Chapter 1: Chapter 1

It’s not what it looks like.

My eyes peer at the dark road ahead of me. Streetlights flicker past, glimmering over the windshield. My hands tighten, digging my nails into the steering wheel, wrecking my new manicure.

It’s not what it looks like.

It’s the excuse that’s the most insulting part. Not the fact that twelve hours ago, I came back to my apartment in the middle of the workday to find my boyfriend, Steven, with his cock down some college girl’s throat. Not the fact that his bare ass—and hers—were planted on my brand-fucking-new Restoration Hardware white sofa. Not that fact that my dream apartment, with the perfect kitchen and the perfect views and the perfect décor, is now totally tainted.

No, it’s the gall of that fucking excuse.

It’s not what it looks like.

Imagine having the balls and the utter disrespect to say that to someone—to your girlfriend—in her own fucking home.

Tell me, Steven: exactly what could one possibly be doing with their dick in another girl’s mouth that isn’t getting a blowjob? What bad, X-rated Saturday Night Live sketch entails you “accidentally” probing the tonsils of a random Kappa Delta Phi sophomore pledge with your pathetically C-minus grade penis?

I glare at the road.

Except, the worst part isn’t actually the excuse.

The worst part is, I don’t really care.

I’m angry, yes, but it’s at the total lack of respect for my house and my new goddamn sofa. Not at the cheating.

I’m relieved.

Steven was never “the one”. We’ve been dating for close to seven months, and I can count the number of times we’ve slept together on less than five fingers.

Really.

I could tell myself that it’s because “demanding” barely scratches the surface of my workload as an attorney and managing name partner at the prestigious firm my two best friends and I built from scratch. I could say it’s because Steven’s job as a Philosophy Professor at NYU—though way less stressful than mine—is just as demanding on his time and focus.

But blaming our jobs is like blaming the dog for eating your homework.

It’s bullshit.

There’s a reason that seven months into a “relationship” with the man who just cheated on me, we’ve barely ever been intimate, I’ve never memorized his number, and I’m not totally sure what his parents’ names are.

Steven, like any relationship before him, is just checking off a box for me.

Bad-ass career with corner office? Check.

Gorgeous apartment with a claw-foot tub? Check.

Sexy-ass fucking car—a Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet; cherry red, obviously? Check.

Appropriately handsome, but not too handsome, mild-mannered boyfriend with a career in academia? Check.

Go ahead and tattoo “live laugh love” on my fucking forehead right now and crown me Ms. Basic with a capital B Girl-Boss. Sponsored by Pinterest and some cheap rosé brand.

My mouth purses again. As I leave the Tuesday evening lights of New York behind me and wind my way up the wooded banks of the Hudson River, my gaze slips from the road ahead to the phone perched on its dashboard holder.

Instantly, the pissed-off thoughts about Steven and his TA disrespecting my couch fade away, quickly replaced by something…different.

Something twisted. Something dark. Something…

Sinister.

Dangerous and reckless. Depraved and exiting.

Something seriously fucking stupid, and you need to turn around right now and call Dr. Jesnick ASAP and tell her to clear her schedule because Taylor Air is coming in hot for a landing with a full cargo of baggage.

I glance at the road again, then the phone. My teeth rake over my lower lip as something heated and deliriously dark pools in my core. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m pulling off to the shoulder of the road, throwing the Porsche in park, and plucking the phone from the holder.

I navigate to the app, my pulse quickening as I tap on my correspondence with him.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

I’m going to make you my personal little cum slut. My fuck toy. My pretty little whore.

My physical response to the message, same as every time I’ve gone back in and re-read it, is instant. Instant and…all-consuming. My breath hitches. My skin tingles with an electricity that curls my toes and makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My nipples tighten to points. Wet heat pools between my thighs, and when I shift in my seat, I shiver at the delicious friction of my panties against my core.

I can’t believe I’m doing this.

Any of it. I mean, hell, I can’t believe I’m up past nine at night, and it doesn’t involve work. Much less currently driving to fuck-knows-where in the woods forty minutes outside New York to play dark, dangerous games with a man who says things like “I’m going to make you my personal little cum slut”.

I shudder again, my teeth biting my lower lip even harder.

This is insanity. And yet, here I am.

Most girls’ mothers tell them the basics of how to survive in the world. Don’t talk to strangers. Be aware of your surroundings. Don’t put yourself in a bad situation.

I think it’s safe to say “don’t meet strange men from the internet in the woods at night to play out primal fantasies with them” is probably somewhere on that list, too.

