Dylan took a few seconds, drinking in the images around him. Dancers. Couples entwined around each other. Groups of revellers in the booths, a few celebrity faces among them. Their clothes would stay firmly on, but their status would be enhanced by gossip column inches and pictures the next day. Dylan knew that most of them were there at the behest of their PRs and advisors, targeted carefully by a comprehensive Gateway publicity campaign.

Champagne corks were flying. Nearby, a woman naked from the waist up ground slowly against the guy behind her, her eyes closed as his hands moved over her breasts.

A regular club with added erotic extras.

“I think it’s fucking amazing,” he said truthfully.

Lucien nodded, leading the way through to the spa area. Things had certainly kicked up a gear since Dylan had last been in there an hour back. Several people lounged naked in the jacuzzi, talking, flirting, and as he watched, one woman turned to another beside her and kissed her lingeringly, their bared breasts pressed together as their arms moved around each other. It wasn’t so much exhibitionism as uninhibited freedom, a distinction Dylan hadn’t fully appreciated until then. When a third woman joined them, he glanced away, back to Lucien’s knowing eyes. It was a hard line to walk, being here in a professional capacity rather than as a pleasure seeker. He supposed it was like being on the set of a classy porn movie and having to keep your jeans on.

“It’s natural to be turned on by it. It’s the best fucking job in the world,” Lucien said, interpreting Dylan’s thoughts without difficulty. “It gets easier to detach in one way, but the day you stop wanting to strip off and fuck someone is the day to walk away. You need a healthy appreciation for sex to do this job justice.”

A healthy appreciation for sex was one way to put it. A burning desire to hunt Kara down and screw her hard against the wall in the next five minutes was another.

Lucien headed up the nearby staircase at a jog, a man at ease in his environment. Dylan followed, knowing that if what he’d seen downstairs was any kind of yardstick, then upstairs was going to blister his eyeballs.

“This is how it’ll be here, night in, night out. People come to drink and to fuck, simple as that. No drugs, no fighting, just fucking.”

“As someone who has managed some rough clubs over the years, that is music to my ears, man,” Dylan said, peering into one of the playrooms as they passed the open doorway. Seven or eight naked clubbers writhed on the oversized bed, a nest of nude bodies, their mouths feasting on each other. Painted lips sliding over rigid cocks. Tongues lapping between spread legs. Hips banging hips, mouths sucking nipples. It was a veritable sex carnival, the players utterly lost in the acts of giving and receiving pleasure.

“There’s an absolution and purity to fucking that strips people back to their primal core,” Lucien said, and his eyes moved from the playroom to Dylan. “Life is filled with double meanings and hidden secrets. There’s no hiding here.”

They moved along from room to room, scene after scene of sex, from vanilla through to deepest darkest kink, the kind of stuff Dylan had barely even considered let alone taken part in. And he was no prude. But Lucien’s words sat heavier on his mind than the scenes unfolding before him. No hiding.

Was he hiding? And what kind of a man did that make him?

“Lucien, I know I’ve given you no reason to trust me.”

Dylan watched the man he’d come to think of as a friend lift one shoulder, the other leaning on the doorframe of a room set out for people who liked a little pain along with their pleasure. Cages. Shackles. Whips. And suddenly Kara was foremost in his mind once again, her promise of being a very bad girl suddenly more real as he watched a blonde gasp with pleasure as a riding crop left red welts across her exposed ass.

“Trust is a strange thing. Sometimes we give it even though it hasn’t been earned, because something in our gut tells us to,” Lucien said, as the man swung the crop down on the woman’s cheeks again. “She’s putting her trust him, even though she probably doesn’t even know his name.” He went on, “And I’m trusting you with my club and my friend, even though I’m well aware that I don’t even know your name.”

Dylan nodded. That didn’t surprise him. Lucien was way too acute not to have looked into Dylan Day’s background. He’d have done the same himself in the other man’s shoes.

“And I don’t need to know it,” Lucien said, turning abruptly from the door and walking towards the stairs at the far end of the corridor. “But whatever trouble you’re in obviously has you running scared. I’ve been that man, Dylan. It’s tiring, isn’t it?”

Dylan leaned his back against the wall at the top of the quiet stairwell.

“Fucking exhausting.”

Lucien looked away for a few seconds and shook his head, then looked back again. “Can I help?”

Dylan huffed softly. “I appreciate that more than you’ll ever know, man, but no. No one can.” He pushed his hands through his hair. “And just so you know, my troubles are my own, and hand on heart, they will not and cannot follow me here. Your trust is not misplaced.”

He stood with his hand outspread on his chest, feeling his heart beating too fast for comfort. He wouldn’t lie, but the truth wouldn’t come out either. It had no place here, and Lucien’s opinion of him would inevitably change. Right now it meant a lot to count him as a friend.

They both turned at the sound of footsteps and found Kara coming up the staircase.

“Hey Sailor. I’m on break. Keep me company?”

Lucien placed his hand on Dylan’s shoulder for the briefest of seconds, then left him to Kara’s ministrations.

“What was that all about?” Kara asked, gazing after Lucien.

“Boy stuff.”

Kara arched her eyebrows with a grin. “Boy stuff, huh? Dylan and Lucien, sitting in a tree...”

Dylan dropped his hands to Kara’s waist. “The way you look in this outfit?” He ran his palms appreciatively over her velvet-clad hips and pulled her against him. “Not a chance.”

Kara wound her arms around his neck. “I’ve got ten minutes,” she murmured, kissing the golden hollow at the base of his neck and sliding her hand down over his crotch. “Take me somewhere private and find out what’s underneath this dress?”

Dylan didn’t need any further encouragement. He felt in his back pocket for his keys as he tugged her down the stairs. “In here.” He flicked through the keys to the right one and slid it into the lock, not easy with Kara already wrapped around him, sliding her hands inside his shirt.