first floor faded further as they descended.
Though the comparative quiet eased the music’s assault on her ears, the bass still felt like gentle kicks to the diaphragm. Sexually suggestive rather than insistent. She realized she could hear her own feet thumping lightly on the steps, and Martin’s boots, too.
Was that the crack of a whip?
She forced her legs to keep moving.
In the low-lit room they entered, four unfamiliar pieces of dungeon furniture, each positioned under small white and colored lights, claimed nearly half the space. And just in case anyone made the mistake of thinking the furniture was meant for casual lounging, the thick red ropes of velvet kept onlookers and passersby from penetrating into the dedicated play spaces.
Stadium-style seating lined one wall. All seats were filled.
Small vinyl booths and a bar took up a full corner of the large dungeon room, but Charlotte barely glanced at it.
She looked at the performance behind the velvet ropes.
A sadist spanked his victim. The middle-aged woman being assaulted tilted her ample but attractive ass up from a padded bench. The rose and thorns tattoo on her lower back was well displayed as she jiggled and gasped under the severe, twohanded ministrations of the tall, velvet-clad sadist. After a series of spanks, the man gripped a reddened cheek, digging in his long nails for a vicious clawing. He smiled as the woman yelled her pain. Then she wiggled and bucked her ass up for more.
Charlotte saw another performance. A nude young woman, clearly a bottom and blessed with a model’s bone structure and thin, perfect build, was buckled onto a large, glossy black T. The dominatrix behind her, an athletic woman with black hair and a leather corset showcasing the muscles of her strong arms, lovingly wrapped a wide, black piece of nylon material over the top half of the bottom’s gorgeous head, knotting it in back. The girl held herself as still as a mannequin, as if she was aware of her beauty and the mesmerizing effect of anticipating the poised stillness erupting into abused, galvanized movements.
Over the nylon, the dominatrix slid a snug and silky-looking black sleep mask. She adjusted it. She arranged the beauty’s long hair to drape over one shoulder, revealing a creamy white bare back. Charlotte suspected it wouldn’t remain that creamy white for very long.
Charlotte stared, hypnotized, until she felt Martin’s hand graze hers in a light touch. She was supposed to follow.
But she had to pause again in front of the nude man hanging wrapped in ropes. The asymmetrical position of his body looked as random as if he’d fought the rope only to find himself more tightly bound in a less comfortable pose.
Two men whipped him. One wore a grin as he wielded a crop with no unneeded movement, not even enough to disturb the pale brown ponytail reaching down to his mid-back. He tapped the instrument with easy patience, repeating on one reddening spot of the trussed one’s bare thigh. When the whipper paused, reached into a large pocket of his utility kilt to extract two clothespins, his grin widened until he looked a little like a kid on Christmas.
The older black man on his opposite side noticed the pause. He stopped flicking the single-tail whip against the bound one’s back. Charlotte held her breath as the kilt-wearer brought the first clothespin to one distended nipple of the nude man’s gleaming chest. He stroked the nipple as if it were a tiny pearl, rolling the nipple between two fingers. Making it ready. The man shook his head as much as the ropes allowed, the shaven skin of his face gleaming with tears. “No, no, no . . .” he begged. The sadist paused, as if savoring the moment. Then he snapped the first clothespin onto a nipple.
The victim screamed, then panted, his eyes round and shocked. When the second clothespin snapped closed, his body jackknifed within the ropes like some caught fish. He let loose a growling moan. Of pleasure?
“Okay,
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