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“How may I serve you?” she asked. Her smile wavered and widened as the young woman seemed to suddenly register Nora’s identity. “Mistress Nora,” she said, bobbing a perfect curtsy. She looked positively starstruck. The girl wore a classic cigarette girl costume, blue and black striped, and her lush dark hair was coiffed Bettie-Page style.
“Hello, dear,” Nora said with a magnanimous air as she gave the girl her coat. Zach surrendered his, as well, grateful to be rid of it. In the stifling hallway, he instantly felt more comfortable in his jeans and T-shirt. “Are you new? Did King bring you in?”
“Yes, mistress. Mr. K. brought me in a few weeks ago.”
“King always did have good taste,” Nora said, eliciting a blush from the beaming young woman. “Have you made it to the floor yet?”
“No, mistress,” the girl said, her voice aflutter with nervousness. “I’m so sorry. It’s just…I’m such a fan.”
Zach smiled at the girl. “You should enjoy her next book, too. It’s coming along very well.”
The girl looked puzzled.
“You write books too, mistress?”
Nora laughed but didn’t meet Zach’s eyes.
“You’re adorable,” Nora said to the girl. “I’ll talk to King about getting you on the floor.”
“Thank you, mistress,” the girl breathed. She seemed to remember herself and said with a more professional tone, “Can I get anything for you, mistress? For your guest?”
“A white scarf, please. And my case. The black one.”
With another curtsy the girl left and promptly returned with a plain white handkerchief and a small box that looked like a flute case only much longer.
Nora took the white scarf and wrapped it around his bicep.
“What on earth—”
“The Circle revived the flag and scarf signal system from the old guard leather scene,” Nora explained. “We revised it quite a bit to suit the specific clientele that comes here. The scarves are signals or advertisements. Here white means you’re an S&M virgin who only wants to observe. Should keep the wolves at bay.”
“Should?” Zach asked skeptically. “I really need a stop signal? A simple ‘no, thanks’ wouldn’t do?”
“Trust me, as gorgeous as you are, Zach, you would be in big trouble down there without a little armor on.”
“Wouldn’t red make for a better stop signal?” Zach asked, not wanting to be labeled as a “virgin” anything.
“A red scarf would signal you were into blood-play.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Could be worse,” Nora said as she finished knotting the scarf around his arm. “It could be a brown scarf.”
“And brown means?”
The young woman and Nora gave each other conspiratorial glances.
“Keep the wolves at bay…should I be nervous, Nora?”
Nora didn’t answer. She snapped open the black case and took out a riding crop, black with white braiding and quite professional-looking. She took a step back and twirled the crop with stunning expertise. With a quick flick she struck it against her own leather-clad calf. The sound echoed down the hall like a gunshot.
“Kingsley Edge was the first person who put a riding crop in my hand. It was like Arthur with Excalibur.” She winked at the girl and the girl could only smile in awe. Zach tried not to roll his eyes. Disheartening to think Nora had better luck with women than he did.
“Come, Zachary,” Nora said, tapping her leather-clad calf with the crop.
“Yes, mistress,” he said, with minimal irony.
Nora started to turn but stopped in midstep.
“Tell me your name,” she ordered the girl.
“Robin,” she replied.
“Ah, a little bird,” Nora purred. She reached out and caressed the girl’s burning cheek with the back of her hand. “I’ll remember that.”
Nora lowered her hand and stepped away. She pushed the down button on the elevator and the door slid open. They entered and Zach saw there was only a down button inside.
“This elevator only goes down?”
“Apparently so.” Nora held the handle of her crop in her right hand and the tip in her left. She held it, he discovered with a jolt of recognition, like a scepter. Even her posture, usually intimate and conspiratorial, had transformed. She held herself like a queen, her chin high, her back straight. She wore the hauteur well.
“Then how will we get out?”
Nora looked at him as if the thought had never occurred to her.
“I suppose we won’t.”
“That girl worships you but she doesn’t know you’re a writer. How did she know you, Nora?”
“Down here everyone knows me. Oh, and to answer your earlier question,” she said as the elevator slowed. “Yes, you should be nervous.”
He heard the muted grinding of the elevator coming to a shuddering stop. The doors opened. Nora turned her face to the dark outside the doors, and in a low voice said, “Let the wild rumpus begin.”
Nora stepped forward and across the threshold. Zach called her name as she disappeared into the dark. Her hand reached back; Zach grasped it and let her pull him across blindly into the abyss. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust. Zach stepped back when he realized he now stood teetering at the top of a steep staircase. But Nora stepped forward and went down, and he had no choice but to go down with her.
He felt the music before he even heard it. It beat into his chest, a pounding, visceral symphony of violence. Nora descended the staircase, and he had to trust her since he could barely make out his own feet below him. As they reached the middle of the staircase a deafening roar erupted as the throngs below recognized Nora. When they reached the bottom step a horde of near naked bodies congregated to throw themselves at Nora’s feet. She brushed past them, kicked some away, and swatted a few dismissively like flies with her riding crop. The more viciously she dealt with them, the more they groveled.
Looking around, Zach saw sights his eyes could process but his mind could not. Above him hung bodies hoisted high on suspension harnesses. A woman in leather dragged a man to a cross and lashed him to it. A line of people queued up to take turns flogging him. A naked woman was tied spread-eagle to a large spinning wheel. A huge bear of a man whipped her as the wheel turned and turned. Another woman strapped to an X-Bar volunteered her services to a man covered in head-to-toe vinyl except for the part of him in her mouth.
Into all this wet, red hell Nora strode without blinking, without flinching, without missing a step. She floated light and buoyant across the black waters, her eyes burning like flags afire. Zach imagined they could be seen for miles.
