NightWhere

Chapter Three

Deeper

The anxiousness that had plagued her earlier was gone now, thanks to the warmth and power of wielding the whip. Sometimes she just needed to be reminded of what she really needed. Amelia could fight against herself, but she would never win. She needed what NightWhere gave as much as she needed food or sleep.

Amelia worked her way to the back of the club and past the beginner’s flogging racks to an arched doorway in a shadowed corner. The entry was cordoned off with a red velvet rope, but Amelia stepped over the barrier and knocked. The door opened slightly at the touch of her knuckles, and without being asked, Amelia held her wrist out. Someone inside shone a small black light across her skin, and the snake there shimmered and glowed in the purple-hued light; the snake looked almost alive as the flash moved over it.

The hand disappeared and Amelia followed it inside.

The door closed behind her and the boom and throb of the Blue Room’s sound system suddenly disappeared. In its place, she heard a more appealing sound. The sound that made her blood pump faster. The sound that made her thighs grow damp and her groin warm. Her whole body, in fact, underwent a change as she stepped past the candle flames on either side of the room and heard the first few screams from beyond the foyer, back in the dark recesses. She took a deep breath and the stress of the week slid away from her as quickly as she shed her clothes. Once stripped, Amelia walked past the first dark curtain. The red lights trained from the ceiling and floor accentuated the road map of her scars, but Amelia didn’t care. She would make new ones tonight. Deeper ones. Always deeper…

“I’ve been waiting for you,” a man’s voice said.

A hand grabbed her by the hair and yanked her sideways, into a room cloistered by curtains dark as blood.

“It’s been too long,” he said.

Amelia looked up into his angry, dark eyes and matted black hair and grinned.

“I’ve missed you too, Gordon,” she said, reaching out to touch his bare, thick biceps. She trailed her fingertips down the gentle curves of his ribs and then brought them forward, teasing across his groin to the edge of the waist of his shorts. She began to work on the buckle of his belt, but Gordon slipped his hands around her wrists and forced her hands away from him. He yanked her backwards. Something sharp stabbed Amelia in the back, and she strained her neck, trying to see what. As she did, something pinched her skin again and again.

“Fuck,” she complained, and then looked at the wall and said it again, only this time it was more in a tone of admiration than complaint. “Fuuuuuck!” she said.

Gordon hoisted her wrists into the air and into two waiting leather shackles. He quickly pulled them tight and then he bent and slipped cuffs anchored to the wall near the floor around her ankles as well.

Amelia felt her breath catch as she considered what was about to happen. She couldn’t escape her bonds by leaning forward, and if she leaned back…her skin would be pierced by a hundred points of steel. The pinching she had felt was because the wall was lined in long, sharp nails, all pointing outward. She was bound against a vertical bed of nails.

Gordon bent to retrieve something that looked like a long black baton. Then Amelia saw what hung from the end of it, and her eyes widened. Her blood warmed, as her heart began to pound faster, long before the first blow. Terror tied inside anticipation. The sweat flowed instantly under her arms.

He held a cat-o’-nine-tails. Only…the end of each small whip glittered in the red light.

The glitter of metal.

Hooks.

“My wife was a complete bitch tonight,” Gordon said. “So I just want you to know that I need this just as much as you do.”

From somewhere not too far away came a moan of orgasm, followed quickly by a bloodcurdling scream.

Amelia saw something move on the far side of the room-the curtains shifted. She saw the pale jaw and black-pit eyes of a Watcher take position. They never missed an exhibition of pain.

“Let’s begin,” Gordon said. He smiled and raised his arm.