Free Power Play (Center Ice Book 2) by Katherine Stark Page A

chrome and black vinyl and Victorian clocks flocked velvet wallpaper. An eerie mish-mash of Edward Gorey and H. R. Giger. A red leather nun struts past me as soon as I enter, leading a nearly-naked congressman on a leash. A fanged South Asian woman bares her teeth at me and hisses as I try to angle around the massive Marie Antoinette ballgown of PVC she’s wearing to reach the bar.
    “Hello, worm.” The woman at the bar slaps down a napkin on the counter and an empty glass. “I guess you’ll be wanting your usual tasteless swill.”
    “Ease up, Carmilla, I’m not paying you for the sass.”
    Carmilla bats her false eyelashes, spangled with butterflies and stars, at me. “Fine, fine. The usual for you?”
    “Please.”
    She pours me one of her exceptional bourbon drinks, full of all sorts of rare liquors and bitters I can’t pronounce. “Want me to tell the Mistress you’ve arrived?”
    “Please. Victoria, if she’s free.”
    Carmilla nods and saunters over to the phone beside the bar to have a quick chat with the main office.
    The guy at the bar next to me, in a long black trench coat, does that thing people do to me a lot. Where they’re checking me out, knowing they recognize me from somewhere, but are trying to play like they aren’t checking me out. It’s fine. Even in Washington, I’m not a household name like Drakonov. It’d take a serious Eagles fan to know me instantly. But now I wonder how likely that is to continue, if I get sent back down to the farm team.
    Just another reason to atone.
    Carmilla returns to the bar and flashes me a quick smile. “Please proceed to your usual room. You know Vic’s rules?”
    A tiny jolt of electricity courses through me. “Oh, yes, I do.”
    My usual room is the Taj Mahal, a sumptuous silken affair straight out of Moulin Rouge . Breezy fabrics in jewel tones sway gently in the draft from the HVAC (skillfully concealed), and the scent of spicy incense wafts all around me.
    Victoria usually insists that I shower immediately before a session, but I just came from the showers in the locker room, so I’m not too worried about pissing her off. I peel off each item of clothing I’m wearing and fold it up, neatly, and stack it on a pile of cushions in the corner.
    Then I crouch down into a ball on the floor, sitting on my heels, my arms tucked around my knees.
    And wait.
    Victoria likes to make me wait. It’s all part of the experience. Somewhere, I’m sure, there’s a hidden camera monitoring the room—Club Brimstone is lousy with ‘em, for their workers’ safety—and I can just picture her sitting behind her bay of security cameras, smirking. I don’t mind. It gives me time to prepare. To sink into that dark space, the one Fiona just barely scratched the surface of. To remember all the reasons I need to atone.
    Oh, there are so many reasons.
    Finally, after what must be fifteen minutes have passed, the door to the Taj Mahal room crashes open.
    “Get up. What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Get the fuck up.”
    Victoria slams the door shut. I curl my head against the ground to look at her behind me: she’s standing with her legs spread wide in her thigh-high boots and corset, her fists planted firmly on her hips. The red slash of her mouth is twisted into a scowl.
    “I’m sorry, Mistress.” I slowly uncurl from the ball I’m wrapped in and stand before her. “I thought you’d like me this way.”
    “You think you know me? You think you can assume what I want you to do?” She spits—real, actual spit—right in my face. “Fuck you. You wait for me to tell you. Stand still.”
    For a long, cruel minute, she paces a circle around me, tapping one finger against her red-stained lips. She’s tall, though she wouldn’t quite as tall as me if she weren’t wearing five-inch heels. White, but tan, though devoid of tan lines that I can see. Her blonde hair, frayed from too many chemicals, is swept into a severe French braid down her back.
    I used to