“I can’t believe this place,” Raji said, scanning the crowd packed around them. Even though it was almost midnight, people thronged the nightclub’s dance floor and crowded the balconies above. The smoke from the sizzling steaks from earlier still lingered in the air, though the excellent whiskey had washed the taste down Raji’s throat.
Peyton laughed as he held her in his arms, waltzing as a string quartet played a waltz. Speakers bolted to the ceiling and walls all around the cavernous space amplified the music to fill Raji’s ears and chest until she felt like she was floating.
A perilous tremor started in Raji’s chest again, flopping in there like a panicked trout. Her eyes burned, and she told herself No, no, no, not here, not now, not ever. Shove it all away. She sucked a deep breath in, her lungs pushing out her ribs. The slim whalebones in the black dress she wore pinched her waist as she tried to breathe, but she steadied herself.
Tonight was a night that Raji had off, a night to be savored, not to be spoiled.
Work things would not interfere with tonight.
Peyton’s strong arm clamped around her waist, and he led as well on the dance floor as he did in bed: very much in control, but not too rough. He wore a mask over the upper half of his face and nose, painted black and white with subtle shading and swirls. It was a Venetian mask, he had said, and yes, he had picked it up during Carnevale in Venice a few years earlier. The black mask matched his tuxedo, though he wore a black, straight tie with the tux, not a bow tie. “Oh, you haven’t seen even half of it yet. Save your disbelief for later.”
The crowd was a monochromatic dark sea, shining with speckles of moonlight. The black-and-white charity ball was also a masquerade, so everyone wore funereal black, ghostly white, and masks. The nightclub soared around them, an open dance floor in the middle and then three stories of white-covered tables on balconies. Waiters moved between the tables, serving supper and wine.
“I can’t believe we’re out on a real date!” Raji adjusted her mask, a silver filigree composed of metallic swirls and crystals. It looked like a face-tiara.
Below Peyton’s mask, his mouth smiled, and crinkles formed around his eyes. Even in the twilight-lit nightclub, his bright teal eyes shone in the glimmers. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Georgie told me about it. Evidently, she knows the people who own this place, so they sent her an invitation. It’s to benefit a new autism center called A Ray of Light that’s run by a friend of the owner.”
“You know,” Raji said, trying to make her eyes sparkle with mischief but unsure that she succeeded, “my hospital has a huge masquerade fundraiser next month. We could go out, eat a rubber chicken supper, and go dancing again! Two dates!”
Peyton laughed. “I’d love to. Let me check the touring schedule and get back to you. I think we could make it a habit, Raji-lee. The Met holds a masquerade ball every year, as do several charities in London. We could meet just for these masked events.”
She laughed. “It would be a shame to use this mask only once.”
“This place is very special, though.”
Raji smiled back at him, even though a part of her threatened to fall apart. “Yeah?”
His brilliantly blue-green eyes took on a wicked twinkle. “You’ll see. We have about fifteen minutes until our reservation upstairs.”
Raji glanced at the white-covered tables and hovering waiters on the balconies. “We already ate supper. I’m stuffed.”
Peyton laughed. “This place has many surprises.” He looked over her head, guiding her through the crowd as he led the waltz. He saw something, and his smile faded. “Oh, shit.”
He whipped her around sideways, so that his back was toward whatever he had seen.
“What?” Raji craned her neck to look over his shoulder at the crowd, but even in heels, she was too short.
Peyton hunched a little and kept his face turned the other way. “Xan and Georgie are here. She said they weren’t going to be able to make it. That’s why I suggested we go.”
“Xan Valentine? Where?” She hadn’t seen Xan since that time she had met Peyton at the Whisky a Go Go before she and Peyton had become an official, if secret, item. Even though she was there to hang out with Peyton, seeing the lead singer of the meteorically successful band again would be pretty awesome. “And how did you recognize them? Aren’t they wearing masks?”
“Yeah, they’re wearing masks, but I’ve been staring at his ass on stage for years now. I can recognize him better from behind than from the front. Georgie is wearing the same silver satin dress that she wore for a concert last week. Let’s go.”
