Oh, high ceilings.
When Arthur and Maxence had been joking about “high ceilings,” they had meant that Cash knew a lot about sex clubs. They must all be built with tall ceilings or something.
She snickered.
Cash turned. “What?”
“Nothin’,” but she grinned at him.
He raised one eyebrow at her but kept walking.
Cash stopped at a door, opened it, and stood to the side, holding it for her.
She walked in and stepped aside, keeping close to the wall. Hot air wafted around her.
Odd, that the room was so warm. Her business suit seemed like too many layers of thick cloth for the small room. Anybody wearing normal clothes in here would sweat through their clothes in no time.
Oh.
She got it.
They had evidently come in the back door of the dungeon because the first thing that Rox saw when her eyes adjusted to the gloom was an enormous, carved door on the opposite side of the room like a doorway to Hell.
Cash closed the door behind them. When she turned around, the door was camouflaged, painted into the stone-bricked wall. Sconces on the walls glowed with orange bulbs as if they were pitch torches.
And there were apparatuses stationed around the room, odd skeletal structures like weird gym equipment that were empty of weights.
Her arms warmed, and she realized that Cash was standing right behind her, touching her.
She said, “I don’t know how anything in here is supposed to work.”
Cash ran his hands up her neck. “I do.”
His voice was about half an octave lower than usual, and it had a calmness, an unswaying determination that he didn’t usually have.
She cleared her throat. “Somehow, that isn’t reassuring.”
“It should be.” He stroked the back of her neck with his fingers. “Dilettantes get hurt in places like this. You’re safe with me.”
“Am I?”
“You’re always safe with me.”
“I’m a little scared,” she admitted.
He wrapped his arms around her from behind. “We can leave. We’ll go have a drink with The Dom and wait for Arthur and Maxence.”
“Give me a minute.”
The black iron and silver contraptions jutted into the air, shining and yet dark at the same time. Ropes and whips and spiked metal torture things hung in glass cases.
Rox clasped her hands in front of her. “Do you want to hurt me?”
“No.”
“Those things over there look like they’re for hurting people.”
“That’s not the point,” he said. “Unless you are both into that sort of thing, you shouldn’t hurt the other person just to hurt them.”
“And you’re into that sort of thing, hurting people.”
“No. I don’t like sadism or masochism. Everything done here should heighten the other person’s reaction so that when the pleasure comes—and it should—it is that much sweeter and more intense.”
Cruel whips and ties and chains and metal bars crowded the room. “Just looking at all this is making me nuts.”
Cash gently turned her around so that she faced the wall. “Then don’t look.”
“It doesn’t mean that all that stuff just disappeared. Just because I’m not looking at it doesn’t mean that it’s not there. Just because you refuse to acknowledge something doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to happen.”
He pressed her shoulders, moving her closer to the wall, and then blocked her view of the room with his broad shoulders. “But most of it doesn’t concern you. On your first day at Arbeitman, Silverman, and Amsberg, I didn’t hand you a stack of contracts and tell you to have them annotated and back to me by the next morning.”
She shook her head. “We sat down together, across from each other at a table, with several contracts and talked about important paragraphs and how you wanted me to handle something like that.”
“And how did you feel about that, afterward?”
“Confident,” she said, closing her eyes at the memory. He had gazed at her with those glamorous green eyes of his all day and spoken softly, smiling when she picked up on something. “Like I knew what to do and how to do it.”
“Safe,” he whispered.
“Yes.” Her voice was as breathy as if she was hypnotized.
“I always keep you safe.”
Physically, yes.
Professionally, absolutely.
She nodded, holding all the exceptions inside.
His breath brushed the back of her neck, and the cinnamon and musk of his cologne swirled around her. “In the rest of your life, you take care of everyone, and you are responsible for everything.”
“Yeah. I’m an adult. That’s what adults do.”
“For a few hours, give it to me.”