As they paid their couple’s entry fee, she hung back in the lobby. It wasn’t the same without Luke; nothing was the same anymore without him.

Then the man opened the inside door, holding it politely for his partner and Bree. The music from upstairs drifted down the stairwell, and she followed the woman into the interior.

“You shouldn’t be alone,” the lady said. She was older, perhaps Luke’s age, forty-five or so, but her skin had the soft, unlined quality of a woman who’d used moisturizers religiously since she was a teen and never ventured into the sun.

“I’m meeting someone,” Bree offered up the lie, wishing it were true.

“Stay with us until you find him,” the woman said.

Bree saw the wisdom of it. “Thank you.”

“Your dress is gorgeous. I wish I could wear something like that.”

“Darling, you’d look perfect in that dress,” the man said as he flourished an arm to allow the ladies to precede him up the stairs.

“You’re so sweet, baby,” the woman answered, touching his shoulder.

Bree took in the matching wedding rings. Married. Wow. Not that she wasn’t well aware married couples visited the clubs and swapped and all that stuff. She’d just never heard them be so nice to each other.

They weren’t the most attractive. The woman had a few extra pounds and a horsy face, and her husband, well, portly was a diplomatic description. Yet they looked at one another with kindness and affection. People who looked at each other that way didn’t generally go to sex clubs. Maybe they were voyeurs.

Then she wondered how she and Luke appeared to others.

At the top of the second flight of stairs, the man once again opened the door with that chivalrous flourish.

“Thank you,” she told him and followed them in. It was the same level Luke had brought her to last time.

“Margie and Ron,” the lady supplied.

Such normal names. “Bree.”

“Were you headed to any room in particular?” Margie wanted to know.

“I’m just going to wander the milder rooms until my friend arrives.”

The entrance opened onto a large area for dancing, a few tables, and a bar on one end. The dance floor was empty despite the disco music playing, and only a couple of tables were occupied. There were hallways to the left and right and another at one side of the bar. This level provided a variety of entertainment; themed rooms, a movie theater with bean bag chairs and big screen TVs playing all manner of porn. Bree had never figured out why someone would come here to watch porn, first because you could watch that at home, and second because when the place got jumping, you could see all that stuff for real. The next floor offered same-gender activities, though voyeurism by straights was welcomed, and on the floor above that, hardcore BDSM. Which wasn’t to say that bi and bondage activities didn’t occur on this floor, the other night being an example, when the master gave away his submissive and allowed that woman to take her.

“Why don’t we wander with you?” Margie said. When Bree nodded her assent, Margie tucked her arm through Bree’s, and they walked like girlfriends. “Since I’m assuming you’ve been here before, tell me what your favorite room is.” Margie steered them into one of the hallways, which was uncrowded at this early hour. Ron followed a couple of paces behind.

“I just like to watch,” Bree said.

Margie laughed, a lusty sound. “We all like to watch, darling. It’s a question of what we like to watch. I must admit I’m partial to two men going at it, but Ron’s a bit homophobic.”

“I am not,” he denied.

A couple of punk rockers in black clothing, black fingernails, black eye makeup, and spiked hair passed them heading the other way. The only thing that clued Bree in on male versus female were the small breasts beneath the black T-shirt one of them wore.

“Have you ever watched two men?” Margie probed as they neared the DVD room.

At one time or another, Bree had seen just about everything, but the best had been the other night with Luke. “Yes, I’ve seen it. But I think I prefer something with a bit more bondage.”

Margie slapped at her arm. “Bad girl.”

They stopped at the door of the theater and peeked inside. Big-screens played on each of the four walls with various scenarios of man–woman sex, but the bean bag chairs were empty.

“Dear,” Margie said over her shoulder, “we got here too early. There’s nothing to see.”

“I told you so,” Ron commented in typical marital fashion.

“I have an early breakfast meeting tomorrow, but I did so want something naughty tonight,” Margie confided. “I suppose you felt the same.” She led Bree to the next door.

“Yes.” They could have been talking about going out for a mocha or a shopping spree. Except that inside this room, which was festooned with painted palm trees and ferns and monkeys flying between the branches, a woman was going down on a man with the biggest cock Bree had ever seen.

Margie let out a low whistle. “Goodness, I could suck that.”

Ron was suddenly close behind them. “Shall I ask him if you can have a go, sweetheart?”

“I need a bit of a look-see first, babykins.”

“She always likes to check out everything that’s available before she chooses,” Ron explained.

With Margie on her arm and Ron trailing them, Bree’s tension melted away. Her insides were no longer quaking. There was something soothing about Margie’s easy attitude. She was so accepting, so normal. Even as she said she’d love to suck the big cock.

Maybe Bree wasn’t so incredibly abnormal after all. Maybe she was just different, with varied needs. Different wasn’t such a bad word.

They inspected more rooms as the hallway began to fill up with more partiers. They laughed and giggled like girlfriends, swapping ribald comments. It was actually fun.

“I’d love to watch Ron fuck you, dear. What do you think of that?”

Bree almost laughed at Margie’s exceptionally mild tone. “I don’t think so.”

“Sorry, sweetheart, I think you struck out,” Ron said with a hint of laughter in his voice.

“It was worth a shot,” Margie quipped, then lowered her voice for Bree. “You’re very attractive.”

There was nothing to it really, but as they walked her down the hall, she felt Ron breathing down her neck, and Margie’s hand on her arm began to tighten like a claw. She was suddenly trapped between them, especially as the clientele cruising the rooms had multiplied and begun to swarm around them. Would they drag her into a room and force her? Where rape fantasies were the norm, no one would pay much attention if she screamed.

