by Livia Grant
Black Light: The Beginning (Black Light Series Book 17.5)
Black Light: Unbound (Black Light Series Book 18)
Black Light: Roulette Rematch (Black Light Series Book 20)
Books Released As Cassandra Faye
Daughters of Eltera Series (Dark Fantasy Romance)
Fae (Daughters of Eltera Book 1)
Tara (Daughters of Eltera Book 2)
Standalone Paranormal Romance
Hunted (The Dirty Heroes Collection Book 13)
One Crazy Bite
Dangerous Magic
Owned
A Black Light: Roulette Rematch Novella
By
Renee Rose
Chapter 1
Pavel
It’s the tattoos.
A first-class plane ticket doesn’t ensure special treatment when you look like I do. Not even the Tom Ford button-down and polished Berluti shoes counterbalance the ink markings that cross my knuckles and scrawl up my neck.
The flight attendant, a gorgeous African American with a poufy halo of curls, projects her smile across the first-class cabin. When her gaze flicks to my throat where the ink shows, it zings back to my face in surprise. She realizes I’m watching her and quickly moves on, only to see Maxim, across the aisle from me, also heavily inked. Of course, the beautiful redhead on his left makes him look less threatening.
I stretch my legs out and catch Sasha’s eye. “Why don’t you buy us a private jet, money bags?”
Sasha—Maxim’s arranged-marriage bride and bratva princess—came with a dowry of sixty mil. All Maxim has to do is keep her alive, which hasn’t been without its challenges.
Interested, she lifts her bright blue gaze to Maxim’s face. “Should we?”
I know perfectly well Maxim will provide Sasha whatever the fuck she decides she wants. I just need to tempt her into wanting something I want, too.
“Wouldn’t you rather be on your own plane right now, on your own schedule? Sipping a Cosmo before takeoff?”
“What would that run?” she asks her husband.
Maxim, our bratva cell’s fixer, quickly calculates. “We could probably get a used one for a million. Then we’d have to hire a pilot and pay for a hanger.” He shrugs. “Maybe we should. It would make trips to Russia more comfortable.”
“It would make everything more comfortable,” I agree.
I’m being a mooch, but at least I’m obvious about it. It’s not as if I come from money, like Sasha. I’m exactly what I look like. A Russian ex-military thug who makes his money the wrong way and now wants to use it to buy respect.
Which, of course, won’t work. As if to prove my point, the mudak with a ticket for the seat beside me stops in the aisle and eyes me with distaste. “That’s my seat.”
I wait three full beats before I move. After I get up and let him by to take the window seat, I crack my tattooed knuckles and look his way until he starts to sweat. All his money and arrogance wouldn’t keep him from breaking if I had him alone in a warehouse.
But my days of torture are fewer and more far between than they used to be. I haven’t beaten anyone down in months. No, I’ve been saving all that sadism for the lovely pain-slut the roulette wheel selects for me tonight.
I just wish to fuck Maxim and Sasha weren’t coming along. I guess I don’t care that much about Maxim. He knows the darkness inside of me. He’s seen me kill before. But it’s not something I care to have Sasha see. The sadism, not the killing. Well, neither.
I’ve been fucking my fist for a year thinking about this event. Ever since Ravil went to Black Light Roulette in D.C. last year, it’s been in my fantasies. I liked the anonymity of the thing—fake names and chance pairings.
Women who crave what I want to give: pain.
No emotions. No relationships. A little negotiation. Plenty of rules that keep things from getting weird.
For a man like me who prefers his women nameless—faceless even—for a man who wants to hear them cry out in pain and beg for more—heaven.
The truth is, I knew jack about BDSM and clubs like Black Light before last year. Ravil was dismissive about it when he was leaving. “Why would anyone pay to whip a woman?” he’d scoffed. He had to go play wingman to Valdemar, the Russian diplomat whose assistance we rely on to get illegal imports into the country.
