TamingTara

Chapter Three

Tara sat on the pallet on the floor, staring at the pattern of stripes the hardwood created. Things hadn’t gone so well. Jason and Adam had pretty much had to come right out and tell her they wanted to do forbidden things and then be punished. It had taken her a few minutes to realize they wanted her to make them do those things, the threat of the flogger forcing Adam to take his friend’s penis in his mouth and suck it.

She sighed. Her arms and shoulders ached and her right hand burned from the friction of the flogger handle.

Once again, the flogging had been…weird. She’d concentrated on technique, but had a hard time getting past that fear that she might actually hurt them. Even though she knew that was what they wanted. A deep, aching longing had risen up inside her as she’d punished them, a disappointment, a yearning for something more than she was getting from this. When she’d watched them, it had been erotic, but this time she’d told them to leave before she tried to find the satisfaction that would ease that emptiness inside her. Although she wasn’t even really aroused.

And she knew Jason and Adam hadn’t been quite satisfied either. They shouldn’t have to direct the scene; she should be the one to do it. Normally she had no problem telling people what to do. It was what she did every day at work.

Why wasn’t this satisfying her? What did she really want? She’d been so excited to come to the club and try these things, certain this would fill the emptiness in her life, the dark yearning she felt inside her. But it didn’t seem to be working.

When the door opened, she looked up, thinking it was Adam or Jason coming back for something.

Joe.

He stepped inside, closed the door behind him and leaned against it, hot, dark eyes burning into her.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, sitting up straight.

He said nothing.

“This is a private room,” she snapped, rising to her feet. “You can’t come in here unless it’s agreed on. That’s the consensual part of ‘safe, sane, consensual’ in case you don’t remember.”

“I remember,” he said, his voice low and rough.

“Then get out!”

“No.”

She stood and glared at him, lungs tight, eyes wide. He moved toward her. Every nerve ending tingled. She took a step back, almost without realizing it. Dammit. “Joe.”

“How did it go?”

“Fine.” Her eyebrows snapped together.

“Really.” He lifted a brow. “You don’t look like you just had the best scene of your life. Or are you already crashing?”

She had no idea what he was talking about.

“It wasn’t that great, was it?” He stopped in front of her, long legs planted wide, arms folded across his impressive chest.

She pursed her lips. “It’s only my third time here. It will get better.”

“Uh-huh.” He studied her, making her feel very warm.

“I spent some time with a Master who taught me to use the flogger.”

Joe shook his head. “Maybe you need a little more…mentoring.”

She blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m an experienced Dom. If you want to learn, maybe I can help.”

Her breath stuck in her throat. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Very likely not,” he muttered, his mouth firm. “But it’s hard for me to watch someone struggle when I could help.”

“I’m not struggling! I’m fine, I’m just…new to this.”

“Here’s your first lesson,” he said, voice like velvet. He stroked a hand over the curve of her shoulder and down her arm, his hand big and warm, leaving a trail of heat in its wake. “There’s a difference between the technical skills—using a flogger—” he gave a short nod at the tool lying on the pallet. “A whip, a cane, ropes…whatever. The technical skills are important, for sure, but the psychological skills…those take much more time to develop.”

“Uh…”

“Understanding people…what they want. Knowing what they need. What they really mean. Negotiating. Communicating. Self-control.”

She nodded.

“But most important is that to be a Dominant, you have to understand yourself. You have to be in control of yourself before you can control someone else.” His fingers lingered on her wrist, over the sensitive skin where her pulse leaped. “And think about this…the best way to learn how to be a great Dominant is to experience what it’s like to be a sub. Many Doms learn that way.”

His air of authority and confidence, the sultry rasp of his voice, surrounded her like a warm blanket. She stared up at him. She took in his words, even as she felt a little irked that he was lecturing her. How did he know she didn’t know all that stuff? She could be a pro Domme for all he knew.

Well, apparently her inexperience was pretty evident. She drew in a long breath. “Thank you for all that wonderful information,” she said coldly. “But I think I’ll do just fine without your help.”

He bent and picked up her flogger, brushed it across his palm. Her eyes followed his actions. Her lips parted.

“I think I could…convince you,” he murmured.

He wouldn’t. He would not use her own flogger on her to make her give in to him. A thrill of uncertainty chased through her. She lifted her gaze to his. He smiled.

She reached for the flogger and grabbed it away from him.

“No, thank you,” she snapped.

“Suit yourself. But if you change your mind…” He gave her a wicked smile. “You know where to find me. See you Monday morning.”

Oh dear God. Now she had to face him Monday morning in a swelter of embarrassment about this. As if it wasn’t bad enough she had to deal with a stranger coming in to take over the business, he was a goddamn Dom and he’d showed up at her club.

She could have stomped her stiletto-clad foot as she watched him leave.

