“He probably wants to keep an eye on both of us while the whole ‘assassins trying to kill us’ thing gets sorted out.” She had no real idea how they were going to sort it out. She’d kind of hoped she would have some time before they caught up to her. No such luck.
“Are you really an information broker?” Serena asked.
Chelsea’s eyes widened. “Did you pass out business cards?”
Charlie shrugged as Eve was working out the laces on the corset. She slipped the small band of spandex over her hips. It would barely cover her ass, but that was likely the point. She noted that someone had been a little kinder to her sister. It looked like she was holding PVC leggings and a matching tank top. “I don’t lie about what we do.”
Chelsea cleared her throat deliberately.
She took everything so seriously. “Well, of course I lie to the Feds. I was talking about our friends.”
“You’ll have to give me some time to figure out if they are our friends. Where can I get some privacy? As long as I’m here, I could use a workout. My leg is stiff. I’ve been sitting for days.”
“There are changing rooms and showers you can use,” Eve explained, gesturing toward the back of the locker room.
“Excellent.” Chelsea walked back to the dressing rooms, her left leg dragging just a bit. She was probably in extreme pain, but she wouldn’t show it. One of the ways she’d learned to deal with the pain was BDSM. Charlie might not have had a Dom since Ian, but she’d found several willing to help her sister out.
“So she seems oddly comfortable for a woman who was likely dragged out of her home and taken to a sex club. Arms up.” Eve held out the emerald green corset, stretching it around Charlie’s torso before she started in on the laces.
“She has some problems with her legs, especially her left one. A good long flogging gives her some relief. We normally had Doms come out to our place, but she’s been in a few clubs as well.” She took a deep breath because it would likely be her last of the evening.
The door to the locker room opened again and two women walked in. Both were blonde and looked in desperate need of a cheeseburger. One of the blondes had a nice rack and the other had a fake one. They carried in their fet wear in dress bags.
Eve groaned a little. So these girls were not friends. Eve seemed determined to ignore them.
“Hello. You must be the new girl,” the blonde with fake cans said. She was dressed conservatively, though she wore a ton of makeup and had left her blouse opened far past what could be considered professional. “My Master told me you would be here tonight.”
Serena looked up, frowning the blonde’s way. “I didn’t know you had taken a collar, Amanda.”
“I didn’t even know you were dating anyone,” Avery said.
Eve kept working on the laces, her hands moving smoothly.
“She’s had her eye on this particular Master for quite a while,” the other blonde said with a nasty little laugh. She picked a locker and hung up her clothes for the night. “We all should have known that Mandy would be the one to bring him down.”
“Mandy” winked her friend’s way. “You know it, Britney. It was inevitable. By the way, Serena, you look really nice today. I don’t know anyone else who could quite carry off that look the way you do. I didn’t know they made dresses like that anymore.”
Serena shut down, looking back at her computer.
“What did you just say?” Charlie asked.
Amanda shook her blonde head. “I was just complimenting her. Subs have to stick together. Isn’t that what you say, Eve? And you really have to give me the name of your moisturizer. You look so good for a woman your age.”
“I’ll get around to it, Amanda. I’m a little busy with my husband. We all are busy with our husbands and families.” Eve had some claws, but Charlie wasn’t sure she was going far enough.
Amanda glanced back at Charlie and then Eve. “Oh, honey, if you need any help getting that corset on her, I am actually really strong. Don’t worry about it. I think the Master will be busy with me tonight.” She leaned in. “Ryan explained it all to me. The Master needs to pretend to have something going with you so he has to have someone he’s really attracted to around or he probably won’t be able to pull it off. I always knew he would come back to me.”
Charlie wasn’t exactly sure what the blonde’s Master had to do with her, but she didn’t want to prolong the conversation. Amanda walked to the dressing rooms with a confidence most women didn’t have.
It was a confidence Charlie was pretty sure she didn’t deserve.
“Just ignore her,” Eve said, putting the finishing touches on the corset. “We all do.”
Serena was looking down at her screen, but Charlie could tell she was close to tears.
That little blonde bitch had told a pregnant woman she didn’t look nice. Among other things. “Is she always so nasty?”
Avery’s hands moved angrily now. She could probably do some damage with those knitting needles if she wanted to. “She’s hit on every one of our husbands. Even after the whole marriage thing. She also likes to tell me how pregnant I look. I can’t stand her.”
“She’s a brat. An actual real one. She’s really sweet when the men are around, but she’s hateful around the women. I’ve tried to get Alex to kick her out, but she won’t do anything to violate the rules,” Eve explained.
Being nice should be a rule. “Ian doesn’t care that she’s mean?”
“No one really talks to him about her. He’s always been standoffish. I don’t understand why he would…” Serena stopped midsentence.
Everything finally fell into place. “She was talking about Ian. When she talked about her Master. That rat-fink bastard. I knew he was up to something. This is his way of showing me he doesn’t care. Tell me honestly, Eve, has he ever touched her before?”
Eve turned a nice shade of pink. “Maybe once when she first came into the club, but you have to understand…”
She understood. “He screwed everything in a corset who would let him. I’m not worried about that. Tell me if they had a relationship. I want to know if he had a thing for her.”
“No. He can’t stand her. He’s the only one who sees through her bullshit. Charlotte, he hasn’t had a relationship with anyone.”
Serena shook her head. “He never spends more than a couple of nights with any sub, and all of his contracts state that he isn’t interested in anything permanent. The few times he’s trained new subs, he didn’t sleep with them.”
Avery’s mouth dropped open. “How do you know about his contracts?”
“Oh, I really wanted to read one and he keeps copies on Ryan’s computer. Ryan never changes his password, so it was easy for Adam to grab me one. I totally used it as the basis for the contract in Sweetheart in Bloom.” She flushed a little. “Now might be a really good time to remind everyone that what happens in the locker room stays in the locker room.”
Eve rolled her eyes. “You are going to get in so much trouble one day.”
Charlie needed them to stay on track. So he’d picked someone he couldn’t stand in order to annoy her, to show her that he couldn’t be won back. Well, he picked the wrong girl to pull that shit with. If he’d picked someone sweet and nice, then Charlie would have trouble dealing with it, but Ian made everything easy. “So Ian is pretending to have two subs with him tonight. Me because of the whole shooting thing and trying to keep the cops from figuring out who I am, and skinny bitch because he wants to make sure I know he’s only topping me because of the shooting thing. You all let her talk to you like that?”