A trace of some emotion flashed in his eyes but I couldn’t interpret it. It vanished too quickly. “Yes, that would make sense.”
“Did you have a Watcher?”
“No.” I had the feeling that I’d made him remember something he wanted to forget. “Ah. Here we are.” I hadn’t even noticed that we’d exited the freeway. The car turned into a tree-lined driveway. “You’ll get your best view of Club Phoenix in a minute.”
“That’s very Harry Potter,” I quipped. “Am I going to see Hogwarts in a moment?”
He laughed and the tension in the car lightened. “Maybe you’ll be fine,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Maybe this isn’t a mistake.”
My comparison to Hogwarts was spot on - Club Phoenix was an honest-to-goodness castle. I openly gaped before I turned to Miles. “How much room does a sex club need?”
He grinned. “On Yelp, this is a spa. And it’s actually a very good one. The sex club is the underground part of the business.” That explained some things. Even in the middle-of-nowhere, there had to be someone curious about a castle.
“The home was built at the turn of the century by one of Philadelphia’s robber barons as a retreat,” he added. “It lay vacant for many years until the club purchased it sometime after World War Two. It started out as a gentlemen’s retreat, but has evolved as time has gone on.”
“How long has it been a sex club?”
“Probably since the start,” Miles said. “I’m assuming ‘gentlemen’s retreat’ was a polite euphemism. But you’ll have to ask the Chairman for more details.” He flashed me an amused look. “I got a full tour and history lesson once my qualification period was complete, but I wasn’t paying full attention. I was waiting for the scantily clad women.” He winked at me, gently mocking my words from earlier.
I punched his arm lightly. “Jerk.”
The car ground to a halt outside the castle and the driver hopped out to open my door. I stepped out and glanced at Miles who had come around to my side. “What time is it?” My voice sounded nervous.
“Eight forty five,” he replied. “Not too delayed by traffic. Come. I’ll show you where to go.”
Should I be nervous?, I wanted to ask him again. Instead, I grabbed his hand, holding on to him for reassurance. “Kelly,” he soothed. “I’d tell you to relax, but that’s not going to help. Instead, a piece of advice.”
I looked at him and his bottle-green eyes bored into mine. “Always remember who you are.” His fingers traced the outline of my jaw lightly. “The Kelly Mitchell I know likes to laugh and tease. She loves her family so fiercely that she will cause herself any amount of pain to prevent theirs. She is insanely talented. She worries about when she’s going to set up her own fashion line. She’s thinking of applying for a job at Zac Posen. If it wasn’t for her organizational skills, Nina Germain’s business would have fallen apart years ago.”
I gaped at him. We met up often enough, on the plane when he gave me a ride home and at lunch every two weeks, but this was a display of disconcerting attention. When I spoke, Miles had been listening. And it seemed that at almost every turn, I’d underestimated Miles St. Clair.
“The Kelly Mitchell I know is a woman who lights up a room when she walks in.” He squeezed my hand. “The darkness is seductive…”
“And you think I should leave now.” My heart sank in my chest. I didn’t know what his warnings were about. Either he was just being overprotective or he displaying some kind of male double-standard, but in either case, I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to explore.
“Stop interrupting Kelly, and stop jumping to conclusions.” He shot me an irritated look. “We have something in common, you and I. The darkness is seductive and always within us. And it has a place but so does everything else. In this quest to explore your darkness, don’t forget that there’s so much more to you. You are more than your sexual desires. What you crave in the darkness of the night does not define you.”
I remembered my dreams last night of being tied up and taken. Of being whipped until tears of pain dripped down my cheeks. Of kneeling on my haunches and sucking cock, of crawling on my hands and knees on command. These were my dark desires and I was about to get a chance to explore them. For the moment, Miles’s warnings were kind but my nervousness was overlaid with excitement and I wasn’t listening too closely.
