Chapter 3
Tate
When I’d decided to come to the Players Club tonight, I’d had a plan.
Find an experienced sub. Someone who knew the rules, understood the dynamics, could take what I needed to give without requiring explanations or hand-holding.
A woman who’d been in the lifestyle long enough to know her limits, communicate her boundaries, and walk away at the end of the night without any messy entanglements.
That was the smart play. The safe play. The play I’d been making for the past three years since I’d discovered this place and the release it offered.
Instead, I was standing in a shadowed viewing room, watching a wide-eyed innocent discover her own desires in real time, and I couldn’t make myself walk away.
It had started in the main lounge a short while ago.
I’d been nursing a whiskey with a few of my colleagues from Noble and Associates, the security firm where we worked.
Kane, Austin, Xavier and myself were unwinding after a week of executive protection detail, while Chase and Andrea, and Ford and Violet, were off enjoying a private room somewhere.
They were the only couples of our group, and the way they looked at each other made it damn near impossible to ignore the fact that something was missing in my own life.
Not just sex—I could get that whenever I wanted—but connection.
The kind that anchored you. Lit you up. Wrecked you in all the best ways.
But I knew that wasn’t for me. Not the way it was for them.
I wasn’t built for forever, not when I’d spent most of my life trying to unlearn the damage my father had hardwired into me.
And even now, after years of discipline and distance and becoming a man I could live with, there was still a part of me I didn’t trust. A darker edge I kept locked down tight.
I’d dated. Fucked. Played. But I’d always kept it negotiated and contained.
The women I played with here knew the rules.
They wanted the kind of dominance I offered—the kind that was a little dark and dangerous and ended when the scene did.
No mess. No emotion. No risk of hurting someone who wanted more than I was capable of giving.
So yeah, I watched my friends with their women and their softer, messier, more vulnerable emotions, and I told myself I didn’t want that. Couldn’t want that. Even if the quiet ache in my chest said otherwise.
“You hear they finished the new primal maze?” Austin had asked, swirling the bourbon in his glass. “Atrium too. Supposed to be intense.”
“Heard it’s invitation only for now,” Kane added in that brooding way of his. “Testing it out with experienced members before opening it up in the next few weeks to everyone.”
I’d kept my expression neutral, but something had tightened in my chest at the words.
The Primal Maze. I’d heard whispers about it for months, a new section of the club designed for those with.
.. specific appetites. Hunt and chase scenarios.
Predator and prey dynamics. The kind of play that spoke to baser cravings most people preferred to pretend didn’t exist.
The kind of darker play I’d spent years trying to pretend didn’t call to me.
The need to hunt, to chase, to take—not because she didn’t want it, but because she did…
and needed it to feel like she didn’t. That was the razor-thin line of consensual non-consent.
The illusion of danger. The reality of trust. And maybe that’s what scared me the most. Not the craving itself, but what it said about me, that some part of me might not be so different from the man I swore I’d never become.
The thought had risen unbidden, accompanied by a visceral surge of hunger that I’d immediately tamped down. I was good at that, at burying the darker parts of myself so deep that sometimes I could almost forget they existed.
Almost.
“You interested?” Kane had asked, watching me with those perceptive eyes that missed nothing.
Of all my colleagues, he was the one who probably understood best. We’d never talked about it directly, but I’d seen hints of the same shadows in him.
The same careful control. He was mostly quiet and introverted, after being embroiled in a scandal when he’d been a cop with the Las Vegas PD, but he was slowly coming around and opening himself up to more of a connection with us co-workers.
“Not my thing,” I’d lied.
But it was my thing. That was the problem.
Those darker tendencies—the urge to dominate completely, to possess, to chase and catch and claim—they reminded me too much of him.
Of my father, who’d gone to prison for beating a man to death in a bar fight when I was seventeen.
The same father who’d used his fists on my mother until she’d finally found the courage to leave him.
The same father whose blood ran through my veins no matter how much I wished I could drain it out.
I’d spent my entire adult life trying to be nothing like him.
