The Strength of the Pack (Suncoast Society #30)(2)

What should be their retirement years, and her husband had to work two jobs, one full-time and one part-time, to help pay for insurance so he could keep her in medications, what she needed to try to stay functioning between her lupus and her RA. It was amazing she could even still drive. Sometimes, she couldn’t.

They’d started the process with Social Security to get her officially classified as disabled and make her eligible for cash benefits and Medicaid, but cutting through red tape was a nightmare.

By his third patient of the morning, Nate still felt unsettled. At least the phones had come back online, as had the office’s Internet. He sublet to three other professionals, two acupuncturists and a chiropractor, but they usually didn’t see patients on Saturdays. Cherise worked for all of them, handling the phones, front desk, billing, processing payments, and scheduling.

“Last one of the day is coming up, Doc,” she joked, her work nickname for him. “You have plenty of time to grab a bite to eat, if you want.”

She’d been too young to remember most of their time in England beyond fuzzy, hazy snippets of time. Technically, she was his half-sister. Twelve years younger than him, she was twenty-nine and had been born in England to his mom and step-father while they were stationed there.

“Thanks.”

“You all right?” she asked.

“Headache last night.”

She winced. “Ooh, sorry.”

“It is what it is.”

He hadn’t brought anything with him to eat, but he walked over to the plaza next door and got a vegetarian sandwich from the sub shop there and took it back to the office, along with a bottle of Mountain Dew.

The stuff was horrible for him. But sometimes when he had one of these headaches, which he’d had off and on all his life, the jolt of caffeine and carbonation helped the ibuprofen kick the pain in the ass and chase it off.

He knew from the faint echoes in the back of his skull that the headache hadn’t completely cleared out yet and was still deciding on whether or not to leave or come back in full force. He really didn’t want to cancel going to the club, if he could avoid it.

Cherise wrinkled her nose when she saw what he had in his hands. “Eww. That stuff will pickle your liver. You must really be hurting.”

He headed toward the break room they all shared. “Let me know when my last appointment arrives, please.”

Once they left, then he could break out another weapon in his arsenal, slathering peppermint oil on his forehead and the back of his neck. He didn’t like doing that before a client, though, because he never knew when someone might be allergic to the oil or to the carrier oil it was blended with.

He could tough it out another ninety minutes.

He was used to toughing things out. Life had taught him that lesson.

Too damn well.





By the time Nate returned home at three, the headache had finally retreated. He would take a short nap and, if history proved correct, by the time he was ready to head to the club a little after seven, he should be ready for the night.

Finding Venture and the members of the Suncoast Society munch group had been like stumbling across long-lost family. Even better, because he chose to incorporate many of them into his life.

Cherise was well aware of what he did in his free time. She’d bugged him about his Saturday nights at the club until he finally took her for the first time, not too long after she’d turned nineteen, just to shut her up, thinking she’d be freaked out.

She’d loved it. And she’d not only become a member of Venture, but volunteered at the club, too. This was after a bumpy time in her life when he’d had to confront her about issues she’d been having. He’d been relieved to find out she was kinky and not into drugs, although at the time she hadn’t realized how “normal” she was. Her months of agony had led her down a lonely, dark, self-destructive path, until he finally forced her to admit the root cause so he could help her.

He thought it might freak him out to see his sister play, except she turned out to be a Domme, not a submissive.

Well, go figure. He didn’t exactly label himself a Dominant, even though he certainly was a dominant person, more a sensual sadist than anything.

He was getting ready to lie down for his nap when Cherise called his cell.

“Did you want me to come pick you up and drive you to the club later?”

“I thought you weren’t going tonight?”

“I wasn’t, but Wade got called in to work an extra shift for another guy at his station.”

He thought about it. Cherise and Wade only lived five minutes from him. It wasn’t like it would put her out of the way. She could drive right by his house.

Hell, not like he would be bringing a date home, either.

“Okay. I won’t argue with you.”

“About damn time. Did you want to go to Sigalo’s first for dinner?”

“No. Just the club.”

“Be ready by 6:45, then. I’m going to help open, so I need to be there early. Laters.”

He climbed into bed and set his alarm for five. That would give him plenty of time to get a shower and wake up.

I will go run tomorrow.





Chapter Two


When Nate awoke from his nap five minutes before his alarm went off, he was relieved to find that the headache had completely broken and retreated to the realms of memory.