Page 10 of Playing with Forever (Players Club Sinners #1)

Chase

A few days later, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about Andrea. The way she’d melted under my guidance, and how she’d embraced everything I threw at her without a hint of hesitation at The Players Club.

Jesus. She’d been a fucking revelation. I’d half expected her to tap out.

Hell, if I was being honest, I’d counted on it.

That’s why I deliberately pushed the scene harder than I normally would have with someone so new.

I’d brought out the clamps, the spreader bar, even the damn plug.

Not to truly scare her, not to hurt her, but to give her an easy out if she wanted it.

She didn’t take it.

Instead, she’d thrived like she’d been made to be my submissive, lighting up under my direction. She’d wanted the aggression, the dominance. Wanted me . All of me—the control, the roughness, the dark shit that most women couldn’t handle.

The image of her—eyes wide and sparkling with excitement, body arching into mine, voice sweet and breathless when she called me sir —burned through my mind, refusing to fade.

And when I’d seen her stubbornness flare afterward, when she stood up to me even after everything…

fuck , that tenacity had hit me harder than anything else had all night.

That passionate spark inside of her? I wanted to see it again. I wanted to coax it out and make her burn for me. I wanted to break her down and build her back up, until she trusted me enough to give me everything. Every whimper. Every moan. Every sweet surrender.

It scared the shit out of me how much I wanted that. How much I wanted her .

I tried to end things between us the second she started talking about more .

More scenes. More lessons. More of us. But the moment she threatened to find someone else to give her what she needed, my blood went cold.

No one else was going to touch her. No one else was going to see her come apart, soft and desperate and perfect, the way she had for me.

I clenched my fists as I increased my speed on the treadmill I was running on in the company gym with my co-workers, while struggling to tamp down the vicious, possessive need rising inside me.

I wasn’t some goddamn white knight. I wasn’t wired for gentle, or forever promises.

I was the man you called when you wanted your world cracked open and remade from the inside out.

And somehow, she trusted me to teach her, to guide her, to be the one person she could trust to show her pleasure and pain, and give her all the things her body craved.

It honestly messed with my head how much I wanted to be the man she needed. How much I already wanted to ruin her for anyone else.

“What did that treadmill ever do to you?” Kane asked, smirking from one of the same machines beside mine as he wiped sweat off his forehead with a towel.

I grunted but didn’t answer right away, pounding out another half mile like I could outrun the mess trying to claw its way out of my chest. It was Monday. Just three damn days since Andrea, and I already wanted her again like a drug addict jonesing for a hit.

I forced myself to slow down on the treadmill, trying to get my breathing under control. “Sorry. Just got lost in thought.”

“Yeah, we noticed,” Xavier chimed in, spotting my brother Austin on the bench press. “You’ve been out of it since we got here. You’re usually the first guy running your mouth when Kane’s form looks like shit.”

“Appreciate the support,” Kane deadpanned, throwing an empty water bottle at Xavier, who dodged it easily without losing his grip on the bar.

“You looked like you had a good night…” Austin said as he racked the bar with a grunt. “At the club on Friday.”

I wiped my face with a towel and gave a short, distracted laugh. “Yeah. Right. The club.”

I had been thinking about that night. About Andrea. About her trembling under my hands, and looking at me like I could tear her apart with my cock and she’d beg for more.

Just not anything I could say out loud.

“You disappeared with someone pretty quick,” Tate said, grabbing a set of dumbbells and giving me a pointed look. “Cute brunette. Short dress. Sweet little…smile.”

I glared at him before I could catch myself and Kane caught it, arching a brow.

“Relax, man,” Kane said, chuckling. “None of us are trying to poach your girl.”

“She’s not my girl,” I said immediately. Too fast. Too sharp.

They all went still for a beat—just long enough for me to feel it—then went back to their sets like they hadn’t noticed. But they had. Of course they had. These were men who made a living off reading people, threats, and dire situations.

“She’s an acquaintance,” I added, forcing the words out in a casual tone. I shrugged like it didn’t matter because I wasn’t in the mood for anyone’s shit talking. “Just showing her a good time.”

Austin glanced up at me from the bench, his mouth twisting like he didn’t quite buy that load of bullshit. I didn’t let it show that I saw him clocking me. Didn’t let him see how badly I wanted to punch something, someone, out of sheer frustration.

“Good for you,” Xavier said easily, flashing a grin. “She definitely looked like she had a good time when you were walking her to the door after the fact.”

I gave a noncommittal nod and turned back to the treadmill, punching in a harder speed like I could sweat out the guilt gnawing at my gut.

