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mystery man to torture each other, until one of the two was no longer
good for anything outside an ICU unit.

"What do you want, Leah?" His voice is so deep, she can feel it
vibrate in her chest. He reaches out and snags a strand of her hair,
where it's fallen loose from its braid, and weaves it between his fingers.

"Tell me what you want. I'll do anything."

Anything? Who says that, and means it? That's just stupid. And

she'd be twice as stupid to believe it.

What does she want, anyway?

The crowd's irritation is like a swarm of bees buzzing in her head,

louder and louder...

She reached out and smacked the alarm clock. The audience, along

with their noisy protest, evaporated. Then she stretched, groaning at the 147

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way the muscles in her legs cramped, and the tense, frustrated ache

between her thighs. In the silence of her bedroom, she heard the man's

voice asking one more time...

"Leah, what do you want?"

She sighed and ran a hand over her face, scrubbing away the last

traces of sleep. "Damned if I know."

Leah threw back the covers and crawled out of bed, leaving dreams

and memories behind.

* * * *

literature."

Forty bodies sat up straight on uncomfortable chairs. The chatter

echoing off the walls of the half-filled classroom died away. In the front row, a sophomore—the one with "virgin" written all over her preppy kilt and pearls—scrunched her face like she'd accidentally sucked a big old

slurp off of a lemon.

Well, that got their attention.

Leah set her books on the desk and turned to write a name on the

blackboard: Marquis de Sade. Beneath it, she scrawled the words,
father
of sadism
, and underlined them twice. Then she turned to face her Basics of World Literature class. They stared at her, pens poised above

notebooks. Even the uber-jocks in the back looked interested.

Crossing her arms over her chest and leaning one hip against the

desk, she began, "The Marquis de Sade, otherwise known as Donatien

Alphonse François. Can anyone tell me something about this man?"

Silence. Leah stifled a sigh. No challenge here. Nothing to make her

think or try. Just the never-ending battle to make them—her summer

term students, who didn't want to be here on a Friday afternoon in the

dog days of August, and who could blame them?—think and try. The

very definition of a losing battle.

"De Sade's philosophy was based on a single principle: perfect

freedom. Freedom to do whatever struck a person's fancy, with no

restrictions imposed by ethics, religion, or law."

The sound of pens scratching against rough paper was loud in her

ears. She continued, "For de Sade and his followers, the pursuit of personal pleasure was the highest ideal."

The virgin sophomore—
I really should quit thinking of her that

way, it's not fair
—raised her hand, and Leah nodded.

"When you say 'personal pleasure,' do you mean...?" The girl's voice 148

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trailed off. She flushed a pretty pink against the white of her pearls.

"Yes. I mean sex." Leah uncrossed her arms and gestured toward the blackboard. "But not just regular, run-of-the-mill sex. We're talking about real perversion here. Taking pleasure in the suffering of others."

The good-looking blond junior at the opposite end of the row

cleared his throat.

"Yes, Ray? You have a question?"

"More like an observation."

Of course. Ray Delacroix never asked questions when he could

make comments, remarks, or observations. "Go ahead."

Ray shrugged and said, "You're way too uptight. There's nothing

perverted about getting off on a little pain." He leveled a smirk at her and sat back in his chair, the muscles beneath his tight tee shirt rippling.

Leah felt her lips twist in distaste. She stepped away from the desk

and went to stand directly in front of the boy. "Can I assume you have some experience in this area?"

Ray laughed. "You know it. Nothing like a little kink to spice things up, baby." He leered at her. "I'd be happy to give you some private instruction, if you're interested."

Several students gasped. A few tittered. A sharp bark of laughter

rang out before it morphed into a coughing fit.

"I don't think that will be necessary. However, I'd like to try a little experiment. May I touch you?"

He rolled his eyes and grinned. "For sure, baby. Go for it."

With her right hand, she reached out and caressed Ray's left ear. He

leaned into her touch, his suggestive smile deepening. When she was

sure she had his trust, she closed her fingers around his ear and twisted.

Not hard...just enough.

"Hey!" He jerked his head, but Leah held on, digging her nails into the flesh around his ear.

"I thought you liked pain, Ray. I thought it spiced things up."

"Let go, you crazy—"

"Hold still, and I won't hurt you."

He stopped struggling. "You wait 'til I see the dean about this, you nutty—"

"Listen to me," Leah said, keeping a firm grip on his ear. "Listen and consider. Imagine if, instead of your ear between my fingers, I was

holding a different piece of your anatomy...say, your testicles?"

A groan erupted from one of the jocks in the back. Ray muttered an

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obscenity, his color deepening to an unattractive shade of magenta.

"Imagine if you were hanging in chains, and I continued applying

pressure to said anatomy until the pain made you black out. Imagine if I then revived you by having you flogged."

The virgin sophomore made a gurgling sound, and Leah paused to

glance at her. She'd gone as pale as her pearls.

"Okay, I get it," Ray said, his face nearly purple. "You made your point."

"I don't think so. I think you need to keep imagining...considering how it would feel to know I was 'getting off', as you put it, on your

agony. Taking joy from your helplessness. Reveling in the knowledge

that I could kill you slowly, and all for the sake of my own pleasure."

Ray's gaze flickered to her face, and she smiled at him. "You still like the idea of pain?"

"That's not what I meant. You twisted it—"

She gave his ear a sharp pinch and let go. He flopped back in his

seat. His face was bathed in sweat, and he was panting.

"I know what you meant. But de Sade wasn't about a little

consensual spanking or a set of nipple clamps—he was the real deal.