The doors to the castle were open and we entered. My mouth dropped as I walked into a massive foyer. Marble tile was inlaid into the floor; a multi-tiered chandelier hung from the ceiling. A dark mahogany table contained an ornate crystal vase that held armloads of fresh flowers. Everything exuded a sense of understated luxury.
My high heels clicked on the floor as I walked in and I automatically arched my calves so that I’d be quieter. If there were other people in the club, there was no indication of it in the foyer. It was so quiet that I would have heard the sound of a pin drop.
“Mr. St. Clair.” A man appeared out of nowhere, making me yelp and jump. He turned towards me with an apologetic smile. “Ms. Mitchell, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
I blushed as Miles snickered quietly next to me. “My name is James,” the man continued. “Please follow me. The Chairman wishes to meet you.”
“Don’t worry about me, James. I know where to go,” Miles interjected.
“Yes Sir,” James responded. “The Chairman has left a note for you in his office.”
Miles nodded. “Thank you.” He leaned in to me and kissed me briefly on the lips. He’d never kissed me before and I almost jumped again in shock, but desire rose in my blood at his nearness and at the heat emanating from his body. In that moment, at the threshold of discovering something about myself, I was more attracted to Miles St. Clair than I’d ever been before.
I didn’t want to let go of my grip on Miles’s hand. Yet I did want to explore. There was a dichotomy in me that I didn’t fully understand. I think Miles sensed how I felt because he gently disentangled our hands and gave me an encouraging smile. “Rafael’s not as scary as he appears,” he said. “Don’t let him give you any grief, Kells.”
My lips twitched at the nickname that he hadn’t used in so many years. Cheered, I nodded at Miles, and mouthed ‘thank you.’ I followed James through a small door to one side of the foyer, down a narrow, spiralling stone staircase, and then we made our way in silence down a long corridor.
The walls were made of stone and the lighting was dim. As I walked after James, I wondered what I was getting myself into. When he pushed open a door at the end of the corridor, it was with distinct trepidation that I entered.
“Ms. Mitchell, Sir.”
“Thank you, James.” The man who spoke had a distinctive accent. Something European. Spanish, maybe? He looked Spanish with his jet black hair slicked into a ponytail and a neat goatee. “Kelly, right?” His voice was friendly. “My name is Rafael Garcia.”
He was standing in front of an unlit fireplace. I walked towards him, taking his outstretched hand and shaking it. “The Chairman?” I asked him, looking around the room with some curiosity, but if I’d hoped to learn something about what was in store for me, I wasn’t going to learn it from the décor in this room. There were two comfortable armchairs positioned near the fireplace but the room was otherwise devoid of ornament.
“A bit of a pretentious title,” he said with a shrug. “Still, we like our formalities here at Club Phoenix.”
My lips twitched. “You certainly seem to,” I noted dryly. It was all very Eyes Wide Shut.
He laughed. “I like to meet all the new recruits personally,” he confided, waving me towards one armchair and settling down into the other. I took a seat and waited for him to continue. “Now, Anna has given you some indication of what to expect, yes? And Miles as well?”
“Actually,” I corrected him, “they’ve both been quite mysterious.”
He smiled again but I could see how he could be intimidating. He looked like he could easily cloak his personality
with a European hauteur, transforming into someone much cooler and darker. Or perhaps this friendly persona was the mask and the real Chairman would make me quail. In either case, for the moment, Rafael’s goal seemed to be to lull me into relaxation. “We do like to be somewhat secretive,” he acknowledged. “Partly, that has to do with the very real need for privacy for many of our members and our employees.”
It worked as a significant point in his favour that he mentioned that his employees deserved privacy as well, especially given they were the ones that would probably be much more in a position to be hurt if their private lives became public. After all, if it became gossip fodder that Miles St. Clair visited a sex club, St. Clair Biotech stock might dip a little but it would recover. Miles would still be a billionaire. But the men and women who worked here didn’t have the luxury of a stuffed bank account to insulate them.
