“I’m going to head out,” he told Bill, who nodded and did his best not to look relieved. Which made Luke’s lips twitch with amusement. Bill would never tell Luke to leave, of course, but it was obvious he’d been worried Luke’s current head-in-the-clouds distraction was going to get him hurt, which wouldn’t look good for Bill. No one wanted the owner hurt at their work site.

Sighing, Luke headed out to his car. He might as well go to Marquis.

Check in on what was happening. See if anyone was there.

See how Olivia was doing this morning. Make sure nothing had disturbed the club.

Really just whatever excuse he could make up to go by there, he thought with a sigh. He might be a little weirded out by exactly how much he’d submitted to her last night. How much he’d let go of his control and what he’d enjoyed her doing to him, but he still wanted to see her. Felt almost compelled to seek her out in fact.

Too bad there weren’t any other male submissives in the class. He would have liked someone to talk to. The women were all nice and he was sure they’d be willing to listen, but would they understand? How could they? Especially when he couldn’t quite explain even to himself exactly what he was struggling with in his own head.

The knock on her door had Olivia’s heart jumping for a moment before she reminded herself it was probably just Michael, maybe someone else from down in the restaurant if they needed her for something. They were testing out recipes over the next few weeks, getting ready for both the New Year’s Eve opening party and the actual opening of the restaurant. Club members were being encouraged to start coming by for dinners as a kind of a test run—a soft open—before the official opening in a few weeks.

“Come in,” she said, keeping her eyes on her computer screen and steeling herself, telling herself she was not going to be disappointed that her visitor was not Luke.

Except apparently she didn’t need to convince herself of that at all.

“What are you doing here?” she asked before thinking, almost shocked to see him striding into her doorway the same way he had yesterday afternoon.

“Just dropping by to see what’s going on,” he said, coming in. He was wearing his jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt with his company’s logo on the left side of the chest, his hair looking shaggy and a little unkempt as if he’d had it under a hat. Sauntering to the chair he seemed to have claimed for his own, he sat down and leaned back, looking at her almost contemplatively.