Chapter 5 Hazard
Hazard
Daily work on the Bloom Estate continued as follows: arrive early, stay late, screw around whenever there was no one looking.
Zira, the little minx that she was, showed herself off at every chance.
Either she was used to acting as if she was being watched, or she was toying with me, knowing that my dick was constantly half-hard at the mere thought of her.
I kept an eye on her as I punched in a new door for Daddy Bloom’s private gym.
If Zira was like a devil, then I was like a minion, ready to please my master. I was starving for her, and no matter how much I jacked off, she always came back to my mind, making my dick sore all over again.
Trying to give myself a break, I swung open the door to the supplies shed, then headed straight to the break room.
I pulled my bag out of the fridge, then settled into a seat at an unoccupied table.
The sandwich wrapper crinkled in my hands.
A slip of white paper caught my eye, too stiff to be a napkin or a scrap of wrapping paper.
It was a note typed and printed on cardstock.
Whoever had sent it was probably a rich bastard.
The note said: Zira knows what happened to Gabby.
My chest tightened. My sister.
Someone was either messing with Zira, or they were messing with me.
A handful of staff members, most of which dressed in vests and bow ties, ate their lunches, muttering quietly to each other. I cleared my throat and they turned to me like a herd of sheep.
“Who fucked with my lunch?” I asked.
Eyes blinked. Fingernails tapped on tables. I made eye contact with each of them, but there was no fidget or twitch to give anyone away.
“No one touched your things,” a man said.
“So you’re hiding like a little bitch?” I asked, glancing around the room. “Show yourself.”
But no one moved. I flexed my shoulders, daring someone to come forward. I could get personal about it, start a fight, make it a thing, but I knew what had happened. A staff member had been paid to hide the note in my lunch, and the money probably came from a Marked Blooms Syndicate member.
I was being watched, then.
My dick twitched. I didn’t care what happened, so long as I got closer to the answers about Gabby, and it worked out in my favor that Zira was my clue. I took a bite of my sandwich, and everyone went back to their meals.
I stowed the rest of my sandwich, my mind racing. I pressed my thumb knuckles together. It always helped to do something, to keep my mind from spinning. Otherwise, I got into bigger trouble.
Like a man in need of a fix, I wandered to one of the storage facilities, because technically, it was still my lunch break—not that I gave a shit about the rules.
The Bloom Estate was massive, with a storage facility a short distance away from the supplies shed.
It was a warehouse with three rooms; equipment, furniture, and in the last room, dungeon equipment.
Saint Andrew’s crosses, spanking benches, elaborate spinning racks, tables to strap victims too, medical gurneys, and cages of all sizes.
Hundreds upon hundreds of strange contraptions meant to torture victims. I had only been to that one Masquerade briefly, but I could tell that they hadn’t even brought a third of their devices.
They must have rotated the furniture at each event.
Wood creaked through the room as if weight was being shifted on a plank.
Peering through the metal beams and wooden frames, I caught sight of her small nose, those curved, pink lips, her blond hair piled on her head in an elaborate weave of curls.
Queen Zira laid back on a leather-lined bench, easing herself awfully close to the guillotine.
A small device gripped in her hands, silent images flashing before her.
Her legs spread across that bench, ready for more. What was my little bloom watching?
I grabbed my dick through my pants. I reeked like I was fresh out of the gym, a layer of sweat crusted over my skin, sticky with funk.
But that was part of why I wanted to ruin Zira.
She was clean. Orderly. Even her cunt smelled like vanilla and cherries, like she dined on fruit alone.
I wanted her breasts in my dirty palms, her delicate skin against my rough flesh, her teeth sinking into my lips as I buried myself deep inside of her.
And yet I wasn’t one to beg. I could use force if I wanted to. But I liked making them kneel of their own volition. It was more of a challenge.
As quietly as I could, I snuck through the room, weaving in between the ropes and metal structures, like a wolf darting through the trees. Once she came into view, the dress exposing her bare legs, my lips dipped into a grin.
Fresh meat. All for me.
I pounced, raising the hatch of the lunette and grabbing her by her hair until her neck was in the head hole. Keeping a hand on the hatch, ready to lock her into place, I drank her in. Her breathing was rapid, her eyes glazed as she stared at me, surprise twinkling in her eyes.
I grabbed the device out of her hands. On the screen, a man in a black mask gouged out another man’s eyes. The victim’s hands lay dismembered on the floor.
So that’s what my queen had spread her legs for? She was getting off on watching someone die.
“Is that your smut, Bloomy?” I asked. “You get off on death?”
She rolled her eyes. “And you get off on watching me wiggle like a worm.”
“Oh, my queen,” I winked. “You get off on it being bait on a hook more than you’d like to admit.”
I straddled the bench, resting each of my legs inside of hers, pressing them apart, so that her pussy was spread over that bench. Her dress rode up her thighs, and the faintest hint of sweetness wafted in the air. Goddamn. She got off on violence as much as I did.
But I wasn’t here to have fun with her. Not yet.
“Why’d you leave that note?” I asked.
“What note?”
I slapped the latch and let the top of the head hole lock into place.
“Who are you using to fuck with me?” I asked. “I know a game when I see one, love. I play them myself.”
