Double Entendre: (City of Steel 2) (The Vault)

by Katherine Rhodes

  After a minute, I lolled my head to look at him, and he was grinning wickedly at me. His fingers moved and pushed the balls back up inside me, and he patted my sex a moment later. “Good girl.”

  I felt like preening, if I’d had any strength at that moment to do that. He saw I was wrung out and pulled me onto his lap. He kissed me sweetly and languidly as my entire body settled through the wicked orgasm.

  “I love the way you feel in my arms after that,” he whispered. “I know I get you in my bed all the time now, but I will not tire of this.”

  I grinned, and a moment later I could feel my grin slip away.

  There was bad body language. Looking right through the room—windows let casual onlookers linger in the hall if they wanted—and right into the rack room across the way, I watched a moment as the master’s arm rose and fell, and there was no love in the stroke. There was no checking the movement of their arm as the cane came down across the sub’s back.

  “Simon, rack room. Don’t move quickly. I don’t like what I’m seeing there.”

  He kissed me again and settled me a little differently on his lap, so he could watch the room over my shoulder. I couldn’t see the room now, but I could see a few of the people in the hall starting to squirm and look away uncomfortably.

  It was easy to tell when a punishment was brought with a loving hand, the motion was checked. Even the hardest punishments, the Dom never had to follow through on the arm. It was something they were all taught.

  Unlike throwing a ball of any kind—baseball, football, basketball, shot put—there was no follow through. In sports, follow through was necessary. It lent power to the move. A pitcher who pulled their arm at the end of the pitch wasn’t going to be able to get it to speed and would risk injury.

  That was exactly what a Dom didn’t want. It wasn’t good to have the follow through at all. It could damage the sub badly. There were techniques shared that still conveyed the power without damage.

  This guy wasn’t pulling his punches.

  At all.

  The people watching could sense that even if they weren’t sure what they were reacting to.

  “That’s him,” Simon whispered. “Stand and follow me. Don’t look over there.”

  I draped myself on his arm, smiling and wobbling a bit after him. Part acting, part my legs were still jelly from the orgasm. He kept his head close to mine and nuzzled my temple as we walked. The exit was on the opposite side of the room, away from the windows, and as soon as we were out of sight, he started running, too fast for me to keep up.

  “Pull a fire alarm! I need to get into that hallway!”

  He shot out of sight and I had to fumble in the dark a bit to find a fire alarm. I yanked the handle and busted the glass on it, slamming the button behind it.

  The lights and sirens started immediately, and I just stepped back out of the way. I wasn’t going to leave, and I didn’t want to get sucked out into the crowds that were now going to flow down and out of the club.

  When I saw a clear path to the hall, opposite of where Simon had run, I made my way over, watching everyone run for the main rooms.

  I froze.

  There were fire exits that went up. I remembered from the few times I had been on the top floor with Darien. I grabbed my phone and dialed Donny’s number.

  “Vanity!” he yelled into the phone. “Are you out?”

  “It’s not a fire, Don. We spotted the sadist, and I pulled the fire alarm on Simon’s request. The fire exits go up, don’t they?”

  “Fuck! Yes, they do, to the other side of the parking lot, in two utility buildings. But the place isn’t on fire?”

  “No, Simon was going to try and flush the guy out. Or stop him at the least,” I answered. “Is there any way we can get those doors watched.”

  “If we had known, yes, but the doors are open and people are flying out of them right now.” He gasped. “I’m watching it on closed circuit that gets recorded. We might be able to pick them out from there. Where is the detective?”

  “Rack Room three, on the right side as you walk in.”

  “I’ll send the paramedics through the emergency door,” he said. “Mistress Dee is going to be pissed this is the third time.”

  “I think Simon is going to be pissed that this is the ninth victim,” I snapped and ended the call. I ran over to the hall that led to the rooms. It was mostly empty by now with the lights and alarms ringing and buzzing.

