by Holley Trent
“I’ve never seen folks beat around the bush as much as you all are,” Valerie said, “so the only direction I’m going is back where I came from unless someone tells me immediately what’s going on inside that house.”
“All right,” Carine said. “I didn’t want to spring it on you because you would have said no way, no how, but what’s going to happen is you’re gonna walk through that door, and someone’s probably going to try to bone you. You’re standing on the premises of the largest private fetish club in the area.” She made jazz hands, and added softly, “Surprise.”
Valerie didn’t respond because she was too busy grinding her teeth and plotting her escape.
Can’t. Be. Here.
There was no way in hell she was going to get herself tangled up with that sort of crowd ever again.
Carine kept wearing that spooky grin and her eyes went a bit round. “The basement is a dungeon. Wanna see it?”
Valerie looked from one man to the next and could read nothing in their placid expressions. No humor, no shock, no embarrassment. It was as if they were waiting for an explosion they knew would come but hadn’t been certain of the exact date or hour.
Exploding had never been Valerie’s style. Her favored method of punishing people was to skillfully and thoroughly cut them out of her life.
And she would. No qualms.
Silently, she padded down the steps and headed toward the Miata. She scoffed as she spied the humongous pickup truck Carine’s car was nestled beside. The attire of its passenger suddenly made a lot of sense. Too many times in the past, Valerie had ended up staggering out a dom’s SUV and fixing her clothes as she went. She wasn’t really into exhibitionism, but the guy she’d been with at the time got a kick out of possibly getting caught.
She had been, once. Having that cop knock on the window and point his flashlight at them had been one of the most humiliating encounters of her life.
After that, she’d said she’d never get caught up in that kind of shit again. She had a career to worry about, and she already had too many strikes against her as it was. She was a woman working in a male-dominated field. She not only needed to be twice as good as them to get the same rewards, but she had to be infinitely more pious, too. She couldn’t be caught making mistakes like that. She couldn’t afford to be labeled as “Problematic.”
The cop had let her off with a warning, but that’d been enough incentive for her to change her ways.
Valerie yanked on the Miata’s door handle and said a prayer of thanks that Carine had left it unlocked as she tossed herself into the tiny vehicle.
Carine’s bright red hair bobbed past a car a couple of rows up, and moments later she was at Valerie’s window. She knocked on it and gave Valerie a shy grin.
Angry enough to spit, Valerie opened the door a crack.
“I didn’t think you’d come if I told you.”
“You would have been right.” At a particular, obnoxious buzzing sound, Valerie shut the door and left Carine to deal with the blood-sucking fauna on her own.
Carine swatted at the mosquito and ran around to the driver’s side. The bug followed her in, but she’d apparently honed her bug-killing reflexes under the tutelage of Mr. Miyagi. The mosquito hadn’t stood a chance.
Reluctantly impressed, Valerie handed her a wet wipe from the glove compartment. “You had to have known I would have bounced the moment I figured out what was what.”
“I was hopeful that a nice guy would swoop in fast and turn on the charm long enough to disarm you.”
“I can’t believe this. You’re into kink?” Valerie would have never guessed it of Carine. The occasional use of crass language aside, Carine was the perfect Southern belle. She was sweet and demure—or at least good at pretending to be—and always wearing a smile. Valerie didn’t even want to guess where her friend’s predilections might lie. If she knew, she might have to fess up about a few of her own.
Carine shrugged. “Honey, I’m here all the time checking out the fresh meat. I mean, out in the real world—and especially around these parts—you can’t just hand a guy a questionnaire and have him check off all the dirty nasty things he’s willing to do when he takes his clothes off.”
“Of course not,” Valerie said in the flattest tone she could muster. “That’d be uncivilized.”
“Shush. You know what I mean.”
Valerie grated her teeth because she did know. She’d started going to clubs around D.C. in the first place because she couldn’t come straight out and ask a guy to get her hot and bothered and make her beg.
