Black Light: Brave

by Smith, Maren

  “Do you want to try?” he asked, offering her a rope.

  “Red,” she whispered. She would dearly have loved to have marks like that on her body, anywhere, even if only just on her foot and only because she’d put them there herself, but it wasn’t her place. She really ought to go home.

  Except she didn’t.

  Turning the page in his book, he continued on to the next simple pattern and she continued to sit, and watch, and listen as he talked about his military life, about the twenty-two years he’d spent as an explosives technician and about how coming home again hadn’t been as easy of a transition as he’d thought it would be. He talked about working fulltime for the military, and now as an instructor training other young soldiers how to do the things he used to. When he wasn’t there, he came here—something his salary would never have been able to afford if the owners hadn’t seen his veteran status and hired him to dungeon monitor part time. Being around people rather than sitting alone in the stifling quiet of his new house helped him keep his head on straight and his mind focused on something other than memories.

  He liked it here. When he wasn’t working, sometimes he played; sometimes he practiced, brushing up on skills he used to have—like double flogging (it was not like riding a bicycle; the hands definitely forget the rhythm). Right now, he was taking lessons from Black Light’s Shibari expert, Owen. Knots and the art of rope corsetry definitely kept his mind and hands occupied, and when one had rope skills, one never lacked for rope bunnies. He’d never been married, didn’t have kids, used to have two dogs, but lost custody of them to his last girlfriend when he redeployed overseas a few years back. The next thing she knew, it was four in the morning and the bar portion of Black Light had shut down without her even realizing it.

  She hadn’t noticed Spencer either, who’d spent the better part of the night standing silently at the edge of their quiet nook, watching their scene unfold before, just as quietly, retreating back to his office and closing, then locking the door behind him.

  * * *

  “Did you let her in?” Jaxson said from his end of the cell phone conversation.

  “Yes, just like you instructed us to do,” Spencer said. “Although frankly, I was kind of hoping she wouldn’t. I think everyone just wants this whole mess to quietly fade into memory and be done.”

  “We don’t always get what we want,” was Jaxson’s sagely and yet maddening response.

  “Yeah,” Spencer said dryly. “I know.”

  “Did she cause trouble?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Did she come with anyone?”

  “Nope. She arrived alone, but she didn’t stay that way.”

  “Ethen always did have an eye for pretty women. That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “We’ve got a new guy. Well… relatively new. I don’t know if you’ve met him yet, the military guy. He’s here a few days a week as a dungeon monitor, and he sometimes hangs out on his days off. She paired up with him rather quick.”

  “Paired up?”

  “Well… it wasn’t what I’d call a scene. They sat on the floor together, while he practiced his knots. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. I tried to keep an eye on it. I thought I’d have a chance to catch her for a quiet word, like you asked, while she was waiting for a cab, but Danny said she didn’t call for one. Carlson took her home instead.”

  “So long as she’s not causing any trouble, I don’t care if she comes back. When you get a chance, just let her know we’ve comped her membership, but only for a limited time. After that, she’s welcome to stay if she wants and if she can afford it.”

  “You’re the boss,” Spencer said. “What about Carlson?”

  “What about him?”

  “If it were me, I’d want to know what I’m walking in to. Especially when the mess is as big as that one. What should I tell him?”

  A long sigh breathed through the phone line a few seconds before he heard the long-distance club owner reply, “Nothing. Unless something happens, it’s not our story to tell. How much longer do we have until we have to worry about Ethen showing up?”

  Swiveling his chair around, Spencer checked the calendar on the corkboard behind him. He really didn’t need to. He’d gone through the calendar four times now since Puppy had walked in. “As near as I can tell, we’ve got six or so weeks until he’s eligible for parole.”

  “Am I an ass for hoping he doesn’t get it?” Jaxson snorted.

  Growling, Spencer echoed his disgust. “I’m still hoping he gets shanked, so I say no.”

  Snorting again, Jaxson said, “Keep an eye on it, but so long as she isn’t coming back to rally support for Ethen or pave the way for him to reintegrate himself back into the community, then leave her be. Perhaps she’s trying, as Hadlee and Kitty did, to find her way back to normal. It might be my own wishful thinking, but if Black Light can help her do that, then let it. What does Garreth say?”

  “He doesn’t know yet. He and Hadlee are still on vacation, visiting Noah, Kitty, and the baby in Australia.”

  “Give them a heads up,” Jaxon said. “This isn’t the kind of surprise you want to spring on anyone. Just in case there’s hard feelings.”

  Spencer remained at his desk for a long time after he hung up the phone, thinking that over. It might be his own wishful thinking too, but Black Light wasn’t just a place of business for him. It was his home away from home, and the people he worked with were his family. There wasn’t anything or anyone here he wouldn’t protect to the utmost of his ability, and that included both Hadlee and Kitty, and she didn’t even live here anymore.

  Funny, how that same protectiveness did not extend to Puppy. But when he looked at her, all he saw was an impending round two of the same shitstorm that had hit Black Light within days of Ethen O’Dowell’s highly publicized arrest.