At least, I assume most girls’ moms teach them those things. Maybe mine never got around to it. Or maybe she did, and I’ve just forgotten it, same as I’ve forgotten her and the rest of my childhood memories—all gone in an instant, like a bad Vegas magic trick.

*Poof*, there goes the rabbit!

*Poof*, there goes the nine of hearts!

*Poof*, there goes Taylor’s entire memory from before the age of eighteen! Don’t forget to hit the craps table on your way out, folks!

But this isn’t the time to ruminate on lessons my mom may or may not have taught me. I’ve already come this far, and there’s no backing down now.

Not because I can’t. I don’t want to.

At least, I’m reasonably sure I don’t.

Which is why I’m still driving up the Hudson, the Porsche’s headlights illuminating the dark road ahead, following the map directions to the agreed-upon location.

Where he’ll chase me. Where he’ll catch me.

Where he’ll do whatever he wants to me.

This time, the shiver that ripples up my spine is a mix of fear and excitement. It’s addictive as fuck. So is the sprinkling of anxiety and the throb of nervous energy.

Needless to say, none of this is “me”.

Not Taylor Crown, attorney-at-law, who just had a cover piece published about her in The Legal Journal, detailing her rapid rise through the ranks of the legal world of New York, up to and including founding Crown and Black alongside Alistair and Gabriel.

I’m the girl with the Chanel skirt suits and Louboutins. The one with the meticulous schedule involving the four AM alarm so I can hit the gym and get my jogging in, wall-to-wall client and board meetings, and the standing lunch reservation at Per Se. The one with the perfect car and the perfect apartment with the perfect white couch and the cutlery that matches the kitchen fixtures. The girl with the perfectly vanilla boyfriend.

I know I’m all those things, because I’ve been all those things, robotically, for a decade.

But tonight, I’m going off-book. Off script.

Off the fucking rails…

It started earlier, after Fumi came into my office and immediately noticed the black look on my face after my inadvertent lunchtime peepshow involving Steven and the co-ed. As usual when it involves even the slightest whiff of my personal life, I clammed up. It works on most people. Not Fumi.

Eventually, she dragged it out of me. After that, it was a quick escalation from her calling Steven a “baby-dicked piece of shit”, loudly, to us ditching work a few hours early and going to get cocktails.

That’s how we got onto the mortifying subject of my sex life, or rather the complete lack thereof. That’s how Fumi—my good friend but also my employee—bluntly told me I needed to go out and “get good dick”.

And that’s how we got talking about Club Venom.

Venom, which is run by Dante, the husband of Gabriel and Alistair’s sister Tempest, is a private social club that caters to New York’s most powerful, wealthy, usually criminally connected, and deviant. Mix two parts Eyes Wide Shut with one part Prohibition speakeasy vibes, throw in a heaping dash of luxury and opulence, and stir.

It’s a playground for the dark and devilish. A place where those with specific tastes can come to indulge their appetites. Except, to call Venom a “kink club” is like calling Buckingham Palace a “nice townhouse”.

It’s honestly like nothing else. The guests wear masks. Anonymity is encouraged. Upon arrival, you’re invited to choose from a selection of wristbands of different colors, all signifying interest in different kinks, and highlighting if the wearer is a sub or a Dom.

I’m technically a member, but certainly not for leisure purposes. Crown and Black has built a lot of its client base on the more…colorful types in New York: Mafia dons, Bratva pakhans, and the like. The type who almost certainly are members of Venom. Plus, given the club’s anonymity, security, and ban on cellphones, it’s a perfect place to hold business meetings with people who make their money in less than legal ways.

…If you can ignore the fact that there may be an orgy happening thirty feet away.

I’ve been a handful of times, always thankful for the mask to hide the heated look on my face when I’m there. Fumi, of course, knows that I’m a member for work purposes, and suggested that it could be the perfect place for me to “find some good dick”—as if hook-up sex is what I need to get over the mental image of seeing my couch violated so callously.

But that’s a hard pass. Is the idea of going to a place that indulges certain darker fantasies appealing to me, given my hidden tastes in said dark fantasies?

Yes. Then again, I also think tigers are pretty neat, but there’s zero percent chance of me taking a stroll through the jungle looking for one.

The desires and tastes I have and keep locked down tight and deep aren’t the sort of desires I tell anyone about. Not my friends, never my relationships. Besides, mask or no mask, the idea of being recognized at Venom is almost crippling for my anxiety.

But then Fumi started telling me about Venom’s new web portal: a way for existing members to seek each other out outside the club—specifically, members who have an interest in the sort of venomous, dangerous kinks that I keep buried under the floorboards.

