by Cara Dee
I didn’t want Levi mimicking TJ too much.
Aunt Mel’s street consisted of narrow townhouses painted in various colors, and hers was the red one, the fourth house on the right side.
“Do you need money, boys?” I asked. “Never mind.” I pulled out my wallet, knowing that at least Levi would say no. TJ was a shrugger. But they often found something they wanted when they were out, and I’d rather pay for it than have them ask Aunt Mel. “Here.” I gave them each a twenty.
“I still have some left from last week,” TJ said.
Levi grinned widely. “I don’t. I blew my savings on the PlayStation.”
I remembered. I’d been there. The look on his face when he grabbed the big box with the PlayStation in it… Christ, Mom and Dad should’ve been there to see it. He was ecstatic.
TJ ran up the steps to the house, and it was as if our aunt knew I had every intention of leaving right away. She opened the door and was holding my overnight bag hostage. I’d left it in the hallway so I could grab it quickly and make a dash.
“Did you boys have fun?” she asked, smiling at them as they entered the house.
“Yeah, but the museums were boring,” TJ replied.
“They were not boring!” Levi exclaimed.
TJ snorted and headed for the stairs, but not before he hurried back and fist-bumped me. “Thursday night?”
“I’ll be here with takeout,” I promised, taking out my lollipop. “Love you, kid.”
He smirked. “You too. Later.”
At least I had Levi… He wasn’t afraid to hug me regularly, and he snuck in and wrapped his arms around my middle.
“Bring pizza next Thursday, please.”
I chuckled and squeezed him back. “Pizza, it is. Love you.”
“Love you too!” Then he was gone, running up the stairs with TJ.
Then there were two…
I braced myself and gestured at my bag. “Can I have it?”
She pursed her lips and cocked her head. She shared a lot of features with Mom, but she’d inherited their father’s darker hair and brown eyes.
“You didn’t take the money I left you on the kitchen island for the groceries you bought,” she noted.
I raised a brow. And?
She huffed. “You’re taking this privacy thing a bit too far, Shay. You didn’t want me to ask about your job, so I promised I wouldn’t. You don’t want me to visit you where you live, so I’m not. But you’re making me worried.” She paused, and I suppressed a sigh. “In all the years you’ve trained, you’ve never come home with cuts. Bruises, sure. Sprained ankles, definitely. Muscle aches out of this world, many times. But right there—” She pointed to my jaw. “And the other week, you had scrapes all over your leg. Don’t tell me that’s the work of a freaking foam mat at the studio where you work out.”
“It is,” I lied. “I’m just trying something new. I’m sparring with someone.”
She just stared at me.
Maybe she didn’t believe me, but it didn’t really matter. I was an adult.
Eventually, she handed over my duffel to me. “Please be careful with whatever it is you’re doing, honey. You may be old enough to fend for yourself, but no one is ever too old to need extra care sometimes. I really wish you’d move back in here.”
Two talks about this in one day. Fuck, I’d thought I was safe.
“I’m being careful,” I insisted. I stuck the lollipop back into my mouth, trapping it against my cheek. “I know I can turn to you if I need it.”
“Good.” She wasn’t satisfied, but she knew it was as much as she was gonna get.
The Tenley twins and their group could suck my dick.
All you had to do to join a White Rose party was pay twenty bucks and “consider” wearing something that displayed or hinted at your main fetish. Whoever ran those events was part of a more open community, and it was no wonder some three hundred people RSVP’d to attend every time.
I arrived around ten, wearing a pair of jeans and the same white tee I’d worn to the last four parties. It read “Masochistic Tendencies is an Understatement” and earned me a smirk at the door.
I knew from experience that the S/M crowd tended to stick to the third floor, so it was where I’d made plans to meet up with Isela, a fellow masochist who’d once dated one of the founding members of Reese and River’s self-righteous kink squad.
There were no contraptions or setups to speak of at the nightclub, but that didn’t stop people from engaging in play. As I reached the second floor, I spotted two Tops going to town after turning a bar table into a whipping bench for their two bottoms. Belts out, skirts pushed up, screams dancing in the air with the loud music.
Fuck, I hoped I’d get a beating before the night was over.
I did have fights tomorrow to look forward to, but it wasn’t the same. If anything, the pain I received in the cages was amusing.
Continuing up to the third floor, I unwrapped a lollipop and trapped it in my cheek. The last White Rose party had been awesome. It’d been hosted across the river in Virginia, where you were still permitted to smoke in some public areas, which included that club’s rooftop terrace where I’d also received the mother of whipping sessions.
Just whipping never pushed me to where I wanted to be; the physical pain alone aroused me. But combined with extreme degradation and the knowledge that I didn’t matter enough to be given aftercare afterward, I’d ended up feeling pathetic and worthless. Like I deserved. And once that button was pushed, all pain became unbearable to me.
Isela was easy enough to spot. She had ridiculously long hair, reaching below her ass, and she’d told me she’d be carrying a purse with the Little Nation flag. The only flag missing was El Salvador’s, which she used as a filter for her profile picture online.
Her gaze landed on me when I was a few feet away, and she grinned curiously. “Shay?”
