We ride the employee elevator in silence. When the door opens, we step out, head down the short flight of stairs, and down the narrow, black-painted corridor. I stop in front of the Romanov room, but Shane's grip tightens on my elbow.
“Tonight is about choices, Addie.” He steers me to another door. A different private room, then. A different scene? What do they have in mind for this last session?
“What choices?”
Theo throws the door open. “Your first choice,” he says. “Pick the location.”
I stare at the room in front of me. I've never been here before; I would have remembered this space. It doesn't look like it belongs in Club M. This room embodies light and warmth. There's nothing dark about it, nothing grim or scary. A king-size, four-poster bed is in the center of the space. To the right, a fireplace gives off heat. Unlike the fireplace in my condo, this isn’t electric. The wood crackles, and the flames flicker hypnotically. The aroma of wood smoke drifts through the air.
The sheets on the bed are white, and the duvet is pale pink silk. Vases overflowing with blush pink roses rest on the tables by the bed. The only concession to kink is the mirror on the ceiling directly above the bed.
Mirror aside, the room looks familiar.Comforting.It gnaws at me, the sense that I know this place. I feel like I've been here before, but I swear I’ve never stepped foot in this room.
“Do you want us to fuck you, Addie?” Shane asks, his voice a dark promise.
This is a question I know the answer to. “Yes.”
“Here?”
On a bed, in this achingly familiar room. Naked. Limbs entwined. No ropes, no paddles, no whips. Nothing to distract me from the intimacy of the moment.
My heartbeat speeds up. My throat goes dry. I wipe my palms on my skirt and ask, “What is my other option?”
Theo wordlessly steps outside and flings open the door to the right. This is a much more typical club room. The black-painted walls are covered with mirrors, and there’s a padded leather bench in the center. A Saint Andrew’s Cross is in the back corner, and an armoire of sex toys is at my left.
Two choices. The bedroom or the dungeon.
Once again, I'm standing on the edge of a precipice. There is no safety net. I have no guarantee that my parachute will open. I have crashed on the rocks once. It’s taken me two years to piece the fragments of my broken heart back together. I used to believe that I could fly, but I’ve lost that faith.
I cannot jump again.
There is a safe choice here, and it’s not the pretty pink bedroom. It’s the terrifying sex dungeon.
“This room,” I whisper. I do my best not to see the way Theo's expression goes carefully blank. I tell myself that I don't notice the way Shane's shoulders stiffen. “I choose this room.”
“Very well,” Theo replies, his voice revealing nothing. “Get naked, Addie.”
“Yes, Theo.”
“Racking up the punishments already,” he says. “You appear to need a reminder. In this room, you call me Mr. Keppel.”
The rebuke stings. Tears prick my eyes, but before they can see, I blink them away. I wonder what sex would have been like in the other room. Naked on the bed. Held in their arms. Skin against skin.
But beds are for relationships, and what we have isn’t one.
This is what I wanted. This is the choice I made. “Yes, Mr. Keppel.”
14
SHANE
She stands in front of me. Adelaide Byard. Diamonds sparkling at her ears and throat. Dressed in a designer gown that hugs every curve of her body. She looks expensive. She looks like a prize.
A reward.
And yet. . .
This is not what I want.