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  She kissed both cheeks and his nose, their usual good-night, and flipped off his lamp.

  “Hey, Mommy,” he said, his small voice nervous again.

  Turning in the doorway, she tried not to let her irritation sound in her voice. She had another several hours’ worth of work to do for her other job still. “What is it, baby?”

  “When I laid on my bed after my bath, my penis stuck right up in the air! And it kinda felt funny, like a tickle right on the end, even after I kept touching it.”

  “Oh,” she said, her face heating up. “Well, that’s normal.” Making a mental note to consult her How to Raise a Boy to a Man and Not Lose Your Mind, or whatever title of the latest son-raising manual. “That’s okay.”

  “I know. I was just telling you. G’night.”

  “Good night.” She stumbled out the room laughing until tears ran down her face. When the laughter became sobbing, she let it take her. Can’t keep all that inside, after all. Then she poured a glass of wine and pulled out her laptop to read the latest reports form Lance and the girls—Katrina’s was the name of her new company, a high-end, secret, and exclusive service for subs of all genders. She had the men and the women to provide them what they wanted.

  Between her and Lance, they’d made nearly a million dollars profit the year before. She sipped and studied the numbers for the quarter, her tears drying. After a couple of hours of budgeting, working on schedules for the following two weeks based on the high demand for her employees’ services, she rubbed her face and leaned back.

  The dark, purple evening deepened into full night, as it always did. A new day would dawn soon. Like usual. Her life, the one she had hastily constructed for herself and her son out of the ashes of yet another huge relationship disaster, advanced inexorably. She remained a tenant among homeowners on her quiet, tree-lined street, but she didn’t care. The family-centric vibe of the street soothed her. But at quiet moments like this, memories of Brody came at her, incessant and relentless. She gave in to them and cried a bit more before crawling under the covers, no need to set a mechanical alarm because, despite the fact the next day was Saturday, her own little boy-shaped wake-up call would come at six a.m. without fail.

  Chapter Four

  “Harder! C’mon baby, fuck Amber like you mean it….”

  Brody watched his cock, slick, wet, pounding in and out of the girl’s body. He liked this moment, the almost money shot. It fueled a fresh shot of lusty adrenaline down his spine, just when boredom threatened. Amber must have sensed it and ramped up the nasty talk on purpose. His fingers dug into the spare flesh of her hips.

  “Spank Amber’s ass, Brody. What are you waiting for? Act like a man! I’ve been very bad!” She whipped her head around, glared up at him as if he were failing.

  That pissed him the fuck off. He observed, as if watching someone else, as his hand rose. He felt the stinging smack against his palm, again and again…he owned the brief moment of power it allowed him as Amber shrieked and arched her back giving him an ever deeper angle inside her.

  He reached up and grabbed her hair, tugged, using it as reins, and rode the bitch, no longer hearing her or feeling much of anything. The air whooshed over his vocal cords and his mouth opened wide. Blinded momentarily, he shivered, let go of her hair, and stepped away from her.

  She’d declared his habit of disconnecting within seconds of orgasm as weird, but cute. He viewed it more like a necessity, a survival mechanism. He had to get away from her, from any woman he’d fucked, or the nearly overwhelming urge he always got to hold them close, kiss them, beg them like a little kid to never leave him alone—because that sort of neediness made him feel weird. He fought it by pulling his sometimes still-climaxing dick out of whatever pussy he’d been fucking, Amber’s, or one of her skinny, accommodating friends, standing still until that part of his anatomy finished.

  He stumbled backward, suddenly dizzy. Amber’s ass shone beet red. His hand stung. A sudden rush of shame punched an iron fist into his gut. “S-s-s-sorry,” he stuttered, fascinated as her still-visible sex continued to pulse, slick and wet, and at that moment the last thing he wanted to look at.

  “Mmmm….” she purred, and flopped down on the bed onto her side, curling around a pillow. “Amber liked that, baby. Go get your shower. I know you want to.”

  He blinked. “Why do you do that?” he blurted, feeling like someone else had asked the question.

