Dungeon Master by Golden Angel
Chapter Three
Gavin
Everyone always came to Gavin’s for game night since he had an entire room dedicated to Castles and Creatures, which meant they didn’t have to move all their pieces every week. Considering how detailed the maps they used were and all the miniatures they had laid out on it, it was for the best. Setting up and cleaning up week after week would have taken a long time, and by the end of the first month, it had been easier to have a dedicated space.
Of course, after he and Leah split, they’d had to move everything, but they’d managed to time the campaign to finish while he was packing up.
It had been two days since he’d stopped by Leah’s house before her date, and he hadn’t heard from her since. Not that he’d expected to, but he’d wondered if she’d call out sick tonight. All day, he’d waited for her to say something in the group text, but there was nothing.
He’d spent the morning doing the accounting and attending to some other business matters for Outlands, then the afternoon preparing the perfect evening. Everyone always came over for dinner before they started playing, taking that time to catch up and chat as themselves. Usually, it devolved into a discussion of what they wanted to accomplish that evening and trying to get Gavin to give them hints of what was ahead.
He never gave anything away, but he appreciated the effort as well as the opportunity to fuck with them.
Dinner tonight was going to be special. It was his turn to provide, and he’d gone all out, cooking all Leah’s favorites. Things he’d made her for special occasions, but rarely outside of them. She’d done most of the cooking, though she’d always insisted it was because she truly enjoyed it. Gavin didn’t love cooking, but he could hold his own in the kitchen. Any time he cooked was truly a labor of love, and she knew it.
The front door opened, and Gavin looked up. His condo had an open floor plan, so he could see everyone as they came in the front door unless he was in one of the bedrooms. Unfortunately, it was only Aiden. Gavin raised his eyebrows.
“You’re here early.”
“Did a run to the hardware store that took longer than I thought it would, and my choices were to go home and be late or come straight here and be early. Holy shit, it smells amazing. Are you… cooking?” The incredulity in his voice was reflected on his face as he crossed the room, following his nose.
A couple inches taller than Gavin, he had dark eyes and hair. Unlike Gavin, his dark hair had remained dark; his goatee was mostly salt with just a bit of pepper still sprinkled throughout. More than one person at the Outlands had compared him to Jeffrey Morgan after Negan had appeared on The Walking Dead. He had the same kind of dangerous air about him, though once someone got to know him, they realized he was more of a mischief-maker than a threat.
“Yes, I’m cooking.” Everything had about ten more minutes to go. Cheesy scalloped potatoes with scallions were in the oven, along with lamb stuffed red peppers and bacon-wrapped asparagus. Leah’s favorite brand of red wine had been opened and was ‘breathing’ in anticipation of her arrival, and Gavin had an ice cream cake in the freezer. That part he hadn’t made—Leah liked Carvel, so that’s what Leah was going to get.
“It smells amazing, but what the hell, man?” Aiden’s forehead wrinkled as he sat down on one of the bar seats along the opposite side of the kitchen island Gavin was behind.
“Just felt like cooking.” Gavin shrugged. He knew Aiden would figure it out pretty quickly, but that didn’t mean Gavin had to admit it. All the relationship books he’d been reading said he needed to be more open to communication, but he was pretty sure that was with Leah, not with a friend who was going to tease him about it the first chance he got.
“Uh huh.” As expected, Aiden realized something was up. He was observant, which made him a good Dom, but he could also be a pain in the ass. Thankfully, he was also less nosy than some of their other friends and didn’t press the issue. “So, what have you been up to lately?”
* * *
Leah
Chill out. This is a totally normal night, the same kind of evening you have every week with your friends and your ex, and there will be absolutely nothing weird about it. There’s no way Gavin will make a thing out of your date in front of everyone.
Gavin didn’t like letting people see into his personal business because it made him vulnerable. Even when they were splitting up, he’d barely talked to their friends about what was going on. They’d learned most of their information from her.
Nervously wiping her hands on her pants, Leah held her head high and opened the door. On game night, no one knocked since they were expected. The muffled sound of laughter went full blast when the door opened, but it was the incredible smell that hit her in the face. That wasn’t pizza, Mediterranean, or Chinese food… no…
That scent went straight to the memory bank of her brain, making her tongue tingle and sparking immediate tears as a wave of nostalgia and old emotions slammed into her. What the actual hell? It smelled like home and happiness. She was flush with the warmth of knowing Gavin had done something special for her.
The sense of smell is the one most acutely linked with memories.
While she’d known that was true, she didn’t think she’d ever experienced it so viscerally.
“Leah? You coming in?” Esther asked, swiveling around on the stool in front of Gavin’s counter. “Gavin cooked.” The awe and surprise in her voice made Leah’s ex laugh, and that sound punched her straight in the gut, thanks to how vulnerable she was already feeling.
“I do know how, you know,” he teased. Standing on the other side of the island, his eyes were on Leah rather than Esther. Bright blue watched her every move, cataloguing every reaction. The way he did in the club when she had his full attention as the submissive he was playing with.
When was the last time he’d looked at her like that outside of a scene?
Not since the divorce when he was trying to figure out why she was walking out on him.
I aim to win ye back.
Pressing her lips together, Leah gathered herself back up again. The shock of the memories he’d brought up by cooking some of her favorite foods had fractured her usual defenses, but she was practiced at building her walls against him. She had to be, considering how often they’d scened together after their divorce.
“Sorry, I was so shocked by the smell of home-cooked food, I think my brain tripped.” As everyone burst out into laughter, she put a wide smile on her face and closed the door behind her. Everyone laughed except Gavin, who was still watching her with a little smile on his face as if he’d already won something.
