Page 1 of Night By Night
Chapter One
Please don’t let this be a mistake.
Maddox Orosco sat at one of the large, round tables in the private meeting room of the steakhouse and studied the munch attendees who’d already arrived. So far, he only knew two of them, the hosts for tonight, whom he’d come face-to-face with upon walking through the door.
Marcia and Derrick Watson.
AKA hisemployers.
He knew they ran a BDSM club in Sarasota—they made no secret of it. But he’d deliberately avoided going there, for now, until he really got to know people in the local scene. He hadn’t even told them he was in the lifestyle.
Hence why he’d comeheretonight, to the munch, instead of going to the club.
Because he didn’t want things to be…weird.
Too late.
It was weird.
Well, weird forhim, maybe not weird for them.
He’d worked for them a little over a year now, and they were great people. But he’d been attending a club up in Pinellas County, and one over in Orlando, for the past several years, mostly because after college he’d settled up in St. Petersburg. All the people in the lifestyle he knew mostly hung out in those two areas. Since he’d moved back to Sarasota, he hadn’t made any local lifestyle friends here.
He’d decided that driving all that way, when there was a dungeon practically in his own backyard in Sarasota, was just…stupid.
Which was why he’d decided to attend the Suncoast Society munch tonight, to ease his toe into the local lifestyle scene and get used to it, meet people, before possibly running into his bosses at their club.
Best-laid plans, and all that shit.
The reason why he knew Marcia and Derrick ran the club was because they’d put it out there during his job interview, in the interest of full disclosure. They didn’t want him hearing about it third-hand later on and then perhaps freaking out about it.
The other reason he’d wanted to start finally making inroads with the Sarasota kinky scene was that his ex, Kelly, had resumed attending the club in Pinellas. Not that he’d asked, but mutual friends of theirs had told him she was on boyfriend number three since they’d imploded.
Never doing that again.
He’d moved in with her. They’d lived together for over two years when, one day, she decided she was done and kicked him out.
Only for Maddox to later learn she’d been cheating on him for several months. He had to fight to get all of his stuff out of the condo, but since it was in her name, he was limited as to what he could do.
He’d finally needed friends to intercede on his behalf and basically corner and shame her into letting him come get his stuff.
Thatfiasco came on the heels of him losing his job when the large accounting firm he’d worked for in St. Pete closed without warning, and with a scandal about insider trading swirling around the owners.
Thankfully, several rounds of testing had shown Kelly didn’t leave him with any other dismal reminders of their time together.
It was just fate and blind luck, he supposed, that made him open his options to casting a wider net for a new job and he ended up back in his hometown of Sarasota. Making a little less money than he had been, but ironically he had far better health insurance now. Plus, he’d bought a small house and was paying less per month for a mortgage and living expenses than he’d been paying for his share of rent and expenses to Kelly for her fancy condo in downtown St. Pete.
Alotless.
It wasn’t a large house, but an older home, a little two-two with a really large, open great room area worth about three rooms, and a completely refurbished eat-in kitchen. It also had a small pool which took up most of the backyard, and it was located in a quiet neighborhood about fifteen minutes from work on the south side of Sarasota.
Truth be told, he’d missed Sarasota. St. Pete had been fun to live in right out of college, but he was hitting that point in his life where he knew he needed to give serious thought to the next stage. He didn’t want to be alone anymore.
He wanted to find the right woman—or man—to settle down with.
Maybe Ishouldtry dating guys again.
That was the nice thing about being bi—he had options. Relationships with the last two women he’d dated hadn’t ended well. But in the past when he’d dated guys they hadn’t been interested in settling down.
