“WHAT IS THIS PLACE?”
Lucian gave me a dark look from the driver’s seat. “It’s a member’s only adult club.”
I glanced back at the mammoth-sized house surrounded in by a large wrought-iron fence. It didn’t look like any adult club I’d ever heard of, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine what might be going on in there. There were a lot of kinky sex spots in Vegas.
“Is it a BDSM club?” I asked.
Lucian shook his head. “It’s an anything goes club. Fetishes, fantasies, role play… whatever two consulting members agree on. Sometimes, even more.”
“I see.” The lump in my throat wouldn’t go down when I swallowed.
“There are things inside that I can’t prepare you for,” Lucian cautioned. “If you choose to go in, you need to understand that nothing is off-limits. You might witness scenes that could be a problem for you.”
I didn’t falter in my decision as I looked straight ahead. “Okay.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
It was the fifth time he’d said it, and that was after we argued about it for an hour. He didn’t want me to do this. He wanted to protect me from his secrets, but I needed to know what his darkness was. I had to see it for myself.
“I want to,” I assured him.
He looked out the window, a strange intensity bleeding into his features. “If at any point you feel uncomfortable inside, I want you to tap on my arm. That’s all you have to do, pet, and we’ll leave. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
We got out of the car and walked to the door together. He entered a code on the key pad and let us in, where we were stopped at the entrance by two burly men. One nodded at Lucian but didn’t address him by name.
“She’s with me,” Lucian said.
Another nod, and then they held out a dish where Lucian put his keys and phone.
“Locker 7,” the first guy said before he turned to me.
“She left her phone in the car,” Lucian told them.
The guy on the left ran a wand down us to ensure we were clean of devices before waving us through.
The house was larger than I thought. The farther we ventured inside, the further it seemed to go on. The entire lower level didn’t open up to all the horrors that Lucian warned me about. It was simply a social environment where groups gathered to drink and smoke and laugh at bad jokes. From this viewpoint, it looked like any other bar. But I knew when Lucian led me to the stairs, it was about to get real.
I wasn’t wrong.
We stopped on each level of the house and did a walk through, Lucian’s hand like an anchor in mine. The first few rooms we passed weren’t as crazy as he’d led me to believe. I’d seen a lot of stuff in my life, and a full-on orgy wasn’t anything that made me blink twice, even if it was hard to keep track of who was doing what. But as we progressed, it only became stranger.
There were people dressed up in outfits like nurses and firemen, and then there were people walking around in nothing at all. Some rooms contained couples having sex while others watched, and some rooms were closed off entirely.
At one point, we passed a room labeled “human furniture” that was pretty much exactly as it sounded. Men and women alike were poised as footstools and tables while groups of their masters socialized around them.
“If at any point something catches your curiosity, we can stop,” Lucian noted.
So far, everything just seemed like kinky, weird sex. It wasn’t anything that I had a desperate need to see more of. There was only one reason I came here, and it had nothing to do with anybody else.
“Which room do you visit?” I asked.
Without another word, he led me all the way up to the top floor of the house. There was a separate entry code required on this level, a warning that things weren’t going to be the same. I followed him blindly as he directed me down the hall and into the first room on the left.
There was a viewing area like some of the others, and Lucian gestured for me to sit down and wait. The room was empty apart from us, at least until he pressed a button on the wall and shut the door behind us. There was a brief pause of silence, and then out of nowhere, the black curtain was pulled back in front of us, giving us full view of the scene taking place in the room.
In the center, a woman kneeled on the floor, much the same way I had in Lucian’s bedroom not long ago. I could still feel the rawness on my limbs from what happened afterward, and I rubbed them while the man in front of us nodded to Lucian. They were acquainted with each other, a mutual respect between them. But it was the girl on the floor who surprised me when her gaze turned to Lucian and warmed with a wicked smile.
A sharp emotion I couldn’t identify pierced my stomach when I realized what was happening. Lucian had been intimate with this woman. And it wasn’t difficult to guess what she liked. Already, her body was covered in welts. Her nipples were clamped together with clothespins, her knees digging into the rock salt on the tile floor.
There was not a shred of doubt in my mind she was a masochist, and that only left one possible avenue for Lucian. At some point, he’d probably stood over her the same way the other man was now. He had assuredly grabbed her chin and jerked her attention back to him in the same domineering fashion when she looked away for too long.
“Did I say you could move?”