It was the whip a woman thing that got me. I’d had so many fucking fantasies of exactly that thing running through my head from the time I was young, and until then, I didn’t know it was a thing.
I’d never let myself indulge, figuring I was a sick bastard who deserved the shitty life I’d been given for having such thoughts.
So I hit the internet. Found the porn. And the rules. And the lifestyle. I even had a few negotiated hookups.
So when Valdemar called Ravil this year, not knowing Ravil had knocked up his partner from last year and now has a newborn, I offered to go.
And everything would’ve been perfect if Sasha hadn’t heard and decided she also wanted to go.
Maxim, of course, forbade her from entering the event, but he decided if she wanted to attend, they would buy tickets and watch.
Like that’s not weird.
Who wants to watch their housemate having depraved fucking sex?
Apparently, my depraved friends.
Blyat.
Kayla
I circle the block three times to find a place to park then jump out of my ten-year-old Toyota Camry and dash for the door to my apartment.
The commercial I was shooting took all day. Eleven hours on my feet, dancing in stilettos while they filmed take after take of the lead actress flipping her hair, sipping the energy drink and looking refreshed while I partied on in the background.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m thrilled to have the work—any paid credits to help me get into the guild, but now I have to haul balls to get ready for tonight.
The night I’ve been freaking out about for the past month. Black Light Roulette.
I zip through the apartment, greeting my roommates breathlessly. “Hi—I’m here. Gotta shower. If Sasha comes, tell her I’ll be out in two seconds.”
“Sasha is heeeeere!” Our former roommate calls from the kitchen. She comes out holding her arms in a victory ‘V.’
“Sasha!” I throw my arms around our former housemate, the Russian party-girl who majored in theatre with me at USC. “I’m sorry I’m so late. I was filming a commercial, and it took forever.”
“Plenty of time,” she tells me. “Let’s get ready. Let me see what you’re wearing. I want to do your makeup.” She follows me into my bedroom rolling her Louis Vuitton suitcase beside her. She’s the reason I’m going to Black Light’s Valentine Roulette.
Six weeks ago, she told me she was coming to town with her hot Russian mafiya husband to attend some exclusive private BDSM club event. The moment she told me, it was like a switch turned on inside me.
My pulse started racing. I couldn’t stop pumping her for information about the event.
She told me about Black Light’s roulette event in which couples are paired by the spin of a wheel. Their activities—BDSM activities—are determined by a spin of a wheel.
I’d always been terrified of BDSM—the craving, the desire to submit to a man. It was like it was something lurking in the shadows I was afraid to look at for fear it would destroy me. Like Satan worship. Or a suicide cult. It was a book I refused to open. I didn’t even read the back!
But suddenly one of my best friends was talking about it casually, like it was just another event, and that changed everything.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It took me ten days to work up the nerve, even though I knew the moment I heard about it that I wanted to participate, but I called Sasha and told her I wanted to go.
“I’m not participating,” she warned me. “Maxim said over his dead body. He wouldn’t share me. But we’re going to watch. Do you want to come and watch with us?”
“No.” I couldn’t beli
eve I was saying it. “I want to, um, play—p-participate. Whatever you call it.”
Sasha laughed. “I think play is right. Okay, I’ll find out how to get you in. Our roommate Pavel is going to participate. He will know.”
I remembered Pavel from Sasha’s wedding in Ibiza. He wasn’t charming like Maxim. He was brooding and dangerous. Attractive in a deadly sort of way.
So, she got me an application, and I think maybe Maxim pulled some strings with someone he knows who is a member of the exclusive club, and I was selected.
I’m more nervous and excited than I am for the opening night of a play.
I take a quick shower to wash off the sweat and stale makeup. When I come out, Sasha has her suitcase open on my bed and is standing in her thong and push up bra putting makeup on in front of my dresser mirror.
I smile because it feels like old times. When Sasha moved back to Russia, we found a new housemate—Kimberly—and she’s great, but Sasha truly was the heartbeat of the house.
