She did just this, going directly to her locker and grabbing the small, boxy, black python Alexander McQueen clutch with its four finger loops topped with various skulls or roses. A clutch she’d placed there after she’d arrived rather than giving it to reception, which was what most of the Dommes did.
Inside was a slim, business-card-sized wallet with her credit card, ID and a few banknotes, her phone, another phone that was hers-but-also-not, her lip liner and lipstick, her fabulous vintage compact with mother-of-pearl inlaid in black depicting cranes flying across a yellow moon, her Cayenne keyfob and nothing else.
With her back to the camera, she grabbed a random vibrator she had in her locker, twisted off the bottom where you’d put batteries, upended the flash drive she’d hidden there, and slid it in the lining of the clutch that she’d jimmied so she could open it, hide things behind it, and then press it back in place where it held.
She then went to the mirror.
At first, she didn’t look at herself, but instead used it to take in the plush surroundings of the Dominants’ Lounge.
Deep-seated, purple-velvet banquettes spanned the walls. They were covered in red-and silver-velvet toss pillows. The patterned silver wallpaper behind them was bottom-lit with soft light.
There were attractive steel tables with scented candles glowing on top of them.
The lockers were made of the same steel as the tables and looked like a bank of cabinets with a variety of digital locks, not lockers.
The gleaming black basins had no faucets, just wide, lush waterfalls that activated by motion. There were no paper towels, instead thick, soft, purple, red or silver hand towels and washcloths.
There were showers around the side, as well as a Jacuzzi tub, a steam room and a sauna.
Available for use was anything you could need. Disposable razors (for men and women) and shaving cream, aftershave, a variety of colognes and perfumes, hairspray, lotions, oils, deodorants, tampons, condoms, face moisturizer, bath soap and scrub, shampoo and conditioner.
Submissives were specifically disallowed there. The lounge was for downtime and Dom time outside any scene. If a sub needed to be cared for or it was part of the scene, you requested a room that had those amenities, and the Dom took care of that.
And Sixx longed to stretch out on those banquettes and close her eyes to the D. L. & Co. candles that smelled like vanilla, balsam and pepper, soothing and spicy, so very Aryas. So very the Honey.
God, she loved it there. It was like her home. It was the only place, outside being on a job, where she could be …
What?
Not herself. She played a role there. No one knew who she was. Not really. (Except Aryas, or at least he knew more than everyone else.) Not even people she called friends.
So why did she love it there so much?
And why was her heart hurting that she wasn’t getting out of it what she needed anymore?
She looked at herself in the mirror.
“Because it’s safe,” she whispered to her reflection.
That was it.
And now it no longer felt as safe.
Because Stellan was there, and wanting him and not having him—but more, knowing she should never expose him to what it would mean to have her … hurt.
That didn’t make sense either. She’d wanted a lot in life.
And never got it.
But Stellan was different.
Stellan was …
Sixx shook off her thoughts and took herself in through the mirror.
She couldn’t see the black pumps or her long legs she’d sleeked not only by giving them a close shave all the way up to her pubis but also with a subtle oil that made them shine.
What she could see was the black leather micro-mini that sat tight on her hips, cupped her ass and had a wide black belt with a bold silver buckle.
Up top she wore a white leather modified camisole that had a deep plunging neckline that went to her midriff and spread wide at the sides, showing the inside curves of her smallish breasts. The straps were very thin. There was a tight band across her ribs. It was cropped but not by much, showing only a hint of flesh at her belly between camisole and skirt, depending on how she moved.
Her hair was short, clipped in a graduated bob at the nape of her neck, the champagne highlights in her dark cinnamon hair looking (she thought) great in the sweeping, long bangs that fell well past her eye, the sides of her hair hanging below her jaw, all the ends in messy flips.
She had to style it, which was a minus. But it was short so it didn’t take long, and it had a sex-bomb vibe, so that was a definite plus.
She looked into her wide, brown eyes and wondered, What next?
A weighty question because it wasn’t about what was next for her at the Honey.
But what was next for her with everything.
At Aryas’s appeal (which meant repeated demands), she’d given up “the job.”
Ostensibly.
As far as he knew, Sixx had gone legit, working as the internal investigator for a large local law firm.
However, directly due to Aryas’s interference in some of his other friend’s lives, a need had arisen in Phoenix when Branch Dillinger stopped doing what he did out there and became the operations manager for all of the Bee’s Honeys.
Nature abhorred a vacuum.
Cue Sixx stepping in because first, her pay at the law firm was good, if you weren’t used to making a lot more doing a lot more dangerous shit for a lot more dangerous people. And second, if you were used to doing a lot more dangerous shit for a lot more dangerous people, as well as used to the adrenaline rush that got you, it wasn’t an easy habit to break.
So she had a proper job, not a normal one, but one that included a 401K and a bi-weekly paycheck that gave her insurance benefits.
And on occasion, she moonlit on the side.
Aryas didn’t know.
No one knew (except her friend and sometimes partner, Sylvie Creed, and her husband, Tucker, who she and Sylvie sometimes had to call in to help. But Sylvie wasn’t in the life Sixx pretended to lead through her play and relationships at the Honey).
Even if Sixx got off on it, and the cash she accumulated doing it, not to mention the freedom that offered, she knew she couldn’t do it forever. She had the scars to prove that particular story you told yourself to stay on the job was a lie.
But what would she have if she stopped?
The kink was getting boring. There were only so many orders you could give that led—perhaps in a lengthy way, but nonetheless the end was always the same—to someone else’s orgasm.
It had lost its appeal.
Because she wasn’t connecting.
She used to connect.
She used to stay mostly silent, watch, listen, open herself to being acutely aware of every expression or even twitch of the skin to sense what her sub wanted … then she’d find some elaborate or creative but always hard-earned way to give it to him.
Now she didn’t even have that.
Anyone could give their own self an orgasm. It was her job as a Dominatrix, regardless if the emotion wasn’t there, the attention and the respect and the motivation and the deliberation had to be there to connect. Somehow. Some way.
That was gone.
So what was the point?
To yank herself out of thoughts that were going nowhere, even though her long-lasting lipstick was doing its job, she still opened her clutch, pulled out the liner and lipstick, refreshed the ruby red, ended it with a nice coat of clear gloss, and dropped the stuff back in her bag.
She then grabbed her phone—not her actual phone, the other one—before she clicked the clutch closed and made her way out of the lounge, deciding to have a drink while she dealt with the details of finishing up her final mission of the evening.
She wandered the halls, doing it avoiding having to walk past Stellan’s room, and hit the hunting ground.
The back corner booth was open, so she went there, flipped open the burner phone in her hand, set it to silent and then used her thumb in the onerous task of hitting the numbers on the pad repeatedly to get to the letters she needed to send the short text.
Really, smartphones were a gift from God.
The drop happens tonight.
She tucked the phone by her thigh when a server came, and she decided cool-but-luxe Sixx, Mistress with the Mostest, was fucking dead.
It was over.
No rep to uphold.
No bullshit to convey.