I looked away at first. It was just too much. But in the end, I suppose I was as much a voyeur as everyone else in the place, for my eyes were inevitably drawn back.
From my vantage point, pretty much all I could see was Adam, his body shielding Dom from view. I watched the muscles of his spectacular ass bunching and releasing, and heard the little sounds Dominic couldn’t seem to help making. No matter the public humiliation, no matter his discomfort, no matter his basic unwillingness, he couldn’t help enjoying what Adam was doing to him. I suspect only reluctance to give Shae any satisfaction kept him from letting loose completely.
For his part, Adam didn’t make a sound. He pounded away, fucking Dom as brutally as he’d beaten him. It had to hurt, but you wouldn’t have known it from Dominic’s sighs and moans.
I could tell when Adam came by the stiffening of his stance and by the change of rhythm. Still he made no sound, though his breath came in ragged gasps. Looking exhausted, he leaned over Dominic’s back, resting his hands on the table.
“Draw the fucking curtain,” he snarled at me over his shoulder.
Outside, the audience gave an enthusiastic round of applause. I hurried to the curtain on shaky knees, wobbling on my damned high heels. I drew the curtain as fast as possible, then kept my back turned on Adam and Dom to give them a belated moment of privacy.
It occurred to me that Shae wouldn’t have the same decency, so I moved to the door and pressed both hands against it. Sure enough, I felt someone trying to push it open.
“Give us a minute!” I said, not quite a shout but close to it.
Being a demon, she could have forced the door easily, but she didn’t, at least not yet. I kept leaning on it anyway, putting as much of my body weight into it as I could. Behind me, I heard Adam and Dom dressing.
“All right,” Dominic said a moment later. “You can let her in now.”
I didn’t want to, but I moved away from the door. Shae sauntered in, looking terribly pleased with herself. She sighed with contentment.
“And you thought you couldn’t put on a good show anymore!” she said.
Adam’s eyes glowed. “You don’t want to push me just now, Shae.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Is that a threat?”
“My self-control is not boundless. Give me the keys and get the fuck out of my face.” Dom put a hand on his shoulder as if to calm him, but Adam shrugged it off. “I mean it, Shae!”
She smiled. “I know you do. And I’m a woman of my word.”
I had to resist the urge to snort. If she was such a woman of her word, then why was she helping us, if that’s what she was doing?
Shae fished a couple of keys out of her pocket and held them up to Adam. “The big one is to the rack room. The smaller one is to the ‘fire escape.’” Yes, you could hear the quotation marks around the term. “You’ll wire the money to me as soon as the bank opens in the morning. Right?”
Adam nodded. “Assuming I live that long and that none of the people under my protection dies, yeah.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That wasn’t part of our arrangement.”
“It is now.”
Apparently, she wasn’t entirely insane, after all. She took one look at the expression on Adam’s face, then shrugged and handed over the keys.
“Fine.” She looked at her watch. “It’s one twenty-five. At one thirty-five, I’m going to make the call. I suggest you move your glorious ass.”
For a moment, I thought we were going to have to waste precious minutes prying Adam off Shae, but he managed to control his obviously brittle temper. With one last goading smile, Shae left the room. The rest of us followed.
In the hallway, the crowd had gathered in front of another window, closer to the stairway leading out of Hell. Shae waggled her fingers at us as she climbed the stairs, but the rest of the crowd ignored us completely, enjoying whatever sick perversion was taking place behind that window.
We reached the room with the black curtain, and Adam made to slip the key into the lock. I stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“We don’t even know if there are guards,” I said.
He batted my hand away. “We will in a minute.”
Before I could utter another protest, he turned the key and pushed the door open.
CHAPTER 25
There weren’t any guards. I think all three of us took that as something of a bad sign, but it wasn’t like we were just going to run away. If this was a trap, then we’d already stepped into it, so what the hell.
Brian was still chained to the wall, the gag still stuffed in his mouth. Blood crusted his abdomen and soaked the front of his underwear. His head lolled, and my heart constricted to see a pair of burns, one under each armpit.
I ran to him, tears stinging my eyes. “Brian!” I cried, touching my hands to his chest, relieved to feel the beat of his heart. But he was out cold.
Dom and I held him up while Adam freed him from the shackles. His body was a dead weight.
“Oh my God, what’s the matter with him?” I was reduced to a quivering mess, my whole body shaking, my brain hardly functioning.
Dom traced his finger over the crook of Brian’s elbow, finding a small bruise. “They drugged him,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here. We’ll figure out what they gave him later.”
Adam bent and picked Brian up, slinging him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He moved as if the weight were nothing, heading toward the door.
I saw Brian’s clothes lying in a heap in the corner, and I snatched them up. We were going to look very conspicuous carrying an unconscious, half-naked, bloody man, though I didn’t suppose we had the time to get him dressed.
When we exited the room, Adam led us to the left, rather than toward the stairway leading back into the club. I supposed we were heading for the “fire escape.” A couple of the perverts watching the show noticed us and made surprised noises, but no one followed.
Adam shoved the small key Shae had given him at me, and I took it. We rounded a corner and burst into another of the rooms, this one designed to look like a doctor’s office, only the stirrups on the exam table came complete with restraints. I shuddered and forced my mind not to go there.
“Here!” Adam said, pointing at what looked like a locked cabinet.
I didn’t question him. I rammed the key in the lock, and Dominic grabbed the edge of the cabinet and pulled.
I gave Adam a questioning look as the cabinet pulled away from the wall to reveal a doorway. He shrugged-an awkward gesture with Brian lying limply over his shoulder.
“Illegal things happen here,” he explained. “Sometimes the patrons need a secret escape route.”
I was definitely going to have a talk with Adam about the wisdom of letting Shae continue to operate when this was all over.
We piled into the secret hallway and pulled the door shut behind us. The screams and other unwholesome sounds cut off, though honestly, I’d been blocking them out so thoroughly it wasn’t until the door closed that my mind acknowledged what it had been hearing.
We hesitated, looking at each other with identical concerned expressions, I’m sure.
“This has been too easy,” I said, deciding to state the obvious.
Adam and Dominic both nodded their agreement. Then Adam took his turn stating the obvious.
“We’re committed now. There’s nothing we can do but move forward.” He took a step down the hall, then looked over his shoulder at me. “Stay behind us.”
I let them take the lead. My heart was pounding so loud I could barely hear anything else. How much time had passed? Had Shae made her phone call yet? Was that even an issue?