Members who want to chase or be chased.

Primal kink.

Something dark and throbbing teases my core as my hands tighten on the wheel.

I’m almost there.

I waited until Fumi went to the restroom before I snuck out my phone and checked out this web portal for Club Venom. Signing in was easy. I’m already a member, so I was pre-approved. Answering some simple questions about myself and my preferences for a partner was just as easy, as was snapping a quick picture of me from lips to waist—with a few buttons of my blouse undone to give a generous glimpse of the girls—and uploading it to my profile. As was choosing a stupid and admittedly kind of cringe username: “SecretSlut”.

I mean, I’m not. But dress for the job you want.

An hour later when I glanced at the app again, my heart skipped. I had twenty message requests.

Most of them even had decent opening lines. Which would be great if I was on Hinge, or OkCupid, and looking for a nice dinner out with a mild-mannered professor of Psychology at NYU with a penchant for getting his dick sucked by co-eds on his girlfriend’s new couch.

But, that’s not what I’m looking for on the Venom site.

Not. Even. Close.

“Let me fly you wherever you want tonight.”

“I want you to be my dirty girl.”

Even a bolder one who had actually clearly read my profile and knew what I was looking for:

“I want to chase you, baby.”

I kept glancing at them whenever Fumi was preoccupied. I even almost responded to one or two. But then I saw his initial message, and after I managed to pick my jaw up off the floor, that’s who I replied to.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

I’m going to ruin you

This is how I know I’m supremely fucked in the head. Because that, of all things, is what captured my attention. Because Fumi was right: this is what I need. Not a date. Not another boyfriend to tick a box.

I need something raw and real and now.

So that’s how we started talking. No “I want to”. No “would you like me to”.

“I am going to ruin you.”

A man says the filthiest thing anyone’s ever said to me, and I’m instantly all-in? Paging Dr. Jesnick: we need to chat, immediately.

SECRETSLUT

That’s quite the opening line

NAPOLEONINEXILE

It’s not a line, it’s a warning. Here’s another: be sure of what you’re getting into if you choose to go any further with me, or you’ll regret it.

I swallow as my eyes scan our message exchange again.

SECRETSLUT

Why would I regret it?

NAPOLEONINEXILE

Because I’m not playing games. My tastes are…singular…and dark.

SECRETSLUT

So are mine

NAPOLEONINEXILE

We’ll see.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

Your safe word will be “Vault”. Until you use it, assume that I’ll do whatever I want to you. I’ll chase you, and catch you, and fuck you hard and mercilessly in any hole I choose. We’re not going to “play”. I’m going to make you my personal little cum slut. My fuck toy. My pretty little whore. Are we continuing, or not.

I think it was the borderline psychotic unapologetic tone. Not a negotiation. A decree.

And yes, that pulled a trigger inside of me.

SECRETSLUT

I’m still here.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

For now.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

What are your hard limits. Be very specific.

A flush blooms in my cheeks as I read through the messages from a few hours ago.

SECRETSLUT

No bathroom stuff. No animals.

I mean, fine print and legal wording is my career. You’ve gotta cross your T’s and dot your I’s.

SECRETSLUT

No extreme sadism like torture or anything. No being tied up or immobilized. No anal. No other people involved.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

Nope.

SECRETSLUT

Nope??

NAPOLEONINEXILE

You may pick three of those.

I’d stared at the phone. Fumi was off getting us another round at the bar.

SECRETSLUT

No, those are all my limits.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

Yes, and you get to keep three of them. That’s MY limit. You have five seconds.

I know I could have, should have, just ended the conversation with Mr. Control Freak then and there. But I didn’t.

I might still be trying to figure out why.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

Four

NAPOLEONINEXILE

Three

SECRETSLUT

Ok, the first three

No bathroom stuff. No extreme torture. No animals. I mean, of all the things I listed, those are simply non-starters. I sent the reply in a hazy blur, my skin tingling.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

I’m going to enjoy breaking you, my little slut.

It’s embarrassing how wet I got reading that at the bar. Or how much wetter I got when he told me we’d be meeting tonight and sent me GPS coordinates to what I assume is his house outside the city, in the Hudson Valley.

Before Fumi came back with our drinks, I managed to send one more message.

SECRETSLUT

How will I know it’s you?

NAPOLEONINEXILE

You’ll know I’m near when your pussy starts to get wetter

And then the icon next to his username went dark, leaving me staring at that last line.

Two hours later, here I am.

The car’s GPS says I’m minutes away from his house, and when it hits me how close I am to actually doing this, something dark and twisted ripples through my soul.

