I nudge Hercules back. “How do you feel knowing I’m going to strip you down to your base level in front of a crowd?”
He blushes, a tinge of pink stealing over his golden cheeks and down his chest. “I want it.”
“Good.” I urge him up. “I got something for you.” I walk to my desk and pick up the wooden box that was delivered earlier. I turn to him and flip it open. Hercules’s response is everything I could have dreamed of.
His jaw drops and his eyes go wide. “That’s mine?”
“Yes.” A more masculine twin to the collar Meg wears when we play. Thicker leather, fewer diamonds. I set the box down and lift it out. “Kneel.”
Hercules instantly obeys. I don’t know that I’ll ever get tired of seeing this man on his knees. He’s truly beautiful in a way that goes beyond his physical perfection. I fasten the collar around his neck and then take his hand and press it to the buckle at the back of his neck. “This removes it.”
“I won’t take it off until you take it off me.”
Power and desire curl through me. If I were a simpler man, this would be all there is to us. Lust and love, and the only power games would be confined to the bedroom. I’m not that man. I don’t know that I ever was, but any chance at that kind of life was buried alongside my family. There is only the person I’ve become, and the vengeance that has been a slow burn in my chest for too many decades. I don’t know how to be different than I am.
I press a soft kiss to his mouth. “It’s time.” I move to the door, and he falls into step behind me. We stride down the hallway and around to the back door into the lounge. I stop just inside the door, a king surveying my kingdom, at least in part. The more interesting things will be going on behind the door Allecto lounges in front of. She won’t let anyone through who isn’t meant to be there, but it won’t matter. Rumor spirals, and I have every intention that news of this night will reach Zeus’s ears before dawn.
As I suspected, there is so much power in this room, it’s only my dominion that’s kept it from being a bloodbath. Jafar and Jasmine lean against the bar, as wrapped up in each other as they always seem to be. Jafar pauses to glare at me, but he knows better than to push the subject, righteous revenge as motivation or no. Being banned from my club would cut his woman off from a significant resource and piss her off in the mix. I had expected to see Meg with them; she adores Jasmine and tends to gravitate to them when they visit.
I survey the rest of the room. Hook with his second-in-command on the other side of the bar. The warring generals Gaeton and Beast who are never far apart, but who I’ve had to threaten with expulsion if they ruin yet another piece of my furniture with their brawling. The golden queen, Malone, who’s as untouchable as she is beautiful. Even the Sea Witch is here, dripping in jewels and watching the room with a predatory glint I recognize.
But no Meg.
Unease slithers through me. It’s possible she’s in the playroom already, but she doesn’t spend time back there unless she’s actually playing. I’d fully expected her to be here waiting. I can feel Hercules’s tension at my back, but there’s no telling if he’s noticed her absence and found it as unnerving as I have.
Something is wrong.
I turn on my heel and jerk my chin at Hercules. “A small detour.” It’s easier—and faster—to check the cameras than to search this place for Meg. I don’t care that it may be seen as a weakness to retreat as soon as I enter the room. I’ve spent too long honing instincts to ignore them now. Meg intended to be in that room when we walked in. It’s possible she changed her mind, but even if she’s having doubts about us, she knows the value of a united front. We show a sliver of weakness to the people in that room, and they’ll crack us open without hesitation. Our strength protects us, yes, but it protects the people within our small domain as well. No matter how angry Meg gets with me, she takes her responsibility too seriously to endanger anyone.
So why isn’t she here as planned?
“What’s going on?” Hercules doesn’t lift his voice, but he doesn’t have to since we’re alone in the hallway.
I don’t slow down. “Meg should have been there.”
Just like that, he picks up his pace until he’s shoulder to shoulder with me. “You’re going to check the cameras.”
“Yes.” For all that Hercules is a shining near-innocent when it comes to our brand of fucking, he’s smart enough to connect the dots without my spelling it out for him. I veer around the corner and have to draw myself up before I open the door to the security room. Charging in there isn’t likely to panic them—they work directly under Allecto, after all—but I’ll get answers quicker if they aren’t scrambling to cover their asses. I take a slow breath and push through the door on the exhale.
The thin man behind the row of monitors jumps to his feet. Minh, a Vietnamese man who’s worked for me just shy of five years. “Sir?”
The urge to yell rocks me back on my heels. I have no reason to panic. No reason to fear. I’m overreacting, surely. I manage to keep my tone mild. “Find Meg.”
“Yes, sir.” He drops back into his chair and his fingers fly over the keyboard. The screens in front of him flicker as he cycles through them, almost too fast for me to follow. He frowns. “Uh, give me a second.”
Cold sinks into me. “Is there a problem?”
“I can’t seem to find her.” He doesn’t look from the monitors. “Give me a second to backtrack and figure out where she went.”
“Do that.”
A warm hand presses to the center of my back and Hercules leans against me. Offering silent strength, though his expression is as worried as the feeling curling through my bones. Something is wrong, terribly wrong, and standing here while we wait for bad news sends me hurtling through time and space to a room very different from this one. To my man, Andreas, shaking and pale, spilling forth words that no man wants to hear. My wife. My son. Both lost in a fire.
Meg was sheltered between my and Hercules’s bodies an hour ago. Safe. It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t remain so.
The two minutes it takes Minh to pull Meg’s image up on the screen take on the semblance of a small eternity. Finally, he sits back. “Here she is an hour ago.” The camera shows Meg walking out my office door. She’s a little flushed and has a small smile on her face. Happy. She looks happy. She rolls her shoulders and sets off down the hall.
“Follow her.”
Minh clicks a few buttons and the screen changes, showing the lounge. It’s not as full as it is now, and Meg strides to the bar and says something that makes Tis laugh. They share a smile. Everything is fine.
I find myself holding my breath, and Hercules keeps rubbing small circles against my back as if that will change the feeling of the sword about to slice through my neck. As if I summoned trouble with my thoughts, Tink appears on the screen and hurries up to Meg’s side. Meg dips her head and listens intently to what the other woman is saying. She flinches.
My woman flinches.
Just like that, the joy is gone from her face, from her posture. She turns with a wooden expression I haven’t seen since that first few months when she lived under my roof. The memory steals my breath. The implication of what it means seeing it now? “No.”