4. Christian

Kale curledhis fingers around my arm and ushered me into a nondescript building with an otherwise indistinct black door. He'd called it a sex club, and it was giving speakeasy, but either way, as the door latched closed behind us, I breathed a sigh of relief at avoiding Niko. Even if only temporarily. Inside the quiet foyer space, a man sat behind a desk, and he greeted Kale with a curt nod. "Mr. Sheffield."

"I have an unexpected guest," Kale said, tilting his head in my direction. "I hope that won't be an issue."

"Not for you, sir," the man behind the desk said before turning his attention toward me. "I'll just need to see some identification."

"I'd rather not."

"You're not even inside and you're already not listening?" Kale tutted his tongue against the roof of his mouth and something flared hot and sharp in my chest. "You can go, Christian."

"It's not that." I rolled my eyes and checked my pockets for my passport, which I wasn't even sure I had on me.

"I told you compliance was non-negotiable."

"You sound like my father." My fingers grazed over the well-worn pages of my passport, and I dropped it down on the desk, alongside the blue royal order ribbon.

The attendant's nostrils briefly flared, and he took the book and flipped it open. His jaw clenched and he was quick to flip it closed, sliding both items back in my direction. I tucked them both back into my jacket and raised a brow.

"Everything in order?"

"Quite. I want to also assure you that at The Black Door, we take the utmost care around confidentiality and privacy."

"I'd assume as much," I said.

"Mr. Sheffield," he said, turning to me next, "Yo?—"

"Are we good, then?" I cut him off, not interested in the slightest about outing my royal title to Kale, or anyone for that matter. He'd seen the royal order at least half a dozen times since I'd run into him on the street, and if he hadn't bothered to put it together or ask questions to get the information, I wasn't going to press him on it. And judging by the very excitable and eager way he'd kissed me back on the sidewalk without so much as a hello-how-are-you, I didn't pin Kale as the kind of man who cared about names and titles so much as he cared about gag reflexes and stamina.

He cared about good listeners, though.

Unfortunately for him, I wasn't one of those.

"Jesus, you have a mouth on you," Kale muttered, exhaling at me, frustration clear on his face. His stare flickered over my shoulder toward the door and I knew he was very close to taking me outside and finding a way to deposit me right into Niko's waiting hands.

"I wish you were wrong about that, but you're not," I said with playful shrug. "Sure you can find a way to shut me up, though. If you think real hard about it."

The corner of his tongue darted out of his mouth and he licked the corner of his lip, eyes narrowing in thought as he gave me a slow appraisal.

"Alright," he decided, gesturing toward the wall behind him that looked just like a wall and definitely not a secret door. It opened, and I was suddenly desperate to know why this city was so fascinated with hidden doors.

"Be my guest, then."

I tipped my head in thanks to the attendant, who knew when to stop talking, and I followed Kale through the opening in the wall and into a space that speared the opposite of a kinky sex club.

"This looks like a place rich men with too much time go to smoke cigars and get off," I said after taking a perfunctory glance around.

The room was narrow, like most of the residences in the city were, with lots of exposed brick and some well-placed frosted glass panels. There were clusters of overstuffed wingbacks and leather seats with small tables nestled between them, almost every seat taken by a man or a woman who looked like they knew exactly who they were and what they wanted. It was a sexy sight to behold—all that power and confidence in one place. To me, it felt like the antithesis of home, which was filled with so much posturing and pretend. Everyone in this room dripped with authenticity and—to varying degrees—arousal.

"There's no smoking inside," Kale said. "Did you want a drink?"

I scoffed. "I want to know what you were thinking, bringing me here."

He sucked his tongue across the front of his teeth, mouth pulled down into a frown. "I'm not sure," he said.

"That feels like a lie."

Kale huffed, then pointed toward the back wall of the room. "Drink first?"

"If you must."

I followed him through the room, navigating between the clusters of the tables and the random couples grinding against each other on a makeshift dance floor. The air smelled like wood and sweat, but not gym sweat.

The air smelled like sex.

When we reached the bar, I knew better than to look down and check on the state of my dick. I was undoubtedly well on my way to being hard if I wasn't hard already, and while I could fathom a guess as to what Kale had intended by bringing me here, I'd long ago learned not to make assumptions.

"You drink champagne?" he asked when we reached the bar.

"How did you know?"

Again his tongue in the corner of his mouth. "I could taste it on you," he murmured.

"French 75," I said.

The corner of his lip quirked, and all I could think about was kissing him again. I studied him in profile, the ridiculous swoop of his hair against his thin and angular features. Kale wasn't broad or stocky by any sense of the word. Instead he was tall, well over six feet, and slender enough that I worried if the only thing he ate was the lettuce he'd assumedly been named after. His cheekbones were slightly hollow, only accentuated by the light brown scruff that had started to grow in around them and along his jaw. Kale was also dressed well, from that thick wool pea coat and impossibly soft scarf down to the shined tips of his shoes. Beyond that, I could tell during our kiss that his pants fit him well because he filled them out enough where it mattered the most.

He turned, catching me mid perusal, eyes sparkling and clearly taking my stare as flattery. Passing me my drink, he didn't say a word, so I took the chance to repeat the question I'd already asked him, "What were you thinking?"

