Chapter 1

This job should’ve been over months ago. Easy. One and done.

Damp rag in hand, Avery Dylan wiped down the bar in The Asylum’s dance club, distractedly observing the members bump and grind to a mellow Trance song. Just a typical night, stuck in the back of the building. As far from his target as he could possibly get without actually leaving. Three floors up, as elusive as a wraith, his mark slipped like water through his fingers at every turn.

That’s about to change.

Done cleaning, Avery nodded to Garet as the club’s youngest bartender took over, then shouldered through the throng into the gym. Crowded ringside, members followed the current fight, bet slips in hand, shouting directions and encouragement to their favorites. Muscular, with a sweep of sweat-soaked blond hair, white skin always slightly tanned, Curtis faced off against Dallas, both men shirtless and wearing black shorts. Ducking a punch from the switch, Curtis countered, a solid uppercut connecting with bone-jarring force.

Light brown skin flowing over rock-solid pecs and abs, Dallas absorbed the hit to his side, backing as he struggled to catch his breath. A decent contender, though not quite up to Curtis’s level of experience. The inevitable winner of this match should be obvious to everyone in the room, but still, some had placed longshot bets on the other man.

Avery shook his head and headed to the locker room where he grabbed his spandex shorts, changing quickly from his jeans and blousy white cotton shirt and black kidskin boots into something more comfortable to fight in. His lip rings and ear gauges, nipple rings and other piercings, he removed one by one, plinking each onto the metal locker shelf before he slammed the door shut.

His challenger for tonight, Reed, wasn’t a slouch in the ring, but he was an easy mark. Someone close enough to The Asylum’s core members, but enough on the periphery, that access to him wasn’t quite as well guarded. The ideal key to the world upstairs.

Members of The Asylum were regularly granted entry to the first and second floors where the bar, gym, and SM dungeon spaces had been carved out of the nineteenth-century brick warehouse. Upper levels on the third and fourth floors held loft-like spaces, where the owners and core members lived. If Avery planned to complete his assignment sometime this century, he needed a way into those apartments.

Winning this fight tonight will give me the perfect opportunity.

Out by the ring again, Avery slipped close to the ropes to watch the tail end of the fight. Blood dotted Curtis’s whip-scarred back, lending reality to the inked drops that soaked the tat running from the back of his neck to between his shoulder blades.

Muscles flexed around the tat with his next jab, quads bunching with the forward movement. Brown eyes intent, Curtis spun on the ball of his leading foot and feigned a kick. Dallas rocked sideways to avoid the blow, creating an opening in his guard for Curtis to exploit. The direct hit snapped Dallas’s head back, spraying blood in a pretty arc that spattered like rain to the blue mat.

Wolf whistling, the man’s collared sub, Matt, called out to Curtis as Dallas fell to his knees before toppling forward. When Dallas didn’t move, Doc sprang into the ring and bent down before going to Curtis and holding his hand high.

Gaze carefully neutral, Avery studied the closest link to his target, Jared “Doc” McCleod. The man looked tired. Too many late nights and early mornings taking care of a man who, by rights, shouldn’t even be alive, had taken their toll.

“Two subs in the ring next?” A few paces to Avery’s left, a Dom frowned at the fight sheet in his hand. “Well, that’s going to be about as lame as fisting two limp dicks.”

Average height, average build. Brown hair shaved close. Weak chin. Brown eyes. No one on Avery’s roster. Not worth wasting energy toying with or exploiting. A shame. It would’ve been nice to show him just how hard his ‘limp dick’ could be when he shoved it up the man’s ass.

After helping Doc get Dallas past the ropes, Matt cleaned and disinfected the ring while Reed, his lime green shirt and shorts glittering under the overhead lights, hung out at the opposite side talking to Curtis. Behind them, a more interesting target lurked.

Rhodey Leonov.

Close-shaved, golden-brown hair. Almost a head taller than the majority of the members, with a shoulder span to match. Piercing gray eyes that noticed everything. Even Avery. Who, when not on stage, the members here rarely saw, unless he deliberately made a spectacle of himself. Which he’d stopped doing as soon as it became apparent he tended to draw a little too much attention from Leonov in all the wrong ways.

The members mostly trickled into the bar and dance club or to the dungeon, sweeping Avery with odd looks and a curled-lip sneer here and there. Only two people here didn’t look at him that way and hadn’t bet against him if they’d bet at all. Matt, who he’d sparred with before, and Leonov, who had watched. Fucking stupid to let the man in on his abilities, but he’d listed his experience on his application. None could fault him for assumptions based on his slender form.

Still, tonight, he’d have to be...careful.