Chapter 40 Nine
Nine
Kate didn’t answer Emma’s calls on Thursday or Friday. She didn’t respond to email. Emma studied at the coffee shop and the library, trying to focus, but all she could think about were Kate, the club, and Shay. Most of all, Shay.
Two people on the kink-curious loop posted links to invites to a BDSM club called Harlow’s. The club was interested in having more coeds come to experience what they had to offer. Two of the girls had arranged to meet there, and Emma emailed them to ask if she could join them.
Harlow’s wasn’t a secret society and didn’t sound like a place where its members spent all their time. Emma thought she might be able to sample things without the risk of losing her identity. That thought made her feel hopeful.
She knew she should get something special to wear.
She didn’t have the nerve to try fetish wear in its full glory.
All of that seemed so tight and revealing.
She thought about Rory’s comments about her favorite dress, though.
He’d been right that light and floral was better suited to other places, not a bondage club.
She washed Coral’s sheer robe, and Emma had a black bustier that she’d worn as part of a Halloween costume one year.
It had been worn underneath a tailored jacket when she’d been a “sexy executive.” Under the robe, the bustier would work for a club.
She put on a black skirt and heels and felt pretty well covered by the outfit.
It wasn’t great, but the sheer robe over the bustier was sexy without being uncomfortably revealing.
Emma drove to the club, but the lot was full, so she parked on the street. She thought it was a good sign that the place was busy. In a crowd, there wouldn’t be a focus on her and she wouldn’t feel as intimidated by what might happen if there were only a few people present.
The girls were supposed to meet in the entry between ten and ten-fifteen. At nine-fifty-nine she went inside. They asked her some questions and explained the rules, which were much less elaborate than the ones at the Marquis Club.
The people coming into Harlow’s were much rougher looking than the people at the Marquis Club.
Their fetish wear was all very pointy. And the attractiveness factor was lower.
As she waited for fifteen minutes, she people-watched.
There were no men that could’ve been in magazine spreads.
No Master Js. No Shay. She frowned at herself.
A man didn’t need to be drop-dead gorgeous to be attractive. She needed to stop making comparisons.
She found the type and extent of the body art and piercings unsettling, though. She understood it was a valid form of self-expression and decoration, but it didn’t appeal to her. One man who stood close to her had writhing demons on his chest and back. They creeped her out a little.
He tried to engage her, but she explained she was waiting for someone. He lingered.
She wondered if the girls from school could have already gone inside. Or if they’d decided to skip the club altogether. She checked her email. No messages from them. She sent one to them but didn’t expect to hear instantly.
Harlow’s entry had gotten crowded. She started to feel claustrophobic.
In or out, Emma? She took a deep breath. Just a look around and then I’ll go.
She wove through the people to get into the club. The first room had black light and death metal playing. People danced wildly.
The club had been converted from an old house, so the rooms were separate from each other.
She walked in on a pair of couples copulating.
One against the wall. The other in a corner on the floor.
There were a few spectators cheering them on.
The crowd was definitely more vocal than the crowd at the Marquis Club had been.
On some level, Harlow’s felt appropriately casual if sex was going to be viewed as a spectator sport.
On the other hand, it had a sort of sleazy vibe, too.
The room smelled of bleach and cigarette smoke, and she wanted out.
She got turned around and decided to just leave, then she found the stairs. She knew the dungeon would likely be downstairs. Could she really say she’d experienced Harlow’s without looking in on their main play area?
She descended the steps. There were people going up and down, and bodies pressed against her.
A hand grabbed her breast and twisted it hard enough to elicit a gasp.
The man grabbed her hair, pulled her head back and kissed her.
He tasted of liquor. She jerked free and nearly fell the rest of the way down, but caught the bannister.
She glared at him. He sneered and continued up the stairs. Wow. She would’ve gone directly back up to leave, but she didn’t want to appear to be following him.
The first person she saw when she stepped into the basement was a man with an orange band.
A dungeon master, thank God. The DMs acted as a club’s police force.