Joe knocked on the open door of Tara’s office Monday morning. He’d spent the entire weekend thinking about her. Not the new job. Not how he was going to learn everything he needed to know about olives, for Chrissake—just her.

Her fierce opposition to him being there. Her strong, spirited nature, her passion for the business, the surprise of seeing her at Le Château …and the hint of submission and uncertainty in her eyes.

He still couldn’t believe she’d been there. He’d been in town a few days, decided to check out the local scene and who did he run into but his new…uh…colleague. She wasn’t his boss. She was his boss’s granddaughter, which was just about as bad. It was some kind of sign, he just hadn’t figured out if it was a good one or a bad one.

She shoved back her chair and stood, and he admired again her curvy body in the little dark suit, the jacket all buttoned up and so at odds with the black painted-on latex dress she’d worn Friday night.

“Good morning. Come in.”

It was like she was a different person. This morning, she was cool, in control of herself, all efficient and polite business. He could almost think seeing her at the club all worked up and soft had been a dream.

“First we’ll go down to the store,” she told him, voice crisp. Okay. They were going to pretend Friday never happened. That could work for him. Maybe.

She strode across the room on those endless long legs and, trying to gather his wits together at the contrast between cool professionalism and hot sensuality, he followed along behind her.

The offices of Santa Ynez Olive Company were located on the second and third story of an older building on State Street in downtown Santa Barbara.

“We own this entire building.” Tara led the way down the stairs at the rear of the building. “The retail store is on the main floor and we lease space to a clothing boutique on one side and an art gallery on the other.”

He had to drag his eyes off the way her snug skirt cupped her sweetly rounded, very spankable ass as he followed her down the stairs.

The store hadn’t opened yet for the day, so the only people there were two men, one looking over some papers, the other unloading stock from a box onto a shelf.

The retail space was small, which was okay considering they sold relatively few items, all specialty items—oils, olives and some imported foods like capers, roasted peppers and vinegars. A baker’s rack held loaves of breads and the tantalizing, yeasty aroma filled his nostrils and reminded him of home.

“The bread is delivered every morning from a local bakery.”

Joe picked up a bottle of olive oil in a dark, etched glass bottle that looked handcrafted, the bottle itself a work of art. It was a one-liter bottle of oil and the price on it said fifty dollars. Holy shit!

Apparently seeing the look of astonishment on his face, Tara grinned.

Her smile sucked the air out of his lungs.

It was the first time he’d seen her smile, really smile, and holy crap, she was fucking gorgeous. Her smile lit up her face, lit up the whole room, and he realized to his dismay that he was standing there staring open-mouthed at her, the expensive oil in his hands forgotten, his gaze riveted to her.

He snapped his mouth shut.

“It’s totally worth it,” she said, still smiling. “You can try some later. Out at the ranch. We’ll do a tasting and you can have a lesson in olive oil.”

He nodded and carefully set the bottle back on the shelf.

The tastefully decorated shop catered to an upscale, “foodie” clientele. Was that Tara’s doing? All the packaging was artistic and classy and seemed to fit with her vision for the business.

“How has the recession affected sales of this kind of luxury item?” Joe asked.

“It hasn’t. These kinds of items seem to be recession proof. The people who can afford to buy them can still afford to buy them. But good question.” The words almost seemed to be pulled out of her reluctantly.

Tara introduced him to Jack Berns, who was stocking the shelf. The young man greeted him with a friendly smile, stood up and shook hands before resuming his work. Then she introduced him to Jose de la Cruz, the manager of the store.

“I wanted to talk to Jose before I met with the web designers,” she told Joe. “He has some ideas too about marketing.”

They followed Jose into his small office at the rear of the store. Jose was older than Tara. Did he subscribe to her innovative ideas or was he old-school like Tyrone?

It didn’t take much time listening to Jose and Tara to realize Tara had the man completely under her control. If Jose had ever had a different thought, he now deferred to her on everything. Interesting. She was obviously very strong willed, but once again, some of the things she said raised questions for him. Or maybe it was the things she wasn’t talking about that got his spidey-senses tingling.

How did she know what kind of sales figures she could expect from putting all their products on the internet? What was her plan for the inventory they would need to carry to fill online orders? This space was clearly too small for what she had in mind. He was curious about her research, her business plan. He made mental notes, grateful for his near-photographic memory.

After an hour talking to Jose, they went back upstairs, where her first website developer was waiting outside her office. Joe had to grit his teeth when Tara didn’t bother to introduce him.

Two hours later, his head was spinning only a little. Thankfully, he knew enough about target markets, niche markets, product, pricing, promotion and distribution that it didn’t really matter that he knew next to nothing about olives.

“It’s a lot to think about,” Tara said afterward. “Back-end databases and shopping cart systems. Technical support. Programming languages. God, I don’t know anything about Basic HTML or JAVA.”

