“Hey, Drake,” he said. “There’s an alligator in the hallway, so be careful. We’re going to head out and look for Saxon and the key to these handcuffs.” He gave the cuffs a more thorough inspection. “They look like titanium to me, which will make this more of a challenge. Stella and Katie are on their way to get Zelda dressed and off to the ER.”
Drake just nodded, like none of that was particularly strange.
“An alligator?” Josie Lynn asked. “Are you freaking kidding me? What kind of a weirdo fun house is this?”
“If this is a fun house, it’s a terrible one,” Lizette said, sounding put out. “I think it’s time to leave. Has anyone seen my shoes?”
Johnny gave a cursory glance around the room. There were a few whips and ball gags strewn about, and the sex swing dominated the center of the room, but he didn’t see any clothes or shoes. He had a hard time picturing Saxon spending hours of pleasure in here with Zelda, who was actually much smarter than Saxon. The woman ran her own business and had raised two kids, so she clearly had more than cotton between her ears. Saxon, on the other hand? He wasn’t so sure.
Johnny had to admit he was ready for some fresh air. This was all just a little too much togetherness and more of a glimpse into his friends’ private lives than he needed. “I don’t see your shoes. We can see if Zelda has flip-flops. You shouldn’t be walking around the quarter barefoot.”
“Oh, heavens, no.” Lizette gave a delicate shudder. Her fingers fluttered over her chest.
It was then that he realized she was in fact far too classy for him. Here she had woken up in a strange place surrounded by sex paraphernalia and people she didn’t know in various states of undress, and she was completely holding it together. In fact, she was buttoning her blouse one-handed, and despite their being attached at the wrist, she was assessing him coolly, like nothing was out of the ordinary whatsoever. Johnny did not have that kind of self-control. He’d never had that. Most likely he never would, given that he was damn near a century old and it hadn’t happened yet. Which meant Lizette was out of his league.
Which suddenly pissed him off.
Chapter Six
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA
LIZETTE didn’t want to admit it to Johnny, but she was terrified of the alligator. So while she knew intellectually that it couldn’t kill her, she still couldn’t help but imagine that teeth crushing her flesh and bones would not feel particularly wonderful. So she was hiding her fear under an aristocratic veneer. It was something her mother had taught her back when she was a child in France. Her mother had frequently been afraid in the tumultuous days of the Terror but she wouldn’t let her tormentors have the satisfaction of seeing they had made her so. Lizette wasn’t going to let Johnny see that she was quite possibly on the verge of having a complete meltdown.
It was becoming more and more clear that she was attached to Johnny for at least the next hour or so, when all she really wanted to do was run away to her hotel room to take a long shower, before putting on her most demure panties and business suit, so that she could pretend none of this had ever happened. It was a little hard to pretend nothing untoward had happened, when the evidence was a living male attached to her wrist.
She supposed that she only had one option: She needed to get past the alligator so they could proceed with their lives outside of this windowless room.
Johnny pulled a riding crop down off the wall.
“What are you doing with that?” She was simultaneously horrified and just a teensy bit aroused, which then horrified her all over again. What on earth was she thinking? One night in a sex dungeon and she was willing to be spanked? Her cheeks heated as she wondered what exactly had transpired between her and Johnny. And had there been witnesses? It didn’t bear considering.
“I’m going to give the alligator a whack if I need to.”
“Oh.” Right. Of course. He was thinking about their safety, not about the sexual escapades they might have engaged in. Lizette cleared her throat and put her purse firmly over her shoulder. “Bonsoir,” she called to Josie Lynn and Drake. “It was a pleasure meeting you, and please extend my felicitations to Zelda when she awakens.”
Johnny just stared at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Drake waved and gave her a smile. Lizette kept her eyes firmly above his waist as she waved in return, then she nodded to Johnny. “I’m ready. What is our plan?”
“The plan is to run past the alligator. If he snaps, I whack. That’s it. Nothing fancy.”
“In other words, you do not really know what to do.”
“Exactly.”
Well, she supposed she could appreciate his honesty. “Understood. Shall we? On the count of three?”
“Let’s just go.” Johnny pulled open the door and they both ran.
Which was something of a challenge, given that they were attached at the wrist and they both tried to squeeze to the left, out of the path of the alligator’s jaw. They were stumbling and bouncing, Johnny’s free arm swinging with the crop even though the alligator wasn’t doing a damn thing. He just sat there looking like they were a couple of complete idiots. He was probably right.
Johnny was dragging her down the hallway and he opened the first doorway on the right. It was the bathroom. “Shit!” he said. He kept dragging her, and the next door was a bedroom. They ran in and Lizette slammed the door shut. Then locked it. She’d seen Jurassic Park. Who knew if an alligator could figure out how to push open a door?
They stood there, both moving away from the door before Johnny burst out laughing. Lizette couldn’t help but smile with him. It was more than a bit absurd.
As was Zelda’s bedroom. Lizette felt like she’d fallen into Barbie’s dream house. There was hot pink everywhere and lots of shiny surfaces and crystal, from the chandelier to the candlesticks on the dresser, to the gigantic crystal-rimmed mirror. Where there wasn’t bling, there was pink, and as Lizette turned, she could see six of herself in the many mirrors and reflective surfaces.
Johnny laughed even harder. “Wow, when you’re on the bed, you can see yourself getting plugged from every angle. That Zelda. What a fun gal.”
“Plugged . . .” Lizette suddenly realized what Johnny meant. “Why I’ve never even considered . . .” Then she cut herself off. Johnny Malone didn’t need to know the details of her sex life, or lack thereof. Even if she had slept with him the night before.