CHAPTER TWO #2
"I have an arrangement with the sharks in this city.
They are, as a species, spectacularly bad at long-term thinking.
They loan money to people who can't pay it back, then waste resources trying to collect through intimidation.
It's inefficient. My arrangement gives them a cleaner exit.
They sell me the debts at a discount, usually sixty to seventy cents on the dollar, and I recoup my investment through my business. "
"Kinky Kritters," Rodney said.
"You've heard of it."
"Everyone's heard of it."
That pleased her. He could tell by the way the corners of her mouth lifted, just slightly.
"Good. Then you have some idea of what I'm about to propose.
I buy your debt from the sharks. They go away.
You owe me instead of them. And I am considerably more civilized than a shark, though I admit the bar is low. "
Rodney waited. There was going to be a catch. There was always a catch.
"You pay me back in one of two ways." Lady Leo held up a manicured finger.
"First option: you enter my next auction.
It's in three days. My clients bid on participants for a night of play.
Kinky play," she added, watching his face.
"BDSM. Dominance and submission. Sex with whoever wins you.
If the winning bid covers my costs, which, given that you're a panda and I've never had a panda before, I suspect it will and then some, you walk out free and clear. Debt gone. Fresh start."
Rodney's mouth had gone very dry. "And the second option?"
"You work for me." She said it simply. "Not in the club. Upstairs. Cleaning, maintenance, filing, answering phones. Whatever needs doing. I'll pay you a fair wage, and every dollar goes toward your debt until it's cleared."
"How long would that take?"
"At the rate I'd be paying you?" She tilted her head, calculating. "Three and a half years, give or take. Faster if you're efficient. Slower if you're not."
Three and a half years. Scrubbing floors and answering phones and crawling his way out from under a debt that had taken him less than three years to dig.
"That's a real offer?" he asked. "The second one. The working-for-you one."
Lady Leo's eyes narrowed, and for a moment Rodney saw something in them that wasn't predatory at all. It was closer to surprise. "Yes, Rodney. That's a real offer. I'm not in the habit of making ones that aren't."
"It's just that the sharks said—"
"The sharks." Her voice went cold in a way that made every hair on Rodney's arms stand up. "What did the sharks say?"
"They mentioned the Playground. They said they'd sell me there if I didn't pay up."
Lady Leo set her pen down on the desk with a click that sounded louder than it should have.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, very evenly, "The Playground is not something I associate with, and the sharks know that.
If they were threatening to send you there, they were using the worst threat they had.
It's a cesspool. No rules, no vetting, no protections.
The people who run it don't care what happens to the men and women who walk through their doors, and they care even less about the ones who don't walk through willingly. "
The way she said it made Rodney believe, for the first time, that she genuinely found the idea distasteful. Not because it was bad for business, though it probably was. Because she actually found it wrong.
"I don't do that," she said. "What I do is offer choices.
Bad choices, sometimes. Limited choices.
But choices." She met his eyes, and her gaze was the most direct thing Rodney had ever felt.
"No one enters my auction who doesn't choose to be there.
No one stays who doesn't want to stay. My clients are vetted.
My staff are present. There are rules, and those rules are enforced.
If someone says no, everything stops. That's the line, and I have never allowed it to be crossed under my roof. "
Rodney believed her. He wasn't sure why, she was clearly accustomed to getting what she wanted, and clearly profiting from the whole arrangement. But there was a hardness in her voice when she talked about the Playground that went beyond business. It sounded personal.
"I don't need your answer today," she said, and the predator softened back into the businesswoman.
"You have three days before the next auction.
If you want to enter, come back Wednesday evening at six.
My daughter will get you checked in and my staff will walk you through everything.
If you'd rather take the second option, come back Thursday morning at nine and I'll put you to work.
" She sat back down, picked up her pen, and jotted something on a legal pad.
"Either way, I'll contact the sharks today and buy your debt. They won't bother you again."
"Just like that?" He couldn't keep the disbelief out of his voice.