“How many providers will you be talking to?” Joe asked her.

She looked at him. “Those are the first two. Paige is setting up meetings with two more. Why?”

He shrugged. “Two isn’t enough. Their prices are wildly different and so are their ideas.”

Her hands stilled on her keyboard. “I think Imagemakers, the first group, are the ones I’d like to go with.”

“Why is that?”

She was silent for a moment, watching him. Her intense, sparkling eyes raised his body temp a few degrees, but he kept his mind firmly on business.

“They get me,” she finally said.

He almost snorted. “What the hell does that mean?”

She frowned. “They get me. They get my ideas. They know where I’m going.”

Now he did laugh. “You’ve met with two groups. Imagemakers was double the price of the other one and you want to go with them because ‘they get you’?” He shook his head in amusement. “Have you got a project plan for this?”

She frowned. “No.”

Oh man. He sighed. “Just because you have one retail outlet doesn’t mean setting up to do business on the net is going to be easy,” he told her bluntly. “You need your entire information technology team involved in this project.”

“We contract out our IT services.”

“Fine.” He shrugged. “You still need to involve them. And where’s your market research and analysis?”

She stared back at him, eyes wide, lips rolled in.

“You have done market research?”

“Um…”

He sighed. “Sweetheart, designing the website is such a tiny part of this whole thing. You need a business model. You need to do more research. You need to think about distribution channels, warehousing, inventory control…”

She scowled. “Do. Not. Call. Me. Sweetheart.” The words squeezed out between her clenched teeth. “And do not tell me what to do.”

Whoa. Heat surged through his veins. She had no idea how those words inflamed him. Challenged him. Urged him to not just tell her what to do, but to make her do it… More inappropriate images flashed through his mind, sizzling hot ones of Tara restrained and helpless with no choice but to do exactly what he wanted.

He shook his head. He had to focus on the business challenge here, not the challenge of dominating a hot little spitfire.

He could only imagine the kind of trouble she could get herself—and the company—into if she just plunged into this blindly. For him, though…wow. He was figuratively rubbing his hands together, raring to go, ready to dig into the challenge and get to work.

“We’ll grab some lunch before we head up to the ranch,” she told him, back to being Mistress of Ice. “I’ll get Paige to go pick up some sandwiches for us. What would you like?”

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

She left the office and returned a few moments later, dropping into her chair behind her desk. “I need to check my voice mail.” She picked up the phone. He watched her as she pressed buttons, listened and scribbled notes on a pad of paper on her desk, quick and efficient. Finally, she hung up.

“I have two calls I need to return, but I’ll do that on the drive to Santa Ynez.” She started typing on her computer keyboard. “I want to make some notes of my meetings.” And she proceeded to ignore him.

He sat there for a few moments, then started tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. She shot him a glance at one point, then frowned and refocused on her computer screen.

She was doing it on purpose. Making him feel insignificant, useless, in the way. He recognized it because he knew just how to play that game. But as the saying went, two could play. And patience and self-control were only a couple of the things he’d learned from playing that game.

She was obviously pissed off he’d dared to question her business planning. Or lack of business planning, he should say. And if he thought she’d been icy Friday afternoon, that was nothing compared to now. Probably their little encounter at Le Château had increased her annoyance. The thought amused him.

Paige knocked on the door of the office, then walked in with a paper bag in her hands.

Joe regarded the new secretary he shared with Tara with interest. Her black and purple hair stood in spikes, a ring pierced one eyebrow and thick black makeup ringed her eyes. She was tiny, maybe five foot one, wore heavy black combat boots and a short black skirt with a striped T-shirt.

“Here’s your lunch,” she said. She set the bag on Tara’s desk. “There are three kinds of sandwiches, some coleslaw, napkins and forks in the bag. Do you want me to make some coffee?”

“Yes please,” Tara said immediately. Joe smiled at Paige and got his more familiar interested smile in return, a stark contrast to the icy response he was getting from Tara. Paige was young, looked like she was just out of high school, and despite the raccoon eyes, she was kind of cute. He looked down at his suit. He’d definitely gotten the impression from what he’d seen so far that he was overdressed. Whatever. Better to overdress the first day on the job.

Tara opened the bag and pulled out the food, spreading it across her desk. He slid his chair closer and selected a thick sandwich that turned out to be roast beef. Excellent. It was delicious and he was starving.

Tara ate half a tuna sandwich and he devoured the roast beef, piled thickly on squishy fresh bread. The tang of horseradish nipped his tongue. Then he ate the pastrami and the other half of her tuna when she had pushed it away. The coleslaw was really good too, some kind of Asian creation with crunchy noodles, sunflower seeds and a tangy dressing made with soy and sesame oil.

Tara watched him finish off the coleslaw, one eyebrow raised. “You have a big appetite.”

He grinned. “Oh yeah. For many things.”