Lexi Blake - Dungeon Royale

Her own face was a careful blank. “Yes, you’ll ruin my life. I am well aware of that. You’ve properly threatened me, Mr. Knight. If you prefer to kill yourself, who am I to care? Now, I would like very much to go home and be done with this charade.”

His heart was starting to squeeze again. “I told you. You’re coming with me.”

She stared straight ahead. “I don’t very well want to come with you anymore.”

Because he’d hurt her feelings. She was a stubborn thing. He hadn’t counted on that. Damn it all, he needed her. If she walked away, the whole operation very likely got shelved. “Ah, so you don’t get your way and the operation is finished.”

A little huff came out of her throat, and she finally turned his way. “That’s not fair.”

“None of this is fair, Penelope,” he shot back. “You know how much is riding on you and the very first time I don’t do exactly what you want, you threaten the entire job. I really didn’t expect that from you.”

She was a person who wanted to please, needed it. It was precisely what attracted him to her, but it was also a weakness he would use against her.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t work, and I know why you’re intimidating me. You don’t want me to say anything to Nigel. He doesn’t realize just how bad your lungs are.”

No one knew. He didn’t even really understand what the problem was. “He doesn’t realize it’s affecting my heart, too. Baz nicked it when he shot me. The real damage wasn’t apparent until later. I had a second surgery in the States. It should be fine, but it’s not.”

“And you won’t see a doctor because it would go on your reports. You’re mad, you know.”

“I’m trying to keep my job.” He ground the words out. No one understood, but then they didn’t have to. It was his bloody problem.

“At the cost of your life?”

“My job is my life, Penelope. It’s all I have. I will fight for it. I’ll fight you and anyone else who thinks to take it away from me.”

They sat in silence for two stops, the train moving beneath them in a familiar rhythm. He knew he should be thinking about Baz and what he was going to tell Nigel. SIS had to know about him being in London. He would have to explain how he lost the bugger in the crowd.

He should have been plotting out just how he would handle the situation, but all he could think about was how much he wanted Penelope to look at him again. Not with tears in her eyes. He wanted her to look at him the way she had at the wedding, like he meant something to her.

He’d had plenty of women who wanted him, used him for a good time in bed. Penelope was the only one who looked at him like he was worthy of something more, like he would really protect her, would take care of her in a way that didn’t involve shagging.

“Are you really all right?” she asked.

He turned to look at her. Even in profile, she looked soft. She had no place in his world. He was going to hurt her in the end. It would be so much better if he let her go. But he wasn’t going to do that. He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t going to let her get away from him.

He slid his hand into hers, lacing their fingers together. She tried to pull away, but he placed his other over hers, trapping her, holding her. “I’m fine now, darling. Let’s get home and put this behind us. We have a job to do, after all.”

She stared ahead, but he felt her relax.

The train rolled on, and he rather wished they didn’t have to get off.

Penny looked up at the unassuming building in front of her. “This is some sort of sex club?”

Damon smiled at her, right back to his charming self. It was as though he’d never yelled at her, never threatened her. How could she trust a man who could look so perfect? “It’s my home. I live in apartments on the sixth floor. It’s only a sex club four nights a week.”

“It sucks, Knight. Charlie wants me to put plants all over Sanctum now. I knew this trip would blow.” Ian Taggart was a big man who seemed to hate everything. He’d been especially mad that they were late getting to the station, and then he and Damon had a private talk while she bought a few items for the night at Boots and he’d been even angrier when she’d returned.

Apparently Basil Champion had enemies on both sides of the pond.

Damon stepped forward, pulling out a keycard and slipping it through the reader on the door. “I can’t help it if my club is better than your club, mate.”

This Taggart person was apparently a Dom as well. He was massive and so fit it hurt to look at him. His face was gorgeous, but the man himself seemed so dark she was a little afraid of him.

“Your club is not better. You just have time to garden and shit,” Taggart said irritably. She moved out of his way to let him enter, but he stopped, his eyes narrowing on her. “Are you nervous about going in? Expecting to be shot?”

