Page 2 of Take Her

“Well, then I’ll have to be speaking to Vertigo’s membership coordinator about that, because I’m not paying as much as I do to be having conversations here with casuals.” I took a step back, attempting to extract myself. She was pretty, but I had a suspicion the whiskey in my glass was older than she was.

“I just knew the password,” she said, and then added at a slightly louder volume. “Do you want to know what it was?”

“No,” I said simply, turning around to walk away.

“It was, ‘I’m gorgeous and I like to get spanked,’” she called after me, at a pitch where everyone at the bar could hear.

I paused at that. It was clear she wanted my attention.

And while I didn’t want to give it to her...she still had it.

“Ignore him,” said another man’s voice from behind me. “He doesn’t play well with others—but I can show you a good time.”

I slowly turned, and saw Clark—a trust-fund type, far closer to her in age—circling in on her like a shark. Her warm brown eyes were filled with panic, until she noticed me noticing, and then she kept her gaze on mine like I was her savior.

And I realized that was why she was here, and what she wanted—the same as most people in the place.

Saving.

And it’d been a long time since I’d been in a situation where I could save anyone.

“Oh, come on, Rhaim,” Clark complained as I strode back. “Everyone here knows you’re rusty?—”

“Fuck off, Clark,” I said, without taking my eyes off the woman. “Daddy issues?” I guessed and watched her cheeks flush even in the club’s dim light.

“Yes,” she admitted, the tip of her tongue furtively peeking out to give her full lips a nervous swipe.

“As long as you cop to them,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Uh—Lia,” she said, after a moment’s panic more.

I knew what it was when she said it. “That’s your real name, isn’t it?” I asked her, mystified.

“Was it not supposed to be?” she asked.

Her password story might actually be real at this rate. “We usually leave our real names upstairs. For instance, the guy who sells weed on the back deck calls himself Madman23—and I’ve never met his older brothers one through twenty-two, or his younger brother, twenty-four.”

I was making conversation with her now, pretending to be personable, a little to piss off Clark, who was still watching, but more to calm her, and she gave me a slow smile in return.

“What should I call you, then?” she asked, swinging her mane of a ponytail over one shoulder provocatively.

I cast an appreciative eye over her entire body, before staring her down again. “You are gorgeous,” I agreed. “But did you mean what you said?”

She rose up eagerly on her toes and nodded hopefully, so I downed my drink and set the glass on the bar behind me, before offering her my arm. “In that case—you can call me sir.”

Lia took it and we walked through the rest of the floor at a stately pace. Vertigo had installations in certain rooms that they took pride in, sometimes holiday themed, others just represented common kinks, but they went to elaborate lengths to make them special for scenes, all the better to draw crowds in when a theme changed.

I’d already walked the premises earlier in the night out of curiosity, which was why I knew exactly where I was taking her, in her silly catsuit, and on her teetering heels: a throne room.

It was done up to look like it was from that ridiculous dragon show on television, and it contained someone’s massive, beautiful antique chair that’d they’d sacrificed at the altar of sexuality. It had all sorts of blunted swords artfully laced to the back of it, with winding layers of suspension rope wound around the front, a comfortably padded seat, and wide leatherbound arms—real leather, unlike the outfit she was in—with two women playing on board.

“Oh,” Lia gasped as we entered, and I suspected from the way she’d been looking around en route, she hadn’t made it past the bar.

I should’ve wondered why—I was good looking but not magnetically attractive. I’d kept myself up—for a long time I’d had nothing to do but work and work out—but I was well aware God hadn’t blessed me with the same charisma he had others. My boss liked to tell me that my gruffness was part of my charm, but if it was, he was the only one who thought so.

Nero Ferreo liked me because I was his living pit bull, both in person and on paper. He enjoyed having the plausible deniability that came from having someone else do all your dirty work, and I enjoyed pretending like it was all his fault that I had to do it, like I didn’t enjoy it in the least.

I’d started off with him thirty years ago, when we were both much younger men, on the cusp of our “industry” evolving, away from the racetracks and docks and into finance. And when wetwork shifted to deskwork, I was one of the few men who worked for him capable of making that change. You’d think a bunch of bookies would be better at doing math, but no...

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