all March cold and April wet, the bitter wind weaving around
like a drunk with a nasty attitude. As he stood before the panorama of Caldwell's twin bridges,
the postcard view of the twinkling city bored him.
And so did his prospects for the evening's fun and games.
He supposed he was similar to a long-standing coke addict. The high had once been intense, but
now he serviced the monkey on his back with no particular enthusiasm. He was all need, no ease.
Planting his palms on the terrace ledge, he leaned way over and got sandblasted in the face with
a rush of icy air, his hair blowing back all fashion-model and shit. Or maybe… more like in
superhero comics. Yeah, that was a better metaphor.
Except he would be a villain, wouldn't he?
He realized his hands were stroking the flat stone they rested on, caressing it. The ledge was four
feet high and ran around the building like the lip of a serving tray. The top of it was a three-foot-
wide shelf just begging to be leaped off of, with the thirty feet of thin air on the other side the
perfect breezy prelude to death's hard fuck.
Now, this was a view that interested him.
He knew firsthand how sweet that free fall was. How the force of the wind pushed at your chest,
making it hard to breathe. How your eyes watered and the tears streaked up your temples, not
down your cheeks. How the ground rushed up to greet you, a host ready to welcome you to the
party.
He wasn't sure he'd made the right decision to save himself that time he'd jumped. At the last
moment, though, he dematerialized back up to the terrace. Back into… Butch's arms.
Fucking Butch. Always came back to that son of a bitch, didn't it.
V turned away from the urge to pull another flier and unlocked one of the sliders with his mind.
The penthouse's three walls of glass were bulletproof, but they didn't filter sunlight. Not that he
would have stayed here during the day even if they did.
This was not a home.
As he stepped inside, the place and what he used it for pressed into him as if the force of gravity
were different here. The walls and the ceiling and the marble floors of the sprawling one-room
spread were black. So were the hundreds of candles that he could light at his will. The only thing
that could be classified as furniture was a king-size bed that he'd never used. The rest was
equipment: The table with the restraints. The chains mounted into the wall. The masks and the
ball gags and the whips and the canes and the chains. The cabinet full of nipple weights and steel
clips and stainless-steel tools.
All for the females.
He took off his leather jacket and tossed it onto the bed, then ditched his shirt. He always kept
his leathers on during the sessions. The subs never saw him completely naked. No one did except
for his brothers during ceremonies in the Tomb, and that was only because the rituals demanded
it.
What he looked like down below was no else's fucking biz.
Candles flared at his command, the liquid light rebounding off the glossy floor before being
sucked up by the black dome of the ceiling. There was nothing romantic in the air. The place was
a cave where the profane was performed on the willing, and the light was only to ensure proper
placement of leather and metal, hands and fangs.
Plus, candles could be used for a purpose other than illumination.
He went to the wet bar, poured himself a couple of inches of Grey Goose, and leaned back
against the short stretch of counter. There were those among the species who thought coming
here and withstanding intercourse with him was a rite of passage. Then there were others who
could find their satisfaction only with him. And still more who wanted to explore how pain and
sex could mix.
The Lewis-and-Clark types were the ones who interested him least. Usually they couldn't handle
it and had to use the safe word or safe hand signal he gave them in the middle. He always let
them go readily, though any tears were theirs to soothe, not his. Nine out of ten times they
wanted to try again, but that was a no-go. If they broke too easily once, they'd probably do it
again, and he wasn't interested in coaching lightweights into the lifestyle.
The ones who could take it called him lheage and worshiped him, not that he gave a shit about
their reverence. The edge in him had to get dulled, and their bodies were the stone he used to
grind himself down on.
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