CHAPTER 1
Marcus stalked the network of walkways that crisscrossed the ceiling high above Elysium's floor space, the restless need to move forcing him out of his office. Mostly hidden in darkness, the walkways allowed the club's owners and security personnel to supervise almost every square foot of the massive club without disturbing the patrons below. The bar, dance floor and massive dungeon areas could all be overseen from The Heights, as the employees had dubbed the level of overhead walkways. There were only two areas not visible from The Heights: the exclusive VIP section of the club and the private playrooms.
Though shielded from view from above, every room in those two areas had a network of discreetly placed CCTV cameras installed that constantly monitored the activities for breaches in legality or safety. At Elysium, privacy was only an illusion; one that could be bought from the general masses, but not from the watchful eyes of the security team who were there to ensure that all members obeyed the club rules, even behind closed doors.
As his boot heels rang out along the suspended, metal grates, he should have been watching the various scenes and activities taking place below him, but he couldn't focus through the turmoil in his brain. A craving he was unable to satisfy distracted his mind and occupied his full attention, such that he barely noticed the cacophony rising up from the club floor.
The private BDSM social club was full to capacity, as was normal for a Saturday night. Naked, writhing submissives occupied all the play spaces with their leather clad Dominants holding court above and behind them. The huge, horseshoe-shaped bar was crowded with patrons whisking drinks away as fast as the bartenders could pour them. Even with the two-drink maximum, the bartenders were in a flurry of motion to get everyone served. The sunken dance floor was a seething mass of moving bodies, gyrating around the raised DJ pedestal. Even the expensive private playrooms had all been booked out for the night, with people left disappointed on the waiting lists.
None of this mattered to Marcus; there wasn't room in his brain to rejoice at his club's success, not with every brain cell dedicating itself to thoughts of her.
He moved without purpose along the walkway until he found himself overlooking the alley that housed the voyeur theatres. Looking down, he paid no attention to the various scenes of debauchery playing out in each of the rooms below, entertaining the crowd of avid spectators packed on the other side of the one-way windows. Even the VIP club was full to capacity with the upper echelon of the rich and kinky, spending obscene amounts of money to partake in carnal delights that only Elysium could provide.
People swarmed like ants on a picnic below his feet, but her face was the only one his dark eyes could see...and her ghost was everywhere he looked.
...A squealing sub bound to the St. Andrew's cross, writhing under the flying tails of her Dom's flogger.
...A pretty brunette wailing, getting her round ass spanked with her head locked in the stocks.
...A naked, Rubenesque woman, moaning through countless orgasms with her Dom's face buried between her plump thighs.
Every one of these sexual creatures had her face superimposed on theirs and no matter what he did; Marcus couldn't clear her image from his mind.
Wherever his gaze roved, people grouped into pairs, trios and more, were all having a good time and the only thing he could see, was the one thing he couldn't have. There were a thousand reasons for Marcus to be happy, the proof arrayed like a banquet below him, but the gnawing emptiness in his gut made him feel as destitute as a beggar.
Marcus should have been deliriously thrilled with Elysium's popularity. They were thriving in a harsh economy that had sunk many a start-up business before they ever got off the ground, but Elysium had defied the trend and was growing, with plans for expansion looming on their horizon. Money was flowing into his and his partner's pockets in insane quantities and their notoriety had spread such that they could barely accommodate the volume of interested people on their intake tours. In addition to the regular folk who frequented the club, their reputation had attracted wealthy members from all parts of the globe who travelled to the city just to be able to play at Marcus's dream club.
He should have felt proud that his club attracted the elite, both in the BDSM lifestyle and in the financial world - people who could afford to buy anything, go anywhere and do whatever their deviant hearts desired - they chose his club to come play at. This fact alone should have provided a sense of satisfaction for the accomplishment he, and his partners, had achieved.
Elysium was a rousing success and Marcus should have been ecstatic.
He had every reason to be happy...and yet he wasn't.
Somewhere on the level below, the sharp snap of a whip cut through the buzz of noise, creating a momentary vacuum of sound, only to be filled a split second later by the high-pitched shriek of the submissive on the receiving end.
