I cleared my throat and met her eyes. “Johnny has offered to let us play in a room tonight, if you want.”

To all outward appearances, it was a basic, run-down building housing assorted businesses, including an Italian restaurant, a hair salon, and a boarded-up Asian market. The only other time I’d visited, Johnny took me in through a back entrance. The door he’d told me to use tonight was apparently the main entrance, an unassuming battered steel door off the alley, and required the key he’d had messengered over to my office that afternoon.

“How many people have a key?” I’d asked him on the phone.

“Four,” he’d told me. “You’re five. It’s how we keep track of who comes in. Random Joes can’t get there. We have a list for each night. Guests phone Lisbeth at the desk and she sends security up to retrieve them.” He paused. “You’re lucky you’re my favorite, Max, or you’d be waiting months.”

“I appreciate it, John. And if it goes well tonight, I’m pretty sure you’ll want to let me bring this one back every Wednesday.”

Pulling out the key and faced with the reality of what we were doing, I started to grow more and more excited. I led Sara down the alley, her hand clammy in mine.

“We can leave anytime,” I reminded her for the tenth time in as many minutes.

“I’m excited-nervous,” she assured me. “I’m not scared.” Pulling my arm so that I would turn to her, she stretched up and slid her lips across mine, nipping and licking at me. “I’m so excited I almost feel drunk.”

I gave her one last kiss and pulled away before I found myself fucking her in the alley—something Johnny promised would get me blacklisted for the rest of my days—and pushed the key into the lock.

“That’s the other thing I meant to mention. Drinking. There is a two-drink maximum. They want everything safe, consensual, and calm.”

“I’m not sure I can promise the calm part. You have a way of making me a little insane.”

I gave her a grin. “I think he means between patrons. I’m pretty sure there are some things happening tonight between the performers that will not be calm.”

When the door made a soft click, I pulled it open and we stepped inside. Per Johnny’s instructions, we continued through a second door just ten feet beyond that, then down the long flight of stairs leading to a freight elevator. The doors slid open immediately when we hit the down button, and after I entered the code he gave me into a lit keypad, we descended two more floors, deep into the belly of New York.

I tried to explain to Sara what she would see—tables in a semicircle around an open floor, people socializing just as they do in any bar—but I knew that my explanation wouldn’t do it justice. To be honest, I’d been so fascinated with this place when I visited with Johnny that only my ethics as a partner in his other businesses had kept me from exploring it further. As much as I’d wanted to return, I never had.