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Friday, August 1st
On Friday evening, her palms damp with nervous sweat, her stomach in a knot, Natalie drove to Big Iron Fitness, took the narrow lane around the side and parked in the small, lamplighted parking lot beside the old, two-story craftsman house.
Before she had time to chicken out, she stepped out of her car. She looked down at her apparel. She wore one of her short denim skirts, a tight turquoise tank with silver tracery and beading on the front that revealed the edges of her cocoa lace bra, and a new pair of cowgirl boots with darling insets of turquoise leather in the elaborate stitchery, that she’d found at Ross. Long turquoise earrings, bought by her grandmother in the seventies, dangled from her ears. Her hair was down, curled and finger-fluffed to bouffant party status.
Underneath it all, she wore a set of cocoa lace bikini panties. They’d never been worn. She definitely wasn’t showing up at a sex club in old underthings. Not that she actually thought she was going to have the courage to let anyone see her panties tonight, but at least she knew they were nice.
She glanced at her phone, saw that it was seven fifty-eight. Remembering the club rule against cell phones, she stowed it in the car and locked it before slinging the long strap of her small purse over her shoulder.
Daisy had promised to meet her in the parking lot at eight o’clock. Leaning against the hood of her Highlander, Nat looked at the house looming in the shadows of the trees, the gym a massive block behind. A broad verandah fronted the club, with old-fashioned globe lamps beside the door. She was wildly curious about what lay beyond the massive wooden doors, but she wasn’t sure she was allowed to venture inside by herself. She’d wait.
A dark pickup rolled into the lot, and pulled into a spot near her car. The motor died, the door opened, and a tall, handsome man with short brown hair and big muscles under his sleeveless western shirt stepped out. He wore a battered cowboy hat on his head, old jeans that looked like they were painted on his long legs, and boots.
He looked her over and gave her a chin lift. “You Natalie?” he asked in a deep, smooth voice.
She nodded cautiously. “Yes.”
He sauntered over to her, confidence in every move. “Hi, I’m Dack. Daisy’s man.”
Nat blinked. This was the first time a guy had introduced himself as some woman’s man. Boyfriend, fiancé, those she often heard. But whatever, it worked, because Dack was definitely a man. Like Mase, he radiated a sexy self-confidence. And shit, she had to stop comparing every guy she met to the absentee cop.
“Nice to meet you, Dack.”
“Likewise.” He gifted her with a grin, white teeth gleaming, dimples appearing in his hard cheeks. “Daisy’s running late from her folks’ place. So I’m gonna take you in, show you around. Okay?”
Oh, God. This was the moment of truth. She took a deep breath, and nodded. “Okay. And thank you.”
He nodded, then cocked his head and regarded her, smile gone. “Gonna give you our standard warning for guests, though. Club 3’s a BDSM club. We’re not hard core, but we get wild. You’re gonna see shit. I think you’re not handling it, I’m gonna bring you out, sit you down. Have you re-think whether you should be here.”
“I’m not a teenager,” she reminded him. “I’m thirty-three, I’ve been married and I own a bar. I’ve seen and done things. Maybe not what you all do in the club, but I’m not easily shocked.”
“Fair enough, Natalie. Welcome to Club 3.”
He held the door open for her, and Nat stepped into the club. She found herself in a small foyer, a man smiling at her from behind a small concierge desk who looked as if he should be modeling for a Hawaiian cowboy calendar. He wore a black hat on his raven hair, a flashing smile on his face and no shirt. His golden tanned torso was something to behold. Nat almost wanted to touch his golden chest to see if he was real.
On the wall behind him hung a pair of gold-plated hand-cuffs, opened to a stylized 3. Whoa.
“Hi, Natalie,” the Hawaiian cowboy said. “Welcome to Club 3. Hi, Dack.”
“Kai,” Dack said, moving up beside Natalie. “White cuffs, please.”
He handed Nat a pair of white, stretchy lace cuffs. “These show that you’re a guest and not available for sex, or anything else, unless one of the head doms approves. For your safety and comfort.”
Safe, that sounded good. If she was really going to do this, it helped a lot to know she would be watched over by this and other strong men.
