Page 78 of Cook

I didn’t know what I expected inside. A whole new world, perhaps. But it was just dark. We met a desk with a receptionist, who wore skin-tight leather and a high ponytail holding blond hair that fell to her ass even bound up like that.

She gave one look at Cook and nodded as if she recognized him.He walked around the desk, leading me by the hand, toward velvet curtains that draped behind the desk.

“Cook,” I said, my heartbeat quickening. Without realizing it, I had dug the heels of my tennis shoes into the marble floor.

He looked back at me, softness crinkling the skin around her eyes. “What is it, Maddie?”

I wasn’t sure what to say. A scream caught in the back of my throat. Memories ofthenhit me like a tidal wave. This wasn’t Enigma, but there had been curtains like this blocking the halls into Tommy Gambino’s offices within the club.

The darkness lingered heavily, pressing down on my chest. The hard floor was like the cold concrete in the hole, the cage in the dungeon at Enigma where I went when I couldn’t live up to Tommy’s expectations.

“Maddie,” whispered Cook.

His voice allowed air into the room, gave me breath again and grounded me. Cook wouldn’t bring me somewhere dangerous. He said I was safe.

So, I knew there wasn’t a cold cage behind those curtains.

IknewI was safe.

“Do you want to leave?” asked Cook.

I didn’t want him to ask me that, because no, I needed to stop being so skittish. I wanted to run and hide, but that was when the memories assaulted me, holding around my neck and suffocating the life out of me. If he was going to take this risk, so was I.

“No,” I answered.

Cook straightened. Something hard came over him, and he pressed my chin up to face him as he looked me dead in the eye. “I am going inside,” he said. “You’re coming with me, and you’re not going to stop us again.”

Unease fell off my shoulders until I stood taller. I relaxed in Cook’s hold. Wherever and whenever and whatever he commanded. He peeled back the curtain and led me inside.

The place was as full as I’d expect at a club between midnight and 1 a.m. Men and women in black. Some wore suits and others leather,but most of them drank dark liquor from faceted glasses... similar to Enigma. I molded myself to Cook’s shoulder, and he positioned his thick body between me and anyone who let their eyes linger.

He would protect me.

Keep me safe.

Cook could’ve been a carbon copy of some of the men in the room as if it wasn’t for the bright white T-shirt with a 1950s diner graphic on the front. There were also four words. “Eat out” in a thought bubble and “Dine in” with an arrow pointing at the hem.

If others here wore leather, it wasn’t a motorcycle club jacket, but studded leather bodices and some collars. One person wore latex from head to toe with eye and mouth holes only. I wondered how the hell they peed in that thing.

“Eyes on me. Focus on my jacket,” ordered Cook, and I stared at The Ridge MC letters in an arc across the upper part of his leather jacket.

The world shifted around me as moans blending pain and pleasure pounded against my head. I started humming low in my throat to block some of the too familiar sounds.

Cook turned away, squaring off with the two people who brushed against us. They backed down, and he continued walking. I kept my eyes fixated on the MC logo, trusting and following where he guided me.

When we stepped through another door, the music and moans faded, and I heard a man’s voice.

“My receptionist told me you had stopped in,” he said.

I kept my gaze pinned but took in the rest of the room through my peripheral vision. The office. Dark wood and black prevailed, but there were accents of satin and velvet and silk. The man, though, looked hard as diamonds. I shied away from him, not liking the look of him or the smell of his cologne.

“We’re here for our free coaching session,” said Cook.

What did he mean by that? Besides a sex club, what was this place?

“Right this way,” the man said.

A round of introductions passed, but I stayed silent.

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