Teach Me. Caitlin Crews

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       CHAPTER ONE

      SHE WAS IN.

      Finally.

      Erika Vanderburg tried to breathe as elation and anticipation coursed through her in equal measure, as if in time to the deep thump of the music that wound its way around and through the crowd and seemed to rest against her clavicle. Like a heavy hand.

      The notion made her warm. Maybe too warm.

      Concentrate, she ordered herself.

      She’d worked too hard to get in the door to waste her one chance…fluttering.

      No one could simply walk into the infamous Walfreiheit Club, though many tried. The line of hopefuls stretched for acres on its once-a-month semipublic exhibition nights, like tonight. Some waited outside every night and never got in. And though Berlin was a city filled with sex clubs to suit any mood or experimental phase—or all of the above, all at once—Walfreiheit was its most exclusive.

      Erika had been trying to get in the door for going on six months now. She would fly in the night before, then spend the day treating her jet lag at the Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin, her favorite hotel in the city. She liked to take her time selecting an outfit from the high-end shops on Friedrichstrasse before relaxing in the hotel’s five-star spa. The routine was familiar now, and got her ready for a long night of waiting in line with the rest of the hopefuls outside the converted old building in East Berlin. All of them trying to look appropriate, whatever that meant when the place in question was an upscale bondage club. And when the opportunity to enter was entirely at the whim of whoever was at the door.

      She had been reminding herself—sternly—that there was a point to all this, despite the annoyance of being denied entry month after month, when one of the terrifyingly calm and formidably solid bouncers had pointed straight at her. Erika had frozen solid.

      “You,” he’d said in German, then shook his head at the dark-haired woman next to Erika who surged forward. “The blonde.”

      Erika had been certain that he’d shake his head at her when she moved toward the door, but he didn’t. He opened the rope and waved her through. It was on her to somehow…not fall apart with sheer giddiness as she was actually let in.

      The Walfreiheit Club specialized in kink. Specifically BDSM, though it was whispered that definitions were kept loose to better serve the imaginations and desires of its exclusive clientele. Members played as they liked within the walls, and membership was never automatic. No amount of money could buy someone a place if the other members didn’t vote them in. Unanimously. There were always stories about this or that celebrity or tycoon trying to buy his way in, only to be summarily denied, because the club did as the club liked. Always.

      In the same vein, on exhibition nights, the men on the door made their selections from the vast line outside according to their fancy. Selected hopefuls were brought inside to the large, cavernous foyer where Mistress Olga waited, dressed in full fetish gear—though what was actually terrifying about her was the arch amusement she wore on her distractingly beautiful face.

      Erika had not been prepared for Mistress Olga. She wasn’t sure a person could be prepared, especially because the bouncers outside were only collecting a group of potentials for the mistress to sort through. Which she did.

      With brutal precision.

      The tiny yet ferocious woman reputed to be the most sought-after Domme in Berlin threw out most of the people who’d waited in that foyer with Erika at a glance. She sauntered down the line, flicking a finger to dismiss each person she didn’t like. She nodded at a stunningly pretty-looking man. She studied a woman with a bowed head, then murmured an assent. By the time she’d reached Erika, she’d gotten rid of most of the people who’d been let in. And she stood there, magnificent in her spike-heeled boots that stopped midthigh, training her very cool, assessing look all over Erika until Erika rather thought she might scream. Or otherwise embarrass herself beyond repair.

      She would never know how she managed to just…stand there.

      “You will do,” Mistress Olga pronounced, in crisp German.

      Erika had been ushered into a smaller foyer, this one in all black. She and the other two selected were met by another woman, this one clearly not a Domme. Or so Erika assumed from the way she bowed her head to Mistress Olga. The three of them were made to fill out extensive paperwork, were given bright yellow wristbands that they were warned sternly not to take off, and were then treated to a long list of the club’s rules and regulations.