“What do you think?” Sasha asked, smiling at me.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “It’s a little…overwhelming?”
Sasha linked her fingers through David’s and nodded toward a small room furnished with a normal-sized bed and an armchair. “Want to come play?” she asked me. “Or, if you want to ease into it, you can just watch.”
I was flattered by their attention, and I actually liked them. But I didn’t think I was a voyeur or a two-at-once type. I smiled and shook my head. “Thanks, but you guys go ahead,” I said. “I’m going to, uh, keep looking around.”
“Okay. You know where to find us,” Sasha said. She leaned forward and surprised me with a soft, Kir-flavored kiss. “See you later, I hope.”
I noticed they left the door to their room open.
Alone, still feeling the sweet tingle of Sasha’s kiss, I fidgeted nervously. Was this a huge mistake?
There was really only one way to know. I tossed back the rest of my drink, straightened my shoulders, and scanned the room. I saw a man with his hands down a woman’s tiny disco shorts and two naked girls fondling each other on a table. Low bass thudded in the background, and it seemed like there were more pheromones in the air than there was oxygen.
I caught the eye of a tall, dark-haired man standing near one of the private rooms. I sucked in my breath.
His gaze was so intense it was like a physical touch.
I stared back without smiling, letting the tension between us build. Then, feeling bolder, I beckoned him over.
“You’re new here, aren’t you,” he said, giving me a sexy half-smile.
“How can you tell?” I asked, trying to sound playful. He was so tall that my head didn’t even come up to his shoulders.
“You look as freaked out as I did an hour ago. I’m Dylan.” When he brought my hand to his lips and kissed it, a tiny jolt of electricity shot through me. “And you are?”
“Jane, and I do not look freaked out,” I insisted.
“Really,” he said, unconvinced. “Then let’s see how you look now.” And, still holding my hand, he pulled me into the dungeon.
It was a large, dark room with dripping candles mounted in iron sconces. I saw paddles, switches, and whips, some resting on hooks and some in use. In the middle of the room hung some kind of elaborate harness, with a pale, naked girl writhing ecstatically in it. Another woman, naked except for her thigh-high boots, cracked a whip near the girl’s legs.
All right, I probably looked freaked out now.
But I was turned on by this man, by his coal-hued eyes and his long-fingered hands. By the animal energy that seemed to shimmer from his smooth skin.
“What do you think?” he asked, giving me a tiny smirk.
I shrugged, all put-on nonchalance. “Whips aren’t really my thing. But whatever anyone else does is their business, right?”
“To each his own,” he agreed. He stepped closer to me. “Or her own.” His fingertip brushed my bottom lip—a touch impossibly light, yet I felt it in every nerve.
The girl in the sling moaned as the woman dragged the whip along her skin. Someone began blowing out candles, and the room grew darker and seemingly hotter.
I told myself that no one here mattered but me and this gorgeous man. I said, “Smile if you want to make out with me.”
He flashed me a beautiful grin, and then he kissed me. Hard. My hands slid around his waist as I pressed my body against his. He broke the kiss before I was ready, taking an ice cube from his drink and putting it in his mouth, then bending down to my neck. The heat and the cold, the tease of his tongue—they made me shiver and gasp.
But when he reached for the zipper on my dress, I put my hand on top of his. “No, no, not here,” I said.
“Then tell me where,” he whispered.
Chapter 20
We cabbed to my apartment, and we’d barely gotten inside before Dylan had me up against the wall, his hands strong and urgent on my body.
I was breaking a major rule, bringing him home, but I didn’t care. I’d crossed so many lines already—what was one more?
Summer heat lightning flashed outside the window, illuminating my cluttered living room. Dylan was the first man I’d ever had in my apartment, but he didn’t see the mess of books and magazines and coffee mugs. He cared about nothing but me.
“I’m going to bend you over the couch,” he said into my neck. “But not just yet.”
“What are you going to do first?” I whispered, thrilled.
