AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Inside that head of his, Landon was clearly at war. There was something he was trying desperately to say—or maybe not to say. “This isn’t about what I want. Letting you go in there by yourself, looking like that… You don’t understand what you’d be doing.”
“Looking like what?” I asked, even though I hated how much I knew what I wanted his response to be.
“You look exactly like the kind of pure, pretty little thing a seasoned dom would love to claim. Some doms would happily take you, manipulate you, and turn you into their plaything before you knew what happened. Not all of them would, but some are predators.”
My eyes narrowed. “And tell me, how is that different from the way you tied me up and seemed to want me to enjoy it so badly? Why should I believe you’re not one of those predators?”
“Right,” I said, sliding out from under his arm. “If you’re not going to be honest with me, then you’re no more trustworthy than anybody in there. Have a great night, Landon. Or don’t, actually. I really don’t give a shit.”
I walked toward the lobby without looking back, even though I’d let my stubbornness write a check the rest of me didn’t want to cash. The extent of my plan had been to bluff about wanting to go explore on my own. In my determination to piss him off, I’d just agreed to walk blindly into a BDSM club full of apparent sexual predators at the worst, and masters of emotional manipulation at the best. Nice one, Andi.
I could sense Landon easily keeping pace with me. I knew if I stopped or hesitated, he’d take me by the arm again and try to talk me into staying with him.
So, I didn’t stop.
I let stubbornness pull me forward like a leash tied to my neck.
I passed through the lobby, briefly catching a glimpse of his brother, James, sitting in his usual spot at the bar. I turned a corner, ducked through a black curtain, and found myself in a dark room filled with scentless smoke. I half-blindly felt my way around the wall until I found a door, which I pushed my way through.
In what felt like seconds, I’d stumbled my way from the lobby to a mysterious, dark ass room in a creepy BDSM club.
Wonderful.
I turned and felt for the door handle, then twisted the lock. A paranoid part of my mind wondered if I was locking myself in with someone or something, but I pushed that thought away.
“What do we have here?” asked a man’s voice from the darkness behind me.
I twitched back at the sudden sound. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just trying to avoid this guy who was bothering me. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute or two.”
Landon knocked on the door a few times and tried the handle.
“Andi,” he called through the door. “Don’t be stupid. Open the door. You don’t know what you just walked into.”
I squinted into the dark room and tried to find the person who had spoken. “Do you have a name, guy in the shadows?”
From what I could see, the room wasn’t very large, but the only light was coming from a single bulb that didn’t appear to work like normal light bulbs. I could see that it was on, but all it managed to illuminate were a few vague, fuzzy impressions I thought must be the walls of the room. If anything, I thought I’d have been able to see more if the light was off.
“I’m Edward.”
I flinched back when I saw the man emerge from the shadows. He was almost as tall as Landon. He was broad, powerful, and he made all my instincts to run fire off at once.
“I should go, sorry,” I said, reaching for the door.
“No,” he said. Before I could unlock the door, his hand was on mine. Something about the way I hadn’t even heard him run—which I was sure he did to cover the distance so fast—made my blood feel like ice. “You really shouldn’t,” he said. “We’d love to have you join us.”
I looked behind him but couldn’t see who the “we” he was talking about was. My skin crawled, like dozens of pairs of unseen eyes could be prying into me from the darkened corners of the room—phantom hands and fingers exploring my body in an unwelcome barrage.
“I’m going,” I said more firmly. “So please back the fuck off and let me unlock the door.”
“Andi? Who’s in there?” Landon called from the other side of the door. “Open the door!”
“Creeper alert!” I called as loudly as I could.
Landon immediately started banging something hard into the door so that it flexed against its hinges. Edward made no sign of wanting to remove his hand from the lock, so I did the most reasonable thing I could think of. I put my hands on his shoulders, pulled down, and used the leverage to drive my knee up toward his crotch as hard as I could.
