DAY TWENTY-THREE

In the daytime, as the night, the Cellar wasn’t more than a sealed and locked black doorway in the Meatpacking District. I went around to Horatio, as instructed in the latest text, until I hit a brick arch at the entrance to a narrow, clean alley. A brass plate was bolted to the bricks.

The solid metal gate was open, and I walked past it, heels bucking and slipping on the uneven pavement. The effect of the alley was of something older than me. Older than New York. A place as old as desire.

Insolent knew about Adam. I felt fine manipulating my husband, since it was for his own damn good, but I didn’t want to drag someone I didn’t know into my personal dramas. Insolent seemed game for the game, but I didn’t know how committed he was to winning.

Be at the Greens at 1:20 p.m.

Wear a skirt

White underpants. No garter. Nothing fancy

Take a cab

Do not put a napkin or bag in your lap.

Place your phone on the table, glass up.

Wear a string of pearls.

Sit with your back to the door.

A heavy metal door stood at the end of the alley. On my right, the red brick of the building, and on my left, windows looked onto a winter garden with patches of snow and twisted brown rosebushes. Since there was no roof, the alley was as icy as February. The bitter air stung my bare legs, and my face and hands were red from the cold.

A handsome man in an open wool coat and a shirt unbuttoned at the collar stepped out of the black door.

“Are you the guest of Master Insolent?” he asked.

Kick off the heels.

Run away run away run away.

“Yes.”

“Come this way.”

He led me through the door into a restaurant enclosed in glass. Cool winter sun drenched the white tablecloths, and the low hum of conversation filled the room. It looked almost normal.

The handsome man didn’t grab a menu or ask me where I wanted to sit. He took my coat, gave it to someone who whisked it away, and led me to a four-top table in the center of the room. He pulled out a chair for me. I hooked my bag on the back of it and sat.

No water. No menu. Just me in a room full of Cellar members.

I didn’t want to be there. Flat out. I didn’t want to do what this stranger told me. It wasn’t arousing or fun. I wanted Adam. I wanted Adam to tell me to go to some strange glass-encased restaurant that was hidden behind a building. I wanted to know he would be sitting in the seat across from me, not some guy I’d texted. Some guy I’d never seen before.

Was Insolent here? I glanced from face to face. The customers looked like anyone else, with a twist. Business suits. Dresses. Normal voices. A closer look revealed a few collars, a young man with a T-shirt tight enough to reveal nipple clamps. I could tell who was Dominant by their relaxed posture. The submissives had their hands flat on the table, or were sitting on them. Eyes down. A woman in a carefully tailored pants suit patiently fed her tablemate his melon.

A small white plate was placed in front of me. A card stood in the center in an inverted V.

So it begins.

My phone buzzed. I could see the preview without touching the glass.

As if I needed to be told. Right down to not reading it out loud to a room full of people. Jesus Christ. I was submissive, not stupid.

Annoyance probably wasn’t a good way to start. Actually, it was the exact opposite of what I should feel. I was supposed to feel excitement. Trepidation at the very least. This whole experiment was a fail. I was going to leave. This idea sucked.

That being the case, it wouldn’t hurt to look at the card. I was curious. I could read it then go.

I hadn’t been doing this long, but I understood the purpose of the command. I was supposed to get turned on by the exposure. I was supposed to feel a thrill at pleasing him. I was being trained to react like a submissive with a happy master. I was supposed to be aroused.

Right?

Nothing about this was arousing. It was either too soon or I wasn’t submissive.

I fished a pen out of my bag and wrote on the back of the card.

I placed it back on the plate the way I’d found it. I was sorry in my heart that this had failed, but I needed Adam to make my submission work.

As if my thoughts attuned me to the tones in the room, I heard his voice. Far away, nearly lost in the ambient noise in the room, his presence tightened my ribs around my lungs. I turned, scanned the room. I had to turn my head almost all the way around to see him with Charlie and Stefan. Their table was against the back wall, and Adam sat in profile, leaning one elbow on the tabletop as he made a point I couldn’t hear. The remnants of lunch and coffee were scattered before him, and even at a table with two Dominants, he was the master of the space.

The sight of him opened the floodgates of arousal that another man hadn’t been able to tap into. Stefan spoke, and Charlie looked up, making eye contact with me. I froze, wide-eyed, and whipped my head around.

The card sat on the plate.

What are you going to do?