“I bet your sister would know,” Carine said. “In fact, she thought me bringing you here was a great idea.”
“What?” Valerie couldn’t even pretend to be calm, especially not with the high pitch of her voice giving her away.
Carine closed her eyes and nodded. “Yup. Her words were—and I quote—‘maybe if she got a good dicking down, she’d pull the stick out of her ass.’”
“She did not say that.”
“Hand to God, she did.” Carine put up a hand and turned her face heavenward again. “It’s in my Facebook inbox. I’ll show it to you at work on Monday.”
“That bitch.” Valerie fastened her seatbelt and folded her arms across her chest. “She was always trying to get me into trouble as a kid, and I guess she hasn’t grown out of that bratty habit yet.”
“She just wants you to have a little fun. She means well.”
“Funny way of showing it.”
Carine jiggled her keys and sighed. “If you want to go, we can go. I’ll come back in a couple of weeks. That’s how often Clay has these things. I’m a regular fixture. The newcomers only get the chance for a ticket twice per year, though, and that’s why I grabbed you one. Clay goes over the membership rolls and crunches the numbers to see how many folks he can let in.”
“I don’t want to think about specifics, but thank you. I don’t think this is for me.” Valerie had meant it the last time she’d walked out of a kink gathering and said, “Never again.”
“No worries. At least I can tell your sister that I tried. We’re still friends, right?”
“Ask me on Monday.”
“Shush.”
Carine pressed the key into the ignition and turned.
Nothing happened.
She jiggled the Miata’s gear shifter, pumped the clutch a couple of times, and tried again. “Damn it, not again.”
“Start the car, Carine,” Valerie spat. From where she sat, she could still make out Hal and Clay on the porch, looking on.
“I can’t.”
“Oh, you can. I’ll talk you through it. You let down the emergency brake, right? And make sure you’re in neutral, okay? Put your little foot on the clutch and push that while simultaneously pressing on the brake pedal. Then, you gently turn the key clockwise until something under that fucking hood ignites, do you understand me?”
“No, I mean, I literally can’t.” Carine growled. “This has happened before. There’s something wrong with the transmission, I think? I mean, it’s to be expected. This is a ten-year-old car, and I don’t exactly use certified technicians to handle maintenance on it. That crap’s expensive.”
Valerie entwined her fingers atop her lap and ground her back molars a few seconds. She concentrated on breathing.
In, out. In, out.
“Say something, Val.”
Valerie gave her head the minutest shake. “You don’t want that. I promise you don’t want me to say what I think right now.”
“Yikes. Look, I can get us a ride back to Shora and send the wrecker out in the morning to tow the car to the shop. Maybe I’ll even let them keep it this time for scrap metal.”
“You really think you’ll be able to drag one of your fellow degenerates away? I mean, obviously, the party is just now getting started.” And from experience, Valerie knew the party would probably be going until early morning.
She didn’t need that kind of distraction in her life an
ymore, even if it felt so good while she was in the thick of it. She missed the sense of community. Kinksters were good at that.
She’d have to find community some other way…maybe at the next job site.
Just one month to go.
“Have some faith in me.” Carine pushed her door open. “I’m a real estate agent. I’m good at talking people into shit they don’t really want to do. I’ll be right back.” She was off like a bolt, her bright hair flying behind her as she jogged.
Valerie pulled her phone from her purse and fired off a text message for her little sister:
Leah, your name is mud. Don’t ask me for shit, and don’t expect a Christmas gift.
Seconds later, Valerie received: So…I guess you didn’t get dicked down? Damn. You suck. You ain’t got swagger.
“Swagger gets people in trouble, you little brat,” Valerie muttered and tossed the phone into her bag.
Who needed enemies when she had a sister like Leah and a friend like Carine?
