Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 149137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
Like a reminder that no matter how far he’d come, there was someplace dirty and rotten for him to fall back to.
No matter how often he fucked his sub, no matter how good she felt and how well he seemed to sleep after she’d given him everything she had, she was still bought and paid for. She wouldn’t writhe under him, holding him close, if he didn’t keep the payments up.
When he thought about it like that, his whole life was one big blackmail scam.
“Everything has been prepared for you,” Riley said with another nod. “The red room is closed until you and your lovely sub are ready for play. I was surprised. You typically like to play in the larger dungeon.”
The red room was all about intimacy. It was the smallest of the play rooms, and even if he’d wanted a crowd, he wouldn’t have been able to fit more than two or three extra people in.
He wanted her to himself. Even when they were here. It was odd and wrong. She was a woman who enjoyed being watched. He’d never had a single problem showing his submissives off. He would parade them around, allowing the rest of the club to enjoy their naked beauty.
He didn’t like the way they looked at Kayla. She was a bright light and everyone in that dungeon could see it. When she walked in, every head turned, and not simply because she was lovely. They were all attracted to her because she put them at ease with her smile, her bright eyes, her infectious laugh. If she were an actress, she would be the star of every film, the strong center around which the story turned, the lead female every male wanted and every female wanted to be.
“Tonight we’re playing in the red room. Do you have a problem with that, Master Riley?”
The Dom held his hands up in obvious defeat, or perhaps as a way to say he chose not to play at all. “No problem. I’m sorry if I gave offense. I’ll go and check twice, make sure everything is in working order.”
He turned and walked away.
“Dude, what do you have against that guy?” Jared asked.
“Nothing.”
“That is not what it looked like.” Jared watched the man stride toward the back of the club. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so…shit, it’s tonight, isn’t it? When were you going to tell me?”
He felt every muscle in his body tense. “I wasn’t. I was going to lift your keys from your locker, take your bike, and hope you didn’t notice it was gone.”
“My locker is kept locked. You don’t know the combo.”
“It’s Sarah’s birthday. I’m not stupid.”
Jared sighed. “I’m going to change that.”
He wouldn’t but Josh wasn’t about to point that out now. Jared would be pissed enough as it was. “I didn’t want to bring you into it.”
“Except for stealing my bike. You could have gone out there and gotten yourself killed and I wouldn’t have known anything was wrong until I went out looking for my bike,” Jared replied, bitterness in his tone. “Does Kayla know?”
He didn’t want anyone to know, wished Jared didn’t know as much as he did. “No.”
“How is she supposed to guard you if she doesn’t know what’s going on? I thought the whole point of hiring all these people is to keep you safe. She can’t keep you safe if she’s not with you.”
That was where Jared simply didn’t understand. “I hired them to keep me safe from stalkers, not to follow me around, figure out my secrets, and use them against me.”
“You think she would do that?”
He didn’t want to think it. Not for a minute. He wanted her to be exactly what she looked like—loyal, sweet, kind, moral. “I can’t take the chance.”
Besides, she was basically a mercenary. There wasn’t anything wrong with it. It simply meant she would watch out for herself first, and wasn’t that what everyone did? He had one friend he trusted—to a point. Jared knew he was being blackmailed but didn’t know why. Jared thought it was about some kind of a sex tape. He’d tried to convince Josh that everyone made a sex tape at some point in time.
Those people had made them to have fun or to spark controversy that might help their careers. They hadn’t done it to eat. They hadn’t done it because they didn’t know how to do anything else.
What they’d done was playful and fun, and the trouble those celebs would get into if their tapes got out was nothing more than a few days of ridicule. What he would get out of it if he didn’t pay up was something altogether different, something sick and insidious, something he would never be able to outrun.
He would pay up again and again. Anything to keep the world from knowing his secret.