Page 57 of Nikolay

Amelia nodded once. “Already on it.”

Before I could add anything further, the main floor lights dropped.

Bodhan looked at me and grinned. “The wolves will have to wait. My demonstration tonight should make them blush.”

A single column of amber light cut through the purple dark at the back of the room, so clean and sudden it looked less like illumination than selection. Conversation died by degrees around it. Even vice, under the right conditions, knew when to hush.

Bohdan did not walk onto the stage. He vaulted onto it.

The movement was easy, athletic, almost insolently graceful, and entirely calculated to draw the eye. He landed in the center of the light, straightened his jacket with one smooth drag of both hands down the front, and accepted the microphone from a shadowed attendant who vanished again before the audience had time to notice him.

“My distinguished degenerates,” Bohdan said, and the room answered with a low murmur of amusement already half won to him. “Welcome.”

He paced once across the stage, not hurried, merely letting the amber light find the planes of his face and the precise dark cut of his suit. “For those new to our little institution, Obsidian believes desire is best practiced with information. Fantasy flourishes under many conditions. Safety, however, does not. So tonight, in the spirit of public service and private corruption, we are offering a demonstration.”

A few laughs moved through the crowd.

Bohdan’s smile sharpened. “Consent. Equipment. Technique. Communication. You may clap if inspired. You may take notes if educationally inclined. You may not, under any circumstances, touch the demonstrators unless invited, and I assure you, none of you are that compelling.”

The room liked him. It always had. He made authority feel like flirtation until one noticed it was still authority.

He turned slightly. “If our volunteers would join me.”

A male vampire emerged first from the wing in loose white linen trousers slung low on his hips, barefoot, bare-chested, beautiful in that hard, ageless way our species did so effortlessly when presented well. His skin glowed dark bronze beneath the amber light. Dark hair brushed the nape of his neck. He moved with the contained calm of someone who knew exactly what every eye in the room was doing and had no reason to fear it.

The witch followed him.

She wore nothing but a sheer length of pale silk draped artfully around her body; the fabric catching the light and revealing as much as it concealed: the full curve of her breasts beneath it, the soft line of her stomach, the slight dark triangle at the apex of her thighs. Her skin gleamed tawny gold under the stage lights. She was stunning, yes, but more than that she walked like a woman fully aware of her own consent, her own appetite, her own power in being watched and untouched.

Above them, rigging whispered. Then the suspension swing descended from the ceiling.

It was a beautiful piece of engineering—braided black ropes, polished steel hardware, wide leather straps shaped for thighs, wrists, and lower back. Nothing about it looked improvised. Load-tested. Balanced. Purpose-built. The leather caught the amber light with a low glow, already conditioned soft by use and care.

Bohdan gestured toward it with the pride of a curator unveiling a particularly fine relic. “Tonight’s apparatus is a supported suspension swing,” he said. “Designed for visibility, pressure distribution, and prolonged use without unnecessary strain. Please note the width of the straps. This is not decorative. Narrow restraints cut. Wide restraints support.”

The vampire guided the witch beneath the rigging with deliberate hands, touching her first at the waist, then pausing for her nod. Every movement was slow enough for the room to follow. He lifted one strap, tested the buckle, checked the anchor point overhead, then fitted the leather beneath her thighs and along the small of her back with the calm attentiveness of a man dressing a lover for worship rather than display.

Bohdan narrated as he worked.

“Before anyone gets excited and forgets themselves,” he said, “observe the sequence. Hardware check. Strap check. Body check. Verbal check. The point is not merely to put someone somewhere beautiful. The point is to keep them safe there.”

He turned to the witch. “Your safe words, darling.”

Her voice carried clearly through the microphone lowered toward her mouth. “Yellow for slow down. Red for stop.”

“And if you cannot speak?”

She lifted her right hand and opened her fingers once, then twice. A nonverbal signal. Planned. Practiced.

“Excellent,” Bohdan said. “Gentlemen, ladies, and others, if you learn nothing else tonight, learn this: if you are too aroused to discuss an exit, you are too aroused to begin.”

A murmur ran through the floor. Interest deepened. Bodies leaned toward the stage.

The vampire settled her fully into the swing. Her legs hung open now, supported under the thighs by the wide leather straps, her back cradled and angled so her body was offered both upward and outward. The silk had long since fallen aside to reveal her properly. Her breasts rose and fell with a quicker breath now. Between her thighs, the delicate flush of her arousal already gleamed.

I heard Bodhan still, but my body had begun making its own substitutions.

Not the witch.