They stopped scenes that got out of hand and enforced the club’s rules.
She’d thought it was strange that the Marquis Club didn’t have them, but the Doms there had all seemed intimately acquainted with the rules of their club, and Shay had said if there was a problem a sub could tell any Dom.
Emma ventured farther in. The first two things she saw were St. Andrew’s crosses like the one Rory had strapped Kate to.
One of the crosses had a man strapped to it, the other a woman.
But beyond them, things were much darker in both senses of the word.
Contorted bodies were being twisted and slapped, whipped and pulled by the nipples or labia by heavy chains, pinched with laundry pins, and, oh God, poked with needles and cut with thin blades. Blood seeped from shallow cuts.
There was plastic covering the floor and areas were separated by rope, but it couldn’t be safe to be cutting different people in such close proximity.
One woman who was being tortured was painfully thin with bruises of different ages all over her.
Emma’s stomach churned as a man dragged the woman back when she tried to crawl away.
Emma knew it was a scene, but it felt real and made her nauseous.
She turned and hurried back to the stairs with the image burned in her mind.
Out was all she could think.
She pushed through. When she met a traffic jam of bodies in a doorway, she had to work to get past them. Someone grabbed her robe. The ties pulled taut across her throat, panicking her for a second. With the robe pulled back, her bustier was exposed.
“Nice outfit. Where are you from?” a craggy-faced man with a spider tattoo on his hand demanded.
“Please let go,” she said.
“Let’s talk first,” he said, attempting to turn her toward him.
The strings were cutting into her neck. Her heart slammed in her chest, adrenaline pouring into her veins. She jerked the end of the bow she’d tied and the knot slid undone. She surged forward, leaving the robe behind.
Some people leered at her as she made her escape. She found the door and shoved it open to get outside. The air was cool and fresh. Despite her pounding heart, relief flooded her body.
She turned onto Guyton where she’d parked, but nothing looked familiar. She couldn’t stand still, so she walked along the street, searching.
“Hey, your friend didn’t make it?”
Her head jerked to look over her shoulder. It was the man with the demon tattoos from the entryway. At least it wasn’t either of the men who had grabbed her.
“They’re here. I’m trying to find their car.”
He eyed her. “Slaves shouldn’t lie to Doms. That’ll get you punished,” he said with a smile. It was said in a light enough tone, but it made everything in her instantly alert. Getting out of the club hadn’t really been an escape if the club had followed her outside.
“I’m collared actually. So a random Dom doesn’t get to punish me.”
“I don’t see a collar, and I don’t see your master. I think you’re playing a little game. That’s okay. I like games.” He reached out, sending a forearm’s worth of snarling demon art toward her.
She stepped back. “I’m not playing a game. You’re actually creeping me out. Please go away.” She spoke the words clearly and forcefully. There was no flirtatious edge or breathy submissive in it. It was pure harassed female. She wanted him to get the message.
But he didn’t go.
“I don’t think you’ve got a master. I think you’ve read about them.
You’re new to all this, aren’t you? You need someone experienced to show you the ropes.
It’s important. You’re from the university, right?
We heard there might be a few college girls in the mix, looking for some kicks.
You’re a little too fresh for Harlow’s. There’s a better place.
Ever heard of the Marquis Club? Upscale.
As in the rich guy from the book I’m sure you read. ”
“You’re not a Marquis Club member,” she said.
“You think I’m not good enough? I go wherever the hell I want. I’ve been in this scene a lot longer than some snot-nosed college boy. Let’s go. I’ll show you how it’s really done.”
She moved quickly, but not quickly enough. She was hampered by high heels. He wasn’t. She fought to free herself and when she couldn’t, she screamed Fire as the self-defense courses all said to do. But no one came running. No people looked out their windows to see she was in trouble.
She tried to get her hand into her purse. If her car was anywhere nearby she could set off the alarm.
The man grabbed her throat. “If you scream again, your punishment will be—”
The man’s face contorted, and his grip slackened as he crumpled to his knees wheezing. Shay stood behind him, having appeared from the darkness like Batman.
