Without a Net (3 page)

Ollie nodded. He did know. For a time Ollie stared at the ad, and the weight of the paper seemed to hold him in place.

“I had a case once—a twenty-two-year-old right out of university,” Travis said softly. Something in his tone broke the spell the paper had over Ollie, and he looked up at his neighbor. “Some asshole had violated her redlines so many times that she didn’t know where they were anymore, and he’d convinced her that she wanted more. She’d signed a twenty-four-seven contract as a pet, never allowed to stand up. When we raided his place for drugs, we scooped her up, and it took the psychologists a good two weeks to get her to admit she hadn’t wanted any of it. She was so ashamed of what he’d made her do that she would have rather clung to him than face the real situation. I almost wrung that guy’s neck.” Travis grimaced, and the hatred practically radiated off him.

“Was she okay in the end?” Ollie asked. For some reason, he needed to know the girl had gotten her head back on straight. Dominating was a dangerous business, and in control clubs where sex was all negotiated, that danger was attractive—it was a spice that made sex more exciting. But the shade clubs were different.

“Sorta,” Travis said. “She filed charges against him, but I’m pretty sure she planned to avoid sex for the next sixty years. She was one of those cases that hit me.”

Ollie nodded. He didn’t have anything to add to this conversation. For a time they stood in silence, and then Travis cleared his throat.

“If you ever want to talk about whatever’s eating you, you know where my apartment door is. This job is hard. Don’t make it harder by trying to carry the load all yourself.” Travis silently studied Ollie for a good minute before he turned and headed back up the steps.

When he was halfway to the second floor, Ollie called his name. Travis turned.

“How high up were you before you retired?” Ollie blurted the question out, almost before he realized he was going to ask it.

Travis gave him an odd look. “Plenty high. I could have been captain, but I refused to leave the field. My place was out there investigating leads with my team, not stuck watching through some damn vid feed.” He came down several steps. “But there’s nothing you could say that would shock me. If you want, you could come upstairs and have a couple of drinks, and we can talk about your hard day.”

Ollie wanted to do that, but he wanted it too much. Lusting after a married man was not Ollie’s normal MO, and he was afraid the shit at work had left him too off balance. He wanted someone on his side. Travis gave off a supportive vibe, and Ollie wished he worked for the department because Ollie would trust Travis at his back. He wasn’t sure he could trust the captain who was using him or the lieutenant who was out to get him or even his fellow officers who wanted to stay out of the line of fire.

But no matter how much he wanted some strong shoulder to lean on, he had to handle this on his own. He could not violate operational security on two active cases—the investigation into the kidnappings and the internal review of Lieutenant Huda’s actions.

“No, thanks. Besides, I don’t think your wife wants to hear some old war stories from a couple of cops.”

“Don’t kid yourself. Darla’s got more stories than both of us put together.”

“She was a cop?” Ollie asked. She seemed too caring to be a cop.

“She was a dispatcher,” Travis said. “She heard crap that would make my toes curl, and she was helpless to stop any of it as long as she was on the other end of a vid or a phone. Sometimes when the bad guys were high enough or stupid enough, they even committed crimes in front of the camera, and she got to see it. She may be soft and tender on the outside, but inside that woman has a core of steel. You can trust her to handle whatever you’ve got to say and keep it confidential.”

“That’s a kind offer…” Ollie let his voice trail off. Something here wasn’t right. Yeah, cops stuck together, but this was a little over the top. Ollie’s feelings were too unpredictable for him to spend too much time with a very attractive male. In Ollie’s experience, anxiety and stress never led to good choices. The very fact that he found Travis attractive was the best reason to run like hell. He put on an apologetic expression. “It was a hard day.”

Travis leaned against the rail. “Look, Darla’s always telling me I come on too strong, more like one of those shade Doms than an in-control and sane sort. So feel free to tell me to fuck off if you want, but you’re putting out some sub vibes, and it bothers me to see someone spinning out of control.”

Sub vibes.
Fuck.
Yeah, that was exactly what Huda had said when he insisted Ollie had to be the one to go under. Apparently he reeked of submission. The worst part was that Travis was the sort Ollie would want under better circumstances.