Yes, this is insane. But, criminals though most of them may be, I know for a fact that Dante vets every member of the Club. I mean, it’s not like he’s letting in actual psychopaths and/or dangerous murderers who want to lure women to the woods and chop them into pieces.

…Right?

The GPS tells me to take the next turn. Up ahead, the main road goes on, but a side road winds along the hilly side of the river, up into the trees. My headlights sweep over the dark, gnarled trunks and overgrown underbrush as my tires no longer rumble over pavement but a dirt driveway. The map says the address is right up ahead, but I didn’t see a mailbox or anything when I just turned.

The driveway winds higher and higher up Into the trees. I frown, looking for the lights of his house, or at least a porch light or something. But then the driveway evens out to a flat clearing in the trees, and suddenly, the GPS dings again.

I’m here.

My pulse begins to thud a little faster as I glance nervously into the darkness surrounding the car.

There’s no house.

No lights.

Nothing.

Just darkness and woods, and the sudden feeling that I’m in way over my head. The idea of turning around and going home to read something involving my fantasy, perhaps with a familiar vibrator, instead of indulging in whatever insanity this is becomes very, very tempting.

Shivering, I pull out my phone again.

SECRETSLUT

I think you gave me the wrong address by mistake.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

I don’t make mistakes.

My throat bobs as my eyes lift to peer into the dark woods next to the small gravel clearing.

SECRETSLUT

I don’t see your house.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

You wouldn’t from here.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

Get out of the fucking car, slut.

Something vicious stabs into my chest. Something I know should terrify and appall me. Something that should set off every alarm in my head.

The problem isn’t that it doesn’t do all those things. The problem is that it most certainly does, but I’m not leaving.

I’m still here.

My hands shake as I cut the engine. The headlights switch off, and a cold sensation finger-walks up my spine as the darkness closes in around me.

Don’t do this. Do NOT do this.

My hand extends and grabs the driver’s side door handle. My brain screams at me to stop as I slowly step out with shaking knees. When I shut the car door behind me with a dull click, the interior lights stay on another few seconds, a little glow of light to keep the shadows at bay just a little while longer.

Then they go out.

And it’s just me, the darkness, and him.

Somewhere.

My pulse starts jangling in my ears. My blood runs hot, my core tightening as sweat slicks the small of my back.

This is crazy. Because I’m terrified.

But the problem is, that’s what I crave. The rush. The adrenaline. The danger, and the fear. The quiet throb of tension hovering in the sky before the storm breaks.

The feeling of being hunted, in that split second before the hunter pounces.

My phone lights up one more time.

NAPOLEONINEXILE

Leave the phone. You have three seconds to start running. After that, you’re fucking mine.

Shaking, my pulse roaring in my ears, I turn and set my phone and purse down on the roof of my car. I pull out the mask—we’ve agreed to wear them, in the spirit of Club Venom—and adjust it over the top half of my face. For the first time, I realize how badly prepared for this I am. I mean I’m wearing a fucking Versace pencil skirt, Valentino blouse, and goddamn Louboutin stilettos.

In the woods.

About to be chased.

Caught.

And fucked.

Panic and adrenaline throb and sizzle through my veins as I turn to survey the dark, shadowy tree line.

Then, it’s like time slows. My spine stiffens, and my breath catches.

Wetness and heat pool between my thighs.

That’s when I know he’s here.

“Your three seconds are up, little prey.”

The words are rough, growled in a slight European accent behind me, rasping dark and deep, like they’re coming from a black cave. My chest seizes, my pulse skipping a beat as my face goes white. I start to turn, and when I do, whatever courage I had left shatters like glass.

He’s huge. Insanely tall and broad-shouldered, with a powerful chest and thickly muscled, rippling arms bulging out the sleeves of the black t-shirt he’s wearing with black jeans. But it’s not his outfit that has my blood turning to ice water.

It’s the matte black devil mask he’s wearing, the bottom half open to reveal his leering, coldly beautiful and terrifyingly malicious smile.

My heart pounds as I start to back away and he advances across the clearing toward me.

“You had three seconds, my little fuck toy,” he growls, melting out of the blackness like ink staining a sheet. Like a nightmare emerging from behind the open closet door in your bedroom late at night.

“You should have used them.”

He rolls his neck as he leers coldly at me.

“Too late now.”

It happens so fast that I freeze to the spot. One second, he’s just standing there, radiating malice and wrath as his cold eyes stab across the darkness into my soul.

The next, he’s exploding toward me.

Ready to take me.

To catch me.

To devour me whole and spit out the bones.

The scream strangles in my throat, and I turn, and run.