Ties That Bind (Club Risque Book 3)

  What’s Inside

  The only other place he was nearly as comfortable was at Club Risqué, which fit him as comfortably as an old pair of jeans—or even one of his impeccably tailored Saville Row suits. The thought brought him up short for a moment. Would he end up having to give up one to keep the other? The thought gave him pause. But this thing with Luanna was so new, he simply couldn't answer that question yet, neither in the speculation of what she might allow in relation to his fetishes, nor whether the incentive would be there for him to walk away from Shibari in favour of a relationship with a woman who didn't embrace his own brand of kink.

  As red hot as each of their sexual encounters had been, so far, they had all been mostly vanilla. There had been no bondage involved, whatsoever. Climbing naked into the narrow bed beside Luanna, he wondered if now was the time to change that.

  Pulling her close, he nibbled on her collarbone as she snuggled up to him, pressing her long lithe body with its lovely silky skin close enough to plaster herself to his side. Disappointingly, as he let his hands rove over her generous curves, he also noted that she was wearing a pair of baggy sleep shorts and another long, stretchy vest top.

  She batted at his wandering hands, even as she giggled girlishly. "Stop it!" She whispered, "We can't mess about while Danny's in the house."

  Logan reared back in mock horror, but his hands kept up their mission to creep inside her top and find her breasts. "We can't?" he exclaimed. "So how on earth does procreation prevail in families with more than one child?" he teased.

  "Logan…" she began, and he could tell by her tone that she planned to deny him, but his hands found themselves full of her glorious breasts and she lost the thread of her objections as soon as he grazed his fingers across the rapidly stiffening tips. Before she could say another word, he bent his head and pulled one hard little bud, fabric and all, into the heat of his mouth, sucking and nipping at her through the cloth then turning his attention to the other when she bucked and wriggled beneath him.

  "You'll just have to be quiet," he murmured into her magnificent cleavage as he massaged the globes together and brushed the material aside.

  Luanna threw a fist to her mouth, and Logan smiled as she bit down on the fleshy pad at the base of her thumb to stifle her groans as he grazed his teeth over a plump, coral nipple and then bit down gently. Her shoulders heaved, and she started to pant, but Logan knew another denial was on the tip of her tongue, so he plunged one of his hands down the elastic waistband of her shorts and pressed and rubbed his fingers firmly across her clit, around and around in decisive circles, until her hips were undulating to meet the strokes.

  "Weren't you the one who invited me to stay the night and insisted there was no point in patronising Danny by not sleeping together when he already knows we are?" Logan kept up the erotic assault in all her sensitive spots.

  "Yes, but…"

  He thrust a finger inside her without warning and captured the sexy mewl that left her lips with his mouth, covering hers and plundering deep, mimicking the pull and thrust of the sexual act with his tongue.

  "I could fuck your mouth; that would muffle your screams," he growled in her ear. He knew he'd shocked her when her eyes widened, but her body couldn't lie, and he also felt the gush of moisture that coated his fingers as they continued to play in her sweet pussy.

  "Dammit, Thornton." Luanna scowled, even as she shuddered with longing.

  Ties That Bind

  Club Risqué Book Three

  Poppy Flynn

  Blushing Books

  Published by Blushing Books

  An Imprint of

  ABCD Graphics and Design, Inc.

  A Virginia Corporation

  977 Seminole Trail #233

  Charlottesville, VA 22901

  ©2019 by ABCD Graphics and Design, Inc. and Poppy Flynn

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The trademark Blushing Books is pending in the US Patent and Trademark Office.

  Poppy Flynn

  Ties That Bind

  EBook ISBN: 978-1-61258-980-0

  v1

  Cover Art by ABCD Graphics & Design

  This book contains fantasy themes appropriate for mature readers only. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual sexual activity.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Poppy Flynn

  EBook Offer

  Blushing Books Newsletter

  Blushing Books

  Prologue

  Lulu was scared. More than scared, in fact, she was really terrified. Tears prickled at the back of her moss green eyes and she fought to keep them from falling at the same time as she struggled against giving in to the devastating fear that crawled insidiously through her mind and threatened to overwhelm her.

  She needed to keep calm. She needed to think. She needed to be sensible and work out what to do without falling apart.

  She needed James, but so far, there was no sign of him. Still, Lulu waited at the meeting place where she'd arranged to meet him in the note she'd slipped to him during their English class, earlier today.

  It was the first day back after summer break, and Lulu hadn't seen James at all during the holidays. Not that that was surprising. His family was rich. They usually went abroad, somewhere exotic, for the duration. He'd sent her a postcard.

  James and Lulu had been going steady for over eight months now. They were tight. True, she hadn't seen much of him in school today, but it was the first day back. It had been hectic. New classes, new timetables, new teachers. General education was finished, and she had a decent set of basic exams under her belt, but now it was time for the hard work to start. It was time to knuckle down and get the advanced grades she needed so she could get into a good college.

