she feel she should bow down before him? Lord, he intimidated her.
“I’m Damián Orlando, one of the owners of the club. Just call me Master Damián.”
Her hand shook as she adjusted the microphone to her height. Master Damián? What had she gotten herself into this time?
“Nice to meet you, sir.”
He smiled as if satisfied with her response. Why did the thought of pleasing him seem so important to her? “Begin whenever you’re ready.”
She walked over to the sound equipment and queued up her music. When she returned to the mic, his intense gaze sent butterflies into frenzied flight inside her stomach. Shoot! She missed her queue.
“I’m sorry. May I start over?”
“Certainly.”
Come on, Karla. You need this job. Don’t blow it.
She went back to the CD player to start Track One again. Deep breath. She ran her clammy hands against the brocade dress covering her thighs, then returned to the microphone center stage. Unable to sing while he stared at her with that all-consuming gaze, she closed her eyes and felt the music flow through her.
For you, Ian. She almost felt as if Ian was watching over her. Not the sadist club owner in front of her, but her brother.
Then she sang Tarja’s I Walk Alone, as if she really could bring Ian back.
* * *
Adam closed the checkbook and crossed to his filing cabinet to lock it away. Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing blared from the speakers. He’d been trying to drown out the noise from the auditions, but that song put him even more on edge. Damn. One of Joni’s favorites. She’d play it almost every night he was home on leave.
They said time would heal the pain of her loss. Nine years had only managed to dull it. Rather than the sharp knife point he used to feel jabbing into his heart, the pain now felt more like his heart being squeezed in a vise.
God, I still miss you, Joni.
A particularly discordant note from the latest audition brought him back to the present. He hoped he hadn’t made a big mistake with this whole live music thing. He’d barely been able to hear himself think while trying to concentrate on his bookwork. How the hell would he be able to focus on his sub during Dom/sub demonstrations with that racket in the background?
Of course, there were the private rooms, but he liked to do demonstrations in the great room for some of the newer Doms. He usually worked with Grant as his sub. She’d shown up at the club six months ago, after hearing about it from Damián. She usually topped submissive women and men—but she liked to switch things up with her former master sergeant. Unfortunately, she wasn’t submissive so much as subordinate. Not the same as what he’d shared with Joni, but he didn’t expect to find that kind of woman again.
Now that his accounting was done and the bills paid for another week, he opened the door to his office and went back to the desk to check his e-mail account. If anyone had told him while he was in the Corps he’d become a keyboard jockey in retirement, at his laptop several times a day to keep his business records up to date or to cruise the Internet, he’d have shot them for a fool.
During a lull between his classic-rock station’s tunes, new music wafted through the door from one of the acts auditioning in the bar. Nice. A woman’s voice. He actually understood the words. For some odd reason, thoughts of Karla Paxton came to mind. He still pictured her as a pink-haired Goth, although she’d sworn to him in her letters that had just been a rebellious teenage phase.
Karla had written to him as promised since he’d said goodbye to her at the airport that Thanksgiving weekend. She’d often send something she’d made, including the most incredible chocolate-peanut butter brownies he’d ever eaten. He felt guilty, as though that thought was disloyal to Joni. She’d never been too interested in cooking or baking.
Then, during Karla’s senior year in high school, he’d received an MP3 player with a few songs saved on it that she’d recorded. Nearly every night in Fallujah, he’d lain awake in his rack and listened to her sweet voice through his earphones. She’d kept him sane, especially after the disaster there, reminding him there still was innocence and beauty left in this fucked-up world. Somewhere.
He’d been so proud of her when she went on to complete