Page 8 of Unbind

‘I always do,’ she retorts, but there’s no missing the affection on her face when she looks at her husband.

‘You’d run the acquisition past her?’ I clarify, surprised. Iunderstand I’m on dangerous ground here, but I can’t see any circumstances when I’d allow a lowly host any say in my management affairs.

‘I would,’ Gen says. Her voice is neutral, but something in it tells me she wouldn’t welcome being challenged on this. ‘Nat is a loyal employee. She works incredibly hard, and I would never put her, oranyof my team, in a position where I brought in someone at a management level who made them feel unsafe in their place of work, however unlikelyIfind the threat.’

Her words hit me like a blow to the stomach. Here was I thinking this was about a potential employee’s deep dislike of me, but it’s not.

It’s about the fact that in Natalie’s eyes I’m still a common thug—a violent, volatile entity.

And a danger to those around me.

5

ADAM

My first evening at Alchemy may have spiralled from the fantasies I was expecting into a reality far too grim for my liking, but I opt not to go home when I’ve wrapped up my uncomfortable chat with Gen and Anton.

The blood is coursing far too readily through my veins for that. My mind is far too uneasy, the phantom cold of long-gone steel handcuffs around my wrists too close to the surface to give me comfort.

There’s only one thing for it tonight, and that’s oblivion. The kind Alchemy promises, at least, as enticing as it is temporary. But it’s what I need. It’s the only way I’ll slay those demons, alter my biochemistry.

Let’s see if the women next door can provide the elixir this place promises. The sedative I crave.

I bid goodnight to my hosts and head through the heavy double doors that lead from the main bar to The Playroom.

My permitted double shot of whisky has done nothing to settle me.

But this just might.

I stand at the threshold of the large room and attempt to make sense of the instant sensory assault. The music was loud next door, but in here it’s deafening, that same heady thump as the one that always hits your bloodstream when you walk into a nightclub. The one that screamslet’s do this.

Like a nightclub, the lighting is dim, complex. The enormous white pillars are up-lit in pink, as are the gauzy white drapes that hang between them. A woman twirls languorously onstage in a suspended hoop. It’s busy, too busy for a clear view of the room, but I take in the patrons dancing in time to the house music while others fuck on sofas.

It’s a clever setup, the music and drapes and lighting and even some dry ice conspiring to trick the mind somewhat, to confuse the senses as much as to delight them.

Forget the whisky.

Thiscan be my drug of choice tonight.

Anton mentioned that the female hosts in here wear identical white dresses so they can be easily spotted. It won’t be hard to find a woman—or women—to fuck, but this evening I want a professional. The fact of Alchemy being a sex club won’t completely protect me from clinginess or hopefulness, of cards with phone numbers being slipped into my trouser pocket.

I have no tolerance for that kind of bullshit tonight, just as I have no tolerance for a woman who thinks she wants what I have to offer but who will, at the first strike of my palm, run for the hills.

I make my way through the crowd, pausing to appreciate the view of a stunning blonde laid out on a low couch while one guy eats her and another holds her hands above her head. Fuck, that’s hot. Vanilla, but hot nonetheless, mainly because it’s so carnal. So unapologetic.

And I am most definitely in an unapologetic mood tonight. I know with absolute certainty that the remorse and self-disgust my run-in with Natalie has triggered will haunt my dreams tonight and hit me with blunt force when I surface tomorrow morning. So for now, I need to sate myself, empty my body of this friction, this restless energy buzzing under my skin.

I need to do it without having to hold back.

Gen offered to make some introductions for me, but I’ve certainly never needed any help getting laid, and I’m not about to start asking for it now. I stride over to the pink-lit bar, my eyes on the back view of a willowy brunette. Short white dress. Endless, shapely legs. Sky-high heels. Long, dark hair that reminds me fleetingly of that girl Natalie’s.

That’s fucked-up, even by my standards: homing in on a woman who resembles, even slightly, the woman who quite justifiably made me feel less-than earlier. I wonder what my therapist would say. I tell myself it’s less about reasserting my wounded authority than about showing her who’s boss. After all, that’s the despicable act of a cowardly bully, and I’m not that man anymore.

This is about restoration by proxy. About making amends. I’m imagining giving it to Natalie so hard that I’ll obliterate any pain I’ve inadvertently caused her.

What a crock of shit. Apparently, even a man who’s made self-awareness his entire personality for two decades can have staggering lapses.

When the woman at the bar turns around, she of course looks nothing like Natalie. She’s very sexy—not that I’d expect anything less from this place—but there’s something missing when I look at her. I decide I don’t mind. I’m certainly not in the market for introspection this evening.

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