  “Do what?” She rolled onto her back and stretched. Her firm tits hardly moved.

  An absolute shark of an agent—she was savvy and possessed as cutthroat as any man in the business. People both respected and feared her. He shook his head, recalling their first meeting when she’d picked him up at a bar, literally, yanking him into a back hallway and blowing him like a pro while he stood there, palms pressed against the cold, concrete block wall, high as a fucking kite, and let her do it.

  It had been a turning point for him, and one he should likely thank her for initiating. Nearly a year’s worth of hard partying, harder playing, winning games like a champ, and fucking every pussy in a twenty-mile radius had landed him at some nightclub, somewhere, damned if he remembered where. And Amber had appeared in his life, her green eyes shining, her barely-there dress pulling his X-addled body like a magnet.

  Now, sick of her and her bullshit, he had no idea how to cut her loose. He allowed this little truth—that his terror at what would happen to him if she did leave, kept him from kicking her to the curb.

  “Talk about yourself as if you were someone else…you know….” He cast around for the phrase, last heard in college Freshman English class. “Third-person-like.”

  She giggled and got up on all fours, her lips wet and inviting, her hair hanging down over her face. “What are you talking about? Now go get your shower, Brody. Or Amber is gonna jump that cock again,” She glanced at the body part in question. So did he. His cock did indeed appear jumpable still. He touched it, pondering a second go-round. But with the realization that he did not feel his own palm on his most sensitive flesh and that his vision had gotten a little fuzzy, he scoffed, and headed for the shower instead.

  Amazing what the human brain would tolerate. He had become so completely detached from anything he did that didn’t involve playing, practicing, or staying in shape for his sport, he thought he might be going legitimately insane. Shaking under the pounding streams of hot water, he warded off yet another onslaught of scary memories. If he were not pushing his body to its limits for soccer, or fucking some girl, he had no control over what sort of freakish journey down mysterious memory lane his brain would take him.

  Today’s trip included yet more of the redhead, the teacher in the tight dress, with the long hair, as if she stood right outside the shower door, dressed from head to toe in leather, including a mask. She had a whip in her hand. He flinched at its sting and bite. His cock stayed hard, loving the pain, but his brain headed into meltdown, begging her to stop, to let him be, to let him just…hold her. Then came a room, dark, but for a candle, a cross, cuffs, and pain all over. He had on nipple clamps, a cock ring, while she poured wax near his scrotum, teasing him, calling him names, telling him not to be such a pussy, to man up and take it. Because she, his Mistress, had to get off—which was his only job, if he were up to it, of course.

  Then, white noise, silence arose, as if the pain had spilled into another realm. He stared unseeing at the tile wall as her face appeared—the cunt with the red hair and leather. She straddled his hips, riding his cock like a pony, using him, coming again and again while pinching his nipples hard to teach him how to deny his own natural release. And he had no pain, no pleasure. He just…existed, for her to use.

  “Goddamn it!” He pounded the wall, willing her away from him. Her constant teasing did nothing but infuriate him for taking it for so long. Because she had dumped him like a prom date with herpes. He remembered it clear as day, now. It had dropped into his stupid brain like some kind of sick slide show—full color, ful
l pain, full emotion.

  He saw her when she looked up from her phone screen. Watched her gaze narrow as her nasty wheels turned. Go, she’d blurted, out of the blue. He’d groveled, begged, sniveled like the pussy she’d converted him into, but she would not listen because her job had been in jeopardy. So he had to go.

  “Fuck you, bitch!” he yelled, loud, purging her. And she vanished into the gaping maw of his murky non-memory. He got out of the shower, dried off, and dressed. Amber sat in front of the TV in his robe. He glared at her. “I’m going to that club, downtown, The Suite. You can come if you want, but I need to try…something. To see if it helps me remember.”

  “Oh, baby.” She jumped up and wrapped herself around him, cooing in his ear, drawing him down onto the couch with her. “You do whatever you want to do. I’ve heard good things about that place. Kyle Summerlin, you know, the former NFL star, owns it.” She pulled his head to her breasts, stroking his hair.

