CHAPTER EIGHT #3
That remark, Will felt confident enough to challenge. He squared his shoulders and pulled himself to his full height, and glared at Brad.
“Hey, for I all know, you’re not collared because you don’t have a steady Dom,” Will said. Brad’s hungry gaze, the way he panned up and down Will’s form and sucked in his lower lip, inspired discomfort. “I may be new to the scene, but I know what the collar symbolizes.”
Brad nodded. “Aren’t you clever? Yeah, it’s true not every sub wears a collar, and Velvet Sands is the place to be if you’re looking for one. Is that why you’re here, Omega?”
“How do you know I’m not a Dom, or an Alpha?” Will tilted up his chin, defiant in stand despite his organs quaking like jelly.
“I can tell. I’m good at sussing out these things.” Brad sidled closer, baring crooked incisors and bringing his dark campout stench to Will’s face. Mistress Eden continued her demonstration, capturing the majority of the crowd while Will leaned away for clearer air.
Brad sniffed hard and grunted. “You must be on some military-grade suppressants, Omega. Tell me what you smell like?”
Will folded his arms. He eyed the bar, contemplating a bottle of water for cooling down. “I don’t think my scent or my supplement regimen, assuming I have either, is any of your business.”
“You interested in playing tonight?” he asked.
Not with you. Nor with anyone else here, for that matter. “I’m just here to observe.” Not that he owed Brad an explanation, but he wanted to stress his lack of interest. His no meant no, and he expected Brad to shrug and move on to the next unfortunate soul.
Instead, the man breached Will’s personal space. He nudged Will with his bare shoulder. A dead forest hung heavy between them. “Come on. One session on the sawhorse.” Brad goaded him. “I’ve been checking you out, Billy.”
“Don’t call me Billy.”
“You have nice pale skin, and I bet your sweet ass is white as milk.” Brad leaned to one side to admire how Will’s backside filled out his jeans. “I’d love to see how my red handprint looks on your creamy skin. I bet I could have you leaking slick all over the floor.”
Ew. “I thought there was a policy about it here.” Will scanned the play area, looking for the supervisory staff charged with spotting heat/rut activity. Whoever the club hired blended too well in the crowd.
“Look, if an Omega goes into heat while I’m disciplining him, I’m fine to help him through it.”
The slight brush of their bodies proved enough to ignite Will’s disgust. “I’m not interested in that, or in being spanked by you. Have a good evening.” He stepped away to drive the point, but Brad closed the space again and leered up at him.
“Could you move away, please?” Will asked, his cracking voice betraying him.
“When somebody declines play you’re supposed to accept it.
It’s basic BDSM protocol.” Applicable also to vanilla dating.
Will knew he gave off vibes that should have encouraged Brad to back off, but the guy wasn’t having it.
“Why the fuck did you come to a kink club if you refuse to get kinky?” Brad reached his hand up to Will’s face, and Will reared back. The cloying atmosphere, the influx of bodies and mingling of other scents, turned Will’s head dizzy. This was a mistake.
Every step Will took, Brad matched. Will steered toward the exit and scanned passersby for any hint of authority. A name tag, a badge. “I told you I’m here to observe tonight, that’s all,” he said. “I am not interested in you bending me over a sawhorse, especially since I don’t know you.”
“I’m a nice guy, and a solid Dom. Ask anybody here.” Brad waved his thick arm in a wide arc.
“I don’t know anybody here.” Will raised his voice.
“Good luck finding an actual sub who’s willing and cooperative.
” He turned to leave, anxious to put distance between himself and his unwelcome admirer.
The cold, pinching grasp of Brad’s fingers around his bicep, however, triggered a response that gave several people within earshot pause.
“Hey, don’t walk away from me!” Brad’s voice turned angry and demanding. Each word knifed through Will’s gut, and panic set in. He jerked his arm, but Brad held him like a vice.
“Let go!” Why was nobody intervening?
“One round on the sawhorse,” Brad said. “Let me spank your sweet ass and we don’t have to see each other again.”
Right. Will knew if he acquiesced to a session on the sawhorse, Brad would demand they play on the cross, then the swing. He looked around the club, disheartened as people walked past with barely a glance in their direction. “I want you to let me go,” he said. “I told you I am not interested.”
“Maybe if you tried it you’d like it.” Brad gritted his teeth.
“Hey, he said no. Why don’t you let him go like he asked?”
