Mal replied with more silence.
"And now it's me who feels like that."
This time he added a thoughtful "hmm."
"Come on, Mal. Give me some actual advice. You've been doing the BDSM thing a lot longer than me." Mal was my best friend. We knew a lot about each other's sex lives. I knew full well that between when we met when he was ten and when I ran away to his house in England when I was sixteen, he'd started tying up the girls he liked.
"All I can tell you is it's very bad when one of you wants a relationship and the other one doesn't," he said.
"That's true in general," I said. "Not specific to BDSM. Seriously. I want her and I know I can establish total dominance over her if we're alone in a room together. But tell me how not to freak her out. What should I say to her?"
"You're the one with the fantastic chemistry with her. What do you think you should say?"
"Well, probably not 'hey, can I kidnap you again?'" I couldn't tell Mal, of course, that I might have a chance to see her in a kinky context again. I needed to figure out a vanilla strategy that would work better. "Maybe I ought to offer to take her out to a nice dinner. What's the best restaurant in the city?"
Mal snorted. "Something tells me an heiress is going to be unimpressed by displays of wealth."
"I didn't mean most expensive restaurant in the city. I meant, hey, let me treat you right this time. As opposed to carrying her off like a Viking with a sack of … of … whatever it was Vikings pillaged."
Mal started to laugh then, a slow chuckle that eventually put a wide grin on his face. "You're ridiculous," he said, and reached over to tousle my hair. "Are you at least writing lots of angst-ridden love songs?"
"Oh, yes," I assured him. "Can't wait to show you."
CHAPTER SEVEN
GRAVITATE
RICKI
As I made my way down the stairs to the dungeon, I could hear Gwen shrieking and I broke into a run, imagining all kinds of terrible things might be happening to her.
I hurried into the central room to find her strapped to a giant wheel against the wall, spinning around and around like some kind of carnival ride, while an auburn-haired woman kept it turning with pushes of her hand.
"Rickiiiiii! This thing is so fun! Aaaaaaaaah!" Gwen cried.
The woman's name came to me before I had to call her "hey you." Madison. Madison Rofel. She had been hired by my grandfather two years ago to work the club and according to her file was an aspiring dancer. "Madison, could you let her down? It's going to be difficult to have a conversation with her while she's playing the part of human Ferris wheel."
"Of course, Ms. Hamilton," she said, running her hand along the padded edge of the wheel to brake it.
Gwen came to a stop, her face flushed, bits of her straight blond hair stuck in her mouth, panting and giggling. "Whew! Oh my goodness I'm dizzy." Her wrists and ankles were secured to the spinning rack with heavy leather cuffs, lined with fleecy lambswool like you find in shearling bedroom slippers. "Ricki, you have to try this thing."
I suspected it wasn't as comfortable as bedroom slippers. "We have more important things to do right now. Besides, I think you've adequately tested it."
She giggled as Madison undid the buckles at her wrists. Gwen was in a polo shirt and khaki shorts, which made her look like she should be testing golf clubs, not gothic torture devices. "This is definitely ready for Saturday."
"Getting dizzy is a fetish now?"
"No, silly. That was just us having fun. It's much more likely they'll be strapped in the other direction,"-facing the wheel instead of facing the room, she meant-"and be flogged or whatever."
Or whatever. Sakura was right. I had known about the existence of the dungeon and of BDSM for years but I had always shied away from learning the details. "Well, I'm glad it's … adequate. What else do we need to check over down here?"
She stepped into her shoes and smoothed back her hair. "Madison and I were waiting for you before we checked the other rooms."
"Great. Lead on."
To my surprise Gwen turned to Madison and said, "Maddie, could you go upstairs for a while? I need some alone time with my big sister."
"Of course. Ping me when you need me." She handed a clipboard to Gwen, gave a little curtsy, and walked away. A few moments later I heard the beep of the main security door at the top of the stairs opening and closing.
"Are you training them to do that?" I asked.
"To do what?"
"Curtsy?"
"Oh tsk." Gwen waved her hand. "That's just Maddie playing around."
"Okay, whatever." Managing the club's hosts and hostesses was Gwen's job. Apparently her management style was pretty blunt. I probably would have said something like My sister and I can handle this. Why don't you get a cup of coffee? and expected her to get the hint.
We stepped into a side room that had a four-poster bed in it, with not-so-subtle leather straps hanging from the posts. Gwen checked the drawer of the nightstand for safe sex supplies.
"Pooh, there are only latex gloves in here."
"There's a whole box of condoms on the bar," I pointed out.
"That's not what I mean." She pulled the drawer open wider. "We've got condoms, lube, wipes, everything but nitrile gloves. For the people allergic to latex."
"We have members allergic to latex?"
"Well, no, but we might in the near future, so I'm making sure we have the right supplies. Oh, here they are." She dug a sealed plastic bag of purple gloves out from the back of the drawer and tucked them into the front. "Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about something."
"So I gathered."
As she pulled on the straps attached to each post, she said, "I wanted to tell you right away about this. Schmitt's trying to convince me we should let him run the club, and he said you'd go along with it."
I tried to keep my annoyance in check, but honestly, did he really believe he could play us off each other? No wonder he wanted to talk to us separately. "What an utter rat. He tried to convince me of the same thing, and I brushed him off."
"I get the feeling he's been the one really running things for a couple of years now," Gwen said, pulling herself up like a gymnast on the crossbar between the rear posts. "So he's probably not happy with us taking over."
"Well, tough cookies," I said.
She laughed as she landed lightly on the carpeted floor. "I thought you didn't like the idea of running this club."
"I don't! That doesn't mean I want Schmitt running it, though!"
"Okayyyy … "
"He's got to be the one who invited Grant to the party without checking with me."
"Oh, well, that's no good. No good at all." She led me to the next room, the spanking specialty room. A padded spanking bench stood in the center of the room and the wall was hung with paddles of many sizes and shapes. "I thought you were vaguely interested in him, though?"
"Not anymore," I said. "That was Schmitt's justification for it, though. I think he thought I wanted to cozy up to Grant and therefore it must be okay to invite him."
Gwen grimaced. "Well, for what it's worth, there were people in the club Grandpa didn't particularly care for."
"But he couldn't kick them out or they'd rat out the whole group," I said. "We can't un-invite Grant now that he knows. This is why I want control of membership! This is too important, and it's not Schmitt who will be dragged infamously through the papers forever if the secret gets out."
"Oh, I agree," Gwen said, riffling through the drawer of the dresser in the room. "Bandage scissors, flashlight … Yep, this one's good."
We moved on to the next room, which was the most dungeon-like of all the themed rooms, by which I mean it was set up like something from the Inquisition, complete with wall sconces that looked like flaming torches and iron manacles built into the walls. For all I knew it had been decorated by a set designer from the studio. The floor was a few steps down from the doorway, and the ceiling was arched like something from an underground catacomb. I had heard stories that a famous actor who had been good with a bullwhip liked this room the best because there was room to swing a whip in it.
I wondered what Axel thought of whips. I quickly quashed that thought. Sakura had convinced me Axel hadn't done anything wrong, so I figured now I really didn't have to call him. Now I just had to try to forget him. The sudden tightening of my stomach, the crinkle of my nipples, every time "Kidnap My Heart" came on the radio-that would go away after a while, wouldn't it?
Gwen flicked on the theatrical lighting first. Unaffected by the dramatic setting, she then found the switch for the main lights and brought them up full to make it easier to see what was in the supply drawer. She handed me the clipboard. "Here, be useful. Check off each thing as I find it."