CHAPTER TWO
Apparently, the good Lord hadn’t totally forgotten about Tim Dowd’s earthly trials and tribulations, as He sent him rescue from his current strife in the form of a chatterbox realtor who always managed to be the perfect distraction.
“Tim!” Carine called from the front door. “My car won’t start. Can you give my friend and me a ride back to Shora? The two smokestacks out here on the porch summarily dismissed me.”
“Poor baby,” the hot mess at Tim’s right elbow purred.
He’d been married to that hot mess for a while before they both agreed that Tim wasn’t the right man for her. Actually, no man was the right man for Heidi, and it had taken her seventeen years to decide that she far preferred the fairer sex. Tim couldn’t find it in him to take it personally, but all the same, he was tired of being chick bait. The women who arced toward him at events like Clay’s were always so confused when Heidi swooped in for the kill. Their confusion usually played out well for what Heidi wanted, but Tim would have rather been fishing or…hell, watching paint dry.
He pushed off the wall he was holding up and tossed his empty beer bottle into the recycling bucket. “I’d be happy to drive you home,” he said to Carine.
He’d been looking for any excuse to leave.
Everyone expected him to show up, not only because he was Clay’s big brother, but because they were well aware of his proclivities. But Tim wasn’t trawling for a submissive anymore. Submissives got attached, and he wasn’t really in the market for anything but a casual relationship. He wasn’t wary because his divorce had left him so wrung out—it hadn’t—but because he knew that in the end, a relationship just wasn’t going to work. He had too much baggage, and most nice Southern ladies’ idea of bedroom adventuring was sixty-nining with the lights on.
They didn’t want to play with men like Tim, and if they did, they sure as shit never admitted it.
He turned Carine swiftly by the shoulders and guided her toward the door before Heidi could decide that her favorite color that day was red.
“What’s wrong?” he asked Carine as they passed Frank and Hal. “Forgot to put gas in the tank before driving out here?”
“I think I know how to read a gas gauge.”
“That same gas gauge that stopped working three years ago?”
She stopped at the bottom step, and muttered, “Damn,” under her breath.
“What happened? Did it start working again for a little while?”
“Yep. Right before I was going to take it to the shop to get looked at. I had some extra cash after I sold the old Parker place.”
“Maybe putting gas in the tank is the first thing we ought to try, then. I’m pretty sure Clay keeps the gas can full for his riding mower.”
“I’ll go ask him. Here.” She dropped the keys into Tim’s palm and started up the stairs. “My friend’s roasting in the car. Go be hospitable or whatever. Maybe turn on the charm and see if she’ll stay for longer than five minutes.”
Frank and Hal scoffed in chorus.
“Like y’all are doing so much better at it,” she said before snatching open the screen door. “Keep waiting around for someone to fall into your lap. Pleated khakis will come back into style before that happens.”
Tim gave his head a shake and struck out in search of the Miata. He’d been telling Carine to get rid of that car since right after she bought it, but she was attached to it the same way some kids were attached to their baby blankets.
He spotted the compact thing in the back row closest to the trees and squeezed his way between the tightly packed vehicles ahead of it. He recognized every one of them on sight. They belonged to folks ranging from casual deviants like him to honest-to-goodness pillars of the community who hoped and prayed their secrets never got out. Most folks in attendance at Clay’s events fell somewhere in the middle, but Tim was guessing this friend of Carine’s didn’t even make it onto the freak spectrum if she was having such a hard time getting out of the car.
She was staring down at her phone when he reached the driver’s door.
He knocked gently so as not to startle her, but she jumped anyway, sending the cell flying out of her hand. She clutched her chest and reached across the car to pull the handle…then she seemed to change her mind.
She narrowed dark-as-night eyes at him, pursed her lush, pink lips, and shook her head. She held up her index fingers, crossed them, and held the banishing sigil up to him.
Well, that’s just plain ridiculous.