I turned around again and shook my head slightly at Charlie. I didn’t want Adam to know.

Yes, you do.

No, I didn’t. But I did. Just not today. Or ever. Or now. What kind of plan was this anyway? I was playing a game I didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to win.

Before I turned back to the plate, Adam held up his hand for a waiter, shifting ever so slightly to get his attention. He was going to see me.

Unless I could turn in time.

But he was so beautiful, and the grace of his hand held me.

And as he made the check sign, he saw me.

Shit.

Fight or flight?

His eyes were blue in a world drained of color, and his jaw tightened into angles of fury.

What did he see?

Heels.

Bare legs.

A single card on a plate.

Charlie put his hand on Adam’s arm. A calming gesture. It wasn’t going to work.

Fight or flight?

Stefan followed their attention right to me, and he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. I faced forward.

Fight. It’s fight.

I pushed the plate away. The card tipped and dropped, hiding my writing. I could see the Dom’s instructions inside.

I curled my fingers around the hem of my skirt. Looking straight ahead, I pulled it up.

Adam was watching. I felt it. The arousal I’d been missing flooded me. I was tight as a drum when I lifted my bottom to get at my underpants. I wiggled, sliding them down my thighs.

He barked something, and the volume in the room went down a notch.

Too much. It was too much. I had to look. Charlie clutched Adam’s arm tightly. My husband was halfway out of his seat. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I didn’t need to. Like a good sub, I faced forward again.

Fight, Diana.

Down my thighs, looser now, past my knees, down my calves, the white cotton underwear dropped, cuffing my ankles together. I reached down, hooked my finger in the fabric, and took my right foot out of its shoe.

“What the hell are you doing?”

His voice. Like a hundred hands on my skin. He’d had the same voice the entire time I knew him, but my reaction to it had changed in Montauk. He could fuck me with that voice.

In the corner of my vision, his hand leaned on the table, fingers flexed against the white cloth, angled in tension. Sky-blue cuff peeking from a navy jacket. Black cufflink with an anchor in silver.

I’d bought him those cufflinks for our first anniversary.

He was my anchor. He was the one who kept me from going adrift.

I’d bought him those fucking cufflinks to express what he meant to me, and he was fucking wearing them to a fucking club and—

Fight.

I got my right foot out of my underwear and wedged it back into the shoe. “I’m letting someone else finish what you started.”

I took the underpants from my left ankle. I didn’t look at him. All my resistance would have drained from me.

“Who?” he growled.

“What’s the difference?” I sat up straight with a handful of underwear.

“Huntress.” His tone softened enough for my heart to hear him, but not enough for my head to disregard the warning in his voice.

I didn’t like it. Not one bit. I made eye contact with him, making sure not to waver. “Don’t call me that unless you want to know what I’m hunting.”

He didn’t break away from my gaze when he snapped up the card and opened it. From below, I could see my note on the back, but he couldn’t.

I coiled the underwear around my wrist. The crotch had been bone dry until I heard Adam’s voice across the room. I tucked the edges in tight as Adam tossed the card onto the plate.

“Diana?” Charlie’s voice came from the side opposite Adam. He yanked out the empty chair next to me and sat in it. “I’m taking you home.”

I expected Adam to interject, but he didn’t.

“I’m fine,” I said steadily, making sure they all understood that I meant it.

Charlie nodded and got up. “You know where to find me.”

“I do. Thank you.”

Charlie stopped in front of Adam for a beat, just long enough for them to speak without words. He sent a warning to my husband by doing no more than standing there, leaning one side of his body on a cane. Even though the warning was soundless, Adam nodded as if he heard it.

Charlie trudged off. I barely saw him meet Stefan by the exit.

Adam cocked the chair beside me sideways and threw himself into it, crossing his ankle over his knee and leaning one arm on the table. “So.”

“Buttons. Sew buttons. You were supposed to be in a meeting. You have to go.”

“Why?”

“Someone’s coming.”

“Yeah. I was curious about that. Those are really nice heels by the way. No stockings. It’s thirty-five degrees. The streets are still icy, and here you are. Frostbite and a broken ankle waiting to happen.”

“You can’t get frostbite at thirty-five degrees.”

“What are you hunting, Diana?”

“What?”

“You said you were hunting something. Someone, maybe? Tell me.”

You.

“Someone to help me finish what you started.”

I’m hunting you.

He kept his face on mine. He was implacable. Still as deep water.