I inclined my head and extended a hand. “Nice to meet you in person.”
“You too!” She shook my hand firmly as a new song came on, one with a grinding, seductive beat. “I’ve seen many amazing Sadists here tonight. I’m sure we’ll both get some playtime.”
I hoped she was right. Talking to her online this week had been somewhat of a revelation. She’d approached me in a thread about bullwhips, responding to something I’d commented with, “If only it didn’t take a year of commitment to a Sadist before you actually got a taste of a bullwhip,” which I’d found funny. And true. Then she’d DM’d me and made it clear I’d been delusional to ever think I was a social person. She struck up random conversations with just about anyone in the public threads, and she talked. A lot. About everything.
“Cute with the lollipop.” She smirked and flicked the end of the stick.
I snorted quietly and shifted it to my other cheek, then surveyed the club area. Blue and white strobe lights traveled across the crowd and turned everyone into static. People were still arriving, and singles moved in groups rather than couples.
I wanted to check out the seating areas across the floor.
I kinda wanted to sit down too. I’d taken a nap after returning to the apartment earlier, only to wake up with a headache from hell. My skin felt sensitive, and I couldn’t quite shake the tiredness.
Leaning closer to Isela, I asked if I could buy her a drink. It was the least I could do for her weirdly passionate quest to find me a Sadist.
Her dark eyes lit up. “A frozen margarita, please? Strawberry, if they have it.”
“You got it.”
A few minutes later, she was holding a big frozen strawberry margarita in her hands, and we left the bar to see if there was anyone she knew at the tables. I assumed there would be, not only because she’d said so, but because she constantly waved at people who recognized her.
“Oh, Shay, you gotta try this one. It’s delicious!” She held up the drink for me.
I smirked a little and removed my lollipop, then took a quick pull from her straw.
&nbs
p; It was better than beer, at least. The cold felt good in my throat.
“Not your poison?” Isela guessed.
“It was all right.” I stuck the lollipop back into my mouth and nodded toward the seating areas. “Point out someone I should talk to.”
Fuck. It took me two seconds to lay eyes on the Tenley twins. What the hell were they doing here? They sat alone at a table, and they were watching a man nearby who appeared to be arguing with his partner.
I kinda wished River and Reese weren’t so goddamn attractive. They put James Dean to shame, and it wasn’t the only category I could put them into. I wasn’t sure if they had the bodies of linebackers or two blue-collar men who’d had physical jobs all their lives, maybe somewhere in between. They were tall, immense, solid, without looking like they were trying too hard. Or trying at all. They didn’t strike me as guys who went to a gym regularly anyway. Rugged, inked, devil-may-care.
The only thing bigger than them was their reputation. Sadistic to the extreme…
I’d had my eye on them since I’d become a member earlier this year, and I’d had friends tell me I should approach them. Until I found out that they were just sheep in wolves’ clothing and abided by every safety rule imaginable—something Isela was refuting. She’d told me that was nonsense; she claimed they played by their own rules when no one was looking.
The idea of having them both go nuts on me…
Jesus Christ.
No one needed to explain why there was a parade of masochists dreaming of playing with them. Hell, there was an entire fucking group on our online platform dedicated to their play, and I’d never once seen River and Reese in there. It was just their own little following that loved to brag about having gotten the chance to play with them. As far as I knew, no one had been in an actual relationship with them. But men—and women—definitely lined up to try. I’d seen them in action a couple times, once with Ivy, a friend in the community. She was close to them and often volunteered when they wanted someone to demonstrate on.
It was through the grapevine I’d learned they were gay, but their public sessions were typically nonsexual. They were in it for the pain.
I wondered if they were fuck—
“Oh, Santiago’s here!” Isela pointed. “The man in the blue button-down.”
Everything was blue under these lights.
I followed her gaze to a tall, broad-shouldered man near the corner. Definitely smoking hot. He had more salt than pepper in his hair and trimmed beard. Talk about Daddy material.
“Is he from there, or…?” I couldn’t tell in the darkness.
Isela responded, but I couldn’t hear her over the music, so I leaned down and asked her to repeat that.
“He grew up there,” she said, louder this time. “His mama is from Chile, but his father is American. His real name is Joshua Jones.” Her dreamy sigh got lost in the music, but I’d recognize that look in her eyes anywhere. “I would so snatch him up if he were at least bisexual.”
Hmm.
“But you know what?” Isela spun on me and faced me dead on with a smirk. “You should ask River and Reese before you try Santiago. They are your perfect fit. With Santiago—you never know.” She tapped her temple. “He works in law enforcement, yes? He’s always digging.”
She should’ve led with that. Santiago was out.
I slid a hesitant look to the Tenleys. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to get them out the way by approaching them and having my suspicions confirmed. Then I could move on to someone else.
“Asking them won’t kill me,” I decided. “Wish me luck.”
“I don’t think you need it!” She grinned and gestured for me to go already. “How can they resist a gorgeous maso like you?”
I chuckled and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze before I left her behind.
The familiar question rolled forward and settled on my tongue. The same question I asked all Sadists, the one that would weed out the good ones and let me know who was bad enough to make me suffer properly.
