Chapter Two

Alex

The club took up more of my time than I had expected. When we planned the whole thing, we thought with several of us we could handle everything without losing time from our other responsibilities. After all, we were all successful in our various fields and had earned our time away for a pet project.

Talon, who took on the job of staffing, moved his business to the premises. As an investor, he could work from anywhere, and he and his new omega/sub were on the premises the most. A little less since his omega gave birth to their child, but it was helpful to have one of us here so much of the time.

My job in our partnership was a lot like the one I had in the military where I had been the officer in charge of a big distribution warehouse. Actually I guessed that put me on the other side of things, but it did give me knowledge of what was going on at our suppliers’ facilities. In my previous life, I’d had to determine what to keep in stock in order to meet the needs of our “customers,” who were various military facilities in a widespread area. I had to know how much peanut butter might be needed to ship out or bread or beans or beef. In the remote area where we were located—a place I was still not allowed to tell people about—we were responsible for a wide variety of items, and they weren’t always easy to get.

So when a supplier tried to tell me it was “impossible” to get wild mushrooms or that there was an embargo preventing caviar from crossing the ocean, I knew better, and I had connections. One of my former NCOs was even now planning to open a company who would be getting as much of my business as I could throw him, but that would be in a year or two.

Until then, I had to put up with what was available, and our chef partner Xerxes had very specific desires for the kitchen. We hadn’t even planned to serve food beyond maybe a bar nibble or two when we opened the place. But Xerxes, who owned a number of restaurants across the country and had appeared on TV as a celebrity chef, insisted that this element of our operation should be as special as any other.

But making the menus and making them make sense for a kink-focused club were not my jobs. No, I took on making sure we had all the ingredients as well as paper products, cleaning items, and just about anything else that would be bought for the running of the club. All but the dungeon furniture and similar—we had a partner in charge of that.

I came directly after leaving my day job office, wanting to go over some invoices. Our primary supplier had made some “goofs” lately in the totals—none of which were in our favor. Maybe I should consider investing in Sgt. Keen’s business venture as a silent partner. It would speed things up and take some of the annoyance from my life. It would help him as well.

Plus, the idea of going back into my old type of workdays too sounded kind of good. As a CPA, I dealt with numbers day and night and sometimes I missed working with more tangible items. Who said my investment had to be silent?

Worth considering.

I struck out some ridiculous numbers on a final invoice and sent off a request for a correction. I definitely needed to help my sergeant get things going. So, I sent an email to him, too, requesting a meeting at his earliest convenience.

With all of that done, I left my office and set out to enjoy the club I had gone to so much time and effort to help create. Sometimes it seemed like my partners and I spent all our hours here working with no chance to play. I would have to consider how my ideas on improving our supply chain would also streamline my work.

Out on the main floor, things were humming. Even though we had the biggest array of dungeon furniture and apparatus of any club on our side of the country, so far as our research showed, every station was in use with sign-up sheets for the rest of the evening filled. It was great, a real sign of our success, but it meant that I would not be able to visit my favorite even if I did have a sub in mind.

Sometimes it felt like we were doing too well…if that were possible.

“Hey, come over here.” Talon sat at the bar with a golden pilsner in front of him. “You’ve got to try this.”

Talon preferred something more sophisticated usually. “Since when did you become a beer fan?” I accepted the glass the bartender set in front of me. “What is this?”

“New local brewery. Very popular. Give it a try.”

“All right.” I also was more likely to have a single malt than a beer—except maybe while watching baseball in person. I held it up to the light behind the bar. “Nice color and a good head.” Inhaling, I nodded. “Faint hint of floral note.”

“Just drink it.” Samuel, the bar manager rolled his eyes. “It’s beer, not an aged wine from a French cave.”

“Cave?” I chuckled but obeyed, holding the fizzy liquid in my mouth before swallowing. “This is effing amazing.”

“That’s what I was saying.”

We ate and drank a couple of beers each, talking about this and that and nothing, before his phone went off, and he looked at the screen, a smile brightening his whole face.

“Your mate?” As if I had to ask.

“He wants me to bring home milk. Which is code for ‘how much longer are you out’?”

“After your fire display with him, it’s hard to believe he’s at home tonight with a baby.”

“He doesn’t like to get a sitter too often.” He stood and stretched out his back. “Duty calls.”

And the fire dom left, whistling. I never thought I’d see the day.

“Makes having a mate sound pretty good, doesn’t it?” Samuel asked, also watching Talon walk away.

“What?” I blinked. “No, I mean sure, but fateds are hard to find.”

“Yeah.”