“I can take care of myself, thanks.” Ollie put a whole lot of unhappy in his voice.

Travis raised his hands in surrender. “No problem. You can take care of yourself, and I don’t doubt that, but if you need some relief, Darla switches, and she always loves to have playtime as the Domme. No sex, of course. I mean, that’s my wife—but we do have some fun toys.” Travis offered him a kind smile, a sort of come-hither expression that made Ollie yearn for some connection.

Ollie’s face got hot as his imagination turned to what it would be like to feel Travis’s hands holding him down.
Great.
One neighbor hated him, and the other thought he needed babying. Ollie’s life couldn’t get any better. “Fuck off,” he said before he headed into his apartment. He didn’t need to play, especially not with this new job coming at him like a freight train. What he needed were a few beers, some loud music, and a night of killing electronic zombies. That would make him feel better. Without another word to Travis, Ollie went into his apartment and slammed the door.

Chapter Three

This was a bad neighborhood. Scratch that. This was a terrifying neighborhood. The difference between a bad neighborhood and a terrifying one was that one had poor people and overpriced grocery stores and the other had body-mod shops, shade clubs, drug dealers lounging on the corners, and a general sense of doom hanging over the place like a cloud. Ollie honestly didn’t understand why people were drawn to these islands of horror that hid in every city, but they were.

The “why” was for psychologists to figure out. As a cop, he needed to enforce the law.

He looked up at the sign over the Happy Whip club. Reputable places had lists of rules posted up front—which activities were and weren’t allowed. They had sign-in sheets where someone checked in with each sub to make sure he or she could articulate limits, and every Dom had to sign a nonharm agreement.

Like most shade clubs, this one had none of that. Ollie walked in the front door and looked around at the shadowy interior. Two side stages were set up with bondage horses. The narrow plank of wood that served as the seat would cut into someone’s genitals quite cruelly, and the wooden horses were set high enough that anyone sitting there couldn’t touch the floor. Hooks and chains dangled from the ceiling here and there, and a long, raised stage came halfway out into the main floor, dividing the area into different zones. One side had a number of spanking benches, and the other had suspension points and pulleys that could obviously be used to drag a hanging submissive from one point to another.

Ollie’s nuts were trying to climb back up inside his body while his dick hardened. The pills he’d taken helped with that. He had to put on a good front, after all. Besides, he did like toys. He’d simply prefer it if the people in charge weren’t utterly insane. Maybe that wasn’t fair, because some people liked to have boundaries pushed and enjoyed giving up their safe words and their contracts. That was their kink. Ollie didn’t have that kink.

“We’re not open yet,” a guy called from the back of the bar. “Did I ask you to look up? Get to work, you piece of shit!” he yelled at his feet, and he grabbed a whip from the counter and swung it several times. There was a muffled cry and a scrambling.

“I was looking for work, but hopefully the sort that gets paid with money and not lashes,” Ollie said with his best smile. The bartender was a bear of a man wearing a leather harness and a thick collar, so he either subbed for someone or wanted other Doms to keep their hands off without permission. In this kind of place, subs didn’t get much of a chance to say no. They got used unless they had a collar and a Dom to tell others to back off.

“You ever work a place like this before?”

“No,” Ollie admitted, “but I might have one or two problems that make it hard for me to get work other places.”

The bartender aimed a kick at whoever was at his feet and then walked out from behind the bar. “This ain’t no playground, and the men and women who come here aren’t into flowers and candy and treating subs like they’re precious. You might be in the wrong place, sweet cheeks.”

“I’m not in the wrong place, and if you can’t see a hard dick in a man’s pants, you’re blind.”

The bartender moved quicker than Ollie expected, and before he could do or say anything, the man had him by the neck and was forcing him back into the wall. Ollie hit so hard the wind whooshed out of him.

“You still hard, boy?”

Ollie pulled against the man’s arms as he slowly lost the ability to breathe.

“You like that?” the bartender asked as he tightened his hand more. Ollie knew these were standard games for a shade club, and he still couldn’t stop the small and panicked prey instinct deep in his soul.

“If you want to breathe, you put your hands at your sides. Do it, or I’ll choke you until you pass out, and tie them there.”

