"Desire is a cathedral. Pain is its choir."
The taxi stopped in front of a forgotten church.
Not the Sunday kind with a choir and praise hands. This one was cracked stone, boarded windows, and ivy crawling like desperate hands up the walls. The only light came from an old lantern swaying at the entrance, pulsing red like a heartbeat.
Almond didn't hesitate.
She stepped out of the cab in boots that didn't care about puddles, her coat slung lazily over one bare shoulder. Her dress tonight was black latex, sleeveless, zipped halfway down her spine—a deliberate act of control, a tease of vulnerability. Her back was almost entirely exposed, and down the middle of it, in ornate ink:
"Nothing breaks me. Not twice."
It was her only tattoo—visible, sharp, angry.
A piercer once told her she had the kind of body made for jewelry. "Cartilage made for sin," he'd whispered. She almost let him touch her. Almost. She'd left him with a bloody nose and a note: Never assume softness.
She pushed open the cathedral doors.
Music greeted her. Low. Erotic. A bassline that throbbed in time with every bad decision ever made inside these walls.
This was The Red Room.
Not a myth. Not a rumor.
A BDSM club for the supernaturally touched—witches, demons, hex-born, bitten, broken, immortal, cursed. You don't enter unless you've bled, branded, or buried a version of yourself before. Almond was all three.
Inside, chandeliers made of melted bone. Chains dangled like jewelry from the ceilings. Velvet curtains bled red under low light. In one corner, a succubus whispered filth into a warlock's ear. On the stage, a blindfolded vampire was bound with golden rope, begging for a taste he wouldn't get.
Almond walked through it like it was a grocery aisle.
She wasn't here to play.
She was here to watch him.
He arrived 15 minutes later.
Same coat. Same scent—like burnt ash and gunmetal. He called himself Aren, though she was sure that wasn't the name he was born with. If he'd been born at all.
His eyes found her instantly. Of course they did.
She was leaning against the bar, sipping a drink that shimmered with spell-dust and regret. Her lips were dark cherry, her eyeliner sharp enough to kill, her body language? Unbothered domination.
He walked over like the floor should be grateful for his footsteps.
"You look…" he started.
"Don't finish that," she said, not looking at him. "You'll sound like every man before you."
He smirked. "And how did they end up?"
"Dead. Or crying."
He chuckled low. "You came here to see me."
"I came to see if you'd show your fangs in public."
"And?"
"You're predictable."
"You're impossible."
They both sipped their drinks.
Then silence stretched between them like a velvet rope, daring someone to pull.
Aren's hand brushed hers. She let it.
Then his voice dropped to a whisper only she could hear.
"I saw your tattoo."
She turned to him slowly. "Did you?"
"I want to read the rest. With my tongue."
She smirked, slow and lethal. "You want permission."
"I want surrender."
Almond laughed. Not the soft kind. The kind that strips paint off walls.
"Surrender isn't in my vocabulary."
"What if I earned it?"
She leaned in close, lips ghosting his ear.
"You'd have to bleed for it, Aren."
He pulled back just enough to look at her, eyes dark.
"Then I'll bleed."
And just like that, she grabbed his wrist and led him down the corridor behind the stage.
The velvet curtains parted for her. The shadows didn't dare touch her.
At the end of the hall: a door with her name carved into the wood.
ALMOND.
The room inside was black marble and leather. A four-poster bed with silk ropes. A wall of instruments: whips, cuffs, paddles, knives etched with symbols. No mirrors. Only darkness and the sound of breath.
She turned to face him.
"Strip," she commanded, and he obeyed.
Not because he was weak. But because some instincts run deeper than choice.
He stood before her—body sculpted, scarred, beautiful.
She took a silk rope and approached him, slow, like a lioness tasting the air.
"You want to play with fire," she said, circling him.
He nodded.
"You want to own it."
He nodded again.
She stopped behind him, wrapping the rope around his wrists with fluid precision.
"But fire doesn't love you, Aren."
She pulled the rope tight.
"It devours you."
What happened next wasn't sex.
It wasn't torture.
It wasn't romance.
It was ritual.
And when he screamed her name—choked on it, pleaded with it—it wasn't pain he was crying for.
It was permission.
And Almond?
She never gave that freely.