  Nothing rattled a private club like having police detectives show up on a party night. More than a few people had canceled their memberships after that. The number of new members coming into the community had tanked, and for a brief while what had replaced it were curiosity-seekers and undercover reporters, either working for legitimate papers or for blogs and podcasts wanting nothing more than to expose this place and the people who liked to come here.

  They’d come perilously close to letting the wrong person in, more than once. The only thing that had saved them was Black Light’s very thorough vetting process.

  Fortunately, the media’s attention was only as long as the public continued to spend money reading up on it. Media interest in private BDSM clubs had diminished. Within a week of Ethen’s arrest, the focus had shifted from sadistic abuse to human trafficking in D.C., and then to domestic abuse in the United States, and now it was on the upcoming election.

  Was it wrong of him to worry that Puppy’s re-emergence back into the shadows of this place boded ill for Black Light? He hoped not. Sighing, Spencer leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his desk while he rubbed his face with both hands. He really, really hoped not. Because abused or not, if it came down to a decision between protecting her or protecting Black Light, Spencer didn’t even need to think about it.

  Hands down, Black Light would win.

  Chapter 5

  “Get up, lazy bones,” her mother called as she came breezing into Puppy’s bedroom. She threw open the blinds and paused at her bedside long enough to jostle her, startling Puppy wide awake.

  She jerked her head up off the pillow, but for a change her first thought wasn’t that it was Ethen, summoning her to come and join another of his midnight parties. Burning eyes half closed and head foggy from too little sleep, she didn’t recognize the touch as her mother’s either. Instead, for just a moment, she was back in Black Light and it was Carlson’s hand, warm and gentle on her arm as he put himself between her and all those staring eyes, before guiding her into the very back nook so they could practice his ropes in peace.

  Lying on her stomach, Puppy blinked until her bedroom came in
to focus and she remembered where she was.

  “I don’t think you’ve ever slept this late before. Rough night?” her mother asked, sliding open the closet door. Plastic hangers clattered as she pulled out matching clothes.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” Puppy murmured. She felt the light plop of pants and shirt being draped over her blanketed feet.

  “We’ll get you some melatonin to help with that,” her mother breezed. “Up, up!” She clapped her hands. “I’ll put lunch on the table.”

  And out of the room she went, the door closing softly behind her.

  Burying her face back in her pillow, Puppy muffled a groan and then glanced at the clock on her nightside table. Panic drilled straight through her when she read noon on the digital display. It hit her heart and her breath caught.

  Ethen would never have allowed her to sleep this late, not even when she was sick. Six a.m., every morning without fail. That was when the menagerie got up and started their routine. Exercise first, then showers, then chores. Pony did the cooking, breakfast and coffee; Puppy packed the lunches, straightened the kitchen, and then they each got ready for work. Just because he was in jail and even though there were only two of them left, that didn’t mean the routine was allowed to deviate.

  Kicking back the blankets, Puppy bolted upright, but froze when she saw Pony. Sitting on the edge of her cot in nothing but the harness she’d slept in, Pony studied her, silent and unsmiling. Her hands on her knees, her back straight. Her pale face was drawn, and the dark half-circles under her eyes seemed more like black-eyes in the shadows of her bedroom, since her mother hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on.

  “I don’t think I’m feeling well,” Puppy hedged. Grabbing her clothes off the foot of the bed, she went naked to the adjacent bathroom and quickly shut the door.

  After only the briefest hesitation, she locked the door—yet another of Ethen’s rules she was breaking—and backed from it until her heel hit the side of the tub. She sat before she fell, and there she stayed, hugging her clothes to her chest while her heart raced in dread. Did Pony know?

  The flare of panic became sharp enough to slice. Jumping for the bathroom sink, she looked inside the cupboard where she’d hidden last night’s horribly mismatching outfit, wadded up with the wet towel she’d ruined. All were gone.

  The bottom fell out of her world, and her stomach went with it.

  Retreating back to the tub, she crawled all the way in it and sat huddled in the bottom, hugging her clothes and trying not to cry.

  She was caught. Although there was no way Pony could know exactly what she’d done, she had the wet towels from Puppy’s illicit self-punishment and she had the clothes she’d gone to Black Light in. All of that, she knew, would be laid out for Ethen the next time they went to visit him. He would bully her until she admitted what she’d done, and then he was going to punish her.

  Pressing her clothes over her mouth, she tried not to hyperventilate. Ethen could go fuck himself. She didn’t care about Ethen. He couldn’t lay so much as a finger on her while he was in prison.

  But he wasn’t going to be in prison for that much longer.

  He was getting out, and when he did, then she would have to go back to him because if she didn’t… Pony…

  She pressed her hands harder over her mouth, smothering the squeak of dismay she just couldn’t kill.

  A creak of a floorboard right outside the bathroom door let her know Pony had got up from her cot and was now standing right outside.

  She couldn’t hide in here forever. She couldn’t even hide in here all day.

  Bowing her head, with shaking hands, she got dressed. Jeans today, with sparkles on the back pockets and a pink sweater with cat ears and whisker lines drawn on the tummy. Her mother had even found pink socks to match it. She hated pink, but she put it on and, trying not to look as guilty or scared as she felt, forced herself to open the door.