Ollie fought down his instincts and let his hands fall to his sides. His vision was getting fuzzy now, and the bartender held on for another couple of seconds before he let up. Ollie gasped.

The bartender leaned close and whispered in Ollie’s ear, “So tell me, do you want a job, or do you want out of here?” It was such a disturbingly intimate thing to do, especially after the brutal assault. The false tenderness and the pills Ollie had taken ganged up on him, and his cock got even harder. The bartender ran his free hand down Ollie’s shirt and over his stomach to grab Ollie’s cock. “Well, it seems like I have a vote for staying. Is that right?”

Ollie swallowed. “Yes, I want a job.” The words made his sore throat ache. These people weren’t playing.

The bartender took a step back and studied Ollie. “Worm! Turn the main lights on!”

A man scuttled out from behind the bar. His head was completely encased in leather or latex, and he had mitts locked around his hands, each with scrub brushes attached. He awkwardly crawled over to the wall and knelt up to hit the switch.

Light flooded the area, and Ollie narrowed his eyes as they adjusted. The bound man fell back to his hands and knees. A huge plug was sticking out of his ass, and his ankles were locked onto a rod, which was why he had such a strange gait when he crawled. The man turned and struggled back toward the bar.

“You want to be my new worm?” the bartender asked.

“I think that’s too big a step for me,” Ollie said. “I was thinking more like serving drinks.”

“You’re pretty enough. A little long in the tooth, but you have a wide-eyed sort of panic that will make some of the regulars eat you up.”

“They can’t… I mean, I don’t mind touching, but they won’t…” Ollie had no idea how to ask the question. Actually, he did, but he was supposed to be a washed-out college student, not a cop. So he let his stuttering ask the question for him.

The bartender crowded closer until he had Ollie pinned against the wall with his chest. Putting his hands on either side of Ollie’s face, the guy leaned in. “They won’t what, fishy? They won’t fuck you? They won’t pass you around like a joint at a party? They won’t tie you to one of those horses and leave you to scream? What won’t they do?”

Ollie opened his mouth and then closed it again. It was amazingly easy to play someone in over his head when he was six feet under and sinking deeper. And here the lieutenant had been worried about his acting skills. There was no acting required.

The bartender chuckled. “Yeah, you can’t even say what you want, so those nice safe clubs aren’t the place for you, are they?”

Ollie shook his head. “They don’t like that I had drug charges.”

“Pansy-ass players who don’t know how to give in to the sexual need, that’s what they are.” The bartender stepped back again. “No way I’m taking you to the boss dressed like that. He’d take a switch to my ass. Strip. I’m Buck, by the way. Worm back there is just Worm.”

“Olan. I’m Olan Roberts. Strip all the way? I mean, I brought a loin cloth for the interview.”

“If you didn’t wear it in that door, that means you aren’t comfortable in your own skin. I’ll teach you better,” Buck said, slapping Ollie on the shoulder. “Now strip, or I’ll sit on you and cut your clothes off. Got it?”

Ollie shivered. “Got it,” he agreed. He unbuttoned his shirt with shaking fingers. This was a hard-core shade club, more than Ollie had suspected. However, if he walked out, he would have the lieutenant and the captain pissed at him.

Buck turned around and headed for the bar. Leaning on the end, he pulled out his phone as Ollie stripped. Ollie was sitting on the floor and pulling his shoes off when Worm came around the opposite end of the bar from Buck. He was pushing a wide two-chamber bucket with his head and crawling. He stopped and dunked his scrub-brush hands in one side of the bucket and cleaned the floor.

It was hard to tell if the servitude was voluntary since his whole head was covered. He had a hole over his nose, and he could look out through a narrow slit, but the rest of his face was hidden. The only thing Ollie could tell was that Worm either had a very long horsey sort of face or his mouth was stuffed full enough that his jaw was open, giving him a long face.

“Hurry up, little corporal,” Buck called.

Ollie jumped and tugged his socks off. “How did you know? Military records are sealed.”

“Not if you know the right people,” Buck said. “Oh, you were a bad boy. You couldn’t stick with beer and marijuana, not you. You’re into sun. That shit will kill you.”