Page 18 of Velvet Sin (Elite Men of Los Angeles #5)

DANTE

B lake: Don’t worry, everything is under control. Sorry if I gave you a heart attack.

I rolled my eyes at Blake’s most recent message, one in a string of increasingly frantic texts and voicemails he sent while I was in the air and having issues with the WiFi.

The girl hired for the impact play demonstration was apparently sick and couldn’t make it.

Thankfully, he’d found someone to fill in before I landed.

This was why Blake made a better behind-the-scenes partner. He dealt well with numbers, data, ideas. When it came to day-to-day management, he was a little too high-strung to be effective. How could anyone respect a guy who ran around like a chicken with his head cut off?

But all was well by the time I left the airport, and I was glad I’d arranged for a car and a driver to pick me up rather than driving myself.

Things back in Manhattan were going well, but it had been a long few days, meeting with investors, taking lunches and dinners with colleagues.

Noah Goldsmith had been one of them, along with a few of his longtime friends.

He and his wife, Sienna, were frequent visitors to the club, and Noah had promised to take a trip out to Vegas soon.

I’d suggested having them out to my new home, which was in the process of title transfer and would officially be mine within another week or so.

Cash purchases always moved faster—another perk of success.

With everything going well in New York and LA, I could turn my attention to Vegas and the possibility of opening another location.

Blake’s idea about specializing from one club to the other, catering to a specific crowd, had been percolating in the back of my mind ever since he brought it up.

It would mean spending more time here, but that was what the house was all about.

It would give me that luxury. I could invest real time into securing a foothold in the town.

Though I wasn’t kidding myself. My pulse pounded harder the closer we got to the club.

Lenny would be working. It had been three days since I saw her.

It didn’t matter that we hadn’t done more than cross paths around the club with her pulling the usual cordial act.

Professional. Pretending there was nothing drawing us together.

It was easier for her. I didn’t look like walking sex when I showed up for work the way she did, and it was getting harder to keep my hands to myself.

There was only so far I could stretch my self-control before it snapped like a rubber band.

Now, sitting in the back seat of a BMW, my hands closed into fists as I imagined everything I’d like to do to her.

There were groups of people waiting outside the club doors, hoping to get in.

The sight satisfied me even as I wondered what the hell was taking so long to process newcomers at the front counter.

Rather than try to fight my way through the front door, I took the side entrance leading straight up to the office.

Strange how comfortable I’d started to become here.

I felt at home in a way I never had in LA, where I’d spent most of my time until now.

Was this nostalgia coloring my thoughts?

“There’s no place like home,” the way Dorothy said.

Flipping on the monitors when I reached the office, I found the source of the problem.

Chloe was working alone, moving as efficiently as she could but clearly in the weeds.

“Where the fuck is Lenny?” I whispered, ready to comb the building to find her.

She didn’t want me berating her in front of her coworkers?

Then she needed to learn how to be a team player.

My fists clenched at my sides, and my molars ground together.

This was why I couldn’t afford to take a few days away, even if it meant overseeing my business.

I scanned the other monitors, expecting to find Lenny exiting one of the dressing rooms or hanging out in the break room. I couldn’t find her there. She hadn’t called out, had she?

Movement on one of the monitors caught my attention.

A brawny, shirtless man in leather pants walked back and forth in front of a crowd gathered in the group playroom.

Of course, the demonstration Blake had been so fired up about.

The ink spanning the big man’s back and shoulders moved when he did as he lifted his arm to deliver a brisk strike against his partner’s tits with a leather flogger.

My heart leaped into my throat, and a cold, sick feeling slammed into me when I recognized the woman strapped to the cross.

Her body was tense, her jaw tight, tits heaving inside a bra so sheer it was see-through.

Her nipples poked at the fabric, straining it, but she didn’t offer any more of a reaction than that.

My chest was so tight I could barely draw a breath. A storm raged in my head. The rubber band that was my self-control stretched to its breaking point…

… then a little further, finally snapping.