  Lulu closed her eyes as her breathing sped up and the tears threatened to overflow again. She took a deep breath and pretended it hadn't juddered on a near sob as she'd sucked it in. Everything would be okay when she spoke to James. He would know what to do. Together, they could face anything. Lulu let the thought calm her and settled down to wait a bit longer.

  An hour later, she forced herself to move and acknowledge the fact that James wasn't coming. What was she supposed to do now? She couldn't talk to him about this in school, and she couldn't risk ringing him from home and having their parents overhear. Did she try to arrange another meeting, or should she go over to his house? Perhaps his parents had him doing something that had stopped him from coming out this evening. It wouldn't be the first time. That seemed to happen a lot, especially when they'd gone to the trouble of making more specific plans.

  Lulu wandered across the park in the direction of Fulford House, the family home that had been in James' family for generations, and saw a group of her classmates heading in her direction.

  "Hey, Lulu." Tom Schwartz bounded up and grinned. He was like an overgrown puppy, with feet that he still needed to grow into and hair that was a bit too long. He grabbed her hands theatrically as the rest of his friends ambled up behind him.

>   "So, what are the chances of you coming on a date with me, now that you and 'the lord of the manor' have split up?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows, his smile infectious.

  Lulu shook her head and smiled back. Tom had been asking her out forever, although, sometimes, she wasn't sure he was completely serious. Still, she tried to be kind in her knock backs because he was a nice guy and she didn't want to hurt his feelings, but he never seemed to take no for an answer.

  "Give it up, Tom. James and I haven't split up!" She nudged him casually, trying to keep things light.

  "Umm." Tom frowned and, for once in his life, looked like he didn't know what to say. A frisson of unease skittered down Lulu's spine as he looked away from her, and she caught a couple of his friends share a glance and then deliberately avoid eye contact with her.

  "Really?" Cindy McCall, one of the school's resident mean girls, asked, and Lulu didn't like the gloating smirk that she eyed her with. "Because we just saw James come out of the cinema with Kimberly Scott, and they were looking pretty cosy."

  Lulu felt her stomach bottom out and a wave of increasingly familiar nausea had her jaw clenching as a watery, metallic sensation filled her throat.

  Lulu swallowed carefully and breathed slowly through her nose, willing herself not to embarrass herself in front of one of the people who would have the story of her humiliation embellished and spread to the entire senior school before class even started tomorrow morning.

  "Don't be a bitch, Cindy," Tom called her out. "You know the Scotts and the Fulfords are old family friends; their kids probably don't even get a choice."

  Lulu smiled weakly, glad of his defence.

  "Sure." Cindy waved him off. "I heard they all met up overseas during the summer. Of course, with Kimberly and James being the only two even close to the same age, it's probably inevitable that they pair off together," she finished with a sly glance Lulu's way.

  "Take no notice of her," Tom soothed, but she noticed that his smile didn't quite reach his eyes. Even worse was the hint of pity she saw there instead.

  Lulu beat a hasty retreat; at least she had an idea where she might find James now if what had been said about the cinema was true. James was a creature of habit. After the cinema, he liked to go to the smoothie bar and buy the biggest, most decadent milkshake with all the trimmings. She didn't want to think about the two straws he usually got to share. Just like she didn't want to think about whether the rest of Cindy's words were actually true. There were a lot of things she didn't want to think about right now.

  When she got to the smoothie bar, her eyes went automatically to the booth they always shared. Lulu bit her lip hard and told herself that it hadn't done a little jib when she saw James there, in their own special booth, with Kimberly, one milkshake and two straws.

  Smoothing down her long auburn hair, taking a deep breath, and filling her backbone full of determination, she headed his way, ignoring the eyes she could feel following her all the way across the room.

  Since her quiet, studious parents had drummed into her the importance of politeness and decorum, even in the face of adversity, Lulu gritted her teeth and firmed her jaw, pulling her face into an impassive mask that belied her sixteen years.

  "Good evening, Kimberly," she said pleasantly, even though she could hardly bear to look at her supposed boyfriend's 'date'.

  "James, I need to speak to you." There was the tiniest tremor in her voice, but mostly, she was pleased with her performance. The nausea, fear, and now, betrayal were all bubbling pretty close to the surface but, for the moment, at least, she had them under control.

  Embarrassment, closely followed by irritation, flitted across James's almost handsome but still boyish features.

  "I can't right now, Lulu," he evaded.

  He was giving her the brush off. Despite the overwhelming desire to turn tail, run away, and lick her wounds, Lulu stood her ground. There was more at stake here than just her own bruised feelings.

  "It's important," she pressed, noticing for the first time the discomfort and embarrassment on Kimberly's pretty face and how she squirmed under the unabashed interest from the other kids in the popular teen hangout.

