Even Shayla leaned back and away from Tony.
The woman’s rage evaporated under Tony’s wrath. “Carol Fallowes.”
“Spell your last name.”
She did.
He looked at Cali. “She’s banned. DNA list. Immediately.” He returned the woman’s phone and ticked points off on his fingers. “First strike was being a bitch and trying to order Axel to get you water. Second strike was you gave me attitude when I ordered you to apologize. Third strike was you took your phone out in the dungeon.”
“You have no right to do that!”
“Fourth strike,” he said, voice rising as he steamrolled her, “is that you came in here with attitude like this, disrespecting our volunteers and thinking that rules and common courtesy don’t apply to you. Your fifth strike is that tonight of all nights is not the night to piss me off, lady.”
He leaned in closer. “Name’s Tony.” He pointed at his name badge. “Feel free to tell everyone I’m the big, bad asshole Dom who threw you out of here tonight, and make sure to tell them what you did to earn the eviction, because then you’ll really eat yourself a shit sandwich for those efforts.”
He stepped around her, heading toward the office door.
“But my stuff’s still in there! And my ride! I came with friends!”
“I suggest Uber or Lyft. Or you’re waiting out here until they leave. Cali will get your stuff and bring it out. You set foot in this building again, I’m calling the sheriff’s office and having a trespass warning issued against you.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
He turned and stalked toward her, causing her to scurry backward a couple of steps. “Try me, lady!” He finally seemed to see Shayla standing there. “Pet, go set up the implement stand for me. Now.”
Whatever anger had been simmering inside Shayla evaporated. “Yes, Sir.” She raced back inside.
He turned to Cali. “I’ll wait in the office until you get her shit for her. Might want to bring a pair of scissors to cut her wristband off her so she doesn’t try to sneak back in.”
He headed inside, and Cali was still trying to process what happened. It was unheard of for the good-natured man to go off like that.
Actually, she’d never seen him so pissed off. Hell, she could practically feel the rage washing off him like waves of heat from a blast furnace.
The woman described her purse and implement bag and where they were, and Cali headed inside to retrieve them for her. Tony met Cali in the office on her way back out, silently handing her a pair of scissors. By the time Cali returned to the office after that chore, Tony stood behind the counter at the computer with June, and was apparently adding the woman to the club’s Do Not Admit ban list.
Shit.
Usually, Tony was the epitome of chill, even when dealing with problem children. Cali could remember maybe only two occasions over the years she’d known him where he’d raised his voice as a DM, and one of those times was removing a drunk from the office, a guy who’d staggered in looking for a “titty bar” and who wouldn’t leave when Leah and Marcia had refused him entrance.
She couldn’t exactly ask Tony for all the details about what happened right then, either, because they had an office full of people they were trying to get processed and inside. If he evicted and banned someone—which he had the full authority to do as one of their core staff of volunteers who’d been a part of the club from the very beginning—it had to be bad.
Once they had that batch of people through the door and inside, June, Eliza, and Skye turned to Cali. “What happened?” June asked. “He wouldn’t get into it in front of customers.”
“I don’t know exactly. Something about the woman ordering Axel around, had her phone out, and she stepped on his last damn nerve by being a rude bitch. He was practically screaming at her out there.”
June winced. “Yikes. That’s not like him, but I know he’s wound tight right now. Shayla said he had several rough weeks out of town at work. He had to fire someone in the middle of the job and take up the slack alone because he didn’t have anyone else he could fly out to help him. They were setting up servers at an off-site location or something.”
“Shit. Well, she’s not allowed back in. Not even to use the bathroom. Let me get in there and check on things.”
Cali left the office for the dungeon, pausing just inside the door to let her eyes adjust to the dimmer lighting. There was a suspension underway on the large A-frame, and every play station in the old side was being used. Something else highly unusual, considering they had benches, St. Andrew’s crosses, and other stations on the new side.
But walking over there and peeking in showed, yep, they were all occupied, too.
Dang.
It wasn’t even a quarter after ten yet.
Max, Rusty, and Scrye were busy supervising on the new side, so she didn’t bother interrupting them. Tony had Shayla on a bench and was already scening with her, so she damn sure wasn’t going to interrupt them.
Tonight, Tony’s play had an even more vicious edge to it than the Dom usually displayed. Tony was definitely a sadist—something Shayla loved—but usually kept his club play more around a seven or eight on a scale of one-to-ten.
Whereas Landry was about a fifty.
Tonight, however, she suspected Tony’s play might even make Landry’s usually sadistic scenes look more fluffy-bunny.
Tony’s jaw bore a tense, grim set to it as he took hard strokes with a fairly severe riding crop, pausing between each one, rubbing them in.
As a Top, Cali noted the dark stripes already forming on Shayla’s flesh with each impact, something she couldn’t remember seeing the Dom do before to this extent. Shayla loved having marks, but he usually spaced things out more, leaving severe implements like crops and canes more toward the end of play and only giving her a few strokes, or at the very least going easier on her with them earlier in the play so he didn’t burn her out too soon.