“No, sir.” The breathy whisper of her voice was undeniably sultry, and I looked at Lucian to see how he responded, but his face was blank.
Without warning, the sadist slapped the girl across the face, and I jumped. Lucian squeezed my hand, but it did nothing to quell my nerves as the sadist chose a cane from the selection of pain tools. The girl moaned and tugged at the restraints around her wrists, begging him for it. The drum beat of my heart, and the blood rushing between my ears warned me this was a threat, but it didn’t stop there.
The sadist gestured for Lucian, an invitation to participate. He silently declined, but I suspected it was only to be polite. He didn’t want me to see the worst version of himself, but I needed to. I had a morbid curiosity that couldn’t be contained. I needed to see what he would do with her. How far he would go.
“Show me,” I whispered.
Lucian swiveled his head in my direction, eyes blacker than I’d ever seen them. “You don’t know what you’re asking, pet.”
“I want to see,” I insisted. “You said you would show me.”
He tried to fight it. I saw the struggle in him, and then I saw the demon win. He glanced at the girl on the floor, resignation weighing him down as he accepted that, on some level, he wanted to show me too.
“You can tell me to stop at any point,” he said softly. “If it becomes too much.”
I nodded stiffly and released his hand, emptiness settling inside me when he left me on my own. The girl on the floor peeked up beneath a dark curtain of hair, excitement simmering in her eyes. It stabbed at me, the prospect of what might happen. But this was a test as much as it was a learning experience. I wanted to expose Lucian’s deepest secrets as much as I wanted to know his loyalty for me.
Would he touch her with his hands? Would he kiss her? Fuck her?
I didn’t know, but I needed to.
He picked up a whip, testing it in his hand, and the other man nodded his approval. Lucian turned his head as if he were going to look at me one last time but decided against it. He was close to the girl. So close that when he bent down to murmur something, it was just for her to hear. She nodded, and her eyes lit up.
He closed his eyes and breathed, and then he brought the whip down with a mighty strike against her back. She collapsed onto her forearms with a strangled cry, and I was so horrified I couldn’t move. Lucian took no pity on her. Everything about him was different. His posture, his eyes, his voice. They weren’t the man I thought I’d come to know.
“Get up,” he demanded.
She did, and he whipped her again. He whipped her so hard, I almost begged him to stop. But she didn’t. With every strike, she cried out in pleasure and pleaded for him to continue. To give her more. To give her everything. For the next ten minutes, he doled out enough pain to last me a lifetime.
Finally, my eyes had been opened to the truth. Lucian was right that I couldn’t or wouldn’t ever give him these things. He couldn’t say the word out loud, but he’d shown me. He was a sadist.
And I could never be his masochist.
Even now, when I glanced down at his trousers, I could see the hard outline of his cock. He’d been torturing himself for weeks, keeping me in his bed. In his arms. Having me just within reach and knowing that I could never be the thing he needed.
When he swiveled his head in my direction, I searched his face for answers. It didn’t make sense that he’d chosen me as his wife, knowing I could never give these things to him. But suddenly, everything was clear. He never wanted to have sex with me. He never included a clause in our contract that he wouldn’t have any extracurricular affairs.
I swallowed, and it felt like a rock was lodged in my esophagus. It should have come as a relief. It should have made my life easier knowing that in just under two years, I could be free of him and I would never have to worry about him taking my body. But already, things were too muddled between us. There was only one solution, and the simplest thing to do was push him away. Divine intervention helped me with that when Lucian set aside his torture device. He came back to sit beside me, but that didn’t matter. The other man took one glance at the sweaty sub on the floor and gestured for Lucian as he untied her.
“I’m done playing with her now. She wants you.”
“I’m not—”
“I want to watch you,” I interrupted.
Lucian’s fingers tightened around my thigh. The same fingers that had just wielded a whip with a skill that told me he’d been practicing for years. I knew this was a path we couldn’t come back from, but I needed to do this for my sanity. For my well-being. I needed to remind myself that Lucian was nothing to me, and in the end, I was better off alone.
“You want to watch me with her?” His voice was deceptively soft, and I didn’t trust it, but still, I forged on recklessly.
I nodded. “Yes. You said you would show me.”
“That wasn’t the agreement,” he pointed out.
“She said yes,” the sultry voice purred from across the room.
When I looked over, the naked girl was crawling toward us, her eyes burning with need for Lucian’s touch while jealousy burned deep in my gut. I wanted to extinguish it. I wanted to hate him, and after this, I would.
