I took a deep breath and studied the vaguely alien ceiling. It really felt like I was losing my mind. I was in this strange, aggressively quiet room. Landon was towering over me like a bossy, mysterious demon, and… And I was considering stripping completely naked and getting into a bathtub in the secret BDSM club below my grandfather’s hotel.
I closed my eyes, then nodded my head. Giving my assent made my entire body light up. I could feel every hair standing on end and I knew Landon must’ve heard the impossibly loud thumping of my heart. The room was so quiet, he probably could even hear the blood sloshing around in my veins.
He clapped his hands twice, and the lights cut out.
Despite my best efforts, I laughed out loud. “Clap on, clap off lights? Really?” I asked,
“People kept losing the remote,” he muttered.
My smile quickly faded when reality sank in. I was doing this. I really was about to strip naked only inches away from a man who was practically a stranger. The only thing separating my kind of dimpled ass, the unfortunately placed freckle that kind of blurred the border of one of my nipples, and all my other points of self-consciousness from his eyes were two claps of his hands.
I pulled my dress over my head and extended it toward where he’d been standing. I found his hands and passed it to him. Next, I unclasped my bra, and then slid out of my panties. I set both of them on top of the dress and then waited for his hand. He took me by the wrist and guided me into the tub.
The whole experience was already surreal. Once I took my mind off undressing, I realized just how dark the room was. Like the silence, it was another factor beyond dark. It felt as if the darkness wasn’t just around me or in front of me, but like it had flooded to the inside of my eyes and brain, too. It made me realize how even when I’d been in dark places before, my mind was just working overtime to process what little visual information was available—hints of a wall here or an object there. This darkness was so complete that I could feel a sort of stillness in my brain, like it wasn’t even trying.
The unexpected sensation of his hand against me in that dark silence seemed to magnify everything, even the barely audible rasp of his calloused skin against me.
The water sloshed as I slid into the tub. I was pleased to find it wasn’t cold at all. In fact, it was as close to a neutral temperature as I thought there could be. It felt like nothing, just like the rest of the room, and I understood now why the tub was the final step of the sensory deprivation.
“No jokes?” Landon asked. His voice seemed to float in the darkness just above me.
I frowned up toward him, even though I couldn’t see a thing. I was certainly nervous, but the gravity of the moment was starting to weigh down everything else. I realized I’d been treating this whole thing like I was taking a tour of a chocolate factory. I figured I’d just pop my head in, take a look around, and leave the way I came once I had my fill. Clearly, I’d been very, very wrong.
This was the part of the tour where the Oompa Loompas emerged, locked the doors, and started singing. What do you get when you play with your, heart? You get naked in the, tu-ub! I was pretty sure that wasn’t how the song went, but I was definitely naked and in the tub. I was also neck deep, and I wasn’t just talking about the water.
“Relax your head back,” Landon said.
I shivered when his fingertips pressed lightly into the sides of my head, easing it back to rest on a small, padded ledge at the back of the tub.
“Good,” he said.
Just the sound of his voice alone was so overpowering in the black silence. It sent shivers across my body—or maybe that was his hands on me when I was naked, even if I knew he couldn’t see anything.
“Now,” Landon said. “Touch yourself for me.”
When I didn’t move, I felt him kneel until our faces must’ve only been inches apart. “You remember the safe words, don’t you?”
I nodded, stupidly realized he couldn’t see me, then whispered a hoarse, yes.
“Good. Then I’m only going to say it one more time. Your options are to touch yourself, or I’ll do it for you. You have three seconds to choose.”
I felt the weight of each passing second like fists to my stomach. One… Two…
Almost as if it had a mind of its own, my hand slid up my stomach to cup one of my breasts.