I wasn’t wrong.
We stopped on each level of the house and did a walk through, Lucian’s hand like an anchor in mine. The first few rooms we passed weren’t as crazy as he’d led me to believe. I’d seen a lot of stuff in my life, and a full-on orgy wasn’t anything that made me blink twice, even if it was hard to keep track of who was doing what. But as we progressed, it only became stranger.
There were people dressed up in outfits like nurses and firemen, and then there were people walking around in nothing at all. Some rooms contained couples having sex while others watched, and some rooms were closed off entirely.
At one point, we passed a room labeled “human furniture” that was pretty much exactly as it sounded. Men and women alike were poised as footstools and tables while groups of their masters socialized around them.
“If at any point something catches your curiosity, we can stop,” Lucian noted.
So far, everything just seemed like kinky, weird sex. It wasn’t anything that I had a desperate need to see more of. There was only one reason I came here, and it had nothing to do with anybody else.
“Which room do you visit?” I asked.
Without another word, he led me all the way up to the top floor of the house. There was a separate entry code required on this level, a warning that things weren’t going to be the same. I followed him blindly as he directed me down the hall and into the first room on the left.
There was a viewing area like some of the others, and Lucian gestured for me to sit down and wait. The room was empty apart from us, at least until he pressed a button on the wall and shut the door behind us. There was a brief pause of silence, and then out of nowhere, the black curtain was pulled back in front of us, giving us full view of the scene taking place in the room.
In the center, a woman kneeled on the floor, much the same way I had in Lucian’s bedroom not long ago. I could still feel the rawness on my limbs from what happened afterward, and I rubbed them while the man in front of us nodded to Lucian. They were acquainted with each other, a mutual respect between them. But it was the girl on the floor who surprised me when her gaze turned to Lucian and warmed with a wicked smile.
A sharp emotion I couldn’t identify pierced my stomach when I realized what was happening. Lucian had been intimate with this woman. And it wasn’t difficult to guess what she liked. Already, her body was covered in welts. Her nipples were clamped together with clothespins, her knees digging into the rock salt on the tile floor.
There was not a shred of doubt in my mind she was a masochist, and that only left one possible avenue for Lucian. At some point, he’d probably stood over her the same way the other man was now. He had assuredly grabbed her chin and jerked her attention back to him in the same domineering fashion when she looked away for too long.
“Did I say you could move?”
“No, sir.” The breathy whisper of her voice was undeniably sultry, and I looked at Lucian to see how he responded, but his face was blank.
Without warning, the sadist slapped the girl across the face, and I jumped. Lucian squeezed my hand, but it did nothing to quell my nerves as the sadist chose a cane from the selection of pain tools. The girl moaned and tugged at the restraints around her wrists, begging him for it. The drum beat of my heart, and the blood rushing between my ears warned me this was a threat, but it didn’t stop there.
The sadist gestured for Lucian, an invitation to participate. He silently declined, but I suspected it was only to be polite. He didn’t want me to see the worst version of himself, but I needed to. I had a morbid curiosity that couldn’t be contained. I needed to see what he would do with her. How far he would go.
“Show me,” I whispered.
Lucian swiveled his head in my direction, eyes blacker than I’d ever seen them. “You don’t know what you’re asking, pet.”
“I want to see,” I insisted. “You said you would show me.”
He tried to fight it. I saw the struggle in him, and then I saw the demon win. He glanced at the girl on the floor, resignation weighing him down as he accepted that, on some level, he wanted to show me too.
“You can tell me to stop at any point,” he said softly. “If it becomes too much.”
I nodded stiffly and released his hand, emptiness settling inside me when he left me on my own. The girl on the floor peeked up beneath a dark curtain of hair, excitement simmering in her eyes. It stabbed at me, the prospect of what might happen. But this was a test as much as it was a learning experience. I wanted to expose Lucian’s deepest secrets as much as I wanted to know his loyalty for me.
Would he touch her with his hands? Would he kiss her? Fuck her?
I didn’t know, but I needed to.
He picked up a whip, testing it in his hand, and the other man nodded his approval. Lucian turned his head as if he were going to look at me one last time but decided against it. He was close to the girl. So close that when he bent down to murmur something, it was just for her to hear. She nodded, and her eyes lit up.
He closed his eyes and breathed, and then he brought the whip down with a mighty strike against her back. She collapsed onto her forearms with a strangled cry, and I was so horrified I couldn’t move. Lucian took no pity on her. Everything about him was different. His posture, his eyes, his voice. They weren’t the man I thought I’d come to know.
“Get up,” he demanded.
She did, and he whipped her again. He whipped her so hard, I almost begged him to stop. But she didn’t. With every strike, she cried out in pleasure and pleaded for him to continue. To give her more. To give her everything. For the next ten minutes, he doled out enough pain to last me a lifetime.
Finally, my eyes had been opened to the truth. Lucian was right that I couldn’t or wouldn’t ever give him these things. He couldn’t say the word out loud, but he’d shown me. He was a sadist.
And I could never be his masochist.