I didn't bother looking over my shoulder. I didn't care who was arriving but also the person arriving likely wished the same thing.

I heard a pleasantly deep man's voice say, "Dewar's. Rocks."

"Yes, Mr. Grant."

No noise after that undoubtedly because the carpeting muted him moving to his seat and Ms. Ross would never in a million years make too much noise closing the door behind her.

However, I only vaguely considered those thoughts.

I was still stuck on the pleasant deepness of the man's voice.

I wanted that. I wanted that to let my mind take flight. I wanted the next scene I viewed to be stirring and to use that voice and my imagination to make some fabulous man up in my head who had a pleasantly deep voice who could do pleasant things to me. Then I would go home and create an even more fabulous fantasy with my hand between my legs.

These thoughts in my head, I heard the swish of fabric that was probably him setting aside a suit jacket, and out of habit at the sound, my head turned left.

I took one look and turned my attention back to my phone.

His voice had a pleasant deepness.

His appearance was so beyond pleasant, it was startling.

I waited, not wis.h.i.+ng to be caught looking, and Ms. Ross returned with his drink only moments before the window illuminated for the next scene.

Only then did I allow myself to look at him again.

He had his eyes to the window, the drink to his lips.

I looked away quickly. But this time I'd noticed something so I couldn't help myself from just as quickly casting another glance his way before I again looked away.

I'd been correct.

It was Nick Sebring.

I focused on my breathing, keeping it calm, my eyes to the window, my attention on my thoughts.

In my business, no, in my world, one made it a point to know men such as the Sebring brothers.

On several occasions, I had met Knight Sebring, a Denver nightclub owner who also provided protection and client vetting for a stable of ladies of the evening.

We had no dealings with Knight. He had a niche and kept to his niche, making it clear he had no interest in expanding his operation outside the women he had under his protection. Unless a client was exceptionally stupid, Knight also had little to no problems with any of his businesses. He lived quiet and extremely comfortably with his partner, Anya, and their two daughters.

Some years ago, perhaps seven or eight, Nick Sebring had worked for his brother, Knight. There had been a falling out, the reason for which I was not privy. After this Knight cut his brother loose.

It then appeared Nick had lost his way as there was a spell of time where he was either keeping company with a variety of unsavory characters or on the straight and narrow with an office job.

However, four years ago, Nick Sebring had set up his own shop.

This shop included providing a variety of elite services to an exclusive set of clientele who could pay handsomely. In a very short period of time, he'd made a name for himself in this business of acquisitions, deliveries, security, mediation, surveillance, deep background checks, safe-housing, and information collection, dissemination and safeguarding.

Also in a very short period of time, he'd made a fortune doing these things.

Back in the day, Nick Sebring had been known as the incompetent, unprincipled wastrel younger brother of a successful man. Nick also was known to have a fondness for cocaine and a mind filled with nothing but getting laid and living large off his brother's back.

He was no longer any of that.

What he was was a dark horse. No one had expected anything of him except, perhaps, the frequently earned t.i.tle of baby daddy and an early death due to his own folly.

But now, in our world, he was respected and even feared.

And, in the club in the seating area next to mine, he also looked nothing like he used to look.

The few times I'd been on the scene and had the opportunity to see him back then, I'd noted he had been very pretty. Unlike his brother, who was remarkably good-looking in an intensely masculine but entirely offhand way, Nick Sebring had been handsome in a look-at-me way. He'd worn clothes that were loudly expensive, his hair was over-styled and he had a body that was meticulously maintained-not to maintain it, but to get attention.

Now, his black hair was clipped very short, only bits at the top and the front longer and sticking up in appealing ways which invited a woman's touch to arrange or smooth, no matter how hopeless this endeavor might be (or perhaps because of it).

He was tan, my guess, not due to laying by a pool, especially not now when we were heading out of February. The lines emanating out of the sides of his eyes and around his mouth and the nuance of ruggedness barely contained in the elegant confines of a viewing chamber in the club hinted the tan was because he spent time outside.

His stubble was thick and not groomed. He was not a man who forgot to shave that day or had been too busy to do so for a couple. It had been weeks. Though it was not a full grown beard.

I detested facial hair on a man.

But Nick Sebring's looked good.

And his clothes were impeccable-not obnoxiously so, but in an understated way. That didn't mean his sky blue dress s.h.i.+rt didn't catch on his defined biceps or beautifully delineate his broad shoulders, they did-deliciously so.

Since Tommy, unless it was one of the rare occasions where I was in a certain mood and went out to find a man to a.s.suage that mood, it was unusual for me to have a reaction to a male. Not any of them. It was too dangerous.

No-strings-attached and usually no-names-exchanged f.u.c.king was one thing.