“But,” he continued. “Here you are. I can answer any questions you have but I will also start by telling you what the qualification process is about, yes?”
“Please,” I replied, keeping my innate sarcasm hidden for the moment. How nice of them to finally tell me what was in store for me.
He steepled his fingers. The light glinted off his Rolex, confirming my impression that whoever he was, Rafael wasn’t exactly hurting for money. “The qualification process is designed for you to understand your sexual desires,” he started. “We will expose you to a variety of scenarios. Some will be quite vanilla. Most will be intense. Your role is to be honest in the discovery of your desires and to be open about what your own limits are.” He gave me a steady look. “We will push you during this stage but it is your responsibility to push back. To let us know what is too much to endure.”
This was the clearest explanation of the qualification process. “When does the qualification process end?”
“When we are secure that you do know your own limits and you can play safely without intense supervision.”
“Intense supervision?”
He waved a languid hand to a corner of the ceiling, and I noticed a blinking light. Cameras then. I wasn’t surprised. “There are cameras, of course, and club security is always keeping an eye on proceedings,” he said. “But we prefer that the intervention from club security is the exception, not the rule.”
I had one more question. “And the Watcher?”
He smiled. “Ah, yes. Your Watcher. It sometimes intimidates applicants that someone is watching every single scene from such close quarters.”
I hadn’t thought about that particular issue until that moment. Sigh. Another thing to be nervous about. Being watched so intimately by a total stranger while another stranger systematically probed my walls, testing each and every dark crevice in my soul.
“You have so little experience that the Watcher is a must for you.” He rubbed his chin. “However it might make you feel better to know that we rarely forgo the Watcher for any new recruit. It is too easy to neglect safety. The Watcher is your lifeline. He does not speak to you during your scene but he monitors your emotional and physical well-being.”
Anna had been so convinced the Watcher was necessary and so had Miles. Now Rafael was swearing by them too. And he’d used the same words Anna had. The Watcher was my lifeline.
If the Watcher was my lifeline, would I be drowning? Would I be suffocating in fear or overwhelmed with pain? Another twinge of unease settled between my shoulder blades. But in tandem, there was a heavy ache in my cunt. My body was clear about the path ahead; it was only my mind that was conflicted.
“Until you get your medical tests done, everyone will use protection for vaginal, anal and oral penetration.”
I barely heard his safety warning. The road was forking. There were two paths. One through the door in front of me; another through the door behind me. A step forward or a step back.
But the step back would be motivated by fear and I was determined not to be afraid. I just wanted to be eager and excited and ready for what lay ahead.
“I’m ready.” My voice was clear. None of the turmoil I felt was audible in my voice.
“In that case, Kelly Mitchell,” he said, pointing to the door in front of me, the one I hadn’t yet walked through, “your pathway lies through that door. Your Watcher will be waiting for you.”
My Watcher. Every time someone spoke those words my heart started to race. I rose from my armchair. “Thank you,” I said to him.
He smiled automatically and politely. “If everything works out, I’ll see you at the end of the qualification period,” he responded. “Good luck, Ms. Mitchell.”
I smoothed my palms on my dress and reached for the handle, turning it and pushing the door outward.
Chapter 5
I hadn’t articulated it to Anna or to Rafael or even to Miles, but in the back of my mind I’d kept wondering what the point of the Watcher was. If the person who was doing a scene with me couldn’t be trusted to read my emotional state correctly, what use was there really in adding the Watcher?
Mentally I’d assumed that the purpose was to just add a set of eyes for extra safety and I’d dismissed the measure as a meaningless antidote to pointless worrying.
But when I stepped through that door and I saw the familiar bottle-green eyes of the man watching me in silence, I understood. A flash of pure electricity jolted through my body at the idea of the Watcher’s intent gaze on me as another man took my body for his pleasure.
