Some of the BDSM stereotypes were in full force and effect on this Friday night, but as she looked around, she noticed a few people dressed casually in T-shirts and jeans. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as easy as she expected to determine if a person was a Dominant or submissive. Considering two of her closest friends were submissives and members of this club, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Neither one of them fit the profile of what Rachel imagined when she heard the word submissive. That was only one of the many reasons she’d decided to do an exposé on the southeast Michigan BDSM scene.

“Where is Cole?” she asked Danielle, her escort for the evening. “I thought you said he was down here.” Even though Cole had married her friend Danielle a couple of months ago, he hadn’t agreed to give Rachel a full-access, no-question-barred interview until last week. Apparently, he hadn’t completely trusted her.

She rolled her eyes. Yeah, whatever. She was a reporter. What did trust have to do with anything? Facts were facts and the story always came first. If he didn’t have anything to hide, he shouldn’t worry.

“I lied,” Danielle said, rubbing her pregnant belly. In her second trimester, she was just starting to show. “I figured if I didn’t take you down here first you’d spend the entire time in Cole’s office doing the interview.”

Stopping to watch as one woman had her boot kissed by the naked guy kneeling at her feet, Rachel tossed her long black hair over her shoulder and smiled. She’d look awesome dressed in leather with a whip in her hand. She sighed. Tonight wasn’t about her sexual needs. It was about work. It was always about work. And that’s just the way she liked it.

Never willing to show weakness, Rachel tried not to flinch at the sudden cracking sound of the whip being wielded. “I would’ve come down to the dungeon eventually. After all, I’ve been waiting a long time to see it.” Ever since she’d covered the murder of submissive socialite Alyssa Deveroux more than a year ago.

Jaxon, the widower, had been the prime suspect and a longtime member of Benediction. After Rachel followed him and his attorney, Kate Martin, around for several days, she found she actually respected Kate. Somehow when it was all over, they became friends, Rachel’s first since childhood. Most women were offended by Rachel’s blunt and often tactless comments, but not Kate. Rachel had found a kindred soul in Kate, a tough woman who wasn’t afraid to get her hands a little dirty for the sake of her career.

With Kate into the BDSM lifestyle now and a member of Benediction along with her boyfriend, Jaxon, Rachel had been waiting for the opportunity to learn what really happened here. The exposé seemed like the perfect opportunity to do some exploring of the alternative sexual lifestyle.

Danielle commandeered Rachel by the elbow and led her away from the whip scene as if she sensed Rachel’s discomfort. “If you had come for the open house last winter, you would’ve seen it a lot sooner.”

They didn’t go far before a scene caught Rachel’s eye. On the floor, two women wearing nothing but black collars, cat ears, and long tails licked and rubbed up against each other as a man reclined on the couch and patted them on their heads. She’d read about pony and puppy play, but kitten play was a new one. She found it odd that the man wasn’t participating in the scene other than to caress the top of their heads and watch.

Ready to explore some more, she continued walking through the dungeon. “I had a bigger story to work on that night.” Mobster and ex-Benediction member Anthony Rinaldi had been arrested for kidnapping Danielle and her stepmother, as well as the murders of thirteen young women. All the local reporters were following up different angles and salivating for an exclusive. If she was ever going to land a prestigious investigative reporter position in New York, Rachel had to find something to wow them and prove she was more than just a pretty face. Just because she had big breasts didn’t mean she deserved any less than the men who found their way to the coveted investigative reporter spots in the New York or California television markets.

“It was your choice to forgo the chance at seeing Benediction in order to cover the Rinaldi case,” Danielle said, bringing them to an area with loveseats and chairs.

“Come on, the arrest of Anthony Rinaldi was the story of the year.” Rachel winced, realizing how harsh she sounded. After all, Danielle had been one of his victims. “No offense.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I had to cover it. But now I’ve got the time to do this exposé the justice it deserves, and in order to do that, I need to know everything that goes on here.”

Danielle harrumphed. “Knowing the kind of reporter you are, I doubt there’s a kink or fetish out there you haven’t come across in your research.”

She scanned the room, checking to see if there was anything here other than the kitten play that she didn’t recognize. Nope, nothing she hadn’t seen on the Internet.

A petite Asian woman spanking another woman over a bench.

Another woman using a cane on the buttocks of a very large man who wore a spreader bar between his legs and a metal ball stretcher around his purplish-red scrotum. Ouch, that looks painful. Rachel grimaced and quickly turned away.

A beautiful redheaded woman was on her hands and knees, a fucking machine plowing her pussy with a giant dildo as a leather-clad man stood over her and watched with a stern expression.

Sprinkled throughout the space were a few different flogging scenes, but one in particular caught her eye. The man held a flogger in each hand, raining the falls in a figure-eight pattern onto the woman’s reddened back. Light moans flew from her mouth as she arched up to meet the strikes, the couple completely in tune with one another.

Her gaze continued to bounce among the various scenes, until she spotted him.

Holding dark ash-colored rope taut between his hands as he talked to a woman wearing a latex dress that just barely covered her nipples, he appeared completely in his element. She must have said something that amused him because he threw back his head and laughed. Rather than the suit and tie she normally saw him in, he was wearing ripped jeans and a simple black Henley. Since she’d last seen him a couple of months ago, he’d grown out his light brown hair from the buzz cut. The half-naked woman raked her fingers down his shoulder, drawing Rachel’s attention.

Had his arms always been that sinewy?

As she answered Danielle’s question about her research, an unfamiliar flurry of butterflies whipped around in her stomach. “I like to be thorough. And since I barely sleep, I have plenty of time to do some reading at night,” she said, ripping her gaze away from him. Just the sight of the damn man gave her indigestion. She sucked in a quick breath to kill those pesky insects wreaking havoc on her insides.

Her hands covering her stomach, Danielle plopped down in one of the oversized chairs. “You need to do something other than work.”

Working was as vital to Rachel as breathing, but it wasn’t the only thing she did. It was just the most important. “I do. I go out with you and the other freaks for drinks every Thursday night.” A group that also included Gracie, Lisa, and Kate.

“Other than that. You don’t have any hobbies, you never date—”

Rachel perched on the arm of Danielle’s chair. “I don’t need to waste my time dating when I can have sex whenever I want.” Her cell phone had a list of men’s names to rival any little black book, every one of them available to her at a moment’s notice.

“That’s probably true, but when’s the last time you slept with someone just for the sake of having sex and not because you need some information for a story you’re working on?”

Rachel sunk her teeth into her bottom lip as she mentally went through her sexual Rolodex. Huh, maybe Danielle had a point. “Jacob Parkman, ten years ago. His parents played bridge with my parents every Sunday, and while the rest of my family was outside playing in our yard, Jacob and I were ridding ourselves of our pesky little V-cards.” Last thing she heard he was a precious-gems jeweler and had five kids with one on the way. She smiled, remembering him fondly. He was a good man, but not for her. “That was two minutes of foreplay and eighteen seconds of intercourse I’ll never forget.”