Although none of them could know exactly what was going on, they were all observant enough to get the gist. A similar smile to her own appeared on Kincaid’s face, obviously already anticipating what she was going to do.

2

Listening to Patrick and Michael had been a bad idea.

Luke couldn’t blame them entirely though; he’d also wanted to see Olivia’s face when he’d joined in the submissives class. Ultimately, it hadn’t been quite as much fun as he’d thought it would be. Her jaw had almost dropped, her expression had been full of shock and—he thought—a bit of desire, but then she’d gotten pissed.

Not in the way that turned him on either.

There was a difference between when he was annoying her and when she was actually angry, and he’d just felt it. He hadn’t known before. Ignorance didn’t stop him from feeling both guilty and a bit miserable about upsetting her. Patrick and Michael hadn’t seemed too bothered by it, but then neither of them would be.

Internally sighing as he headed over to the table of rather attractive women, all looking to be in their late twenties, Luke decided he was going to find a way to make it up to her.

“Hello,” said the blonde as he approached. She eyed him speculatively. All of the women looked a little confused, and he wondered how much they’d been able to hear of the conversation across the room and how much they understood of it. “So, you’re the last submissive?”

“Yes,” he said, sliding into the booth on the end. The women had all huddled together enough that there was plenty of space on both ends. The woman to his left was very slight and petite, reminding him of Lexie’s build, but where he would call Lexie an imp or a pixie, this woman looked more like a little fairy. Give her a pair of wings and he could see her fluttering around pollinating flowers or something. Her riot of short blondish brown curls shook as she tilted her head to study him with gray-blue eyes. He smiled at her. “I’m Luke.”

“Samantha,” said the blonde, with a warm smile. Luke did his best to hide his reaction to her name. At least she didn’t look anything like his dark-haired ex. Fortunately, the redhead next to her was already speaking up, so he didn’t think Samantha saw him cringe.

“You don’t look like a submissive,” said the redhead, who was stunning but didn’t appeal to him in the same way Olivia did. She eyed him speculatively, blatantly checking him out.

“Um...” he didn’t know how to respond to that.