Chapter 1
Varden
Thump.
The door slammed, echoing through the building and all the way down the street. All heads turned in my direction.
Just as I’d wanted.
I stood in the entrance, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. This gave me the chance to adjust the Venetian-style mask I’d tugged over my face in the last minutes before entering. It lent me an eerie, and I hoped mysterious, air, and running my fingers over the smooth alabaster and swirly filigree trim was a familiar comfort.
My adjustments served another purpose—they gave me a moment to scope out the room and assess the evening’s talent. A head start on the night’s possibilities would allow me to decide ahead of time which of the babes in attendance I was gonna spin on my dick before the night was over.
The blue balls that had been killing me weren’t letting me forget my mission.
Why the mask? Well, it wasn’t for style. I could give a crap about looking like I was a refugee from Carnivale. No. Simply put, it was a disguise. No one, and I mean no one, in the club knew who I was. And I planned to keep it that way.
The twelve hours a day I worked my hedge fund firm were not exactly relaxing. But the few hours a night I spent at the most secret sex club in San Francisco allowed me to be a different person, something I craved the way a man needs air. At Club Silk I had no responsibility, no fortune, and no celebrity as San Francisco’s wunderkind financial brain. I didn’t even have a goddamn name.
For a few miraculous moments, I, Varden Gallagher didn’t exist. And it was fucking amazing.
“G,” a female voice dripping with sex purred over my shoulder. Without turning, I knew who it was.
But of course I turned. It would have been rude, and possibly self-desctructive, not to.
“Miss M. Don’t you look beautiful tonight.”
And she did. The proprietor of Club Silk stood before me in a slamming red evening gown that reminded me of something from the old-time movies my mother had loved. M looked like a movie star and moved like one too.
“Darling.” She planted a kiss on the cheek of my mask, no doubt leaving a deep red lipstick mark.
“How are you this evening, G?” she asked.
The first time each night I was called my “club name” was usually jarring. But in a good way. Along with the ritual of pulling on my mask, it was strangely comforting and pushed me into my temporary identity.
I thought of it as a clean transition from the real world to my fantasy one.
I ran a thumb along her cheek, grabbing a strand of her black hair and giving it a tug.
“Oh,” she moaned. “If you keep that up, I may have to spirit you away to one of our private rooms.”
She’d like that. I, however, would not.
“I could never do that to you. I respect you far too much,” I fibbed.
She responded by belting out the laugh of a woman who owned the world.
“And why couldn’t you do that to me, my dear G?”
I ran a finger down the front of her dress to where it just stopped short of exposing her small but perfect breasts. When I knew I had her, I pushed the silky fabric down, baring a beautiful, dark nipple.
My fingers closed on it and squeezed.
Miss M neither moved, nor altered her expression.
“M,” I explained, “because you’d never find satisfaction with another man after me. I couldn’t ruin you like that.”
How was that for a dick answer?
Her head fell back and she released another beautiful laugh. She smacked my hand right off her tit, tucked herself back into her dress, and whispered, “You can ruin me any day.”
With a wink, she floated across the room to greet another guest.
Maybe I should fuck her some day.
But like the saying went, you gotta keep your dick out of the company inkwell.
Of course, Silk wasn’t my company, per se, but it was my home away from home. I wasn’t about to risk any drama with the one person who could keep me away from it.
I’d seen M on the warpath before, and rain down her wrath on some dumb fuck who didn’t mind his place.
Regardless, my stiffening cock seemed to like the idea of Miss M, and I reached down to adjust myself in my custom-made trousers.
The industrial space that housed Silk was the perfect venue for an erotic as hell sex club. I’d been to several in my day, and none came close to this one.
Some smart real estate investor—with foresight not even I had had—transformed an old, trashed commercial space, one of the few still standing from San Francisco’s days as a huge food cannery, into a giant adult playground.
The city’s food processing industry had been driven out long before, and the once industrial part of town was now ground zero for movers and shakers of the tech and financial world, bringing wealth to San Francisco unlike anyone had ever dreamed of.
So this old space, with its abundance of character, had been reconfigured as the dreamy Club Silk, with its warren of bars, dance floors, stages, and play rooms for fucking or whatever else anyone felt like doing.
Miss M had wisely purchased it and taken it to the next level by covering the wall in dark tapestries, and providing just enough light to leave the place candlelit dim, and massively sexy.