Marcus didn't even flinch.
The air drifting up into The Heights was redolent with the heady scents of sex and sweat as Dominants and submissives of all ages and sizes worked themselves into a sexual frenzy. The sounds of pleasure, pain and the smells of debauchery filled the air, but Marcus was numb to it all. His heart had become a stone - heavy, unyielding and bristling in burrs that grated in his chest, turning every heartbeat into an agony he couldn't ignore. Focusing his attention on the actions below him was pointless, no matter how hard he tried, his mind kept circling stubbornly back to one name and a pair of stunning emerald eyes.
Supervising the patrons using the dungeon area was a wasted effort. Whom was he kidding? He'd dragged his ass in to work every day for the last month, but his mind and heart hadn't come with him. Instead of actively running his business, he'd turned most of the day-to-day operations over to his partners and had resigned himself to haunting the club like a ghost trapped in limbo, lost in his thoughts and going through the motions of living.
Tonight was no different. Marcus prowled the upper deck, his agitation making him as unpredictable as a starving grizzly. He suffered from a toxic frustration that chewed at his guts like a horde of ravenous parasites, watching but not really seeing the action on the level below him. His mind was a chaotic mess of emotions swirling around the desperate anxiety that something crucial, something vital that he needed to survive, was slipping further out of his reach with every passing day.
The reason for his turmoil was painfully simple.
Tabitha.
...She was the angel who had stolen his will and woken his inner beast with nothing but a broken smile...
...She was the beautiful siren whose cry for help had enslaved his imagination and tormented his dreams...
It had been four, long, torturous weeks since Marcus had last seen his green-eyed angel.
...Four weeks since her demented boss had tried to rape her, thrusting her into Marcus' life.
...Four weeks since Tabitha had bewitched him with her vulnerable beauty and sweet innocence.
...Four weeks since he had chosen to give her the space she needed to heal and then walked away from her.
Four fucking weeks... and he had felt each hour pass by like a razor sharp knife slowly whittling away pieces of his soul.
As much as he abhorred what that sick bastard had tried to do to her, he felt a twisted sense of gratitude to him.
Without his attack, Marcus would never have found Tabitha.
He owed the man a debt that he intended to repay with his fists.
The need to see her, to touch her, consumed him. His brain dwelled constantly on her: when awake, he saw her ghost from the corner of his eye, when he slept, all his dreams were pornographic wishes brought vividly to life. Every blink brought flashes of her face, her smile, her eyes, so that he couldn't escape his obsession with the enchanting young woman.
His memory taunted him with echoes of her enticing scent, tricking him into believing that she was standing right beside him. Even his own hands added to his misery, the memory of the feel of her soft skin lingered in his fingertips, reminding him of the unusual, electric connection he had experienced every time he had touched her. The constant deluge of erotic fantasies blending with his vivid memories had brought him to the point where his dick was hard nearly all the time - awake or asleep, it didn't matter.
There was no respite, no safe place, where he could go to escape her. She was with him wherever he went because she lived in his mind.
He had lost track of the wasted hours he had spent with his fist wrapped around his cock, coming with Tabitha's name scorching his lips. The blinding hunger that drove him to seek release, immediately morphed into a gnawing loneliness that strangled him as his balls emptied themselves into the shower, or onto the floor, or into his hand.
When it was over, in the place where all that lust had burned so hotly only minutes before, was an angry, hollow feeling of being cheated - as if fate had pulled the ultimate bait-and-switch on him, leaving him destitute and wanting. Then an errant thought - the memory of her sweet scent or the soft, lovely curves of her body - would pop into his head and the vicious cycle would start again.
His own brain tormented him in the most exquisite form of self-torture any man could concoct, but he was powerless to stop because, no matter what he did, he couldn't hide from his own thoughts.
It had driven him to the point where he dreaded every minute of the time he spent masturbating. What had once been a pleasurable pastime had been perverted and twisted into a vulgar compulsion that stripped him of the ability to resist. His body desperately needed the release to ease the painful arousal, but the accompanying depression that followed, attacked his mind like a caustic acid that slowly ate holes into his sanity.
He was damned if he did and double damned if he didn't.