Controlled where he was impulsive. Disciplined where he was chaotic.
My eight years in the military had definitely helped with that, but sometimes, late at night or in moments like this one, I felt those urges stirring.
The desire to stop being so goddamn careful all the time and just let the beast off its leash.
That was why I chose my play partners so carefully. Experienced submissives who could handle intensity without breaking. Women who’d safeword out if I went too far, and who I trusted to mean it. I’d built a reputation at the club for being demanding but safe, dominant but controlled.
No one knew how much effort that control actually required.
I’d been about to order another whiskey when she walked in.
At first, I’d only noticed her peripherally—a flash of deep purple moving through the lounge with the hesitance of someone who didn’t belong, despite being with Melissa, a woman I knew frequented the club.
A first-timer, I’d cataloged automatically, the same way I assessed potential threats in my day job.
She was probably overwhelmed by the sensory overload and not my problem.
Then she’d turned and I’d seen her face, and the whiskey I’d been about to order had been completely forgotten.
Beautiful. That was the first word that came to mind, but it wasn’t quite right.
She was more than beautiful—she was captivating.
Blonde waves tumbling over bare shoulders, blue eyes wide with a mixture of nerves and curiosity, full lips slightly parted as she took in her surroundings.
She moved like a woman who’d been taught to take up as little space as possible, but her gaze was hungry, drinking in details like someone who’d been dying of thirst.
And that dress…classy and sophisticated, yet the fabric outlined undeniable curves and a firm, rounded ass that made my dick twitch in my slacks.
I’d watched her cross the lounge and accept a glass of champagne before her friend had disappeared with Jax, leaving my mystery woman on her own.
Leave her alone, I’d told myself. She’s not what you’re looking for tonight.
Instead, I’d watched her square her shoulders with visible determination, then walk out of the lounge to explore the club on her own. And like a predator catching a scent, I’d followed.
I’d kept my distance as she wandered through the corridors, observing her reactions.
The way she’d paused outside the doors to the private rooms, her head tilting as sounds of pleasure drifted through the walls.
The way her pulse had visibly quickened at the base of her throat when she’d passed a couple engaged in a heated kiss against a wall, his hand up her skirt while she moaned into his mouth.
But it was when she’d found the exhibitionism room that I’d known I was in trouble.
She’d settled into one of the viewing alcoves, her eyes wide as she took in the various scenes before her.
I’d watched her watch them—the couples on the beds, the groups in various configurations of pleasure—and I’d seen the exact moment her curiosity had transformed into something more.
Recognized the flush of arousal on her face, the way her lips softened and parted, how her nipples peaked and pressed against the front of her dress revealing she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath.
She was getting turned on. And she was surprised by it, maybe even shocked, but she wasn’t running away or shying from the wickedness of it all.
I should have left her alone.
I knew that, even as I’d moved closer. Everything about her screamed wrong choice.
Wrong for tonight, wrong for me, wrong for the uncomplicated release I’d been seeking.
She was clearly innocent. Inexperienced.
The kind of woman who needed gentle introduction to this world, not the dark intensity I was barely keeping leashed.
For another, I knew her type. I’d spent enough years guarding the wealthy and powerful to recognize the signs.
The dress she was wearing wasn’t off the rack—the construction was too precise, the fabric too luxurious.
Her shoes were red-soled Louboutin’s, her jewelry minimal but expensive with the kind of understated elegance that marked her as someone used to the finer things.
She was a rich girl. Probably came from some powerful family who’d be horrified to know their precious daughter was strolling around in a sex club.
And rich girls—in my experience—wanted rich men.
Men who could match their status, maintain their lifestyle, and give them the kind of future they’d been raised to expect.
I was well off. Years of careful saving and smart investments had given me a comfortable cushion. But I wasn’t her kind of wealthy. I was a bodyguard at a very reputable firm, with a nice townhome and a reliable SUV. I didn’t belong in her world, and she sure as hell didn’t belong in mine.
I should have left her alone.