“I’ll drive you.”
He pushed open the front door of the shop, bells chiming as the door swung open, and I flipped off the lights and gave one last scan of the dark space before joining him on the sidewalk. After shrugging my jacket up my shoulders, I locked up and laughed as Damon hobbled around the corner to my car, and laughed even harder at him while he tried to maneuver himself into my passenger seat.
“Are you sure I can’t stay here tonight?” he asked.
“I’m sure.”
Knee tattoos definitely hurt, but if I could handle it, Damon could also handle it. If women could do it, well…it was no secret that women always sat better for tattoos than men did. A fact I reminded Damon of after getting into the driver’s side of my car and buckling my seatbelt. He gave me the finger and tried to say something rude, but my phone chose that moment to connect to the Bluetooth, loud music immediately drowning him out.
It took about fifteen minutes for me to get from Silverlake to Hollywood, and ten minutes to help Damon up the stairs to his second-floor apartment. Once I dropped him on the couch, it was another thirty-five minutes to Pasadena, and I pulled into the parking lot at Rapture just shy of eleven.
I hadn’t bothered to change or spruce myself up, but my street clothes were standard enough that I wouldn’t stand out inside the club. As usual, I had on black leather boots and black jeans, though the pair I’d put on that morning were so faded they were nearly gray. I wore a black shirt I picked up somewhere along the way, probably merch from a band I’d seen in the past. I honestly wasn’t sure. All that with my leather jacket, and it was a normal look for me. Shoving my hair back from my forehead, I twisted it into a loose bun and headed toward the front doors of the club.
Rapture was a great place and an even better idea. Landon and Verity, the owners, had kept a ton of the original building elements when they built the place up, including the stained glass and some of the pews. I loved the vibe it created, a lot like what I’d tried to do with my place. The building my tattoo shop and apartment were in had been built in the thirties, and when I put the offer in, it wasn’t in great shape. I’d done as much as I could to preserve the character of the building while refreshing what I needed in order to make it modern and workable.
“Welcome to Rapture,” a slender woman at the front desk of the club said, her hand held out, palm up. “ID?”
I fished my ID out of my wallet and handed it over. Rapture was one of the safest clubs in the area with a strict membership and guest policy. There were background checks and rules upon rules, everything designed with the safety of members in mind. I appreciated the thought that had gone into the whole thing.
She handed me back my ID and wished me a good night, and five steps later, the sweetest relief washed over me. Wrapped up immediately in the sound and smell of the club, I ignored everything that could serve as a distraction and headed straight for the bar.
The bartender, Callum, acknowledged me from the other end of the bar with a quick flick of his wrist, and I leaned against the bar top to wait for him to make his way down to me. He had a beer uncapped by the time he reached me, setting it down on a white napkin and pushing it toward me. I traded him a ten-dollar bill for the drink and turned to face the club, trying to decide where I wanted to settle in for the night.
The dance floor was dark and crowded, but I definitely wasn’t in a dancing mood. Sometimes people found trouble in the bathrooms and the patio, but I wanted something I could spend some time with. The great thing about Rapture was that it was absolutely possible to go there and not be seen by anyone. There were private playrooms and dark corners, but there was a blanket kind of implied consent there that if you weren’t behind closed doors, there was the potential for being seen. Some people didn’t care and some people sought out that kind of attention, and my interest sat firmly with the latter.
I didn’t mind peeping in on people who’d simply gotten too caught up in the moment to close a door, but I wanted to watch people who wanted to be watched. There was a different sort of performance to that kind of exhibitionism, and that waswhat I liked the most. There were, of course, times I’d come out to Rapture with the intent to play myself. Damon hadn’t been pulling something out of left field with his earlier comment about my taste in submissive men, but what I looked for in a partner these days was far from what had interested me in my younger years. Now, if I did find someone to play or scene with, I solely focused myself on two things—rope andtheirpleasure.