Cali couldn’t even count the number of times she’d watched Tony scene with Shayla over the past couple of years, either at private parties or here.
Something about him just…felt really off tonight.
But interrupting his scene wasn’t her call. There was nothing blatantly “unsafe” about his play, his own slave wasn’t safewording, he wasn’t violating any rules…
And he was her friend and a fellow volunteer, a Dom with more experience in the lifestyle than she had. A man who taught classes on lifestyle topics, including impact play and safety.
No, Cali wouldn’t intercede, but she made a mental note to check in with Shayla on Monday to hint around that she’d provide an ear if Shay needed to chat about anything.
Normally, vicious play wouldn’t blip Cali’s mental screen if she didn’t see anything else to make her pay attention.
It was the…overall situation.
The unconstrained anger in Tony’s demeanor earlier.
The way he’d uncharacteristically lost his shit. He was a supervisor at work, a manager in a high-stress job. When he taught their DM classes, he emphasized de-escalation and conflict management skills to help prevent or defuse confrontations.
Calli rubbed her hands up and down her arms as she watched.
I hope they’re okay.
It was bad enough not having Mal and Kel around and not wanting to intrude on their situation. She damn sure didn’t want them to lose another of their team’s mainstays in terms of friendship and volunteers. Tony had been a friend of Kaden’s, around from the days before the club was even opened. He was one of the original Suncoast Society munch hosts.
Losing him wouldn’t just be a blow to the community at large, it’d be a blow to many of them personally as his friends.
Definitely need to talk to Shay Monday.
No, Cali knew she couldn’t save the world, but she hated feeling helpless when she suspected her friends were struggling.
Then again, maybe it really was nothing more than a very stressful work situatio
n combined with the additional stress of being separated from Shayla for so long because of his job.
Cali turned from the scene and scanned the old side, found Sean, and walked over. She leaned in, her voice low enough to not carry.
“Okay, so what happened?” He told her, then she related what happened outside.
Sean slowly shook his head. “I’ve never seen him flip out like that. Not that she didn’t deserve it, because she totally did. If he hadn’t walked up, I was going to toss her out, too. Might want to call Marcia and give her and Derrick a heads-up. To keep an eye out on Fet for the bitch posting something.”
“Yeah, not a bad idea.” It was rare they had to ban someone. Very common to deny entry to people who didn’t understand what kind of club they were, especially to random guys who were drunk, or who showed up out of the blue after an Internet search while looking for strip or sex clubs.
But evicting someone rarely happened. Usually they only needed one gentle warning—mostly for people looking at their phones to check the time—and people complied with the rules. Every once in a while they had to walk someone outside to talk privately about remembering the rules, but that was also a rarity.
That’s why they had a newbie speech to begin with—to go over the club’s rules and basic protocols and etiquette, to make sure everyone was on the same page when they walked through the dungeon door, and to prevent problems from occurring.
In all the years the club had been around, it was a winning formula.
Cali returned to the office and found June, Eliza, and Skye helping two people. When Cali looked through the viewfinder in the door, the evicted woman still stood outside, now on the phone with someone.
Cali waited until the two customers, already members, walked into the dungeon to call Marcia.
After Cali got the story out, Marcia swore. “Son of a bitch. Yeah, that was the right call. I think I know who that woman is, too. Real troublemaker, if she’s who I think she is. She has a reputation for starting drama for that very sort of bullshit. Including being in the middle of whatever it was that happened down south and had people coming up here to begin with tonight. People usually just uninvite her from private events. Guess she’s working her way up here since she’s worn out her welcome down there.”
“Might want to keep an eye on FetLife tonight.”
“Oh, I’m going to do more than that. I’m going to proactively post a rules and courtesy reminder so when she does start bellyaching, people will see my post, assume it’s about her bad behavior, and tear her a new one. You sure you don’t want us to come over?”
“No, we’re good.” The outer door opened, and two more members walked in. “I have to go, though.”
“Thanks again. And thank Tony for taking one for the team for us. I know he wasn’t planning on doing anything but playing tonight.”
“Yeah, I will.”
They processed the members and once they had the office to themselves again, Cali turned and looked at the volunteer name badges, where the lanyards hung on several hooks on the side of the cabinet.
“I don’t even remember handing him his name badge when they came in.”
“Who?” Skye asked.
“Tony.”
“Shayla walked around the counter and grabbed them when they saw how busy it was in here,” Skye said. “I just handed her wristbands and they headed in after signing in. You were running RSO checks on a batch of newbies.”
“Ah.” Their volunteers didn’t have to pay, one of the perks of volunteering. “Let’s hope that’s the end of the bad kind of excitement for the evening.”
A loud boom from outside shook the building, making all three women jump. Before Cali could react, the power went off, sending the office into darkness.
“Well, shit,” Eliza said. “Things just got even more interesting.”
Skye laughed in the darkness and when she spoke, she channeled Inigo Montoya. “I don tink that word means whatchoo tink it means.”
