The Choice

by Alice Ward

  Truthfully, I didn’t fucking care about PETA or toads, and honestly, I didn’t give two flying fucks about the vote right then, either. The election was six months away, and all I’d been doing was traveling from town to town in Pennsylvania on the campaign trail, not knowing where I was or what the hell I represented or whose ass I was supposed to be kissing. Sometimes I just wanted a night to breathe.

  Thus, this foray out into the wilds of Camden.

  I’d been coming to places like The Black Room for a little over a year, with no actual clue of what I’d been looking for. Escape, I supposed. It started with me researching places online, and by the time I found Camden, I’d been to every one in New Jersey. Whenever my most trusted chauffer was on shift, I’d ask him to take me out. George, who I trusted implicitly since he’d been with the Brice family since before I was born, loved to drive at night. I’d give him the directions, but I’d always have him park far enough away that he never really knew what I was up to.

  At first, I went because I loved the taboo nature of it — the way people would be wild and crazy out in the open, fucking each other with wild abandon, with only a mask to separate them from reality. It was so different from the buttoned-up, conservative world I was forced to be a part of. I came to watch, occasionally participate.

  But by Camden, I hadn’t participated in months. By then, it was almost boring. I’d been becoming desensitized to it, always wanting more, hotter, crazier, wilder.

  After a while, I’d found myself not feeling anything. Wondering what the point was.

  But the second she walked in, I took in the first real, honest breath I’d managed in over a year.

  When she walked in, I felt the blood pulsing through my veins again.

  She didn’t belong there. But my prayers were answered when she finally sidled up next to me and rested her elbow on the bar. She looked a little desperate, like she wanted someone to save her.

  “Hi,” she said, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder. “You look bored.”

  Although my dick was pulsing, I looked over at her, giving her a noncommittal glance. “I am. Are you about to change that?”

  She smiled. “Maybe.”

  I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a flask of my favorite Macallan 25, then lifted my mask slightly to take a swig. I’d filled it from the crystal decanter in the limo. I held it out to her.

  She jumped on it desperately, as if she could use the drink, and took a sip. “Scotch,” she mused, seeming a little more relaxed. “Mmm. That’s smooth.”

  I nodded. “It should be. You know scotch?”

  “Some. You seemed like a scotch type. It’s got to be expensive.”

  I crossed my arms. “Very.”

  She held out a hand. “I’m Cassandra.”

  “The great prophetess, huh?” I took her thin, manicured fingers in mine. “So what does the future hold for us?”

  She shrugged, a slow smile spreading across her face, revealing slightly crooked bottom teeth. It made her all the more beautiful. The people in clubs like this one had visible scars, emotional or physical, but some were better at hiding them than others. I knew women like the one she was attempting to imitate because I’d dated them all my life, Bernadette being the latest in a long line of well-bred debutantes. But this woman wasn’t quite hitting the mark.

  Her pearls were clearly imitation. Though her pale pink cashmere sweater, a shade darker than her skin, was something a grandmother would wear, it showcased her ample curves, and I could see the faint outline of her nipples through the thin fabric. Her skirt was too short, baring legs so long and lean that she must’ve been a dancer. Her shoes were cheap, fuck-me heels that were the constant in clubs. She had a ponytail of sunshine-yellow hair that was begging to be yanked on. At that moment, I wanted to take it and pull her to me, to defile those full pink lips of hers, to make her obey.

  “I’m Apollo,” I told her, the permanent sly grin on the mask hiding my real grin from the outside world. Every club I went to, I used another name, just in case. It helped to keep things under wraps, which I needed to do. “What brings you here tonight, Cassandra?”

  She smiled. “I want some fun.”

  I couldn’t tell for sure because the music was blasting, the air hazy with smoke, and I’d been drinking all the way over from Philly so I was half past trashed, but she seemed nervous. “What kind?”

  Then she did the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. She drew a corner of her bottom lip under her teeth. “What do you mean?”

  I let out a slow exhalation of breath. “Have you been here before?” I asked as she pulled her bag close to her side as if she were afraid someone would try to lift it from her.

