She still had a key to Jonah’s dungeon.
My heart sank.
Would I ever be able to please him? He was still keeping things from me, still not revealing the true extent of his dark yearning.
My curiosity getting the best of me, I walked back down the stairs to the room that was still unlocked.
It was such a strange combination of beauty and grandeur mixed with darkness and kink.
Did Jonah fantasize about taking me in this room?
He had never said anything about it. In fact, he had been loath to even discuss his darker desires with me. I had taken the lead and asked him to show me some of what I might be missing.
He’d said he hadn’t been to the club in years. Was it possible he hadn’t been down in this room for years either?
There was only one way to find out. I would have to ask him about it.
I walked over to the Master’s chair and ran my fingers over the supple leather. I pictured Jonah sitting in the chair. It wasn’t a stretch. He exuded dominance. It was an easy image to form in my mind—him sitting in this chair, a submissive on her knees in front of him.
What was difficult was imagining that the submissive was me.
Was that what he wanted from me?
And if it was, would I be able to give it to him?
I knelt in front of the chair, imagining Jonah sitting there, me serving him.
I gazed around the room, focusing on the thing that looked like a stockade and then the strange table. But if I looked just to the right, I saw a beautiful bed that almost looked like it belonged to a decadent bedroom, along with the settee, couch, and marble-topped coffee table.
I stayed, kneeling in front of the chair, for a long time.
Chapter Sixteen
Jonah
When I got home, I made sure Lucy had fresh water, and when I didn’t find Melanie in the family room or the kitchen, I figured she might be resting in the bedroom. I sighed. I had a lot of explaining to do to her. It hadn’t been fair of me to walk out on her and Talon without telling them where I was going or why, and I really shouldn’t have told her to leave me alone. I had just been so angry. And then to be blackmailed on top of everything else. Colin Morse and his father would not get one penny from me. Well, his father wouldn’t. I had no problem helping Colin, if he needed it and as long as he wasn’t perpetuating lies about my family or me.
Whoever and whatever he was, he didn’t deserve the treatment he had received at the hands of Tom Simpson and Theodore Mathias.
I walked to my bedroom to find Melanie. She wasn’t there, so I checked the guest room she had been using. Not there either.
I grabbed my phone and called her. Oddly, a phone began ringing, and I found it on top of the dresser in the guest room.
She would never go anywhere without her phone, so she must be around here somewhere.
Instantly I began to panic. What if she had been taken again? Those two sickos were still out there.
I ran out of the bedroom down the hallway. “Melanie? Melanie? Where are you?”
Then I noticed the door to my basement was cracked. I usually kept it shut. Perhaps she had gone down there.
I walked down the stairs slowly. “Melanie?”
And then my heart raced. The door—that door—was open.
Oh my God.
I ran into the room.