She was having fun dancing with him and having a real date. “But we’re wearing masks—”
“Come on.” He held her hand and broke a path through the crowd, away from where he had been looking.
They reached the edge, and Peyton dodged down a hallway, pulling Raji after him.
She draped her arms over his shoulders, laughing. “So you told them that you weren’t seeing me anymore, I take it.”
“After we discussed it about a year ago, yes. They have no idea about this—” his hand flipped in the air, indicating something words couldn’t express, “—thing we have going on. Xan’s on the warpath, though. He’s been after me, saying that I’m traveling too much when we have breaks, that I’m never there when they’re writing songs, stuff like that. He caught me in a hotel lobby when I left to meet you last summer, and he’s been giving me the hairy eyeball ever since. He thinks I’m meeting drug dealers for coked-out weekend retreats or something.”
“I’ve been getting chewed out by friends for trading shifts, and one of my attendings thinks I’m not getting enough ‘face time.’”
Peyton grimaced. “Sounds familiar.”
“So, we’re both getting in trouble for continuing this relationship, aren’t we?” she said. “It’s really inadvisable.”
“Yeah,” Peyton said, grinning. “Makes it more exciting, doesn’t it?”
Raji grinned back. “You bet.” She paused. “Should you be writing songs with them, though?”
Peyton shrugged, still watching down the corridor as if he expected Xan Valentine to track them down. “They haven’t used any of my music. Xan and Cadell can write as much as the band needs and volumes extra, and Tryp occasionally contributes. My stuff doesn’t fit with Killer Valentine, anyway.”
“You’ve never played any of your songs for me,” Raji said.
He shrugged, still watching the end of the hallway as if he expected Xan Valentine to come raging around the corner.
“But you bring your guitar every time,” Raji said.
“I’d rather work on a keyboard, but they’re unwieldy on airplanes. The guitar is portable. Most of the time, I’m working on the sheet music for Xan’s new songs or reconsidering older ones. I rarely have time to work on my own material.”
“And you’ve only played Killer Valentine songs for me, which means that Xan and Cadell wrote them, not you.”
He glanced back at her before he resumed watching the hallway. “You like Killer Valentine’s songs.”
“But I might like your songs, too.”
“They’re different than KV’s.”
“How?”
He looked up at the acoustic tiles on the ceiling, musing about it. “They’re lighter, more melodic, more whimsical, maybe. Xan and Cadell have the sturm und drang thing, which is great for arena rock anthems. Nobody sits down during a Killer Valentine concert. The whole crowd is on their feet, the whole time. I seem to write a different kind of song. They probably wouldn’t be as popular.”
“How many have you written?”
“Thirty or so.”
Raji’s heart surged. Thirty songs! Maybe he was going to make a break with Killer Valentine. Maybe now was the time she could open a spreadsheet on her laptop and map out a life plan for him. He needed to forge a career for himself instead of tagging along for years with Xan Valentine and Georgie Johnson. “Thirty! But you’ve never played any of them for me.”
He shrugged again. “The timing never seemed right.”
“I want to hear one. I want to hear them all.”
He looked back at her, his eyes wary. “Do you?”
“Yeah!”
“All thirty of them?”
That was a lot. “Absolutely.”
“We might have some time tomorrow morning if we can pry ourselves out of bed. Maybe one or two.”
She snuggled up to him a little more. “We’ll make time before our flights. I want to hear more than one or two.”
His arm wrapped more securely around her waist, and his head dipped beside hers as he breathed on her neck. “Assuming we’re not exhausted from tonight.”
“Got something special planned, do you?” They’d been furtively meeting in hotel rooms and crashing at each other’s apartments for more than two years. Raji knew most of his moves, probably. She liked all of them, but she knew them.
He whispered, “Come with me.”
Raji skipped along behind him, just tipsy enough from the wine to enjoy walking with him because it was fun. “Where are we going?”
“Do you know where we are?”
“Some nightclub.”
“Not just any nightclub,” Peyton said.
An enormous man with skin and hair the color of sable stood at the intersection of the next hallway. “Good evening.”
