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“All of them,” Hal muttered and relit his cigar. “All of the years.”
“Fuck all y’all,” Clay said. “Y’all don’t have to show up, but here you are, every other week just itching to see who turned up. Bet you’re itching real good, aren’t you Carine? Want to see who’s inside and whether you like the way they’re hangin’ tonight?”
Clay could have seduced Satan with that grin of his.
Valerie could introduce Clay to him because she was fairly sure Carine’s little car was going to stumble right into a hole to hell before the night was over.
Valerie cleared her throat. “We’re going off track again. The waywhat’shanging?”
“I can think of three different interpretations for that,” he said. “All would be true.” He took Valerie by the elbow. “Come on in, honey.”
“Nuh-uh.” Valerie squirmed away from him. When he saidhangin’, the image conjured in her mind was of a bound and gagged submissive being suspended from a ceiling hook that hadn’t been properly mounted. That scenario she’d witnessed hadn’t ended well, and Valerie got a sneaking suspicion her evening wasn’t going to, either.
“I’ve never seen folks beat around the bush as much as you all are,” Valerie said, “so the only direction I’m going is back where I came from unless someone tells meimmediatelywhat’s going on inside that house.”
“All right,” Carine said. “I didn’t want to spring it on you because you would have said no way, no how, but what’s going to happen is you’re gonna walk through that door, and someone’s probably going to try to bone you. You’re standing on the premises of the largest private fetish club in the area.” She made jazz hands, and added softly, “Surprise.”
Valerie didn’t respond because she was too busy grinding her teeth and plotting her escape.
Can’t. Be. Here.
There was no way in hell she was going to get herself tangled up with that sort of crowd ever again.
Carine kept wearing that spooky grin and her eyes went a bit round. “The basement is a dungeon. Wanna see it?”
Valerie looked from one man to the next and could read nothing in their placid expressions. No humor, no shock, no embarrassment. It was as if they were waiting for an explosion they knew would come but hadn’t been certain of the exact date or hour.
Exploding had never been Valerie’s style. Her favored method of punishing people was to skillfully and thoroughly cut them out of her life.
And she would. No qualms.
Silently, she padded down the steps and headed toward the Miata. She scoffed as she spied the humongous pickup truck Carine’s car was nestled beside. The attire of its passenger suddenly made a lot of sense. Too many times in the past, Valerie had ended up staggering out a dom’s SUV and fixing her clothes as she went. She wasn’t really into exhibitionism, but the guy she’d been with at the time got a kick out of possibly getting caught.
She had been, once. Having that cop knock on the window and point his flashlight at them had been one of the most humiliating encounters of her life.
After that, she’d said she’d never get caught up in that kind of shit again. She had a career to worry about, and she already had too many strikes against her as it was. She was a woman working in a male-dominated field. She not only needed to be twice as good as them to get the same rewards, but she had to be infinitely more pious, too. She couldn’t be caught making mistakes like that. She couldn’t afford to be labeled as “Problematic.”
The cop had let her off with a warning, but that’d been enough incentive for her to change her ways.
Valerie yanked on the Miata’s door handle and said a prayer of thanks that Carine had left it unlocked as she tossed herself into the tiny vehicle.
Carine’s bright red hair bobbed past a car a couple of rows up, and moments later she was at Valerie’s window. She knocked on it and gave Valerie a shy grin.
Angry enough to spit, Valerie opened the door a crack.
“I didn’t think you’d come if I told you.”
“You would have been right.” At a particular, obnoxious buzzing sound, Valerie shut the door and left Carine to deal with the blood-sucking fauna on her own.
Carine swatted at the mosquito and ran around to the driver’s side. The bug followed her in, but she’d apparently honed her bug-killing reflexes under the tutelage of Mr. Miyagi. The mosquito hadn’t stood a chance.
Reluctantly impressed, Valerie handed her a wet wipe from the glove compartment. “You had to have known I would have bounced the moment I figured out what was what.”
“I was hopeful that a nice guy would swoop in fast and turn on the charm long enough to disarm you.”
“I can’t believe this. You’re into kink?” Valerie would have never guessed it of Carine. The occasional use of crass language aside, Carine was the perfect Southern belle. She was sweet and demure—or at least good at pretending to be—and always wearing a smile. Valerie didn’t even want to guess where her friend’s predilections might lie. If she knew, she might have to fess up about a few of her own.
Carine shrugged. “Honey, I’m here all the time checking out the fresh meat. I mean, out in the real world—and especially around these parts—you can’t just hand a guy a questionnaire and have him check off all the dirty nasty things he’s willing to do when he takes his clothes off.”
