“Don’t panic.” Zoe reached out a hand and squeezed Cassie’s shoulder. “I’ve never seen him with anyone. I rarely see him downstairs at all. It was merely an assumption.”

Cassie played with the elastic band on her mask, occupying her hands because she had no control over her mind.

“I didn’t know until recently either,” Shay added. “I think he’s far too much of a gentleman to share his personal details in a work environment.”

Yes, maybe that was it. He’d admitted long ago that he didn’t want her being a part of the sex club. Not until they had measures in place to safeguard the identity of everyone involved.

“He’s protective.” Cassie lowered her gaze to her lap, threading the elastic through her fingers. “I used to attend work functions years ago. But once they started chatting about opening Vault of Sin, T.J. wanted me as far away from the business as possible. He didn’t want to risk my involvement if the privacy of the club was ever breeched.”

“Hold up.” Shay leaned forward, into Cassie’s periphery. “If he’s so protective, why did he let you in tonight? What was the fight about?”

Cassie met the woman’s gaze with a wince. “He didn’t let me in. I used a fake ID.”

“Oh, shit. Brute is gonna be pissed that you slipped past him.”

“Not as pissed as T.J. was when he found out he was kissing his wife instead of a stranger.”

Shay’s mouth gaped. “He didn’t know?”

Cassie shook her head and grabbed the front of her hairpiece. “I went to a lot of effort to make myself unrecognizable.” She pulled the wig off her head and placed it on the bar. “I’m blonde.” She mussed her hair, trying to form some semblance of normality from the plastered-down strands she could see in the mirror behind the bar. “Everything about me is different. Apart from the weight. Although, I have dropped a dress size since my husband informed me of the divorce.”

“Was this retaliation?” Zoe asked, sliding onto a stool.

“God, no.”

“Then what?” Zoe’s tone was gentle, the soft lilt filled with comfort and concern. “Why turn up at his sex club and pretend you’re someone else?”

“Because I love him.” Cassie hung her head. “I don’t want a divorce, and with every part of me, I know T.J. doesn’t either.”

“Then why would he request it?”

“It’s complicated.” She gave a derisive laugh. “Yet simplistic too. We both made a mistake that he takes full credit for. He thinks he let me down. He’s too defensive when it comes to my wellbeing.”

“Okay.” Shay cleared her throat. “You’re going to have to go into more depth than that. I need deets.”

Tension built in Cassie’s chest, the need to bare her soul itched to break free. Nobody in her day-to-day life would understand. These women were the closest she would get to a knowledgeable sounding board, and she needed to rid herself of the guilt from the past. “My marriage with T.J. was nothing but flawless—”

“Really?” Shay drawled in disbelief.

“Let me finish. We rarely fought. We meshed perfectly. He gave me everything I needed from a lover and a friend, and I tried to give him the same in return.” The women were staring at her, clinging to her every word. “I learned a lot about myself because of him. Sexually speaking, I mean.”

She cleared the discomfort from her throat. “As a new couple, we tried everything and anything. As time went on, we began pushing boundaries. I had limited experience when we first met, and T.J. opened my eyes to the possibilities. He made me feel comfortable fantasizing about things that aren’t society’s standard of normal.”

“Like?”

Cassie shrugged. “It started off simple, with sex toys and classy porn.”

“Classy porn?” Zoe raised a brow, a smile brightening her features. “Is that even a thing?”

“Well, there’s dirty porn and there’s the stuff with the faintest hint of a romantic storyline. Neither have good acting.”

Zoe chuckled. “Okay. Carry on.”

“That evolved into light BDSM, but apart from T.J.’s usual dominance, it wasn’t our scene. We started talking about other topics like voyeurism and exhibitionism. It was around the same time the Vault was being discussed as a possible form of revenue for the business.” Cassie waved the conversation away. “I’m rambling. You guys don’t want to hear all this.”

“Of course we do.” Shay grabbed a bottle of wine from the fridge underneath the far side of the bar. “I’ll even provide refreshments.”

The verbal purge didn’t seem to be lessening the tight hold on Cassie’s heart. It wasn’t helping. Yet neither would going home to a lonely house. “To cut a long story relatively short, the reason T.J. is leaving me is because we decided to go to our first sex club about a year ago. It was out of the blue. Unplanned. In fact, we were out of town, staying in Brute’s Brisbane apartment. We went to a club on a whim… The worst whim of my life.”

“You didn’t like it?” Shay paused in the middle of pouring the first of three wine glasses on the bar.

“I don’t think the first time is ever easy,” Zoe added. “Even more so when you’re in an established relationship and have to consider the possibility of how it could affect your future together.”

“It was a disaster.” Cassie sucked in a breath, held it until the pain took over the nerves in her belly, then released it in a rush. “It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

Shay cringed. “It’s not for everyone. Hell, even I was disgusted to begin with.”

“That wasn’t the half of it.” She wrung her hands together in her lap, wiping the sweat from her palms. “For starters, I’d glamourized the thought of a sex club. I anticipated seduction and passion. Fine furnishings and men who cherished their women like T.J. cherished me. The place we went to was cold, dank and sleazy.”

“That’s not good.” Shay slid a glass of wine toward Cassie and another in front of Zoe.

“T.J. wanted to leave straightaway. I could sense his annoyance. But the surprising conditions didn’t curb my curiosity. We were out of town, finally in a place where I wouldn’t feel nervous about my friends and family finding out about our sexual tendencies.” Cassie placed the mask on the bar beside the wig and grabbed for the wine glass. “We’d been talking about going to a club for so long…work had already started on the Vault. And even though the scene was far from erotic, I wanted to understand what a sex club was all about. There had to be a reason why women were there, right? So I begged T.J. to hang around, just for one drink.”

She sipped her wine, the sweet taste exploding over her tongue in complete contrast to the liquid she remembered consuming that night in Brisbane. The bartender—dressed in a frayed wife-beater and ill-fitting silk boxers—had leered at her as he handed over the soda glass filled with cheap wine. He was just one of many men who’d eyed her like a dish they were determined to taste.

“T.J. didn’t drink. He stayed at my side, his hand always protectively placed on my hip as we watched men rut like dogs in heat. There was no seduction. No interest in pleasuring anyone but themselves. The women were merely a vessel to be used.”

“Drugged?” Shay asked.

Zoe swiveled in the stool, her knee grazing Cassie’s thigh. “Paid escorts, I’d assume.”

“Yeah.” Cassie gave Zoe a nod. “Apparently, it’s not uncommon. T.J. had murmured in my ear that some clubs who can’t obtain willing female clientele actually pay escorts to attend. So in retrospect, I was like the rainbow unicorn—the one willing female who had turned up to this sleazy place without monetary compensation.” She shrugged off the stupidity, because she hadn’t even broached the worst part. “I made a vain attempt to salvage the night. I ignored our surroundings and tried my hardest to feel sexy as I stripped to my underwear. But my halfhearted attempt to get T.J. in the mood didn’t work.”

The humiliation of going down on a husband that couldn’t get hard was just as potent as how naïve she’d felt walking into an environment she had no right being in. “After twenty minutes inside that place, I’d lost all hope of exploring this part of our sexuality.”