Chapter 1
JESS’S BAR
~MARLOWE~
“He bought a what?” I gasped, nearly dropping my glass on the sticky floor beneath my feet.
Tannin rubbed at her ear, her expression suggesting she’d already regretted telling me. “A BDSM club,” she repeated, keeping her voice low enough that the customers at the other end of the bar wouldn’t get a free show.
Behind the counter, Jess stopped polishing his glass. He looked at Tannin, then at me, and finally set the glass down with a sharp click.
“Torin?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
Tannin nodded, pressing her lips together as if she were trying not to laugh.
“Your Torin?” Jess pressed, leaning his forearms against the bar.
I pointed at my own chest, staring at him in disbelief. “My Torin.”
“Your husband Torin?” he clarified, his eyebrows climbing higher.
“I feel like you’re enjoying this far too much,” I told him, narrowing my eyes.
“I absolutely am,” Tannin admitted, a grin spreading across her face as she lifted her drink.
Jess snorted, and I turned on him so quickly that he lifted both hands in surrender.
“Okay, first of all, why the hell did Torin buy a BDSM club?” I demanded, gripping my glass before it could suffer the same fate as my dignity.
“Because he signed the paperwork?” Tannin suggested, swirling the ice in her drink.
“That isn’t an answer,” I protested, shooting her a flat look.
“It’s technically an answer,” she countered, tipping her glass toward me.
“It’s technically the sort of answer that makes me want to throw something at you,” I warned her, tightening my fingers around my glass.
Jess reached for a bowl of lemons, looking entirely too comfortable with the direction this conversation had taken. “Maybe he always wanted one,” he offered.
I turned my head toward him with agonizing slowness. “Jess,” I said, fixing him with a warning stare.
“What?” he asked, pausing with a lemon in his hand.
“Please don’t help,” I told him, pointing a finger in his direction.
“I wasn’t trying to,” he replied, setting the lemon down.
“That’s the problem,” I muttered, shaking my head.
Tannin laughed, and I glared at her until she managed to regain enough control of herself to take a drink.
“How do you even know about this?” I asked, refusing to let the conversation wander into whatever deeply unpleasant direction Jess was already imagining.
“Rook knows someone who knows someone who was tracking the commercial sale,” she explained, lowering her glass to the bar. “Torin finalized the deed about ten days ago.”
Ten days.
I’d spent those ten days going to work, coming home, and pretending the distance between Torin and me was a sensible, healthy boundary instead of a physical ache that sometimes caught me off guard while I was doing something as stupidly ordinary as folding laundry. Meanwhile, my husband had apparently been buying a sex club.
A fucking sex club.
I turned toward the bottles behind the bar, focusing on a green bottle of Jameson because it was easier than looking at either of my friends.
“It’s called Black Velvet,” Tannin added, watching my face carefully.
I blinked, then looked back at her. “That sounds made up.”
“It isn’t,” she assured me, taking another sip.
“It sounds like the name of a place where people make questionable decisions while wearing entirely too much leather,” I remarked, shaking my head.
Jess nodded solemnly as he returned to polishing his glass. “Sounds accurate.”
I shot him a look. “Have you been there?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“No,” he replied, answering so quickly that I immediately distrusted him.
“That answer came out suspiciously fast,” I told him, leaning closer across the bar.
“Because I haven’t been there,” he insisted, meeting my stare.
“Sure,” I muttered, lifting my glass.
Tannin rested her elbows on the bar and leaned toward me. “It’s been operating in the lower district for years, Mar. This isn’t some new place he decided to open on a whim. He bought an existing business.”
“Thank you for the clarification,” I said, lifting my glass in a mock toast. “Somehow, that makes the entire situation so much less alarming.”
Her smile faded a fraction as she studied me. “Does it?” she asked quietly.
I took a drink instead of answering, because the problem wasn’t that Torin had bought a club. The man had money, business interests, and a habit of making decisions without consulting anyone who might tell him to get his head out of his ass. Buying another property wasn’t exactly shocking. The problem was this property.
Torin had spent years guarding the parts of himself he didn’t want the world to see. Even when we’d been married, there had been places inside him I hadn’t known how to reach, and I hadn’t understood how much he was keeping from me until everything between us came apart.
Now he’d bought a place designed around the very desires he’d hidden.
I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead and let out a slow breath. “Oh, this is fucking hilarious,” I muttered.
Tannin’s eyebrows drew together as she leaned closer. “What is?”
“Nothing,” I replied, dropping my hand.
