The Businessman's Tie (The Power to Please, Book 1) (4 page)

We ordered more drinks even though I didn’t think I needed
another one. We spent our time nursing our cocktails while Lilly giggled over
the sight of several bar patrons with particularly outrageous garb.

Eventually, she pointed out an area in the back of the room
which appeared to be a hallway. A sign over the entry proclaimed “VIP. No entry
without invitation.”

“I think there are rooms back there where you know, they do
stuff.” Her voice was too loud, I thought. She was getting tipsy.

A VIP area. Good grief. Lots of clubs had that. It was
nothing more than a scam to trick shallow suckers into overpaying for booze. A
VIP area was no proof that this was a sex club. How disappointing.

Now that the first excitement of possibility had worn off, I
noticed that we weren’t the only people who were staring. We, in fact, were
being stared at by the other club patrons. Some of them simply glanced our way
then moved on. Some were rude and let their gazes linger on Lilly and me. I
couldn’t tell exactly what their expressions were saying, but it was either
“who the hell are these women trespassing on our turf,” or “yum, fresh meat.” Hard
to say which.

Lilly appeared to notice none of this. She chattered away
about this and that, and how ooh, don’t you think those heels would give you
bunions and so on. I half-listened.

Some of the looks we received were starting to unnerve me,
and I began a plan to escape, either with or without Lilly, should it become
necessary. Fresh meat. That couldn’t be what those people were thinking. But if
they were ... I shouldn’t have been feeling anticipation. A growing excitement.
A desire to flee. A greater desire to stay.

The colored strobes of the moving spotlights and the
thumping underbeats of the dance music acted on my senses, making me feel
connected to the pace of the club. And sexy. Connected and sexy. What the hell.
Of course that’s how I felt. These places were designed to seduce, to make you
want to dance and flirt and rub against someone.

I realized I’d had one cocktail too many.

A tall man approached our table. I elbowed Lilly and told
her to shoot him her best fuck-off stare. She began to do just that, but when
she looked over at him, she stopped, her expression a blank still life. An
instant of something else replaced the blankness, awareness perhaps, or fear.
No, not fear. What was it? Regardless, she didn’t give him her fuck-off stare
so he strolled up to our table.

Once I got a closer look at him, I was glad she hadn’t run
him off. He was good-looking, in a fierce kind of way, with a long, lean body.
I guessed he was in his early-30s, close to my age. He wasn’t wearing leather,
sporting instead a black, lightweight shirt of natural fibers. The collar of
his shirt was open and he’d rolled up the sleeves to just below his elbows. The
shirt was tucked with conscious sloppiness into a pair of dark, well-fitted
jeans.

He wore his black hair in a longer style, most of it pushed
behind his ears, the ends curling where they hit his shoulders. He made me
think of a continental playboy. I expected him to have an accent when he spoke.
Turned out, he didn’t. Just a plain old American accent.

“Lilly,” he said, “It’s good to see you. It’s been a while.”
He smiled when he said it. He had sexy lips, well-defined.

Lilly squirmed, nodded jerkily, then looked back down at her
drink and appeared to develop a fascination with the swizzle stick, twisting it
in her fingers and eyeing it uneasily.

“Who’s your friend?” he asked, then turned to me.

He had the most stunning blue eyes. They were that uncommon
light blue, like wolf eyes. Something uncurled in my lower belly, a twist of
attraction. It wasn’t at all like what I felt the first time I saw The
Businessman. But it was something. It was most definitely something.

I smiled while Lilly made an awkward introduction. His name
was Michael Weston. When he asked if he could sit, I readily nodded and scooted
over toward the center of the booth to give him room to sit next to me.

I wanted to talk to him, but I couldn’t ignore Lilly’s
apparent discomfort. Quickly, before Michael got settled, I whispered to her,
“Is he the one who stood you up tonight?”

“No,” she said, her voice clipped.

“An ex?”

“No.”

“Oh,” was all I said, then dropped it.

Michael leaned back in the booth beside me, his arm draping
casually on the top of the back cushion. He was a man who knew how to be at
ease.

“So, Nonnie, how do you know Lilly?” he asked.

