Lexi Blake - Dungeon Royale

“And you won’t see a doctor because it would go on your reports. You’re mad, you know.”

“I’m trying to keep my job.” He ground the words out. No one understood, but then they didn’t have to. It was his bloody problem.

“At the cost of your life?”

“My job is my life, Penelope. It’s all I have. I will fight for it. I’ll fight you and anyone else who thinks to take it away from me.”

They sat in silence for two stops, the train moving beneath them in a familiar rhythm. He knew he should be thinking about Baz and what he was going to tell Nigel. SIS had to know about him being in London. He would have to explain how he lost the bugger in the crowd.

He should have been plotting out just how he would handle the situation, but all he could think about was how much he wanted Penelope to look at him again. Not with tears in her eyes. He wanted her to look at him the way she had at the wedding, like he meant something to her.

He’d had plenty of women who wanted him, used him for a good time in bed. Penelope was the only one who looked at him like he was worthy of something more, like he would really protect her, would take care of her in a way that didn’t involve shagging.

“Are you really all right?” she asked.

He turned to look at her. Even in profile, she looked soft. She had no place in his world. He was going to hurt her in the end. It would be so much better if he let her go. But he wasn’t going to do that. He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t going to let her get away from him.

He slid his hand into hers, lacing their fingers together. She tried to pull away, but he placed his other over hers, trapping her, holding her. “I’m fine now, darling. Let’s get home and put this behind us. We have a job to do, after all.”

She stared ahead, but he felt her relax.

The train rolled on, and he rather wished they didn’t have to get off.

Penny looked up at the unassuming building in front of her. “This is some sort of sex club?”

Damon smiled at her, right back to his charming self. It was as though he’d never yelled at her, never threatened her. How could she trust a man who could look so perfect? “It’s my home. I live in apartments on the sixth floor. It’s only a sex club four nights a week.”

“It sucks, Knight. Charlie wants me to put plants all over Sanctum now. I knew this trip would blow.” Ian Taggart was a big man who seemed to hate everything. He’d been especially mad that they were late getting to the station, and then he and Damon had a private talk while she bought a few items for the night at Boots and he’d been even angrier when she’d returned.

Apparently Basil Champion had enemies on both sides of the pond.

Damon stepped forward, pulling out a keycard and slipping it through the reader on the door. “I can’t help it if my club is better than your club, mate.”

This Taggart person was apparently a Dom as well. He was massive and so fit it hurt to look at him. His face was gorgeous, but the man himself seemed so dark she was a little afraid of him.

“Your club is not better. You just have time to garden and shit,” Taggart said irritably. She moved out of his way to let him enter, but he stopped, his eyes narrowing on her. “Are you nervous about going in? Expecting to be shot?”

“Tag?” Damon asked.

Taggart shrugged. “I expect to be shot all the time. I don’t understand why she thinks I’m going to go first unless she wants me to get killed instead of her.”

“Of course not,” she said, shocked he would think that.

Taggart loomed over her. “Submissives go first unless there is some kind of danger and then I would absolutely be murdered before you. I would go first and Damon would protect your back. We’re safe in the club, so you go first. You need to train her better. She’s been running wild all afternoon.”

“Running wild?” She didn’t see how anyone could accuse her of that.

“Yes. You nearly got lost in the crowd at the station. You just walked off. That would have been a time for you to stay between us. You charged through and didn’t pay attention when I tried to open the door for you, and I didn’t like the way you constantly walked on the road side of the sidewalk. You’re not my sub, but I don’t buy for a second that you and Damon are involved. Otherwise, you would have let him take care of you.”

“I was hard on her when Baz showed up so I let it go,” Damon said, but it was easy to see he was embarrassed.

And looking back, she could see he’d tried. He’d herded her away from the street several times. He’d tried to get in front of her at the station. She’d wanted to prove that he hadn’t really hurt her. She’d been stubborn, and he was trying to protect her.

He was brutally confusing.

She entered the club first, ready to see a real look into Damon Knight’s soul. This was his private sanctuary. He ran the club when he was in the country and had a manager when he was out. He lived here and played here.

The lobby was lovely but a bit bland. It was nothing she hadn’t seen in a nice hotel. She was disappointed. She’d expected to see his dirty side. She’d expected whips and chains and those St. Andrew’s Cross things. She didn’t like to think about just how interested she was in those.

If the last twenty-four hours had taught her anything, it was that she had to climb out of her shell. She couldn’t pretend like sex wasn’t important. She was tired of her existence. It wasn’t a life. For years she’d been a slave to duty. It was time to figure out what she wanted. She wanted love and intimacy. She wouldn’t find that from Knight. But she might figure out what she wanted from a lover.

Damon locked the door behind them. “When we’re running, we have someone working the front desk. We don’t open again until Wednesday night, so we have a few days for you to get used to the club and everything that goes with it.”

“All right. So we’ll practice a bit before we’re on display, huh?” There were no windows. The place was lit with tasteful wall sconces and recessed lights. It was plain. Ordinary.

Vanilla. Wasn’t that the word they used?

