Unbound; The Dominator III Page 14

  The place was crawling with press from the adult entertainment industry and when we got out of our limo and found ourselves on a red carpet, camera flashes went off and nearly blinded us.

  Outside, it looked like a medieval cathedral. Inside, it was lavish. The front lobby was sumptuous with a large marble reception desk. We were greeted by Ben and Olive Goldberg.

  Olive gave Tess air kisses after being introduced and hugged me and it was definitely lingering too long for my comfort level but I tried to go with the flow.

  John Lewis and his wife Kate (aka: Katie Cupcake) were there, too, looking as put together as Posh and Becks, as always. Ben gave a quick tour for the benefit of me, Tess, and Kate. The place was very much like what I’d imagine a boutique hotel somewhere in Paris would be like. But there was a whole lot more than guest rooms.

  There was a large auditorium for theater type shows and a smaller one as well. There was a restaurant and a gorgeous rooftop patio with Olympic sized swimming pool and gardens. There were a few dozen overnight rooms as well as experience rooms, too, and Ben explained that he would show us a few, as there were some done alike.

  One of the rooms he took us into was set up like a replica of the Fifty Shades of Grey red room but it was done in purple. There was another room with a big canopy bed as the centerpiece but there was a swing hanging from the top of the canopy.

  “Each room offers privacy or options for voyeurs,” Ben explained, “You can see those who are watching you, you can have utter privacy, or you could have a two way mirror where you are left to wonder if you are being watched.” He said all this professionally and nonchalantly, as if he were giving an ordinary tour of a regular old hotel.

  Another room was a big wooden room that looked, at first like a sauna but with small and larger portholes on the walls. It didn’t take long for me to realize that porthole was not the right name for these holes. These were actually glory holes. There were holes in the wall with clipboards above each hole, where Olive explained a photograph or other information would be hung. She opened a sliding door to reveal the other side. Some holes had benches with straps and it didn’t take much to figure out that women or men could be positioned or even strapped against those holes in any potential direction / position.

  Katie Cupcake fake-clutched her not-fake pearls and laughed and bumped shoulders with me. Tess was wide-eyed and Tommy was stoic. It couldn’t have been comfortable to take this tour with his sister.

  Another room was a big bed, in essence. A bed for about twenty. It was clearly an orgy room.

  A room was designed like outer space where you could role play in an alien scenario.

  There were costumes for the guests or costumes for cast members employed by the club that could create scenarios. Sex with a werewolf, sex with a sexy vampire, whatever scenario you wanted, they would try to make it happen for you. I saw a room with racks and racks of costumes.

  I got the impression our tour was provided with much less information than potential customers or the media. We were family of the investors. Tours would happen throughout the evening, first for the press, and then for invited VIP guests. A theatre production would be put on afterwards with a cocktail party and then some of the rooms would be open to whomever might want to partake.

  “This tour is for you but the next rounds will have staff posing and role-playing in these rooms during the tour for effect. Tommy asked that we leave that out of this tour. Some people are voyeurs. Some like to watch. We cater to those who want to be a submissive, those who want to be dominant. We offer training courses for potential Doms and subs alike.

  We have shows. We have parties. You can hire someone to fuck you. You can apply to be fucked. You can simply watch. We cater to all fetishes. This is another toy room.” He opened a door.

  “What’s that?” Tessa asked me, pointing at a Sybian. I only knew what it was due to my bit of research around BDSM when Tommy and I got back from Mexico.

  Kate started to answer, “You sit on it and…”

  “Never mind,” she said, round-eyed. She’d figured it out.

  “That’s a Sybian and that’s the flogging area. You can be flogged or watch someone be flogged. You can even ride the Sybian while swings are lowered around you with others on them,” Ben explained.

  The tour went on and Tess was quiet but wide-eyed and pink-cheeked. She was having trouble hiding her reactions, but I couldn’t read whether she was embarrassed, intrigued, or just trying very hard to not show what she was thinking.