Finally, intervention. More people crowded this part of the club, and the ebb and flow of bodies combined with the dimmer lighting in this part of the club made it difficult to see who stood up for him.
Will was too focused on Brad owing to the man’s proximity, but he was no less grateful for the help.
“Thank God,” he muttered, keeping his voice low. Brad loosened his grip and Will rubbed away the soreness. He hoped he didn’t bruise under his shirt, and he was so focused on his own pain he wasn’t aware of the heated argument happening next to him.
“This is none of your damn business, guy. I’m in the middle of negotiating a scene here,” he heard Brad say.
“I heard him talk back, and he told you no. You know what that word means, unless you think we need to pull up a dictionary app. No? Okay then. How about you get lost?”
That voice…
Will looked away from Brad just as Ray Matthews rounded on him with a soft expression, his eyes wide. “Are you okay, Will?” he asked. “Did he hurt you?”
“Um…” Will looked past Ray to where Mistress Eden’s demonstration drew to a close. Brad, scowling, had stomped back to that group, attentive to the Domme as she helped her submissive down from suspension. Ray paid none of it any mind. Will felt somewhat exposed.
“I’m fine,” he said after a beat.
“If he hurt you, tell me.” Ray tensed along with his voice. “It might not have seemed that way just now, but they enforce the rules here. Any patron caught getting rough on another person is expelled and banned. You can still report him. I’ll vouch for you.”
Will considered whether Brad deserved such punishment. Perhaps it was a moot point, since he’d lost all interest in this club. “I’m fine,” he repeated, and brushed past Ray. “It was just a misunderstanding. Please excuse me.”
“Where’re you going?” Ray asked, following him.
“Home.” Will looked for pockets of space among the people coming into the main room.
The music sounded louder and the vanilla mist now spewing from diffusers near the ceiling irritated his olfactory sense.
Was that meant to mask the natural scents of the guests?
Who cares? I’m not coming back here. “I’ve seen enough of this place to know I’m not cut out for it, or for anyone into this. ”
Ray quick-stepped past and rounded on Will. In another time he might have welcomed Ray’s enthusiasm, been flattered by the attention. Here, it added to his discomfort.
“What about me?”
“What about you?” Will asked, annoyed. “You’re here and I had no idea you were coming. Were you meeting a date or looking to find one?”
Ray’s reaction suggested shock. “No!”
Will wanted to believe him. Ray wore street clothes, jeans and a plain olive green shirt.
BDSM didn’t have an official uniform, though.
Ray might not be decked out in leather and studs, but it didn’t mean he hadn’t come to play.
“I don’t know you weren’t planning to discipline an uncollared sub tonight,” he said, easing away from Ray.
“That’s fine. It’s not like we made a serious commitment or anything. ”
“Will, I know you’re upset,” Ray cut in, “but this is residual from that earlier confrontation. I’m not the one you’re upset with.
” His expression slackened to a soft melancholy.
“This is a third space for me. I don’t always participate.
Sometimes I sit at the bar and mingle, and I planned on that tonight.
If you want to leave, fine, but let me join you.
Let’s get some coffee, talk. You can tell me why you came tonight. ”
Will shook his head. “Later, okay? I need some air, and time to think. It stinks in here.”
“Will.”
Later, he thought. Maybe never. All Will wanted at the moment was the safety of his apartment and the opportunity to put this disastrous outing behind him. Unfortunately for Ray, it meant leaving him with the triggers housed in this club.
Will quick-stepped toward the exit and found he didn’t have to wait to be buzzed out. He passed the teal-wigged girl in reception without saying goodbye and bolted out into the night. He relaxed once he reached the parking lot and breathed in the night air, savoring the release.
He paced the length of his car for a few laps before slipping into the driver’s seat.
He wanted to walk off the stench of Velvet Sands, of that demanding Alpha Brad and even Mistress Eden’s cool, dominant demeanor.
He thought her demonstration was the one high point of the evening, but Brad’s aggressive behavior spoiled it.
And Ray. Had Greg tipped him off to Will’s presence here?
Impossible. He hadn’t revealed Ray’s name during their conversation.
Ray came on his own, leaving Will uncertain how to interpret it.
He could accept Ray’s reasoning. Velvet Sands was a social establishment, and maybe Ray wanted to let off steam by watching a few demos.
The longer Will sat in his car, though, hinted at Ray preferring to stay. It answered a lot of questions Will was afraid to ask, and when he started the car to head home the club’s door remained closed, causing Will’s heart to further deflate.