Erin McCarthy: Full Throttle

“I double-dog dare you.”

Shawn Hamby stared at Eve Monroe-Ford and remembered exactly why they had gotten in so much trouble together back in the day as the only two girls on the tween racing circuit. Eve had grown up with brothers and was a master at taunting manipulation. Shawn had grown up with an indifferent sibling and was eager for camaraderie, with an inability to keep a straight face. The combination had resulted in broken bones and many a grounding from their honked-off parents.

“I’m not falling for that,” Shawn told her now with a laugh. “I’m not going to talk to a random guy in a fetish club because you dared me to.” She wasn’t twelve anymore, and she didn’t need to prove anything to anyone.

Which didn’t explain why she was here in the first place.

Damn. Maybe she hadn’t changed all that much.

“Oh, come on,” Charity McLain said, lifting her cocktail to her mouth as she leaned against the bar. “We’re here because of you, so you might as well have the full experience.”

They were here because of her, in a roundabout sort of way, and as Shawn looked around at the dimly lit club, she fought the urge to giggle, which was her usual reaction to situations that made her uncomfortable. How a book club meeting had resulted in her and three friends being at a place called The Wet Spot—and no, they weren’t talking about spilled beverages—she couldn’t imagine.

“All I said was that people don’t really do what the chick in that book was doing. I didn’t say let’s go to a fetish club and see if it’s true or not.” It had just been a little hard for Shawn to believe that their fiction selection for the month had any basis in reality whatsoever, regardless of how enjoyable a read it had been. Average suburban women didn’t just up and go to a sex club after years of lame sex and let a total stranger blindfold them. She was sure of it. Not in Charlotte, North Carolina. Not in a day and age when true-crime shows about serial killers and date rape drugs were on TV every day, all day.

Not only did it seem dangerous but it also seemed kind of silly. She wasn’t so sure what would be hot about having a man boss her around. Hell, she had that every day at the track, and it just frustrated her. There was nothing sexy about it in the least. Not to her anyway. Hence, the curiosity.

Harley, Charity’s twin, tucked her blond hair behind her ear, glancing around nervously. “Let’s just leave then.”

“No!” Charity rebuked her. “Shawn needs to admit that this is real, that people go to clubs like this.”

“I admit it,” Shawn said easily. She wasn’t exactly sure what people were doing here, or what drew them to the club, whether it was curiosity like the four of them, or a genuine interest in BDSM or other fetishes, but she’d seen enough.

There were only so many adult men and women being pulled on dog leashes she could look at before she lost it and started laughing. It wasn’t like she found other people’s choices amusing. It was that it just looked . . . fake. Like a movie being filmed. Like a giant skit being played out for her benefit. None of it seemed real, from the girl on the red velvet sofa allowing two different men to swat at her backside with a paddle to the extremely thin man who was shirtless and wearing nipple clamps, SLAVE tattooed across his chest, a lollipop in his mouth.

“This isn’t really what I pictured,” Eve said, scrutinizing the room. “I guess I thought it was going to be more tawdry. Nobody is having sex or anything.”

“Do you want to see people having sex?” Shawn asked, because she didn’t. She didn’t even really get the appeal of mirrors in a bedroom. Sex was not a spectator sport. Not that she remembered what sex was like, given how long it had been since she’d had it. Eve, on the other hand, was married to a sexy jackman, so she had no business being curious in Shawn’s opinion.

“No, I do not. I don’t even want to be here. My husband’s going to start to think our book club is a front for checking off items on my Bad Girl Bucket List. Last month we got drunk on margaritas and took a pole-dancing class, which was a huge leap from reading Margaret Thatcher’s biography. The month before, you goaded me into waxing my cooter, though Nolan wanted to write you a thank-you note for that one.”

Eve had a point. Shawn wasn’t sure how this kept happening. She thought it had something to do with the prevalence of wine at their book club gatherings and the fact that she and Eve felt every one of the five years they had on the twins. Or maybe they were just repeating their childhood of stumbling into Bad Ideas together, though she had to primarily blame Charity for this particular outing. She was the one who had asked Siri on her iPhone where to find a fetish club in Charlotte, and suddenly here they were.

“We can go at any time,” Shawn said. “And I get to pick next month’s book selection. Plus it’s my birthday month, so you’d better have cake for me.” She was turning thirty-three, which, while not noteworthy, was fairly appalling. “Red velvet.”

“Fine. I’m going to the restroom first,” Eve said, setting down her beer and heading off.

Shawn wasn’t sure going alone was totally wise, but Eve could take care of herself. She was known around stock car racing as having a razor-sharp tongue and no hesitation whatsoever in using it to slice offenders to ribbons. It was a talent Shawn did not possess. She was the goofy girl, the one who cracked a joke at the wrong time, the one who nobody took seriously.

“I’m kind of disappointed,” Charity admitted. She and Harley were identical twins, but only in appearance. While Charity was outspoken and wore significant makeup and teased and highlighted her hair, Harley was quiet and completely natural-looking. When they stood next to each other, it was like seeing a before-and-after pageant shot of the little girls on Toddlers and Tiaras . “I was hoping for something more glamorous.”

“I think if you join one of those members-only clubs, you get glam. Otherwise you just get skimmers,” Harley said. “People dabbling in the scene. Not that I know anything about it, really. I’m just speculating.”

“None of these guys are even cute,” Charity complained.

Shawn would have to agree, except right at that moment, a guy came around the corner from the other room, and he wasn’t just cute. He was beyond cute. He was smoking hot. He was wet-panty-producing sexy.

“Hubba hubba,” she said, before she could stop herself. “Now there’s a fine male specimen.”

He was ripped, but not bulky, filling his button-up shirt and jeans to perfection. Just a perfectly hard, muscular lean man with a confident step and an intense stare that swept the room and landed on her.

“Oh, damn, he is hot,” Charity said.

“And he’s looking at us,” Harley breathed, sounding panicked.

He was.

And then he strode right over to them, his eyes locked on Shawn. On her. Yikes. She swallowed and tried not to fidget. She didn’t really want to do this. She wasn’t prepared to talk to a guy here. It was all just a dumb idea to even set foot in this place, and she certainly didn’t want to encourage any attention from a guy who would clearly be interested in areas outside her expertise and comfort level.

She would have to politely dissuade him.

Before he even spoke, his hand slid out and took hers, his thumb stroking across her palm, causing a shiver of arousal to take her totally by surprise.

“You should dance with me,” he said, already pulling her toward him.