Janet digested that. “Understood. How about anal?”

“Hmm. A strap-on might not be out of the question. You’ll have to figure that one out. Hasn’t come up in our daily conversation.” She gave Janet a cheeky grin. “But I can tell you right off, don’t touch him with an actual cock. That boy’s as straight as Pat Buchanan on a holy roller tour. Some poor guy would lose their most vital appendage.”

Janet chuckled at the image, even as she remembered how he’d handled Thor, so casually intimate, but firmly distancing himself from any sexual implications to it. “All right. Anything else?”

An expression of feline pleasure wreathed Dana’s face. “Yeah. I’d probably sell my soul to be able to see this go down. You’re one lucky woman. Why don’t you plan to come to our girls’ night this month? I bet everyone would be willing to offer major bribes to hear you rattle off a play-by-play.”

“I’m never averse to bribes.”

* * * * *

For the third time, Max checked himself in the mirror. This was getting ridiculous. He wore a belted pair of stressed jeans and a black dress shirt. He’d seen the things Janet did with her subs, and he was starting to think he was crazy, imagining himself in similar positions. One night, she’d led a poor bastard around the club on hands and knees. He’d been buck-naked, except for a cage-like thing around his cock. What if any of the K&A men were there? He cut the vision of Matt seeing his limo driver being led around by a cock leash right out of his head, because the mere thought would make Max break out in hives. It would probably make Matt break out in hives as well.

He hadn’t thought about any of that when he offered this. He’d had some vague sense of her hand upon him, him being on his knees, close enough to put his mouth on her sweet-smelling skin, rub his cheek against whatever sexy concoction she’d wear to drive him crazy. So basically his brain had disengaged and his cock had done his thinking.

Except it hadn’t been his cock leading him, but his heart. He should have remembered his heart had no more of a brain than his cock did, and they’d both left his head out of it. Idiots.

Okay, he was turning his internal organs into a community forum, so he was not in a good head space right now. His date was waiting on him. If he waited five more minutes to leave, he’d run the risk of being late, not a good start to the night. Fuck it.

No. He drew a deep breath. It wasn’t his date waiting for him, but his Mistress. He liked the way she reacted to that, her eyes sharpening but her mouth getting a little softer, the silky brows arching in an interested way. It would be all right. Either way, he’d agreed to do it and he wasn’t backing out. No sense chewing on it any more. Grabbing his keys, he headed out.

She’d told him she wanted to meet him at the club, not be picked up, so as he drove that way, he wondered what she’d choose to wear. Leather, corset…those awesome boots and gloves that fit like a second skin. No, he bet she was going to be more unpredictable tonight, though if she showed up in sweats and running shoes he’d still be hard as a rock for it. Yeah, he had it bad.

His mind moved to thoughts of their day together with Amanda, then to what Janet had done when they left the facility, guiding him into the garden and putting herself in his lap. She hadn’t coaxed or chased his emotional reaction. She’d demanded it, in a way that had resulted in a purging of the pain. He’d broken down after his mom, sure, but by himself. In the early days of dealing with it, he’d almost lost it a couple times in Dale’s company, or with the other guys, but their way of handling it was letting him walk it off, protecting him from interruption until he collected his shit.

Maybe it just wasn’t in his makeup to accept from a guy what Janet had offered. When she took charge, instead of swallowing it down, he’d let it swallow him up. Everything he’d needed to do since he first saw his mother’s body had risen out of his heart and taken over. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried about anything, but if a man couldn’t cry about losing his mother and the death of his sister’s future, then he supposed he had no tears for anything.

He pulled up to Club Progeny. Fortunately, Matt and his guys mostly preferred the slower weeknights. Since that meant they likely weren’t here, that was a plus, but seeing the profusion of people coming and going, Max felt an unfamiliar shot of uneasiness through his vitals, something perilously close to unmanly fear. He was familiar enough with this stuff to know there were safe words, limits. He could tell Janet what was a no-go for him. But of course that caught in his craw, because it clashed with his determination to be the big alpha guy who could handle anything.

“Fuck it. Get the hell out of the truck and do it.” Trust her. That’s what this is about, remember?

As he strode up to the club, he was aware of calculated glances. When he brought the limo, he had an obvious role as a staff person delivering a club member. Tonight his status was up for speculation, an unknown quantity. Dom? Sub? Curious voyeur?

