Standing on her friend’s front porch, Ellie inhaled a deep breath, sucking in the floral scent that accompanied the beautiful gardens. She put a smile on her face, hoping it appeared real. It was fake, of course, but none of her girlfriends would notice. She was the master of masking. Over the last couple of months, all of Ellie’s smiles had been fake and, so far, not a single person had commented. Not even Sam, who was a psychologist and good at reading people.

Ellie’s eyes widened when the door swung open, the fresh floral scent becoming stronger when Sam threw her arms around her, enveloping her in a hug.

“Girls’ night!” Sam exclaimed, a wide grin spreading across her pretty face.

Ellie wished she could emulate the other woman’s enthusiasm. Sam was always so happy, whereas Ellie had been running on empty for weeks. Whether it was ADHD burnout or end-of-year burnout, she wasn’t sure. Either way, it sucked and Ellie was tired of being tired. She wanted to go to bed and sleep for a week.

Ellie had been scattered and unfocussed all day, again, despite the stimulant medication she took for her disorder. It was a shame because she’d been looking forward to spending the night with her girlfriends. After weeks of non-stop work, she could finally have a proper catch-up with them. She hadn’t had girl time in weeks and had missed her friends.

Sam led Ellie through the immaculate house to where the other girls—Amara, Belle and Larissa—were already congregated in the expansive lounge room. She gestured for Ellie to take a seat on the soft, comfortable couch.

After greeting her friends with quick hugs, she settled onto the cushion with an audible humph sound, enjoying the way it embraced her on all sides. With a sigh, she closed her eyes and enjoyed being relaxed for the first time in weeks. She hadn’t had a night off in far too long. But all her hard work was about to pay off. The gym she ran—and now was a fifty-percent owner in with Sullivan, her friend and former boss—was opening in a month in new, larger premises.

With rooms for healthcare professionals to work from, including a chiropractor, nutritionist, psychologist and massage therapist, it was going to be a proverbial one-stop health shop. Staying fit and healthy wasn’t just about eating right and exercising. There was also a room for Sullivan to run his physiotherapy business from a couple of days of the week, which he was already utilising.

After coming up with the plan twelve months ago, Ellie had gone to Sullivan, nervous that she was overstepping because she was simply his head coach and trainer. He had not only announced that he thought it was a great idea, but had also offered her a fifty-percent stake in the gym she’d worked so hard on. The gym she had helped start from the ground up was now half hers. She couldn’t have been happier about it. Her professional life was heading right where she’d wanted it to. Her personal life was another story.

Now that the gym was almost complete, the health and lifestyle app she’d been working on was out of the planning stage and ready to hit the practical trials—filming exercises and stretches as well as meal prep videos and other videos she’d planned for it. It would take a while and be a hard slog, but it would be worth it for Ellie to realise her dreams.

“I haven’t seen you for so long, I was beginning to forget what you looked like,” Amara said with a teasing smile.

Reaching for a hunk of cheese and a cracker, Ellie nodded and sighed. She’d been burning the candle at both ends for too long. And once the gym was open, the app was going to be her priority in life.

One thing at a time, she had to keep telling herself.

She had a bad habit of piling too much on her proverbial plate, then burning out. She still had to remember that having ADHD made things more difficult for her. There was a finite number of hours in the day where she was medicated and her brain worked properly. Other than that, she was an unfocussed, inattentive mess. It had been six years since her diagnosis, but she was still getting used to the idea that she wasn’t “neurotypical”. She had a disorder. It was a lot to take in.

“It has been a while. I’ve been so wrapped up in work, I haven’t had a chance to breathe in recent weeks.”

“How have you been?” Sam asked, her newly dyed red and green hair—for Christmas—shiny and glossy as it spilled over her shoulders.

“My life has been all about the gym,” Ellie said.

“As long as you’re not running yourself into the ground,” Sam replied, her voice filled with concern.

“Ever the psychologist, aren’t you?” Ellie teased.

