Exposed Exposed (Dom Nation #1) - E. Davies Page 0,1
my hope of finding a man who shared them and wanted more than one soulless night.
“Welcome in,” the club guardian said instead, stepping aside and gesturing. “Changing area’s to the left next to the lockers.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled. Shit, I should have brought a bag, but I hadn’t known what kind. Gym bag? Tote bag? Locked suitcase? This was an alien world.
As I stepped into the entryway, my heart beat so loudly in my ears that it washed the sound away in a dizzying wave before it returned.
I’m okay, I told myself, keeping my chin up. Fake it till you make it.
There were signs everywhere to read. One said No phones outside the changing room. The changing area turned out to be a small room that was mercifully empty. I yanked off my T-shirt and jeans and slid my shoes back on. Then I nervously slid my phone inside my jeans, my hand hovering over the pocket.
God, if I got my phone stolen at a kink club, I had no idea how to explain that to my insurance company. I shoved the bundle of clothes into a locker and slid the wristband with its key on. Like a fucked-up adult swimming pool. Speedos would be more comfortable than these shorts.
The dance music was louder toward the right, and I could just see a darkened room with people moving to the music. To the left, though, was the bar.
Oh, God. Yes, please.
I squirmed where I stood, unused to feeling a breeze quite so high against the back of my thighs. A rum and Coke firmly in hand, I ignored the signs pointing to the play areas. I needed more liquid courage for that.
Instead, I escaped to the dance room to watch men dancing to the deep, thumping beat. With nobody watching me, I gradually relaxed and leaned against a wall, nursing my drink.
This was okay. Why had Isaac never wanted to bring me here? I’d asked—but he’d brushed it off.
He’d told me harshly, I’m all you need. And how could I argue with that? He could take me apart with his hands, toys, and brutal precision right at home.
Three years later, I’d never been able to switch off the cravings that Isaac had awakened. He’d translated vague longings to reality. I’d always known something was different—wrong, I’d thought often—but it hadn’t made sense until Isaac touched me.
I hadn’t made sense until Isaac touched me.
Fuck him, I thought for the thousandth time. It was a mantra that saw me through the long evenings when time stretched out into infinity, empty and aching. Sometimes I kneeled on the carpet in my living room, closing my eyes. Remembering.
Regretting.
For years, I’d hated that he’d ever come along and taught me what I could be, only to disappear like a wisp of chimney smoke on a winter’s night. Off to find some other, prettier hunk of wood to set alight with his blows and his caresses.
Leaving me there, charred and collapsing in on myself and very much alone.
I’d kneeled, and prayed for him to come back, and cursed at him, and stewed in self-loathing for long enough.
Tonight, for the first time in three years, I’d slipped on the harness I’d had to fight to be “allowed” to keep. A gift from a man who had once lavished me with them to keep me on tap. When he’d left, he’d taken everything else.
Even my pride. Especially my pride.
But the harness? That was mine. And this boldness was mine, too. We’d never gone to this club—or anywhere public—before. He’d said he didn’t like the meat market atmosphere.
Well, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Isaac would laugh if he saw me now. I’d never worn so little in public. The harness and leather shorts exposed me. I felt naked, and turmoil writhed through my belly as my body remembered how much it liked that vulnerability.
Steering around strangers, I walked through the arch and toward the dance floor. Fuck what he thought. I was at the market because, with a wildness that flooded my senses and filled my lungs, I needed to be—
“Fresh meat.”
The voice was masculine, rough. Certain.
It was the voice of a Dom. Like a man woken from the last ice age, my veins remembered the heat of my blood again.
I stiffened from head to toe. My heart hammered against my rib cage as I gripped my plastic drink cup tightly. Act natural, I told myself as I turned my head to inspect the man who spoke.