Peyton held out his phone to the man. “We have a reservation from twelve to three o’clock.”
Twelve to three? That was a long time for dessert or whatever. Raji stood and watched them.
The man took Peyton’s phone and inspected the screen thoughtfully. “Yes, you do. Come this way, sir. Welcome to The Devilhouse.”
Raji smiled and nodded, going along with it all. “Thanks!”
He led them through some very ordinary, office-looking hallways to a door. “It bolts from the inside, but we can get in if there’s an emergency. Have a nice evening, sir,” he nodded to her, “and ma’am.”
The guy walked away.
Maybe this was one of those hotel fantasy suites where it looked like they were underwater or on a deserted island or at the North Pole or something. That would be surprising.
Peyton opened the door. “After you.”
Raji strode into the room and stopped dead in her tracks. “Are you kidding me?”
Not a forest, not a harem, not an island or a heart-shaped red satin bed.
Nope, it was a medieval dungeon, complete with cases filled with an array of whips, a huge X in the corner to spread-eagle strap people to, and so many other frames and posts and things that looked like gym equipment but obviously, so obviously, weren’t. “Uh, Peyton—”
With a solid thunk, the door slammed behind her. Bolts clacked.
Raji whirled around.
Peyton towered above her, right above her, and she realized just how overwhelmingly tall he was, five inches taller than she was even though she was wearing high, high heels. When a guy is a quarter of a foot over six feet tall, he looms over everyone, and the top of Raji’s head didn’t even clear his shoulder.
At five-seven, Raji was used to being one of the taller women around and eye-to-eye with a lot of men, even more so when she wore a little heel.
But, damn.
His Venetian half-mask was lying on the floor beside the door, and the light from the sconces flickered over his strong cheekbones and jaw.
She looked way, way up at him and said, “Yep, this is a surprise.”
Peyton grabbed Raji around her waist and whirled her against a wall. He grabbed both her wrists and pressed them over her head, and he bent. His mouth grabbed hers, sucking at her lips, and his tongue invaded her mouth.
She opened to him, melting where he held her and letting him kiss her more deeply.
He broke off. Energy and need and passion filled his blue-green eyes, and the wildness was like a bolt of electricity through Raji. It was practically a Pavlovian response, now. He looked at her with lust in his eyes, and she went wet between her legs.
Peyton asked her, “Do you trust me?”
She had no other thought in her entire body. “Yes.”
“In here, you’re mine tonight.”
“I’m always yours,” she said.
He smiled, a hungry, wolfish smile. “You need to choose a safeword, something that you will say if you want me to stop, something specific and unusual.”
“Hemorrhagic stroke,” Raji said.
Damn, that was too much on her mind.
“And something to say if you want me to slow down, to back up, to let you breathe a bit, metaphorically.”
“Only metaphorically?” she clarified.
“I’m not into breath play,” he said. “Too limiting.”
“Okay, I didn’t even know that was a thing, but all right. How about ischemic stroke?”
“Good. So ischemic stroke is our ‘yellow’ word, and hemorrhagic stroke means ‘stop.’ We are agreed?”
“Yes,” Raji said. “Hemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke.”
“Good.” He stepped back, and she almost stumbled. “Take off your clothes.”
Raji complied, hanging her black dress over a thing composed of bars and padded seats that she had no idea how one or two people would sit on.
When she looked up, Peyton had stripped to the waist, baring his broad chest and the flat stones of his abs. His black slacks hung on his narrow hips. Matching Nordic armband tattoos ringed his biceps. More tattoos like woven ribbons emblazoned with runes crawled over his shoulders and pectoral muscles.
He said, “Everything. The mask, too.”
Raji shimmied out of her pantyhose and her black underwear and bra. She laid the silver filigree mask on top of it all, the crystals glittering in the light.
“Now you kneel,” he said. “You sit back on your heels, your hands clasped behind your back.”
Raji did as she was told, trying to look graceful, but her legs and back were sore from standing over back-to-back-to-back surgeries the last few days. That’s the problem when you’re a fucking good surgeon: the higher-ups assign you the harder cases because, most of the time, you won’t kill the patient.
