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I wasn’t looking to shop for vibrators and leather outfits, and I certainly wasn’t interested in clinical definitions.

Hard limits, soft limits, safewords, blah, blah, blah.

I wasn’t even sure what all of it meant.

So, what is it I’m looking for?

I bit my lower lip, trying to decide on what exactly I wanted to find out. I thought perhaps something with pictures would give me more to go off of. I clicked on the images tab.

Holy fuck!

The extreme images that filled the screen were nothing like what had happened in Alexander’s penthouse last night. Even his crazy insinuations would never have led me to envision the things I was viewing. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw on the screen.

The pictures were borderline frightening, and some were outright disgusting. Women brutally tied up and caged with weird contraptions hooked up to their female parts. It looked painful, and a lot of it looked dangerous.

Is this what Alexander wants?

I thought I had a mild understanding of what he wanted, but now I wasn’t so sure. My eyes grew wide, and I felt my heart begin to pound inside my chest as I tried to decipher what the pictures were portraying.

A Nine Inch Nails song began to sound in my head, and I slammed the laptop closed. I couldn’t imagine how any sane person would get off from being bruised, burned, or poked at with needles. To me, there was nothing sexual about the sadistic images I had just seen. They were beyond extreme for obvious reasons. I could not believe that was what Alexander wanted.

Wait…what was it I was reading about hard limits?

I hesitantly opened the lid for the laptop and went back to the link I had initially considered boring.

At least that page won’t give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

I read the dry and very long explanations about the history and culture of the Dominant and the submissive.

There has to be something better than this!

It was impossible to believe there wasn’t just a basic explanation available. After reading for more than an hour, I still felt like I knew nothing.

I finally found a page of S&M resources and began scrolling through the articles. The more I read, the more I found kinky play was actually very normal. But more importantly, I learned of the different levels of BDSM.

Most people’s kinks were fairly mild, practicing only my initial ideas of BDSM. A few spanks and some role-playing. Yet, other people were more extreme—like the scary pictures I’d seen. I just couldn’t figure out what the middle ground was in it all.

This shit is way too complicated.

I could research all day and into the night and still not really understand it. There was only one thing I was sure of—Alexander had some serious explaining to do.

Chapter Twenty-One

Alexander

Ipressed the button for the intercom on my desk, ending the call with George Canterwell. Leaning back in my chair, I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. It was shaping up to be a long week, and it had barely even started.

Stone Enterprise had been purchasing properties from Canterwell for a couple of years. Our transactions had been easy at first, as he was pulling up stakes, retiring, and traveling the world. He wanted to be done with it all, and scooping up his properties for a low price had been simple. But old age, and his new young wife, had made him a greedy bastard. While I could appreciate his ruthlessness, I wasn’t willing to pay more than market value for what he had to offer. It was time to cut ties with the old man and move on.

The intercom buzzed, and I groaned.

Laura better not tell me it’s Canterwell calling back.

“Yes,” I clipped into the speaker.

“Mr. Stone, Kimberly Melbourne is here to see you,” Laura informed me.

Good.