Words from years ago feel like fresh slaps as they echo in my head, reminding me that what I desire—what I crave sometimes—doesn’t “fit” with the world I live in.
That those thoughts don’t belong in my head.
Shaking my head, I yawn as the fatigue of the day settles through my limbs.
I should sleep.
In the kitchen, I grab a glass of water to bring with me to bed. Slowly, my gaze wanders and then lands on the laptop sitting on the far end of the kitchen island.
Not Tempest’s.
Dante’s.
I’m hovering over it before I know what I’m doing. I lift it open, my pulse thudding as my eyes drop to the keyboard.
This is wrong, but I start typing anyway.
“Venom” doesn’t work to unlock it. Neither does “Club Venom”, “kink”, “Kink” with a capital K, or either of our parent’s names. I wince when I try “Claudia”, Dante’s and my older sister who died when she was a teenager.
Nope.
Then, it hits me like the most obvious neon sign in the world.
“Tempest”.
Yep, that does it.
Top-notch security, bro.
Breaking into Dante’s laptop is a horrible idea. It’s not just morally wrong in terms of breaking his trust, either. Instantly, I realize I have free access to the members list and member profiles for all of Venom, which could earn some major ransom money in the hands of the wrong people.
But I’m not here to blackmail people or ruin any reputations.
I’m here because a man in a mask last night poured gasoline on the little wicked fire inside of me. Now, it’s a raging inferno.
…And Dante’s computer has the only water that will douse it.
Obviously, I’ve thought about acting out my fantasies before. I know now that it would have to be anonymously, or at the very least with a stranger I’ll never see again.
People you know can’t be trusted with something like this, as ironic as that sounds from a safety perspective. I made the mistake of finally blurting out my dark fantasies to Tim when we were dating.
What the fuck is wrong with you, Bianca? What sort of messed-up girl wants that?
You’re broken.
That was the beginning of the end of Tim and me. And then…well, what was truly the end. After that, I realized you really can’t tell some things to just anyone.
Club Venom would obviously be more than ideal for assuaging my curiosity. But there’s the small problem that my brother runs the place, not to mention its security and an iron-clad vetting process.
You can’t fake your way into Venom—trust me, I’ve tried. Yes, you wear masks. But the wristband each guest wears—the one signifying their kink and whether they’re a sub or a Dom—is linked directly to that member. They can even be scanned by security to ID someone. And his entire security team obviously knows who I am.
Even if I somehow got around all that, I’d never be able to actually relax enough to explore my fantasy. I’d be too freaked out that I’d be recognized.
But that conversation this morning in Vito’s kitchen has the gears whirling in my head.
The club itself is out. But not necessarily its new website portal.
Swallowing and intermittently glancing over my shoulder, I navigate through Dante’s private files until I find the dashboard for Club Venom’s new “off-site” connection portal, which links like-minded individuals who crave a specific sort of play that at times needs more space—and more realism—than Club Venom can offer.
Primal kink, specifically.
I’m not sure how I feel about the term “rape kink”, even though that’s basically what it is. The desire to be chased and caught. To be roughly manhandled, and “forced” into things. “Consensual non-consent” is the more polite way of putting it.
Things that Bianca Sartorre, good-girl ballet dancer and mafia princess, shouldn’t even know about, let alone want” is yet another way of phrasing it.
But here we are.
My nerves jangling, I find the admin dashboard and navigate to the members list. Guilt and the realization that I’d be mortified if someone else was doing this and I was on the list suddenly grips me. I quickly resize the window so that I can’t see the “names” column of the member list to make myself feel a little better. Then I scroll to the bottom where there’s a button labeled “add/import new member.”
Heat blooms in my core. My pulse throbs heavily in my veins as I click the button. I’m taken to another screen and instantly my adrenaline jumps.
There are fields to input basic data: name, contact number, email, that sort of thing. Very quickly, my eyes land on the last question at the bottom of the form:
“Individual is existing Club Venom member”. Next to it, there’s just a simple yes or no toggle.
This is a terrible idea. You shouldn’t be doing this.
I do it anyway.