  Pony got dressed too, staying right there so she could stare at her with grim, carefully masked accusation deep in her blue eyes. She stepped back when Puppy tried to slip out the door past her but followed right on her heels as she gathered her shoes to put them on. “Where did you go?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Puppy whispered, her eyes on her shoes, because her hands were already shaking and it didn’t matter anyway. Pony knew she was lying. Pony always knew.

  “Where did you go?” Pony asked again, her brittle tone a little harder.

  “Girls,” her mother called down the hall from the kitchen. “Lunch is ready!”

  Puppy hurriedly tied her shoes and jumped up, dodging past Pony, who again stepped out of the way, only to fall into step right behind her. They came down the hall together, with Pony not more than a step behind her, and Puppy hanging her head with guilt.

  Sinking into her seat at the table, Puppy stole an immediate sip from the glass of milk waiting for her and kept her stare locked on the grass weave patterned place setting so she wouldn’t have to look at anyone else.

  “Have we got great things planned for today?” her mother asked, a little too brightly.

  “I want to go to Master,” Pony said, sitting directly across the table from Puppy.

  Stomach rolling, Puppy sipped her milk.

  “I thought yesterday was visiting day.” Careful to keep her voice light and cheerful, her mother’s hand visibly trembled as she circled the table, laying identical plates of sandwich, chips, and grapes in front of Puppy first and then Pony.

  “I want to go to Master,” Pony said again, glaring.

  Puppy stared at her sandwich. Chicken salad, which her mother always did well and which used to be her favorite back when she was a kid. The crusts had been cut away and the sandwich cut in half. Because, apparently, she couldn’t handle a whole sandwich any more than she could handle any other part of her life.

  Her stomach rolled and growled, hunger warring with nerves until she didn’t dare take so much as the smallest bite for fear she’d lose what few sips of milk she’d already had.

  “I want to look for a job,” she said, sweaty palms pressing hot against her denim-clad thighs as she raised her head to return Pony’s stare. She would not be going to visit Ethen.

  Blinking twice, a touch of moisture crept into Pony’s eyes. The accusation died on her face and desperation grew up quickly to take its place.

  “A job?” her mother echoed, her face lighting up with all the delight that her voice tried but failed to emulate. “Well, won’t that be nice. You can do it, honey. Y-you… you know you can do anything, right?”

  Patting Puppy’s shoulder, she went back into the kitchen to clean up what little mess she’d made. The shimmer in Pony’s eyes grew even more watery, while in the kitchen, the soft clatter of dishes gave way to sniffles. The water at the sink turned on to help mask the sound as her mother broke down and cried.

  Very softly, Pony said, “I want to go to Master.”

  Yes, but only to tell on her.

  Crawling in guilt and growing angry now because of it, Puppy just as softly replied, “Then go.”

  Face crumpling, Pony whispered, “Come with me.”

  “No.” The last thing she wanted today was to be stuck standing in front of Ethen while he questioned her. What right did he have to judge her at all, after everything he’d done? But he would, and she had no desire to hear his decision on how she should be punished—first for leaving her bed, and then again because she already knew no way in hell was she going to confess where she’d actually been.

  “Please!” Pony hissed, crying openly now.

  “No.” Leaning over her plate, Puppy spat, “Don’t go! Just don’t go! You don’t want to see him any more than I do. How could you?”

  Jaw snapping open in shock, Pony was just as quick to lash back. “I’d be in there with him if I could! You’re just as disloyal as they are!”

  Jumping up from her seat, back stiff and straight, Pony stalked back down the hall. Menagerie girls didn’t run. They didn’t s
lam doors either, and Pony was nothing if not well-behaved. Their bedroom door shut so softly that Puppy had to strain just to hear it. It made the knots in her stomach pull that much tighter. She strangled, first on them and then on the guilt that only prickled her harder when, in the kitchen, the water shut off and her sniffling mother retreated down the hall to her room too.

  The very air turned suffocating as she sat hunched at the table, her hands clasped tight and still shaking, and too upset to eat. She never should have got out of bed last night, but it was hard to regret that decision when she’d happily be in her car right now (if only she still had one) and speeding her way back to Black Light just to be away from here.

  Guilt churned in her gut, over and over.

  She was so tired of feeling guilty all the time.

  She was even more tired of feeling useless.

  Shoving her chair back, she got up and strode down the hall. Halfway there, her nerve wavered and her determination collapsed. By the time she reached it, she stood in front of her own bedroom door feeling as if she were about to walk into the enemy’s lair, except the enemy in this case was the only person in the world that she considered to still be her friend. They’d gone through hell together.

  In many ways, they were both still there.

  Steeling herself, she went inside.

  Pony wasn’t crying anymore, although she was still holding a wad of wet tissue in her lap. Sitting on the edge of her cot with shoulders hunched, she didn’t look up when Puppy came in. She just wadded and unwadded the crumpled tissue, folding it to find a clean spot before dabbing at the corners of her eyes. A little mascara came off every time she did it, but her makeup remained practically flawless.