Chapter 24
COLE
Rider descends from the stage like he’s climbing over the boards at a hockey rink. He stands so close I can hear him swallow. His back is to the Russian.
“Who is this guy?” I ask, my lips barely moving.
“Dimitri Antonov. Enforcer for Evgeni Federov. The Brighton Beach bratva.”
“What the fuck is he doing here?”
Rider barely shrugs. “I’m all paid up on protection.”
“You pay these Russian assholes?”
“I run a fucking sex club in Brooklyn. You bet your ass I pay.”
Kate makes a soft sound, and I realize my fingers are digging into her shoulder hard enough to bruise. I let up on the pressure without adding a sliver of space between our bodies.
Rider says, “What do you want to do? He came through the greenroom. He’s not armed.”
Rider should know that men like Antonov can kill a dozen different ways with their bare hands.
If it were just me, I’d fight instead of giving in. But if Antonov breaks free, he could snap Kate’s neck in a heartbeat. So I ask what she wants. “Kate?”
Before the meeting, she was upset by those women on leashes. If Collins hadn’t just revealed himself to be a Russian pawn, I would have offered to send her back to the car.
But she certainly wasn’t bothered watching Jonathan and his sub play out their scene. I’ve just learned that my wife has an unexpected interest in exhibitionism. And now that Antonov has made this personal, calling her Katie…
She doesn’t answer me. Instead, she turns to Rider. “He’s Federov bratva? Not Tarasov?”
“Brighton Beach, born and bred.”
“Whisper, whisper!” Antonov sneers from the foot of the stage. “Is time to play my game.”
Rider is trapped. If he backs up Kate and me, he’ll bring down the wrath of the New York bratva. They could shut him down faster than the vice squad. Or, at least, with more finality.
“Cole Wolf,” the Russian says again. “Katie Lynch. Game.”
I recognize the fire flaring in Kate’s eyes.
It’s the look she gave me weeks ago, when I caught her meeting with my sister behind my back.
It’s the rage that boiled over when she discovered I locked her out of the highest levels of my Winter Reckoning game.
It’s the madness that overtook her when she was forced into a wedding dress, dragged into a church, and ordered to say she’d be my wife.
She leans in to kiss me. “Let’s take his fucking money,” she whispers against my lips. Then to Antonov, she announces: “Fuck you.”
Shoving the Russian out of the way, she steps onto the stage. I follow close behind, keeping my body between her and the bratva goon. Antonov grunts as he hauls himself onto the platform.
The room is deadly quiet now. It stinks of sex and sweat and the barely held breath of all the members watching.
The spotlight is blinding; I can’t see beyond the first row of people. That will probably be better for Kate. She won’t be able to see the crowd.
Antonov places one meaty hand on the roulette wheel. His shoulders bunch and his knees dip, and he pulls it hard enough to spin around twice. The pointer clicks over the nails slower and slower, finally coming to rest on a bright red wedge.
Vibrator.
I allow myself a single deep exhale. I can get Kate off with a vibrator in thirty seconds. We can be off this stage, out of this club, and on our way home in less than a minute.
Rider turns his head, saying something to the black-clad staff in the shadows. A woman steps forward with a velvet-lined box. She displays the contents for the entire crowd to see, like she’s turning lighted letters on some televised game show.
Five vibrators nestle in black velvet beds.
There’s a massive flesh-colored dildo with batteries in the base, large enough that it looks like Master Jonathan might have been the model.
A sculpted turquoise wand resembles something from an art museum gift shop.
The cheeky pink vibe with paired rabbit ears is meant to hit a woman’s G-spot and clit at the same time, and the scarlet tube with a fist-size bulb on top is purely intended for external stimulation.
A jet-black bullet will barely fill my palm.
I choose the bullet.
Rider’s employee slinks off stage with the rejects as I move behind Kate. I’ll pull her close to my chest, the way I held her while we watched the other Dom play. She won’t even have to take off her clothes. I can palm the bullet, buzz her folds, pinch her clit the way she loves, and we’ll be done.
“Special request,” Antonov demands. “You take off clothes. You show your pizda. You prove you come.”
I bite back a curse, but Kate is now in full defiance mode. Glaring at the Russian, she toes off her shoes and kicks them across the stage. After shucking her pants like she’s preparing for a medical exam, she steps out of her panties.
I run my thumb over the power switch at the end of the bullet and resume my place behind her.
“Special request,” Antonov says in the same flat voice.