She pursed her lips together, but there was something there: a hint of confusion. Something that told me that she didn’t know about any note, but she was amused that I was threatening to chop off her head just to get more information about it.
“I’d love to know who’s fucking with you, but I don’t,” she said. “What did the note say?”
Her eyes were blue and full of madness that she kept tucked inside of a cage, chaos swirling like a bomb about to ignite. Her eyelids fluttered, desire oozing through her gaze. I rearranged myself, pressing her knees apart with my legs, giving me a glimpse underneath her dress.
Her pink pussy, covered in short hair. Glossy with need. She wasn’t wearing any underwear.
Such a greedy little cunt.
“Were you masturbating, slut?” I said, my voice hoarse with lust. “Or is this a show for me?”
“What’s the most disappointing answer?” she asked.
There was a wink in her expression. She was toying with me. Always ahead. She wasn’t easy to mold or break, and I loved it. I slid my fingers down to her knees and she snarled.
“I’m married,” she said, but the desire flamed in her eyes.
“Tell me you don’t want to play. Lie to me. Beg me like a little queen should. Say those words, and I’ll stop.”
“Get your hands off of me or I’ll cut you,” she snarled.
I studied her for a second. She was telling the truth, but I wanted to test her.
“Do you always skip the panties?” I asked.
I rubbed her knee, then straddled the bench too.
She was so close, lying down on the bench like that, her head locked into the hole, that all it would take was a little maneuvering, and my dick would be deep inside of her. “You like feeling exposed like that?”
“It’s easier that way,” she said.
“What is?”
“They can just fuck me and stop wasting my time,” she hissed. “Are you going to be like them too?”
A tightness filled my chest as I looked down at her. She was serious. She didn’t wear panties, and must have constantly worn dresses, so that ‘they’ could rape her, and she saw it as a waste of time. That’s how numb she was. She didn’t want pity; she wanted control.
I let go of her knees, then stood up, reaching for the head hole’s latch.
I wanted Zira, but I wasn’t a rapist. My sister had lived in a place like this for years, and that made my insides crawl, thinking about her like that.
Not fighting. Letting them take what they wanted so they’d stop wasting her time.
But as soon as I lifted the latch, Zira pulled a knife from under the bench and struck toward my face. It barely drew a white line in the skin of my neck, but I grabbed her wrists, holding her there. We panted in heat.
God, I loved a woman with fire in her veins. I may not have been on my knees, but my dick worshiped every inch of her.
“Explain it to me, my queen,” I said. “I’m not quite sure a peasant like me can understand. You’re loyal to a man you don’t live with. A man who fucks other women. A man who didn’t even stick up for you when it came to your spot in this secret society. Why?”
“I’m not loyal to him,” she huffed. “I’m loyal to what I want.”
It wasn’t about him, then. It was about something much bigger than a marriage. I let go of her wrist. She straightened, then fixed her dress.
“What did the note say?” she asked again, curiosity brimming in her eyes. She truly didn’t know.
“The note mentioned my sister,” I explained. “She disappeared, and I’ve been told she came to the Marked Blooms Syndicate.”
Zira smiled, but it wasn’t genuine. She was mocking me.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, tilting my head. Tension pulsed between my temples. Her dress cascaded down her legs, ending at her calves.
“You say that like your sister didn’t have a choice. But no one comes here without a reason. They’re given a contract. An option to say ‘no,’” she said, twisting the knife deeper inside of my gut. “She made the choice to be here.”
The image of my hands wrapped around Zira’s neck filled my mind, blood shooting to my groin, but I shook that away.
Perhaps Zira had a point.
“And yet, I still try to find her,” I said.
“Why do you care?”
I snapped my jaw closed. It didn’t matter why I cared. I brushed the sentiment away and sent the focus right back to her.
“Why don’t you care?” I mused. I raised a brow, waiting for her response.
She dragged a hand down her chest, right near that little hint of cleavage, her small breasts smashed together, desperate for my hands.
A vein pounded in her neck. I imagined pressing against it, her heart throbbing beneath my tongue.
“Even if I did know about your sister, you’re a smart man, Hazard. Everything here is business. I’m not going to give information away for free,” she winked. “Tell me, what do I get by helping you find her?”
Her tongue flicked over her lips like a snake, and I wanted her pussy muscles to coil around my dick like a boa constrictor while I clamped my teeth on her neck. She was a clever, manipulative little bitch. And damn it all to hell, I wanted her.
“And what would make Queen Zira happy enough to give me a little information?” I asked. “I’m all ears, love. Ready to bow down and obey you.”
Her bright white teeth peeled back, showing off her practiced grin. She was perfection, from the top of her curly hair to the tip of her painted toenails, and she knew it.
“You’ll think of something,” she said. Then she stood up, stretching her arms above her head, her push-up bra squeezing her tits together.
She disappeared through the dungeon equipment, flickering away like a sunset through a forest. I watched her disappear, then turned back to the bench.
A puddle of her need pooled on the leather, and I scooped up what I could with my hand, then sniffed it.
Jesus christ. It was like a syrupy perfume.
I licked it up, groaning as I did. Sweet, with a mild hint of citrus.
She was like the devil herself, full of forbidden nectar and temptation and the fucking divine.
But what did the devil want?