Page 3 of Key of Kink

Grant would have scoffed. He’d have said real power didn’t wait.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

He was tall, dressed in a pair of leather pants that clung to long legs. His boots gleamed. His chest was bare beneath his leather jacket, revealing an intricate tattoo in black, swirling lines interspersed with angles.

Well fuck.

Dark eyes, a black, neat beard that hugged his jaw, glorious cheekbones…

He looked like someone who expected obedience, and I yearned to know if that was true. Part of me was yelling to get over there, to talk to him.

Not yet.

I stayed where I was, my hands clasped behind my back, watching, not hovering or drifting around the room as though I needed someone’s attention. I was simply there, letting the place settle around me. If I came back here, it wouldn’t be to be claimed. It would be to choose.

Power here didn’t feel one-sided. That mattered.

My gaze kept drifting back to him. He hadn’t moved. Then he lifted his eyes and met mine, and I smiled before I could stop myself.

His gaze sharpened, but it didn’t read as surprise or annoyance, more like… evaluation. Then he raised his eyebrows, as if he’d just realised I was worth paying attention to.

A shiver trickled down my spine.

Oh.

Yes.

If I stayed another minute, I’d do something reckless.

I turned my back on Mr Tall, Dark, and Dangerous, and walked back toward reception before I embarrassed myself.

“Seen enough?” the desk guy asked.

Yes and no.

I nodded, then glanced back at the doors. In that moment I knew two things.

One, I was coming back, because whatever Obsidian offered, it wasn’t just kink.

It was possibility.

And two?

Something had just shifted.

And I wanted to see how far it would go.

Chapter Two

Max Rivers

I liked rules because they were honest.

Rules didn’t pretend to be feelings. They didn’t lie about what they wanted. They existed to be followed or broken, and either way, the outcome was predictable.

Obsidian ran on rules: written ones, laminated ones, and a dozen unwritten expectations that separated the people who belonged from the people who wandered in hoping someone else would make decisions for them.

I slipped my arms into the sleeves of my leather jacket, the fabric cool against my chest. It didn’t feel like a harness kind of night, and besides, I wasn’t really sure why I’d come. Beyond the locker room door, I caught the blur of voices, the throb of music, the same old soundtrack of noise that accompanied every visit.