Solange

What? No, he must be punking me. “Dean, be serious for a minute.”

“Solange, listen to me,” he says as he paces the length of the surprisingly spacious bathroom. “I’m being one hundred percent serious. Does this sound like something I would lie about? Me?”

Oh. My. God. I kind of scream on the inside for a few seconds. This is bananas. All I can do is repeat his words. “We’re at a sex party.”

“Bingo. I’ll take ‘Oh, baby, the places I never thought I’d go’ for one million, Solange.”

“Shit. Are you telling me Peter wanted to bring a firm recruit here?”

“Now that I think about it, no, that’s not what’s going on,” he says. “Peter wanted me to bring a firm recruit here. He didn’t know that Kimberly and Nia had canceled. He just conveniently and suddenly decided that his marriage meant more to him than a very important assignment that could give him a leg up in his bid to become a firm partner. The sneaky, cutthroat, disloyal son of a bitch. Peter set me up. Or tried to.”

“Are you sure that’s what this is, though? Because I’ve read about sex clubs, Dean—just . . . uh . . . out of curiosity—and there’s a whole process to this. Waivers, promises of confidentiality, rules.”

“Well, I’m not an expert in these things, but a bell rang and suddenly people were having sex, and everyone in there seemed to know what was up. That sounds like a sex club to me.”

It does to me too. What the hell is wrong with Peter? I pegged him as a sleazeball from day one, but this is beyond the pale. If Dean and I had consented to attending, I wouldn’t blink twice at what’s going on beyond these walls—okay, maybe I’d blink once, depending on the scene. But we didn’t agree to this, which means Peter is a menace who must be stopped. My immediate priority, though, is to get us the hell out of here. “So we should just leave, right?”

“Right,” he says, raking his hands through his mussed hair. “‘When in doubt, get the fuck out’ is my mantra. I’m sorry, Solange.”

I raise a brow. “Sorry? What for? You didn’t do anything.”

“But you’re caught up in all of this because of me.”

“Dean, stop,” I say, jumping in front of him and halting his incessant pacing. “Look at me.”

He does the very opposite of that, his gaze bouncing from object to object in the space, until he lets out a harsh breath and finally returns my stare. Dean prefers to control his surroundings, so being thrust into an unexpected situation like this one must be unsettling.

I link our hands together and squeeze. “I take it from your reaction that you’ve never attended a sex party before?”

He snort-laughs, as if my question is ridiculous. “Uh, no. Never. Have you?”

“I have.”

His gaze snaps to mine, and his eyes go wide. “Really?”