AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t give a shit about your silly little words,” Matvei growls. Pain blossoms through me again as he slams the hard wood of the paddle against tender flesh. “I paid for this—”
My fingers grope for the button. There can’t be cameras or microphones in the rooms for the sake of client privacy, but there are small panic buttons hidden on most surfaces, anywhere that a hand might be able to reach even while bound, for cases just like this. They’re almost never needed, but I’ve never been so grateful for their presence as I am right now, when I wrap my fingers around the leg of the bench that my hand is cuffed to and press the small button there.
The door bursts open seconds later, and I hear the low, rough voice of Damon, the bouncer on duty for me tonight.
“You’re going to need to step away from the girl, Mr. Kotov.”
For a brief second, I think Matvei is still going to refuse, and that this is going to escalate. And then I feel his hand leave my hair, the intrusion of the paddle gone, and I let out a slow, relieved breath. I don’t even care about my nudity or the position I’m in—I’m not a particularly modest or shy woman, and Damon will pretend he’s never seen any of this.
“You’ll need to come with me,” Damon says flatly, as Meredith—our house mother, so to speak—pushes around him and comes to unbuckle my wrists and ankles. She exists here entirely to help the girls in moments like this or listen to them if they have complaints, concerns, or difficulties that they can’t bring to Nikolai that require a professional ear. She’s a tall woman with auburn hair that she keeps in a short, neat cut and kind green eyes, and she glances at me as she helps me up, eyes looking me over professionally.
“This is ridiculous.” Matvei’s voice is hard and angry as Meredith hands me a robe. “I won tonight. This girl is mine for another two hours. Howdareyou—”
“She pushed the panic button.” Damon’s voice is even, but I can hear the steel under it, and the anger. He despises anyone who handles a woman roughly, which makes him both perfect and terrible for this job—he’s great if we need someone to help us out, but he’s always vaguely uncomfortable anytime he can hear what’s happening or hears any recounting of it. “Which means you didn’t adhere to her safeword.”
“I hadn’t done anything to her worth stopping over,” Matvei snaps, and Damon raises an eyebrow.
“I believe that’s for Asha to decide. Which is the purpose of a safeword. Now, if you’ll please come with me, Mr. Vasilev will want to speak with you before you leave.”
“Nikolai Vasilev can go fuck himself.” Matvei spits on the floor. “I was promised his best submissive. All I got was a girl with a smart mouth who can’t handle the simplest punishment or obey the smallest order. This place is a fucking—”
“You’re welcome to relay all of those concerns to Mr. Vasilev.” The steel in Damon’s voice is hardening. “But you will need to come with me now.”
Matvei’s head turns sharply towards me, his eyes narrowing angrily. “You’re going to regret this,” he hisses at me. “No one humiliates me and gets away with it. You understand that, right, you little whore? You have to leave this place eventually—”
Damon opens his mouth, but I speak before he can. “You wouldn’t know proper dominance if it bit you in the ass,” I tell him smoothly, my gaze fixed on his. There’s no fear in my expression or voice now, none that he’ll get to see. “And you don’t deserve Nikolai’s best submissive. Small wonder you didn’t get what you wanted.”
“That’s not for you to decide—”
“Actually, it is.” I give him a tight smile. “I might be paid to do this, but I choose my clients. Iagreedto take you on. And now I’m ending that arrangement. I doubt you’ll be coming back here,Mr. Kotov, but if you do, it won’t be to see me. And I don’t recommend you approach me on the street or anywhere else, if that’s what you’re threatening,” I add sweetly. “There are rules here for me, too. They don’t apply outside, either.”
Damon is striding into the room by now, two other men following him as backup. “You can come with me easily or not,” he says, the threat clear in his voice. “But you will be leaving this room, Mr. Kotov.Now.”
Matvei takes one more long look at me. There’s a burning hate in his gaze that’s directed squarely at me, a tension in every line of his body that I can see simmering with fury. I keep myself very still, my expression blank, but I feel a small jolt of fear at the way he’s looking at me.
He’s not going to forget this. He’s taken this personally, and I have a sudden, deep feeling that he plans to make it my problem past tonight.
When he turns away, sharply following Damon out of the room, I feel my shoulder slump a little. “Are you alright?” Meredith asks me, her eyes narrowing as she appraises me, and I give her a small smile. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”
Before she worked here, she was a therapist, and it shows. She’s come in handy with plenty of the girls who need someone to talk to, but I’ve rarely used her services. I prefer to keep to myself and figure my own shit out, but that doesn’t mean I’m not glad to have her here at the moment.
“I’m fine,” I assure her. “I just need a few minutes. I’m going to go sit in my dressing room and calm down, and then I’ll get a ride home so I can shower and get some rest. No big deal. Nikolai will ban him, and he won’t come back. But if Nikolai asks you, even if Matvei hadn’t ignored my safeword—he shouldn’t be allowed around any of the girls.”
“Of course.” Meredith nods. “But ignoring it means he’ll be banned immediately. There’s nothing to worry about. He won’t be back.”
“I know.” I wrap the robe a little more tightly around myself. I know she’s saying it to comfort me, but if I’m worried about anything, it’s when I’mnotat the club. I feel protected here, but outside—
Outside, you’re still not helpless.I keep a knife on my person and a gun in my apartment for exactly this sort of reason, and I won’t hesitate to use either on anyone who comes close to me. Iknowhow to use them, too. But I tell myself, as I thank Meredith again and head to the privacy of my dressing room, that it won’t matter.
Matvei was wound up tonight; an arrogant and entitled man denied something that he thought was his by right, but he’ll forget about it soon enough. I’m just a girl—a girl whose real name he doesn’t know, and whose stage name he’ll almost certainly forget quickly enough. He’s not going to bother coming after me.
A man like him, as brutal as he is, has ambitions beyond harassing a single escort who didn’t please him.
It’s the better part of an hour before there’s a knock on my dressing room door. I’m back in my street clothes—black skinny jeans, ankle boots, and a tank top under a cropped leather jacket for the spring chill outside—but I’d waited for specifically this reason, because I assumed that Nikolai would want to talk to me.
“Come in,” I call out as I zip up my makeup pouch and slip it back into a drawer. The standard dressing rooms that the other girls use are typically a mess of makeup, hair products, beauty tools, lingerie, and heels everywhere, and it always makes me glad that I have my own room. I like the room to be neat when I arrive for work, so no matter how tired I am at the end of the night, I make an effort to clean it up. I always feel more relaxed walking into a clean, neat space at the start of my shift.
“Asha, I’m so sorry.” Nikolai is already speaking from the moment he steps into the room. “How badly did he hurt you?”
