As if sensing my hesitation, she looks up, her blue eyes liquid. “You haven’t been coming to the club, and I know you can’t go anywhere else. I can help. You know I can. I won’t take it out of the club. We’ll just do a scene. I promise.”

    Craving takes hold of me, deep and dark. Even if the club scene didn’t turn Penny off, as I assume it does, I’m a sadist. And after tonight, I’m damn sure she’s not a masochist. She needs pain for the release the endorphin rush gives her, but she doesn’t enjoy it the way Sylvia does. We could never make it work, and I’m selfish for pursuing her, selfish for pushing her, selfish for not wanting to let her go.

    Sylvia twines her arms around my neck and presses herself against me. She is nothing if not persistent. “Please, Master Jack.”

    It all hits me in a rush—the craving, the restraint I have to exercise with Penny, my longing and desire to have her the way a normal man would, and the burning, seething need to hear her scream with pain before she screams with pleasure. I don’t want to be this man, but I am. I don’t want to hurt her, but I will. And the best thing for her would be for me to stay away.

    “Fuck.” I swipe my card and pull open the door, holding it for Sylvia to pass through.

    “Yes. Anything you want.” Sylvia brushes her lips over mine as she walks inside. “I’ll be waiting in your playroom.”

    Before I can say anything more, she hurries down the hallway, her heels tapping on the tile floor.

    Disgusted with myself and what I’m about to do, I follow her in.

    Club Sin is heaving tonight, with all the equipment in use, from the cage in one corner to the St. Andrew’s Cross in the other. Doms hold subs on the aftercare couches or pet submissives kneeling at their feet. Music pounds through the speakers, punctuated by the occasional scream.

    I spot Damien walking the floor and catch up to him by the water station. “Are we at capacity tonight?”

    Damien gives me a conspiratorial grin. “Over capacity. We’ve become so popular we could add another level and still have a wait list. If the landlord wasn’t so determined to get us out of here in a hurry, I would have considered some renovations.”

    “Any fallout from Gerry’s attempt to send in the contractors the other day?” I step to the side as a Domme leads a male sub past on a leash.

    “Nothing. My lawyer is trying to drag things out while I find somewhere to relocate. I’ve seen a few interesting properties. You’ll have to come and check them out.” He gives me a searching look. “And where is our newest member? I thought we’d be seeing a lot more of her. Don’t tell me you scared her away.”

    “Story of my life.”

    “I’m surprised,” he says. “She didn’t seem the type to be easily put off. After all, she came back here and sat in the waiting room for almost two full nights before I let her in. And she jumped at the chance to play with me—”

    “Don’t go there.” I don’t want to remember seeing Penny on Damien’s bench and the amount of effort it took not to pick him up and toss him out of the room.

    Damien laughs. “So it’s not over.”

    “It is, or I wouldn’t be here with Sylvia waiting in my playroom.” I run my hand through my hair. “I told Pen I could cope without the club, but she was worried she wasn’t enough for me. She agreed to do a scene, and it went all fucking wrong.”

    “So now she feels like a failure.”

    What the fuck is he talking about? “I’m the failure. It was my scene. I was in control. I’m the monster Avery always thought I was.”

    Damien’s gaze lingers on a threesome over by the St. Andrew’s Cross. I recognize Master Daniel and the male sub chained to the cross, but the woman is new and not wearing the usual club fetish attire. Master Daniel has restrained her in a bondage chair and positioned her so she can watch him, but at a safe distance away. When Penny first showed up at the club, I imagined her chained to the cross, trembling under the bite of my whip. But not now. Not ever.

    “I had to rearrange some furniture to accommodate them,” Damien says. “The alcove was booked up tonight. Master Daniel’s wife has never been to the club before, and I suggested he bring her sooner rather than later because the future of the club is so uncertain.”

    “Fucking Gerry,” I mutter. “Would it really have been so hard to just give us the proper notice? I can’t even imagine what he’s paid in legal fees.”

    “I can,” Damien says dryly. “The lawyers are the only real winners in this dispute.”

    We walk the length of the main floor and turn down the hallway to the private rooms. Damien stops beside the door to my playroom. “You’re still hung up on being the man your family expects you to be instead of embracing who you are. Give yourself permission to enjoy your scenes instead of just enduring them. If you do, you might discover you don’t need the intensity you think you do, and you might open yourself up to being with a woman who can offer you something more. You’re fighting this harder than you fight in the ring, and I don’t know why.”

    “I wanted to give her normal.”

    “Normal?” Damien laughs. “There is no normal. There are only degrees of kink. You need to free yourself from expectations and judgments and decide who you really are and what you really want. And if that means meeting Sylvia in your playroom, then accept it and embrace it. Be the sadist. Enjoy her pain. But if it means taking a risk with a woman who sees the man behind the monster you think you are and who needs what you have to give, then that’s the wrong fucking door.”

    I already know it’s the wrong door. There’s only one place I want to be. One woman I want to be with. But after tonight, will she want me?

    “She wants some pain, but she can’t take too much.” I scrub my hand over my face. “But she wasn’t happy when I told her I could give up the club. She thought she wouldn’t be enough for me.”