“And the others?” she rasped quietly. “Has everyone been recruited?”
“Not yet.” Kalen’s frown was deep. “They usually don’t start recruiting in the first two years. Oscar, Elijah, and Gabriel were special cases. And now you. I suspect they didn’t want to sit on you. You’re too … unpredictable.”
“I’m very predictable,” she countered.
“That so?” Kalen’s firm lips quirked.
His easy attitude made her suddenly self-conscious, her attention snapping to Mikel again. Kalen had asked her to speak to him informally when they were alone, but Mikel hadn’t.
“Am I …” She swallowed past the crack in her voice. “Should I be calling you Professor?”
“While I’m enabling underage drinking?” Mikel winced. “I don’t fucking think so. When you’re outside this room? Yes.”
She rolled her tongue against the roof of her mouth, trying to keep the surprise off her face. “So what do you mean by ‘entertain?’ What do the Gifted actually do down there?”
“Some of them just fill the space,” Mikel answered. “Flitting from section to section and socialising until someone important decides to spend a small fortune to get all their attention for a night—”
“You mean like—” She immediately interrupted, horrified, but Mikel was already shaking his head.
“They just have dinner and drinks or watch the other entertainment in private booths. The humans quite literally pay just for their company. We’re talking about the most popular, the most famous Gifted at Ironside. The biggest celebrities in the world, other than the Icons themselves. People pay through the roof just to be part of the scene, and we’re the ones who create the scene.”
“What do you both do?” She lifted a finger from her glass, gesturing between the two of them nervously. They were dancing around the point too much and it was making her antsy.
“What I do isn’t exactly legal,” Mikel admitted. “There’s an unregulated ring down there. We fight, and the humans bet on us. It’s one of the most popular sections of the club.”
“Do they make you do that?” she asked quietly, unable to read his face. “And Oscar?”
“No.” His eyes flashed in amusement. “I was originally with Kalen, but when I realised they were trying to recruit Oscar, I switched over. I thought it would be a good outlet for him.”
“You get beat up for Oscar?” she blurted, before sinking her teeth into her lower lip, her face flooding with colour.
Mikel only regarded her with cool amusement. “No, Carter. That would imply I lose. I never lose.”
“Not even against Niko?”
His amusement deepened. “You think Niko was born like that? Someone had to teach him.”
“Right.” She shuffled back on the stool. “Of course.” She was starting to sweat. She crossed her legs distractedly and then uncrossed them again, the giant sweatpants making her movements ungainly.
“W-What about you?” She barely managed to flick her eyes up to Kalen long enough to let him know she was speaking to him before she hid away behind the sweep of her eyelashes again.
“I also hurt people,” he admitted, trying to make his voice soft. Instead, it just came out as a low, growly rumble. “But they ask me to. The club has fetish rooms.”
“Like … whips and leather?” Her eyes widened, twitching up to his—except they didn’t make it past his angular chin.
“I’m sure there’s someone dressed in leather in one of the rooms, and yes, I’ve used whips before. Members of the club can assign themselves to a fetish room and the humans will either pay to play or pay to watch. Some of the rooms are so popular they have waitlists months long. All of us in Dorm A send our Ironside stipends home and those of us who work in the Stone Dahlia make our earnings available to the others.”
So that’s how the boys were affording expensive gifts from Ironside Row.
She finally managed to hold Kalen’s stare, her attention flitting over the stern mask of his features. He was watching her carefully, warily, flashing the tiniest spark of amusement that disappeared from his eyes when he blinked it away.
“You said Elijah and Gabriel work with you?”
“Not with me, exactly,” Kalen specified. “They run a room together.”
“What’s the um … what do they … you know …？”
“Ask me properly anyway,” Kalen suggested. He seemed to be trying to speak lightly and casually, likely for her sake, but his voice was too deep and textured, his stare far too heavy and focussed.
Mikel arched a sharp brow at her, somehow able to prompt her without a word, like he was giving her a shove in the middle of her back.
“What’s their fetish?” she quickly asked, hiding her blush behind Mikel’s glass as she hurriedly swallowed the rest of his drink. The cherry slipped into her mouth, and she caught the stem, sucking off the whiskey flavour coating its skin.
For a single, insane moment, she wondered if that was what it would taste like if she kissed Niko. Tart and smoky.
And then she realised she was thinking ridiculous thoughts, and she quickly shoved them out of her brain.
And then Mikel decided to drop a bomb on her.
“Degradation,” he said plainly. “Humiliation. Sexual and physical torture.”
Her mouth fell open and the cherry tumbled onto her lap. Both of the professors watched quietly as it rolled along her thigh and tipped onto the floor, bouncing twice.
She had so many questions, they all tripped over themselves on the tip of her tongue, giving her the precious few seconds she needed to realise that she shouldn’t voice any of them. She had no right to judge what people chose to do of their own free will.
If a human wanted Elijah and Gabriel to humiliate and torture them, then … fine? Right?
And if Elijah and Gabriel wanted to …
She swallowed, carefully setting her glass on the table beside Kalen’s. She fiddled with her fingers in her lap as she waited for them to continue. They were trying to baby-step her into this conversation, and she had already made it uncomfortable enough.
Kalen’s eyes traced her face, reading something there that sparked satisfaction in his expression.
He licked his lips, saying, “My speciality is Shibari. It’s a form of rope bondage. It’s not all about sex. It’s an art form, a kind of meditation for some people.”
Rope bondage and torture.
Artistic expression and humiliation.
Degradation and meditation.
She bobbed her head, trying to visualise what Kalen was talking about before realising they were laying out her options before her, waiting for her to decide.
She could shadow Gabriel or Elijah and watch them torture people, or she could shadow Kalen and watch him tie people up. It didn’t sound like Mikel and Oscar were on the table as options, and she was coming to the uncomfortable realisation that Mikel might have been as scarred as he was from those fights, and she wasn’t sure she had the stomach to watch it happen night after night.
“How often?” she asked quietly.
“Generally once a week.” Mikel tipped out of his chair, leaning over her to snatch the cherry from the floor. His stormy scent flooded over her as he popped it into his empty glass and resettled in his armchair. “Kalen could always transfer somewhere else, but his fetish room might present a more … private and controlled environment for you—if slightly confronting. He has a firm hand over his audience. He can’t control everyone else in the wider club if he decides to become a floater for you. We don’t know exactly why they wanted to recruit you so early, so playing it safe might be a good idea.”