But I'd learned my lesson.

Three glances and Nick Sebring drew me. In fact, even sitting still I was finding it physically exhausting fighting the urge to look his way. And I was finding it utterly impossible to get him out of my mind.

Thankfully, a noise pierced this thought and my unfocused gaze focused on the scene being played out in the window in front of me.

The whipping post had been set up.

Such was the attraction of Nick Sebring-the whipping post and I hadn't noticed.

If done well, that was my favorite scene.

I reached to my drink and took a sip, forcing myself to take in the players.

The man had the whip. Cat o' nine tails, a beautiful set in braided chocolate and burgundy leather with expanded curved tips, not knots, beads or frayed.

He was in jeans, nothing else, and had a large, muscular body that was most appealing.

A woman was tied to the post. She was also in jeans and nothing else. I saw the red marks on her back and knew she'd taken more than one lash during my inattention.

And when I watched what the man did next, I automatically crossed my legs, feeling my lips part and Nick Sebring flew from my mind.

He ran his lips along the marks on her back.

One. Another. The next. And the next. Slowly. Tenderly.

A devotion.

Once done, he ran the handle of the whip along her hip.

Again slowly, he stepped back, raised his arm and let loose.

The slap of leather against flesh filled the chamber as her head flew back, her quiet moan sweet and short, her back arched.

He moved in and tenderly ran the tails of the whip along her skin. As he did, she relaxed for him. He then worked her neck with his mouth and pressed his bulging crotch into her behind before he again stepped back and let loose with the whip.

And again.

Then he moved back to her.

I'd seen many such scenarios but not one as slow, as drawn out, as tender, loving, sensual as the one before me. A scene where he mixed pleasure and adulation with her pain like they had an entire week for him to bring her to climax and not the length of their scene at a s.e.x club.

They were on display, who knew how many people watching, but they were completely alone. She was completely his. Her adoration of him not in question. And this adoration was not what he could do to her. Not what he gave to her. That was only a part of the love she had for her master.

She loved him.

His devotion was the same. Unhidden, completely exposed. Every move he made was entirely focused on her pleasure. On her.

She was the center of his universe, at play and not.

After an unusual succession of three lashes, her moan came deeper and I again could not control the direction of my gaze.

It moved to my left.

When it did I saw that Nick Sebring was entirely focused on the scene. Leaned slightly to his right, his elbow resting on the arm of the chair, his hand up, his thumb distractedly tracing his lower lip.

At this sight, my s.e.x, already damp, convulsed.

I wet my lip and bit it, watching his thumb move along his. Wanting my tongue to replace his thumb with a yearning the strength of which I wasn't sure I'd ever felt.

Without warning, his head turned, his gaze capturing mine.

His eyes were a startling blue. Pure blue. Like the ocean.

I wet my lip again.

Those blue eyes dropped to it.

My nipples tightened.

A noise came from the window and I looked that way, seeing the man was now rubbing his partner between her legs. She was working his hand, writhing against her bonds, desperate for every inch of contact he gave her.

I felt my breaths begin to get heavy and tightened my thighs against each other.

The man went from between her legs to her fly. He undid it and pulled her jeans down over her a.s.s. Once bared, he paid attention to it with whip, hand and lips.

I again bit my own lip, this time to hold back the inadvertent noises I would emit at how what I was watching was making me feel.

He pulled her ponytail free, her long, curling, red-blonde hair falling down her back and swaying against skin that had to be beyond sensitized. Seeing this, I felt my own hair trapped between my back and the seat and I wanted it released. I wanted it moving against my skin. I wanted to use it against his.

Not the master working his slave before me.

The man with the pleasantly deep voice and ruggedly handsome face beside me.

Sebring.

The master pressed his hand back between her legs, now un.o.bstructed by her jeans.

Her noises became desperate.

His growls of approval became audible.

Witnessing that, hearing it, instantly, my need became uncontrollable.

Utterly.

I looked left and saw Sebring's eyes not on the scene but on my crossed legs.

I uncrossed them and they cut to my face.

His gaze was burning, searing holes right through me.

G.o.d, he felt the same as me. About that scene and about me.

Seeing that in his eyes, without that first thought, I pushed out of my chair and moved along the low divider that demarcated our seating areas.

I was breaking the rules. I knew my members.h.i.+p could be revoked for what I was about to do.

I didn't care.

I moved around the divider to his section.

The noises from the scene playing behind me filled our s.p.a.ce, getting louder, keener, hungrier.

I stopped at the side of his chair, looking down at him.

His head was tipped back, his eyes locked to mine.

Another growl from the window followed closely by the unmistakable noise of flesh hitting flesh.