Page 34 of To Catch a Sub

“Not all of it. Not yet.” Andrei straightened. “But I will figure you out.”

Genuine amusement made Colette smile. “Better men, and women, than you have tried to figure me out.” She rose on tiptoe, and he obligingly leaned down so she could whisper in his ear. “They’ve all failed. And you will too.”

* * *

* * *

Landon’s jaw tightened, his molars groaning, as he watched Colette whisper in Andrei’s ear.

The flash of narrow-eyed calculation on Andrei’s face before his expression smoothed out mollified Landon somewhat.

“You need to figure out her kink IQ,” Rolf said quietly.

“Yeah, I got that.” Landon knew this woman, and yet she was both a stranger and a mystery. Maybe he wasn’t a complete asshole for his thoughts yesterday. Maybe she was in the lifestyle. She’d make a killer Domme, but several times his sub-dar had gone off. Yesterday he’d chalked it up to wishful thinking.

Powerful, high-tension people often sought a safe way to give up control. It was incredibly common for a Domme’s subs to be male-identifying people with a lot of responsibility or high-powered jobs. The same was true with the flipped gender dynamic, though there were also plenty of women whose high load of responsibility wasn’t directly tied to a job, but rather to the mental and physical workload of unpaid domestic and relationship labor.

Being a cat burglar was high-stress. Maybe Colette slipped on a collar to alleviate that tension.

“Do you want the room with the slave bed?” Rolf asked.

For a minute, Landon was tempted. Of the bedrooms up on the third floor, several were plain, almost spartan rooms that had just a bed and a bedside locker in them. Others had been outfitted as play spaces, with the plan that club members could rent the rooms by the night. One of the rooms had both a king bed and a “slave bed”—a single mattress with a metal four poster bed “frame” that looked like a tiny freestanding jail cell. All four sides of the bed were lined with metal bars, creating a cage around the bed, or a bed inside a cage, depending on one’s point of view.

But she wasn’t a prisoner, and he had no legal right to lock her up. He’d argued with Anu yesterday that her disappearing act was grounds for them to arrest her, but his director disagreed. He needed to treat her like a protected witness, and that meant the slave bed was out.

Regretfully, he shook his head. “No. Don’t two of the regular rooms have a connecting door?”

“Yes. The old administrative and foreman’s offices.”

Several of the rooms upstairs had been here when they bought the warehouse, and it made sense that the front office would have had an internal door to the manager’s office.

“We’ll take those.”

“We’ll take what?” Colette asked, hips rolling as she walked over.

Andrei had hopped up on the closest scene stage once more, his elbows on his knees, his gaze focused on Colette in a distinctly predatory way.

“Discussing sleeping arrangements.”

Colette raised a brow and then glanced at the ceiling. “How does one get up there?”

“The stairs in the hall, or the private elevator. Both require a key.”

Colette turned in a slow circle, then faced Rolf. “It’s a nice club. Good set up, and I assume you have excellent taste in DJs?”

Rolf looked briefly disconcerted. “Er, yes. I believe so.” He glanced over at Landon who raised his hands in a shrug. Booking DJs wasn’t his thing. They hired a company to run the nightclub side of it.

“None of this explains exactly why Interpol owns a BDSM club. What do you, Agents Pederson, Leonard, and Malik, use the club for?”

“That’s not something you need to know.” Rolf was back to his usual stern, stony self. “The facility is secure, even on the nights when we open this floor to the public.”

“Entrapment then,” Colette’s lip rose in disgust. “You’re specifically targeting ‘alternative’ people with the theme of the club, luring them in and then…offering to sell them drugs? Arresting them once they purchase?”

“That’s not what we’re doing,” Landon snapped, feeling vaguely guilty even though he had no reason to.

“Then what are you doing?”

“Enough, Colette. We’re not going to tell you because one, you’re not an agent. And two, you’re a fucking criminal, and you’d go tell all your criminal friends.”