I returned my gaze to Lucian, but he’d never taken his eyes off me. “She might have said yes, but I didn’t.”
The girl didn’t listen. Instead, she kneeled before him, clinging to his shoes, and I locked my fists at my sides to keep from clawing her eyes out.
Lucian regarded me with an intensity that made me shiver. “This is what you wanted, pet?”
I nodded.
“You want to watch me fuck her?” he pushed.
Again, I nodded.
“You want to watch me kiss her, and punish her, and fill her with my come?”
I jerked my chin toward the ceiling, but it was stiffer this time. The girl didn’t seem to care that we were still having a conversation because she began to lap at his shoes with her tongue, and I was so close I could smell her arousal for him. It made me sick. It made me hate him even more. Tears burned the back of my eyes as he forced her chin up.
“Kneel,” he ordered.
She panted like a dog in heat as he fisted his cock through the material of his trousers. “Tell me what you want her to do, pet,” he ordered. “Be specific.”
I looked at the girl. She was pretty. The opposite of me with fairer skin and softer features, but I wondered if she was more Lucian’s type. And then I wondered if it had been her he’d thought of when he masturbated in the shower.
“What do you want her to do to me?” Lucian pondered. “She’ll do anything, won’t you?”
The girl nodded, and I didn’t miss the blatant dig at me. I wouldn’t do anything with him, but was that what he wanted? I didn’t know anymore. I was confused. I thought I wanted him to fuck her, so I could hate him, but I couldn’t stomach to watch it.
“Do you want her to suck my dick?” Lucian suggested. “Ride me? I could eat her out. Tell me, baby girl, what do you want to see?”
He was pushing me, and he knew it. He was also being an asshole, and he knew it. And I hated him so much for getting inside my head this way. The whole world was collapsing in on me, and I had no defenses against it.
I stood and tried to look brave. “I don’t care. You do whatever you want with her. You’re the twisted fuck, not me.”
I tried to leave, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me back to him. “You were so willing to lend me to her,” he said coldly. “What’s the problem, pet?”
“I don’t need to see it.”
“But you want it,” he insisted.
I shook my head. “You want it, so it’s what you should do. I can’t be this for you. I can’t let you do those things to me, and you know it.”
The blackness in his eyes melted away to a warm chocolate brown as he snagged my wrist and tugged me onto his lap. He pinched my face with his fingers, his lips a breath away. It looked like he was going to kiss me, and I found that I wanted him to, but I couldn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he forced my legs apart and dragged me forward until I could feel the throbbing heat of his dick through my panties. It was wrong, but I couldn’t make myself remember that.
His hands cupped my ass, squeezing the flesh as he grinded against me. “Tell me you want me to do this to her, and I will. Tell me you don’t want me.”
I couldn’t. My head dipped, and a tear leaked from the corner of my eye. It was the second time today they’d spilled after I hadn’t cried in years. It was awful to feel so out of control.
“It isn’t what I want,” I admitted. “I just want to hate you.”
His lips pressed against the moisture on my cheek, kissing away the evidence of my vulnerability. I leaned into him, and it was the first time I could ever recall feeling complete calm with a man’s hands on me. Because whatever Lucian was capable of with someone else, he could only ever be this way with me. Maybe it was a first for him too, or maybe he just hadn’t recognized that yet. He said this was what he needed from me. He wanted to show me his demons, but he never asked to hurt me. And when I looked into his eyes, I knew he couldn’t.
I touched his face, my fingers grazing over the shadowed stubble on his jaw. “You would never do those things to me.”
He stared deep into my soul, his gaze reflecting a promise before he even said the words. “I wouldn’t, pet. I couldn’t. Not with you.”
I was warm all over, completely owned by him at that moment. And it hit us both at once that, in some small way, I was giving him my trust. It was a hard-won battle, and Lucian did not take his victory lightly.
He groaned, and his lips dragged against mine, kissing me with a hunger he’d never satisfied before. I kissed him back. I touched his face and his neck and any piece of skin I could claim through the barriers between us. I wanted him, and it was the most sobering thought I’d ever had. But he broke away, his forehead dipping against mine as he closed his eyes in what looked like silent prayer. The struggle was evident in his body. He was trying to find his morals. He was trying to resist what was happening between us. It made me feel so uncertain, and I wanted to second-guess it too. But before I could remind myself of the many reasons this was wrong, Lucian cut through the silence.