Natalie smoothed the stretchy lace over her wrists like a talisman and followed Dack through another set of doors. Music, laughter, voices and the scents of perfumes, cologne, sweat and sex assaulted her ears, while subdued bar lighting highlighted the gleaming woods and most of all, the people.
She stood, drinking in the sights before her. An array of people, mostly young though a few were middle-aged, were dancing to Zac Brown. The men wore jeans, leather pants and shirts or vests. Many wore cowboy hats. The women wore much, much less. One pretty redhead was dancing in only a pair of green chaps, another nothing but a pink cowgirl hat and thong. Many women wore little sundresses—one of them vinyl. Daisy Duke cut-offs and tiny tops were popular too.
The clubbers were men and women of varying degrees of physical allure and fitness. But one thing they all had in common was looking comfortable in their own skins and focused on their partners. As did the people at the array of tables and chairs before the bar.
“Come on back,” Dack said in her ear. “I’ll give you the two-dollar tour.”
Nat followed him, trying to be polite about watching the club members as she passed. Not that any of them seemed to care.
She nearly tripped over her own feet when she saw a woman kneeling before her a man who must be her dom, sucking his cock while those around them watched.
“Natalie?”
She looked up quickly, her cheeks burning. Was she not supposed to watch? But Dack merely assessed her reaction, smiled at her and led the way on. They passed a woman sitting naked, except for tiny panties, on her barstool while a man applied what looked like little clamps to her nipples. Nat winced at that and hurried after Dack.
He showed her the private rooms in the back, the women’s locker room, the bar, and then gave her a look. “You good for more?”
She nodded. She was ... fine. She was shocked, but instead of being repulsed by anything she’d seen so far, she felt intrigued and energized, even turned on. And if that made her feel a little guilty, well, it was what she was here for, after all.
“I’m good,” she said.
He nodded, looking pleased. “Then we’ll go upstairs, take a quick tour.”
Upstairs was just as darkly furnished and elegant as the main floor. Nat followed the tall Dom along a corridor between rooms on both sides. Some doors were open, some closed.
A couple was involved in full intercourse inside the first room. Nat blinked and bit back the urge to giggle before walking on. That position might be fun, but it looked a little silly from this side.
Then she heard a voice that was somehow familiar, through the last of the open doors at the end of the corridor. She stiffened, her skin tightening.
“Who’s my naughty girl?” asked a deep, hoarse voice. “Who needs to be spanked?”
A woman’s voice said something, too soft and breathless to hear. Natalie could’ve cared less what she’d said. She only cared about the identity of the man. Her heart in her throat, she hurried to the open door, and peered inside.
“Whoa,” Dack said sharply behind her. “C’mon back, Natalie.”
Nat barely heard him. Inside the room, a woman lay face down on a wide, padded bench, her blonde hair streaming over the dark leather. She was naked, her hands bound behind her back. Her face was flushed, her lips parted, eyes glazed.
Behind her stood a muscular, handsome man, his back to the door. He wore faded jeans, a leather vest, and a bolo tie around his bare throat. His short brown hair was mussed, as if a woman’s fingers had been running through it, and as he turned his head in profile, she could see his square jaw and his ‘stache and goatee.
It was Mase.
Natalie must have made some sound, because he turned, jerking his upper body around. One of his hands lay on the woman’s lower back.
Mase stared straight into Natalie’s horrified eyes. For a long moment they both stood, their gazes locked. His eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared.
Then his gaze flicked to Dack, and he deliberately turned his back on her, on them.
“All right, I’m gonna give you what you need,” he said to the woman. “How many depends on how well you respond.”
Oh, Jesus. The same words Mase had said to her.
Feeling winded as if he’d punched her right in the chest, Natalie jerked back.
“C’mon,” Dack said, taking hold of her arm. Natalie let him lead her away, down the hallway. They stopped by the balustrade, and Nat reached out and grasped it. She stood there, shaking, her eyes closed.
“Hey,” Dack’s deep voice said in her ear. His hand rested on her shoulder, warm and strong. “Natalie. Talk to me. What just happened?”
Nat took a shuddering breath, and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just ... I sort of ... know him. It shocked me to see him here.”