  The place was set up as the ultimate fantasy place. You could describe your fantasy to a fantasy planner to find out what might be possible. And it probably would be!

  I was kind of wishing we’d seen the tour with the actors but I got how that’d be weird to see with Tommy’s sister in tow. Still… I felt a little bit of a whoosh of dampness between my thighs at one point and squeezed his hand, making his eyes hit mine and some sort of promise twinkled deep in there. I returned the look with my version of the same. I didn’t know if my eyes twinkled or not too, but judging by his reaction, I think I got my point across.

  As our tour ended, Ben and Olive excused themselves and left us to go walk through the next group, which consisted of the others in the group of investors accompanied by dates.

  Myself, Tommy, Tess, Dex, Nino, and Will, plus John and Kate were in a large but very classy bar area where waiters circulated with champagne and fancy nibbles. The room began to fill with others as groups who’d gotten their tours trickled in. Cocktail hour would be followed by the theatre production, followed by more cocktails before we’d leave. Others would stay for festivities but we were definitely not staying for that part.

  Tommy assured me we’d leave as early as possible. We’d see the show and it’d be risqué. I’d told Tess that day about the show I’d seen here last time and figured it’d be along those same lines. Where Tess and I would typically giggle through an uber-sexy description of an event, she was quiet and stoic as I awkwardly explained.

  A waiter moved to us, knowing who we were as the others were given champagne and I was given a virgin Bellini.

  Tommy was at my side, his arm protectively over the back of my chair, and to some he might seem casual. To me, I could see that he was alert, actively watching our surroundings. He positioned himself in a way that protected me and allowed him to see both exits in this bar.

  Tessa sat beside me and she finished her glass of wine before any of us had barely made a dent in our beverages. She looked a bit flipped out. It was a lot to take. Sex club opening where she might see the guy who she had to be having nightmares about.

  Nino and John Lewis were keeping the conversation going. Nino was good at it, too. He kept things moving so that anyone with eyes on us would see us as behaving no differently than the other groups that were in the room, not as if we were watching for a specific person and not that our group contained armed bodyguards. Katie was charming and flirty with everyone and kept engaging me in conversation about my pregnancy, regaling me with stories of her five pregnancies, one being twins.

  God, I hoped I could keep my shape after one baby. She looked amazing for having pushed six humans out.

  After Ben and Olive escorted in the second group of investors, John Lewis and his wife moved to join them at another table and ordered drinks. I got the impression that Kate would’ve preferred to sit with us but I’d seen Tommy and John exchange pointed looks so had the feeling things were choreographed a certain way.

  The room filled with more and more people as tour groups entered and well into our second drink, close to when we were to attend the theater show, I felt Tommy straighten. I looked at him and saw his eyes aimed at the door. Tessa got up from her chair and said, “I need the ladies room. Tia?”

  “Wait,” Tommy said, his eyes not leaving the door. I glanced in that direction and saw Leo Denarda moving into the room with a very pretty blonde on his arm.

  His eyes moved in our direction and he snickered
as his eyes hit Tommy and then purposefully moved to Tommy’s sister. Leo’s eyes traveled the length of Tessa’s body and he licked his lips in an oily and perverted way. Tessa saw him and her body locked tight. She glared. He jerked his chin casually at her and then his expression made my skin crawl.

  Tommy’s demeanor would seem cold but impassive to anyone around, but I could feel the energy in the room change, to a level I could only think of as “Danger.”

  Other than his eyes looking hard and stone cold, the rest of him was completely still. He took a sip of his drink and put it down and he stared at Leo Denarda.

  Tessa stared at Leo as if he was something she’d wiped off her shoe and then leaned over and put her mouth to my ear and whispered, “Look at him, look right at his crotch, and then laugh.”

  I didn’t feel good about it, because I didn’t want to do anything to antagonize this situation but I did what Tess had asked. She bumped my shoulder with hers and then Tommy said, “G’head. Dex? Show the girls to the ladies’ room. Staff one, to the right of the bar.”