“I shouldn’t be doing this to you.” His voice held so much agony, I couldn’t stand it.
My fingers wrapped around his face, forcing him to look at me. “I want you to.”
He searched my eyes, and whatever he saw there ignited the flame inside him again. “Fuck,” he murmured. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t.”
I braced for the impending rejection, but it didn’t come. Instead, he wrapped my arms around his shoulders and rushed to free his cock and shove my panties aside.
We were so close I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. I felt his heat against my skin. I felt how slick with want I was. The inevitable feelings of shame and self-loathing welled up inside me and threatened to ruin everything.
“Lucian—” My voice fractured.
He pulled me closer, the heat of his lips caressing my ear as he whispered the thing I needed to hear most. “I want every beautiful piece of you, pet. Even the filthy ones.”
I buried my face in his neck and nodded against him.
“Tell her that I’m yours,” Lucian demanded.
My cheeks heated as I remembered the girl kneeling on the floor in front of us. I’d forgotten she was there until I turned to look at her. The hooded eyes that were filled with lust only moments ago were now overflowing with bitterness and jealousy. Maybe it was sick, but it made me wet knowing that Lucian chose me instead of her.
“He’s mine,” I told her as he kissed my throat and nimbly exposed my breasts for his pleasure.
I should have been more modest, probably. But at that moment, I didn’t care because his hands were on me everywhere, and I was burning alive for him.
“She won’t go until I tell her,” he breathed against my skin. “Do you want her to go?”
I looked at her again, and some feral part of me made me shake my head. I wanted her to watch. I wanted her to know what Lucian said was true. He belonged to me now, and he would never touch her again.
Lucian nipped at my throat, his words so low I barely heard them. “You’re going to ruin me.”
“Please,” I begged.
I was completely soaked for him and drunk on his touch, and there was no way I’d let him back out now. Not when he was the one who made this mess of me. I hadn’t been with a man in so long, I didn’t know if I could even enjoy it. I’d never enjoyed it before. I was terrified of the idea of him taking me, but I was terrified of his rejection more. I needed him to need this as much as I did. And when Lucian nudged his cock against me, I pushed against him too.
“Please.” I dug my fingers into his shoulders as he squeezed himself inside me.
It was tight. He was big, and I was incredibly full. But it felt… good. So fucking good. His face collapsed against my chest as he let out an agonized sigh.
“Gypsy,” he whispered.
I stroked his hair, and at that moment, I was the one comforting him. It was like we had crossed some invisible barrier for him, and he knew he couldn’t come back from it. Whatever it was, he was mourning it, and I gave him time to accept that this was really happening. He was inside me. We had crossed a line we both swore we wouldn’t.
He rocked his hips up into me, making me gasp. “This is going to be quick,” he said. “I just have to fuck you. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t know what that meant until he grabbed my hips and pulled me against his body, burying his cock deep inside. I couldn’t move at all, and I didn’t need to, because the momentum of his thrusts guided me. Synchronicity found us easily, and I got lost in the feeling of being connected to him in this way. The catch of his breath, the beating of his heart against my chest. His eyes were heavy, his head falling back in pure, strung-out bliss… because of me.
He worshipped me with his lips, ghosting my skin with kisses that sometimes turned rough between breaths. He drank from my mouth, sucked at my breasts, and whispered the things I needed to hear.
“You make me crazy.” His fingers wrapped in my hair, and my head fell back. “You have no idea how long I’ve needed this.”
I drank in the sight of him this way, and it was the most intimate thing I’d ever done. We weren’t just connected, we couldn’t take our eyes off each other. We kissed. He played with my clit and told me to come. I was so close, but I was anxious.
“Look at her.” Lucian turned my face to see the girl; her eyes lasered in on his cock thrusting in and out of me. “Tell her how good it feels. Tell her that this pussy is the only one for me.”
“He’s mine,” I snarled again, and the ferocity of the statement surprised me.
It also sent Lucian over the edge. He grabbed both of my hips and pulled my body down on top of his cock, completely burying himself inside me as he groaned out his release.
Some of his come started to leak out of me, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he smeared it over my clit and used it to stimulate me while he was softening inside me. It brought me back from the dead, nerve endings flaring to life that I didn’t even know existed. It was scary and intense, but I stroked his hair and relaxed into his body, letting myself just feel for the first time.
It felt good. It felt right.
And when I came around him, it felt a little bit like I had cleansed myself of the filth I’d always believed I was.