B grinned. She’d just gone into the dungeon. Not a great escape route to choose when fleeing an overzealous submissive. Good-bye, frying pan. Nice to meet you, fire. He sat back in the bubbling water. Why worry about Marla? She wouldn’t die tonight, the spirit in the Dumpster had assured him of that much. All his problems would still be waiting for him in the morning.
Someone slid into the water next to him, jostling a little—that was inevitable, given how packed the hot tub generally was—and then that someone said, “Hey, B. Didn’t expect to see you here.”
B opened his eyes. It was Marla’s friend, or associate, or lackey, or whatever, Rondeau. “Um,” B said. “It’s a total coincidence, I just came here to—”
“It’s cool,” Rondeau said. “I’m not exactly here on business myself, though I can’t speak for Marla.”
A willowy, pale blonde slid into the hot tub, sat in Rondeau’s lap, and began to nuzzle his ear. Rondeau winked at B. “I won’t even mention to Marla that I saw you, ’kay?”
“Thanks,” B said. “But it really is just a coincidence.”
“Marla doesn’t believe in coincidences. Events have gravity, she says, and when the same people and places and images and things keep popping up together, especially when you know something big is happening, that’s not coincidence. It’s confluence. It’s magic. So you know. Maybe we’ll be seeing you around.”
“Magic,” B repeated, but Rondeau didn’t seem to hear him. The blonde in his lap was doing something with her hand under the water that had wholly captivated his attention.
B leaned his head back again. Confluence. Sure. He could appreciate the sense in that.
Marla didn’t have a chance to look for Finch in peace, because she’d picked up something in the anteroom. “My name’s Jared,” he said. “I want you to whip me.”
“As much as I’d like to see you whipped,” Marla said, “I’m busy.”
That turned out to be the wrong thing to say, because now the moron thought she wanted to whip him. She hadn’t meant to encourage him, but with a masochist, it was hard to be discouraging. If she threatened to kick his ass, he’d goad her further in hopes of achieving that result. And if she really kicked his ass—not in some safe-sane-and-consensual way, but the way she increasingly wanted to—they’d throw her out of the party, and she’d blow her chance of seeing Finch.
Jared followed her down the hallway, and Marla kept hoping someone else would grab hold of his leash, or at the very least that it would snag on a doorknob, but no such luck. The house was nice, what Marla could see of it, though the decorations were a bit one-note—the pictures hanging on the walls were prints of Mapplethorpe’s nudes and framed programs from all-male revues, stuff like that. Made sense, if Finch was a pornomancer, but dully predictable.
The hallway ended at a small living room decorated with lots of white wicker furniture and a big-screen television playing porn. People in various states of undress sat around, probably recuperating from or gearing up for heights of sexual excess. The doorkeeper in the velvet cape was there, sitting on a bar stool, watching the television. “Excuse me,” Marla said.
The woman looked up and smiled. She was pretty, dark-eyed with full lips and a dark cast to her skin. “Mmm,” the woman said. “I wouldn’t mind licking your boots. But I’m working tonight—just taking a little break to rest my feet.” She wiggled her ankle, and Marla glanced down to see spike heels, the clasps held closed with little golden padlocks. “Finch likes to keep me on my toes.”
“You’re, uh, close to Finch?” Marla asked. Her admirer was hovering impatiently behind her, but she chose to ignore him.
“Oh, he doesn’t fuck me,” she said, laughing. “Though he’s told me my ass is as pretty as a boy’s, which I take as a compliment. He’s been helping to train me as a submissive.”
“You seem pretty bold for a sub in training,” Marla said.
The woman grinned and shrugged. “Like I said, I’m taking a break.”
“Is Finch around?” Marla said. “I need to talk to him.”
The woman looked at her again, more speculatively. “You don’t strike me as someone who wants sub training, and you look like you know how to be a dom already.”
Marla found herself strangely flattered. It was always nice to hear that she radiated confidence.