  The door to room three was wide-open and I charged in. Simon was kneeling next to the woman with a towel pressed to her shoulder.

  “Medics?” he barked.

  “On the way,” I answered. “More towels?”

  “Come, sit with her,” he said. “I’ll handle the towels.”

  I dropped to my knees next to the woman on the bench. She was sobbing and covered in tears and blood, and I took a corner of the towel.

  “We saw him,” I whispered. “We’ll get you out of here and safely to the hospital.”

  “It hurt so fucking much,” she managed to get out between the sobs.

  Simon gasped and jumped back from the closet he opened. “What the hell!” He leaned in and down and fiddled with something and half a minute later—he helped a man out of the closet.

  “Sabrina,” the man whimpered and ran over to kneel next to me. “Oh, God, Sabi.”

  I cleared my throat. “Sir?”

  “My fiancée,” he said, brushing the hair out of her face. “Oh, shit, Sabi. I’m so sorry.”

  I moved back and helped Simon with the bleeding. “There were other exits.”

  He grunted, “I realized that as I hit the hallway. I cursed loudly, but I had to get in here. You can see she’s hurt bad.”

  “Yes, I know. Donny said there’s cameras on the doors as well, so we might get something out of that.”

  He flinched, confused. “How’d you talk to him so fast?”

  “Cell phone…?”

  He looked me up and down. “Woman, where are you hiding a cell phone in that outfit?”

  “Cleavage, it’s not just for motorboating.”

  He choked on his laugh and went back to handing the guy another towel to keep her from completely bleeding out. There were feet on the metal stairs coming down and Simon nodded for me to take the towel. He stepped back and let the medics in the room as the alarms were finally shut down.

  “What’s going on here?”

  We turned to find a firefighter in heavy gear standing in the door. Simon pulled out his badge and held it out. “Lieutenant Simon Garabaldi, Pittsburgh PD. I pulled the alarm when we discovered this woman was being beaten.”

  I stepped up next to him and nodded. “The Northside Sadist. We saw him and we both forgot there were other emergency exits that would funnel people up and out of here.”

  The fire chief ran in and saw Simon holding his badge. He looked at the firefighter in full gear. “Clear it fast if he says there was no fire. And let’s get that woman to the hospital.” He peered at Simon’s badge again. “Lieutenant, is it? Take a seat. We’ll be here a while.”

  Simon

  Brigyd ran a hand down her face as we stared at the footage for the fiftieth time. Or sixtieth. Who knew at this point.

  “I have no idea which of these it could be. You can see everyone’s face, and no one is covered in any kind of blood,” she grumbled.

  Yawning, I nodded. “I agree. I don’t know what to do. He was wearing a hoodie, so I couldn’t see his face.” I was about to ask Vanessa, yet again, if she had seen anything that might help us, but she was in the chair, and somewhere in the past five minutes had fallen asleep. She was snoring and curled up, clearly chilled.

  I pulled my jacket off and tucked it around her. She made a little adorable sigh and snuggled into it.

  Brigyd and Donny exchanged glances and rolled their eyes. I stuck my middle finger up and walked back to them. “You get no slack. Screw you both.”

  “You’re cute together,” Donny said. “She
’s fucking filthy and you’re Joe Friday.”

  I stared at him. “I don’t think Joe Friday could use a flogger or had a spanking bench in his basement.”

  “You what?” Brigyd asked.

  “You heard him, she’s a dirty bird.” I scratched my nose and realized I could still smell her sex on my finger. That wasn’t helping anything. “So, back to the tape.”

  Shaking her head, Brigyd sat back in the chair. “We’re all too tired to watch this again. There’s only five minutes of video on each of the four cameras, but there’s nothing of us left. We have to try again later. We all need to go home and take a break and get some sleep.”

  “Did you hear from the hospital?” Donny asked.

  I nodded. “Killian texted me when they got out of surgery. She’s in good shape. Everything stitched up nicely and she didn’t need a lot of blood at all. We got her out in time. And he said to tell you that he and Cece will pick up the fine and bill for the alarm.”