  Her nose wrinkled as she inhaled, slow and steady. “Is it obvious?”

  I drew her closer to me, trailing a hand down her soft pink sweater, not stopping until I reached her ass. God, she felt like heaven, all soft and sweet and innocent. Not a debutante, clearly, but not meant for this club, either. Where did she belong? She had to know that was why every eye in the place was on her. They all wanted to corrupt her. And hell, I wanted to as well, but part of me wanted to capture it, bottle it, and never let it go. “You’re too sweet for this place,” I told her, running a finger along her pearls.

  “Looks can be deceiving.” She raised her chin in defiance. “And I want to have fun.”

  “There are many ways to have fun here, Cassandra. It all depends on what makes you tick. And what gets you off,” I told her, slow and seductively, my mouth so close to her ear that I could nip at the luscious pink lobe. “What gets you off?”

  She swallowed and looked away, gnawing on her lip again. “I don’t know. What about you?”

  She was clearly not in her element, which was why I’d gradually become so bored with places like The Black Room. Everyone else wanted to be there. But Cassandra? She was innocent and wide-eyed, and… appeared to want to be anywhere else but here.

  And fuck. I’d only just met her, and I already knew I wanted her. I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. As a rule, things I wanted, I usually got. They came easily to me. And Cassandra? I knew I would have her.

  “For one thing, long blonde ponytails.” I tugged on hers until she moaned.

  She grinned, the corner of her mouth turning up in a sexy smirk. “Oh, really?”

  I offered her another drink from my flask, and she took a larger gulp this time. My cock pulsed again as I watched her swallow. I leaned over, inhaling the candy-sweet scent of her perfume, and pressed my lips to her ear. “Let me take you upstairs and show you what else.”

  I could barely see her eyes under the mask, but I could tell when they widened. Her body tensed like a rod. Though I knew she was surprised by the invitation, I also knew that, before she said a word, she would say yes.

  She leaned into me, brushing her nipples against my chest, and nodded.

  Forcing myself to move at a pace that wouldn’t give away my eagerness, I pushed away from the bar, took her hand in mine, and led her to the stairs.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Brooke

  This isn’t really happening.

  I kept repeating that to myself as he led me up the narrow staircase to the second-floor landing. The air was hot and thick with the heavy, cloying scent of sex. My sweater adhered to my body in unnatural places, making me feel itchy all over, and sweat coated my palms.

  But Cameron’s? His were smooth and dry perfection, without a callus to be felt. This obviously wasn’t his first time in a sex club.

  Cameron Brice, the Republican hopeful, is in a sex club.

  I had to hold my other hand against my heart to keep it from doing a victory beat out of my chest. This was better than I’d expected. Much better.

  Wait until Owen Blakely hears this.

  Then I snapped to and remembered that I wasn’t quite headed to fill Owen Blakely’s ear just yet. Far from it. First, I had to somehow get my subject to take his mask off. The next hurdle was
getting out my camera and taking photographic evidence without him getting royally pissed off, and then I’d win the adoration of my employer.

  Getting him upstairs was just the first battle. I’d far from won this war.

  The walls around me suddenly started to close in, and my throat, coated with the sour taste of scotch, went completely dry.

  I looked around as we reached the top of the staircase. Moans echoed down the blue-lit walls, like some perverted haunted house. The hallway was choked with people, and all the masked faces seemed tilted in my direction. There goes Jackie O, ready to pop her sex club cherry.

  The hallway was long. He led me down it, stopping every so often at a room to check the door. Each one had a little message scrawled in Day-Glo marker on the outside. OCCUPIED, one said. STAY THE FUCK AWAY, another practically shouted. ALWAYS ROOM FOR MORE! said one farther down, and I hoped he wouldn’t take me into that one. But he moved with purpose, like he had very specific plans for me. I wasn’t sure if that was because he knew where he was going, or because he was a Brice, and that’s just what Brices did. They made decisions, got things done.

  “Here,” he said finally, stopping at an open door.

