And for not trying to jimmy the lock. Not even once.
Of course, the reality was that every other time she’d come here the door to the room had been sealed up so tight it didn’t budge. Meaning that Rory didn’t so much practice any kind of restraint as she’d repeatedly tried the dramatic, medieval door handle—every time she cleaned here—and always, always found it locked.
Maybe no medals, then.
But today, at last, the secret room was open.
Rory had finished up her normal rounds, leaving everything sparkling and bright and lifted, because that was what actually made her happy. Then she’d taken a few artsy photos and posted them, because that was her brand. With all identifying details concealed, naturally, because her clients certainly didn’t want the masses showing up at their homes. Then, on her way out, she’d gone ahead and tried the extraordinarily over-the-top door, fitted as it was in a stone arch, complete with iron studs and scrollwork bands across the sturdy oak planks.
When everything else in this home was sleek and modern, as if to play off the old church’s gothic architecture.
She expected it to be as immovable as it always was, but instead, when she tugged on the iron handle, it opened.
A thrill shot through her, a wild tingling thing that was hot and cold at once—
“It’s just a door,” she muttered at herself, trying to tamp down all that absurd sensation.
It didn’t work.
She pulled her mobile out of her back pocket and hooked her spray bottle—filled with the noninvasive, nonchemical, nonharmful green cleaner she preferred, because she wasn’t a Boomer, hell-bent on destroying the world on her way out, thank you very much—on the waistband of her jeans. Then she took a few snaps of herself trying the handle of the secret door she’d posted about before, making faces upon finding it open and then pushing the door in as she went inside.
The first thing she noticed were the stained glass windows. She assumed this must have been the nave of the church, where the altar would have been, and the glass seemed warm and remote at once as the summer afternoon light streamed in. She ran her fingers over the wall beside the door, trying to blink her eyes into focus, and found what seemed like a particularly involved panel of light switches. Dimmers and another line of switches and who even knew what.
She flicked on the light switches, blinked, and then paused. Because she’d expected...a wine cellar, or something. A recording studio, like her father’s back home that he liked to treat like it was the Pentagon.
But not...this.
It was a large room with warm hardwood floors. There were area rugs that looked soft and inviting. The ceilings were high and airy, with whitewashed walls wherever the stained glass windows weren’t, and loads of exposed beams and brick.
It was nicer than her current flat in the Latin Quarter, if she was honest.
But it was also outfitted with a great many things she’d never seen in person before. There was a bed with four very high and sturdy-looking posters, all fitted with bolts and things that clearly indicated it was used for bondage. There was a chair nearby that looked like a throne but...wasn’t. There was a huge X-shaped cross against one brick wall. On either side of where she stood, stretching down the walls, were...tools. Of all shapes, sizes, and descriptions. Whips and actual chains. Obvious sex toys she could identify and a great many she’d never seen before in her life.
Her heart thudded at her. Her pulse felt too hot and weighted, somehow, in her veins.
The rest of the room featured a giant mirror on the wall across from the X that she imagined could also take in the bed. There were a variety of different benches, many with interesting-looking additions, or better still, subtractions, that made her head spin. There was what looked like a padded massage table, if she ignored that the space beneath it was an actual cage. There was a hammock sort of thing slung from one of the beams, what looked like a hanging pull-up bar, and incongruously, high above, one of the biggest and most beautiful chandeliers she’d ever seen.
And for some reason, the sight of all these things made her breath go shallow.
If Rory wasn’t mistaken—and how could she be in the face of all this clear evidence?—this was a literal den of iniquity. A red room of pain, as such places were sometimes known. Though this