Whipped by Sabrina York

Chapter One
     
    It was a sad day. One of the great ones had fallen.
    Dane Coulter bowed his head and lifted his glass. “To Cody. My best friend and the world’s best wingman. He was a good man. I’ll miss you, buddy.”
    Billy nodded and swiped at his cheek. “Damn straight.”
    “To Cody,” the others around the table chorused as they lifted their glasses as well.
    All but Cody. Cody shot them an annoyed look and snorted. “I’m getting married, not dyin’.”
    “Close enough.” Dane clapped him on the shoulder, a somber expression on his face. “It was damn good knowing you.”
    Hard to believe all their adventures, all their wild sexcapades were over. Hard to believe such a dyed in the wool ladies’ man could succumb.
    But succumb he had. Cody had met Angie and she’d swept all his cynicism—his stalwart resistance to that romantic notion women called love—aside.
    In just a couple days he’d be a married man. Ball and chain and everything.
    Which was ironic, when you thought about it. Given his…proclivities in the bedroom. A submissive man, Cody was not.
    Dane knew him well, had known him his whole life. As Army brats, traveling the world in a rootless existence, it was rare to run into the same friends again and again but, as a result of their fathers being repeatedly assigned to the same bases, they’d grown up together.
    They’d been best friends since grade school, except for that month or so in high school when they’d both been besotted with Lila Pennington. But then she’d slept with Thomas Winkler and that had been the end of that.
    Their families were still friendly too. Their dads went fishing together, their moms had cocktails and their brothers and sisters were all best friends. There had been dinner parties and sleepovers and camping trips.
    As young men, Dane and Cody had enlisted side-by-side and helped each other survive Basic, and then Cody had followed Dane into the Special Forces. For the past five years they’d been inseparable, had each other’s backs on mission after mission, adventure after adventure.
    Until Angela.
    Dane had been joking when he’d said Cody’s impending marriage was like a death sentence but, on some level, it didn’t feel like a joke at all. He tried not to think she was taking Cody away forever but, deep inside, that was how it felt.
    Like he was losing a friend.
    He glanced over at Cody, who had wandered to the window and was staring out at the Vegas skyline. Angie had picked Vegas for their whirlwind wedding and, of course, Cody had agreed. He agreed to everything nowadays.
    Dane hadn’t complained because, hell, it was Vegas. And Angie’s dad was paying for everything. A week in Vegas. Everything top of the line.
    And Cody was in love. Head over heels, helplessly, hopelessly in love.
    Whipped.
    Dane stifled a snort and took a draw on his beer. This was supposed to be a celebration, a badass bachelor party. Cody’s last gasp of freedom with his wild and raucous buddies before the boom fell. He glanced around the lush suite with derision. Wild and raucous? Not.
    Billy and Kaye sat at the table flicking paper footballs at each other and Ennis was playing with himself…a desultory game of beer pong with olives. Dudley was perched on a chair angling cards into a wastebasket. Badass bachelor party? Shit. It felt more like a high school slumber party. All that was missing was footie pajamas.
    It was a crying shame.
    If their C.O. saw his Special Forces team brought this low, they’d all be drummed out of the corps.
    “When are the strippers getting here?” Kaye asked the question humming in Dane’s mind.
    Cody spun around and paled. He clutched his chest like a swooning virgin. “Gawd. Strippers? There can’t be any strippers. Ang would have my balls on a plate if I so much as looked at another woman.”
    Dane tried not to roll his eyes in disgust.
    “Does that mean you won’t be needing the hooker we hired?”
    Cody gaped at Billy. “You