Page 2 of Masked Indulgence
Thunderous applause boomed throughout the large room. Owen gave me a nod, and he and his wife moved forward to get closer to the stage. I stood back, watching the crowd move in. I wasn’t too keen on being in the midst of a crowd. I liked to be near an exit most times—it was an odd little quirk of mine. Getting trampled in a panicked frenzy was a bit of a phobia Ihad.
Thankfully, staying on the fringes of any crowd kept me sane. A waiter came by with a tray of assorted cocktails. I picked up a clear drink that had some cherries floating in it. When I took a little taste, I found it was minty andfresh.
Looking back at the stage, I found four people lining up on it. One man and three women—all wearing red cloaks—were getting into position. Chains fell from the rafters, and more men came onto the stage to string the womenup.
Playing with ropes and chains wasn’t a thing I’d ever done. Not that I wouldn’t like to someday, but I just didn’t have the know-how to put all that stuff up in a space. And I couldn’t have a room at home, the way a lot of Doms did. My parents visited from their home in Texas and stayed with me about three or four times a year. They’d usually stay for a week each time, and Mom was a nosy little woman. I’d never get away with having a red room of pain in myplace.
Not to mention, Malibu beach houses weren’t quite the place to practice things that had women screaming. The cops would be called, that was agiven.
So I was left with dabbling with my little fetish in another place. A few people knew my sinister secret. My partners, and my best friend, Shanna. My partners thought it was badass. Shanna thought it was freakish and that I’d get over it one day and grow the hellup.
Shanna and I had been friends back in our tiny hometown of Pettus, Texas. When I came out to L.A., she got mad at me for leaving her all alone in the boring town. After I’d established myself, I gave in to her pleas and let her come out and live at my place until she was able to stand on her own two feet. A thing she did pretty rapidly. It was when she was living with me that she found out about my littlesecret.
I’d brought a woman home with me one night during the first week Shanna was there. I’d forgotten she was there, to be honest. I was spanking the woman, and she was moaning—a lot—and begging me to hit her harder. Shanna knocked on the bedroom door and yelled at me to come out and talk to her. Which I did, reluctantly sending the woman home as Shanna berated me for my unforgivable behavior. She told meFifty Shadessucked and anyone who followed such a mindless plot was a goddamned fool, a thing she knew Iwasn’t.
I was expecting another berating and a long sermon to come from her when I returned home from this trip. I’d managed to duck out of town before she could catch me and try to stop me from going to Portland—knowing what I did whenever I traveledthere.
“Excuse me, please,” came a soft voice as a woman touched my arm to get me to take a step to one side, allowing her to move into thecrowd.
She only made it a few steps in front of me before the outer wall of people stopped her forward progression. Even from behind she wasalluring.
Long legs, covered in torn black fishnet stockings, ended in a pair of red heels. A black bodice clung to her curves; her round ass gave way to a dip in her back, displayed by a panel of see-thru black lace splitting the silky material right down themiddle.
She wore her hair in a long dark braid that she had pulled over her left shoulder. When she turned around, clearly annoyed that she couldn’t see anything from where she was, her blue eyes metmine.
Lifting my drink to her, I said, “Hey.”
Hey? Really? How lame amI?
Chapter2
Katana
Although the nighthad started out badly, I found myself looking into the most gorgeous set of deep green eyes I’d ever seen. The mask he wore did little to hide the fact that the tall, muscular man was handsome. “Hey,” he said to me as he raised hisglass.
I needed a drink desperately. A thing he must’ve noticed as my eyes moved from his gaze to his almost full glass. Just then a waiter walked behind him, and he stopped the guy, grabbing me a drink off the fulltray.
Handing me a dark drink with a lime wedge hanging on the rim of the clear highball glass, he smiled at me. “Would you care for adrink?”
“I’m dying for one, actually.” I took the drink from him and struggled to be somewhat classy, taking a dainty sip instead of downing it the way I wantedto.
The last week had been hellish. I hadn’t paid attention to my schedule and had set up not two or three deadlines for myself, but ten of them. As a freelance book cover designer, I was self-employed, and that meant I was my own boss, a thing that was new to me. Not experienced in management, things had gotten out of hand. I’d get it down eventually, I knew I would—but the week had taken its toll onme.
One would think going to a BDSM club for a Halloween party would be the last place an overworked woman would want to go. But being able to give my whole self over to someone else was always a relief. So I took the invite sent to me by my friend Blyss. We’d met long ago, when I was just a kid sent to an orphanage after my mother disappeared. Blyss and I were a lot alike. We were both quiet and kept to ourselves. We’d written to one another when I was sent to live with an elderly couple in foster care, and she stayed at the orphanage. We kept in contact just so we both knew there was at least one person in the world who knew weexisted.
Blyss had met the man she’d eventually married at this club, and she had encouraged me to check it out by coming to their first annual Halloween Ball. She knew I had little experience in the BDSM world but assured me that didn’t matter. I could just watch things this first time. If someone did ask me to do anything, she told me to let them know about myinexperience.
I’d hoped she and her husband, Troy, would be at the club for the big bash, but he didn’t want to bring her back to the place for some reason. I thought it was odd that he wouldn’t want to come back to a place that had brought themtogether.
“Do you come here often?” the hunky man asked me, shaking me from mythoughts.
Only then did I realize I hadn’t even said thank you. “Oh, jeez!” I grimaced and felt the plastic of my mask gouge into my cheeks. “I’m sorry. It’s been a hell of a week. First, let me say thanks for grabbing me a drink. I need copious amounts of alcohol to rid my mind of all the clutter that’s been burning through it for over a week. And second, let me answer your question. No, I don’t come here often. This is my firsttime.”
When his lips pulled up into one of the best smiles I’d ever seen, I couldn’t help but notice his perfect teeth. “First time, huh? Any experience with this type ofthing?”
My body tensed. I wasn’t used to talking about where I’d gotten my experience, limited as it was. “Well, I had this boyfriend when I was nineteen. He liked to spank me. And that turned into a little more, a little bondage.” I hesitated to tell him the rest, as our little playtime hadn’t ended well. I didn’t want him to think I was scared by what had happened. But Blyss had urged me to be truthful with any man I might consider doing anything with, so I went on, “In the end, the BDSM thing turned into just plain physical abuse, coupled with mental abuse. It ended when he went to jail for beating the hell out of me and leaving me with a broken arm andjaw.”
“Damn.” His one-word answer had me looking down. I knew he felt sorry for me and probably thought of me as damaged goods. His fingers touched my chin, pulling my face up. I saw the concern in his green eyes. “Are you okaynow?”
