EXCERPT
Prologue
The Dungeon Theme Room of the Black Iris Club, in the Penthouse of the JDB Building, Downtown Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Saturday early morning, June 27, 2015, 3:15 a.m.
Danny Holcomb looked up into the sympathetic but extremely furious blue eyes of Jack Dalton Brown. Brown was the owner of The Black Iris Club, a private BDSM club located in the penthouse of a twenty-story downtown Fort Lauderdale office building. Danny was in pain and half out of it, but he knew he didn’t want to make his Master, Randy Newman, angrier by causing a scene.
“Please, Sir, if someone could just help me to my car, I’ll be fine. I don’t want to cause any trouble.” Danny wasn’t sure he could navigate out of the club, down twenty flights in the elevator, and to his car, but he was going to try.
“You’re not causing trouble, Danny. Just lie still. Dominick called Dr. Semanski before he came to get me. The doctor will check you out and determine if he can treat your back here, or if you need a trip to the Broward General Emergency Room.”
“Really, I’ll be fine. I don’t want to cause any trouble.” Danny was embarrassed to be the center of Jack Dalton Brown’s attention. The dark-haired Master Dom was gorgeous and straight as an arrow, damn it—and also very kind. If he didn’t stop, Danny was going to cry, and that would really be embarrassing.
“Let me worry about that. You just try to calm down for a few minutes until the doctor gets here.”
Danny was lying on his side in a black leather chaise in the dungeon theme room, and Master Randy was long gone. The dungeon monitor who had been doing a last sweep of the club before closing had found him still bound to the St. Andrew’s Cross and called the doctor and the club owner in his penthouse apartment next to the club. “I’m sorry that Dominick woke you up, Sir. This is nothing. Really.”
“Quiet, sub. It’s far from nothing. Let me take care of this.” Master Jack seemed to be holding on to his temper by a thread, and Danny didn’t want to push him over the edge. He knew from the gentle way Master Jack kept a calming hand on his shoulder that he wasn’t going to be the recipient of Jack’s fury. But he didn’t want to get his Master in hot water. If Master Randy was thrown out of this very elegant private club because of Danny, he didn’t know how he would react. Danny did know it would be so much worse for him.
* * * *
Jack Dalton Brown was fit to do murder at the moment. There was no excuse for doing this type of damage to a sub and then just leaving him hanging half-conscious on the cross. Thank goodness Dominick had heard him groaning and checked the room. It had been presumed that the sub, Danny, had left with Randy Newman earlier. Jack would have hated for Danny to be left alone in this condition for the rest of the night until the cleaning crew came in the morning.
Dominick had immediately called Dr. John Semanski, the doctor on retainer to the club for medical emergencies not requiring a trip to the emergency room. The doctor was on his way. Jack didn’t think the sub required a trip to Broward General Hospital to be patched up, but that would be up to Semanski. The bloody stripes on the sub’s back certainly needed medical attention.
Jack had been considering an intervention between the sadistic Dom, Randy Newman, and his sub of several months, Danny Holcomb. Now he was sorry he hadn’t interfered. Jack had often felt that the Dom went too far, but the sub had seemed to want or need what Newman delivered. Jack knew that there were extremes in the BDSM culture that he could personally not condone but that some participants seemed to want. This went beyond “Safe, Sane, and Consensual.” He wasn’t sure that Danny Holcomb was really a masochist. He might just be a confused sub who thought that this was the way it was supposed to be. This situation, however, went way over the line. You didn’t do serious damage to a sub and then leave him to suffer alone in a dark room. This behavior made Jack sick to his stomach.
Jack heard the doctor coming down the hall. Dominick was explaining how Danny had been found. Newman was finished in his club. He personally thought that Danny should press charges against the Dom. This conduct went against Jack’s personal ethics as well as the rules and regulations of the club that Newman had signed when he joined. Jack would have some words of wisdom for Newman before he was thrown out of the club whether his cop fiancé, Kaylin Gallagher, and his criminal attorney, Nicolette Summers, liked it or not. Newman was going to be in no doubt about how Jack felt about this behavior. No doubt whatsoever.
* * * *
Danny was sitting up in a chair in the dungeon. Dr. Semanski had just left the room to talk to Jack Brown and Domenick in the main dungeon. The doctor had cleaned the wounds on Danny’s back, treated them with a soothing antibiotic cream, and loosely bandaged them with gauze dressing. Then he had given him a pain killer and a mild sedative to settle his nerves. Now he felt slightly woozy. He just wanted to go home. How the hell had this happened to him? He knew it was his fault for calling his safe word. That made Master Randy furious.
Danny had met Randy Newman at The Black Iris Club. He had joined as a submissive about a year ago. He’d played with a couple of Dominants before he met Randy but had never been abused like this. The big, dark-haired Dom was handsome in a harsh and scary way, but Danny thought the scary was just his way of asserting his Dom-ness. Things between them at first had been extreme but tolerable. But lately they had been escalating dangerously. Master Randy couldn’t seem to control his temper, and everything Danny did infuriated him. Danny should have gotten out of the relationship months ago.
Maybe Danny felt he deserved these beatings because he was gay. He hadn’t had these unhealthy thoughts before he had met and become involved with Master Randy Newman. He hated to feel that way. He knew it was wrong. He didn’t understand what had led him into such a destructive relationship. He should have known better. Danny remembered the sound of Master Randy’s angry voice and the burning pain on his back and butt. He had called “red” but it hadn’t stopped the pain. Now, he just wanted to go home and sleep. He had been scared to death, and the extreme anxiety had wrung him out. The safe word should have been his protection, but it had only made Master Randy’s anger more intense and uncontrolled.