Trinity was the hostess on shift tonight. She was a gorgeous blonde with glossy pink lips and a lot of soft white breast displayed up high in a blue satin corset with black lacings. He’d had cordial dealings with her before, had even brought her a cup of coffee one night when she couldn’t get away from the desk and he was waiting on Ben and Marcie to finish their session.

“Mistress Janet told me you’d be coming as her guest,” she said with a smile. “Glad to have you with us as a player tonight, Max. Will you give me your wrist, please?”

When he complied, she put a rubber bracelet on him. It had been stamped with dark letters. Exclusive property of Mistress Janet.

“No one will offer you any proposals while wearing that,” she said as he studied it. “She said you’d be most comfortable that way.”

When he glanced up, Trinity gave his hand a quick squeeze, fingers whispering over his palm. “Don’t worry. They’re just people. No one’s going to try to eat you alive, though we can’t keep people from fantasizing about it.” She chuckled. “She’s waiting for you in room D, second level. That’s a private room.”

Though he should be embarrassed that his anxiety was that obvious, some of it eased at the information. It underlined what he’d thought when he got out of the truck.

Janet knows you. You can trust her.

The club really was hopping tonight, music booming on the dance floor, the bass accompanied by the bounce and twist of a lot of bodies showing plenty of bare skin. In the public play rooms, several scenes were happening on the suspension beams, with the St. Andrew’s Crosses and spanking benches at full occupancy. Though he usually enjoyed watching from the safety of his coffee spot, he decided keeping his eyes averted tonight was the wise move. On the first HALO jump, he’d found it was better not to lean out of the plane and see how fast and far the guy who’d jumped ahead of him was falling. But he remembered the rush of adrenaline when he followed him, the oh fuck, what the hell did I do, followed by the glorious sense of I’m fucking flying. When can I go on this ride again?

This was going to be like that, because that’s what he wanted to happen, and it was what she wanted to happen. They were in it together. He was being a fucking pussy. He’d gone through buildings that were a maze of blind turns obscured by concrete dust and darkness, fire crackling at his heels, the possibility of an insurgent’s gun or an explosive device directly ahead. He could handle one D/s session with a petite, beautiful Dominatrix who already had most of his heart in her hands.

Room D. He started to turn the door handle, then stopped, knocked. The security light over the door turned from red to green, a beep inviting him to enter. He noted a security card was needed to get in, unless the person already inside unlatched the door. Secure and ultra private.

Out of habit, he glanced through the crack as he opened the door, checking behind it, and then his gaze swept the room as he stepped inside.

It was a simple rectangle with a lavatory closet built into the far left corner, that door open to show a polished silver sink, commode. A built-in cabinet along the same wall displayed an array of items assembled on the counter’s surface. Velcro cuffs, a flogger and a sturdy cloth bag whose contents were concealed, but he expected there was more of the same inside it, since he’d seen Janet bring it to her sessions before. The floor was painted with concentric circles, a chair bolted on the bull’s-eye. One wall had several different options for restraining a body against it. The opposite wall had some of those options as well, but they were obscured by an image being projected from the video equipment embedded in the ceiling.

It was the ocean. Just a continuous, panoramic view of a mild surf breaking and then rushing to shore. The sky was a pre-dawn marmalade. The projector provided sound, matching the image flowing from the wall onto a foot of the floor. He digested all of it in a second, and then found his Mistress. She was leaning against the opposite wall, watching him.

The things he’d imagined her wearing—boots, corset, tight pants—were things he’d seen her don for this type of play in the past. Things that made any man’s imagination run to hot, wet dreams. Her outfit tonight definitely met that requirement, but it wasn’t something he’d seen her wear before. It was as if she’d worn it specifically for him.

She wore a bikini top, the sides shaped so the garment lifted her small breasts and made them swell out and over, her cleavage deep and tempting a man’s tongue to tunnel there. The pale-yellow color showed the dark smudge of her nipples, the silky, thin fabric molding the points. A sarong wrap was tied at her hip, so her leg appeared bare all the way from waist to ankle. She wasn’t wearing anything under the sarong, unless it was a thong so small the strap was hidden beneath the knot of the fabric.

She was barefoot, her hair down, curled around her face. She was wearing makeup, but it was different from the office or what he’d seen her wear here. This was so natural, he might have missed it, except for the gleam of the lipstick, the scent of her gloss. Some kind of musk he expected was injected with pheromones, because it pulled him across the room to her like she’d wrapped a chain around his cock.