Hard to Serve: A Hard Ink Novella Read Free Page A

one hundred percent.
    Next to one of the keyboards, Isaac’s cell beeped an incoming text. The man picked it up, smiled, and replied.
    “How’s Willow?” Kyler asked, recognizing the happy expression on Isaac’s dark brown face.
    Isaac nodded, still wearing a smile. “She’s good. She keeps saying she’s as big as a house, but there’s nothing like seeing your woman’s belly grow with your child.”
    “Two more months?” Kyler asked, the reverence of the other man’s tone getting under his skin, just a little. Not because he wanted Willow for himself, but because at thirty-five, Kyler already knew he’d never have any of what Isaac and Willow had. He couldn’t. Being married hadn’t worked out well for either his father or grandfather. The force was a jealous fucking mistress. It put a shit-ton of stress on a spouse’s shoulders and therefore on the relationship itself. He’d rather forego the heartache and stick with the eventual aloneness that seemed the curse of all the Vance men.
    That was why Kyler had his rules. Never get attached. Share and seek out only that personal information needed to determine a sub’s needs, interests, and limits. Stop playing with a submissive showing signs of attachment. Never play outside the club. Never take a submissive home.
    “Yup. It’s gonna be interesting, adapting all this to the reality of a child,” Isaac said, waving a hand to indicate the club, the lifestyle, maybe even life itself.
    “No doubt,” Kyler said. “You’ll manage, though.”
    “Always do,” Isaac said, scrubbing a hand over his close-cropped black hair. Suddenly, he sat forward and zoomed one of the cameras in on the registration area. “Looks like we got a new subbie.”
    Kyler’s gaze followed Isaac’s to the image of a woman sitting bolt upright on the edge of the chair in front of the registration desk, her ankles crossed, her hands folded in her lap. Long, straight, dark brown hair hung all the way down her back from a high ponytail. Master Griffin was no doubt walking her through the rules and procedures, verifying her hard and soft limits, and preparing the wrist cuffs that all the unattached submissives wore to indicate what kind of play in which they were or were not willing to engage.
    Heat shot through Kyler’s blood in anticipation of seeing what color kink ribbons would adorn her cuffs, heat that surged as Griffin added more and more colors to those cuffs. Kyler also liked what he didn’t see. No white ribbon, which meant the person literally had no limits—often a sign of the sub not knowing what their limits were. No dark blue, which stood for heavy or intense sadism and masochism. Maybe it was because he’d dedicated his life to protecting and serving, but Kyler just wasn’t into hard-core S&M. Never had been. There was also no brown, which meant she wasn’t into pony or animal play. And she wore no orange ribbon, which stood for anal sex. Kyler wondered if that was a hard or soft limit. The only color she wore that gave him any pause was the purple ribbon, which indicated that the club’s newest submissive enjoyed breath play.
    Kyler’s heart kicked into a sprint as his gaze latched onto that purple ribbon. Breath play was some of the riskiest edge play out there—neither safe nor sane in the hands of an inexperienced Dom. Personally, he got off on it because he loved the way it could heighten a submissive’s reaction, but he was not only an experienced Dom, but experienced in martial arts training, which taught safe choke and strangle-holds.
    Text scrolled on the monitor listing the players out on Blasphemy’s floor. A new name popped up: Mia (unattached submissive) . Given all of their private rooms and hidden nooks where people could play, keeping an accurate head count was a critical part of their operations.
    First names were all most of the Masters got to know about the identity of their members, besides what the players decided to share or reveal about