There was a beeping sound effect in the song blaring through the room that shoved two-year-old memories to the forefront of my mind, causing my chest to constrict uncomfortably. Whenever I blinked, I saw Myah in a hospital bed with a machine that breathed for her. I’d been there when her heart rate had weakened to eventually give up. I’d heard the suffocating silence when the machine let me know I would have to tell TJ and Levi she hadn’t made it.
I swallowed hard and shifted the lollipop to the other side again. I didn’t want it anymore. I wanted to throw up, and my stomach felt more unsettled now.
The strobe lights hit me as I reached their table, and one of the brothers tilted his head at me.
In the bright flash of the light, all I saw were piercing moss-green eyes and copper-colored hair.
Just as quickly, the lights rolled away.
I planted my palms on the table and gave them my most assertive look. “Are you looking for play partners?”
“Not really,” he said. “But we don’t throw away winning tickets either.”
I wasn’t a winning ticket, but whatever.
I asked my question. “Will you beat me without knowing the reason?”
The two gave me a once-over, one a bit more stone-cold than the other. It was impossible to tell them apart, except for the menacing-looking tattoo one of them had on the side of his neck. There was a longhorn skull and some other shit.
He was the one who replied again. “Sure. It’s your funeral.”
Fucking really?
These two? After the shit I’d gotten from that Penelope chick they ran the community with?
The twin with the tattoo on his neck kicked out the available chair on the other side of the small table. “Tell us what pain you’re looking for.”
Oh, I could do that. I could definitely do that.
I sat down across from them and took out my lollipop, gesturing it between them. “Who’s River, and who’s Reese?”
Neck Tattoo was clearly the talker. “I’m Reese.”
Reese, all right. Christ, they were hot. Hotter up close.
“Do you recognize me?” I had to ask. No matter how “exclusive” they liked to call their own group of kinksters, they still had nearly 150 members.
Reese’s mouth twitched slightly. “We know who you are, Shay.”
Well, okay, then. I wasn’t gonna assume.
“I like severe impact and extreme degradation,” I said.
The other guy, River, seemed to find that amusing for some reason. It showed in his eyes, and he exchanged a glance with his brother.
No words, just a quick look.
Reese smirked faintly and eyed me. “If we had a nickel for every time we’ve heard a masochist say they want anything extreme… Most people don’t know severe pain.”
I wasn’t most people, and I wasn’t going to let myself be intimidated by their superior asshole behavior.
“Are you sure you’re not just looking for a bit of flogging?” Reese wondered.
“Are you sure you have a dick to go with that big-dick personality?” I asked in return.
He offered a full-fledged grin at that. Then he sat forward and rested his forearms on the table. “Tell you what. We’re not actually looking for a temporary plaything in the city. But if you’re interested in coming out to the house in Mclean so we can brutalize you the way we like, let us know.”
Brutalize.
That word did something to me. It weighed heavier and carried a promise, because you didn’t throw it around for shits and giggles. They were serious.
I wanted to be brutalized for my failures.
“When?” I noticed my throat had become dry, so I swallowed and closed my mouth around the lollipop.
The twins exchanged another brief look.
“I reckon tomorrow’s out for both you and me,” Reese said, observing me with a contemplative expression.
I frowned. No, tomorrow wasn’t a good day for me, but what did he know
about it?
“Turns out we have a bit in common.” The pinch of mirth in Reese’s eyes bugged me as much as when I saw it in River’s. “Last weekend, we were checking out the new place where I’ll be fighting. Imagine our surprise when we saw you in one of the cages.”
I reeled back and stiffened instinctively, and all kinds of alarms went off in my head. What kind of fucking ambush was this? It didn’t feel like a coincidence. Shit, were they gonna turn me into the poli—wait. Reese was a cage fighter?
I narrowed my eyes.
“I’ll wait till the shock has passed,” he said mildly. “I admit, it took us a minute too.”
My breath gusted out of me, and I tore out the lollipop and placed it on the table. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. I didn’t know why, but every part of me screamed to get the fuck away from the Tenley twins.
You approached them, you moron.
Yeah, but maybe they’d…what? Maybe they’d done what?
“You’re a cage fighter,” I stated, mostly to test the words. It was fucking weird.
“Is that unthinkable?” Was everything amusing to these two?
“Yeah,” I answered bluntly. “It wasn’t that long ago I received a sanctimonious rant about following the rules and adhering to all the safety measures in the community you started.”
Reese remained unfazed. “And? Does a CEO follow the company policy when he comes home at night? Just because we have strict safety rules to protect our asses in a BDSM community doesn’t mean River and I gotta be saints.”
Evidently.
“What we do off the clock is our business,” he finished. Except, he wasn’t quite done yet. “That means we hope you’ll keep this shit to yourself.”
Two thoughts struck me at once. One, their goody-two-shoes friends didn’t know about their illegal hobby? Two, everything was we with Reese. He didn’t merely speak for himself. He spoke on River’s behalf too. Like they were one entity.
“So, is it safe to assume you’re fighting tomorrow too?” Reese asked.
I lifted a shoulder. “Maybe.”
He chuckled. “Well, if you do, steer clear of facing me.”