My plans that night didn’t involve either of those things, so after my cursory scan of the club, I headed into the new downstairs playroom. The door was open, and I slipped inside. Larger than some of the private rooms upstairs, this one had clearly been designed for group activities with a couch, a cross, a spanking bench, and enough room for an audience.
There were two couples in the room when I walked in, one on the cross and one on the bench. They both would have been a delight to watch, but the woman standing over the spanking bench caught my eye as soon as I walked in. She was gorgeous, short and curvy with short, manicured nails that matched her shoes. She had a man bent over and strapped down to the bench, his already bruised ass on display for anyone who walked in to see.
I lifted my beer in greeting and sat down on the couch, angling my body so the bench was in my line of sight. She smiled at me, lips as red as her nails, then she bent down to whisper something into the man’s ear. The whole time she talked to him, she didn’t take her blue eyes off of me, and it was my pleasure to return the look. There were some people, of course, who enjoyed voyeurism as a secret act, but I much more preferred when it was in the open.
After the woman finished talking to the man, she sank her teeth into his ear and he shook so violently from it, his chained restraints rattled against the bench. She grinned and let go of his ear lobe, making her way down to the other end of thebench. There was a paddle resting on the small of the man’s back, a mean-looking thing with silver studs on one side, and she rubbed them lightly all over his exposed ass.
He loosed another shiver, caused another rattle, and it was impossible for me to not think how much nicer he would have looked bound in rope. And how much quieter he would have been. I sipped my beer, a burst of heat flaring at the base of my spine when she spanked him the first time. Another crack of the paddle against his ass and another, and a fair amount of blood relocated itself from my brain to between my legs. I was half-hard when she traded the paddle for a flogger, but I had no intention of doing anything about it.
I watched them, and I enjoyed it.
Because I didn’t need to get off to enjoy it.
I appreciated the sounds the man made, and the way it made her smile. I liked the way she touched him, the way her fingers trailed over his skin. She was hardly ever not touching him in some way, and I briefly found myself aching for that sort of connection. I pressed the heel of my palm against the base of my dick and shifted my weight on the couch. There were plenty of times I’d watched people play with the intent to get myself off, but that hadn’t been part of the plan tonight. I’d never been one of those men who needed to actually come to feel satisfied. Most of the time, the act itself was enough to bring me all the pleasure I needed.
The pleasure I wanted.
The Domme flogged the backs of his thighs while I finished my beer, and after the last swallow, I raised my empty to her like a tip of the hat. Disappointment flickered across her face, but she was quick to shutter it, tipping her chin up in an equally matched goodbye. Her stare did flicker down to the bulge between my legs, which must have given her some satisfaction based on how aggressively she connected the falls with her partner’s ass on thenext swing. With that, I adjusted my semi-hard cock, tossed the empty beer bottle in the trash, and decided it was time to call it a night.
CHAPTER 3
SMITH
Getting into Rapture was a lot like what I imagined getting into an FBI building would be like. They took my ID, they took my information, they made Asha vouch for me at the threat of losing her own membership. They gave me a bright pink wristband, made me sign off a lengthy code of conduct, then wished us both a good night and let us inside.
I don’t know what I expected a BDSM club to look like, but Rapture was most certainly not it. Housed inside a long-abandoned church—I’d guess late 1800s based off the brick work—at first glance, Rapture looked like a dance club. The towering stained glass windows reflected disco lights off the walls and onto a dance floor that took up most of what I assumed had once been rows of pews. There was a long bar that stretched the back wall where the pulpit used to be, a few dark hallways, and a door to a patio. The old choir loft had been repurposed into something much less holy, a smaller and more private play space, Asha whispered into my ear while ignoring the loft and dragging me toward the bar.
“Callum!” she greeted a thirty-something looking bartender with a wave. Callum had short, light brown hair, wide eyes, anda welcoming smile. He leaned across the bar and did his best to give her a hug, which she tried to return.
“I haven’t seen you in so long!” He wiped off his hands on a white bar towel. “How have you been? Who’s this?”
