The Darkest Hour Read online

  Kenzie raced for her gray Mazda in the student lot around the corner. She scrambled to dig her keys out of her pocket as she reached the car. She expected Monte or Gary to stop her at any moment, but less than a minute later she was speeding out of the lot. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she sagged in relief at the empty road behind her. No one was following her.

  Her hand reached for her cell phone to call the police. It took her two tries before she got 911 dialed.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” a cool feminine voice asked.

  “My name is Kenzie Martin and…” She froze, remembering what one of the men had said about their man in the local police department. “There’s been a disturbance at the university. Someone broke into the campus offices.”

  She hung up the phone, cursing. Then she called Royce again. This time he answered, and his gruff voice made her want to cry with relief.

  “Kenzie, you know my policy on Saturdays. This had better be an emergency.”

  “It is,” she gasped, her eyes blurring with tears. “Please, I’m so scared, I—”

  Royce’s tone changed completely. “What’s wrong? Tell me what happened and where you are.”

  “I’m driving. Where are you?”

  “Kenzie, pull over to the side of the road and take a deep breath.”

  “I can’t,” she gasped. “Some men broke into your office, Royce. I barely got away. I can’t stop.”

  There was a heartbeat of silence, and then Royce was back in control.

  “Follow these directions exactly, do you understand me? It’s a safe location. You’re going to drive to the Gilded Cuff. It’s a nightclub in an old warehouse. Ask for me at the front desk.”

  Kenzie took note of the directions as she drove, and when she felt she could handle it, she hung up. Her hands were shaking, but she gripped the steering wheel tight, refusing to let herself panic more than she already was. She was going to Royce and to a safe place. It was going to be okay. Soon her breathing calmed and she was able to think a little more clearly.

  She kept the car lights off as she drove, only turning them back on when she reached the turn in the road Royce had directed her to. She knew the cops weren’t likely to be out on this particular road. She’d never thought she’d be afraid of cops, but if one of them was involved with Gary and Monte, who could she actually trust?

  The nightclub was hidden just off a little road, and the club itself occupied a huge old warehouse. He had described exactly how to get there over the phone.

  No doubt he’ll be pissed for ruining his Saturday night.

  But she didn’t care. She’d had a gun shoved in her face, and two men had threatened to kill her. Because of him. Kenzie knew at some point she was going to come to a grinding halt and the shock of what she’d survived was going to set in. But she had to fight that off for now and focus on the next step, then the next, and however many more it took to feel somewhat safe again. She almost missed the sign for the road that led to the nightclub. She parked right in front, not caring that the sign in the spot she’d taken said “Reserved.”

  Her body stung and ached as she walked to the door of the club. The rain drenched her clothes, making her shiver. The club’s front door was made of heavy oak, and she used the last bit of her strength to pull it open. Her breathing echoed harshly off the craggy stone walls and floors of the lobby. For a second Kenzie simply stood there, listening the sound of her own breath bouncing back at her from every angle.

  You got this far—you can keep going. She wasn’t a fan of nightclubs in general, but she wasn’t going to let a strange new setting scare her, not after everything she’d been through tonight. If anything, she’d feel safer in a crowd.

  A fancy antique desk was toward the back of the lobby, close to another door. The woman behind the desk was studying the screen of a sleek computer monitor. She wore a pencil skirt and fitted jacket, and her hair was pulled up in a fashionable chignon, like some kind of sexy librarian. A man in a black suit stood behind her, and his grim expression showed a brief flicker of surprise at Kenzie’s disheveled state.

  “Mistress Aria.” The sound was a low murmur, but Kenzie heard it due to the acoustics in the room.

  The woman at the desk looked up at Kenzie, now standing in front of the expensive antique desk.

  “Excuse me, could you tell Royce Devereaux someone is here to see him?” she asked, shivering.

  “I received no instructions that he was expecting any guests, which means you are not permitted inside to see him.” Aria glanced at the man behind her before meeting Kenzie’s gaze. There was some sense of controlled power about the woman.