Sam shot her a knowing look that Ellie had dubbed her psychologist look. It said she saw right through Ellie’s cheerful bravado to the raw stump that was her mushed psyche.

“How are you feeling? I can’t help but notice you still haven’t been to Haven.”

Ellie slumped. Of course that would come up tonight. Three months ago, she’d had an incident at Haven—the BDSM club they all frequented—where she’d been assaulted by a so-called Dom who had taken advantage of her. She’d been naïve and had paid more attention to his stellar reputation at the club rather than the gut feeling she got about him. Never again would she ignore her instincts.

After that, she had decided to take a few weeks off to deal with her emotions regarding the incident. Then she’d buckled down with work and hadn’t had a chance to head back to Haven. It had been three long months and she’d missed the place. Well, she missed seeing her friends each week more than anything. She hadn’t had much of a sex drive in recent weeks.

“I will always put on my psychologist hat when it comes to my friends burning out,” Sam said sternly.

It wasn’t the first time Sam had raised concerns for Ellie’s mental health. It would be the last, either.

The others joined in, shooting looks of concern Ellie’s way. She hated being judged. It felt extra harsh and made her self-conscious when it was her girlfriends. Like she couldn’t take proper care of herself, even though she was an adult.

“I’m okay. I’m just tired,” Ellie said, expressing what she hoped was convincing self-confidence. “I’ve just been working hard, but I’m coming out the other end. You’ll be seeing me more now.”

“What have you been up to, other than gym work?” Belle asked, the raven-haired amazon resting back on the couch with a glass of wine in one elegant hand.

“Nothing. Honestly, I’ve been so focussed on getting everything ready for the new Better Health premises, I haven’t done much else, other than my usual jobs.” Ellie rested against the back of the couch, allowing her head to drop back. “The new facility is finally finished and looks great. Sullivan is working out of there, as is the chiropractor. I’ve been organising the equipment this week.”

“Sullivan has been running himself ragged with the gym, too,” Amara said of her fiancé and Dom. “I think you’ve both earned a month off after working too hard on it.”

“It’ll be worth it,” Ellie said, reminding herself as much as the others. “It’ll be a one-stop shop for the body and mind once it’s up and running.”

“It might even get me to join now that you’re doing open gym hours during the day,” Larissa said, then tipped her glass of wine up to empty it.

“Considering none of you girls have been to my gym, maybe that was my plan all along,” Ellie teased.

The others laughed. Ellie ran a CrossFit gym and while CrossFit wasn’t for everyone, she had always hoped her girlfriends would give it a shot. The men all had. By adding open gym hours, Ellie was hoping to attract more people like her friends—people who didn’t want to participate in a class but still wanted to exercise. Ellie herself was like that. She preferred to work out alone where nobody could see her face when it became beet purple from overheating.

“Did Sullivan tell you guys we have a massage therapist joining three days a week?” Ellie exclaimed with genuine excitement. “I used to see her before she had her kid. She’s just started working again and has the strongest hands. She really gets in there and finds all the knots and tension.”

“Now you’re talking.” Belle rubbed her hands together. “I love a good deep-tissue massage.”

“She’s the best.” Ellie forced a grin. “Anyway, enough about my boring work life, what have you guys been up to?”

Listening to her friends chat about their lives, Ellie took a moment to appreciate just how great a group of close girlfriends she had now. She’d never experienced it before. That was a little sad for a twenty-six-year-old woman to admit, but the truth was she’d always struggled to make and maintain friendships.

She’d been a tomboy as a kid, with all her friends being boys until she hit puberty. They hadn’t known how to treat her after that. High school had been just one shitty blur where she’d been in survival mode the entire time. Then university had happened and she had been too busy studying to achieve two degrees to be fussed with making lasting friendships. Instead, she’d had dozens of acquaintances, but nobody had ever got close, not until now.

