“When he came back, he told me how thrilling it was to know that I was waiting for him. I remember forcing a smile and telling him how glad I was that he’d had a good time because by then I was scared to death.”
“You thought he’d hurt you?” Eve asked.
“Yes and no. Truthfully, I was afraid that if I gave vent to the rage and humiliation I felt in that moment, I’d kill him. I’d go into the kitchen, wait till he was asleep, and take a knife to him. I’m not proud of having had those thoughts or feelings, but it was one more reason I knew this would be the last time I was with him.
“I ached from head to foot from having been in the same position for so long. I had bruises on my wrists and ankles from trying to get out of the knots, because he sure knew how to tie them.”
“No one heard you screaming?”
“He has a big piece of property outside the city limits. So the answer is no.”
“Shayna,” Eve said very quietly. “Let me make this clear to you. He isn’t just without a conscience, he’s a psychopath and I’m sure if you compared notes with some of his previous girlfriends you’d find he’d been practicing this routine for a long time. My guess is each time he lures another young woman in, he pushes the limits to see how far he can go. He’ll keep escalating as well until he’s done something a lot worse than leaving a woman tied up on his bed while he goes out with some friends.”
Shayna finally leaned back against the couch cushions. “I’ve had those thoughts as well, but dismissed them. I’ve even thought about going to the police.”
Only then, after she’d said it all, did she become fully aware of the state of Marius’s emotions.
He rose up from the couch and shouted in a kind of guttural animal way that made her stiffen her arms, pinning them to her sides, preparing for what, she didn’t know. But the vampire was in a rage.
Eve rose up as well and went to Marius. She got in his face. “Knock it off. You’re not helping. You’re scaring her. Look at Shayna, Marius. Look at her.”
He shifted his gaze to Shayna and in quick stages, he got his temper under control. “I’m sorry, but I want to kill him for doing that to you. I want to kill him. Do you understand?” His hands were balled into fists.
Shayna jumped up and ran to him. He opened his arms as he’d done before and she fell into them. The floodgates opened and she wept on his chest and he just held her, petting her back. She actually hadn’t known until that moment how much Michelson had traumatized her, how much fear she’d had of what he might do to her, what he could have done, how much of a victim she’d become. “I didn’t understand. I didn’t. I thought I was fine. I just thought I needed to realize he was bad for me. I didn’t understand. Who would ever do that to another human being?”
* * *
The rage Marius felt went bone-deep. His whole body felt on fire with suppressed anger, feelings from his childhood and now for Shayna’s past. He knew exactly what it felt like to be tied down and abandoned. Daniel had once left him shackled, bruised, and cut up on the table for two days, one of the times he’d almost died.
The feeling of impotence left him enraged beyond words. The only difference was that Michelson had somehow drawn the line at not inflicting physical pain beyond the hurt the bindings would cause. He never hit her; therefore, he could justify what he’d done to her.
He met Eve’s gaze and saw the speculative look in her eye. She had her arms folded over her chest as though she, too, had to hold herself together by sheer force of will. She’d bought a lot of slaves in the past for the purpose of healing and freeing them.
“I’m so sick of this shit,” Eve said, shaking her head back and forth. “I love what I do, but everyone involved participates by choice and no one is hurt or left to suffer like that. I hate what this man did to you.” She unfolded her arms throwing them in the air at the same time.
“Me, too,” Marius said quietly.
Shayna still wept. “Me, three.” She hiccuped, then drew back to look up at him. “I didn’t expect to start crying like this.”
He wiped her cheeks with his fingers. “And I’m sorry I lost it. I wasn’t even the one injured, but I hate that he put you through that. If he walked into this room, I’d pound him into a pulp.”
She drew a deep breath. “Right after me. You know, it was one long seduction at first; then he slowly turned into a control freak and wore down my self-esteem just a little bit every day until I actually let myself be treated that way. The first time he abandoned me for the sake of his ‘inspiration,’ setting his needs well above my own, I should have kicked him in the nuts.” She pulled out of his arms and lifted her top shirt to wipe her face.
He could sense she was working hard at calming herself as she turned in Eve’s direction. “So what do I do next? I mean, do you think just admitting how blind I was to what I’d actually experienced will help me with the visions?”
Eve paced, a frown between her brows, her ponytail swinging. “I’m trying to figure that out but I do have an idea. Sometimes it helps to relive traumatic events by way of proxy, but change the outcome.” She stopped in her tracks and held Marius’s gaze. “Shayna should see my next show. With a couple of tweaks it will be perfect, since the submissive is a woman.”
Marius shook his head. “Eve. No.” He didn’t want Shayna exposed to a full-on show like the kind Eve ran in her Ruby Cave club.
But Shayna placed her hand on his arm. “Actually, I think Eve has it right. My gut tells me that I would benefit from it because I’m guessing the woman either breaks free or the man releases her the moment she’s ready to be free.”
Eve nodded. “He releases her.”
“Yes, that’s it.” She nodded and met Marius’s gaze.
Marius could hardly bear the thought of Shayna, with her relatively innocent background, having to watch one of Eve’s performances. He thought maybe she didn’t understand. “Shayna, these shows are explicit and I do mean explicit. X-rated. Lots of nudity. Nothing is left to the imagination.”