The man rolled onto his back. “You son of a bitch. What the fuck did you hit me with?”
Shay held out empty hands.
“You kicked me in the balls? Like a woman? I’ll fuck you up, you long-haired faggot,” the man snarled, grabbing for Shay’s leg.
Emma gasped, afraid he would drag Shay down and hurt him, but Shay bent forward and she heard the crack of a fist hitting bone.
The man clutched his throat, gasping. Shay grabbed the guy’s arm and twisted it into a lock hold and then cuffed the guy’s wrist using a bondage restraint.
He attached it to the door handle of the nearest car.
The guy struggled to breathe, still holding his injured throat.
“Where’s your car?” Shay asked, leading her away.
“I don’t know. It’s gone.”
Shay shook his head. “You probably parked on Guron.”
She blinked. “There’s Guyton and Guron?”
“Yes, a city planner must have liked the letter G,” he said, taking her arm and directing her. The cuffed man began yelling in a raspy voice.
She looked past Shay at her attacker. “Are you going to leave him there?”
“Until I put you in your car, yes.”
“And then?”
“Then I’m going to call the police and tell them I’ve made a citizen’s arrest.”
She laughed. “You’re not serious.”
“I am. More or less.”
“What will you tell them?”
“That I was passing by and saw him assaulting a woman. I intervened and here we are.”
“What about the woman?”
“She was shaken and wouldn’t give me her name. I certainly wasn’t going to try to force her to stay after what she’d been through. I’m prepared to give a full account. I saw this guy’s assault on her unfold.”
“He’ll probably say you two just got into a fight, Shay. If you’re going to make a report, maybe I’d better stay.”
“Make a statement in that outfit? Outside Harlow’s? They’ll find out you were inside and your name will be linked to a BDSM sex club in a police report.”
She paled. “So maybe you should just leave him. You don’t want your name linked to it.”
“I wasn’t in the club. I was just passing by.”
“With wrist restraints?”
“Those aren’t mine. They’re his. I’m pretty sure he had them hanging handily from his back pocket so he could grab them quickly and put them on a resisting coed he had plans for.”
“Oh my God,” she said, shaking her head. “They really were his, and he had them out and ready?”
Shay nodded.
“He must have watched me and followed me out of the club,” she said, stiffening. “What are you doing here? Do you come here sometimes?”
“You mean to partake in the fun? No,” he said with a smirk. “I’ve got a club, remember? I heard Harlow’s sent an invitation to a couple college BDSM interest groups. They’re trying to step up their game. Did they serve you cookies and punch?”
“Yes, from a bloody skull. It was pretty bitter. Needed rum,” she said, so happy that he was joking with her. If he’d done anything else, like comforted her, she might have fallen apart on the street. Seeing him made the whole night less traumatic.
“There’s my car. Thank God,” she said. “Obviously, it’s the height of style. I’d hated to have lost it.”
He grinned at the six-year-old Civic. “I can see why. I may trade my Aston Martin in for one of these.”
She paused with her key near the lock. “Do you really have an Aston Martin?”
He nodded.
“Like James Bond?”
“That’s who recommended it to me.”
She laughed. “I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”
“I get that a lot from you.”
Her smile faded. “Shay, about the other night.”
“Forget it,” he said, opening her car door for her. “In you go.”
“Could we talk sometime?”
“You mean at the club?” he asked.
“No, I meant at like a coffee shop or something.”
He shook his head. “Talking to me comes with club membership. Outside the club, I’m busy with work. And vigilantism obviously,” he added with a smirk.
“I understand,” she said, smiling despite her disappointment. “You should probably trade in the Aston Martin for a Batmobile.”
His grin widened. “I might.” He took a step back.
At a loss for anything else to say to engage him, she finally got into her car. He held up his hand in a wave and closed the door.
As soon as the door was locked and the car started, he backed away.
“Damn it,” she murmured and then pulled out of the spot and drove home.