Nora wanted to withdraw, wanted to push Søren away. Zach was out there waiting for her. And she knew better than this. Søren’s gifts were always double-edged swords, and there was no way to take them except by the blade. She heard the voice of reason reminding her that she should find Zach and get him out of here. And then she remembered what she promised him—to show him a place of no regret, no shame and no fear.

She took the key from Søren’s hand.

“I see He’s not finished making you suffer,” Søren said.

Nora didn’t reply. Closing her fingers around the key so tightly the teeth bit fiercely into her hand, she slipped from the room and into a back hallway. Nora felt Søren’s eyes on her. She didn’t look back.

Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER 20

Zach followed Griffin to the balcony section of the bar. Leaning over the railing, they studied the show below.

A lovely dark-haired woman with sinister-looking chopsticks in her hair and wearing a kimono stood on a platform below them. She twined a black rope around a shapely red-haired girl who stood calm and naked next to her.

“That’s Lady Noy. She’s the queen of Asian Rope Bondage around here.” Griffin pointed out two women down in the pit. “And that babe she’s tying up is Alyssa Petrosky.”

“Petrosky?” The name sounded vaguely familiar.

“Yeah, that Petrosky. She’s the governor’s stepdaughter. She’s a pretty infamous submissive down here. Really into exhibitionism.”

“I can see that.” Zach marveled as Lady Noy finished her work and hoisted the girl into the air with a complicated rope and pulley system. The girl lay back in an elegant asymmetrical arch and seemed completely at peace with both her nudity and her bondage.

“And that’s Agent Byers—he’s high-level FBI,” Griffin said, pointing out a man strapped to a cross and being flogged by a woman half his age. “And a sub, too.”

“Are you allowed to tell me all this?”

“What? You’re going to tell someone? No one would believe you if you did tell. And if you spill a word, Kingsley Edge will destroy you. He watches all our backs—it’s part of the membership fee. I’d bet you my bank account that he’s already got a file on you.”

“On me? Are you serious?” Zach asked. He remembered how Nora seemed to know so much about him at their first meeting.

“You get within five feet of Nora and you get a file. And it sounds like you’ve been a helluva lot closer than five feet.”

“I’m hardly blackmail material,” Zach protested.

“Really? Anybody out there you’d prefer not know that Nora blew you?”

Zach flushed and said nothing. Yes, there certainly was.

“Point taken,” Zach said.