  Mistress Aria. Why had the man called her “Mistress”? That was such an old-world sounding word that didn’t fit with a nightclub. Aria reminded her of Royce, with that cool, bossy attitude. She’d never admit to anyone that it turned her on a little when he got that way.

  Sometimes he’d tease her, saying little things that set fire to her body, like “Little Mac, you better get that lecture ready or I’ll remind you who’s in charge.” He’d smile at her like he was thinking something particularly wicked and wonderful. Yet he’d never said anything bad enough to get either of them in trouble. He knew how to walk the line between acceptable and not. And God, she wanted so badly for him to just cross that line and do what his eyes seemed to promise.

  “I know all the members of the club, which means I know that you are not one. I cannot give away any information regarding our members to nonmembers, and I will not allow you to enter the club to speak to them. We are also not open to new memberships at this time, so please don’t pretend to ask for a tour.”

  Kenzie shook her head. “I don’t care about that. I need to speak with Royce Devereaux. It’s an emergency. I’m his teaching assistant at the college. He said I should come here. Just go ask him. Please.”

  She paused, remembering how the man behind the desk had addressed this woman. Maybe it would curry more favor if she did the same. “Mistress Aria.” She lowered her head, doing her best to look pitiful, which wasn’t hard considering how much pain she was in and how scared she was. If Aria didn’t let her speak to Royce, she was going to call him again.

  The woman was silent for a moment. Kenzie didn’t dare look up to see if her behavior was having any effect.

  “Very well. What is your name, little one?” Aria asked.

  “MacKenzie Martin.”

  Aria arose with a nod to the man behind her. “Stay here with her, Bruce.” She walked over to the door at the back and disappeared behind it.

  “Please, take a seat, Ms. Martin.” Bruce escorted Kenzie over to a bench against the wall. She sat down and curled her arms around her chest, shaking from the cold. Water dripped from her hair onto the bench and pooled at her feet. Her heart was still pounding heavily. The door opened, and she lifted her eyes.

  When she saw Royce Devereaux, her heart stopped. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt that hugged his torso tight enough to fill her stomach with butterflies.

  “Dr. Devereaux?”

  He strode over and knelt down on one knee, cupping her cheek, turning her face to his. “Kenzie, what happened?”

  She suddenly realized how she must look right now, and she closed her eyes, blinking as tears flowed down her face. Royce brushed a tear away with the pad of his thumb.

  She felt safe now that she was close to him. He had that effect on her. Royce projected strength, and he had a way of making her feel that he would stand between her and the world if she needed him to.

  “Can I speak with you privately?” she whispered. Bruce and Aria were still there, watching them.

  Royce’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, sure. There’s a room in the club where we can have some privacy. But I have to warn you, this isn’t just a regular nightclub. The Gilded Cuff is…well, it’s a BDSM club. Just stay close to me. You might feel a bit startled by what you see. No one will harm you.”

  He held out a hand, and she didn’
t hesitate in grasping it. She needed him to touch her, to ground her so she didn’t feel like she was going to fall apart. It was the only way she could stop shaking.

  But a BDSM club? Was he serious? She knew what the letters stood for: bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism. But she’d never thought she’d get to see a real-life club where people participated in an alternative lifestyle. She was going to have to trust him to keep her safe. She followed Royce toward the door leading to the club’s interior, hugging his side.

  She drew in a deep breath as she stepped into the Gilded Cuff and saw Royce’s private world for the first time.

  2

  The scents and sounds of sex surrounded Kenzie like a dark erotic haze. She clenched Royce’s hand tightly as they wove through the maze of brocaded couches and past the imposing yet elegant drink bar. Kenzie stumbled as she noticed a woman clad only in expensive-looking lingerie who lay stretched lengthwise down the bar on her back. The bartender placed a row of shot glasses on the woman’s torso, then retrieved a bottle of whiskey from the back of the bar and began to pour into the glasses. Men in expensive suits watched the alcohol drip over the tops of the glasses and trickle down the woman’s skin.