I told him how we met that night, and that we decided to
come check out this place because she’d been here before, and so on. He
listened with keen interest and kept a friendly smile on his face.

“And what’s your verdict?” he asked. “Do you think this is a
sex club?”

“I have no idea. Maybe you could tell me.”

“Better yet,” he said, “Why don’t you tell me what you hope
it is?”

I smiled. I couldn’t help but be flattered that this
extremely attractive man was flirting with me. I thought to myself that I was on
something of a roll lately.

“Well, I guess I hope it’s a sex club,” I answered. “If it’s
a regular club I won’t have a good story to tell my friends when they ask what
I did this weekend.”

“Ah, I see. Then you’re more interested in a story than the
truth.” His natural charm and relaxed grin took the implied sting out of his
statement.

“I wouldn’t say that. I was just being flippant, really.”

“You’re attractive when you’re flippant.”

Oh my. Lilly interrupted the exchange, saying she had to go
to the bathroom, then rushed off.

Michael and I didn’t even glance at her as she left. We
chatted and lightly flirted for a few more minutes, mostly discussing the decor
of the club and its patrons. Soon, the conversation turned back to the true
nature of the nightclub.

He leaned toward me. “Flippancy aside, tell me, what really
does interest you more? Fantasy or reality?”

“I think there’s a place for both, depending on the
circumstances.”

He glanced down at my hands which were holding my drink,
then back up at my face. “What if I were to tell you that this place both is
and is not a sex club?”

“I’d say I don’t know what you mean.”

“It is a sex club in that some people come here to find
others of a similar mindset, and to engage them sexually. For them this is
real. They live a certain kind of life. Other people come here out of curiosity
and find that they’re unprepared for the reality of their fantasies. For them,
this isn’t a sex club; it’s a place of titillation and fancy.”

“In other words,” I said, “some are tourists and some are
locals.”

“Exactly. And you can’t tell which is which by what they’re
wearing.”

I regarded the crowd. A woman in skintight leather pants and
a vest three sizes too small tottered precariously on a pair of six-inch-high
heels. Tourist or local?

“What about her?” I asked. “Which is she?”

He glanced at her then back to me. “She’s a local,” he said
with no hesitation.

“How do you know?”

His eyes bore into mine, as if he were debating his next
words. “I know because several months ago I took her into one of the rooms in
the back. I stripped her naked, chained her to a rack and whipped her until I
didn’t feel like whipping her anymore.”

Good God. I think I flinched backward. My stomach clenched.
Was he serious? He was serious. No one could see his face and doubt his
veracity.

I scanned the crowd to find the woman again. There she was.
She seemed fine. She was flirting with an older, grey-haired man wearing khaki
pants. Would he be the next man to whip her? Would he do it tonight? Would he
wear those pants?

Good God.

I suddenly found it impossible to look at Michael, and I had
no idea what to say.

I jumped a bit when he touched my hand, but I didn’t pull
away.

“It’s okay that you’re a tourist ... for now,” he said.

I shook my head. No, I was neither tourist nor local. I was
just out on a lark. “I’m ... you took me aback is all. I didn’t expect —”

“Don’t deny your curiosity.” His tone soothed the edge off
my discomfort. “How can you ever know what you want if you don’t ask yourself
what it might be?”

He held my hand in his large, tanned one. “Look at that lady
over there, the one wearing the green sequined dress.”

I saw her. I couldn’t miss her, actually, what with the
sparkles and all.

“She’s a tourist,” he said. “There are some things we might
know about her. Maybe a boyfriend once gave her a playful swat on her butt
while he was fucking her, and because she felt a little thrill, she wondered
what it would be like if he had struck her again, harder.”

“Or maybe her husband once tied her to the bedposts,” he
continued. “Lightly of course, so she could easily free herself if she wanted.
It excited her, but she wondered what it would be like to be bound so tightly
she could never free herself on her own. She wondered how it would feel to
truly be at someone else’s mercy, someone who could and would do as he
pleased.”

At some point while he spoke, I turned my eyes to his.
Beautiful blue eyes. Roguish eyes making sensual promises that I had no doubt
he could keep. And I thought, perhaps he was right. Maybe I was like the woman
in the green dress. But he didn’t know it all. He couldn’t know about a dark
corridor and a silken tie.

