I bit my nails, staring up at the building. The driver parked on the opposite side of the street as Grant, and I watched him enter the building, shaking hands with the bouncer. It was here that I had met Dean for the first time. We had been kind to each other at first, finding common ground in our mutual interest in sadomasochism. At least this wasn’t the place where I had seen Dean for the last time.
“You getting out?” the driver asked. “I charge extra for waiting.”
I scowled. “Yes.” I paid the fare on my phone then got out, staring up at the building. From the outside, it seemed like an old warehouse that might hold a coat emporium or a massage parlor. But there wasn’t a light in the window to say,Open!Come to think of it, there weren’tanywindows oranylights. Only a steady stream of people walking into the building, saying the password before being granted entrance. People I recognized from before. Afterglow members. People who hated me.
I was here already. I had gotten this far.
I took a deep breath and went forward. I spit out that stupid password, crossing my fingers that it hadn’t changed. The bouncer waved me through like I was no one. Had Grant said something about me? I didn’t have time to think about that. I walked quickly through the entrance lobby. The people changing their clothes in close quarters made me antsy. It was too easy for someone to turn around and see me. I needed to get to the dungeon, where there was too much going on for anyone to notice an outsider.
Seeing the dungeon in full swing—a man dangling a flogger at the back of a woman as he fondled her tits, a woman using a knife to carve designs into another person’s skin, a man on his knees sucking off another man, a naked woman in tears as she was beaten with a single tail—should have excited me. Made me feel relieved. I was so close to what I wanted. But I looked around frantically, trying to figure out why the hell I was there. A man in a top hat locked eyes with me, black eyes narrowing as he realized who I was. I knew that man. He was there the night Dean died.
A man stepped in front of me, blocking my vision. I startled, trying not to visibly freak out that a stranger was so physically close, until I saw that it was Grant. A warm comfort surged through me.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Not here,” I said. I grabbed his hands. “Let’s talk somewhere else. Somewhere private.”
He gripped my hand and wound us through the equipment, scenes on either side of us in action, making it feel as though we were walking through someone else’s dream. The few people that glanced at us, eyed Grant, barely noticing me trailing behind him. For a moment, I let myself think that no one cared. No one remembered what I had done. But the man in the top had remembered. I couldn’t let go of that.
We came to a doorless hallway with rooms on either side. He took me into the back room. Black painted walls. A small couch in the corner. A cage on the other side with restraints bolted to the top. Most importantly, we were alone.
I finally exhaled and clenched up, unintentionally squeezing Grant’s hand. His palms were rougher than I expected, and warm too. I quickly let his hand drop, then sighed.
“Thanks,” I said.
I went over to the cage, which was taller than my waist. The bars were unfinished, almost like there was a powdered coating that might rub off on my fingers. Grant looked into the hallway, then came back into the room. That was twice now that he had saved me. Annoyance and gratefulness were at war within me. This time,Ihad asked him for help, but I didn’t want to admit that.
“Are you working tonight?” I asked. I knew he had done security at the Afterglow events before. He shook his head. “So you came for fun?” He nodded. Speak, Muscle Boy, I thought, I know you have the words in you. “To hook up or something?”
He shook his head. I tapped my chin, trying to pretend like his answer didn’t make me feel relief. I didn’t care if he hooked up with someone. He could do whatever he wanted.
“Why did you follow me?” he asked.
“Had I known you were coming to an Afterglow event, I would’ve stayed home,” I said.
Home.That stupid, sacred word had rolled off of my tongue with ease. It wasn’t home. It was never supposed to be home. It was a temporary place. Home wasn’t with him.
“Now that we’re here,” he said. He gestured around us, but he didn’t say anything. Left me to fill in the blanks. Asshole.
“Do I what? Want you to tie me up and beat me?”
“We can try,” he said. “See how it fits.”
There was a softness to his tone. Even the way he drew attention when wandering through the dungeon without saying a damn word, because his muscles cast their own ecliptic shadows, there was a compassionate edge to him. Like right now. Did Grant only want to get his hands on me? Was I mistaking desire for kindness?
Did it matter?
“Fine,” I said. I ran my hands along the metal cage, over the rough bars, taking my time fingering the leather-cuffs. “No restraints.” Not because I didn’t want to be tied up, but because I wasn’t sure if I could trust him yet. I had to be more careful than I had in the past. I had to try to learn from my mistakes. I faced him. “What will you use?”
He unbuckled his belt, flinging it out of the loops, the sliding sound of leather against jeans like music to my ears. My jaw dropped.
“A belt?” I asked.
“Is that a problem?”
Sweat laced my palms as I stared up at him. A thousand images raced through my mind. I thought of the moment I had looked away when Eric strangled a woman with a belt right in front of me. How she fell to the ground, gasping for air. He had released her from the belt, but I never saw her again. I thought of Dean, buckling up his belt after we had finished a scene, a scene I had ended because I wasn’t feeling it, I wasn’t feelinghim, and how afterward, I found him rifling through my purse.That’s mine, I had said.Don’t sniff it. It was a gift to me.How he had rolled his gray eyes and ignored my words. I thought of those blank gray-white eyes staring up at the ceiling.
I thought of Grant’s belt buckle shimmering in the dim lighting when he took me from the cage in the basement, dragging me out of the house.