Most of the time.
Raji’s feet ached, and she tried not to think about yesterday’s ten-hour surgery at all.
Peyton was watching her, one eyebrow down. “Are you all right?”
“Fine, now that I’m here with you.” She would make it so.
He walked around her. “All right. Shoulders back, chin up—”
Raji did her best.
“—spine straight, eyes down.”
Before she looked down at her knees, she saw Peyton select a riding crop from an umbrella stand full of them.
The riding crop was a whole new level of kinky in their relationship.
Raji breathed more evenly. She wasn’t sure where this was going, but a small part of the back of her brain noted that all her attention was currently focused on the fact that Peyton was holding that slim, black whip and not anything else.
Leather touched her chin, pressing up, and Raji let her chin lift an inch.
Peyton said, “Better.”
She concentrated on sitting up straight and holding in her stomach.
He caressed her hair as he walked by, a gentle stroke that soothed her.
Raji closed her eyes.
“This is called presenting,” Peyton said. “You present yourself to me this way.”
She nodded.
“It indicates that you are submitting to me,” he said.
Raji nodded again.
“It means that you are mine. I can do anything I want to you, whatever pleases me, unless you say one of your safe words.”
She nodded. Yes, oh yes.
“You should say, ‘I submit.’”
“I submit,” Raji said, not even hesitating.
Peyton ran his knuckles under her chin. “Good girl.”
Raji knew that this was all a game, but she wanted desperately to play it.
He said, “Take my hand.”
She glanced up. Peyton’s left hand dangled right in front of her, ready to help her up.
The suggestion was that she needed him even to stand up, that she was so weak and helpless that she couldn’t stand on her own two feet without him helping her.
And he was right. At least for that night, he was all too right.
Raji slid her fingers into his, and he lifted her hand, steadying her, as she climbed to her feet.
Calluses from the steel strings of the bass guitar hardened his fingertips.
Peyton said, “It pleases me to tie you up, to restrain you so that I can touch you however I wish.”
She nodded, even though she was pretty sure that she didn’t have to because everything should be allowed unless she said a safe word. That’s how the books showed it, anyway.
“Good girl.”
Her face warmed at his praise, silly as it was.
Peyton led her over to two posts bolted to the ground. Black loops were welded to the steel pillars that stretched over her head.
“Stand between them. Hold these loops.” He touched one of the loops just below her shoulders.
She wove her fingers through the cold steel.
Holding onto the bars felt like she was even less in control, less responsible.
Peyton stood right behind her. Warmth from his bare chest rolled off his skin onto her back. “If you let go, I will tie you to the stakes.”
Raji dropped her hands to her sides.
Peyton lifted one of her arms, a careful, slow move, and bound her wrist to the loops with a cord so soft that it felt like silk. She watched as he did the other one. The loose loop around her wrist was secured with coils in an intricate knot that, if she pulled on it, would tighten the coils around the loop but not tighten the loop itself. That knot was tied so that there was no way it could cut off her circulation to her hand, an important safety consideration, especially for a surgeon.
She drooped, trusting that Peyton knew what he was doing.
“Feet by the stakes.” He tied her ankles, spread-eagle, to the posts with the same safety knots.
Raji was utterly vulnerable to anything he wanted to do to her, whether it was to fuck her up the ass or whip the skin off her back or something else.
She gripped the steel loops more tightly for balance.
Near her ear, Peyton whispered, “I want you to be silent. Whatever I do to you, don’t make a sound, or you will be punished. Nod to show me that you understand.”
Raji nodded.
His hand traced her ribs down to the curve of her hip, stroking her skin.
She let her head roll back and moaned.
The riding crop in Peyton’s hand flicked, and a sharp stripe stung her leg.
That brief flash of pain drove the guilt and grief entirely out of Raji’s head, a moment of bliss.
“No sounds,” Peyton whispered near her shoulder.
His hand slid around her hip and cupped her ass cheek.
Raji bit her lip, waiting.