  Oh God… Kenzie pictured herself as that woman, every man’s gaze on her bare body as she lay there exposed, whiskey dripping down her body. Would one of the men lick it off? Taste the alcohol on her skin and lose himself in her body? A shiver rolled through Kenzie, but it wasn’t one of disgust. It intrigued her in ways she didn’t have words to express. She wanted to experience that. Wanted it so bad it hurt.

  The overwhelming decadence and carnality of the room was intense. Whispered sighs and the slap of leather on flesh were punctuated by the occasional gasp and shout of pain and pleasure blurring together. Men and women were bent over leather benches while Doms stood behind them, wielding paddles. A man was strapped to a Saint Andrew’s cross, while a female dominant stroked the strands of a flogger along the corded muscles of one of his biceps. Submissives sat beside couches, leather collars tied with silver chains around their throats, keeping them close to their masters. It was everything Kenzie had read about in her romance novels, an erotic playground that was too decadent to be real. Yet here it was.

  So this was Royce’s dark paradise. She never would have imagined he’d be into something like this, but now that she was here, seeing it for herself, she could picture him here every Saturday night.

  Women in sexy lingerie walked with smooth confidence throughout the room. They were nothing like her. She’d never felt so out of place in her life, and that scared the shit of out her. Her heartbeat pounded up against her eardrums. As freaked out as she was by everything she was seeing—the whips, the chains, the sexual indulgence—one thing at the back of her mind scared her more than anything: this place was turning her on.

  Her body hummed at being in a place where her own fantasies could come true. She thought of the small leather cuffs she’d hidden in a box beneath her bed and what Royce might do with her if she gave them to him.

  The one time she’d asked her last boyfriend to use them, he’d flipped out and dumped her the next day via text message. She’d felt like a freak, and he’d call her a girl whose “weird needs” he couldn’t satisfy. The words had burned. She had gone into a funk and hadn’t dated anyone since.

  That had been four months ago. Since then, she’d buried herself in her work and shoved the leather cuffs deeper into the recesses of her bed, trying to forget they were there. She wished she could embrace this dark world tonight, lose herself in this land of sexual fantasy, but she couldn’t. She had to talk to Royce.

  He led her into a hallway with a series of heavy wood doors that each had a silver letter to identify them. She had only a few moments to appreciate the beautiful hallway with its gilt sconces and elegant artwork between the doors before Royce pulled her into the first door on the left. She halted when she saw massive black wood bed in the center. The fantasies she’d been indulging in seconds ago ground to a halt as she the reality of this moment hit her.

  She’d followed her professor into a sex club and was now alone with him in a secluded room with a bed. He was staring at her, that all too sexy man, with his jeans just tight enough and a shirt that looked like it had been painted onto his body. Concern darkened his brown eyes. In that moment, all she wanted was him, and that was dangerous.

  “What—” She swallowed hard. She hadn’t come here to break her vow of staying away from him. No, she couldn’t. They couldn’t.

  “Relax, Kenzie, it’s just a bed. We needed some privacy, and the rooms here are as private as they get. Sit down and tell me what happened.”

  His hands touched her shoulders, gently easing her toward the bed. She collapsed onto the black velvet coverlet and saw him go to a dresser. She stared at Royce’s nice tight ass in his jeans as he opened the top drawer. She sighed. What she wouldn’t give in that moment to be just a girl and not his TA. They could have been on this bed together, exploring every desire she’d kept bottled up inside for years. Trying to distract herself, she focused on the room and not him.

  So this is a sex room. She looked around at the walls. There were metal rings and hooks, half hidden by the expensive decor. Like a medieval torture chamber designed by Hugo Boss. Kenzie was fascinated, not afraid.