Over the past year, Ellie had scored in the friend department. She now had a great group of people to socialise with. It just happened her female friends were all submissives as well, although Sam was a switch.

And she had her job to thank for finding friends. At first, she’d become close with Sullivan, then his best mate, Grayson. Then she’d met Amara through Sullivan a little over a year ago. She and Amara had quickly bonded over caring for ill parents before realising they had more in common than a shared trauma. Amara had taken Ellie under her wing and introduced her to her own girlfriends. Ellie had discovered that Haven existed, and the rest was history.

“Are you still planning on working on the app once the gym is open?”

Ellie nodded in response to Amara’s question. “I can’t wait. I’ve got so many ideas prepared for it. Once the gym is completed, I’m going head-first into getting the app sorted. By the way, the gym officially opens on the eighth of January, but the Sunday before, we’re having an open-day celebration for everyone to check out the premises. There’ll be food trucks, face painting, a bouncy castle for kids, plus one for adults…”

“I’m definitely going to that,” Belle said with a little laugh. “Even though I plan on never doing a CrossFit class in my life, I’ll be there for support.”

Ellie snorted. “It can be fun, you know. You might enjoy yourself.”

Belle rolled her eyes. “We have very different definitions of fun, girl.”

“Speaking of,” Larissa chimed in, “when are you returning to Haven?”

“I’m hoping to go tomorrow night.”

The four other women cheered in response. Ellie felt uplifted. It was nice to know she’d been missed. She had been so sure nobody would have noticed her sudden disappearance from the club.

“That’s great,” Sam exclaimed. “I’ve missed having a single friend to troll the Doms with.”

The other three women were partnered up—with Masters of Haven no less. Masters and Mistresses of Haven were a group of experienced Dominants who had been voted in by the members to be in charge of and help run the club. Only the most experienced, competent and respected Dominants were voted in. It was an honour to be made Master. It also happened that Ellie’s closest male friends were all Masters.

“Before I forget,” Amara piped up, “have you three got next Sunday marked off in your calendars for the dress fittings?”

Belle, Larissa and Ellie all nodded in response. Ellie had been honoured when Amara had asked her to be a bridesmaid for her upcoming wedding. In the time since they’d met, the two of them had grown close—Ellie saw Amara as a big sister. She viewed Belle in a similar fashion, the two of them hitting it off when they had met.

“Sooo, Miss Ellie,” Amara said in a teasing tone, “are you going to scene with anyone tomorrow night? There are a lot of single Doms at the moment.”

Ellie shook her head. “I’m not allowed to, remember? Grayson has that rule about submissives returning after a traumatic event. He laid down the law last night, telling me tomorrow I am to socialise only, then next week—if he feels I am coping well enough—I may be allowed to play. But he has to clear it first.”

Amara rolled her eyes. “I forgot about that rule.”

“We can still make trouble, though,” Sam said. “Even if you aren’t playing, we can torment some of the Doms we already know. Have some fun.”

Ellie and Sam had made a name for themselves as brats who enjoyed tormenting their dominant friends and other Masters. Often, it resulted in small punishments for them, but the Doms were in on the joke. Ellie only ever acted the brat with people she knew and trusted. A few Doms she’d played with in the past had expected her to be a brat with them, but she couldn’t. She withdrew with strangers. With friends, she was her true self.

“Too many submissive girls are focussed on being good girls now,” Sam said with faux-disgust. “There’s nobody for me to get into trouble with. They think the Doms don’t like brats so they refuse to join me in escapades.”

“Most Doms don’t like brats,” Ellie pointed out. “At least not in my experience.”

“Ooh, you know who does like brats?” Belle leaned forward with a wiggle of her brows. “Parker.”

That snagged Ellie’s attention. “How do you know that?”

“I overheard him and Ambrose talking during the week. Parker asked where all the brats were and said he enjoyed brat taming but hadn’t found one at Haven.”

