AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For about twenty minutes, I stared at the million-dollar view and tortured myself by overthinking every aspect of the night ahead. What would I wear? What would I say? What if I made a fool of myself? What if I attracted the eye of a sociopath? For some reason, I seemed to ping the radar of assholes as much as they pinged mine. Like, it was as if I sent out some silent signal that I was weak and vulnerable, easy prey.
It would be so much simpler to just stay home and hide my room. I had lots of work I needed to do, and Shyla could go on her own. I could spend another safe, quiet night doing safe, quiet things and fall asleep in my safe, empty bed with my vibrator. The thought held about as much appeal as getting my poor vagina waxed almost bare again. That shit hurt.
Pressing my forehead against the cool glass, I sighed, my breath momentarily fogging the view.
Good things. I needed to think of good things like my therapist said. It was hard to be positive when I’d been overly critical of myself for as long as I could remember. It didn’t help that my dad was the pastor at one of our town’s two churches. And it didn’t help that, as the pastor’s daughter, I had an image to uphold—as my mom liked to say. My every move, my every breath, was a reflection on them and their standing in our small town. Being dressed up and paraded around like the perfect daughter had been one of the reasons I fled as soon as I could and moved to Tulsa. Sometimes I felt guilty about leaving my parents behind, but they had my older brother and younger sister. Both either lived in or near our hometown and were raising their families there.
My family loved me, but they were small town people with small town minds. When my ex had been arrested for embezzling, they’d been there for me. Sort of. I should say they tried to be there for me, but they were all out of their depth dealing with my legal mess. Even though they’d never said it, I knew they were ashamed that their daughter was part of a statewide scandal that had made all the papers. My ex had ripped off a lot of people, and he’d been very good at making it look like I was involved.
It was Shyla who’d flown out with a big powerful attorney who quickly established that I had nothing to do with my ex-boyfriend’s schemes. After my name had been cleared, she’d been the one who helped me pack up my house and get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak. Once we’d received word that my ex had been convicted, Shyla had been the one to pop open a bottle of really good champaign and celebrate with me.
She’d been such a good friend…the least I could do is go with her tonight.
Sure, she had other members of the glittering Hollywood crowd she could go clubbing with at any time, but I was one of the few that knew of her taste for BDSM. I should, since it was her mother’s BDSM romance novels that we snuck off the bookshelf and read when we were in high school. While I’d identified with the submissive lifestyle right away, Shyla had been intrigued and eager to try everything—a true Switch. We’d gone to BDSM clubs together in the past, and we always had a lot of fun together hanging out before we’d split off and go solo for our more ‘adult’ activities. Just because I loved Shyla and vice versa didn’t mean we ever, ever wanted to see each other doing the dirty deed.
Yuck.
As I grabbed one of the delicious premade salads that Shyla’s chef had left us from the fridge, I wondered what Club Wicked would be like. Shyla was pretty tight lipped about it. I guess there was an NDA a mile long that would send her to a prison camp in Siberia if she ever breathed a word about the club. Well, maybe not that extreme, but the way Shyla kept her mouth shut about it made me a little apprehensive. She wasn’t particularly good at keeping secrets from me, so I was rather impressed by her ability to keep her lips zipped.
Shoving a big bite of grilled chicken salad drenched with ranch into my mouth, I pushed away from the window and headed for my suite downstairs while still eating. Work was calling, and I needed to bust my booty if I wanted to go out tonight. Everything I needed to do was detail-oriented work. It was complicated enough to shut my every worrying brain down and give me some peace—something I would no doubt need for what promised to be an eventful night ahead.