Before tonight, I’d been the one in charge—but here was a man who wanted to be in control. It was electrifying.
And just a little bit scary.
His hands squeezed my ass, hard, and he said, “Don’t talk.”
I groaned as he ground his hips into me, a taste of what was to come.
“Not yet,” he said again. Then he grabbed my wrists and yanked them down. He held them both in one big hand, tight behind my back, as his tongue traced the seam of my lips and then pushed into my mouth.
It was a hungry, ravaging kiss, and it left me breathless.
“First,” he said, “the bed.” And then he picked me up and carried me into my room.
I, who hadn’t felt small since I was ten, felt tiny in his powerful arms. He set me down, pulled off my dress and everything else in a matter of seconds, and then pushed me back onto the down comforter.
I felt a sense of vertigo as he knelt between my legs, still clothed.
Excitement tinged with a kind of exquisite fear: my heart beat faster and faster. His desire had a violent edge, I could sense it. But I didn’t want to stop.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a silk scarf, and before I’d even processed what was happening he was winding it around my wrists and whispering, “That’s a good girl, you’re going to like this.”
When he had both of my arms tied to the bedpost, he licked his way down my body as his hands pinched my nipples. I arched up and pressed myself into his mouth.
It didn’t matter that I couldn’t move—I didn’t want to move. I only wanted him to keep doing what he was doing. My powerlessness excited me.
But then suddenly he slipped the silk from my wrists, and in one quick, fluid motion he flipped me over so I was on my hands and knees. I turned back to look at him and saw him pull his hand back. Before I could tell him to stop, his palm connected with my hip and a red, stinging pain shot through me. I gasped in shock.
“You like that?” he asked, his voice husky.
“I don’t know!” I cried. I did and I didn’t. It scared me.
His fingers slid between my legs and found the wetness there. “I’m sorry, Jane,” he whispered. One hand caressed me—and the other delivered another slap.
I cried out. He was testing my limits. I didn’t know where they were myself, pleasure mixing with pain, desire with doubt.
Lightning flickered again and I saw him taking off his jeans. “I’ll try to be gentle,” he said.
“Yes,” I gasped.
When he pushed into me, not gentle at all but forceful, animalistic, I couldn’t tell if the flash of light was in my mind or outside my window. I felt like I was shattering. It was amazing and it was terrible—
But what was that glint of metal I could see, half hidden under his discarded jeans?
In a rough whisper, he said, “Now we’re going to try something different.”
I think I might have made a big mistake.
Chapter 21
The phone seemed to ring forever before voice mail finally picked up.
“You have reached Jane Avery. Sorry, I’m not available to take your call right now. Here comes the beep. You know what to do.”
Jessica Keller, publisher of Metropolitan magazine, slammed the phone down in frustration. Actually, she didn’t know what to do.
Jane—reliable, punctual, hardworking Jane—was three hours late for work.
Without her, the Friday-morning edit meeting had dissolved in
to gossip and bickering. None of the staff writers had met their deadlines, and the fact-checkers, given no new articles to review, were staring glassy-eyed at Facebook or playing computer solitaire.
Until today, until right this very second, Jessica hadn’t realized how desperately she needed her second-in-command.
And, though she had called her twenty times at least, Jane wasn’t picking up her phone.
Agitated, Jessica strode down the hall to Brianne Delacroix’s office. The petite redhead was talking animatedly into her headset about “buttressing circulation in order to make rate base.”
Jessica made a slicing motion across her chin, and Bri quickly ended her call.
“Is everything okay?” Bri asked, standing up and smoothing her skirt nervously.
Jessica snapped, “Have you heard from Jane?”
Bri’s eyes widened. “No,” she said. “I texted her last night, but—”
“Did you hear back?” Jessica interrupted.
Bri shook her head. “No.”
The two women stared at each other.
“Maybe she took a sick day,” Bri whispered. “And she forgot to call in.”