The Watcher was going to watch me have sex with strangers. He was going to stay silent as I was whipped and slapped, as I was tested by the mysterious Club Phoenix. He would serve as a witness as I immersed myself in darkness and let my hidden desires rise to the fore.
He was my Watcher, and watching him, I was almost painfully aroused.
There was another man. I had barely noticed him as I walked in, but he now moved towards me. “Kelly? My name is Adam. This is your first time?”
I nodded. It was difficult to tear my gaze away from the Watcher’s gaze, but I forced myself to do it and I turned to the man who had introduced himself. He smiled at me. “Nervous?” he asked.
“A little,” I replied. I couldn’t help looking at my Watcher when I said those words but he didn’t betray any emotion.
“Normally, we use a traffic light system here at Phoenix,” Adam said to me. “Red — stop. Yellow, slow down; green — keep going. Does that work for you?”
I focused my attention on Adam but I was painfully aware of my Watcher. “Normally?” I asked quizzically and he rewarded me with a quick grin.
“Paying attention, that’s good. Yes. Since this is your first time, we aren’t going to bother with safe words. Any variation of No or Stop and I’ll stop and check in with you.”
“Okay.”
“All you have to do is obey. Do you understand, Kelly?”
All I had to do was obey. Intellectually, I’d known that, but as Adam’s deep measured voice spoke those words, I felt the weights I carried on my shoulders slough off one by one. The stress brought about by my mother’s illness. The sense of responsibility I felt for Nina Germain’s business, though the heiress was rich enough to afford it to go bankrupt. The feeling that I should be getting on with my life and applying for better jobs. My low-level panic about making ends meet every month, my finances constantly drained by the monthly flights home and by the high cost of living in New York. My worry that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t want to settle down and get married. The cloud that was always over my head — the fear that I too carried the genetic markers for early onset Alzheimer’s.
I left all of that angst and anxiety at the door and directed my attention at Adam and it was the most liberating thing I’d ever done.
This could get addictive.
“I understand,” I whispered.
The Watcher got to his feet and moved in front of me. “Do you submit?” he asked, his voice devoid of emotion. I would later learn that these were ritualistic words at Phoenix, heralding the star
t of a scene and marking a submissive’s freely given consent.
The top starts spinning.
I looked into his eyes. When I spoke, my voice was free of nervousness and doubt. I knew that I needed to do this. I needed to feel what came next; I had to be true to every facet of myself. Not just the parts of me that were deemed appropriate by polite society. And I needed the oblivion. I needed to forget so badly. “I submit.”
“Take off your dress.” Adam’s voice was even.
I’d barely paid any attention to my surroundings as I’d walked in, my eyes automatically going to the Watcher. Now, I sneaked a peek at the room I was in as my hands unzipped my black dress and I wiggled it down my hips.
It was a large space and most of it was shrouded in darkness. A small area was lit and that was the area I stood in with a spotlight shining down on me. The Watcher had withdrawn just to the edge of the bright space, so he was partly in the shadows. His positioning was almost a metaphor. He straddled the line that separated darkness from light and he balanced at the knife’s edge with seeming ease.
Would I be able to do the same?
I bent to pick up my dress from the cold stone floor and Adam reached forward to take it from me. “Take off your bra as well,” he ordered, and my hands reached behind my back to unclasp the catch. He pushed the straps off my shoulders, and pulled the flimsy lace garment off my body, taking a sharp inward breath as my breasts swung into view. “Oh, very nice Kelly. I think I’m going to have some fun with these creamy tits.”
The words were so crude that I felt my entire body flush with mingled shame and desire. He noticed, because his eyes glinted. “What am I going to do?” he demanded.
I bit my lip. I couldn’t say tits. I just couldn’t.
“Do you have some difficulty understanding the meaning of the word obey, Kelly?” Adam’s voice was harsh and I automatically lowered my gaze to the floor, shaking my head silently.
The Darker Side of Love (A Dark Erotica Boxed Set) Page 5
