Rae waited outside the door to Play Room Five with her hand on the brass doorknob, steeling herself.
The door to Play Room Five was not a forbidding edifice of carved mahogany and designed to look like a door to Hell, like the other dungeon doors in The Devilhouse that Rae had seen. This six-panel door was painted white, and the waiting room had three recliners facing a wide-screen television on the wall, which was tuned to a college basketball game. The unassuming door projected the illusion that they had left The Devilhouse, but Rae knew better. No matter how much this door pretended to exist in the sane world, the sex-crazed madness of The Devilhouse was all around her. The insanity clung to her as tightly as the black leather bustier that girdled her ribs.
Rae turned the knob and opened the door.
The blue living room looked like Rae’s grandmother’s house, decorated in what had been fashionable in 1958. A blocky couch was slung low against the back wall. Brass stand lamps flanked it. The pleated lampshades glowed like white truncated triangles against the sky blue wall. A vanilla candle burned on a sideboard.
This play room reeked of normalcy, except for the shirtless, tubby man wearing a black leather hood, kneeling in the center of the low shag carpet. The eyeless mask only had one hole cut out, for his nose. He leaned to one side, favoring one of his knees. Ginger hair sprouted all over his body.
Sonya’s notes in his file detailed that, in general, Kyle San Jose liked to argue, made up excuses for everything, lied at every opportunity, but he didn’t like to be punished for it. He wasn’t a good little sub. He just wanted some girl to spank his ass and to be on his way.
His safe word was “Yes-yes-yes.”
Sonya had hand-written in the margin: ODD.
Yeah, well, all The Devilhouse’s clients were a little odd.
“Good afternoon,” she intoned as she stood above him.
He didn’t answer.
Rae selected a wooden paddle from the umbrella stand near the door. Three golf-sized umbrellas mixed in with the riding crops and thin paddles. Nice to know that she could borrow an umbrella from here in the rare case of desert rain.
The long wooden paddle looked like the one her grade school principal had had mounted on the wall above his desk, painted with the motto “The Good Old Days.” She whacked the paddle against her palm, testing it. The sturdy plank slapped instead of pounded. She could work with that.
She noticed Kyle San Jose fidgeting. “Sit still, sub.”
“I can’t. I have a knee problem. I can’t kneel like this.”
And the excuses started. His knees even rested on shag carpeting, a luxury that other subs did not enjoy. “I did not give you permission to speak.”
“You’re not my usual girl.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You haven’t worked here long, have you?”
“I didn’t give you permission to speak, sub.” She smacked him on the butt cheek with the paddle.
“Hey! Why did you do that!”
Rae glanced up at the white, drywall ceiling and found the black orb almost directly above her. Wulf might be watching her, or one of his ex-special forces security guys might be the one protecting her and looking down her cleavage. Waving was probably unprofessional, not that Kyle San Jose could see it through his eyeless mask.
Rae walked around the hooded man, stomping on the carpet so he could hear her. So that was why the dungeon play rooms were tiled, so that the sub could hear the clicking of high-heeled boots. That, and it was easier to hose down tile if needed. “What is your name, sub?”
“Foxhound.”
Another dog name. Interesting.
She paced around Kyle San Jose, stomping some more on the carpet. Brown hair curled out from under his hood on the scruff of his neck. Neck stubble met his weedy back hair. Rae was glad that she wasn’t going to see Kyle San Jose’s hairy arse. She just had to spank it over the leather pants that bound his pudgy hindquarters. “Stand, Foxhound.”
He lumbered to his feet.
The furniture in the living room didn’t include a proper spanking chair. Rae wondered how she was supposed to paddle him. She stomped around him again.
He said, “The other girl always leads me over to the chair to spank me.” The leather mask muffled his whiney voice. “Aren’t you going to do that?”
Wow, this one was mouthy.
Because she was a good seven inches taller than San Jose in her high-heeled boots, Rae bent down to whisper near where the hood covered his ear. “No. I’m going to make you wait for it.”
“I don’t want to wait for it,” he said. His tone turned ugly. “The other girl never makes me wait for it.”
Probably because Sonya wanted to get away from his nasty attitude as soon as possible. No wonder she hadn’t come in today.
Rae whispered near his leather-covered ear, “Wait.”
“Why are you making me wait? I don’t want to wait! I’m a paying customer here, and I don’t want to wait for my spanking!”
His shrill tantrum was so ridiculous that Rae laughed at him. Her strong laugh rang like a bell from years of singing with the church choir.
San Jose stopped complaining, and his black, eyeless hood swiveled toward her. “Rae?”
She backed away. She didn’t know anyone named Kyle San Jose. She would have never agreed to the session if she had. “Who are you?”
The man pulled the black hood off his face.
Rae recognized the man’s round jaw and broken nose as the hood stretched, even before it popped free of his face. Years of rage and alcohol abuse had popped spidery blood vessels around his nose. Sweat darkened his orange hair.
Her cousin Jim Bob Mulligan was ten years older than she, had inherited a couple warehouses in Pirtleville, and was a deacon in her family’s church.
Why had the form said that his name was Kyle San Jose?
Making a run for the door would be useless.
His gloating smile was cruel. “Rae Stone. It’s been, what, three years since you left for college?”
Jim Bob grabbed her by the waist and dragged her against his flabby body. Even though she was taller, some of that height difference came from her high-heeled boots, and he outweighed Rae by a good fifty pounds. “What’re you doing in a whorehouse?”
Rae pushed back on his shoulders and answered before she thought about it. “I needed money.”
He leered at her from an inch above her boobs. “Your parents would be crushed if they found out. What’re you going to do for me so’s that I won’t tell ‘em?”
“Stop it, Jim Bob!” She wiggled, trying to push him off of her without starting a brawl.
He grabbed Rae’s shoulder, spun her, and slammed her against the wall.
She felt his hands pulling at her skirt, trying to hike it up on her hips.
Like hell she was going to let her jerk cousin rape her. She had grown up with four brothers and knew how to knock people around.
Rae pushed off the wall and jammed her elbow back, catching Jim Bob in the ribs.
She whipped around with her fist balled up ready to sock him, just in time to see Jim Bob’s surprised face spin away from her. Wulf’s expression was as calm as if he were about to sip tea as he punched Jim Bob’s lights out.
Jim Bob crumpled and flopped to the carpet. His limp dick flopped sideways because he had pulled it out of his pants.
Wulf shook his hand like he was flinging something nasty off his knuckles. His calm question was as even as if he were inquiring about her health after a sneeze. “Are you all right?”
“He knows.” Rae tugged her skirt down. Terrible fears spun in her head. “He’s my cousin Jim Bob Mulligan, and he knows about this.” Rae was undone. He would tell everyone about her and The Devilhouse. A sinner could be forgiven, but the temptress could never be redeemed. What use was it to go to college if she couldn’t go home?
Wulf stepped over her cousin’s unconscious body. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Why did it say his name was Kyle San Jose in his file?”
“Many of our clients use pseudonyms for their working files. Their real names are listed in the business files.”
“He’ll tell my parents. He’ll tell everyone. They’ll disown me.” Her life stretched in front of her, long and lonely and alone.
“I’ll make sure he won’t tell anyone.” Wulf cradled her face in his hand, and his touch was gentle. Blood ran down his pale hand and soaked into his white shirt cuff.
Rae wanted to sob but she held it together. “He’ll tell them all anyway, just to watch them get all upset. He likes scenes and chaos.”
Wulf smiled, and his calm smile was so ordinary that it scared her. “You can watch from the security booth, if you’d like.”