  His cock stirred again as the evil, mysterious, redheaded, torturous cunt lurked around a corner, giggling and waiting for him to let his guard down. “Yeah,” he muttered, staring into Amber’s hard-angled face. She claimed to be helping him. But something told him he got the raw end of that deal. Growling, he flipped and had her pinned under him, smiling as she squirmed and pretended to try and escape. He unzipped his jeans and shoved into her with a grunt, shutting out everything but raw physical sensation. So he could screw himself dry, raw, and empty of memory.

  “Yeah, baby, that’s more like it,” she said.

  After the second time around with Amber, he slept like the dead, but for a brief image of a different woman this time. Sophie Harrison, the legal lady he’d desk-fucked that one time and spent the next three days trying to get over the urge to go back to her again—and in his dream her blue eyes had no more anger, only deep relief.

  Chapter Five

  “I’m worried about Vaughn,” Jack said, halfway through their usual Wednesday lunch and beer meeting.

  She frowned over her glasses at him and kept quiet, hoping he’d get the message that the Robert J. Vaughn topic remained forbidden, outside of trade discussions that were heating up in a big way. Thanks in no small part to the huge hero he’d been in their sixth season, diving and leaping and rolling and making the kinds of saves seen at the highest possible level of play. Well that, and the grasping greediness of his agent, Amber London.

  “Whatever,” she said.

  “He looks bad. His seems…I don’t know…haunted or something. He’s working out like a mad man, like he’s obsessed. I’d worry about HGH if I didn’t have them tested regularly.” He sipped his beer.

  She forced her heartbeat to calm. Brody’s health or the possibility of doping did not concern her. She had her own issues, plus a strange sort of date tonight, at a well-known BDSM club to do some clandestine investigation of how they ran their operations—and to scope out possible new employees. She had lost one of her best males, his fiancée not keen on him continuing after marriage. And one of her very first female employees, a hot-as-shit, fifty-year-old woman who passed for thirty, had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was stressful as all get out. She had Katrina’s booked well into the next quarter and couldn’t afford to lose steam along the underground BDSM insider network by canceling appointments.

  “Yo, earth to Sophie.” Jack snapped his fingers under her nose. “He’s not…I don’t know, himself? I know that’s stupid to say considering that he’s not…and hasn’t been for years now. But now this new guy seems to be slipping some, like he’s just off center, taking crazy chances in goal, getting directly in the line of fire on purpose. Like a death wish to go with his head injury. I still cannot believe they cleared him to play.”

  She sighed and finished her beer. “Jack, I’m sorry to hear that, but it’s really not my concern.” Her voice sounded way more confident about that fact than she felt. “And as for that, he cleared himself, remember?”

  “I know.” Jack ran a hand around the back of his neck, blew out a breath, then picked up his weekly briefing sheet from her, resuming the discussion, leaving the delicate topic of Brody Vaughn behind.

  ****

  She got home early on purpose, wanting to have some Sam time before she headed out for a very late night. Jen had taken him to his afternoon playgroup, and planned to hang around for dinner and stay over.

  “So you can, you know, have a real date.” She waggled her eyebrows at Sophie, who blushed.

  “Oh yeah, well. Maybe,” she said, as casually as possible.

  She and Sam had a brisk game of tag out back then he settled down with a puzzle, the only indoor activity that kept him still for longer than about thirty minutes. His cat wound around his ankles, and he tugged the animal up onto his lap clutching it while he studied the twelve pieces in front of him. So serious and focused, he thrilled and alarmed her both. He would not get up from the table until the thing got done, but he’d mastered the pre-school puzzles in no time so she’d moved him up a level last week. Of course, if he didn’t get it, he had been known to tip the coffee table with a cry of frustration and stomp to his room, slamming the door like a teenager.

  She watched him a while, his brow furrowed as he moved the pieces around, studying them. After a few minutes, she walked into the kitchen and hit a preset number on her cell recalling that she wanted to do some research after Jack’s comments earlier in the day.