She pulled him through the herd of admirers toward an open wrought-iron elevator shaft at the other side of the floor. Guarding the elevator was a man roughly the size of a house wearing chaps and a spiked dog collar. Nora transferred her riding crop from her right hand to her left, and with her free right hand delivered a slap so fierce to the man’s face that Zach winced.
Zach moved forward ready to take the brunt of the man’s retaliation, but he merely smiled, bowed to Nora and stepped aside.
Nora stepped into the elevator and Zach followed.
“What the hell was that?” Zach demanded, referring to the slap.
“The password,” she called back.
No doors closed on the lift as it started to rise. Zach huddled near the back wall for safety, but Nora stood at the very edge and blew a kiss to the howling, cheering crowd below.
The elevator brought them three stories up to an old world bar. Tables of black lacquer sat everywhere and at the center of each pale yellow candles burned and dripped wax over the shiny surfaces. Behind the bar hung a huge mirror and every sort of alcohol one could conceive of. The din of the crowd was still audible but distinctly subdued. A portion of the bar opened like a balcony. Zach could see the chaos still raging below.
Nora brought him to a table near the center of the bar. She stood by her chair and waited. Seconds later a dark-eyed, well-muscled young man wearing low-slung leather pants came up behind Nora and pulled her chair out for her.
“Have a seat, mistress,” he said. “If it pleases you.”
Nora laughed and turned in her chair to face him. He knelt at her feet and waited with a smile.
“Griffin Randolfe Fiske,” she said in delighted recognition. She put the tip of her riding crop under his chin and forced him to meet her eyes. “What the hell are you doing down there, you dirty Dom?”
“Just seeing how the other half grovels,” Griffin said, running his hand through his near-black hair. Even on the floor on his knees, it was obvious to Zach Nora’s friend was no submissive.
Zach guessed Nora’s friend was in his mid-twenties. Handsome and tan with armband tattoos around both biceps, Griffin appeared to be a close friend of Nora’s—very close.
“Who’d you piss off this time?” Nora flicked the little silver tag hanging off his collar.
“The usual.”
Nora shook her head.
“You know S?ren has the right to revoke your key, Griff,” she warned, casually twirling the riding crop in her nimble fingers.
“Yes, but you like me so he won’t.”
Nora gave him a sidelong glare with a smile underneath.
“I don’t like you. I tolerate you.”
“Yeah, you tolerated my brains out in Miami two months ago.”
Nora scoffed. “I was feeling unusually tolerant that day.”
“Weekend,” Griffin corrected. “Who’s blue eyes over here?”
Zach started as he realized Nora’s friend was now sizing him up.
“Master Griffin Fiske, meet my editor, Zachary Easton,” she introduced them.
“A pleasure to meet you.” Zach reached forward to shake Griffin’s hand. But Griffin kissed the center of his palm instead. Zach yanked his hand back.
“He’s gorgeous, Nora. Hot accent, too. Fucked him yet?”
Nora shrugged. “Just a blow job.”
Zach had the sudden urge to throttle Nora.
“Blow job on a British guy?” Griffin asked with some concern. “You’re a braver bitch than I. No offense,” Griffin said, turning to Zach. “I have a foreskin phobia.”
“Zach’s Jewish.”
Griffin nodded his approval. “Mazel tov.”
“Griffin, are you going to get our drink order anytime soon or will I have to report you to a certain someone for dereliction of duty?”
“Drink order, mistress. Give it to me.”
“Zach, do you want anything?”
Did he want anything? He wanted to get back in the Aston Martin right now and head straight for home. He’d thought he’d lived a wild life before he and Grace married—dozens of lovers, sex in cars, in parks, once with the maid of honor in the bathroom during a wedding reception, twice with the daughter of the dean of his college…loads of drinking, carousing, wild nights followed by tired but happy next mornings. But nothing he’d ever done compared to what was going on right in front of his eyes. A girl no more than twenty-five was being dragged by her hair past their table by a man about his age. He pushed her onto the elevator floor and put his foot on the back of her neck. Nora and Griffin barely even glanced in their direction.
“Anything that will put me into a coma,” Zach decided.
“No comas tonight. The Circle’s got a two-drink maximum,” Nora said.
“Two-drink maximum?”
“Griffin, explain,” Nora ordered.
“You see, blue eyes,” Griffin said, still kneeling on the floor. “This place doesn’t actually exist. No one knows it’s here. Not the cops, not the IRS, nobody but members, and the guy who runs this joint has so much blackmail shit on every member that we don’t breathe a word about this place to outsiders. So to avoid any unnecessary scrutiny, we play it very safe down here. No drugs, very little alcohol and safe words, safe words, safe words.”
“So, two-drink maximum,” Nora finished. “Better make it a good two.”
“Gin and tonic,” Zach said, picking the first hard drink that came to mind.
“Just mineral water,” Nora said.
“Oh…” Griffin said, his dark brown eyes turning gold with mirth. “Sounds like somebody wants to play tonight.”
“Up. Go,” Nora ordered and Griffin jumped straight from the floor to his feet in kip-up—a move Zach had only seen in the occasional kung-fu movie.
“Such a punk,” Nora said, watching him walk away. “Thinks he’s a sex ninja.”
“Friend of yours?” Zach asked.
“Kink buddy. But he talks too much so I have to gag him every time we fuck. Cute, isn’t he?”
“Delightful. He’s…” Zach didn’t complete the question.
“Bisexual. Very.”
“Was it absolutely necessary to tell him that we—”
“I blew you. You liked it. Get over it,” she said as a naked woman wearing only a tail feather held in place in a way Zach didn’t want to think about sashayed past their table. Nora didn’t even bat an eyelash at her. “Ever heard of John Fiske?”
“Of course. Chairman of the stock exchange, isn’t he? He’s your friend’s—”