“I can feel how concerned you are. But don’t you see, this is a big part of your world. The extensive sex-club complex that you, Rumy, and Eve have each described to me as well as Daniel’s sex-trafficking operations are two sides of a cultural coin. Not to say that new laws and policing actions aren’t needed to protect the unwilling and the innocent. But at some point down this path we’re on, it might help me to find a key to taking Daniel down. Don’t you see? This is all of a piece. It all works together somehow.”
“I want to protect you.”
“But that’s not your job, Marius, at least not in this circumstance. I definitely value your physical protection in a battle situation, but this is my field—understanding your culture and coming to terms with what my ex did to me. In this case, I don’t need you to run interference for me.”
He was completely taken aback by her determination. “I’m just feeling so damn guilty because I dumped you into this situation.”
She smiled and rubbed his shoulder. “You’re right. You do have a responsibility in that. But later, I was the one who agreed to stay, and from that point these are absolutely my choices. So you can stop with the guilt now. Got it?”
Something inside him eased and he nodded. “Got it.”
She turned to Eve. “When’s the show?”
“In about half an hour and given that Daniel is hunting the pair of you, I’ll need to make some special security arrangements. Still, it’ll be a risk.” She looked them over. “You’ll want to change as well. My clientele is fairly high-end and if things go south, you’ll want to blend in. In fact, I’m going to take off right now and arrange things but I’ll call when everything’s set up. Okay?”
Marius nodded, Shayna as well. Eve smiled as she shifted to altered flight and disappeared through the wall of the house.
Marius took hold of Shayna’s shoulders and squeezed gently. “And you’re sure you want to do this?”
Her gaze flitted around in that processing way
of hers. “Absolutely.”
“Okay, then, let’s get changed.”
He put on a pair of tailored slacks, a fresh black T-shirt, and a short, black leather jacket that concealed at least four daggers and two battle chains. Afterward, he paced the foyer, waiting for Shayna.
He was nervous as hell, for more than one reason. He’d admitted to having seen several of Eve’s shows, but what he hadn’t confessed was how much they’d turned him on. And it wasn’t just the sexual component. Maybe because he’d been chained up as a child, some sick part of him also got off on the idea of bondage. He’d been damn aroused when Shayna had mounted him while he’d been in restraints and recovering from blood-madness.
Truth? He’d loved it.
And he’d loved it even more when he’d broken free.
Twenty minutes later, Eve called, letting him know that Rumy’s security expert had built up a disguising shield behind which they’d be invisible while they watched the show. Only an Ancestral of Daniel’s power would be able to see through that kind of disguise, so Marius had to trust that his father wasn’t actually the one hunting for him at The Erotic Passage. Eve also encouraged him to stay for the entire performance of the first couple, which would last about twenty minutes total.
“Let Shayna see the end. That will be the important part for her.”
“Okay.”
When he hung up, he was jittery and Shayna still hadn’t emerged from the bedroom.
When he heard heels clicking on the tile floor, he stopped and turned toward the doorway to the bathroom.
She appeared and he swore his heart stopped.
“Holy shit” left his lips. “You look fantastic.” Her long, straight hair was pulled back on one side with a small silver clip.
“Marius, I’m sorry it took so long, but the dresses were all absurd. I chose this one because it had the most fabric.”
But he wasn’t complaining and he knew one thing for sure: He’d be throwing a whole lot of wood tonight. He moved toward her like he was floating, then he realized he’d actually levitated, a perfect metaphor for exactly how he felt, like everything would rise tonight.
She wore a simple black silk dress, cut low to reveal all that cleavage of hers. And the dress was short with a sheer red insert cut halfway to her hip bone. The inset would give the dress just enough give if he wanted to lift up the fabric and cop a feel.
When he reached her, he did the only male thing he could think of. He pulled her up against him and ground his erection against her abdomen.
She gasped. “Oh, Marius, how are we going to get through the next half hour?”
“I don’t know. I could take you to bed right now.”
“I’d go with you.”
He debated. Despite the work Eve had gone to on their behalf, all he wanted to do was pick Shayna up and throw her on the bed.
And she would have let him. If he hadn’t believed her words, her light floral scent, so full of sex, rose all around him perfuming the air. He’d never been so into a woman before.
But plans had been put in place and he needed to set aside his current hunger for what Shayna needed.
He opened his arm wide and Shayna carefully perched on his fine Italian leather shoes with just the balls of her feet. The stilettos she wore could do some serious damage.
As soon as she was situated with her arm around his neck, he made his phone call, one-handed, letting Rumy know they’d arrive in about fifteen seconds given that the villa was part of the same Como system as his extensive club complex. Rumy let him know that he had a number of his security team, in plainclothes, scattered throughout the club in case Daniel and his crew showed up.
When he hung up, Rumy made telepathic contact and guided Marius into the club, to the exact position behind the enhanced disguising shield, one more layer of security.
Once Shayna was standing beside him, he contacted Eve, letting her know they’d arrived.
A moment later the lights dimmed.