  “Hey woman. What’s shaking?” The sound of her friend on the phone brought a smile to her face.

  “Hey, uh, I have another question…about concussion and head trauma?” Her voice rose at the end. She hated the sound of it. The other woman responded briskly, telling her what she wanted to know.

  Sophie had had exactly five close female friends in her life, including this latest one, but she’d never been more grateful for her. She met Susan when she’d shown up at her obstetrician’s office, distraught, crying, hopeless for her future with the man who’d gone under the knife one person, and awakened from surgery someone else—someone with no idea that he loved her. She demanded the abortion then, on the spot, would pay them as much as they wanted.

  Susan, a nurse, had calmed her down, then held both her hands. “Tell me what happened,” she had said, in her soft, no nonsense voice.

  And Sophie, always keen to guard her privacy, had spilled it, blurting out the whole stupid mess from start to finish, blubbering and sniffling and drippy. Susan handed her tissue after tissue, nodded her head at the right moments using appropriate sounds of shock and dismay at the right times during her stuttering narrative.

  When she’d finished with that last horrible moment on the desk, when she’d let Brody fuck her like some kind of horny office slut, Susan had stayed quiet. Finally she’d stood, crossed her arms over an ample chest, and said the oddest thing. “You sound like the sort of woman who would make a great mother to me.”

  Sophie had stared at her, shocked. “I’m not…I don’t know anything about…I mean. You don’t even know me.” She had touched tiny bump under her skirt without thinking.

  Susan had simply nodded, helped her to her feet, and guided her out with a sheet of prenatal instructions. By the time Sophie got home, still coming to terms with what she’d just copped to—that she wanted her baby so badly she already felt the warm bundle in her arms, she thought taking this crazy step might just be the thing that could transform her into something she wanted to be.

  Her phone had rung while she sat in the car that day, staring at her small house. It had been Susan, checking on her already. They’d been fast friends since, and Susan had actually been the one to deliver Sam thanks to his eagerness to meet the world, not giving her time to even get to the hospital. She’d been in labor without realizing it for half a day before heading to her regular weekly check-up with a heavy sensation in her lower half and twinges in her back.

  “Jesus, woman, you’re nearly fully dilated!” Susan had chirped, and within an hour Sam existed in her a
rms thanks to the quick action of her friend and the young obstetrician who’d guided her through the pregnancy.

  She’d picked Susan’s brain over the concussion thing, too. Which helped her feel more centered about it. Brody had undergone severe head trauma and very likely the surgeon saved his life but cost him his memory at the same time.

  “The brain is the most mysterious organ in the universe still,” Susan would say over wine while Sam played with her young daughter, an adorable little girl with Down’s Syndrome who Susan and her doctor-husband had adopted a year before Sam’s birth. “Well, after the heart, that is. The one that makes us do stupid shit, not the one that pumps the blood.”

  Tonight, Sophie, pondered what her friend had said. Brody would, without a doubt, be susceptible to all sorts of maladies: seizure disorder, psychological breaks, muscle tremors, pretty much anything. When he’d been told this, he’d jumped back into the goal, eager to return to his life, claiming if he were going to crap out eventually over it anyway, he would go down doing the one thing he loved.

  The likelihood of his ever recovering all of his memory remained nil. She wanted to help him. She’d given up on being anything to him other than the legal lady, however, and wouldn’t reverse direction. Or she might never recover her heart.

  After a quick shower, she checked her email again for the confirmation to visit The Suite, one of the more upscale BDSM clubs in the area. Frowning at Lance’s latest missive, Hire More People!! as the subject line, she studied the tasteful, totally anonymous message she’d received when she clicked through their website to request to attend in a mask. She bit her fingernail, a flutter of doubt-filled second-guessing nearly forcing her to cancel the whole thing.

  She had attended Kyle’s club before. In a life that seemed so utterly removed from her current one, it was as if she, Sophie, lived as an amnesiac, completely detached from her former self. Like Brody lived, in a strange limbo of the before and after for those around him, but for him, only the now.