Chapter One

Kelly

Sara yelled to me over the music that stretched to every corner of the club. “Kelly, seriously, this time. Look at his ass, like goddamn. Have you ever seen anything more edible than that? I could take a bite out of him, preferably repeatedly.”

It barely sounded above a whisper to me. The sound waves were reverberating through my head as if a bongo drum was producing them.

The strobe lights moved in wide, arching circles and slow, lazy movements over the sweaty, straining bodies in the crowd. The predominantly red lights created a dark atmosphere of needful sin. A girl could get into a whole heap of trouble in a place like this, but then again, apparently, that was what I was here for.

I was out of my element, and while I wanted Sara’s strength of will and bold brashness, I didn’t know if I had what it took to be here and look like I belonged.

But in my universe, there weren’t many places Sara and I fit in at all. If the people around us had any inclination to what we were, the matter of whether or not we belonged here would be the least of our problems.

In this world of fetish, there was a great deal of black and white and a tiny grey area. The feeling of relaxed sexuality hung in the air around all of us, tempting us to degrees that we wouldn’t usually have taken anywhere else. It warped our perceptions of the world outside these walls, causing us to forget who we were the moment we passed through the front doors.

“You’ve said that about every other guy here tonight,” I kidded, unsure if I had spoken loud enough for her to hear but without the self-confidence to yell in a public place, no matter how thrumming and loud the beat was.

Sara adjusted her leather and steel-spiked bracelets, which encircled her wrists, as she surveyed the crowd. She referred to it as window shopping. Could I ever be that brazen?

I could barely meet anyone’s eyes, let alone admire their assets.

I hoped for tonight I could be someone else, or I wasn’t going to last the next hour. If not, I certainly wasn’t going to meet the high expectations Sara had set for me.

I was just a small-town girl trapped in a big city that wasn’t forgiving of me. I stared at my newly black nails, the length glowing red under the laser lights that bisected the people and their skimpily clad bodies.

“So, what do you think of this place?” Sara leaned into me and slid an arm around my waist.

I was hiding, sitting on a small bar tabletop, the deepest one in the shadows I could find. Here, I could better see the others, but I was shrouded to cover my incessant shyness. I knew my timidity irritated Sara, but she refrained from complaining about it this time.

She was trying to bring me into this slowly. I had so many problems dealing with my needs in the past, and she had finally figured out that leaving it up to me wasn’t working. To me, my needs were disgusting but very necessary for the continuation of my existence.

“I have never been more nervous in my life. I doubt I would be this scared if you had dragged me to a porno convention naked,” I replied. I could see Sara turning the possibility over in her mind. I needed to give her even more ideas on how to broaden her horizons.

“We could do that.” Sara grinned evilly, and my stomach shrank at her expression.

I knew I had just pushed her to measures she wouldn’t usually have taken if I had just kept my mouth shut.

“Or you could just grow some balls while we are here and play. Possibly even take advantage of what this place has to offer,” Sara said with her voice filled with meaning.

Play was the optimum word when I thought of those around me.

Looking around, it wasn’t hard to figure out I would’ve been better off in a library or a PG-rated movie. I wasn’t even into horror flicks, and certainly not into leather and S&M.

Even still, the RedLine was a cool and upbeat fetish club in Vancouver, British Columbia, that made every Goth-inclined person, S&M enthusiast, and plain open-minded person in the Lower Mainland gravitate towards its ambiance of domination and subservience.

Everywhere I looked, every flavor was more than adequately taken care of.

A particularly gorgeous man was grinding up against a very tall brunette woman, whom I had seen with a few different men since we had arrived. They were both having fun, and I envied them for it.