“I imagine going to a place where women are required to treat you like you’re their lord and master was a huge sacrifice,” she said drily.
Irritation radiated off him as he shoved himself off the bed and began pacing. “When you start off in the scene, even if you’re a Dominant, especially if you’re a Dominant, you undergo training to learn how to properly handle a sub. Not all clubs work that way, but this one did.”
“Let me guess, Leash Handling 101? How about Flogging for Dummies?” He’d stopped pacing, his back turned to her, the muscles on his arms bulging as he tensed. She shook her head, “It was a joke. I’m sorry. I’ll stop being such a smart ass. Go on.”
“In order to be a good Master, you have to learn what you’re asking of your slaves. So you start off as a sub.”
She couldn’t stop her laughter and quickly clamped her hand over her mouth at the mental picture of Sam wearing a leather dog collar while meekly being led around on a leash. More likely he’d rip the leash out of the person’s hands and drag them behind him. “I’m sorry. I just can’t picture you submitting to anyone.”
After he’d shot her another look sideways, he continued, “I had to serve a mistress who acted as my mentor and taught me techniques that would help me be a good Dominant while-” he hesitated, swallowing hard, “-the other agent who volunteered pretended to be my girlfriend who wanted to learn how to be a good sub.”
“And this was with the FBI’s blessing?” What the hell type of report would have to be filed?
“We had to give reports to our supervisor regularly, yes.”
“But no one in the club knew you were there as spies though?”
He scratched the long scar down the middle of his chest. “Cooper was in charge of the scene even back then, so he knew who we were, but he thought it best if no one else knew. Thalia is Chad’s sister. At the time she knew he was sending someone in, but not exactly who. Since she was the most experienced Domme, we were assigned her as our trainer. I guess she suspected that we weren’t who we said we were, but since there’d been a lot of emails flying around the scene about the murders, she wasn’t sure if we were the killers or her brother’s agents. So she questioned us.”
Something about the way he said it told her the questioning was more than a standard interrogation. “What happened?”
There was a long silence but whether he was lost in his memories or trying to decide just how much information she could handle, she couldn’t tell. He finally settled for “Unless you’ve been part of the scene, you couldn’t understand, but there are techniques a Dom can use to scramble a sub’s circuits so they’ll not be able to dissemble. Neither of us broke cover but Thalia deduced enough to realize we’re the good guys.”
There was more to the story, but she didn’t want him to lose momentum, so she decided to jump ahead. “Did you ever catch the killer?”
His hand drifted to the star-shaped bullet wound and his expression hardened. “Eventually.”
Her breath drew in sharply. “Is that how you got shot?”
“Yeah.” His pacing started again. “We’d met the guy before; he didn’t set off any alarms with either of us. He was just a guy you’d wave to if you saw him washing his car in his driveway down the street. The other members said he’d been there quite a few times before we’d joined and taken part in a couple scenes. We figured that’s when he was scoping out the place, picking his targets. Then when he felt secure that no one was suspicious of him, he came back.”
“Makes sense. That’s how I’d do it.”
He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “Jill wasn’t feeling good so we’d stopped in to beg out of a scene. We were leaving when he came in. I saw him raise his gun and went for my weapon but he shot me before I could get a round off.” He took a deep breath, his eyes unfocusing as his memories took him back to that night. “Then he…” He cleared his throat. “He shot Jill.”
Jill! The girl in the picture on his mantel.
His fingers curled into fists, the skin white over the knuckles before he stared at them and consciously flexed them. His voice hardened. “I got lucky. I walked out of the hospital with this.” He gestured to his chest. “Jill died in my arms just as the paramedics arrived. And Thalia…well, I didn’t shoot him fast enough to help her. She was already paralyzed by the time I killed the bastard.”
Oh, Lord, so much pain he was carrying, so much guilt.
His eyes were bleak, his voice flat. “I failed them, Rosie. I was sent in to stop the killer, to protect them, and I failed.”
She reached out then, stopping him mid-pace and dragged him toward her, then knelt on the bed and cupped his face in her hands. “It’s not your fault, Sam.”
“Yeah, it is.” A dark look flickered behind his eyes. He rested his forehead against hers and swallowed hard. “Anyway, the other members kept me from going to pieces after Jill died. They visited me in the hospital, and when I got out, they phoned me if no one heard from me for a couple of days. Even though most of them were being harassed by the media and nutjobs that came out of the woodwork telling them they deserved to die. They looked after me, especially during the internal inquiry that ended up with Chad being fired. They were there when no one else was. Even Thalia kept in touch.”
She patted the bed beside her. When he’d stretched out beside her, she lay her head on his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart. Once his breathing slowed, she asked, “So how’d La Porte Rouge get started?”
“After the media finally got tired of their exposйs of the group, and ruined more than one career, Cooper got together with some of the more influential club members. They decided to create an elite club. Somewhere they could feel safe from looky-loos and potential blackmailers, or whackjobs who wanted to cleanse the world of sinners like the guy who killed Jill. By that time I’d left the FBI, so Coop approached me about designing a proper security system for them. They made me a founding partner, which gave me enough money to start Hauberk. And it gave me access to influential clients who needed personal protection.”
After a few minutes, Rosie shifted so she could look him in the eye. As much as she wanted to discuss the past, she knew she had to concentrate on protecting Sam in the here and now. “I know you trust the founding members, but isn’t it possible that your stalker is one of the other members?”
“That was one of the first things I thought of. I went through the membership list, but frankly, there are days I trust most of the Rouge’s members more than I do some of my own operatives.”
Strange how he could find people into BDSM more trustworthy than her co-workers. But she supposed there had to be an incredible amount of trust to allow someone such power over your body and soul.
“How can you be sure?”
“The only way you can become a member of the Rouge is to be sponsored by a member who has been acquainted with you for at least two years. All initiates have to undergo a thorough psychological, medical and security screening before they’re admitted. We don’t allow anyone with a record, especially of drug use. We have to use a bit more leeway when it comes to abuse charges since sometimes society doesn’t understand the games between scene players. Even once you’re a member, we do regular background checks on everyone and all members have to pass semi-annual medical and psychological assessments to make sure no one’s put at risk. And you have to sign a contract stating what your preferences are and agreeing to respect other members’ choices.”
“But surely there are personality clashes. People who object to something or other-either another member or perhaps a rule being enforced, or not being enforced?”
“The public areas are filmed so we can go back to the tapes to make an independent assessment. If the complaint occurs in a private area, then both the complainant and the accused must submit to another psychological assessment. And they’ll have a hearing in front of the Board where they’re required to answer any questions put to them. They fail any of the tests, they’re out. No appeals.”
“Sounds like it’s tougher to be a member of the club than it is to be hired by Hauberk.”
“It is.”
She leaned back against him once more, and pondered the newly lit avenues of possibilities. “Has anyone been kicked out lately?”
“No. And there haven’t been any complaints either.”
She frowned. Damn it. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. “How many members are there?”
“Just over a hundred. But some of them don’t live on the east coast, they keep a membership for when