“I think you’ve had such moments,” he said, “or something
like them, and I think that’s what brought you here tonight. You didn’t want a
story to tell your friends. You wanted an actual experience.”

“Perhaps,” I said, the most I was willing to admit.

“We could find out, you know.”

“Nooo, not a chance. You’re not strapping me down and
whipping me. Hell no.”

He chuckled softly and took my hand. “You misunderstand me.
My mistake. I’d never treat a visitor in such a way, unless, of course, she
begged me.”

I gulped. “Yeah, well ...”

“No worries. You think I’m moving too fast, but that’s just
how we are here.” He shrugged. “We’ve learned not to beat around the bush and
waste our time on small talk, or at least not much of it. Whether you’ll say it
or not, you know why you’re here. Everyone knows why they’re here, so why
pretend otherwise?”

I wondered. There was an honesty in his words that I couldn’t
deny. I had gone out that evening seeking a man who would probably be right at
home in this club. So what did that say about me? When Lilly offered to bring
me here, I didn’t say no. I wanted to come and see, and not because of a silly
reason like entertaining my friends.

So yes, there was truth in what he said. Yet there was also
a lack of concern, a something that was too casual for me, too anonymous.

“I understand what you’re saying,” I said.

“Good.” He squeezed my hand. “What do you say we try an experiment?”

“What kind of experiment?”

He laughed at my expression, which I’m sure was the
definition of skeptical. “Only a little something to help us begin to know what
it is you want.”

“I don’t know.”

“Hear me out.” One of his fingers lightly stroked my palm. I
enjoyed the tiny shivers it sent up my arm.

“Okay,” I said.

“I find you very attractive. I think you know this.”

“I guess, yes.”

“And you’re attracted to me.”

I reluctantly admitted that I was.

“I like many things that I can see of you,” he said, “but
right now, there are two things I’d like to see more of. One is here.” He
released my hand and ran a feathery touch across the base of my throat, near my
collarbone.

I allowed it.

He continued, slow and sexy. “You’re beautifully delicate
right here. Many women are. It’s one of my favorite spots on a woman’s body.
It’s the hollow between your bones.”

His fingers slid gently over my shoulders. “I like to
imagine I’ve poured a spoonful of honey in that delicate place and that I’m
going to lick it off of you.”

Mmm. I could practically feel him doing it.

“That’s one thing,” he said. “The other thing is cleavage.
Your breasts seem to be lovely from what I can see. They suit your frame. I’d
like to see more, but not all. Not yet. I just want to see the top of your bra,
to see the upper curve of your breasts and the valley between.”

He leaned back into his leisurely reclined pose, picked up
his drink and smiled at me. “So the experiment is this. Right here, right now,
I want you to unbutton three buttons on your shirt and then pull it open far
enough that I can see your collarbones and the tops of your breasts. Sounds
like a fair beginning.”

“But there are people everywhere. They’ll see.”

“So? It’s not like you’ll be naked.”

“Well, no but —”

“Many of them are wearing practically nothing and no one’s
fussing about it. I assure you that showing some bra won’t get you arrested for
public indecency. Not here, anyway.”

“What about Lilly?” I felt disconcerted and then guilty when
I realized I hadn’t given her a single thought since she left. Where was she?
Good grief. I was as bad as my friends. “She should be coming back soon. How
long has she been gone?”

“Lilly already came back,” he said to my surprise. “She took
a look at us, had the good manners not to interrupt and went elsewhere. Where
she went, I don’t know, or care.”

“Really? I mean about Lilly seeing us and leaving?”

“Lilly isn’t as innocent as she appears. Like you.”

I had a passing thought that he and Lilly must be more than
casual acquaintances, but there was a greater concern at the moment: Michael’s
tourist test.

“Okay, I’ll forget about Lilly for now,” I said. “But look,
I don’t know what to do ... about this test of yours.”

I honestly didn’t know. I wanted to do it, deep down I knew
I did, but I also didn’t want to. The idea made my heart beat faster. It also
made me afraid. I don’t think the fear was of Michael or of other people seeing
me in my bra. It was a fear of something more than that.