“Tag?” Damon asked.

Taggart shrugged. “I expect to be shot all the time. I don’t understand why she thinks I’m going to go first unless she wants me to get killed instead of her.”

“Of course not,” she said, shocked he would think that.

Taggart loomed over her. “Submissives go first unless there is some kind of danger and then I would absolutely be murdered before you. I would go first and Damon would protect your back. We’re safe in the club, so you go first. You need to train her better. She’s been running wild all afternoon.”

“Running wild?” She didn’t see how anyone could accuse her of that.

“Yes. You nearly got lost in the crowd at the station. You just walked off. That would have been a time for you to stay between us. You charged through and didn’t pay attention when I tried to open the door for you, and I didn’t like the way you constantly walked on the road side of the sidewalk. You’re not my sub, but I don’t buy for a second that you and Damon are involved. Otherwise, you would have let him take care of you.”

“I was hard on her when Baz showed up so I let it go,” Damon said, but it was easy to see he was embarrassed.

And looking back, she could see he’d tried. He’d herded her away from the street several times. He’d tried to get in front of her at the station. She’d wanted to prove that he hadn’t really hurt her. She’d been stubborn, and he was trying to protect her.

He was brutally confusing.

She entered the club first, ready to see a real look into Damon Knight’s soul. This was his private sanctuary. He ran the club when he was in the country and had a manager when he was out. He lived here and played here.

The lobby was lovely but a bit bland. It was nothing she hadn’t seen in a nice hotel. She was disappointed. She’d expected to see his dirty side. She’d expected whips and chains and those St. Andrew’s Cross things. She didn’t like to think about just how interested she was in those.

If the last twenty-four hours had taught her anything, it was that she had to climb out of her shell. She couldn’t pretend like sex wasn’t important. She was tired of her existence. It wasn’t a life. For years she’d been a slave to duty. It was time to figure out what she wanted. She wanted love and intimacy. She wouldn’t find that from Knight. But she might figure out what she wanted from a lover.

Damon locked the door behind them. “When we’re running, we have someone working the front desk. We don’t open again until Wednesday night, so we have a few days for you to get used to the club and everything that goes with it.”

“All right. So we’ll practice a bit before we’re on display, huh?” There were no windows. The place was lit with tasteful wall sconces and recessed lights. It was plain. Ordinary.

Vanilla. Wasn’t that the word they used?

Taggart walked to a carved wooden door that required another keycard. Naturally Damon would be paranoid about security. Taggart slid his card through and the door opened. He turned to her with a pointed stare as he held the door open. “I should warn you both that Charlie’s been a brat and she’s being punished, though she doesn’t really view it as punishment. It’s really more like I’m getting something out of it.”

She was about to ask what kind of punishment his wife had earned when she walked through the door and into the club.

She stared, her mouth dropping open. She’d expected salacious, something a bit smutty. She hadn’t expected beautiful.

The entire space was covered in rich, green plants. The floor in the lobby had been a plush carpet, but now it gave way to a natural stone walkway that wound around the showroom.

She was Alice and she’d just fallen into Wonderland.

“The light is all natural.” Damon walked up behind her, his voice hushed as though this was a sacred place to him. “It comes through the ceiling. The building itself is rectangular, but when I bought it, I had the atrium built in to accommodate the garden. The floors above all look down on the dungeon.”

It was magical. She walked up to a large tree that was just right in the middle of the dungeon floor. She touched it, running her palm along the trunk, making sure it was real. “It’s beautiful, Damon.”

“It’s a pain in the ass. My Dom in Residence would quit if I told him he had to take care of a bunch of trees.” Ian Taggart shook his head and walked away.

Damon pointed around the space, showing her where the entrances and the exits were. She watched as Taggart went up the lift toward the guest quarters.

“Wait until you see it at night,” Damon said. “All the flowering plants are night bloomers. When the moon is full, the entire place is alive with blooms. It’s quite lovely. During nice weather, I open the dome at the top and let fresh air in.”