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“Verus isn’t only a casino, Kyra. It’s a sex club.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE END – JPOLND
Kyra
A sex club.
Leo flexes his hand in my tense grip and I release him in a distracted haze.
The part of Verus I’ve seen is beautiful in its ambiance, this hidden pocket of sinful behavior that has my heart pounding in my ears. The depraved things I’m imagining behind those doors are too tempting for my already battered mind to resist. After the night I’ve had, I don’t know if I have the strength to just sit here and wait.
“Take me with you,” I plead shakily.
His brow furrows. “Are you sure? What’s in there can’t be unseen.” He strokes my unbruised cheek. “I don’t want to add to the war inside your head.”
“I don’t want to be alone,” I say, more steady this time. But it’s not the real reason. My beating heart and lost mind are begging me to explore this unknown chamber of everything I’ve been taught to shun and hate. It’s being dangled in front of me and I want to know if it was worth it.
If it was worth all the harsh words and brutal punishments. All the Bible verses that weren’t read to me but forced down my throat. And when the message wasn’t clear, the hours and hours on my knees in the name of spiritual discipline.
I reach for my cross and Leo’s hand covers mine, our palms atop my heart as it thumps solidly in my chest. We stand there for a minute in the smoky room.
“I won’t deny you,” he says, his thumb stroking my skin as he stares at our hands. “But maybe I can help.”
His gaze lifts to my face but he doesn’t remove his hand.
“Make it my sin,” he says. “Whatever you see, feel, desire, when you walk through those doors. Make it mine to have absolved.”
I flush under his touch and I pretend he can’t tell how embarrassingly fast my heart’s beating.
I’m just as much of a stranger to him as he is to me, so why does he care?
Is it my age? Or the tears he saw me cry?
Or does he care because he feels it too, and is just as rattled by this invisible rope tying us together?
I tell myself it’s the latter. “Show me,” I say.
His hand drops and he guides us back across the room, swiping his card and pushing open one of the antique doors. We step inside and everything I see sparks that forbidden part of my brain, the sensation freeing despite the guilt and almost illegal feelings I can’t shake.
My covert research and steamy books my parents would have killed me for reading have made it so the scene in front of me isn’t too much of a shock. But experiencing it in real life is like nothing I could have imagined.
The dim lighting bathes the naked bodies in a deep red hue. I watch alongside the other fully clothed members as couples and solo acts entrance the room. Whimpers and moans saturate the air and the low music is buried in the background. There’s a thwack of a crop and a whoosh of a flogger. Even a hum from a vibrator as a man pleasures his partner bound to a large wooden X.
I take it all in, the acts like a drug to my mind, and I can’t stop myself from wanting it—what I know I can’t have.
And what’s worse, the only man I’m picturing doing any of these wicked things to me is Leo. The teasing, the binding, the pleasurable pain, I want it all with him.
He’s watching me closely as we explore the room. When I work up the courage to meet his face, I see he’s anxious.
My twisted brow and shallow breaths are the focus of his attention.
But it’s not what he’s thinks. I’m not uncomfortable, just confused. I’m even more conflicted than before, but this time it’s less like the splintering of my body and mind and more like a desperate ache for an ecstasy just out of my reach.
And then I see the piano.
Leo’s worry is replaced with a raw smile when I enthusiastically drop his arm in favor of inspecting the special edition Steinway in front of me. “It’s beautiful,” I murmur as I stroke my fingers over the keys.