  Donny nodded. “We need to have a sit down and figure out a better way to convey that there is something going on in those rooms. We can’t have the fire department coming out every time we think something isn’t right.”

  “Can you just put in a warning bell system?” Brigyd asked. “Just a button near the stairs at each floor and doors to call security? It’s a blue button system in a lot of places, and then internal security can handle until we get here.”

  Donny’s face twisted in an expression that said it was a good idea. “I’ll talk to Mistress about it and see if I can get her to approve it. It wouldn’t be any worse to install than our closed-circuit system.”

  I tapped my nose. “It’s a great idea. In fact, I’ll mention it to Franz for Imperial and Darien for Wanderer’s End. They have enough through traffic that it’s probably a good idea to have those.” A flash of Emmy’s poor beaten body shot through my mind and was gone. “Yeah. You know, I think it’s time to start thinking about even better security. There are biometrics, Bluetooth, RFID… We’ll get that through the community.”

  Blowing a long slow breath out, I stared at the screens again. “Donny, can we get this footage copied and sent to Brigyd tomorrow? We’ll have some more analysis done and we can figure out what we need to do to catch this guy.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I’ll copy the full hour before and after and send it over. I’ll do that right now and then I suggest you all head home and get some proper rest—actual proper rest, Detective”—he nailed me an accusatory look and tossed a chin at my sleeping girlfriend—“and we’ll pick all this up in a few hours. With fresh eyes.”

  “Where is Mistress Dee?” I asked. “All this time I haven’t once spoken with her about this.”

  “She’s been on vacation,” Donny answered. “She does this once in and while. She’ll go gallivanting around the world for six months. Her last email said she was at Sybaritus in the Caribbean.”

  “If you can get in touch with her, tell her she needs to come back here. We need her to be here. This is the third incident in her club and we’re going to need to talk to her.”

  “I will do my best. She’s… difficult.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I can be difficult too.”

  Donny got the message and nodded. After a few agreements and good nights, I walked over to the chair where Vanessa had fallen asleep. I didn’t want to wake her. She was exhausted, and I couldn’t blame her. I’d wrung her out and she wasn’t used to working on next to no sleep like I was.

  I bent down and scooped her, jacket and all, and she nestled her head into the crook of my neck.

  “S’bed time?”

  “You just nap, pretty girl. I’ll take you home. “

  “Bad dreams. Bad people.”

  Donny held the door open for me as I made my way out to the car in the chill air. “Yes, Vanity. There are bad people.”

  “Don’t want bad people to hurt people anymore.”

  Dropping a quick kiss on her head, I popped the door of the car open and placed her on her seat. “Can you get that seat belt, Nessa?”

  She looked at me with sleepy, sleepy eyes, but grabbed the latch and popped it in the lock. I closed the door and she leaned over onto the window. I walked around and slid into the driver’s seat, starting the car up. It took a moment, but the heat kicked on and she snuggled down into the seat.

  She turned so she could watch me drive. “I’m glad you told me to pull that alarm. That girl was hurt bad.”

  “Not so bad,” I answered. “Killian had her stitched up good in no time flat.”

  “You’re a good detective, Simon.”

  “I try to be.”

  “You’re also great in bed.”

  I chuckled. “I don’t know what one has to do with the other, but I’ll take the compliment.”

  “You are. Even when we’re not kinky. I like being in bed with you.” She looked ahead at the road. “Do you hate me for asking for a poly relationship?”

  “No, Vanessa. I don’t. I wish I understood why, and that I could be that for you, but I don’t hate you for it. You haven’t said a thing since I agreed to it.”

  She frowned in the light of the dashboard. “I know. I haven’t wanted to. What I have with Laicy is what I need, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  I flicked the high beams on as we came to a dark part of the county road. “I don’t know how I feel about that. She’s important to you, and you can’t share what that is with me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what it is about her, but I…” She sighed. “No, I do know. I do. She’s my Domme, Simon. I wanted to back away from Master Darien for you. I didn’t want you to be jealous of another man.”