She’s fearless and fun—being the rich daughter of a controlling mafia boss taught her how to work a situation to her advantage. When the four of us went out together, we got into clubs, were served free drinks, and generally felt invincible. We followed our dreams without taking ourselves too seriously. Even now, every time I go to audition for a part, I purposely channel Sasha’s confidence. It’s another part I play—one that opens doors.
There’s no way I’d ever go to this event without her and having her here makes me brave.
I put on the outfit I’d planned—sort of a riff on a Playboy bunny. Fishnet thigh-high stockings. A pair of satin black panties with a cut out in the back to show the top of my buttcheeks. A pale pink and black striped corset.
“Oh damn, girl. You look hawt,” Sasha purrs.
I chew the inside of my cheek, unsure.
Sasha pokes me with her elbow. “Stop that. Remember, it’s not the clothes, it’s how you wear them. You can pull anything off if you own it.”
I draw in a deep breath, hoping with some of that oxygen I’ll get an infusion of Sasha’s confidence. I look in the mirror and lift my chin, faking it until I make it.
“Forget about the audience or your mystery partner, do you like how you look?” Sasha asks.
Do I? I look critically in the mirror. I’m not wearing it for me, though. I’m wearing it for him. Whichever him it happens to be. Because that’s what’s hot to me—pleasing a man. I’ve always been the type to swoon for professors, directors, bosses. The men with authority make my knees weak.
“Do you feel sexy? That’s all that matters.”
I imagine such a man taking me by the elbow and giving me a sharp command. Me obeying. His satisfaction as he rakes his gaze over me. My nipples get hard.
I nod. “Yes. I feel sexy.”
“Good. What are you doing with your hair?”
“I don’t know. Pigtails?”
Sasha shakes her head. “No. Curls. So he can pull your hair.” She winks and turns on my curling iron.
My mind somersaults with that visual. “Oh my God, does Maxim pull your hair?”
Sasha’s grin is naughty. “Like a boss.”
“And you like it? I mean, doesn’t it make you mad?”
“It makes me mad, but it makes me wet. Every time. He pulls my head back, and then he trails soft kisses down my neck. Pleasure with the pain.”
My insides go molten. Shivery.
Oh God, I am so excited about my induction into this world.
I want to ask her more, but I’m embarrassed. “So, um... what else does he do?”
She shoots me a look under her lashes. “Everything. He’s a devil.”
I think of everything swoony about her husband. He’s frightening—covered in tattoos that signify his involvement in the Russian mafia—and he’s possessive of Sasha yet so indulgent, too. His face goes soft when he looks at her.
My heart beats faster. I want a Russian devil, too.
Sasha finishes her makeup and pulls the front of her red hair into an Ariana Grande knot on the top of her head, the tail of it cascading down the back with the rest of her long, thick locks.
She points at the chair in front of my dresser. “Sit.”
I plop down and let her curl my hair while I put on makeup base. When she’s finished with my hair, she puts on the rest of my makeup, somehow making my eyes look twice as big without looking heavily made-up.
“Are you hungry? We should eat something before we go.” Sasha wriggles into a black bustier-dress.
“Yeah, we should definitely go get tacos looking like this.”
She laughs. “We could order up. What time is it?” She looks at her phone. “Crap! I don’t think we have time. We need to get out of here now in case there’s traffic.” She yanks on a pair of thigh high leather boots with three-inch heels.
I shove my feet into a pair of black stilettos, my poor arches screaming after already wearing heels all day.
“How did you get here? Do you want me to drive?”
“There should be a car waiting outside. Maxim was in a snit about us going by ourselves, but I guess he had to go and grease some Russian diplomat who’s also going tonight. The car and driver were his solution.”
Sasha zips up her suitcase, and we both shrug on long jackets to hide our outfits when we go outside.
We call goodbye to my housemates and strut out to find the Lincoln Towncar waiting at the curb.
