Twelve hours earlier

  She caught Warner’s eye from across the room, that’s how it always goes, except this time, the cliché went the other way. He could swear he felt her presence long before he saw her. He hadn’t had time to consume anything more potent than a few energy boosters from his medicine cabinet, and yet he felt intoxicated, the world blurred, its edges softened, his focus narrowed down to a tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel, there she was. The club and its overwhelming atmosphere, the noise, the music, the bass reverberating in his bones, the strobe lights, the smells, all receded. He didn’t have to search for long—his gaze landed on her immediately, like she was only waiting there for him.

  That leather with the cutouts, downright plain by the standards of the place, hugged her long, lanky body but did nothing to conceal the restless energy that thrummed through her sinewy limbs. She wore her dark hair simply slicked back—in the red-tinted light, it looked wet. Full, dark eyebrows over pale eyes of a color he couldn’t make out, and not a stitch of makeup. Her irregular features looked harsh in the red glare overhead, but from the first moment, he knew with absolute certainty it was the most beautiful face he’d ever seen.

  Those pale eyes followed his every move. Unnerving. Up close, he had to venture a guess they were green. Not a muscle in her face twitched as she measured him with that witchy gaze.

  “What do you want, Warner Vogel?”

  Her voice—the sound of his own name in that low, husky voice made him vibrate. He wanted to think that if his blood hadn’t rushed away from his brain so precipitously, this would have been his first clue. But he’d rationalized that he was a regular here, a lot of people knew who he was, so this woman he’d never seen before also knew. It made perfect sense if you didn’t think about it too much.

  Which he didn’t.

  What do you want, Warner Vogel?

  You, he almost said. That was the gist, not much more to it than that. In this whole place, he wanted only her, and the rest of it could go to hell.

  Instead, he forced himself to go with the more sane, civil option.

  “What are you drinking?”

  One corner of her lips curled upwards. “A glass of milk.”

  She looked amused when he actually got her one. The upturned corner of her mouth blossomed into a little smirk. She studied him with interest. He could feel her verdant gaze glide across his skin.

  “You know my name,” he said. “Aren’t you going to tell me yours?”

  Her smirk widened.

  “Are you always this stubborn?”

  “I’m not stubborn. I’m persistent.”

  She shook her head.

  “Come on. Tell me your name.”

  She said nothing, and he thought he saw a glimmer of genuine interest in her intent stare, although it could have been just his imagination going into overdrive.

  How does that joke go, he found himself thinking. What did the masochist say to the sadist? Hurt me. And what did the sadist say?

  “You don’t get told no very often, do you, Warner Vogel?”

  She was teasing him. He could tell she knew the effect his name on her lips had on him and was doing it on purpose. “And there’s nothing you can do about it. You don’t have anything I want.”

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  “I figured. This outfit costs a fortune. Real leather?”

  “Fake.”

  She started to turn away from him, about to leave. He felt the stab of pure panic. Any moment now, she would be gone, possibly forever, and all he knew with any clarity was that he couldn’t allow it. So he went ahead and did the thing he knew he would regret, the thing you’re not supposed to do.

  He did it without thinking. Just reached out and caught her arm right above the wrist.

  It was like touching lightning, in a good way. All the sensations registered one after another: the smooth feel of the leather beneath his fingers, definitely not fake, and then the realization of the sheer strength in her slender hand that surged like electricity. The smell of her, like a thunderstorm, ozone and petrichor, flooded his senses.

  Her pale green gaze measured him, darting from his face to his hand on her arm and back. Her expression was hard to read.

  What happened next played out so fast he could barely follow the sequence of events. One moment they stood there, frozen in time, her green eyes so calm, studying him with curiosity, and the next, she was somehow behind him, she’d twisted his arms behind his back, and she was slamming him into a wall.

  If this was meant as a rejection, she was going about it the wrong way. And, looking back, this was the moment he absolutely should have figured out what she was.

  She leaned close to his ear. Her magical voice, hiss, snap, crackle, brushing against his skin.

  “You can’t handle me.”

  “You’d be surprised,” he choked out.

  She dragged him into one of the private rooms—all he had time to see was the bright neon-lit sign warning any consenting adults they were entering a camera-free zone. The door shut, and from here on out, it could only be opened from inside. The sound of the lock clicking softly sent a shiver through him.

  And that was that. He was at her mercy for the next however many hours.

  She cuffed his hands and secured the cuffs to the hook under the ceiling. It all took mere seconds. She did everything with a frightful ease and efficiency.

  Another clue Warner ignored.

  In this position, his upper arms blinkered his view of the room. Somehow, when she wasn’t in his direct line of sight, he didn’t hear her move at all. Yet he knew she was still there as if he could sense her. In fact, all his senses seemed sharper than usual. Everything was in focus. The cuffs bit gently into his wrists. The chain creaked under the ceiling.

  His entire world filled with the scent of an approaching thunderstorm.

  She emerged from the corner of his vision. He watched her pace along the wall, inspecting all the various whips, riding crops, and other odds and ends he’d come to know intimately since he started frequenting this corner of the establishment. She tilted her head.

  “So uncreative,” she mused.

  Another missed clue.

  Truth was, no matter how many times he counted off every single one of those missed clues, he came to the same conclusion. It wasn’t that he should have immediately known who and what she was. It was that he did know. From the moment he first saw her.

  And the rest of it…

  Pain and bliss, sharp and clean. Blood and sweat. The taste of her saliva on his lips. He’d never experienced anything like it before in his life.

  It felt like only five minutes had passed when she took the cuffs off the ceiling hook and then uncuffed him. She patched his destroyed back with medical tape, and then he felt the sting of the injector in his upper arm when she dosed him with healing accelerant that, he knew from experience, the establishment also helpfully provided. It didn’t do much—he had the more effective military-grade version in his cabinet at home.

  But in that moment, it couldn’t be farther from his mind. He could think about one thing, and one thing only.

  “When can I see you again?”

  Even before she laughed, he knew how fucked he was. Well and truly. It might not be his first time in this club, or even in these back rooms—hell, it probably wasn’t even his hundredth time—but this had to be the first time he’d ever uttered these words in here. Usually, once he was done, all he wanted was for the other party to get out and leave him the hell alone to marinate in his self-loathing. But this time, the self-loathing was conspicuously absent.

  This left a vacuum.

  “I want to see you again,” he tried once more.

  She leaned close. The heady copper smell now blended with her rain and petrichor accord, an intoxicating mixture. Her lips came so close to his ear that they brushed his earlobe. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood on end.

  “That, Warner Vogel, is the one thing even you can never have.”

  Words. All just words, he knew it. Of course he could, and she knew it too. Oh well—if her plan was to make him work for it, then work for it he would. He’d impress her. For all the assurances and bold claims of total, complete, absolute privacy and anonymity the club boasted, he, of all people, knew there was no such thing. First thing tomorrow, he’d get a log of everyone who scanned in through the doors. He’d find out her name and identity, and then he’d track her down and do whatever the hell he had to do to make sure she never, ever left his side.

  He’d do anything she asked. He’d give her anything she wanted. He had a lot to give. For the first time in his life, maybe, he actually felt grateful to be Warner Vogel. It no longer even mattered what date it was—he was a new man. He had a purpose.

  And when he put his mind to something, he tended to get his way.