those nights when we just come to play, we can leave everything we want outside the door.”
That made a lot of sense.
Whatever I was expecting, the next room was not it. It was like walking into someone’s well-used and loved dining room and sitting room all rolled together. There were drinks and snacks set along one counter, and there were people at the table chatting. A few glanced up and gave us welcoming smiles or a hello and then went back to what they were doing. There was one guy who had to be in his forties and looked like I’d pictured every biker, ever.
There was another guy with more tattoos than skin visible. Older. Younger. A girl with pink tips on her hair and six small piercings in her eyebrows, another lady who reminded me of the librarian at the high school right down to her silvery-gray hair and way too much blue eyeshadow, but her grin was so warm, it was hard to feel uneasy.
Ian kept me tucked right under his arm, and I had an arm around his waist as he guided me through. “This is where people can socialize or rest in between sessions.” There was a couple on one of the sofas, a woman who sat with a man’s head in her lap. His expression was kind of far away, and she just kept stroking his hair as she murmured to him.
Sessions.
Okay.
There was so much to take in, and it was so utterly…normal. A woman came through another door, and she looked like someone’s mom. Not that she wasn’t pretty, because she was. But she seemed so…ordinary, and like someone I would see at Mason’s ordering burgers with her family. It was weird and normal at the same time. She made her way around the room introducing herself to each person there, and then it hit me. A few were just like me—they’d never been here before.
When she got to me and Ian, she greeted Ian with a squeeze to his arm and then a warm smile for me. “If you have any questions,” she told me, “we ask that you save them for the end of the demonstration. Then we’ll take the time to address them. It’s important that you listen and absorb. The Master and his sub who are doing the demo tonight have been doing this for over a decade. They are very experienced, but they also like to focus on each other so you can benefit from the full power exchange.”
Oh. I had questions, but I nodded. I could make a mental list. I also gave myself a mental pat on the back for doing the reading. There was so going to be a test.
I gave a little excited nod, despite my determination to keep it cool, and Ian pressed a kiss to the top of my head, even as he huffed with laughter. “I love you, Angel,” he whispered, and I grinned up at him.
It turned out the lady who warned us to hold our questions until the end was the sub in the Master and sub who were doing the demonstration. The Master, a man they only introduced as Richard, specialized in silk ropes. For the next forty-five minutes, I sat glued as he created the most intricate pieces of art with his ropes and the sub.
The ties eventually held her suspended, but the more he bound her, the more she seemed to relax, and I had to admit, I wanted to know everything about it. He explained that there was more to this experience than just tying someone up. For he and his sub, they shared a Master and sub relationship, but not everyone would have that. But for them, it meant simply that she trusted him to give her what she needed—in this case, to be erotically bound.
It was definitely erotic. Despite the fact that she was dressed, her peaked nipples showed through her shirt. The shorts she wore were super tiny and her thighs were damp whenever he threaded the rope between her legs, and yet nothing he did was overtly sexual. We were six feet away, so there was no missing anything, but at the same time, it was probably one of the most sensual things I’d ever witnessed.
Beyond the simple power exchange, his job was also to monitor her condition. Subspace—I’d heard that one before—could pull a sub deep, and sometimes, the sub could faint from the over stimulation and rapid heart rate.
That explained