“I can’t believe I’m really doing this,” I murmur.
“Kayla,” Sasha says after we’ve both climbed in the back seat. “This is for you—not for anyone else. Don’t go to perform. Make him perform for you.”
“But I’m the submissive.”
“Yes, and your job is easy. You receive—he delivers. You’re not there for him, though. You’re there for you. Remember that. Ultimately, it’s all about your satisfaction. You’re not going to see this guy again. Go in with the intention of getting what you want out of this.”
I lean my head back against the seat, my eyelids fluttering with desire and confusion.
I’m not usually a one-night stand kind of girl. I’m the type who gets attached. Immediately. It’s a problem. It’s probably why I don’t have a boyfriend. I scare them away.
But I can do this.
Like Sasha said—it’s for me not for them.
I just have to keep reminding myself of that.
Chapter 2
Pavel
Valdemar insists we arrive at the exclusive Beverly Hills BDSM club as soon as it opens. He’s a member of Black Light East, the sister club in D.C., but for some reason wanted to attend the West Coast event this year. I already signed an NDA and contract to participate, but Maxim completes his paperwork, and we’re instructed to leave all digital devices in the locker room.
I bring the duffel bag of toys and implements I plan to use on my submissive with me. We take a walk-through tour to get oriented. We’re in a multi-million-dollar mansion, below a swanky nightclub called Runway. Everything is beautifully appointed and thoughtfully designed for both comfort and sex activities. Comfortable lounge seating, tables, booths, and a bar. In the play area, a small stage rises in the far-left corner and, most surprisingly, a lap pool, hot tub, and sauna off to the right. Along one side of the club, there are private cool-down rooms, and at the back there’s a hallway with a nursery-style room for ageplay, a medical office for playing doctor and—my particular favorite—a torture chamber.
At the bar, I lean on my elbows and take stock of the people here. Valdemar buys me and Maxim a round of Beluga Noble vodka, and we settle onto a couple of couches.
“So, does a brigadier know what he’s doing at a high-class place like this?” he asks. It’s another not-so-subtle complaint that Maxim is not participating with him instead of me. I’m not high enough in our organization to appease Valdemar’s ego.
I give a silent nod, trying to suppress my irritation. Valdemar’s a talker. Maxim has handled him
most of the night, and I’d prefer he continue to do so. Schmoozing embassy assholes isn’t my gig. I’m more the guy you send to threaten someone.
“You’ve whipped a woman before?”
I resist the urge to drop my head into my hands and groan. Do we really have to sit with him and discuss this? How long until I can ditch his overweight pompous ass and make a woman scream?
I’m not clear on why Valdemar likes to have a bratva brother at his side for these events. I guess he needs a tough-looking associate with him to make his dick hard. Maybe he’s borrowing his alpha male status from us. Part of me thinks he might secretly want to be a bottom but hasn’t admitted it to himself yet.
Those are all terms I know well now after researching the hell out of the lifestyle. Top. Bottom. Different shades than dominant and submissive.
Maxim plays it cool and does his part of making small talk with Valdemar, but I notice he keeps looking toward the entrance, waiting for his lovely wife to arrive. God help us all if Valdemar says something disrespectful or tries to touch Sasha tonight. Our pakhan warned me not to let that happen.
“Have you, Pavel?” Valdemar presses when I ignore his question.
“Torture is my specialty,” I tell him. I had a half dozen scenes over the last year, but I’m sure as hell not going to trot them out for him to examine.
“It’s not the same,” Valdemar insists, and even though I know he’s right, I want to punch his teeth in. Like I need this peacock instructing me tonight. So help me God, if he stands at my elbow to coach me tonight, I will strangle the man.
Fortunately, I’m saved from a lecture when Maxim surges to his feet. Sasha struts toward us with a little blonde pixie beside her who looks like she came straight from the Playboy Mansion. I recognize her from the wedding in Ibiza, but I ignored her then and I plan to again tonight.
