Page 76 of Cruel Pleasures

No one else bothers to visit the gym at Hurst Manor. As far as they’re concerned, they’re on holiday. Any weight packed on over the course of these two weeks will be lipo’d out of them at their plastic surgeon’s office once they return to Easton.

More sweat pours out of me with my next swing. The force behind my strike makes the mannequin almost tip over. I won’t stop until I’m spent. The restless energy inside me needs to be expunged somehow.

Over the past few days I’ve lost the discipline I’ve prided myself on. I’ve allowed emotions to rise to the surface that long ago I learned to control. It’s made me reckless and irrational. Two of the biggest flaws a person can have.

When I began my martial arts training with Master Bihn, I realized how weak most humans could be. Shitsuke became the concept I lived by—discipline, restraint, control in all that I do. The only way a man can truly become unbreakable.

The one other time in my life where I strayed from this belief, I suffered immeasurably for it. I had let myself believe Asami and I could escape the forces that ruled our world. The same world my father had dragged me into the moment he brought me to Master Bihn at ten years old.

I didn’t understand it then. I didn’t even fully understand it as a young man entering the underground crime world in Japan, doing my father’s bidding.

It wasn’t until Asami was gone that I learned the lesson the hard way.

I must be controlled at all times. Exist outside of the normal human world.

Yet, in the matter of a few days, cracks have formed in this deeply ingrained belief system. I’ve done things, felt things I swore I never would again.

A level of recklessness that’ll surely cost me.

I leap into the air for another swift kick at the mannequin. My mind drifts despite how hard I fight it. Thoughts of Imani emerge.

Shibari is something I’ve long dabbled in. It was an erotic form of pleasure Asami and I both enjoyed. I’ve continued to practice, though, like with everything I do, I’m far removed from the human side.

The women who visit room six know what they’re getting themselves into. They’re aware they’ll leave pleasured, and the beast inside me will be sated for the time being. Without ever having to mar Asami’s memory and the intensity of what we shared. It’s a method for me to keep myself in check. Make sure I don’t… fall prey to fleshly desires.

But Imani showed up. She accepted the invitation I had anonymously sent, asking her to visit playroom six. While she believed it was for pleasure, I had other intentions. Plans to inflict a little suffering like had been requested of me. More importantly, play mind games to further test her psyche.

She stripped down and the composure I easily maintained with the other women who visited was wiped out. I was barely able to contain myself as I looped the rough rope into intricate patterns across her sensuously naked body.

Her eyes met mine, and though it was through the leather mask I wore, I was affected. She disarmed me.

My member grew stiff in my pants.

I enjoyed every second, watching in wonderment as the rope scratched into her soft brown skin and squeezed her breasts. It slipped between her pussy lips, and she cried out in a melodic mix of pleasure and pain. She came for me.

…so hard she was seconds away from passing out altogether.

I launch into another wave of combination hits, trying to fight away the memory. The image stamped in my brain of how her curvy body rocked in her binds and how slick she left the ropes afterward. I ran my tongue along the piece of rope that had rubbed into her pussy. I tasted for myself the most intimate part of her.

Then, for a second time, I came too. For the first time in years.

For the first time since Asami.

Just for her. Just thinking of her.

My jaw tenses as my fists and legs swing. I’m like a machine in how efficient I am. But also the opposite in another regard, in how quick and agile I am.

When I was doing my father’s bidding as a young man, my nickname was Kurai Kage. Japanese for Dark Shadow. Otherwise given due to my ability for being deadly, silent, and unseen.

Hurst must know by now what transpired. He’s become equally preoccupied with our little pretender. The infiltrator in the club’s midst.

Which is why it comes as no surprise when the doors to the gym fly open. I look up in the middle of a side kick. Hurst strides through, face clenched like he’s on the brink of a murderous rampage.

A rare tic seizes me, the corner of my lip twitching.

About time.

I drop my arms to my sides, dripping sweat, and wait calmly. His eyes shrink into a narrow glare as soon as he spies me, and he cuts a direct path over.