Rider steps forward. “You only get one request.”
Antonov’s eyes bulge like a frog’s. “Evgeni Federov has special request.”
Rider shoots me a helpless glance.
“What?” I grit through set teeth.
“You do not touch. Katie comes alone.”
“Unacceptable,” I say before he’s finished speaking.
“You do not touch.”
Bunching my hands into fists, I glance at Rider. He nods once. He has my back. “Go to hell,” I say, enunciating each word so there can be no misunderstanding.
“You do not—”
“Oh, fuck off, ya fucking bratva gobshite,” Kate says. She extends her hand toward me. “Give me that thing.”
I want to tell her no, but she’s the one standing onstage naked from the waist down. She has the oldest feud with the Russians.
I hand her the bullet.
Antonov lumbers off the stage, only to return with a sturdy wooden chair from one of the nearby tables. He plants it in the center of the stage and gestures for Kate to sit.
She does.
“You show your pizda,” Antonov repeats, like a pull-string toy with too-few options. “You prove you come.”
“Go to fucking hell,” she says as she thumbs the vibrator to life. The buzz is designed to be quiet, an intimate noise for a private act. But in this totally silent room, it sounds like a jackhammer.
Kate cups her mound.
If I’d known she’d be doing this herself, I would have chosen any of the other tools. She deserves a better angle. Without my touch, penetration would get her off faster.
Sprawling in the chair, she presses the vibrator against her clit. After a few seconds, she flips it in her palm and holds it at a different angle, trying the other side like a sleeper turning a pillow for more comfort.
People are shifting in the crowd. Some are stretching for a better view, but others back away in embarrassment. This is not the show they expected at Kynk.
Kate catches her lower lip between her teeth, trying again. She closes her eyes. She touches the bullet to her clit, pressing hard. After a full minute with no response, she slips the thing inside.
Everything about this is wrong. Rider didn’t have the option of throwing Antonov out of his club. I didn’t have the option of refusing to take the stage. Kate couldn’t back down.
I’m powerless here.
I can’t control anything.
Kate moans in frustration.
I think of that night, was it only one week ago? Kate safeworded in the dungeon, then tried to fake vanilla sex. I made her promise, swear that she would never fake. I never imagined we’d be caught in this scenario.
“Kate,” I say, pitching my voice to be just louder than the vibrator’s buzz.
Her eyes find me. They’re wide, like a frightened horse’s. She’s stranded. Alone.
“You can do this,” I say. But I’m thinking: You can fake.
“You don’t need me.” Just pretend.
“Come,” I say. Fake.
And she breaks.
For just a moment, I think she read my mind, that she heard my private words.
But I know the sound of her unraveling. I’ve memorized the way her breath catches at the back of her throat, one note shy of the tears she hates to shed.
She throws her head back as if it’s too heavy for her neck, and she spreads her stiffened legs.
Antonov goes down on one knee like an old-time prospector panning for gold. Leaning in close, his fat-padded jaw slack, he studies Kate’s fluttering pussy like he’s earning a degree in gynecology.
I want to break his fucking neck.
Finally, when Kate’s knees have sagged together, when her breath is almost back to normal, when she’s switched off the goddamn vibrator, Antonov lumbers to his feet and shuffles across the stage.
Kate stands and—shaking—crosses to my side.
My arm comes around her waist, my fingers claiming the bare flesh of her hip.
Rider clears his throat, as if he’s been choking on his tongue. Taking a wad of bills from his breast pocket, he fakes a smile for the crowd and says, “And that’s another way to win a bet.”
Nervous laughter ripples through the crowd. He passes me our money.
Before I can shove it in my pocket, Antonov says, “Another spin.”
“Party’s over,” Rider says.
Antonov moves faster than I ever imagined he could, seizing the wooden chair in his ham-like fists.
He raises it over his head and brings it down hard against the edge of the stage, sending splinters flying.
Snatching up a broken leg as long his forearm, he shoves the jagged edge against Rider’s jugular and says, “Evgeni Federov wants another spin.”
Women in the audience scream. A couple of men shoulder forward. The club’s trained security guards reach the stage in seconds, but Antonov digs his weapon deeper into Rider’s throat and snarls, “Call them off.”
Rider holds up a hand. His guards step back.
Kate pulls away from me. Hands on hips, cheeks flushed, she faces down the Russian. I know too well the wild defiance in her eyes, the stony jut of her chin. “Fine,” she says, the Irish tight in her voice. “One more spin.”