place in her heart. While he was very handsome, she’d never been sexually attracted to him. Her feelings for him were completely different and tied to the fact that he understood her as a submissive and gave her what she needed—to feel safe and under someone else’s control.
She hadn’t seen him in several months, since the last time he’d visited The Dancing Pony. She knew this situation would be unacceptable to him. She missed him. She knew where she stood with him, even if she technically wasn’t his submissive, or anybody else’s.
She’d needed a break from the lifestyle after parting from Brandon, leaving him behind in England. They’d both been submissives and had loved each other, but she’d always known that Brandon craved a Mistress. Someone who could give him what he needed most—total power exchange. Camilla hadn’t begrudged him his happiness when he’d finally found it, had been happy for him, but she’d returned home from her summer in Europe in need of a break from all of it. It was then that she’d gone to work for Ben. Gone to work with Quinten. She hadn’t returned to Joseph’s club and from time to time had wondered at that. She hadn’t felt the pull. She’d been very happy working at The Pony, at least until recently.
With work causing such upheaval in her emotions, she figured that had been the reason Joseph had come to mind. She liked running her own life but also relished giving control to someone else and he’d been adept at centering her in the past. With everything so off-kilter between her, Ben, and Quinten, it was possible she needed to make a visit to Hazelle House to create a little buffer.
She thought back on when the tension between the three of them had started to surface. It had been nearly a year since the night that asshole Kade Parker had suggested during a drunken altercation that Camilla led Ben and Quinten around by their balls. She’d done an admirable job up until that moment of denying her growing attraction to both men. To have her nose rubbed in it had stung and made her feel vulnerable, but Ben and Quinten had gone back to acting like nothing had been said after the confrontation was over with, at least until she’d changed her mode of dress.
She followed the curve in the road, relieved and grateful for the distraction of her thoughts as the river bridge came into view, letting her know that she was over halfway there. As she moved ever closer, the roar of the water flowing under the bridge filled her ears. Heavy rains had flooded fields and swelled all the creeks and rivers in the area so that the water had nowhere else to go. The bridge beneath her feet was sturdy, but she could still feel the vibration of the river racing beneath as she trudged on, refusing to pause. The wind flapped the damp hem of her Windbreaker against her upper thighs as it gusted, chilling her so that her teeth chattered uncontrollably. She was barely fit for human company in her current shape. She couldn’t wait to get in a hot shower—
“Oh, shit! Shit! Shit !” This time she stopped.
Standing there under her Hello Kitty umbrella, Camilla Shea O’Neal had a walleyed hissy fit. She jumped up and down, stomping her sloshy boots on the asphalt as she cursed a blue streak, having realized that she’d left her overnight bag in her trunk, back at the car.
When she’d calmed down, she was once again aware of how loud the water was and chanced a peek over the guardrail at the river below. The moon broke through the clouds for a moment, illuminating the surface of the churning water. The river was already swelled over its banks and into the river bottom and was beginning to fill in the lowlands on either side. She felt small and alone, perched over a force that large and uncontrollable.
“If they close this bridge tonight before I can get my stuff, I’m gonna be so pissed. Oh, yeah, Cami, like you’re not already there? Well done, baby cakes. Shit!”
There was no help