Red Handed(44)

“Sir Logan,” Cassandra said. “This is Danielle. She’s a new trainee.”

He smiled and offered his free hand, a beige loop of rope in his other. “Nice to officially meet you, Danielle. What can I do for you?”

Logan’s face lit up from his smile, light laugh lines appearing at the corners of his lips, but his eyes remained intensely serious. Too serious for someone so young. With brown hair worn in a buzz cut, he towered over her five-foot-seven-inch frame, and his simple white wife beater enhanced his firm, lean physique. But despite his attractiveness, her heart didn’t thump any faster.

Sedona slid her arm around Danielle’s waist. “As part of her training, she needs to practice the skill of negotiating a scene, and we thought you’d be able to help.”

“Just negotiate?” He stepped closer. “Or will I get the privilege of playing with you as well?”

She averted her eyes and checked out the floor instead. “I’m not sure. I haven’t . . . that is . . . Master Cole has been present for my previous scenes, and I’m not sure how I feel doing one without him.”

He gently tipped up her chin with two of his fingers, forcing her to look at him. “Do you have permission to do a scene?”

“Sir Logan, you know she can scene so long as she has a dungeon monitor’s approval, and since you are a dungeon monitor, she doesn’t have to worry,” Cassandra said.

“I’ll tell you what,” Logan said softly as if he and Danielle were the only two people in the room, “why don’t we just talk and see where it goes?”

“Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Cassandra said.

Sedona grabbed Cassandra by the arm and yanked her away, both of them in hysterics. “Come with me, slut.”

Logan dropped his fingers and stepped back, keeping his gaze locked on her.

Danielle waited until the women were out of earshot. “May I ask you a question, Sir?”

“Of course. I don’t follow a lot of protocol.” He gestured to the nearby loveseat, and they went to sit on it. “You can call me Logan. What’s up?”

“Should I be concerned that Cassandra is being nice to me?”

He frowned. “I’m not sure. She was acting unusually supportive tonight.”

“Yeah.” At least she wasn’t the only one noticing it. She scanned the room and didn’t see either of the trainees. “I wouldn’t put it past her to be setting me up for something.”

“Listen, if you’re worried, I can call him and ask his permission first.”

“No. He’s busy,” she said a little too forcibly. She couldn’t bear it if Cole gave Logan permission to scene with her. It was better not to know. Besides, she hadn’t decided to do a scene yet. Surely she didn’t need permission to talk to Logan. “I don’t want to disturb him. It’s fine.”

“Right. I almost believe you.” Logan leaned into her. “Why don’t you tell me what brought you to Benediction, Danielle?”

Wringing her hands together, she took a deep breath and prepared herself to lie again. “There’s a man. My fiancé. Well, not really my fiancé because I haven’t accepted, but he’s a Dominant. No, I guess that’s not really true. He’s dominant but he’s not a Dom. And he said it wasn’t important to him that I . . . I’m here to learn more about submission.”

“That was a nice story.” He reclined and crossed his arms. “Complete bullshit, and your acting job wouldn’t win any Academy Awards, but I can see why Cole would accept your application.”

She had to hand it to him. His laid-back demeanor and gentle teasing made it impossible not to like him. “Oh yeah? And why is that?”

“To peel back your layers and discover what’s hidden in your core.”

“Are you comparing me to an onion?”

He shook his head. “You smell too good to be an onion. You’re more like the Internet. Everyone takes it for granted. What you see is what you get. What people don’t realize is how complex it really is or how many layers there are to it. The deeper you go, the more secrets you find—secrets that are right there for everyone to see if they only knew where to look. People can attack it, do some damage, but the core is strong. It survives.”

She didn’t know how to respond to something so insightful without revealing anything more about herself. Since the best defense was an offense, she turned the tables on him. “Are you a computer engineer or something?”

“A criminal defense attorney with a side business in software design.”