her arm and led her to the parking lot of the hotel they were staying at. He’d rented the suite out on a permanent basis since the hotel was both upscale and close to the Club District, the place where he’d mainly needed to be when he was in town. Since he was a semi-permanent resident, the hotel had given him a permanent parking spot, the one where he led her to, a sleek black car waiting for them.
She didn’t know what the car was or the company but it looked fast, and she wasn’t surprised. Between his flying and driving, she’d understood he liked the rush.
Getting into the low, very low car, the interior of it unsurprisingly black too, she strapped herself in and they pulled out.
“Why Blackthorne?” she mused. “Out of all the names you could have picked, why that?”
A side of his mouth twitched. “It was the name of the first man I killed. He was a rich, pompous asshole, and since that’s who I was going to pretend to be, why not?”
Lyla drew in a sharp breath. “How old were you?”
“Six.” The little smile on his face was disturbing. It disturbed her even more that she wasn’t disturbed. Shouldn’t she have been more horrified, more repulsed than sleep with a killer so willingly? Perhaps. Maybe she would have been in an alternative reality where she was normal.
“And why did you kill him?” she kept on, ignoring the thoughts in her head.
He slid her a glance. “He took something from me.”
Something in his tone felt like a door shut. She recognized the tone enough, having been subjected to it a few times in the last two months. Usually, he answered whatever questions she had, let her test as many boundaries as she wanted. But some, he closed up on. And as understanding as she wanted to be, it frustrated her because he knew everything about her, had witnessed her most humiliating moments, and she didn’t have the same privilege when it came to him. She knew his personality, knew who he was, but his past was a vault she hadn’t been given access to yet.
As he swerved around the city, maneuvering the car expertly, she slid him a look. He was dressed up, in a dark suit without the tie, his hair pushed back from the lines of his face, his mismatched eyes dangerous. She was dressed up herself, in a champagne-colored gown with a side split and strings on her shoulders, her hair slightly longer and open in their waves, her lips painted a soft blush she knew he was obsessed with.
She was apprehensive about both being in the city and going to Moonflame. Regardless of what he said, the memory of being tied up and pushed in a maze, of feeling helpless and hunted, was acute in her mind. She didn’t know how he could override all that.
Dr. Manson’s words came to her.
‘Open yourself up to new experiences. Trusting your partner is utmost for any relationship. Has he given you a reason not to trust him?’
No. No, he hadn’t.
Reminding herself of that, touching the gold choker on her neck, she watched the city pass by as they pulled into a familiar parking lot. Moonflame was one of the Club District buildings, a simple two-story gray structure that nobody would have given a second look at, not with all the flashy signs everywhere else. A simple black plaque hung on the wooden door, nothing but the logo of an orb on fire. She assumed it was the literal moon on flame.
Parking the car, he turned to face her. ‘I’ll be with you the whole time.’
She nodded.
Giving her a soft kiss, he exited, coming around to her side and taking her hand. He put his gloved hand on her back, guiding her to the main door.
Dainn knocked sharply on the door three times with his gloved knuckles, and a man opened the door, letting them into a narrow corridor. The corridor opened in an open hall, and Lyla huddled into his side instinctively as deja-vu flooded her. He held her close, walking into the lounge area done in wooden and reds, and if she didn’t see a few people in different stages of copulation here and there, she wouldn’t have thought it was a sex club at all. It had changed a lot from the last time she had been there.
Dainn led her through the lounge toward the back where there was another door, the one that had led to the maze room, and her heart began to stutter, her feet stumbling.
His hold on her waist tightened, but he continued to lead her.
The door opened, and instead of the maze, there were sets of stairs.
Curious, surprised, she followed as he led her up some stairs to the right, one that opened into a small room painted dark red, with nothing but a couch looking at a large glass wall looking into an auditorium style room, no sign of the maze.
Her lips parted.
A brunette woman was strung up, suspended by a rope hanging from the ceiling, her toes touching the ground, a blindfold over her eyes, her body completely naked.
Lyla looked over and saw at least ten other glass rooms looking down on the scene, the glasses tinted lightly enough to only show silhouettes. She could see the silhouettes of two women playing with each other in the window opposite hers. In another, a woman was down on her knees and sucking a man’s cock. In another, two women and two men were moving.
It was debauchery, nothing like the clubs she’d ever seen.
She took a step closer to the glass as two men, completely dressed, joined the suspended woman in the middle of the auditorium. The contrast between them, the men fully clothed and her fully on display, sent a wisp of arousal curling through her.
The auditorium was different, the vibe was different. It didn’t feel invasive, not like it had the last time.
She felt him stand behind her, his gloved finger tracing her collarbones as her breaths turned ragged. “Do you like what I’ve done with this?”
