I run my thumb over the power switch at the end of the bullet and resume my place behind her.
“Special request,” Antonov says in the same flat voice.
Rider steps forward. “You only get one request.”
Antonov’s eyes bulge like a frog’s. “Evgeni Federov has special request.”
Rider shoots me a helpless glance.
“What?” I grit through set teeth.
“You do not touch. Katie comes alone.”
“Unacceptable,” I say before he’s finished speaking.
“You do not touch.”
Bunching my hands into fists, I glance at Rider. He nods once. He has my back. “Go to hell,” I say, enunciating each word so there can be no misunderstanding.
“You do not?—”
“Oh, fuck off, ya fucking bratva gobshite,” Kate says. She extends her hand toward me. “Give me that thing.”
I want to tell her no, but she’s the one standing onstage naked from the waist down. She has the oldest feud with the Russians.
I hand her the bullet.
Antonov lumbers off the stage, only to return with a sturdy wooden chair from one of the nearby tables. He plants it in the center of the stage and gestures for Kate to sit.
She does.
“You show yourpizda,” Antonov repeats, like a pull-string toy with too-few options. “You prove you come.”
“Go to fucking hell,” she says as she thumbs the vibrator to life. The buzz is designed to be quiet, an intimate noise for a private act. But in this totally silent room, it sounds like a jackhammer.
Kate cups her mound.
If I’d known she’d be doing this herself, I would have chosen any of the other tools. She deserves a better angle. Without my touch, penetration would get her off faster.
Sprawling in the chair, she presses the vibrator against her clit. After a few seconds, she flips it in her palm and holds it at a different angle, trying the other side like a sleeper turning a pillow for more comfort.
People are shifting in the crowd. Some are stretching for a better view, but others back away in embarrassment. This is not the show they expected at Kynk.
Kate catches her lower lip between her teeth, trying again. She closes her eyes. She touches the bullet to her clit, pressing hard. After a full minute with no response, she slips the thing inside.
Everything about this is wrong. Rider didn’t have the option of throwing Antonov out of his club. I didn’t have the option of refusing to take the stage. Kate couldn’t back down.
I’m powerless here.
I can’t control anything.
Kate moans in frustration.
I think of that night, was it only one week ago? Kate safeworded in the dungeon, then tried to fake vanilla sex. I made her promise, swear that she would never fake. I never imagined we’d be caught in this scenario.
“Kate,” I say, pitching my voice to be just louder than the vibrator’s buzz.
Her eyes find me. They’re wide, like a frightened horse’s. She’s stranded. Alone.