He sipped what looked like an Old Fashioned, studying me from beneath the dark fan of his lashes.

"I wasn't thinking at all," he said. "At least not with my brain."

I chuckled, tilting the rim of my glass against his. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"It was meant as one."

"So what did your smaller brain have to say about the situation?" I asked, glancing down at his cock before looking back into his eyes.

He held my stare as he answered, "That I should get you on your knees someplace dark and quiet so I don't miss out on how good you'd sound choking on my cock."

"What reaction does that line normally get you?"

"Someplace quiet and dark." Kale smirked, and I was quick to see the power and authority that lingered just beneath the surface of his demeanor. He was a rich man, of that I was sure. But he was also dominant and probably a little arrogant. He had a dry sense of humor and was sharp as a whip with the conversation, yet I couldn't help but wonder what all of that humor and wit hid.

"Do you often ask strangers to swallow your cum?"

"I don't care if they spit," he said, that teasing grin on his face growing wider.

I took a sip of my drink, finding it fresh and cold, just as I liked it.

"Do you often run into strangers on the street and kiss them to the point of distraction?" he asked.

"Distracted you, did I?"

"Coy isn't cute on you," he murmured.

"What is cute on me, then?"

His eyes widened infinitesimally, and that curious tongue of his traced its way across the bottom of his teeth. "I could think of a few things," he said.

"Well, we're amongst friends, Mr. Sheffield. Don't hold back."

I made a mental note to look him up when I got back to my hotel, and I would have Niko run a background check on him. Or I'd have Niko run a background check when he was done being mad at me for giving him the slip in the middle of the ballet.

"You across my lap, for one." He shuffled closer, lowering his voice. I could smell him again, like honey and citrus in the air around us. "Out of these pants with your ass in the air."

"What would you do with my ass in the air?" I whispered.

He curled his finger over the waistband of my pants, tugging at me and closing the rest of the space between us. My shoes scuffed against his and I was close enough to feel the hot rod of his erection branding my thigh through the wool of both our slacks.

"Spank it."

Kale tilted his head to the side, and I gave him no reaction to work from. If he believed anything he'd thought about doing to me was in any way going to shock and awe me, he was in for a sore disappointment.

"Is that all? That sounds rather…anti-climactic."

I made a show of licking my lips before taking another sip of my drink. If Kale wanted to play a game of innuendo, I was more than willing to oblige him.

"You've clearly never been spanked well if you think it wouldn't be enough to get you there."

"I've been spanked plenty, Kale."

"I preferred Mr. Sheffield," he murmured, leaning in just enough that I could smell the whiskey on his breath now mixed with the citrus and champagne in the space between us.

"I'm sure."

"What if I told you to call me that?" His voice was barely above a whisper, but somehow louder than a thunderclap. My pulse thrummed in my ears, and my vision narrowed in so precisely on the dark brown pools of his eyes that I had to brace myself against the bar so I didn't fall over.

"Well." I swallowed. "I did promise that I would be a good listener."

"Kiss me," he said.

He demanded.

I set my drink on the bar so I had free use of both of my hands, then I grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and crashed our mouths together. He managed to get his drink out of the way before our chests collided, and then one of his hands was firm against the back of my head, the other resolute around my waist. I was thankful for the dual support because standing wasn't any easier and breathing was about ten times harder.

Opening my mouth wider, Kale's tongue dipped into my mouth, swirling against mine like he was chasing after the taste of himself from the first kiss on the sidewalk. I tested his hold against me, pressing my head back into his hand, only for him to spread his fingers through my hair to keep our mouths sealed tightly together. I moaned, cock pulsing against my leg for how badly the move made me want him.

I'd spent my whole life fighting against authority and bucking against those who tried to control me, and now here was this man, this absolute stranger who talked about taking me over his knee and making me come from spanking alone? The whole idea was preposterous. Not just the orgasm, but him in general, my reaction to him.

I wasn't a blushing virgin, but my name and my status made it hard to find discerning partners. It was one thing to risk a blow job at a bar, another entirely to suggest that someone tie me up or hold me down. Pictures of that would be near impossible to come back from. Blindfolds had always been absolutely off the table, as were gags. Even as much as I liked to fight the limitations of what my family would allow me to get away with, there was only so much I could allow before things might go too far.

But that didn't mean I didn't want to.

That I didn't dream about it sometimes.

The freedom of it all.

Kale broke the kiss with a gasping breath, the brown of his eyes nearly obscured by the black depths of his pupils. His hands were still on me, against my waist and my head, and thank God for that because my knees felt like jello.

"You're extraordinarily sexy when you're obedient," he murmured, smiling against my mouth.

I'd been called a lot of things in my life, but extraordinary in any way had never been one of them. I found myself leaning into him, chasing after him. After more of the way his mouth and hands and words made me feel, after an end to the desperate ache between my legs and in my chest.

Kale may have tried to pretend he didn't have a nefarious intent in bringing me to a godforsaken kinky sex club to hide me from Niko, but I didn't believe that for a second. I wanted to see what he was like when he got his way, but more than that, I wanted to see how far he'd go to get it.

"Be that as it may…" I licked my lips and smiled, tasting him as I pulled my tongue back into my mouth. "I think I'm much more fun when I'm not."