"Just like that. I don't need their permission to buy a debt they want off their books. You're more trouble to them than you're worth, Rodney. No offense."
He wasn't offended. It was probably the most accurate thing anyone had said to him in years.
"One more thing." Lady Leo looked up from her notes.
"I'm sending someone to keep an eye on you for the next few days.
Not to watch you, to protect you. The sharks and I have an arrangement, but they don't always honor their end, and I don't want them getting any ideas about the Playground before the ink is dry on our deal. "
"You mean a bodyguard?"
"I mean a deterrent." She gave him a smile that was half warmth and half warning. "His name is Geoff. He's very good at his job and terrible at small talk. Try not to hold the second part against him."
Rodney stood. His legs felt hollow, like the bones had been replaced with something less structural. "Thank you, Lady Leo."
"Don't thank me yet." She'd already turned her attention back to whatever was on her desk, but her voice carried the distance between them like it weighed nothing. "You haven't decided anything. Go home. Eat something. Think about what you want to do with the rest of your life. And, Rodney?"
He stopped at the door.
"Whatever you decide, it's your decision.
I don't deal in slaves, and I don't deal in people who don't know what they're agreeing to.
If you enter my auction, you enter it with your eyes open.
If you show up and change your mind at the last second, you put on an apron instead of a blindfold and you start paying me back the hard way.
Either way, the sharks are out of your life. That part is already done."
He nodded, because his voice had left him entirely, and walked out of her office on legs that barely held him.
***
The elevator ride down was a blur. The lobby was a blur. Bethany said something to him as he passed, "See you soon," and he wasn't sure if it was a question or a prediction.
Outside, the Las Vegas sun hit him like a wall. The financial district bustled around him, men and women in their nice clothes with their nice lives and their manageable problems, and Rodney stood among them trying to make sense of what had just happened.
He could work for three and a half years. Scrub floors. Answer phones. Pay off his debt dollar by dollar and come out the other side with nothing but freedom and the knowledge that he'd earned it the slow, miserable way.
Or he could walk into an auction. Naked. Blindfolded. And let a stranger buy him for a night.
One night, and the debt was gone. Everything he owed, wiped clean. A fresh start he hadn't earned but could have anyway, if he was willing to pay for it with his body instead of his time.
He'd never done anything kinky in his life.
He'd had sex, not a lot of it, and none of it adventurous, with a camel he'd dated briefly and a dolphin who wouldn't stop talking during.
He'd never been to a sex club. He'd never been tied up.
He'd never submitted to anyone or anything, unless you counted the IRS, and even then he'd been late filing three years in a row.
The idea of doing any of that with a stranger, in a building full of strangers, while naked and unable to see, it made his skin crawl. It made his stomach clench. It made his heart pound in a way that wasn't entirely fear, though most of it was.
Something else sat underneath. Not curiosity, exactly. More like the faintest pull of what if, the same itch that had drawn him to the blackjack table the first time, except this time he knew the odds, knew the house, and had been told he could walk away.
He shoved it down and walked to the bus stop.
Three days. He had three days.
On the bus, with his forehead against the window and the city sliding past, Rodney let himself think the thought he'd been avoiding.
What if it's not terrible?
Lady Leo had said her clients were vetted.
That there were rules. That if someone said no, everything stopped.
She'd said it like she meant it. And she'd offered him the other option, the years of cleaning, without hesitation or pressure.
She hadn't tried to sell him on the auction.
She'd just laid out both paths and told him to choose.
That was more respect than the sharks had given him. More than the casinos had given him. More than most people had given him in a very long time.
He pulled out his phone, opened his contacts, and stared at his mother's number. He didn't call. He just looked at it, the last remnant of a life before Vegas, before the debt, before all of it.
He couldn't go back. Not because of the money, his mother didn't know about the debt, or at least he hoped she didn't, but because going back meant admitting he'd come to Las Vegas to be something more and had become something considerably less. He wasn't ready for that conversation.
So, he had to go forward. One direction or the other.
Three and a half years, or one night.
He put his phone away and rode the bus home.