Des apparently eased his hold, but not by much, because when Pablo’s lips parted only a wheeze came out.

  “Shut up,” Des said anyway. “You’re not talking now. I am. You were so busy thinking how to make it pretty, you didn’t make it safe, which is the only fucking bloody thing that matters, ever. This is why this performance shit causes problems. It’s more about impressing a fucking audience than taking care of your bottom.”

  Menace rolled off Des in waves. Billie’s fingers pressed into Julie’s shoulders. A bleary look up at the drag queen’s face showed it set in a serious mask, a rare but impressively intimidating look for him. The rest of the people watching were motionless, held by Des’s fury.

  With a sound of disgust, Des took a step back and tossed the metal bar aside, though his body language was looming enough to keep Pablo where he was.

  "You're going to make mistakes," Des said, staring at the rigger who'd paled under his brown skin. "Everyone does. That’s why you always make sure you’re ready for it. You reacted to the damn scaffold and dove for that first, when your first reaction should have been to protect her with whatever superhero adrenaline shit is necessary. Where were your fucking snips?”

  Pablo’s mouth worked, but nothing came out. Des nailed him with a look that could drill holes. “Let me guess. They’re in your pack, which was somewhere backstage. If you tell me they’re in your car, I’ll fucking kill you, so keep it to yourself.”

  Des took a turn around the pit, as if calming himself, then he pivoted toward Pablo, freezing him in his sights again. “If you have a sub tied up, your cutting tool is on your body or no more than arm’s length away. Because when she's in your hands, she's in your hands. She's got nothing but you and luck, and luck has the attention span of a fucking squirrel.”

  Pablo had finally recovered enough that he started to look belligerent. “Oh no, boy,” Billie muttered. “You know what’s good for you, you just stand there pissing yourself and listening.”

  Looking at Des’s face, Julie didn’t disagree. She struggled to a more upright position, lifting her hand to draw his attention. It wasn’t necessary. As soon as she moved, his gaze snapped to her. Even now she was his focus. She swallowed, not quite prepared for an additional sweeping off her feet, even if it was a far better one than the kind she’d just experienced.

  "Des, I'm okay."

  Talking wasn’t such a good idea, s
ince she croaked like a frog. A second later she also realized it wasn’t a great idea to shed light on her role in this. Billie’s dubious look seemed to concur, though the message came too late.

  Des gave her a glare no less wilting than he’d given Pablo. "And what the hell were you thinking? You do not put yourself in the hands of an inexperienced rigger if there's no mentor standing by spotting him. Not for any reason."

  “Hey.” Pablo rallied. “I’m not that inexperienced.”

  Julie gasped as Des turned and punched him in the jaw, knocking him on his ass and making his eyes damn near roll back in his head. At another time, she would have been impressed by the force of the blow, but she was too fragile to do more than cringe.

  “Saw that one coming,” Billie said, stroking her back, a calming gesture. “Easy, honey-chile. Just let him work it out. I love to hear your voice, but right now it’s best you just focus on breathing.”

  The punch had Harris and a couple other male members of the staff coming down the stairs to intervene, but Des backed off, both hands raised. As they helped Pablo up, though, he stabbed a finger toward him.

  “You’re too stupid to know when to shut your mouth and listen,” Des snapped. “You’ve been doing this for six months. Your basics are shit. Learn those, or you’re going to fucking kill someone.”

  Julie’s inevitable reaction to a fright—once she had enough distance from it—was anger. She’d had enough of being handled. Though Des had pretty much just saved her life, she wouldn’t have him treating her like a child. “"I'm not an idiot, Des,” she rasped, managing to get to her feet, though Billie had to rise to keep her upright. “It was just a mistake. Risk Aware Consensual Kink, remember?"

  “Can’t keep you babies from touching a hot stove,” Billie said under his breath. She pretended like she hadn’t heard him.

  Des left Pablo’s vicinity, thankfully, to march up the stairs and square off a few feet from her. He took off his cap and shoved it in his belt. "A few days surfing the Internet learning buzz words doesn’t make you an expert, either,” he said. “That fucking mistake could have ended up with you in a coma or dead. And him carrying that around on his dumbass soul for the rest of his life. What do you think this would do for Madison’s hopes of having a place that helps people understand what BDSM is and isn’t? It’d all be gone, and if your family decided to bring a lawsuit against her, she could be wiped out.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but then she thought of her family. Their lack of comprehension about her theater life and what kind of person she was, coupled to their obvious yet clueless love for her, didn’t rule out such a senseless decision. But that wasn’t the point. None of those things had happened.

  “Des,” Billie said. His low tone was pointed enough that Des’s gaze flickered at the quiet rebuke, then shifted to Julie’s hands, trembling on Billie’s forearm wrapped around her waist. The look that crossed his face made her wonder if he was going to snatch her out of Billie’s arms to hold her himself or go pound on Pablo some more.

  Instead, he pivoted to glare at all the cast and crew. "The next one of you who touches her with a rope answers to me. You clear it with me first, then her."

  "Hell, man. I'm sorry. I didn't know you were her Dom." Pablo coughed it out as he tried to stand on his own two feet, though he was still wobbling between Harris and one of the men who’d been building the pipe structure to suspend the lighting equipment.

  "He's not," Julie interjected hotly. She pushed away from Billie this time, though her balance was likely as precarious as Pablo’s. "He's angry and has lost his mind. You don’t have the right to impose that condition on them. This is my theater. My rules.”