Parker was the latest addition to their circle of friends. Ambrose, Belle’s partner and Dom, had known Parker when they were kids and they’d recently reconnected. When Belle had had an incident with her abusive stalker ex-boyfriend a few months ago, Parker had been a police officer on her case and had been socialising with them since.

Ellie bit her lip at the thought of Parker. She’d been immediately drawn to him. Within seconds, she’d known he was a Dom—the man exuded confidence and power as well as dominance. Often her submissive side came out around him, unlike when she was with her other dominant friends. Parker in the vanilla world was enticing and attractive to Ellie… She had to imagine Parker in Dom mode would be even more appealing. She might have developed a little crush on him in the short time they’d spent together. Not that she would do anything about it. Ellie didn’t date. She didn’t have time for a relationship. But if anyone could get her to begin, it would be her tall, dark and handsome new friend.

“There’s another tick in the Parker box for Ellie,” Sam teased.

Ellie rolled her eyes and tried to play off her interest. She’d made the mistake of telling her girlfriends she found Parker attractive months earlier and they’d been teasing her about it since. “I think the guy’s hot. Don’t the rest of you?”

They nodded. “Thank you. It’s not a bloody crush. I’m not twelve.”

It so was a crush, though. She hadn’t seen him in weeks and had missed him.

“Look at her cheeks!” Larissa teased. “That’s so stinking cute.”

Ellie threw a cushion at the other blonde. “Quiet, you.”

“I’m sorry,” Amara interrupted. “Are we going to just ignore what she said about Grayson laying down the law?”

Belle nodded. “You know how serious he is about club rules. He made me abide by that one, even though I already had Ambrose as a Dom.”

Upon returning from an incident, whether inside or outside the club, Grayson ruled that all submissives needed the help of a Master to negotiate their first couple of scenes. Grayson, as the owner of Haven, was allowed to enforce those rules, as were the Masters and Mistresses. And they were already stifling Ellie. She might be considered new to the lifestyle still, with only a few months of experience under her belt, but she hadn’t needed help negotiating since her first month attending Haven.

Grayson, however, saw Ellie as a little sister and had a serious protective streak when it came to her. Since the incident, he’d become unbearable. He had forced her to speak to Sam in a professional context a few times to deal with the fall-out of the incident. He’d tried convincing her to stay away from Haven. She still hadn’t figured out why he and Sullivan were against her joining Haven in the first place.

“He has the same rules for all submissives,” Sam said.

As the receptionist of Haven, she was privy to more information than the rest of the submissives. She’d been doing the job for a couple of years and had seen it all.

“It’s stifling,” Ellie muttered. “He’s overprotective as it is. But the incident just made him paranoid, too. If he thinks I’m letting him help negotiate scenes for me, he’s got another think coming.”

Not having grown up with protective energy around her—her brother and father hadn’t cared about her dating life, or lack thereof—she struggled when it came to her friends being protective and intrusive. At first, it had been comforting, but now it made little sense. They tended to treat her more like a kid sister than a grown woman capable of making her own decisions.

“Don’t think of it as him being overprotective,” Sam said. “It’s just club protocol.”

“I hate being babied.” Ellie sighed. “I may be new to the lifestyle but I’m not some young naïve girl. I’ve done years of reading and research about BDSM. I feel like the incident was just another excuse for him to hover.”

The other woman disagreed, but Ellie couldn’t help how she felt. Sometimes she thought she came across as ungrateful and petulant.

“We won’t let him hover,” Amara promised. “If he oversteps, I’ll talk to him about it.”

Ellie received sympathetic looks from her friends in response to her admission. She hated those looks. She’d been seeing them most of her life and it had grown tiresome.

“It could be worse. They could not care at all,” Amara said.

That was true.

Ellie had to put on her big-girl pants and get used to being around Doms in Dom mode again. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t assume that every new man she met was a dirtbag or out to get her vulnerable to take advantage of her. She needed to be reminded that there were still good men out there. Maybe she’d even find one for herself.