Sanctuary Read Free

was nothing more than lust.
    Focus…
    He turned back to Roya, smoothed her dark hair to one side and began a slightly harder rhythm, criss-crossing the hits over her shoulders, listening to her small panting breath, to her quiet moans.
    â€œHow are you doing?” he asked her. “More? Or are you feeling like you’re done?”
    He wanted to be done. He wanted to go after Devin, convince her to come into the Ring and do what she so obviously wanted. What he wanted, damn it.
    Focus. Focus or you will ruin Roya’s first flogging.
    Unforgivable.
    One last look.
    He stroked a hand slowly down Roya’s spine, felt her long shiver, knew she was into it, feeling all right. And as he smoothed his hand over this stranger’s skin, something he did every week at the Ring, he looked up to meet Devin’s gaze once more. Hers locked with his and he read it all there—her fear, her naked yearning, her confusion. And Christ he wanted her. Too damn much.
    His hands fisted around the woven handle of the flogger and just as he was tempted to hand poor Roya over to someone else and go to Devin she bit her lip once more, turned and disappeared into the crowd.
    The club had filled up since she’d arrived. It took some work and a few carefully placed jabs of her elbow to make it to the edge of the crowd where she could breathe again. She hadn’t spotted Kimmie anywhere.
    She made her way down from the loft that held the Ring to the enormous main dance floor, but even there the club-goers were practically on top of each other. People gyrated to the hard-hitting beat of the music. Go-go dancers on platforms, dressed in skimpy black leather and thigh-high boots for the evening’s event, writhed and twined their bodies around poles.
    She’d never find Kimmie there, and she really didn’t want to wait. She needed some fresh air. She needed to be gone . To be as far away from seeing Shaye play with someone else. Stupid. She’d just met him. But she couldn’t help feeling this way. As if from the moment he’d spoken to her she had to…belong to him. Yes, she had to get the hell out of there, and fast. She’d go outside, catch a cab and call her friend later.
    She got her leather jacket from the coat check then made her way to the front door and shoved it open, letting herself out into the chilly San Francisco night. The damp air made her shiver as she stood beneath a street lamp while the club’s bouncer flagged down a cab for her. She got in and slammed the door behind her, grateful for the heat of the car. She smoothed the hem of her short red skirt down.
    â€œWhere to?”
    â€œEleven-fifty Capra Way.”
    â€œAh, the Marina. Nice down there, huh?”
    Why did she have to get the rare chatty cab driver tonight? She didn’t want to talk. She had too much to think about. But she didn’t want to be rude, either.
    Always the good girl.
    â€œYes, it’s very nice.”
    Luckily, he got a call before he could reply and spent the rest of the drive arguing with someone on his cell phone while she tried to organize in her mind all the jarring images of the evening: the Ring itself, which was intimidating, fascinating. The people who went there to be spanked and paddled and flogged by the professional Dominants who worked there. Yes, she knew what they were called—Dominants and submissives. Knew what much of the equipment was called from the erotic novels she’d read. She simply hadn’t ever put it all together before. But she’d had no idea that this sort of extreme sensual play—BDSM—interested her this much.
    She was suddenly very interested.
    In Shaye Vincent. In the things he did in the Ring. In the idea that he would do those things to her if she allowed it.
    Mostly she couldn’t get the image of Shaye out of her head. Of him standing there with that swaggering, crooked grin on his beautiful face. She knew men didn’t