Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
“Of course I don’t know the layout of the club. I’ve barely even been here before. I know there’s a kitchen, a safe room everyone likes to pretend doesn’t exist, a bar… and beyond that? I dunno. Sex rooms?”
My cheeks feel hot. I was trying to joke, but he does a terrible job hiding his smirk, and now I wish I could take that back.
“Sex rooms,” he says with a nod. “You could say that.”
We walk down a long hallway. Timeo systematically checks each doorway. “These are the private rooms that are all locked during the day.” As predicted, each is indeed locked.
“How sure are you that everyone’s gone home?”
“Positive. We’re the only ones here. I promised Sergio I would find you and he notified all the employees we weren’t opening tonight.”
There’s one more room in this hall we still have to check, the last room before we get to an open doorway lit from within.
I swallow.
I want to ask him who has access to the club, but for some reason, my voice doesn’t want to work. I’m not sure why I’m so nervous. I’m with Timeo and we’re both armed. It was probably snow or ice or something outside…
Still, I press a bit closer to him. He definitely doesn’t seem to mind.
“Who has access to the club?” I whisper. I suddenly have a pressing need to know. How far have I been kept outside this circle?
Timeo puts a silencing finger to his lips and tries the lock.
The handle turns.
My heart threatens to burst out of my chest as I mentally go through the steps of how to pull this trigger.
With a final push, Timeo throws the door open.
“Oh, God,” he says with a grimace. I cover my mouth and stifle a snort. He tries to close the door behind him, but I flick my foot out as a stopper before he does.
“No way. I wanna see.”
“Starla,” he growls. “We have a job to do and you’re not gonna let a few ropes distract you now.”
“A few ropes?” I say with a laugh. “That’s like calling Niagara Falls ‘a little waterfall.’”
Clearly, someone was in here, and that someone was very into bondage.
Lengths of ropes of every different size and kind and length are looped elegantly on black velvet mats. This room has obviously been set aside for just this purpose, as large, framed prints adorn the walls, each one more evocative and sensual than the last. Men and women, wearing nothing but…ropes.
My mind absolutely goes there.
Me, kneeling before Timeo, his beautiful face tight with concentration as he slowly winds the ropes about me.
Losing complete control to him.
Absolute surrender.
My heart thunders in my chest.
“Is that—” I ask, my mouth agape, just before he takes me by the arm and yanks me out of the room.
“Timeo, I wanna see.”
“Later,” he snaps. “You can see later.”
Well, he didn’t say no.
“I’m gonna hold you to that,” I mutter.
When we come to the bar, we find the source of the loud crash.
“Well, there ya go,” I say, pointing to some boxes askew on the floor. “Someone didn’t stack them properly. Probably rushing out before the snow came.”
“Yeah,” he says, frowning. “Right.”
“Can’t see anything else out of place, can you?”
He doesn’t respond, but bends and picks something up off the floor — a piece of paper? Empty package?
“What’s that?”
“Not sure,” he says, fingering it. “But I’m gonna find out. I want to check the video footage in the surveillance room to see if we missed anything.”
It’s the most boring hour of my life as I sit and literally twiddle my thumbs in the surveillance office. The only reason I don’t play with my gun is because for some reason, it was freaking Timeo out and he took it away. Grump.
I twirl in my chair, catching glimpses out the window at the drifts of beautiful white snow, the flakes reflecting like diamonds in the streetlights as they fall from the heavens.
And I remember…
Three years earlier
“If you think you can hide out here and I won’t find you, you’re wrong!” Timeo shouted, his voice echoing at the edge of the forest.
I covered my mouth with my hand to stifle a giggle. He liked to pretend he knew everything and that he couldn’t really be fooled, but Timeo had no idea I was hiding behind a literal wall of snow at The Castle.
We’d been buried under a veritable blizzard that closed the roads from here to Boston. Timeo and Sergio had arrived the night before to prepare for Christmas.
I loved Christmas at The Castle, the halls adorned like they were designed straight out of the old songs, with boughs of holly, sprigs of mistletoe. Twinkling lights like diamonds lassoed from the velvet night sky. The biggest evergreen tree I’d ever seen was firmly planted in the midst of the living room, ensconced in so many ornaments I could barely see the green branches. Silver boxes were nestled beneath those branches, and like a child I’d snuck a peek when no one was looking. My name was on lots of them.