“Is he from there, or…?” I couldn’t tell in the darkness.
Isela responded, but I couldn’t hear her over the music, so I leaned down and asked her to repeat that.
“He grew up there,” she said, louder this time. “His mama is from Chile, but his father is American. His real name is Joshua Jones.” Her dreamy sigh got lost in the music, but I’d recognize that look in her eyes anywhere. “I would so snatch him up if he were at least bisexual.”
Hmm.
“But you know what?” Isela spun on me and faced me dead on with a smirk. “You should ask River and Reese before you try Santiago. They are your perfect fit. With Santiago—you never know.” She tapped her temple. “He works in law enforcement, yes? He’s always digging.”
She should’ve led with that. Santiago was out.
I slid a hesitant look to the Tenleys. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to get them out the way by approaching them and having my suspicions confirmed. Then I could move on to someone else.
“Asking them won’t kill me,” I decided. “Wish me luck.”
“I don’t think you need it!” She grinned and gestured for me to go already. “How can they resist a gorgeous maso like you?”
I chuckled and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze before I left her behind.
The familiar question rolled forward and settled on my tongue. The same question I asked all Sadists, the one that would weed out the good ones and let me know who was bad enough to make me suffer properly.
There was a beeping sound effect in the song blaring through the room that shoved two-year-old memories to the forefront of my mind, causing my chest to constrict uncomfortably. Whenever I blinked, I saw Myah in a hospital bed with a machine that breathed for her. I’d been there when her heart rate had weakened to eventually give up. I’d heard the suffocating silence when the machine let me know I would have to tell TJ and Levi she hadn’t made it.
I swallowed hard and shifted the lollipop to the other side again. I didn’t want it anymore. I wanted to throw up, and my stomach felt more unsettled now.
The strobe lights hit me as I reached their table, and one of the brothers tilted his head at me.
In the bright flash of the light, all I saw were piercing moss-green eyes and copper-colored hair.
Just as quickly, the lights rolled away.
I planted my palms on the table and gave them my most assertive look. “Are you looking for play partners?”
“Not really,” he said. “But we don’t throw away winning tickets either.”
I wasn’t a winning ticket, but whatever.
I asked my question. “Will you beat me without knowing the reason?”
The two gave me a once-over, one a bit more stone-cold than the other. It was impossible to tell them apart, except for the menacing-looking tattoo one of them had on the side of his neck. There was a longhorn skull and some other shit.
He was the one who replied again. “Sure. It’s your funeral.”
Fucking really?
These two? After the shit I’d gotten from that Penelope chick they ran the community with?
The twin with the tattoo on his neck kicked out the available chair on the other side of the small table. “Tell us what pain you’re looking for.”
Oh, I could do that. I could definitely do that.
I sat down across from them and took out my lollipop, gesturing it between them. “Who’s River, and who’s Reese?”
Neck Tattoo was clearly the talker. “I’m Reese.”
Reese, all right. Christ, they were hot. Hotter up close.
“Do you recognize me?” I had to ask. No matter how “exclusive” they liked to call their own group of kinksters, they still had nearly 150 members.
Reese’s mouth twitched slightly. “We know who you are, Shay.”
Well, okay, then. I wasn’t gonna assume.
“I like severe impact and extreme degradation,” I said.
The other guy, River, seemed to find that amusing for some reason. It showed in his eyes, and he exchanged a glance with his brother.
No words, just a quick look.
Reese smirked faintly and eyed me. “If we had a nickel for every time we’ve heard a masochist say they want anything extreme… Most people don’t know severe pain.”
I wasn’t most people, and I wasn’t going to let myself be intimidated by their superior asshole behavior.
“Are you sure you’re not just looking for a bit of flogging?” Reese wondered.
“Are you sure you have a dick to go with that big-dick personality?” I asked in return.
He offered a full-fledged grin at that. Then he sat forward and rested his forearms on the table. “Tell you what. We’re not actually looking for a temporary plaything in the city. But if you’re interested in coming out to the house in Mclean so we can brutalize you the way we like, let us know.”
Brutalize.
That word did something to me. It weighed heavier and carried a promise, because you didn’t throw it around for shits and giggles. They were serious.
I wanted to be brutalized for my failures.
“When?” I noticed my throat had become dry, so I swallowed and closed my mouth around the lollipop.
The twins exchanged another brief look.
“I reckon tomorrow’s out for both you and me,” Reese said, observing me with a contemplative expression.
I frowned. No, tomorrow wasn’t a good day for me, but what did he know about it?
“Turns out we have a bit in common.” The pinch of mirth in Reese’s eyes bugged me as much as when I saw it in River’s. “Last weekend, we were checking out the new place where I’ll be fighting. Imagine our surprise when we saw you in one of the cages.”
I reeled back and stiffened instinctively, and all kinds of alarms went off in my head. What kind of fucking ambush was this? It didn’t feel like a coincidence. Shit, were they gonna turn me into the poli—wait. Reese was a cage fighter?
I narrowed my eyes.
“I’ll wait till the shock has passed,” he said mildly. “I admit, it took us a minute too.”
My breath gusted out of me, and I tore out the lollipop and placed it on the table. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. I didn’t know why, but every part of me screamed to get the fuck away from the Tenley twins.
You approached them, you moron.
Yeah, but maybe they’d…what? Maybe they’d done what?
“You’re a cage fighter,” I stated, mostly to test the words. It was fucking weird.
“Is that unthinkable?” Was everything amusing to these two?
“Yeah,” I answered bluntly. “It wasn’t that long ago I received a sanctimonious rant about following the rules and adhering to all the safety measures in the community you started.”
Reese remained unfazed. “And? Does a CEO follow the company policy when he comes home at night? Just because we have strict safety rules to protect our asses in a BDSM community doesn’t mean River and I gotta be saints.”
Evidently.
“What we do off the clock is our business,” he finished. Except, he wasn’t quite done yet. “That means we hope you’ll keep this shit to yourself.”
Two thoughts struck me at once. One, their goody-two-shoes friends didn’t know about their illegal hobby? Two, everything was we with Reese. He didn’t merely speak for himself. He spoke on River’s behalf too. Like they were one entity.