Marius hoped to hell that Eve was right about the show and about Shayna. He’d hate for anything to go wrong right now.
CHAPTER 11
Shayna slid her arm around Marius’s waist and drew up tight against him. She’d never been to a place like this before. She’d never even watched porn on her computer.
Now here she was in an upscale sex club, holding on to a vampire she had the serious hots for, and ready to watch strangers have sex.
And not just the performers on stage, by the looks of it, since more than one couple nearby was doing some serious fondling. Sex club was right.
The room itself was beautiful. The walls reflected the name of the club in crushed red crystals, floor-to-ceiling, setting the entire space in a red glow.
About half the audience sat at tables enjoying drinks; the rest stood around the perimeter of the room. Most were, as Eve had suggested, well dressed, so that if she and Marius lost the shielding disguise for whatever reason, they’d fit right in. The thing was, she was already aroused and found herself stroking Marius’s arm. She was tall anyway, but in the heels she was just a couple of inches shorter than him, which meant she could kiss him easily if she wanted to, and she did.
She almost suggested it, but the music swelled, a pulse of blues that had her whimpering.
“Anything wrong?” His deep voice had a husky resonance.
“Oh … nothing.”
He chuckled softly, switching to telepathy. If it’s any consolation, I’m in pain and the show hasn’t even started.
Marius, how about a kiss?
He turned into her with a quick grab of lips that became a strong, promising drive of his tongue that had her panting all over again. God, she loved being with this man.
Eve sauntered onto the stage. “Hello, my lovelies. We’ve planned something special for you tonight. First up, a schoolgirl learns an important lesson.”
She put her fingers to her lips, then blew a kiss. She cracked a long black whip at the same time. Her leopard-print outfit had disappeared and she was dressed all in red leather that featured serious cutouts, including both breasts.
Shayna looked at her nipples carefully. She was pretty sure that Eve had used makeup and glitter on them.
She wondered how Marius was handling all this exposed flesh. Glancing up at him, he was staring at the ceiling.
Her turn to laugh.
Two well-endowed men in very snug briefs wheeled a slanted four-poster bed onto the dark stage, a black fitted sheet on the mattress. They both had beautiful, muscular bodies, part of the show.
The female performer entered the stage wearing a fantasy costume: a short white blouse tied just beneath her large breasts and a minuscule red-and-black-plaid skirt that revealed everything, including a dark landing patch.
She wore pigtails and enormous black-rimmed glasses.
Shayna knew without having to be told that this was for her benefit. In any other circumstances, she would have been too raw to have watched the performance. But tonight it felt right, exactly what she needed.
Also, she trusted Eve. The woman had amazing instincts.
The student sat down on the side of the bed, bounced a couple of times on the mattress, and made an O with her lips while turning to smile at the audience.
A smattering of laughter followed.
Two women entered the stage in only black lace thongs and an arc of visible red glitter above each exposed nipple. “The professor wants us to prepare you for your lesson.”
“Do whatever you need to do.”
They began undressing her and touching her at the same time. Using neckties, they bound her to all four posts, kissing all over her body until the schoolgirl writhed and whimpered.
Once the bound girl was all alone, the scene was all too familiar to Shayna. Except suddenly she knew what she wanted Marius to do to her. And she felt sure Eve would approve.
The thought made her knees weak.
You okay? You’re trembling.
Marius? r />
Yes.
Shayna took a breath, then said, I want you to do that to me when we return to the villa. Would you be willing?
He caught her arm in his hand, then suddenly she was in his arms and he was kissing her hard, his tongue pummeling her mouth again. I want to, but could you handle it? Could you trust me?
Of course I could trust you, without hesitation. And maybe that’s why. I want to know the thrill of it, to have you command me, then take me.
He groaned heavily.
Eve cracked her whip, drawing Shayna’s attention back to the stage. Marius released her, but continued to hold her arm in a firm grasp. She felt how aroused he was, just like her.
The professor entered the stage barefoot, wearing what looked like a graduation gown.
“Hello, Professor. I’m ready for my lesson.”
Maybe the dialogue left something to be desired, but Eve made up for it as she approached the man from behind and slowly removed his gown, sliding it off broad muscular shoulders and arms to reveal a fully erect cock.
I don’t want you looking at him.
Marius’s sudden voice in her head made her jump. She shifted slightly, turning toward him. His eyes glimmered in the dark. Then give me something to look at, Marius. We’re behind a shield and no one can see us. Can you do that for me?
Is that what you want?
You know it is. There it was again, the boldness that seemed so out of character for her.
She felt Marius actually tremble as he turned to face her and unbuttoned his slacks, then unzipped. He was fully erect as well.
She peeled back the pants just enough to expose him. She drew close to him once more, leaning into him, and as the couple got busy on stage she used her hand and felt him up, from the base of his thick hard stalk, slowly sweeping upward to fondle his crown.
She blessed her stilettos again, because he settled his lips on hers and kissed her while she played with him. Desire flowed through her abdomen, down between her legs. She moved against him in slow undulations, her free hand wrapped around as much of his back as she could reach.
He found her breast and dipped inside her bra, stroking and thumbing the tip.