The first sign that the date was a mistake was the chain-link fence topped with black iron spikes.
Callista Chapman stared through the windshield as Jax’s truck rolled to a stop beneath a flickering red sign. Rain slicked the pavement, turning the letters into bleeding smears of neon.
CLUB SINNISTER.
She read it twice, hoping the name would change.
It didn’t.
“Jax,” she said slowly, keeping one hand curled around the strap of her purse. “This isn’t a restaurant.”
He killed the engine. The sudden silence left only the ticking of cooling metal and the rain tapping against the roof.
“No,” he said. “It’s better than a restaurant.”
Callista glanced at him. Jax had seemed normal when her coworker introduced them that afternoon—clean-cut, friendly, with a wide smile and an easy laugh. He’d worn khakis and a button-down shirt to work, the kind of outfit that suggested he knew how to behave in public.
Now he was grinning at the club like he’d brought her to a private joke.
Beyond the fence, a line of people waited under black umbrellas. Some wore leather. Some wore lace. One woman had silver chains draped across her bare shoulders, and a man behind her wore a mask shaped like a bird’s skull. Music thumped somewhere inside the building, deep enough for Callista to feel it pressing against her ribs.
Her fingers tightened around her purse.
“I thought we were getting dinner.”
“We are.” Jax reached for the door handle. “You can eat inside.”
Callista didn’t move.
The truck smelled like wet denim, old coffee, and the sharp citrus air freshener hanging from the mirror. She’d spent the entire drive from Mount Pleasant trying to convince herself she was being ridiculous. Blind dates were supposed to be uncomfortable. That was normal. She had expected awkward conversation and maybe an hour of pretending to enjoy pasta.
She had not expected a gothic club in Nashville where everyone appeared to know a set of rules she had never been taught.
“Jax,” she repeated, “what is this place?”
His smile thinned. “Club Sinnister.”
“I can see that.”
“It’s a lifestyle club.”
Callista looked back at the entrance. A woman in a black corset leaned against the brick wall while a man knelt at her feet, his head bowed beneath the rain. No one seemed surprised. No one seemed embarrassed. A security guard in a long black coat watched the line with an expression of bored amusement.
Callista’s stomach gave a slow, heavy turn.
“What kind of lifestyle?”
Jax chuckled. “You’re cute when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend you don’t know.”
The rain streaked down the windows. For a moment, Callista saw her own reflection layered over the club lights: long brown hair pulled over one shoulder, dark green eyes too wide, fitted blue shirt, plain jeans, and the sensible black boots she wore to work. She looked exactly like what she was—a woman from a quiet road outside Mount Pleasant who had stopped at the grocery store for milk on the way home and somehow ended up outside a place called Club Sinnister.
She turned toward Jax. “I don’t know.”
His expression shifted, irritation slipping beneath the charm.
“Raven didn’t tell you?”
Callista’s pulse stumbled. “Tell me what?”
He sighed as though she had inconvenienced him. “It’s BDSM, Callista. Swinging. Voyeur stuff. Adults having fun without all the uptight judgment.”
Her mouth went dry.
The word seemed to expand inside the truck, filling the space between them.
“No.”
Jax blinked. “No?”
“No, I’m not going in.”
He laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “You haven’t even seen it.”
“I’ve seen enough.”
She reached for the door.
Jax’s hand closed around her wrist.
Not hard enough to hurt. Not yet.
But the pressure was immediate, deliberate, and familiar in a way that made the air vanish from her lungs.
“Wait,” he said.
Callista stared down at his fingers.
A memory flashed—Zack’s hand around her arm in the kitchen, his voice low and angry while a glass shattered against the wall. You always make everything difficult. You never listen. If you would just do what you’re told—
She pulled once.
Jax didn’t let go.
“I said I’m leaving.”
“And I said wait.” His voice had lost its warm edge. “You agreed to come on a date. You can at least give it a chance.”
“I agreed to dinner.”
“It’s still a date.”
“It’s not what you told me.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
Callista’s heartbeat thudded against her throat. The truck seemed smaller now, the doors farther away. She could smell the rain, the leather of the seats, and the faint sourness of panic rising beneath her tongue.
Raven’s voice drifted through her thoughts.
Trust your instincts, Calli. If something feels wrong, don’t stand there trying to be polite about it.
Raven had said it that afternoon while they stood in the break room, eating vending-machine crackers because neither of them had remembered to pack lunch.
“He’s normal,” their coworker Melissa had insisted. “He’s funny, he has a good job, and he’s single.”
“Those are not character references,” Raven had replied.
Callista had laughed then. She hadn’t laughed now.
“Let go of me,” she said.
Jax’s eyes hardened. “You’re being dramatic.”
The old words landed like a slap.
Callista looked at his hand again. His thumb rested over the inside of her wrist, exactly where her pulse jumped beneath the skin.
She should have yanked harder. She should have shouted. She should have kicked the door open and run into the rain.
Instead, for one awful second, her body forgot how to move.
Then the truck’s passenger door opened.
A gust of cold rain swept inside, carrying the scent of wet asphalt and something darker beneath it—smoke, perhaps, or charred wood after a lightning strike.
Jax released her so quickly her hand dropped into her lap.
A man stood outside the truck.