Isn’t this what you wanted? a voice whispered. Debasement, humiliation, punishment. Isn’t that why you’re here?

She didn’t know why she was here, except that Marbury made her feel out of control and terrified. And bad sex made her . . . made her what? Feel like she’d atoned?

Then, dear God, she’d atoned over and over and over. And she hated herself for needing it that way.

“I should go now,” she said softly. Coming here had been a bad idea. It was a reaction to Marbury, seeing Luke with his daughter, knowing it was only a matter of time before he was gone, feeling she had no place to turn. The fun she’d experienced with Margie was just a disguise for darker things. This place and these people didn’t make any of it better. Only Luke had made things better the night he rescued her from Derek.

Margie’s hand was a vise on her arm. “Not yet, dear.”

“No, no, I really have to go.” She needed Luke. She was so good at pretending, she could pretend he’d be there forever. Until he wasn’t. Why not? She tried to tug her arm out of Margie’s grip.

“Well, well, if it isn’t my favorite little submissive.”

She knew that voice. Suddenly those darker things were closing in on her.

The master from Monday night blocked the middle of the hall, clubbers flowing around him. Where had all the people come from? How long had they been wandering?

He reached out a long finger and traced the bruise on her forehead. She’d forgotten about it. Margie and Ron hadn’t said a word.

Her flesh chilled beneath the master’s touch. “I ran into a door,” she said because the lie seemed to be the only thing she could remember.

He gave her a long look with dark, penetrating eyes. “I would never mark you.”

“It was an accident,” she said, feeling almost desperate. She yanked her arm away from Margie and backed up, only to find Ron right behind her.

“That’s what they all say,” the master whispered.

Ron cupped her ass, squeezed.

“I want to watch you fuck her,” Margie said, and Bree couldn’t tell whether she meant Ron or the master. Or both.

Music and voices and laughter and moans, the sounds of sex, the slap of a paddle, the slip-slide of lips on flesh, the smell of come, the sweat of men. She couldn’t breathe. “I want Luke,” she whispered, but no one heard her, no one paid attention.

Behind her, Ron massaged her waist, pushing and pulling the material of her dress, rubbing his cock along her ass.

The master, gaze holding hers, spearing her straight through to her soul, moved his lips. “I’m going to fuck you. You’re going to love it. You’ve never had better. You’ll forget all about him and you’ll be mine.”

“I—” she started.

He put his finger to her lips. “You’ll do what I say. Because you have to. Because you came here looking for me. He’s not right for you. He’ll leave you when you need him most. Only I can give you what you deserve.”

How did he know all that? As if he’d plucked the thoughts right out of her head.

“You dirty, filthy, cocksucking whore. I will give you the punishment you deserve.” He spoke as if he knew her innermost being, but his words did nothing for her. He wasn’t Luke; Luke’s voice had become the only way in which the words worked for her.

With Ron pushing and pulling at her waist, her nipple had somehow worked its way above the bustier, and the master darted a hand out to pinch her hard.

She wanted to scream. Yet with all the weakness inside her, she rolled her head back on her neck so that all she saw was the dirty ceiling tiles, and let him do what he wanted. The way she always had since she was a little girl. Maybe the way she always would.

When he reached the city, he’d hoofed it from a parking spot a couple of blocks from the club. He’d bribed the attendant to let him in despite the fact that he was a single male. If you had money, you could get anything you wanted.

Luke had prowled the rooms, his gut tense. He’d spotted her sometime before ten. With a couple. His instinct was to drag her out of there. Instead, now that he could breathe and his terror had receded, he hung back to watch. She was smiling, laughing, having a great time.

He didn’t get it. She absolutely confounded him. Why, after everything they’d done, everything they were to each other, he the master, she the slave, lovers, whatever you wanted to call it—why had she suddenly thrown it all back in his face and run out to a club alone? Simply to incite him? Or because of Keira, because, instead of inviting Bree inside, he’d taken her home as if he were ashamed of her?

He’d told her mother Bree was emotionally vulnerable, but it didn’t explain anything. Not after that kiss she’d given him last night. That was a fucking communion. He should have called her today. But he’d been running late because of Keira. And he didn’t expect this.

So he fell back into the slowly expanding crowd and watched. He hated how fucking hot she was in the bustier dress. A dress she’d never worn for him.

The couple—middle-aged, unpretentious, average looks, a little on the heavy side—seemed harmless as they led Bree from room to room, sometimes going in to observe for a bit, sometimes peaking inside only to move on again. He couldn’t discern if they had intentions toward her.

The crowd grew thicker around him, and he became separated from her by far too many bodies. The woman stopped in the middle of the hall, the man all at once way too close to Bree.

Luke dodged a couple who’d suddenly decided sucking cock in the middle of the hall was totally appropriate.

Then he froze, his blood rushing through veins that had suddenly shrunk to the size of a pinhead. That fucking dom. He touched Bree’s forehead. She didn’t move. She took it; she accepted. She even let the fat man hold her hips and grind his cock against her backside as the dom stroked her skin and the woman watched with avid, glowing eyes.

Then the bastard pinched her nipple, and Bree’s head fell back, her hair flowing like silk over her shoulders.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Luke’s brain went into countdown to an explosion. The shock of betrayal was physical, a clenching of his teeth, the contraction of his heart. His feet rooted to the floor, he wanted to turn around and leave her to her own debauchery.

Fuck her.

Yet he could hear his own breath rough through his nostrils, and he knew he wouldn’t leave her. He could hate her for doing this, but he would never leave her defenseless.