Just showing her a good time. Yeah, right.

I could lie to the guys. Hell, I could lie to myself and pretend that’s all it was—that my night with Andrea hadn’t felt different and more intimate the second she called me sir with that sweet, trembling voice.

Unfortunately, no amount of running or lifting weights was going to change the truth.

I wanted her.

Not just her body. Not just another scene.

Her.

And that knowledge rattled me more deeply than any threat we’d ever faced on the job, because deep down, I knew how my time with Andrea would end.

I’d walk away. Not because I wanted to, but because she deserved a man who could give her something permanent and lasting.

And better than a guy whose life was built around exit strategies and contingency plans because an emotional commitment wasn’t something a man like me had the ability to offer.

She deserved someone who could put her first. Someone whole and stable. And that person wasn’t me. Because if I let myself believe, even for a second, that I could keep her…I also knew I’d eventually devastate her. And that was something I’d never be able to forgive myself for.

But give her lessons in all the ways she could enjoy pleasure and pain? Yeah, that I could do.

As if I didn’t have enough on my mind, Sutton pounced on me the moment I walked into the office after having showered in the gym and changed into a professional suit for my current assignment.

Sutton was the head of security operations at the firm, hired by my father and Mac to handle the Las Vegas division of Noble and Associates.

He was older than the rest of us by over a decade, but still someone I considered a friend when we were off the clock.

He had a steady head on his shoulders and I appreciated his experienced perspective on things.

“Chase. Glad you’re in.” Sutton grabbed me lightly by the elbow and guided me through the building toward his office. “I have an update for you on Rothschild.”

“Everything all right?” Harry Rothschild was the man I was currently assigned, and who’d received death threats from a former employee he’d fired. I’d only stopped by the office to check in before heading to his estate to pick him up and provide security detail for the rest of his day.

“Better than all right,” Sutton said, as we entered his wing of the firm and his newest secretary looked more than a little anxious at her boss’s return. “The police arrested the guy behind the threats.”

“Well, damn,” I said, surprised to hear that as I nodded politely at Amy as we passed by, hopefully to offset Sutton’s more gruff and demanding attitude when it came to his assistants. “What happened?”

Sutton scoffed as he lead me into his office.

“Idiot bought a shit-ton of illegal fireworks. His neighbor noticed and called the police, worried that he’d set them off in the neighborhood and damage nearby houses.

Once the police arrested him for that, they did a quick search in his garage and found more hostile letters to Rothschild.

It appears he was planning to use the explosive material to turn it into a homemade bomb to use on Rothschild in some way. ”

I scrubbed a hand over my jaw and shook my head. “Jesus.”

“I know.” Sutton sat down in the leather chair behind his desk. “We’re lucky the guy got caught before he could execute his plan. I hope Rothschild reconsiders some of his firing practices after this.”

I snorted in derision because that wasn’t likely to happen.

Harry Rothschild had inherited the CEO position from his father who built the company.

He was spoiled from the day he’d been born and had grown into a pretentious prick.

I didn’t see him wising up and making smarter choices with his employees all of a sudden.

The whole time I’d been his security detail he’d thought he was untouchable and had treated me as though I was nothing more than a nuisance.

“At least it’s over with,” I said, uncaring of how relieved I sounded.

Sutton gave me a small smirk that told me he agreed, then he quickly smoothed it out into his usual stern look. “In the meantime, I don’t have a new assignment for you yet, so take advantage of having a few extra days free before something else comes in.”

That’s how this business worked. I really had no set days or hours.

My assignments—depending on what they were—dictated when and how much I worked, so it was nice to have a little down time.

“Great, thanks,” I said, heading for the door as I tossed a little jab over my shoulder.

“You can go back to terrorizing your latest secretary now.”

“I do not terrorize —"

I left Sutton still arguing with me, gave Amy a reassuring wink on my way out of our boss’s office, and pulled out my phone. I was composing the text to Andrea before I even realized what I was doing, and then I had to stop myself.

I’d just scened with her a couple days ago. I had planned to let some time pass then invite her to the club again this weekend, but now that I had a couple of days free, the first thing on my mind was how soon could I see her, and play with her.

My phone felt heavy in my hand, the text half-composed. It would be good for me to text her, right? We’d made an agreement, and wasn’t it now my responsibility to make sure she received her lessons and had access to what she needed to learn about the BDSM world?

And what you need, that treacherous voice in the back of my head mocked me.

Trying not to analyze just how selfish my own motives were for wanting to see her so soon, I sent the text.