If It Flies (Market Garden, #3)(31)

The tour was likely a thorough one. Informative, maybe even funny. Except Spencer barely heard a word of it. He was too tuned into everything else. All the sights, sounds, and smells that conspired to overload his senses, everything swirling together like mismatched paint until they formed one uniform colour, and that colour was Nick.

Every squeak of leather was Nick passing through Spencer’s peripheral vision or getting comfortable on some invisible piece of furniture. Every smack of anything on flesh was Nick’s doing, and registered on Spencer’s nerve endings 102

like it had hit his skin. Fuck, the son of a bitch really was a ghost. A bloody poltergeist who taunted Spencer with smacks and slaps and shining leather.

There were demonstrations—hell, in one secluded part, a Dom was pushing needles through his sub’s skin, and all Spencer could think was that he envied them the intensity of those moments. Four months ago, he’d have considered them sickos. But now he understood that closeness, that trust, and it struck him that he’d had that with a guy he paid. What were the chances of that, really?

It got too much for him when the Dom kissed the sub, who hung in her restraints, exhausted, blissed out, and smiling.

Too much.

Spencer turned away.

His newly-acquired shadow followed him. “So, Pete, what are you looking for?”

I’m looking for Nick.

Spencer looked at the other man, and found it impossible to believe he’d trust somebody who was wearing half a mask and whom he didn’t know, didn’t particularly care about.

Here among strangers, just about anything could happen, but it wouldn’t work for him. Maybe he could find somebody to whip him, maybe get off.

But no one here was Nick.

His stomach clenched again. Tomorrow, he’d call himself a fool, to have turned down free sex, a free course of pain.

He’d go to work on Monday and prod at the memory of pain, of perfect surrender, but with no bruises or marks to show for it. Whatever. He’d deal with that tomorrow. For now, he’d go home and take care of things under the shower. Maybe watch porn. Maybe just replay what Nick had done to him, imagine he was with him, ordering him to come.

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He would.

Even Nick’s ghost had more power over him than anybody here.“I don’t think it’s anywhere here.” Spencer looked at the guy. “Thanks for the tour, but I think I’m heading home.”

“You sure? I could help you find it.”

You can’t.

Spencer smiled and made his escape, rushing down the stairs to the ground floor, slowing down briefly to watch a half-naked dancer balancing a number of burning bowls carefully, hypnotically, while contorting her lithe, strong body.

He shook himself free and continued outside. He didn’t see Percy on the way out, but then, he’d be pissed off to have to leave early when he’d organized the tickets. Better leave him to his fun and flesh piles.

Spencer dropped the mask with one of the attendants and had another one call him a taxi while he sent Percy a text that the man would get later. When he was finished with whatever and whoever he was doing. Spencer was definitely going home. Just no headspace. No quiet. No real desire, just an itch he could temporarily take care of himself. No stranger who intrigued him.

No Nick.

104





Chapter


teN


pencer’s phone stayed silent all weekend aside from a Smessage from Percy.

You left early? Missing out! C U Monday.

And on Monday, Percy regaled him with everything he’d missed. Spencer caught some of it—a sub discovering for the first time she could ejaculate, an intense scene involving knives, one of the valets clocking out and joining in—but he distanced himself from the stories. Pretended they’d taken place somewhere he’d never been. The sensory hauntings still thrummed beneath his skin and in his ears, and he was caught between trying his damnedest to exorcise them and trying to hold onto and savour them as much as possible.

Spencer returned to his office after the wild debriefing, and checked his phone for the thousandth time. Nothing from Nick. By Tuesday night, still nothing. A text on Wednesday almost had Spencer jumping out of his skin before he realised it was just a dinner invite from his sister in Brighton.

Thursday? Nothing.

And Friday? The night Spencer had reserved indefinitely?

Not a bloody thing.

No way was Nick haunting two of his weekends. After two weeks, the message was clear, and Spencer was bound and determined to move the f*ck on.

So on Saturday night, he walked into Market Garden, hell bent on finding another guy who’d take his money and give him an orgasm or three. Didn’t even have to be a Dom. Just f*ck me, for God’s sake.

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He strolled past the bar in the front lounge, and one of the bouncers held open the door to the back room. Spencer took a deep breath, set back his shoulders, and went into the shadowy room full of men like him and the most mouth-watering array of gorgeous prostitutes who were— Nick.

Double take. Triple take. No, it really was him. Sidled up next to some arsehole in a three-piece suit, chatting him up and probably getting ready to earn a few hundred quid.

Spencer had taken plenty of amazing beatings from Nick, the kind that left bruises and raised welts and drew screams from his throat, but the most pain he’d ever received from Nick’s hand was when it slid over the sleeved forearm of his next prospective client.