I continued. “I know that’s not what you wanted or intended, but it doesn’t matter what you want. You dug up a part of me I need to know. And I’m sorry you have to watch it happen, but this is the only reputable club in the city. So you’re going to have to move to the one in Newark or deal with seeing me sometimes.”

“I won’t sign off on you being a member. As long as there’s breath in my body. That’s not going to change.”

“Your illusion of control is charming.”

He attacked, pushing himself forward as if he was capable of biting off my head. “I don’t have any illusions. Not since the morning I found a note on the counter. Remember it?”

“I do,” I said low in my throat. Probably the least submissive voice on the sound spectrum. “I remember that day. And the weeks after it when you took me away to degrade me so you wouldn’t love me anymore. Then you cut me loose just when I knew I loved you. Way to take control, sir.”

I said sir as if it were the most cutting insult I could muster, and it was. He didn’t flinch. Not exactly. His upper lip tightened and his hand stopped fidgeting with the surface of the table. Yeah, I’d gotten to him.

I expected him to answer quickly with some equally cutting tone, but he didn’t. He looked at his watch.

“What time is he coming?” he asked, flicking his hand at the empty chair across from me.

“Ten minutes ago.”

Adam nodded. “Waiting’s a thing. How long you’ll stand for it, how still you are, how you react.” He laid his palm on my wrist. “How long you’ll sit here with your underpants bracelet.”

“Fuck you,” I whispered.

“Damp,” he said, using his thumb to stretch the cotton crotch thin. “When did they get that way?”

“When I heard your voice.” I shut down tears. I didn’t want his heart to soften. I didn’t want pity. I’d been strong for this entire conversation, and I wouldn’t ruin it with tears.

“What if I trained you? Just until the end of the contract.”

“Too late.”

“Why?”

My phone buzzed and lit up.

Adam must have seen it. He saw everything. He was an information-seeking missile. But you wouldn’t know he’d read it from the way he continued the conversation.

“I know exactly what you need. Let me do it. It’s a safest way.”

Yes would have been the easiest word in the dictionary. He was offering what I wanted. Him.

“I have to go.” I picked up my phone and my bag. “And no. You’re not safe. Nothing about you is safe.”

I walked out with my head high. He was behind me. I felt his presence and heard his footsteps echo mine in the stone alley.

A black limo waited by the curb. A man in a black coat and a felt hat stood by the closed door with his hands folded in front of him. From his posture and manner, it was obvious he wasn’t the Dom. He was the driver.

“I’m the only safe one,” Adam said from behind me. “And you owe me two weeks.”

I spun on him. “You nullified that agreement.”

“Kind of. Yes. No. Yes, I did. But you wanted to finish.”

I crossed my arms. “What are the terms?”

“The loft is a safe shared space. We play there. You’ll have to rethink your redlines. But I’m going to push them hard.”

“And sex?”

“No sex.”

It wasn’t optimum, but I considered it for a second. I could have said maybe, or even yes, but before I could decide one way or the other, he spoke up.

“And no club. I don’t want you in the Cellar.”

I remembered what he’d said when he found Stefan’s note. He didn’t want me to be part of that world. The piece of love he held for me would be destroyed by that.

He might believe that nonsense. I didn’t.

“Thank you for your kind offer,” I said. “But fuck you.”

I turned to the limo, and he grabbed my arm.

“Do not get in that car.”

“I’m fed up with the mixed messages. Fed. Up.”

“Then we can talk about it.”

Had he always been this much of an asshole? Even when I left him, I didn’t imagine he could be this manipulative and blind to his own motivations. Yet I loved this asshole on the sidewalk more than I loved the nice guy I’d shared a bed with.

“Tomorrow,” I said.

“Now. Don’t make me tell you again not to get in that car.”

“Let go of me.” I spoke with such gravity, I felt the words lower in my throat.

He clenched his jaw but let my arm go. “This is a mistake.”

His comment wasn’t worth an answer. When I stepped toward the car, the driver opened the door, and I got in without looking back. The door shut with finality, and I faced forward. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to know what he did or if he came to the window to tell me how much of a mistake I was making.

When the driver pulled away, I hit the intercom.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello, ma’am.”

“Would you take me home, please? Crosby and Prince?”

“Sure thing.”

I shut the intercom and rubbed my eyes. My panties were still around my wrist. I yanked them off and stuffed them in my bag. I couldn’t have felt less sexy. I only felt a deep, twisting pain.