“Oh, so it’s like that, huh, honey?” He drummed on the top of the car and pondered his lot in life. The one woman who’d shown up at one of Clay’s “Lowdown Dirty” events who’d ever made Tim stand up straight and take notice had just insinuated that he was a demon of some sort.
He stooped a bit and caught that dark gaze again. He wished she would hit the dome light so he could get a better look at her. There was too much shadow obscuring her features, but he liked what he could see. High cheekbones. Sandy skin. Thick curly hair that seemed to be giving its clip a real workout.
Probably around thirty.
It wasn’t his intention to size her up like a state fair sow, but hell. He was efficient at it. Being keenly observant wasn’t what made him a dominant, but it sure as hell didn’t hurt.
“I’m harmless,” he said loud enough for her to make out through the glass.
“Am I supposed to take your word for it?”
Touché.
“I come with excellent references,” he said.
“Given the environment, I’m not sure I would trust them.”
“Kinksters are some of the most honest people you’ll ever meet.”
That little spasm in her left cheek hinted to him just what she thought about that.
“I do have the keys, you know.” He’d forgotten he had them. He held them up and let her see them. Certainly, she’d recognize Carine’s massive key ring. Carine probably had keys to half the buildings on the Albemarle Sound on that thing.
The woman pinched the bridge of her nose, slumped in her seat, and made a sort of whatever gesture at him.
He wasn’t going to give her chance to change her mind.
He pulled the door open, quickly pushed the seat back as far as it could go, and dropped himself into the low thing, groaning as he did it.
“Shut the door. I’ve already donated blood this month. I don’t want to lose another pint to the mosquitoes.”
He slammed it and then sat quietly for a moment, just waiting to hear a buzz. There was none. “Thank the Lord.” Riffling through the keys atop his thigh in search of the one for the Miata, he said, “Hi. I’m Tim.”
“Where did Carine go?”
“She went to see if she could squeeze a gallon of gas out of my brother.”
“Your brother?”
“Uh-huh. Clay.” Tim found the key, shoved it in, and gave it a turn.
Click-click-click-click.
The car wanted to go. Really, it did. Seeme
d the tank just hadn’t been fed enough, though. “Yeah, that’s not the battery or transmission. You’d think she’d start carrying some extra gas after what happened last time.”
“What happened last time?”
“Really? You’ve got me in this lady’s car telling you stories and yet you haven’t even told me your name.”
“It’s…” From somewhere on the floor around her feet, her phone buzzed. Its bright screen illuminated a shapely pair of legs encased in sheer hose.
He hadn’t realized women still wore those. His mother did, but that wasn’t saying much. Mom was sixty-two.
She grabbed the phone and squinted at the screen a moment before growling softly and turning it over onto her lap.
“Bad news?”
“Who, you? Probably.”
Ha ha.
She had a bit of a mouth on her. He kind of liked it. Most women he knew wouldn’t think of sassing him, Heidi and Carine being the exceptions. They didn’t want anything from him and didn’t bother trying to impress him.
Maybe that was the stranger was lighting up his radar. The fact the lady didn’t expect a damn thing from him was sexy as hell.
“I’m here because Carine told me to be,” he said. “I guess she worried about you being in here by yourself.”
“If she were so worried, she would have hurried back.”
“You can’t blame her for being slow. It’s easy to get distracted in Clay’s house.”
“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t make it farther than the porch.”
“You’re missing out.”
“On what? If I’d had a chance to refuse to come at all, I wouldn’t have come, but I got bamboozled into this thinking the event was just a raffle drawing, not a den of iniquity.”
“The iniquity generally happens elsewhere, truth be told. Most of what goes on here is a little flirtin’, a little teasin’. Maybe folks’ll play a little bit and put on a show if they feel like it, but that doesn’t happen as often as some of the people in attendance would like.”
“Yourself included?”
He shrugged. “I’m not much of a voyeur. I’d rather be watched than be the one doing the watching. I’ve always been something of an exhibitionist.”