I was halfway down the stairs before I knew what I was doing, tying on a mask with trembling hands as I burst into the lobby.

It was too busy for anyone to notice my sudden appearance or the way I cut through the crowd and into the club itself.

The dancing and revelry going on around me didn’t make an impression.

I had to get to her. After I did, I would find Blake and kill him.

This was his idea of a solution? Having one of our employees stand in?

He lingered just inside the group room, beside the door, which opened and closed with remarkable softness, considering I wanted to slam it hard enough to shake the walls. There were people here. Paying customers. No matter how I felt, I needed to keep them in mind.

It wasn’t easy. “The fuck is this?” I hissed to Blake, one eye on the demonstration. The tattooed man explained the difference between one toy and another and how changing up the intensity kept the experience fresh and the subject guessing.

“What does it look like?” he whispered back. “She’s perfect for this. Look how she’s trembling. She really knows how to keep the act going.”

I could have strangled him in front of these people and anyone else who wanted to watch. “It’s not an act, for fuck’s sake. You had no business putting her up to this.”

When I took a step away from him, prepared to call the whole thing off before spanking the shit out of her, he caught me by the arm and held me in place. “Don’t be an asshole,” he whispered. “She’s fine, everything is fine. People are enjoying this.”

It seemed like he was right about that. The viewers watched, entranced, unable to look away. “Kristoff knows what he’s doing,” Blake concluded. “And she looks?—”

I pulled my arm free before he could share his opinion on how Lenny looked. To hell with all of this. A man had his limits, and I had reached mine. If anyone was going to do this to her, it would be me.

“Wait!” Blake whispered, but I ignored him, striding out to the center of the sunken floor. Lenny’s soft gasp went ignored by me. I held out my hand, silently inviting Kristoff to hand over the riding crop he had picked up to use next.

He blinked rapidly, clearly thrown off. “Continue explaining the techniques,” I murmured, sliding out of my suit jacket and draping it across the back of a chair. “I’ll handle the demonstration.”

Once I had a grip on the crop’s leather handle, I turned to the woman now staring at me through wide eyes.

And Blake thought she was trembling before?

“Is this what you want?” I asked in a soft voice while Kristoff continued speaking to the group.

“You like this? Exposing yourself to these people? Letting someone use you?”

“I had to,” she insisted in an almost inaudible whisper.

“So you’re not getting anything out of this?” Stepping up close, I glanced down toward the apex of her thighs. “Tell that to the wet spot on your panties.” There was a definite dark spot there, revealing her arousal.

“It’s important to vary the intensity of your strokes,” Kristoff explained. “Eventually, your partner will become desensitized if you use the same intensity against the same body part for too long.”

I took one backward step, my gaze locked on Lenny, then delivered a soft strike against her left tit. She gasped, her teeth bared, arching her back and releasing a soft sigh. I repeated the blow, this time against her right tit, catching her nipple with the leather strap and making her gasp again.

“Just as it’s important to vary intensity,” Kristoff continued. “So is switching up locations. Remember, when working someone from behind, stay away from the kidneys.” He touched his hands to his lower back.

“That’s not a problem tonight,” I mused, staring at the body she had revealed to everyone else in the room. When I tapped the crop to her inner thigh, close to her pussy, Lenny released a tiny whimper, pressing her lips tightly together while her eyes closed.

Fuck, she was beautiful. More so now that she’d submitted like this. If only it were me alone, without an audience.

Adrenaline flooded my system, tightening my hand around the grip, giving me no choice but to loosen my tie and open my shirt collar so I could breathe. It had been so long since I’d let myself indulge this way—my gateway drug, so to speak, my introduction to this world.

The night I first agreed to visit a sex club, one of Dick Jansen’s clubs, in fact, was on a guys’ night out.

A group of friends whose names I hardly remembered, but that wasn’t what mattered in the end.

It was the experience that seared itself on my brain.

An entirely new existence had been unlocked to me that night as I watched a subject being pleasured beyond anything I had ever seen or heard.