Chapter Six
Max pulled out his phone, flipped on the flashlight, and pointed it at the ceiling. “Everyone stay where you are, please,” he called out. “That sounded like a transformer. We’ll get some flashlights.”
“I’ll get the LED candles,” Sean called from the other side, where Max saw lights bobbing through the doorway. At least emergency lights on the exit sign over the office door had come to life.
Scrye and Rusty had also pulled out their phones and turned on the flashlights. Between them, that provided enough illumination for people to not trip over each other.
June scurried in with two large flashlights. “Everyone okay?”
“What the hell was that?” Scrye asked as she handed him one of the flashlights.
“Cali went outside to look and call FPL. We think maybe a transformer blew.”
Somewhere nearby, Max heard sirens approaching.
“I have a Bluetooth speaker in my car,” Axel called from the other side. “We can hook it in to Pandora on my phone.”
“Go get it,” Max called back.
Sean brought in several LED candles and handed them to Max, who set them strategically around the space. He switched off his phone’s flashlight. While it was even dimmer than usual, there was enough light to safely navigate inside the play space.
“Do we have to leave?” someone asked Max.
“No, not if y’all want to keep playing. Just please be careful and try not to walk around too much until we get more lights up.”
“I’m not stopping,” Tony said from where he stood by the bench they were currently occupying. “Hang on, pet.”
He took his phone out, pulled something up, and Three Days Grace rolled out of it. After turning the volume all the way up, he laid the phone facedown on top of his implement bag and resumed play.
Two other Tops, a man and a woman, followed his lead and resumed play at their respective stations.
Someone on the other side also had a Bluetooth speaker in their car, so Axel brought his into the new side and Tony paused long enough to connect his phone to it before continuing his scene. The music suddenly filled the space, with Godsmack starting up on the old side.
Cali hustled in minutes later. “Car hit a pedestrian and plowed into a power pole right outside the complex. Line’s down over the entrance to this part of the complex, so no one can leave anyway. FPL’s on the way, but the deputies said at least an hour or more before the road’s cleared while they conduct their investigation. No power for several hours.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah. That also means no A/C. I called Derrick. He’ll have Gilo bring over a generator and a couple of fans.”
Max couldn’t figure that one out. “How’s he going to get in here?”
“Through the complex behind this one. Gilo has a truck. He has the clearance he can drive over the grass median and concrete curb dividers between them. And anyone who really wants to leave, whose car can make it over a curb, we can show them how to get out. Otherwise, they’re stuck here.”
“Oh. Okay. Hey, wait a minute. Go make sure we’ve put LEDs in the bathrooms, please. And bring some stickers for Tony and whoever else is playing music on their phones to cover their cameras.”
“Will-do.”
“I guess we can’t take in any more people tonight.”
“Sure we can, if they get the driveway cleared soon enough and they want to stay, even without power. I have the hotspot on my phone, and can use the music laptop to access the backup member file. I can do RSO checks, too. Once they get a genny here, we can keep an extension cord in the office to charge things up.”
“What about running credit cards?”
“Run the tablet through my hotspot.” She returned to the office.
Scrye walked over to Max and kept his voice low. “It’s going to get hot in here without A/C.”
“I know.”
“And we can’t open the big doors to the outside, because we’ve got naked people, and the
sound’s going to carry. We might be legal, but we don’t need the po-po getting curious.”
Max surveyed their practically full house. “Yeah, I know.”
“You realize we’re also going to have some masochists bound and determined to stay even after they can leave unless or until we kick them out.”
Max sighed. “I know.”
Scrye scratched at his beard. “Why do I have a feeling we’re not out of the weird woods yet?”
“Don’t jinx us.”
“Heh. Too late for that.”
* * * *
Very few people had opted to call it a night and leave early, and only because they had vehicles which could easily clear the divider and make it out of the complex. At Marcia’s instructions, Cali handed out two free entry vouchers to everyone to make up for the evening’s inconvenience.
Gilo wore shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops when he came in search of Max nearly an hour later. It was growing uncomfortably warm inside the space.
“I need help lifting it out of my truck. I picked it up from Derrick, and he helped me load it.”
“I’m coming.”
He walked outside with Gilo, where he’d backed into an empty handicapped-accessible parking spot in front of the unit next door to the old side. “I’m thinking we chain it to the bike rack,” Gilo said. “He gave me chain and a padlock. That’ll keep it far enough from the office door.” Cali had propped that open for ventilation.
“Okay.”
“At the end of the night, just shut it down and drag it inside. He said he’ll pick it up this week.”
“What about the fridges?”
“Toss any food. The beverages will be okay. Empty the ice maker, though. It’ll be a solid chunk of ice when it refreezes.”
Ten minutes later, they had the genny up and running, and fans helping move air around both sides. Max looked around and realized the woman they’d evicted from the club was nowhere to be seen.
He returned to the office, where Cali had set up a couple of Christmas LEDs on the counter—a tree and a Santa. Unseasonably and ironically festive, considering it was a warm summer night in Florida, but at least they provided enough light to see by.
A Spanktacular Fourth Page 4