  Lulu couldn't drum up very much sympathy for the other girl at the moment. Kimberly Scott was nice enough. They weren't particularly friendly, but she wasn't one of Cindy's bitchy crew. From the corner of her eye, Lulu noticed as Kimberly elbowed James in the ribs when he looked ready to settle in and ignore her.

  "You need to tell her!" she heard the other girl mutter under her breath.

  "I'm pretty sure she's already worked it out," James whispered back petulantly.

  Boy, he was weak. The realisation hit Lulu, and she acknowledged it with surprise. Funny how you thought you knew someone. How you could spend so much time with another person, share secrets and intimacies, and never notice some of their most enduring characteristics. But then, right now, she wasn't looking at James with her usual mixture of girlish pride and gullibility.

  "James!" Kimberly admonished, taking a surreptitious look around her at the show they were providing with obvious mortification.

  James made a loud harrumphing sound and glowered at her as if she was the bad guy in this scenario but he got up out of the booth and stalked toward the rear exit of the smoothie bar and headed down the nearby river path, while Kimberly gathered together her belongings and kept her head down as she rushed out of the front door and onto the street, away from the prying, accusing eyes within.

  Ignoring everyone else, Lulu followed James, ready to have it out with him, though probably not in the way that everyone inside imagined.

  The overblown angst of tragic teenage relationship calamities seemed childish and histrionic and so very far removed from where her head was right now. Suddenly, she felt displaced; timeworn, like the child she had been just a week or two ago was just a distant memory. When had she started feeling so old?

  "Look, Lulu, I know I should have said something sooner," James started. "But my father wasn't keen on us seeing so much of each other; he thought we were getting too close, so he invited Kimberly's family to holiday with us. He thinks she's a more suitable girlfriend for me—" James trailed off and, for a brief moment, had the grace to look slightly ashamed.

  Lulu just looked at him. Really looked. Had he always been this way? In her own youthful ignorance, had she really managed to simply overlook his most obvious character traits, or was it simply the process of being slammed between the eyes by an unwanted maturity, with the force of a two by four plank of wood, that made them so obvious now? Lulu wondered if James ever considered anyone else's feelings. Hers, Kimberly's, even his own? Even without her devastating suspicions, had he really imagined that she would just fade into the background and he would never have to man up and deal with her or the fallout of his actions with Kimberly?

  Yeah—weak!

  "I think I'm pregnant," she interrupted his inane babbling with something infinitely more important than the drivel he was spouting.

  James stood with his mouth agape, the colour bleeding out of his rounded, boyish face.

  "That's impossible; we only did it once!" he stammered.

  Lulu rolled her eyes. "How many times do you think it takes?" she asked, suddenly irritated by his immaturity.

  James shook his head sharply in denial, his sun bleached blond hair flopping over his forehead.

  "No! You're just saying that 'cos you're mad about Kim."

  Lulu all but growled her annoyance. "Yeah? And how do you figure I managed to come up with a scheme like that when I didn't even know about Kimberly, since you haven't had the decency to mention it?"

  James fisted his fingers into his hair. "This can't happen; my father will go berserk!" he whined.

  "James!" Lulu said sharply. "I need you to help me. I don't know what to do!" A sliver of the fear and uncertainty, flowing swiftly just beneath the surface of the calm she struggled to maintain, seeped into her voice.

  "You said you thin
k you're pregnant; maybe you're not," James dithered. "Maybe it's just your imagination. It was way back at Prom, after all," he argued. "That was months ago. June! It's September now. Shouldn't you be fat or something?" He eyed her middle in dismay but seemed to take some relief from the fact that she didn't look any different.

  "I haven't had a period, and I keep throwing up." Lulu couldn't keep the quiver out of her voice this time. Talking about it seemed to make it all the more real.

  "That's girl stuff," James blustered with embarrassment. "I don't know what any of that means, so why are you even asking me?" A hint of petulance coloured his tone.

  "I need you to help me, James. I don't know what to do!" Lulu reiterated. The quiver had turned into a judder and the words sounded broken and fragmented. Her hands shook as she clamped them to her mouth in some vain attempt to stop the tremor in her voice and, suddenly, she felt every bit as young as her sixteen tender years.

  James lashed out. "Well, I don't flippin' know!" He scowled. "Ask your mum or something. This is nothing to do with me!"

  "It's your baby!" Lulu hissed, taking hold of his hand when he would have distanced himself, the tears she'd been battling earlier finally bleeding out of the corner of her eyes and dribbling down her cheeks.

  "Says you!" James sneered nastily, pulling from her and starting to walk away. "Could be anyone's. If it even exists. You don't even know for sure!"

  Lulu bit back a sob and ran after him, grabbing his arm. "James, wait!" she implored. "Help me!"