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“Don’t blame you. Those eyes can undermine a Dom’s willpower from thirty feet away.” Leaning an elbow on the wood, Liam pinned him with serious gray eyes. “First time you’ve come to work and brought her in with you. Is she staying with the girls all night?”

“If she makes it twenty minutes, I’ll be happy with it. Tossing her in at the deep end and all that shit.” Cracking open the bottle, Merrick took several swallows. “Gonna have my phone with me, Liam. Think you can keep an eye on Tamsyn, let me know if she gets overwhelmed?”

“That goes without saying, but the girls will take care of her.”

“Don’t doubt it. Tamsyn’s go-to defense is running, and she’s smart. If she wants to get away, she’ll find a damn way. I don’t want her on her own tonight, she’s had a rough afternoon.” That was an understatement; her whole fucking life had been one rough ride.

Liam jerked his chin toward the dais where their girls were sat, and the table below it to the right where his husband was working on a laptop. “Mack’s on protection detail for the next hour. Grit won’t be long until his shift ends, and I think Elias said he and Van just had a quick meeting to finish up before they join the party. Plenty of eyes to watch your girl.”

Merrick drank again, grimacing. Maybe this was a bad idea; he should take her with him, but what fun would she have being tucked into a corner while he flogged his client into subspace? He didn’t want to keep her in the shadows, yet his attention needed to be on his job. “Fuck. That’s a lot of testosterone for her to deal with, Liam.”

“Callie invited Violet—she’ll balance out the equation.”

It wasn’t so much the equation he was concerned about. Mack and Grit were pretty laid back unless pushed. Evander was strict but easygoing, although his size added intimidation even when he wasn’t being a hardass.

Elias would be the issue.

Despite the fact he was a nice guy, he tangibly emanated dominance just by breathing. Throw in that edge of sadism and his dark sense of humor, he had the power to send Tamsyn running for the hills if he so much as looked at her wrong.

“Stop fretting, Merrick. I know it’s hard being apart from her after all these weeks of keeping her to yourself, but this will be good for her. The girls are solid, they’ll make sure she feels included and has fun for a few hours. By the time your shift is done, they’ll all be best friends and you’ll wonder why the hell you tortured yourself with worst case scenarios.”

He wished he could believe that. Unfortunately, worst case scenarios dogged Tamsyn’s steps, skipping along hand in hand with trouble.

Checking his watch, he grunted. He needed to be in the dungeon with his head in the game right about now. “Just… if she tries to run, stop her if you can. Failing that, try and herd her back home safely.”

“She will be fine,” Liam told him, enunciating each word with precision.

Merrick polished off the water and handed the bottle back to Liam for recycling. With a sigh, he braced himself and turned to glance at his little owl—a big mistake, apparently, as she hadn’t taken her eyes off him and he met her mournful stare head on.

Yeah, it was time to go to work before he capitulated.

Giving her a nod, a subtle warning to behave herself, and tempering it with a smile, he tapped a hand on the bar in farewell to Liam and forced his feet to move. With every step, it felt as though he was pulling her heart in two; he could feel her watching him leave.

The sensation only deepened as the swing doors thwapped shut behind him when he stepped into the hallway to snag his jacket before heading out into the cold evening for the short walk to the dungeon.

Head in the game, he reminded himself. It took effort to switch his thoughts from Tamsyn to his first client of the evening, a sub named Gayle from Ohio who he’d had the pleasure of topping three times since Serenity’s opening week.

She was a lovely woman who ran her own business and rarely had time to indulge her submissive urges. The club offered her the opportunity to take a few days away for, as she called it, an internal reset. All the perks of a five-star vacation with the added benefit of tending to her submissive side thoroughly and effectively.

The only issue was, she monopolized a lot of his time, often booking daily slots for two or three hours, usually at the beginning of his shift. By the time he reached the end of the session, his back and shoulders were killing him, which left few resources for his next clients.

Tonight, she was booked for two.

He covered the distance to the dungeon quickly, his boots crunching briskly on the gravel path. It always felt like home when his time was requested here; he loved what Evander’s vision for the old barn had become, the design of the huge space, and the atmosphere it produced.

The medical play area was his second favorite, but here… the moment he stepped through the doors into the anteroom and caught the scent of rich leather and polished wood, something clicked inside him, releasing the darker side of his nature.

Stripping off his jacket, he folded it into a locker. Removing his shirt, he added it before he closed it and pocketed the key, patting his back pocket to make sure his phone was within reach.

Stretching out his arms and shoulders, warming up the muscles in his back, he pushed into the dungeon proper and let his eyes adjust to the dim lighting.

The layout was a bit different in here to the other sections of Serenity. The moment someone entered, they stepped onto a narrow platform that ran around the entirety of the building so voyeurs could watch scenes from above without being at risk of catching a stray lash from a whip or get in the way of some of the more intense activities.

Sturdy railings prevented anyone from plummeting over the edge, and Evander’s sense of inclusivity extended to all his creations with a platform lift for wheelchairs in the corner. For everyone else, a staggered staircase led the way to the heavenly hell below.

Gayle was waiting for him as agreed, kneeling to the left of the stairway. Slim shoulders squared, back straight and bare. Thighs parted wide enough for Merrick to see the gusset of her panties, with her hands lying flat on those wide muscles.

She held her head up slightly, her chin not quite at its lowest point, and she wore a serene expression that told him she’d been waiting a while to get herself into the right mindset. Her long blonde hair was braided in a way that exposed threads of autumnal red through the locks, curling over her shoulder to drape down between her full breasts.