  When Royce turned around, he had a small first-aid kit in his hands. He sat on the bed beside her and dug through the kit for antiseptic pads and Band-Aids. He tore open a package and lifted her injured leg on the bed. Blood oozed from a cut on her knee where her jeans had been torn during the fall from the office window.

  “This may sting,” he warned.

  The cloth did sting as he wiped away the blood and dirt. Kenzie bit her lip, holding the hiss of pain inside. The last thing she wanted was for him to see how much pain she was in. He applied a Band-Aid to her cut, then cupped her chin and tilted her head back so she had to look up into his warm brown eyes.

  How could a man who had such a dark side be so…compassionate? But then, wasn’t that how true Doms were? In the romance novels she’d read, they were strong, sexy as hell. Men who fucked a woman until she couldn’t walk. But then they also cared for her as if she were the most precious thing on earth.

  Kenzie wanted that, wanted it so damn much. And he can’t give it to me, even if I wanted him to. She’d worked too hard to let one mind-blowing night of sex cost her everything. It could put her doctoral candidacy at risk. All the work she’d done with Royce would be tainted by an inappropriate relationship, and the committee in the paleontology department could refuse to grant her PhD. Ten years’ worth of work would go up in smoke. It wasn’t as though she could start over. An inappropriate relationship with her mentoring professor would follow her to any other university. It was a career ender. It could also create chauvinistic and sexist expectations from men she might work with in future jobs.

  “Tell me what happened.” His tone was soft, but there was a strength of command in it that she couldn’t ignore.

  She swallowed and nodded. “I was in your office, uploading the exam scores to your database.” She licked her lips, wincing at the sting of a cut she hadn’t realized was there. “Two men broke into your office while I was there.”

  Shadows flashed across his eyes, and a strange intensity masked his features, shocking her. She was used to the calm and cool professor, the demeanor he carried through the working day, interacting with her and the students. She had even glimpsed that playboy charmer side of his—when he picked up calls from various women as she worked, unseen, next to him. But this? This was something altogether new and a little scary. He looked as though he would burn the world to ash in vengeance, and more importantly, that he had the power to do it.

  “And?”

  “They were looking for you, Dr. Devereaux. They grabbed me before I could get away. One hit me a few times.” She reached up to touch the aching spot on her cheek and winced. That was going to leave a nasty bruise.r />
  Royce continued to watch her, so she went on. “I tricked one into looking for you in the teachers’ lounge. When the second guy wasn’t looking, I climbed out the window behind your desk.”

  “What? That’s a second-story window.”

  Remembering that fall made her cringe all over. “Yeah. One hell of a drop. It’s how I got so banged up. I’m just glad I had my car keys in my jeans and not my purse. I drove straight here.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police? Or go home?”

  A flush of heat infused her cheeks. “I thought they might have checked my wallet. It has my driver’s license in there, with my apartment address on it.”

  A frown marred his beautiful face. “You should’ve gone to the police.” He disposed of the cleansing wipes and Band-Aid wrappings. She bit her lip to keep from snapping at him.

  “They said something about having an inside connection in the police department. I didn’t want them finding me. And they seemed to want to talk to you about illegal trafficking. I didn’t want to get you into the middle of something…” She let the words die as he faced her.

  He leaned back against the dresser, his palms curved over the edge of the wood by his hips. His shirt hugged his abs, hinting at the six-pack beneath. It was a good thing he only dressed like that on Fridays and weekends. Most days he rocked a three-piece suit, which was sexy in a completely different way. More than once she’d imagined going into his office and asking to be bent over his desk for a spanking. It didn’t matter what he wore in her fantasies, but somehow the T-shirt and jeans made him feel more real, like she could really lose control and beg him to take her.

  Man, I have some serious issues.

  “Illegal trafficking?” he mused. “I have no idea what they’re talking about.”

  “Dr. Devereaux, I’m afraid to go back to my apartment.”

  His gaze softened, and he smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I’ll take you somewhere safe tonight.”