  I kissed Tommy’s jaw and he squeezed my hand but his eyes never left where Leo stood with his date, getting served champagne. His lip was curling just a little and then his face transformed. He gave Leo the heart-stoppingly gorgeous Ice Cream Parlor Hottie smile and my heart skipped a beat at that.

  He was going to kill that guy. Murder. Cold blood. Lots of blood.

  My heartbeat was in my ears and I felt a little light-headed. I moved behind Tess, who’d grabbed my hand, Dex behind me, and he steered us toward the employee’s ladies room, which was not far away from our table. I suspected that this was intentional so that we wouldn’t have to pass Leo.

  Once we were inside the bathroom she grabbed me and held me tight. I hugged her. She was shaking.

  “It’s okay. You did good. No, you did great, Tessa. We’re almost through this,” I told her.

  She started to hyperventilate. I rubbed her back and when she seemed to be settling down a bit, I let her go. She started breathing harder so I dashed into the stall finding what I’d hoped would be there. In the stall there was a dispenser of small brown paper bags. I grabbed one.

  “Wanna try to breathe into this?” I held it out.

  She shook her head and grabbed the counter edge at the sink with both hands and stared into the mirror at her own reflection and hunched, blowing air out.

  Tommy

  We knew Leo Denarda was gonna be coming. We were prepared.

  One of his men had agreed to help with the promise of support of his taking over Denarda’s role once the fuckhead was taken out. That man was the rest of that organization’s choice to take over.

  The guy had been like a son to the uncle, but Leo was blood-family so it’d been a problem in the Denarda organization. It was a small organization but one nonetheless and they owned some big construction contracts in Nevada and had some strong ties with politicians as well as had pull in the bookie business.

  The organization was worried Leo being at the helm would fuck that all up. And he’d already taken away from their livelihood because they never got the Fete build, but the guy we’d brought over to our side was going to be in a solid position for his power play after Denarda was out of the picture. And he’d benefit from being a subcontractor in Nevada for the Ferrano Enterprises construction arm.

  He’d let a mutual acquaintance know that he was very unhappy with the state of play and we used that to our advantage. Someone on the other side had been there when Leo Denarda got Ben’s invite to the Fete launch.

  It’d been delivered only two days before but we’d made it look like a courier problem that had delayed it. The envelope was beat up, there was a fake waybill attached that was backdated if Denarda tried looking it up online. Leo might be suspicious but he could come without losing face, which would be perceived as important to a guy who thought he had any face in Nevada or anywhere else.

  I saw the look on his ugly mug when he spotted my sister. He’d tried to hide his surprise but I saw the smug look die on his face. And he’d given her a chin jerk like they’d been old hook-up buddies or something. The smug bastard hadn’t flinched through that part. Either he wasn’t surprised that I’d gotten her back, someone had gotten that news to him (which would be really fucking bad but I doubted it), or he didn’t give a fuck and thought he was untouchable.

  Or, he had what he believed would be another ace up his sleeve.

  We’d had Ben increase security, add another layer of vetting through Hal, Zack Jacobs’ man for staff for the opening, and there were cameras everywhere. If something went wrong, we’d be able to pinpoint how it had happened. I’d not only had a GPS in my wife’s engagement ring, but we’d had Tess wear a watch that had a GPS as well.

  We also had Leo’s limo driver being switched out for one of ours. He wouldn’t be going back home tonight. His two bodyguards, who I’d just had a text stating were directly outside the bar giving death-ray eyes to my other guards, would be put out of commission, too.

  I was uncomfortable with how long the girls were taking to come back so I looked over my shoulder at Dex. I could see him standing outside the employee bathroom. I touched my index finger to my wrist and jerked my thumb toward the door.

  I looked back in Denarda’s direction and caught a look on his face that set my teeth on edge. He put his drink down, grabbed his date’s hand and they moved quickly out of the room. Too quickly. Nino didn’t wait for my ‘go’, he immediately moved to follow.