  I tried to peer inside, but it was dark. He reached in and flipped on a light, but it did little good, igniting a warm orange column of fire in the center of the room. He turned his masked face to me, and this, I knew, was where I needed to take the initiative. I started to walk into the room and suppressed a shudder as I saw a long, slinky-looking chaise shaped like an S in the center, along with a table covered with what I knew were various sex toys and bondage devices. I nodded my approval. “This could work.”

  He didn’t say anything. He picked up a pen and wrote something on the wipe-off board outside the room.

  Curiosity welled inside me. “What are you writing?”

  I could tell from the way the mask raised up slightly that he was smiling. Probably smirking. But he didn’t say a word. He merely dropped the pen, stepped inside, closed the door, and twisted the lock, effectively sealing me up with him.

  Alone.

  I drew breath into my lungs, wiping my palms against my pencil skirt. He removed his jacket, laying it down on the edge of the couch, then unbuttoned his vest, very slowly and precisely, as if he had all the time in the world. As if he was just undressing after a day at the office. He laid that down, too, then started to remove his cuff links.

  I looked down at myself, wondering if he expected me to undress too.

  No. I certainly wasn’t doing that.

  Although I’d come up here with him… to a sex room in a sex club. Had I really expected I could do that and keep my clothes on?

  Once he’d set down his cuff links and rolled up his sleeves, revealing thick, masculine forearms, I heaved in a breath. He sidled up close enough that I could smell the seductive scent of some woodsy, likely expensive aftershave I’d never smelled before. We stood about two feet away from each other, mask-to-mask as I tried to picture the handsome, wholesome, all-American face underneath.

  I couldn’t.

  Though it may have been dull politician Cameron Brice’s eyes in the eyeholes, here, in this Guy Fawkes mask, he was someone else... someone wicked, dangerous, and incredibly sexy.

  I broke the gaze first, looking away. My eyes landed on the chaise lounge. It was covered in a plain white slipcover, something that reminded me of a hospital bed, and there were odd loopy metal grommets placed in various locations at the top of the backrest. When I stepped back, my heel caught on something fastened to the floor. There were more loops sprouting from the floor. I could only imagine what they were for, and my breath hitched.

  People came in here to be fucked.

  When he took a step closer, I felt a pang of need low in my abdomen.

  That was new.

  Sure, Cameron Brice was utterly fuckable, as most of my friends on either side of the political spectrum would agree, but I wasn’t the type to go gaga over guys. Not only was I the good girl, boys didn’t interest me because they tended to get in the way of my career aspirations. I’d had too many run-ins with chauvinist pigs — most of them Republicans like the man in front of me, who thought a woman’s place was barefoot and pregnant. The asshole would always suggest I should take up modeling whenever I mentioned my FBI dream. I stifled the feeling of guilt blooming inside me.

  If playing along gets me closer to the FBI, it’s worth it. It’s worth it, no matter…

  I swallowed, making up my mind. No matter what happened in here, no one ever had to know. After all, I wasn’t Brooke Ellis now. I was Cassandra.

  It was in that moment of weakness that he reached for my bag, his movements fast and fluid. I flinched, but not quick enough, because he managed to wrap a hand around the strap and lift it off my shoulder. I could tell from the way he held it, in midair, that he was questioning my strange behavior. Cool it, Brooke, I screamed in my head. Act natural.

  “Heavy,” he observed, shaking it a little.

  My heart was beating like a drum, but I shrugged like it was nothing and took it from him. I set it down on the shag carpet, out of the way, planting myself between it and him so he would forget it.

  “I like to be prepared. Besides, I didn’t know you were into handbags,” I said to him with a teasing lilt in my voice, flipping my blonde mane to redirect his attention. “I thought you were into ponytails.”

  Quick as a flash, he came closer, reaching around me, yanking my ponytail until I had no choice but to tilt my face up to him. Pain screamed up my scalp as my nose bumped against the chin of his mask. All the breath whooshed out of me as he held me there for a moment. Then, he ran one searing fingertip lazily down my throat, stopping at the hollow. His voice was calm, slow, and even, and his breath was spiced with the smell of scotch mixed with something sweet, like cinnamon. “I am very, very into ponytails.”