Lyla bit her lip, nodding. “Yes.”
“And you like the scene?”
Lyla looked down at the scene, both men sucking on both the suspended woman’s nipples, drawing in so deep she could see their cheeks hollow. They weren’t touching the woman anywhere else, and she hung on, moaning, her legs thrashing to find purchase. The idea that she was blindfolded but being watched by so many did something to her.
‘She wants to be there, right?’ The question was important to her.
‘Everyone here wants to be here.’
Good. That was good.
“Would you let anyone see me like that?” she asked, curious about how his possessiveness could handle that.
His dark chuckle washed over her. “I could fuck you raw with the whole world watching, Lyla. Watching from afar, knowing they couldn’t have you, couldn’t even touch you, that you were all mine to play with as I pleased. But I wouldn’t let you come. That is for my eyes only.”
The possession of his words slithered through her body, stoking the heat higher.
“I… I don’t know what I think of that,” she muttered, her eyes on the scene below. She had hated being on display. What she had with him was just theirs, just between them, and the idea of showing it out didn’t appeal to her.
His lips landed on her neck. “But you like watching?”
His question made sense to her. “Yes.”
She felt his warm breath against the side of her neck. “In that case, flamma, keep watching.”
She did.
She watched as people in the other glass rooms, or rather their silhouettes, engaged in different sexual activities. She wondered, watching them, what they could see when they looked at her glass—just his silhouette as his body covered hers or a small woman with a larger man behind her back? Even not knowing, the idea was thrilling. Letting her eyes drift, she saw as the woman in the auditorium-like room was sandwiched between the two men, picked up by the one at her front while the one at her back unzipped himself.
Knowing what she knew was going to happen, she still held her breath as he entered her backside, the woman moaning so loudly it sent shivers over her body.
Lyla felt the skirt of her dress going over her hips, the man behind her pulling her panties to the side, his fingers finding her drenched already as she breathed rapidly. She felt something metallic swirl around her opening, and her body automatically stiffened.
“Shh,” he settled her. “Keep watching.”
She focused on the sight below. Man A set himself entirely within the woman’s ass, just as Lyla felt the metal bullet Dainn had used before on her slip inside hers. The woman below moaned again as Man B unzipped himself and pushed inside her from the front, stuffing her to the maximum.
The bullet settled within her, Lyla felt the head of his cock at her opening, and leaned into the glass, canting her hips to give him better access. Lodged at the opening for a second, she watched the men below begin to slowly fuck the hanging woman as Lyla herself got impaled. Her breath hitched at the tightness of the penetration, the fact that he still needed to slip into her carefully after all this time making her heart race faster.
Within seconds, she was double downed, as close to a double penetration as she could be with this man, and knowing he would never let another near her, she let go of any inhibitions.
A loud noise escaped her at the tightness; her eyes fluttering close as she felt him go deep in, the metal on his cock rubbing against her clenching walls in a way that had become familiar but no less exquisite now.
“You hated being on display, didn’t you?” The words against her neck made her shiver, goosebumps scattering over her arms.
She had, and this wasn’t really her being on display per se but in a way she was too because the glass didn’t hide her and her noises certainly didn’t. It made her realize that yet again, he had barreled through something she had previously despised, replacing the act with an unforgettable, incredible memory instead in its place.
She let one of her hands curl around his neck, felt him deep inside her, and turned her neck, their faces inches apart. “What I had before wasn’t sex. It was cruelty and it was cold. Being used, being displayed, being touched, everything was humiliating. I didn’t know it could be different, that I could feel different, until you. You showed me sex was deeper. It’s a way to connect to someone you care about. You breathed life back into me, and at this point, I—” she rotated her hips, their lips inches apart, seeing the affect her words had on him “—trust you to do whatever you want with me, knowing I will always be safe in the end.”
His lips slanted over hers, hard, rough, his tongue pushing into her mouth as he moved inside her, her noises drowning against him.
“So,” he asked, pulling back, “you would trust me if I took you down into a room full of people and left you there naked?”
Her breath hitched at the thought, dread filling her but she nodded. “Yes.”
“And if I invited people here to watch this, you’d trust me?”
“Yes.”
“And if I slipped something in your drink, still?”
She looked deep into his eyes, knowing he knew that being drugged was a worse memory for her. She swallowed but nodded.
“Fuck, Lyla,” he groaned, thrusting so hard inside her she almost blacked out. “Nothing gets me like your trust. Nothing.”
“I trust you,” she breathed, and felt his response in a full body shudder, one that seeped into her as he proceeded to undo her. She turned back to the glass, watching the debauchery all around her, and for the first time in a long time, felt happy about being owned.
