Page 69 of Wait for Him

I settle into the booth and let myself look around. I'm still not entirely sure what I'm searching for tonight. I just know the tightness that's been sitting between my shoulders all day has started to ease.

At a table to the left of the stage, a couple is entertaining themselves beneath the edge of the woman's skirt. Her legs are parted, his attention fixed on her while hers remains firmly on the dancers.

I smile into my drink.

This is the part I love.

People come through those doors carrying every stupid rule they've ever been handed about what they're allowed to want, who they're allowed to want it from and how loudly they're permitted to enjoy themselves. Then, little by little, they start putting those rules down.

Sometimes literally with their pants.

Fuck, if Michael had even the faintest idea what his big sister gets up to on the top floor of a building he doesn't know she owns, he'd require medical supervision.

And the board?

Jesus.

If they could see their buttoned-up Corporate Counsel sitting here with a leash in her hand, they'd clutch their collective pearls hard enough to turn the strands into shrapnel.

RAGs is five floors of dark velvet, low light and extremely well-organized indecency.

The first two floors are green, mostly social spaces where people can drink, flirt, negotiate, watch or finally say a curiosity out loud without someone assuming that speaking it automatically means consenting to it. Sometimes the conversation goes somewhere. Sometimes it doesn't. Both outcomes are considered equally successful.

Levels three and four are amber, which is where we teach. Workshops, demonstrations, guided experiences, rope work, impact play, communication, safety. Questions are encouraged because ignorance mixed with confidence is how people get hurt, and I've spent far too much money on this place to let anybody damage another human being because they were too embarrassed to ask where the fucking nerve endings are.

The fifth floor is red.

Private suites.

Approved members only.

Nobody gets up there because they're rich, famous, important, attractive, or convinced the rules are for lesser mortals. Every member is vetted. No exceptions. No favors. Curious visitors can purchase a single day pass, but they stay on green and they only get one. If they're serious after that, they apply like everyone else.

People think the color system is branding.

It isn't.

It's the bones of the place.

To everyone here except Edison, my general manager, I'm just another member. I pay my dues, carry a membership card and keep my ownership buried under enough corporate paperwork that nobody casually connects Rosalie Bennett of Sullivan & Associates with the woman holding the deed to five floors of consensual kink.

I prefer it that way.

My professional life and this one have absolutely no reason to meet in a well-lit room. The optics alone would send half the board into cardiac arrest, and I refuse to have RAGs treated like some dirty little scandal because a group of men in expensive suits are frightened by a flogger.

So I keep the worlds separate.

Cleanly.

By the time something finally catches my attention, I've been nursing my whiskey for nearly an hour.

A Domme passes my table with her submissive on a leash and my eyes immediately follow. She's tall, beautifully put together, her grip on the leash relaxed but deliberate. The man beside her wears a black leather collar, the chain running from it with a quiet metallic clink to the strap wrapped twice around her palm.

She notices me watching and slows.

Her gaze drops to my crossed legs, lingers there with open interest, then travels back up to my face.

I hold her gaze for a moment before giving her a small nod.