Woo-hoo, two points for Gavin—he remembered her favorite flowers and how to cook her favorite foods. Neither of those things made up for… well, everything else. The low bar of expectations she’d had when she was younger was much higher now. She damn well knew she deserved better than what she’d gotten from him before.
She was the last one to arrive, which she’d done deliberately, figuring their friends would provide her with a buffer. Especially since Esther, Jax, and Cyana all knew she’d gone on a date. The only one who didn’t know was Aiden. She hadn’t meant to leave him out, exactly, but he could be a wild card with his reactions—which was probably why he usually played a rogue character in C&C. He said he wasn’t great at improvising, so he preferred to stay true to who he was rather than experimenting.
Leah had pegged him as the most likely to tell Gavin before she was ready, but that was a moot point now.
“You look nice,” Gavin said as she approached, and she almost stumbled over her feet.
She’d chosen to wear jeans with a nice blouse and do her makeup and hair—nothing extravagant, just enough to make her feel really good about herself. It was supposed to be armor, not something Gavin noticed, then complimented her on, making her feel all flush and warm inside and even more off-balance. Then again, he was probably aiming to fluster her, so she shouldn’t feel too bad if he succeeded a little.
“You do look nice,” Cyana said, eyeing her. The Dominatrix was nearly as scary as Gavin. Maybe a little more so at times. Tanned skin paired with dark eyes were set off against dyed silver-grey hair. Once it had started to go grey, she’d decided she was going to embrace the look and dyed it that color instead of the other way around. Although she was the youngest of the group, in her late forties rather than her fifties, she looked even younger despite her hair, thanks to her almost impossibly smooth skin and fit body. As a private investigator, she needed to be in good shape, and she didn’t seem to have slowed down at all as the years passed.
“Thanks?” Leah shrugged. “I changed out of my work clothes?” She left both sentences hanging as questions, pretending she didn’t understand why they were making a big deal.
Hugs were exchanged, including one with Gavin. He tried to let linger a moment too long, but allowed her to pull away when she stepped back, then handed her a glass of wine. Catching sight of the bottle on the counter, she felt her heart do another little flipping ka-thunk in her chest.
Dammit. Favorite flowers, favorite foods, favorite wine.
Yeah, because he’s wooing you. Just remember how quickly this all goes away when he realizes the effort has to be continuous and not every once in a while.
Right. Her chest tightened. She remembered how much it hurt when he’d stopped making these little gestures and started taking her for granted. Again. The smart move would be to enjoy some of her favorite things while not reading anything into them. Once he realized she wasn’t going to jump back in his arms because he’d put in a bit of effort, he’d give it up. The same way he had before. Only this time, she wasn’t going to let it hurt her.
“What are we talking about?” she asked, taking a sip of her wine and inwardly sighing with pleasure as the full-bodied flavor rolled over her tongue, leaving behind a hint of fruit and earth.
“Your son’s new girlfriend,” Esther said, grinning. She was sitting on one of the barstools with Cyana, while Jax, Aiden, and Gavin had arranged themselves on the opposite side of the island. They looked like something out of a magazine, maybe Esquire. Gavin and Aiden both had full heads of hair. Jax shaved his head to the skin and had a very attractive salt and pepper goatee, fuller than Aiden’s rugged scruff but not as expansive as Gavin’s beard, and it stood out even more against his dark skin than theirs did. They were all silver foxes in their own right, even if she was only wildly attracted to one of them.
Leah slid onto the last barstool, completing the ‘boys vs. girls’ setup. She knew the men were being polite and allowing the ladies to sit down, which she appreciated, but it still made her smile.
“Domi, yes.” Lovely young woman. She’d come up the weekend before when Mitch came home for Purim, which was one of the Jewish holidays Leah still insisted on him attending for a family celebration. They hadn’t been a particularly religious family, but Leah liked to celebrate the big holidays, and she knew Gavin liked having Mitch around for Easter and Christmas, even though he’d never admit it. Domi had brought her five-year-old daughter, Ana, which Leah had loved. She’d gotten to play grandmother all weekend and was already hoping Domi and Mitch would make it official in the future.
“I was telling them how we finally got the full story on how Mitch and Domi got together,” Gavin told her, his blue eyes sparkling warmly as if they were sharing a joke. They were, but he didn’t need to make it feel so darn intimate. Darn it.
“And I need to know how it ends,” Esther said, leaning onto her elbow and resting her chin on her hand. Half-white and half-Asian, she often joked it was her Korean genes that kept her skin so smooth, but now that she was in her fifties, she was finally starting to get a few wrinkles here and there. They mostly showed up when she smiled. She swept some of her long, dark hair back off of her shoulder. “Gavin’s left us hanging. So, they went out to brunch, and she was about to walk out the door…”
Rather than looking at Esther, Gavin kept eye contact with Leah, his blue eyes boring into hers. Despite the buffer their friends were supposed to provide, their presence did absolutely nothing. Something about Gavin had changed. He wasn’t pretending nothing was going on between them just because the others were there, the way she’d expected him to, the way he’d always done in the past.
No, he held her gaze, making the moment unnervingly intimate, his lips curling into a little smile as suspicion began to dawn on their friends’ expressions.
“Domi was on her way out the door when Mitch climbed up onto the table and declared he loved her.”
It wasn’t what he said but the way he said it—as if he was the one declaring his love at the moment—while he stared straight at Leah.
That’s it.
She was going to murder him.