“Marlowe,” she said, giving me a pointed look.
“Nothing,” I repeated, reaching for my glass.
Jess watched me from across the counter with that infuriatingly perceptive look he sometimes wore, the one that made me feel as if he’d spotted a crack in my armor and was politely waiting for me to notice it myself.
I hated that look. I hated it even more when he was right.
I reached for my glass again. “I just think it’s interesting,” I said, keeping my eyes on the amber liquid.
“Interesting?” Tannin repeated, tilting her head.
“Yes,” I answered, taking a deliberate sip.
“Your neck is bright red,” she pointed out, nodding toward me.
“It’s hot in here,” I insisted, tugging at the collar of my shirt.
Jess glanced at the thermostat behind the bar. “Sixty-eight,” he informed me, looking back at my face.
“Then I’m having a medical emergency,” I declared, pressing a hand to my chest.
“Should I call someone?” he asked, his expression perfectly straight.
“Only if you want me to haunt you after I die,” I warned him, pointing my glass in his direction.
“Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve threatened me,” he replied, picking up his polishing cloth again.
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve meant it,” I shot back, narrowing my eyes.
Tannin shook her head, still smiling, but she didn’t let me escape the subject. “You know, you could just ask him why he bought it,” she suggested, resting her chin on her hand.
I stared at her, then I laughed, because the alternative was admitting that the suggestion had landed somewhere far too close to the truth.
“Right. I’ll call my separated husband and ask for a guided tour of his new sex club,” I said, spreading my hands. “Maybe he’ll offer me a loyalty discount.”
Jess picked up another glass and gave it a thoughtful inspection. “You should ask about the loyalty discount,” he advised.
“I’m surrounded by terrible people,” I complained, turning back to Tannin.
“You’ve always had questionable taste in company,” she replied, lifting her glass with a smug smile.
“Apparently,” I muttered, looking down at my drink.
The word escaped before I could stop it, and I hated how much it sounded like surrender.
I checked the time on my phone. I had a few things to finish before I could leave, and for the first time all evening, I was grateful for the interruption. There was something useful about having a task in front of me, something that didn’t require me to think about Torin’s hands, his mouth, or the secrets he’d finally let me glimpse.
I slipped my phone into my bag, then pulled it right back out.
Tannin noticed of course. “Going to call him?” she asked, watching me reach for the screen.
“No,” I replied, unlocking my phone.
“Text him?” she asked, lifting one eyebrow.
“No,” I answered, scrolling through my contacts.
“Look up Black Velvet?” she suggested, a knowing smile tugging at her mouth.
I gave her a hard stare. “You’re enjoying this way too much,” I told her, setting my jaw.
She smiled into her glass. “Just checking,” she replied, taking another drink.
I opened my browser anyway. The club’s website appeared almost immediately. Black Velvet had a clean, understated design, nothing like the lurid spectacle I’d half expected. The home page emphasized membership, privacy, and rules. There were no photographs of people, no graphic displays, and no promises of anything except a carefully controlled environment.
I stared at the screen longer than I meant to. Torin had bought a place built around control, boundaries, and trust. The irony was almost impressive.
He’d understood those things well enough to build a business around them, but when it came to our marriage, he’d decided he could choose what I was allowed to know and call it protection.
My thumb hovered over the screen. I could close the page. I could put my phone away and leave the club where it belonged, on the other side of town, in a life that no longer had anything to do with me. Instead, I opened the contact list and found Rook’s name.
I didn’t call. I wasn’t ready to hear his voice, and I certainly wasn’t ready to explain why I wanted information about Torin’s new purchase.
I typed a message.
Do you know why Torin bought Black Velvet?
I stared at the words, my thumb hovering above the send arrow. This was a bad idea. I knew it was a bad idea. I'd spent four weeks trying to prove to myself that I could respect the distance I’d asked for, and now I was about to invite someone else into the middle of it because my curiosity had apparently decided it was in charge of my brain.
I hit send, then I set my phone facedown on the bar before I could do anything worse.
“There,” I announced, reaching for my drink. “I have successfully done absolutely nothing.”
Jess looked at the phone, then at me, before resting his forearms on the counter. “That’s one way to describe it,” he observed.
“Not a word,” I warned him, pointing at him over the rim of my glass.
He raised his glass in a silent toast.
I carried my drink to my lips and took a swallow, trying to ignore the flutter in my stomach and the growing certainty that I hadn’t just asked a question about a building. I’d opened a door, and for the first time in four weeks, I was the one who’d turned the handle.