And sickened her, as nothing else she’d seen tonight had. He’d been with another woman, sharing all that was so magical about him. He’d looked at her, Nat, as if ... as if she were an unwelcome intruder, someone he didn’t want to see or know.
Oh, my God, was that woman his girlfriend, his significant other? He’d told her he wasn’t with anyone. And she’d believed him. Like an idiot, she’d believed him. How many times did a man need to lie to her before she stopped believing them? He was just like Tony.
Dack’s body went solid beside her. “You know him,” he repeated. “Where from, Natalie?”
Without thinking, Nat found herself confiding how she’d met Mase at the party, and what had happened next. Well, most of it. She wasn’t sharing the details with anyone—except that she’d already blurted to Daisy, who was this man’s fiancé. She was so screwed.
“You didn’t know he was a member here?” Dack asked, his gaze probing, suspicious.
“Oh my God, no,” she assured him. “No. I wouldn’t have ... well, I would never have ...”
She wouldn’t have looked in that room, that was for damn sure. The sight of Mase with that other woman was seared into her mind like a brand. She sucked in a breath that was half sob. “I mean, why would I want to see that?”
“It upset you to see him with another woman.” Dack crossed his arms, apparently settling in for a discussion.
Natalie crossed her own arms, hugging them around her middle. “Yeah, you could say that. I thought—that is, we ... he told me—oh, I’m sorry. I can’t talk about it.”
“And you do recall the rule that what you see here stays here,” he said, his voice like steel.
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “Believe me, I remember that.” Now if only she could forget.
Dack sighed and patted her shoulder. “Okay, hon. I can see you’re rattled. Let’s go back downstairs and I’ll buy you a drink.”
“Maybe I should leave,” she said uncertainly.
He raised his brows. “You could, or you could stay and show you got the cojones I think it took for you to walk in here in the first place. Mase ain’t the only guy here, in case you didn’t notice. There’s better lookin’ ones, that’s for sure.”
She surprised herself by laughing at that. It felt good, especially when he grinned at her as if they were in on a good joke. The pain in Nat’s chest eased a bit. She could see why Daisy loved this guy.
She took a deep breath. “Okay. I’d like a drink. And I’d like to meet some of your friends.”
She followed Dack back downstairs, and perched on a tall stool at the bar, where she was introduced to Trace, who was drop-dead handsome but so intense he was a little scary, Jake, who flat out did scare her, and then a beautiful woman dressed as a saloon girl, with dramatic makeup, a black wig and a whispery voice called Xania, who Natalie finally realized was not a woman at all, but a man.
“Natalie is just visiting tonight,” Dack said with a significant exchange of looks with Xania. “She won’t be participating in any way.”
“Got it,” Xania said.
Dack leaned down, gave Nat a kiss on the cheek and told her to call him if she wanted to talk about Club 3. Nat thanked him and watched him saunter away, feeling jumbled, near tears but also weirdly calm. She’d survived the worst that could happen tonight, right? All her nights of remembering Mase and fantasizing about more were now done. Burned away by a searing look that ended it all.
“Love your hair,” Xania said. “What products do you use?”
Natalie had always wanted to meet a drag queen. She crossed her legs, sipped her gin and tonic and leaned in to chat about hair, nail polish and how to get clumps out of mascaraed lashes. Xania was voluble, funny and if this had been any other night, Nat would’ve thoroughly enjoyed their talk.
Instead she hung onto the thread of the conversation with sheer determination. Xania watched her with an odd smile, as if trying to figure her out. Then the drag queen looked over her head, and smiled crookedly.
“Ah,” she said, as if a question had been answered.
The skin on the back of Nat’s neck prickled. She turned and looked up. A story above them, Mase leaned on the balustrade on the upper floor, regarding the two of them with a dangerous scowl.
Well, that certainly took the last bit of fun out of the evening. Nat turned away with a toss of her hair.
“It was great meeting you, Xania,” she said. “But now, I believe I’ll be going.”
Xania cast a lightning look from her to Mase and back again, then shrugged gracefully. “Hope you come back, Natalie. Look for me, or for a guy named Xander.” She winked.
“Thanks. I just may do that.” Natalie slid from her bar stool, and walked through the club her head high.
She might be running, but damned if she’d let Mase see that.