Taggart walked to a carved wooden door that required another keycard. Naturally Damon would be paranoid about security. Taggart slid his card through and the door opened. He turned to her with a pointed stare as he held the door open. “I should warn you both that Charlie’s been a brat and she’s being punished, though she doesn’t really view it as punishment. It’s really more like I’m getting something out of it.”

She was about to ask what kind of punishment his wife had earned when she walked through the door and into the club.

She stared, her mouth dropping open. She’d expected salacious, something a bit smutty. She hadn’t expected beautiful.

The entire space was covered in rich, green plants. The floor in the lobby had been a plush carpet, but now it gave way to a natural stone walkway that wound around the showroom.

She was Alice and she’d just fallen into Wonderland.

“The light is all natural.” Damon walked up behind her, his voice hushed as though this was a sacred place to him. “It comes through the ceiling. The building itself is rectangular, but when I bought it, I had the atrium built in to accommodate the garden. The floors above all look down on the dungeon.”

It was magical. She walked up to a large tree that was just right in the middle of the dungeon floor. She touched it, running her palm along the trunk, making sure it was real. “It’s beautiful, Damon.”

“It’s a pain in the ass. My Dom in Residence would quit if I told him he had to take care of a bunch of trees.” Ian Taggart shook his head and walked away.

Damon pointed around the space, showing her where the entrances and the exits were. She watched as Taggart went up the lift toward the guest quarters.

“Wait until you see it at night,” Damon said. “All the flowering plants are night bloomers. When the moon is full, the entire place is alive with blooms. It’s quite lovely. During nice weather, I open the dome at the top and let fresh air in.”

She’d known he was wealthy, but this place put her so far out of his league it was ridiculous. Just buying a building in Chelsea would have cost more than she would make in a lifetime, but the renovations he’d done had to be in the millions. “How could you afford this?”

He stared up at the massive skylights that apparently moved like a stadium dome. The sun lit the planes of his face, touched his hair, making it shine. “My parents left me with quite a bit when they died. What my guardians didn’t manage to blow through, I spent on this place.” His eyes came down, hooded, cautious. “I really did sink almost everything I have into The Garden. I’ve got a comfortable income, but I’m not fabulously wealthy like my father was. My guardians spent the majority of it.”

She hadn’t pried into his life. Though she’d always been fascinated by him, it felt like an invasion of his privacy to read his files. Not that he’d given her the same courtesy. “When did your parents die?”

“I was seven.” He walked the edge of the room, running his hands through the thick vines that covered the walls. “I went to my grandfather in Scotland for a while. He died. Then I went to a cousin who paid for a series of nannies and boarding schools. By the time I was ready to go to university, the money was almost gone. I took what was left and put it in investments while I went into the Army. By the time I got out, I could afford this place.”

The military part she did know about. Damon had not only gone into the Army, he’d been decorated for valor in military actions in both Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. By the time he’d been sent to Afghanistan, he’d been Special Air Service, a commando. He’d been recruited to SIS from there. He’d spent his entire adult life as a soldier of some sort. He wasn’t ready to give it up. Though she’d hated the way he’d talked to her, she could understand it on some level. He didn’t think he had anything else to offer the world except his skills as an operative.

She followed him, watching his every move. Now that she wasn’t completely distracted by the beauty of the place, she could see that there were small staged areas among the natural settings. The St. Andrew’s Crosses were placed strategically around the room. There were several spaces with dungeon-looking apparatuses, and in the back she saw something that looked like a lounge with a large, decadent-looking bar dominating the space. “It seems like a lot of room for just one man. I know you have the club here on the bottom, but there must be ten floors.”

“Only six. And I don’t live alone.”

“Oh.” Did he have a girlfriend here? That stopped her in her tracks. She knew he’d do just about anything for a mission, but she hadn’t considered that he would compartmentalize so thoroughly that he could bring in a partner he was going to sleep with when he had a woman living with him.

He stared at her for a moment. “You don’t think much of me, do you? I don’t keep a wife or a sub here. I meant I have a friend who runs the club when I’m not around. Like Taggart, I have a Dom in Residence. His name is Reg and he keeps his two subs with him. They’re poly. I’m sure that will make you think less of me, too.”

She stopped. He was doing it again. She’d begun to notice just how good he was at manipulating her. She was pretty sure he did it to everyone around him. He wasn’t a man who just faced a relationship issue head on. He tried to sneak around them to get his way without having to compromise. He was so beautiful, and he controlled his world with an iron fist. She wondered if anyone ever even thought to challenge him. It was right there—the instinct to apologize, to try to make the gorgeous, distant man feel better, but she pushed it aside. “It doesn’t bother me at all. As long as everyone is consenting adults, I think they should do as they please. You’ll have to try again.”

“Try again?”

“Yes. You’re manipulating me in to giving you some outcome you want. I would rather you simply asked. I don’t like manipulations.”

A bitter laugh came from his mouth. “Then you’re in the wrong business.”

“Perhaps,” she allowed. “I never meant to leave the confines of my desk. It’s much simpler there. I understand that you might have to manipulate situations in your job, but I’m not your job. I’m supposed to be your partner, but I think you telling me that was another manipulation. You’re very good at using the right words to get the intended outcome. I’m not your partner, am I?”