  I sipped my drink. My phone rang with a blocked number. I rejected the call and looked over my shoulder toward Dex.

  I didn’t like that I couldn’t see the girls so I jerked my chin at him and said, “Now.”

  Dex knocked on the door to the washroom but at that second, the lights flickered as the room shook with a vibration that hit me in the depths of my gut. The bar area, to the left of me and not far from the alcove that led to that ladies’ room where my wife and sister were, it exploded. Something scraped my face and temporarily disoriented me.

  I saw an orange flash that accompanied the deafening sound of glass smashing, wood splintering, and people screaming. Screaming filled the crowded space.

  The now darkened space was filled with smoke. I immediately moved toward where I knew Tia and Tess were and before I got too far, moving through people and wrecked furniture and falling down ceiling and light fixtures, there was a second explosion. It was happening over by the entrance to the bar, where we’d come in.

  As the sound of that explosion and debris crashing around me pierced the air, I’d gone to the floor, turtling. When I rose, pieces of wall and ceiling or whatever falling all over me, there was coughing and screaming. Dust and smoke in the air was filling my lungs.

  I glanced behind me and saw flames by that doorway. My eyes started to burn, but I had a single-minded goal. Get to Tia and Tess.

  Leo Denarda deserved more credit than he’d been getting. Priority one: my wife and sister. Priority two: make Denarda pay. Fuck, I hoped that Nino and our other guys had managed to get away from that doorway in time and that our guy had him in the limo.

  I moved through people and debris, smoke clogging my lungs but determined to get to the girls. It was all I could think about. I felt for my phone in my tux jacket pocket and squinted through feeling half blind to use the phone’s flashlight to light the way.

  I could see people who were hurt and some who weren’t moving among the debris. The bar was half blown apart, some pieces of ceiling were down and there was stuff coming through from the floor above the bar. The alcove that led to the restrooms had people and furniture and other shit blocking it. I carefully moved through it.

  “Can you help me? I think my leg’s broken,” a small female voice asked. I saw the black and white cocktail waitress uniform of one of Ben’s servers.

  “I’ll get help. I have to get to my pregnant wife in the bathroom. One sec.” I started coughing, eyes still burning, mouth filled with dust
, throat itching like fuck, but I kept moving forward. She was talking to me as I moved, sounding in pain but still talking. I had no idea what she was saying because my wife and sister were all I could think of.

  I heard more voices and saw spotlights from people’s phones coming through the dust and debris from multiple directions. The dust was settling a little bit but that fire by the door was spreading. People coughed, I heard weeping, both male and female. My cheek was wet, cut or something, but I was otherwise okay.

  I fucking prayed that the girls were all right.

  I walked right into Dex and he grunted. He was half slumped against the wall and half against the bathroom under a collapsed bunch of shit, including a beam. He opened his eyes a little, “Someone got her, Tommy. Can’t…”

  My heart stopped.

  “Who? Fucking who?”

  “Tia. Guy got her, climbed over me, was gonna shoot me, I played dead. He got her and went that way,” He pointed deeper into the alcove, “I tried but I couldn’t get up. Tried to c-call”

  His cell phone was on the floor beside him. He coughed and winced. Dex looked rough. Worse than rough. His playing dead must’ve been convincing.

  “Tess?”

  “Didn’t see her come out.”

  I kicked shit out of the way that was partly blocking the door and pushed my way in. The bathroom was dark.

  “Athena! Tess!”

  “Tommy!”

  That was my sister. I panned the light through the space until I found her. She was on the ground. She got up, holding her face.

  “A guy came in here and dragged her out in the middle of that. What happened? A fire? An explosion?” She was coughing and she was suddenly in front of me.

  “He pistol whipped me.”

  “Fuck!” I grabbed her hand and checked her cheek. With my phone’s flashlight I could see it was bruised but she looked okay otherwise.

  It was clearer in here but my eyes and lungs were still burning. I fumbled with the phone and found the app with Tia’s GPS from her engagement ring. She was not far. She was showing as right with me.