“Jane is the most responsible person I know,” Jessica said. “That is not the kind of thing she’d ever forget to do.”
Bri grew pale. Jessica clenched and unclenched her hands. Where in the world was Jane Avery?
Chapter 22
“Jane, you’d better not be screening me, you wench,” Mylissa said into her headset—half laughing, half annoyed. “Are the girls coming for a sleepover tomorrow night or what? Mike’s in Toronto on business, so can I come too? I promise not to mention Jordan Andrews, or say anything at all about your pitiful social life. Whoops! Sorry, don’t be mad. What I meant to say was your, um, selective social life. Quality over quantity, right? Like shoes. Speaking of which, I came into the city today and I’m about to buy the most amazing pair of Stuart Weitzman heels—seriously, you’ll die when you see them.”
Mylissa was well on her way to a ten-minute voice mail when another call came in and she clicked over. “Hello?”
“Who is this?” demanded an unfamiliar voice.
“Excuse me?” Mylissa asked, bristling. “Who are you?”
“This is Jessica Keller. I’m Jane’s boss, and this is the number she listed as an emergency contact.”
Mylissa gasped. “I’m her sister. What’s wrong? Is she okay?” Her heart began to thud painfully in her chest, and she gripped the shoe rack to steady herself.
“I don’t know,” Jessica said. “She’s not at work and she’s not answering her phone. This is completely and totally unlike her.”
Mylissa dropped the Weitzman heels and began running toward the Barneys exit. She flagged down a cab and threw herself into the back, breathlessly giving Jane’s address and telling him to hurry, hurry, it was an emergency.
“Hello? Hello?” Jessica’s muffled voice came from the pocket of Mylissa’s handbag, but Mylissa didn’t even notice.
All she could think about was her baby sister and what terrible thing must have happened to her.
Chapter 23
Barely ten minutes later, Mylissa was pounding on the super’s ground-floor door and yelling at the top of her lungs.
Superintendent R. J. Dattero, obviously roused from a midmorning nap, stuck his disheveled head out the window and looked at her in confusion. “Can I help—”
“Let me into my sister’s apartment,” Mylissa demanded. “Jane Avery. Three A.”
R.J. continued to stare, unmoving, until Mylissa’s patience snapped. “Wake up!” she cried, stamping her foot the way her daughters did. “Jane’s in trouble.”
Saying it, Mylissa knew she was right, and her mind whirled with awful possibilities. Jane had fallen in the shower and knocked herself unconscious. She’d cut herself on a knife and was slowly bleeding out on the linoleum.
I was too hard on her, Mylissa thought. I’ll never forgive myself.
R. J. Dattero finally mobilized and came outside. Pulling a ring of keys from his pocket, he opened the building’s front door and began arthritically climbing the narrow staircase to Jane’s apartment. Mylissa had to fight the urge to scream at him or even push him upward—anything to make him go faster.
Potential disasters continued to present themselves. Jane contracted E. coli from that Greek diner she loves so much, and her kidneys are failing. She drank too much and got alcohol poisoning. She had a heart attack.
When R.J. unlocked the door of 3A, Mylissa shoved him out of the way and burst into the living room.
Panic exploded in her chest like a bomb, dimming her vision, deafening her to R.J.’s shout of shock.
Clothes were strewn everywhere. A footstool was knocked over. Spilled wine, dark as blood, puddled on the hardwood floor.
Mylissa thought she’d prepared herself for what might have gone wrong.
But never in a million years could she have predicted the scene before her.
In the middle of all that mess, Jane, her baby sister, was kneeling by the radiator.
Naked.
Chained to it by a pair of handcuffs.
Mylissa rushed over and flung herself to the floor in front of her sister. “Janie, Janie, what happened?” she cried. “Were you robbed? Where are your clothes? Did someone hurt you?”
Meanwhile, she tried to cover Jane with her shawl so R.J. wouldn’t see her bare and trembling limbs. “Go get bolt cutters!” she cried over her shoulder. “Hurry, you comatose old dinosaur!”