  This was news. “Laicy is your Domme?”

  She nodded mutely.

  “If she’s your Domme…”

  “We have sex, Simon. It’s not just a D/s thing. I really like her, and she likes me. But I wanted to get away from Darien because I…well, I felt it was wrong to have him. He would never have agreed to being exclusive and I didn’t want to do that to you.”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled it to her. She stroked each finger and just played with the digits. “You’re more wonderful than I could have ever imagined. I’m trying to make this work for us.”

  I stared ahead for a moment. “You could have asked me.”

  “Asked you to Dom me?” Her laugh was soft and sleepy. “Oh, Si. I couldn’t ask you to do that. Your job is hard, and you deal with violence all the time. I can’t ask you to indulge my masochism on top of that.”

  I pursed my lips. “You’re sweet for that, but…Nessa, I want to be there for you. If Nathaniel Walsh can learn to be a sub, I can learn to be a Dom.”

  The sleepy laugh again floated through the car. “That’s not fair to you, to take that on. Laicy comes to it naturally, she enjoys it.” She adjusted herself in the seat. “Does this really bother you that much?”

  “Well, I just thought I would be the one to satisfying your cravings.”

  “And what do you get in return? Work all day, come home and beat your girlfriend?”

  I was quiet again a moment. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Make yourself sound like a freak, or a deviant. I wouldn’t have invited you into my house, into my whole life, if any of this bothered me. You know that.”

  “I like being hurt.”

  I let out a sigh. “You don’t like being hurt, Vanessa. You like the pain. There’s a difference, and I know that’s why you need a Dom. That very fact just allowed you to identify a vicious attack on someone who wasn’t seeking it. I was—I am willing to do that for you. Find that balance.”

  She sighed. “How can I ask you to do that?”

  “Just ask.”

  “Ask you to perform acts that you rescue other women from?”

  “But that’s just it, pretty girl. It’s a performance. That’s all. It’s a way to achieve a goal. A way to satisfy you. Don’t
you see what’s all part of this, satisfying each other. My needs are more straightforward, yours are complex. But we can work on them.”

  I saw her chewing her lip out of the corner of my eye. “I know you’re focusing on the Dom aspect, Simon. But you haven’t addressed the female aspect of this. I am very solidly bisexual, and she fills that part of me that…isn’t possible for you to fill.”

  Staring straight ahead, I didn’t know what to say. What did someone say when their girlfriend admitted to being attracted to another woman who was her Domme?

  “Do I get any of your kink at all? Am I just the vanilla boy toy?”

  She sighed. “I thought it would be easier if I left my kink with her, gave you and me the chance to be…just us.”

  I snorted. “I just shoved my fingers up your pussy in the middle of a kink club. What exactly are we? I like playing with you, Vanessa. I like being dirty and kinky. I didn’t know I was going to have competition on this.”

  “It’s not competition, Simon. How can I let you be my Dom, use whips and floggers and paddles on me, and then expect you to go to work? Do you think people won’t find out about our activities?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I do.” She let out a sigh. “I do, Simon. There will always be someone who has something to say, there will be promotions you’re passed over for, friends who walk away.

  “I have nothing to lose. I have no one who calls me to take me shopping or make sure I can afford the plane ticket home for Thanksgiving. I work as a sub at Club Imperial. I’m a replaceable cashier. I am not someone you need to lose your job, your social standing over.”

  Those words stabbed through me. I hadn’t realized that the club was her family. It was the life she’d not only chosen but probably had been abandoned to.

  “I moved away from Darien and to Laicy because I didn’t want you to feel like I was cuckolding you. I still feel that in some way you still think I am. I’m not. This is so very hard to explain. I love you and I love her—”

  I almost drove off the road. I had to pull the car to the side and park. I turned in the seat and stared at her.