Page 5 of Body and Soul

“Well, I don’t.” I crossed my arms. “I hate surprises.”

“You’ll like this one, Eli, I promise.” She took my hand and squeezed it. “Seriously. Have I ever steered you wrong?”

Plenty of times, probably, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud as she tugged me along the side of the building and back toward the parking lot. She and Ketchup meant well. They were just trying to help. Wherever she had in mind, I hoped at least it’d be interesting.

I shouldn’t have comein tonight. I could feel the familiar darkness pulsing at the edge of my awareness, the frustration. My fingers tightened around the railing until my nails dug in enough to leave half-moon scars behind in the wood. Below, patrons laughed and chatted pleasantly in the lounge, unaware of the killers moving among them.

I watched my brothers, Xander and Xavier, move around the room like sharks browsing a school of fish for their next meal. They were forbidden from killing anyone who came through the doors of my club, but that didn’t stop them from being who they were.

And after cleaning up a particularly messy kill earlier in the day, they’d more than earned their reward.

I wouldn’t be at The Playground—the BDSM and kink club I co-owned—if not for them. Though they were identical triplets, or rather two-thirds of a set of triplets, they couldn’t be more different. Xavier was well mannered, pleasant, an expert at playing into people’s expectations of him. On the outside, he wasa social chameleon, able to charm even the most pensive person with his wit.

He was also a sexual sadist who enjoyed the pain and suffering of others. While he rarely engaged in sex acts himself, he did take a particular delight in directing others to carry out his dark and depraved fantasies for his own amusement. The Playground was a safe place for him to explore that within the strict rules I set without anyone getting seriously hurt. But it wasn’t him I was worried about.

It was Xander. That boy was going to get himself hurt if he didn’t stop living life at a hundred miles an hour. I sighed as I watched him walk out of the lounge with his third couple of the night.

“What’s the current record for the most sexual partners in a single night?” I called back to my co-owner, who was working on a budget sheet in the office behind me.

Her fingernails clicked across several keys before she asked, “Are we counting gang bangs or not?”

I turned away from the railing, frowning back at her. Life’s messy pink hair buns bobbed back and forth as she continued typing. “Do I even want to know?”

“There’s a contest at this porn convention in Poland every year.” She picked up a pen and scribbled something down. “Pretty sure the record is like nine hundred something currently. Why?”

“We’ve only been open four hours and Xander’s already picked up a third couple.”

She tipped her head back to look at me. “You judging someone for their body count is the pot calling the kettle black.”

“I’m not judging him, Life. I’d rather he do that here, where I know he’s in a safe environment, than out there where he might get hurt. I’m more interested to know how he fucking manages…Well, all the fucking, to be honest.” I sighed and walked back from the railing.

“Ah, Viagra. Pfizer’s little blue miracle.” She chuckled and went back to work.

“That’s the last thing he needs. He’d better be careful or it’ll be another unpleasant trip to the emergency room. I’m getting tired of playing nursemaid to someone his age.” I huffed and plopped down in the chair opposite her desk.

“Being the big brother sucks, doesn’t it?”

I hummed in answer and picked at the little wooden block calendar she had on her desk.

She reached out to swat my hands away, drawing a growl from me. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

Therewaswork to be done, but I didn’t normally bother with the paperwork side of the business. Life said my handwriting was too messy to read, and I would rather put a bullet in my head than spend endless hours working on a computer. I hated the damn things.

I was supposed to be the face of The Playground. My role was to spend time with the customers, recruit new members, and educate our existing clientele with demonstrations and classes.

Yet I hadn’t held a class at The Playground in almost a year, and that was unlike me. The BDSM lifestyle was my passion, but I’d lost my spark when my last submissive moved on. Maybe it was burn out.

I leaned back against the chair. BDSM had been my lifeline. The dance of power and surrender that made me feel whole, but now… Now it felt mundane. Boring. The electric connection I’d once felt had dulled to a mild attraction. I wanted to reach out, to feel that shock again, but there was this smothering weight of responsibility there now, too many other things that had demanded my attention these last few months.

There were dozens of decent and available submissives who were regular members at The Playground, and I’d tried playing with some of them, but none felt quite right.

Then there were the drifters, the out-of-towners, and curious people who came into The Playground on nights like tonight when we were open to the public. They were mostly people who’d seen some kinky movie or read a few steamy books and thought it’d be fun to try out. That was all well and good, but they didn’t want to play at my level. What they wanted was a hard fuck, a spanking, and someone to call sir or daddy for twenty minutes while they got off. While that used to be enough, it wasn’t anymore. It’d been six months, and I’d all but given up on finding someone.

Life sighed and closed the laptop she’d been working on, folding her hands overtop of it. “You need to go downstairs. Find someone to help you release some of this frustration that’s been building up. Then you’ll be less bothered by what your brothers are doing and better able to focus.”

“It’s not just that,” I admitted, turning to stare out the darkened window. “Today is Dani’s birthday.”

The way Life pursed her lips and reached out to place a comforting hand on my wrist made my blood boil. She was trying to be sympathetic, but she couldn’t know how it felt to be in my position, to be so damnhelpless. That wasn’t who I was. I was supposed to be in control, supposed to help people and defend the weak.

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