Jane was laughing and crying at the same time, mascara leaving black lines down her cheeks. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she insisted. “I wasn’t robbed. I wasn’t raped. Oh God, I’m so glad to see you, Mylissa.” She sniffled, hiccupped, giggled. “You can’t call Mr. Dattero a dinosaur, that’s not nice.”
Mylissa took her sister’s face in her hands. “What the hell is going on, Janie?” she asked. “I was so worried! I thought you were dead. And thank God you’re not, but why are you chained to a radiator?”
Jane tried to look away, and Mylissa watched as she grew bright crimson.
“Seriously. You’d better start talking,” Mylissa said.
Jane heaved an enormous sigh and tried to meet her sister’s gaze. “You always say I don’t have a social life,” she eventually said. “But I do, actually. And this…well, this is what you might call a side effect of it.”
“I don’t understand,” Mylissa said.
“I brought a man home,” Jane said. “And—” She stopped and glanced over to the door. R.J. had returned.
Mylissa leapt up, snatched the bolt cutters from his hands, and shoved him back into the hall.
“Actually,” Jane began, “I don’t think you need those. The key—”
But Mylissa was already hacking her way through the chain. “There!” she cried triumphantly as the metal gave way.
Released, Jane stood, the cuff still dangling from her wrist like a bracelet. Then she raced out of the room.
“Jane!” Mylissa cried. What was going on?
A moment later, Jane reappeared in a bathrobe, smoothing her wild hair with the uncuffed hand. “I had to pee so bad,” she said, sounding almost hysterical with relief.
She walked over to the table and picked up something small and silver.
“See,” she said to her sister, “he left me the key. Just not where I could reach it.”
Mylissa, overcome by absolutely everything, sank down onto the couch. “I think we have some catching up to do,” she said.
Jane gave a small nod. “Yeah, I guess we do.”
Mylissa patted the cushion next to her. “So sit your crazy self down, sis. Now.”
Chapter 24
I took my boss a giant bouquet of apology lilies the next day, and I swore on the grave of my cactus that I’d never disappear like that again. I would not get sick, ever; I wouldn’t even take vacation.
Jessica Keller’s smile was warmer than usual. “Let’s not
go too far, Jane,” she said. “The secret to success? Underpromise and overdeliver.” She placed the bright yellow-and-orange flowers in a crystal vase and gave their petals a fluff. “Just don’t ever get food poisoning like that again, okay?”
I nodded vigorously. “From now on, I’m just saying no to mussels.”
It wasn’t as if I could tell her the truth, after all. Confessing to Mylissa had been hard enough.
I’ve learned my lesson, I thought as I walked down the hall to my office. Last night I’d ripped up my Rules, and I’d rededicated myself to Netflix.
It was probably impossible to spend fourteen hours chained to a radiator and feel any different about things.
When I got to my desk, my message light was blinking and I had approximately five thousand new emails. The one that caught my eye, though, was from Michael Bishop. The subject line was “New Pitch.”
I was proud of my reaction, which was no reaction at all: my heart didn’t skip a beat, and my breath didn’t quicken. I opened it, hoping only for news that he’d gotten Ned St. John, a media-shy film director, to agree to a Metropolitan profile. Pre–Four Seasons, we’d slated it for the October issue.
Dear Jane, the email read. I hope this note finds you well.
He was keeping it formal—how very professional of him.
I enjoyed our working lunch last month, and I hope you won’t consider me rude when I tell you that you are wrong about Ned St. John, whose most recent movie is good but whose personality is execrable. Do not send trees to their deaths over such a cretinous ass.
Instead I propose to feature Kelly Todd, a young female director whose artful “Song of Sorrow” left Cannes audiences blubbering in their seats.
I would also like to say that you are wrong about not seeing me again.
Lunch? Next Friday?
Yours,
Michael B
I scooted my chair back and sighed. Obviously my resolve would be tested. But I would stand firm.