The Angel (The Original Sinners 2)

“You work here?” Michael asked as Brad led him to a cordoned-off booth surrounded by a red curtain.

“Someone has to lend an air of authenticity.” Brad closed the curtain and lit a smattering of candles. “I’ve got my own dungeon—the real thing. Ask your mistress about it sometime. I funnel the few real masochists who come here into my place.”

Michael started to ask a question but Nora and Griffin burst into the booth, laughing riotously.

“How did it go?” Michael asked as Nora and Griffin collapsed into the booth.

“Perfect. I hid my face behind my hat,” Nora said, flipping her fedora up her arm and perching it at a rakish angle on her head. “That got their attention. They probably thought I was way more famous than I really am. Then Griffin threatened to punch a photog.”

“You did?” Michael turned to Griffin. “Can’t you get arrested for that?”

Griffin shrugged. “They love getting threatened. Gives them street cred. Plus I paid him two grand to make sure we hit Page Six.”

“Mission accomplished.” Nora took a glass of red wine from a leather-clad waitress. “Showtime,” she said with a wicked glint in her eye.

At the opposite side of the club was a stage. As the club lights dimmed and faded, the stage lights went up. Four shirtless young men carried a beautiful olive-skinned Amazonian woman out to center stage on a divan. The club erupted into applause.

“Wow,” Michael said. “She’s…tall.”

“She’s a dude.” Griffin winked at him. “Mistress Nyx.”

“Seriously?” Apart from the height Michael couldn’t make out any male features on the Amazon.

“Seriously,” Nora said. “There are some hot male dominatrixes out there. Men can hit harder. Something to be said for that. Don’t tell though. Nyx keeps that on the DL.”

Michael nodded. Nyx now had one of the young men by the throat. She bodily forced him against an X-shaped cross and the other young men of her harem strapped him to it.

“St. Andrew’s Cross.” Nora leaned over the table to whisper loudly at Michael. “You know St. Andrew?”

“Um…a martyr?” Michael hazarded a guess. He might be Catholic but there were more saints out there than stars in the sky.

“Exactly,” Nora said with an approving smile. “According to legend he requested that he die on an X-shaped crossed instead of T-shaped as he did not feel worthy to die like his savior. And he was bound and not nailed.”

“Poor guy. Should have gotten nailed before he died,” Griffin said and Nora swatted him on the arm.

“That’s so weird,” Michael said, laughing at the story. “Poor St. Andrew.”

They watched the show in silence for a few minutes. Nyx had a cat-o’-nine-tails, which she used to flog the bound young man, who writhed and screamed on the cross.

“She’s pulling her punches,” Nora said with a knowing look. “She’s barely hurting him at all.”

“You can tell that?” Michael asked, suitably impressed.

She nodded. “First of all, she’s hitting him all for show. Going too slow and hitting him with the flat of the tails and not the tip.”

“But she’s hitting him pretty hard, it looks.” Michael narrowed his eyes at the scene on the stage.

“The tip of the whip is the business end,” Nora said and reached her arm out and touched Griffin’s face. “It’s the difference between this…” She ran the full flat of her hand over Griffin’s cheek. Griffin sighed. “And this.” She turned her hand and flicked Griffin’s ear with the tip of her fingers. Griffin flinched and grimaced.

“Ow, Nor. I’d say my safe word but I forgot it.”

“It was platypus. So yeah, she’s putting on a good show but not hurting him at all.” Nora pointed at the stage, where the young man on the cross continued to cry out dramatically. “We can go to Brad’s dungeon Dark Forest for some decent S&M after. It’s RACK-rules there.”

“Rack?” Michael asked. “Like a real rack?”

“Not a rack-rack. RACK stands for ‘risk-aware consensual kink,’” Nora explained. “As opposed to SSC rules.”

“Safe, sane and consensual,” Griffin said, rolling his eyes as Nora yawned. “Exactly. SSC is tamer. It’s for the moms and dads in the suburbs with the furry handcuffs under the bed.”

“RACK is for people more like us,” Nora said. “People who do the rougher stuff, edge-play, no safe words, et cetera.”

“You and Søren ever play without safe words?” Griffin leaned back and rested his elbows on the back of the booth. Michael’s temperature rose at the sight of the black silk of Griffin’s shirt stretching across his broad chest.

Nora shook her head.

“I said I like the hard stuff. I didn’t say I had a death wish.”

In front of them on the stage, Nyx allowed her harem to free the young man from the cross. He crawled on all fours to her and kissed her booted feet.

“Aah…” Nora sighed. “The good old days. I miss foot worship. Nothing sexier than a male sub doing homage.”

“Can’t disagree with that,” Griffin said, nodding.

“Are there a lot of male subs?” Michael asked as the young man kissed his way from Nyx’s toe to her knee.

“A lot more than people want to admit,” Nora said. “Men especially. You, Angel, are something special but you are not unique. There’s probably as many male subs out there as male doms.”