The humid warmth of Peyton’s breath feathered over her neck and shoulder.
His other hand trailed up her ribs, and his fingers delicately traced the swell of the underside of her breast.
Her breath caught in her throat, almost a sound, but not quite.
His fingers stroked over her nipple, a gentle pinch. It tightened in his fingers, hardening, and he barely, lightly pinched her.
Raji gasped, “Ouch.”
Peyton backed away, his hands leaving her.
She braced herself.
A sharper slap this time, a slash across her buttock.
The bright pain drove everything out of Raji’s mind, a floating nirvana for an instant longer than the first one.
She gasped and held the rings more tightly.
After that, his hands caressed and tormented her, stroking her body and breasts and folds. With each new touch, each deeper stroke, she moaned or exclaimed, needing the flash of pain that gave her a moment of unthinking relief.
Peyton obliged, the riding crop giving way to a short, silk whip that lashed pain over Raji’s back.
She cried out, a scream of desperation when the grief and guilt came flooding back.
He said once, “Recite your safe words.”
She whispered, “Hemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke.”
“Do you want to use them?”
“No. I deserve this. Use me.”
The next lash over her back stung hard, surely deep enough to leave a welt.
Maybe a bruise.
She cried out, “Peyton!” and received another bite from the whip.
Through it all, he stood in front of her, kissing her between blows with his tongue coiling around hers, his hand grabbing her naked ass, and his fingers running over the raw welts on her back, more pain that chased thought from her head.
He stood behind her, stroking and squeezing her breasts and hips, stroking over her clit and into her core with his ridged and callused fingers, nearly bringing her to orgasm but backing off as she tightened on him.
The hard rod of his erection pressed against her ass through his pants.
In time, all the dark thoughts receded, and Raji pleaded with him, begging him to fuck her.
The whip stung her again, biting into her skin, and she cried out, the wave of annihilation washing over her.
Then he was fucking her from behind, his cock filling her core as he held her hips tilted back and shoved himself into her.
Raji cried out again, her orgasm building ever higher as Peyton stroked her clit with his thumb. He fucked her hard, his hips slapping the stinging skin on her ass.
“Harder,” she gasped.
Peyton pinched her clit and rammed into her, and the tight knot between her legs broke into pulses that flowed through her, cresting over her, and dragged her down as she sobbed.
Her arms fell, and she landed on her knees, reaching for Peyton.
His strong arms cradled her, holding her close to his broad chest. His heart thudded near her ear, and she huddled closer to him, cold and shaking.
He moved away from her. Raji clutched her knees. The drowning sensation was the same as if she had been at the bottom of a dark pit.
Somewhere a few feet away from her, Peyton whispered, swearing bitterly.
A blanket wrapped her shoulders, and she clutched it around herself even while she leaned against Peyton.
Tears flowed down her face, a release of the deep grief inside her.
Peyton held her in his arms, on his lap, and rocked Raji as she sobbed. He didn’t shush her or try to reason with her. His arms held her tightly as she cried great, wracking gasps and chokes, and he stroked her hair.
When she had let it all go, when the utter fatigue from crying had wiped her mind clean, he asked her, “Are you all right now?”
“Yeah,” she said, wiping her damp cheeks with the blanket. “Better.”
“I’ve never seen you cry before.”
“I don’t cry. Ever.”
“All right, then we won’t go there. Who was it?”
“His name was Leonard Yates.”
“What happened?”
“Massive stroke. Massive hemorrhagic stroke. On my table. Under my knife.”
“There’s no way you could have known, and he knew the risks going in.”
“Yeah, I know, and I know that hemorrhagic strokes usually are caused by weakened or malformed blood vessels, and it would have gotten him at some point, anyway, but damn. He was only forty-six. He should have gone home to his kids.”
Peyton held her for a while longer, and then he cleaned her up in the small bathroom adjoining the dungeon and dressed her, except for her panty hose. She shoved those in her purse.
“I have a hotel room for the night,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Raji sat in the passenger seat, still blissfully numb, and Peyton held her in his arms while she slept that night.