Chapter 2

Colin

"Okay, Stewart. Fifteen-minute break. No longer than that. I don't want to catch you smoking in the alley with your friends for half an hour anymore."

"Got it."

Stewart darted away, surprisingly graceful for someone so large. I was teaching him the tricks of bouncing. For a popular kink club, it was not always an easy job.

He was too young in my opinion, too hot-headed, but I couldn't argue with the supervisor's choices. I wasn't a part of the hiring and firing. But Stewart was not a good fit for this job. He'd obviously been hired for his size alone and I did have to admit if any fights or other dramas broke out, I felt stronger with him around. I was pretty big myself, but he was like a wall towering behind me wherever I went. That was, when I could locate him. A chain smoker, he had a talent for slipping out back when no one was looking.

My phone dinged. Outside the club, I'd learned to mostly ignore it. But at work, I had to look. It was a text.

Unknown:Still and always an asshole. Think you're the boss of everyone?

I had been gettingthese texts for months. I always blocked the sender, but the texts kept coming at random intervals from different numbers.

This sort of annoyance came with the job. I had to toss people, literally, into the street if they got too riled up, then ban them from Club 99. I had to keep the files on the banned subjects and update those files to security, who I worked with closely. It was my job to remember faces and names as much as it was theirs, and people got pissed. Rare death threats were part of the job, but they usually amounted to nothing and stopped after a few days. If things got really heavy, Trent Winterbourne stepped in and the problem went away, no questions asked.

Trent was often abroad and ran Club 99 long-distance. I had managed to reach him and talk to him about the texting harassment. He'd shown concern and told me to never erase the texts and to copy and make files of them. He supposedly had people looking into it, but it had been at least three months and I'd had no updates. But I kept saving the texts, updating the files, etc.

My phone dinged again.

I glanced at it through half-shut eyes, but this time it was a legit check-in. Carlo, head of security.

Carlo:Declan needs muscle in the shibari room.

I radioed Jimmy,who was stationed at the far end of the dance floor. Together, we took off at a near-run for the room.

I heard raised voices and yelling as soon as we entered the hall. Half-dressed men hanging out moved aside as we hustled past them.

Upon entering the room, we saw a beautiful naked male on the ground surrounded by several people moving quickly to get some intricately knotted ropes undone. The man was moaning, crying. "I can't feel my legs."

"Get them off now!" some guy yelled.

Another said, "Dammit, we're moving as fast as we can."

I looked to see that the man on the floor was alive, not bleeding. Past that, I didn't know what was wrong.

"Hey!" My voice boomed, getting everyone's attention. "Get this man some water and get those off him. Now!"

"We're trying!" one of the men yelled back.

The sub's arms came loose and he sat up, rubbing at his wrists. "I told you it was too tight!" He started wailing.

Another man said softly, "He's always whining like this. Every time."

He must've been the guy's dom.

"It doesn't matter. The sub is in control. Don't you have a safe word?"

The dom and sub both nodded. The dom said, "He didn't use it."

The sub spoke between heaving breaths. "I couldn't feel my feet much later in the scene. By then it was too late for a safe word."

"If you don't know what you're doing, you stay away." I wanted to lecture them. It was inside me to let them have it, everything that was on my mind. I was tired and stressed and sometimes these men confounded me, playing in ways they didn't have any clue about. It meant safety was not always their first concern even though they signed a contract when they became club members to make safety their priority.

I knelt beside the sub. He was gorgeous, his body tight and lean and brown; the rope had left dark pink stripes all over him. He had long, dark hair that fell like satin against his back. It was disarmingly sexy.

I looked up at Jimmy. Declan was nowhere around even though Carlo had told me he was the one who needed the help in this room.

"Jimmy, call the medic."

Jimmy put his radio to his mouth and turned away.

"I can't feel my legs or my feet. I can't stand up. I told you they were too tight." Tears rolled down the sub's face as he looked up at a man who was beefy and hard-looking. "What if my circulation doesn't come back?"

"It will," I said, trying to lower my voice. "We have a medic coming. What's your name?"

"Candy."

"You'll be fine, Candy."

I wondered why I was doing the comforting and not his dom. Oh well, it wasn't my job to judge beyond the incident at hand.

The patient was turned over to the on-duty nurse. Jimmy and I carried Candy between us. We got him up a flight of stairs to the medical room, which I'd always thought needed to be on the first floor, but no one ever listened to me.

The medic began a massage sequence that had Candy calming down in seconds. He reported feeling was returning to his legs.

The incident required a report which I would file at the end of the night. In the meantime, I went back to my station by the door only to realize Stewart was not around. It was well past his fifteen-minute break.

Teeth gritted, I radioed for him to come back. When he walked up, his head was down. I smelled smoke all over his clothes. Then, I heard my phone ding. I had no more energy to deal with him, so I said nothing at about his half hour break.

When I looked at my phone, a new text blinked at me.

Unknown:Hey asshole. Do you get off on what you do for a living as some sort of twisted kink?