  I thought maybe he was going to kiss me, and to do that, he’d have to remove the mask. Score one for me.

  Instead, he simply reached to the top of my ponytail, tugging on the hair tie, letting my hair fall around my shoulders.

  “But I like things even better when they’re loose. Unstructured. Wild.”

  Unlike his life. Unlike my life too. After all, all I’d ever done was make plans and lists for my future, following my ambition. He’d done the same. I didn’t follow politics closely, but everything I’d heard Cameron Brice stood for had very nearly repulsed me. It was hard to think that we had something in common.

  He stepped back to look at me. I couldn’t see them fully, but I could feel his eyes appraising me. “Take them off.”

  My eyes widened. “Them…?”

  “The pearls. They interfere.”

  I instinctively lifted my hand to my chest to touch the string of imitation pearls hugging my neck. Before I could think, he reached over, seeming to know exactly the right amount of effort to exert to tear them from my neck. Pearls went skittering everywhere, some landing in the thick shag rug, others pinging against the hardwood floors, the walls.

  He made no apology.

  I just stood there, mouth half-open, stunned.

  “They’re not real,” he said after a few silent seconds ticked awkwardly by, as if I should thank him for relieving me of them.

  “What?”

  “Obviously imitation,” he answered, like the snooty upper-crust snob he was born and bred to be.

  I blinked at him, offended. “And what difference does that make? You still shouldn’t have—”

  “No. You shouldn’t have,” he said over me, his voice hard. This must have been the famous Brice influence, the power he and his other family members possessed that could make anyone think whatever the mighty assholes wanted. He’d broken my necklace, and all I could think was that I was somehow at fault. “You’re better off without them.”

  “Oh? Are you that much of a perfectionist?”

  He reached into his pocket and took out the flask. Tilting the mask up ever s
o slightly, he drained the contents into his mouth. “When it comes to pearls, it’s imperfection that’s beautiful, Cassandra.”

  I hoped the mask was big enough to hide my cheeks because I knew they were flushing. Despite thinking these clothes would help me fit in with him, my lack of culture was obvious. Before I could think of any witty retort, he turned away from me. He paced around the room, his hands laced behind his back as if he were addressing a boardroom. All the while, I felt myself getting weaker in the knees. This was the man with a silver tongue that could slay giants. I’d seen him on television, his voice impassioned and bold, commanding the audience, bending them to his will, but here? Alone with him in this room, I already knew I was a goner.

  When he whirled to face me, I knew I wanted that mouth on me. “Now. What do you want to do?”

  I felt the words escape me without thought, but even when they were out, I knew they were the absolute truth. “Anything you want me to do.”

  His laugh was low and sexy. “But what do you want?”

  As flustered as I was, I still managed to keep my purpose in the front of my mind. I gestured to his mask. “For you to take that off.”

  He laughed again and shook his head. “No,” he said with a note of absolute finality.

  Shit. My mask only covered my eyes, so my mouth was exposed, while his covered his entire face. “But how are you going to…” I started, but then stopped when realization flooded in. Of course he didn’t plan on kissing me. A kiss was personal, and this encounter, whatever it was, was not. “No?”

  “You heard me. Anything else?”

  The mask probably didn’t help to hide my disappointment. Without that, what did I have? Nothing. I could catch him stealing the Liberty Bell in a negligee, but with that mask on, it wouldn’t matter, because no one would know it was him.

  Shit.

  The silence stretched on, and what little confidence I had waned. Even with the mask, he could probably see right through me. I didn’t belong here. Maybe he knew exactly why I was here and was just playing with me. After all, I wasn’t the first person to try to catch him up to no good. Plenty of people had wanted to bring his family down over the years, and he’d survived this long unscathed for a reason. He wasn’t just going to whip off his mask because some girl in imitation pearls asked him to. I needed to bide my time and think.