  Des shot her a look and closed the distance between them with two solid steps. She told herself it was her recent trauma, not his imposing demeanor, that had her giving way a step, bumping into the solid bulk of Billie. Christ, he had a buff torso.

  She almost drowned in the turmoil of emotions she saw in Des’s face. It forced her back to what had nearly happened to her, something she wasn’t prepared to handle while she was still so unsteady on her feet.

  Maybe he saw that. His jaw relaxed a fraction and he glanced at Billie. “If you don’t mind watching after her, I need to get out of here a few minutes. If he says one more stupid thing, I’m going to break his fucking neck.”

  “Go, honey-chile. She’s safe here. I’ll watch over her like a mother hen.”

  Des gave Julie another searching look. This one was less angry, but held enough other messages to dry up any other fumbling defenses she could launch. He left the stage, but not before he gave every person around them another fierce stare. "You all heard what I said."

  The slamming of the stage door rocked the theater. A moment of silence prevailed, then Billie touched her arm with one finger, making a sizzling sound through his teeth.

  "What are you doing?" Julie asked, twitching away.

  "That was a branding, honey-chile. Sure as my finely tuned nose detects a prime piece of beef."

  Pablo cleaned up his mess and cleared out without saying much of anything to anyone, and nothing to her. Billie told her to expect a text from the young rigger, backing out of the show. “He’s embarrassed, and he figures you’re going to fire him anyway. But if he’s a decent human being, and I think that silly boy is, he’ll take to heart what Des told him. Once he sets his ego aside and spends more time learning his basics instead of showing off.”

  Well and good, but it left a hole in her program.

  Once she’d assured Billie she could leave his side without a major critical care incident, Julie went into the bathroom and gratefully closed the door. A renewed wave of shaking took her down to the floor on her backside, and stress tears spilled out. Before it became outright sobbing, she pulled herself together, struggled to her feet and took stock of the damage in the mirror. Des was right. She was going to have some bruising along her neck, a major hickey. From the increasing soreness throughout the rest of her body, she was sure she’d be groaning when she got out of bed tomorrow morning.

  As she stood there staring at herself in the mirror, instead of reflective glass, she saw it all happening again and quaked. It could have been so much worse.

  Which was why Des had been so enraged. He’d turned caveman on her, bigtime. During their two brief connections, she’d recognized his protective instincts, a genuine caring for another living being. He also took what he did damn seriously, and now she understood why. Risk Aware Consensual Kink, indeed.

  None of that was wrong, but something more personal was going on in his reaction to the situation. No. She told herself not to go there. She’d fooled herself about a man’s feelings toward her before. She wasn’t going to jump into that pool again. Hadn’t she told herself only an hour ago that she wasn’t even interested in that?

  She washed her face, combed her hair, and left the bathroom. Hesitating backstage, she realized she wasn’t ready to go back up front and watch them repair things or resume the day’s work. Instead, after some waffling, she went out the stage door to get some fresh air. And to find Des.

  She’d been almost certain he wouldn’t leave the premises until he checked on her again, and she felt an odd tilt in her chest to find she was right. He was sitting on the bay of their one loading dock, eating peanut butter pretzel pillows and sipping from a bottle of water.

  He tucked it away in his pack as she sat down next to him, a careful buffer of space between them. He detailed her physical and mental state with one look, and his gaze flared with anger again as it passed over her throat where the abrasions were already showing.

  She wanted to apologize, and she steeled herself against that, knowing it was a kneejerk reaction. It might also set him off again and she’d lash back. Normally she’d summon her usual sass and tell him to stop being a dick, but she couldn’t say that to the guy who’d made sure she hadn’t ended up in an oxygen-deprived coma.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. It was
his normal voice, which helped settle her nerves.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Madison’s on her way. She’s taking you to the urgent care, since you won’t go with me.”

  So much for relaxing. Her back went up again. “I won’t go with anyone. I told you—”

  “Julie.” His sharp look made her bite back the words, but he tempered it with a brief touch on the top of her hand. “I’m not being a jerk. I told Logan what happened and the first words out of his mouth were why you weren’t already on your way to one. I told him it’s your call, and it is, but hear me out. I know you’re rattled and it’s natural to try and regain control by saying you’re fine. But if you trust my expertise, believe me when I say there’s damage that can occur that you can’t feel and I can’t see. You don’t fuck with injuries like this just to save face. Go for the people who care about you. It’s a few hours of your life.”

  She stared out into the parking lot, refusing to look at him. He might be right, but she wanted to bristle and spit. Which was probably part of wanting to regain control, too.

  She turned her face back toward him. She knew she looked mutinous, but she didn’t want to be stupid. She just had too much crap happening right now. When he reached out to touch her cheek, his expression softening, she drew back. It was instinct, not planned, but a clear telegraph she was still feeling too fragile. He dropped the hand back to his side. “I’m not going to yell,” he said. “I’m not going to say anything. I’m just going to listen. Tell me what’s going on in your head.”

  “I’m not okay,” she said after a protracted silence. “I’m freaked out by what could have happened. I’m embarrassed it happened in front of everyone. I’m wondering if I should have known better and I just proved to them I know less than nothing about this stuff. I’m mad at you for yelling at me in front of them. I’m also really, really glad you came when you did.”

  She blinked back traitorous tears and looked away, her fingers gripping the edge of the loading dock. The others had experience in BDSM play, but she remembered the chaos of those first vital seconds. She wasn’t sure if any of them would have been level-headed enough to know to do what Des had done. None of the others were riggers.