Inflicting torture for the sheer enjoyment of watching others suffer, more often than not against their wills." She wiped her fingers on her skirt, as if she'd dirtied them. "And he was imprisoned for over twenty-nine years for his writings on the subject."

Ray shot her a dirty look and mumbled something she didn't quite

catch.

"What was that?"

He lifted his chin. "I called you a fascist."

Leah laughed. "You think I approve of locking people up because of

what they write?"

"Sure sounds that way." His defiant stare didn't quite meet her eyes.

"Well, that makes an excellent topic for debate, doesn't it?" Leah turned toward the blackboard, intending to write something further about de Sade and his literature of perversion. She'd picked up the chalk and

was reaching toward the board when a wave of scent drifted over her,

strong and dark.

Latex? Why am I smelling...? And perfume. Chanel No. 5.

She looked over her shoulder, expecting to see one of the girls in the

front row applying the scent to their wrists or neck. But no—they were

all staring at her expectantly, waiting to see some other outrageous

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teaching technique that would likely get her ass hauled into the dean's

office yet again.

Another whiff of Latex, and then a stronger one of perfume, and

now she was hearing...

Oh no. Not here. Please-please-please not here.

But the guitar chords were unmistakable.
Hotel California
, by the Eagles, circa 1976. Playing in her head—a private performance, just for

her. And getting louder.

She turned again and clutched the back of the chair that was pushed

into the footwell of the desk. If she could hold on just a few

minutes...long enough to get them out of the room...long enough to get

home...

She took a breath and lifted her head. "A thousand words on the

topic of free speech versus social responsibility, on my desk by Monday.

Now scoot, all of you."

The chorus of groans that met her statement didn't come close to

drowning out Don Henley singing about mirrors on the ceiling and pink

champagne on ice. She stood at the desk as the room emptied, barely

hearing the clumsy footfalls and excited, pre-weekend conversation.

Only when the door banged shut behind the last student did she clamp

her hands to her ears and squeeze her eyes shut.

Loud...so damned loud. The music and the voices, and the aroma of

Latex and perfume, sharp enough to make her gag and sickeningly

familiar. A surge of dizziness struck her. She wasn't going to make it—

not even to her car, much less all the way home.

Just as her knees gave way, the door opened again. She felt the floor

rushing up to smack her hard and heard someone shout her name, but all

of it was muted by the sounds and smells in her head, and now...

Oh, God, now the pictures, too...

She saw a face peer out of the shadows. Sharp, almost devilish

features, black hair, dark eyes, strong jaw covered in inky stubble. He

was looking past her, at someone just beyond her, and he was saying...he was saying...

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He was saying, "Sure baby, whatever you want, I'm easy," and

smiling at the redhead standing to his left. She'd just proposed a trade—a brief interview with her employer in exchange for his company, and

maybe some fun and games later on. The scent of her perfume swirled

around him, mixing with the medicinal odor that rose from her black

Latex cat-suit.

"You won't be sorry, lover," she whispered, barely audible over the clash of music and voices. The club was crowded. The ebb and surge of

bodies filing past pressed them tight against the bar, leaving little room to breathe. Marcus reached up to loosen his tie, but the redhead beat him to it, yanking him down and latching onto his lower lip with her teeth.

She bit hard enough to make him wince.

Kinky chick. And a little on the aggressive side for his taste, but

beggars couldn't be choosers. He wanted that interview with the reclusive Madre Donnatella, though he didn't believe the woman had any

information he could use. But, the trail was getting colder by the hour. If he didn't turn up something soon, he'd be shit out of luck, and Julian's murder would go unsolved.

He had to try. And if the freckle-faced cutie wanted him to spank

her and tug on her nipple piercings to get what he needed, well...

Bonus. He smirked around the mouth of the beer bottle and glanced

into the mirror behind the bar, surveying the Friday evening crowd at

Hotel California, the area's premiere alternative hotspot. Nothing like it in this part of the state outside the city limits of San Francisco.

From what he could see, the redhead wasn't anywhere near the

kinkiest clubber in the room. He'd nominate the guy in the far corner for that prize—the one wearing nothing but a black rubber diaper and

sucking on an adult-sized pacifier. Or maybe his date, who appeared to

be taking considerable joy in whacking the backs of his thighs with an

extra-large fly swatter.

Lucky for Diaper Boy that Hotel California continued to exist.

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Uptight, outraged citizens had tried to shut the place down more than

once, but since nobody here was breaking the law...or, at least, nobody

had ever been caught breaking the law...

The sign over the entrance read: "Safe, Sane, and Consensual. No

public nudity or lewd acts. Follow the rules or leave the premises." The club had no record of citations, no nine-one-one calls, no marks on its

liquor license—a clean shop, in other words. And likely another dead-

end when it came to finding Julian's killer.

The redhead grabbed his chin, pivoted his face toward hers, and

stretched up on tiptoe to nibble at his mouth again. Her breath tasted

sour, but he didn't pull away. Couldn't afford to offend her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tall, blonde barmaid take his nearly empty bottle and set another in its place.

"Hey, I didn't—"

"On the house, sir." The barmaid—also attractive and also wrapped in Latex, just like every other Hotel California employee—ran her

tongue over her full, pink lips as she let her gaze wander all over him.

Nice. Maybe he could talk her and the redhead into a threesome once

he'd finished his interview.

"Let's go, lover," the redhead said. "My boss is waiting."

"Yeah? Is she as hot as you?"

She lowered her eyes in an obvious attempt to look coy. "I think

you'll like her. And I know she'll like you."

He lifted his hand and caressed her face. "What's your name,

sweetheart?"

"Clarice," she said. Her lips trembled. Nervous? That was kind of sweet. Maybe she wasn't quite the pro at this scene she pretended to be.