“Back in black…” AC/DC sang as the CD started over, but Perry thought about it and laughed…this man was more white than black.
“Wrap it up,” the man suggested, pointing at Perry’s wrist. “Someone will come for you tonight. She will take you to The Crossing,” the man whispered.
Perry didn’t know why or how, but somehow he found himself staunching the intentional flow of blood from his wrist with a strip of material from a T-shirt.
“Sure,” he said, answering the man. He felt hypnotized…the man was beautiful. His words were seductive in a way that he couldn’t explain. “I will. Why not?”
“Come to The Crossing,” the man said. “Don’t let yourself go alone.”
And Perry nodded, taking a sip of the bourbon and staring at the red stain growing through his T-shirt. “Why not?”
The man wasn’t there anymore to hear.
Chapter Ten
Sometimes the night seemed to last forever. Sometimes Rae wished it would never end.
Right now…she was feeling the former. She’d been awake for hours, as next to her, Mark slept, sometimes snoring faintly. She wished she could let go and dream, as he did. Instead, she lived inside her memories, reliving every moment of her last night at NightWhere.
Every time she thought of Kharon, her skin grew flushed. She wanted to be with him now so badly her breasts ached. The memory of his touch was like a smoker’s lust for a cigarette. Once she began to see his face, his chest…she couldn’t let go of the memories. Her crotch warmed and grew wet, and her hand moved there to ease the itch that built…and then her fingers had to move faster, massaging that hungry spot faster and faster until she had to stop and quietly slip her panties down her thighs and around her ankles so that her fingers could more easily be buried inside her sex. Carefully, she moved her hips faster in a tight motion, sucking her fingers inside her as, next to her, her clueless husband slept.
In the midst of it all, she saw Kharon’s face as if he were right there, and heard his voice as if he were licking and whispering in her ear.
Gordon rolled over and looked at his shrew of a wife. She may be tiny but she snored like a truck driver, and drool wet her pillow.
If he could have, Gordon would have taken a hammer to her head and ended her miserable existence. He often drew great autoerotic pleasure from imagining just that. He hated her.
But if he did that, there’d be nobody to take care of the kid. And someone had to do that while he went to work.
So he let her live in his house and eat his food. But in his heart, Gordon wanted to kill her. To finally sever her hold on him. She’d dragged him into her life and used the baby to hold him there. It was never what he’d wanted.
He closed his eyes and tried to imagine his life without her, but instead all he could think about was the sound and feel of his whip cracking down on the flesh of Amelia.
He kept seeing the open O of Amelia’s pain-thirsty mouth. That, and the face of one of the NightWhere Watchers. He didn’t know them by name, but he knew them by sight. And this one, in particular, he’d seen around the club a lot. The Watcher kept saying things to him. Things like:
He liked the way this guy thought.
And then the guy showed him the pictures of a blonde and a redhead tied to the rack. They were fuckin’ stacked bitches…and naked as jaybirds…and bleeding from the cuts that someone had slit across their breasts.
Gordon reached between his legs to calm the excitement there, and instead of bringing himself off, he lost himself in the dream.
In the back of his mind, a voice whispered,
Amelia shook on her couch and moaned. A scab pulled loose from the whip tracks on her back and blood began to flow again into the fabric. She hadn’t moved from the sofa in hours. She was barely alive.
“Yes,” she whispered. The thought of returning to NightWhere made her blood pump faster. But her eyes still did not open.
Chapter Eleven
Rae taunted the speed limit the entire drive, and when she finally hit NightWhere, she didn’t slow down. Mark followed behind her, wondering if she even remembered that he was there. Tailor’s familiar black fingernails slipped around the door as it opened. She held out their invitation to the doorman, and as soon the door opened, she strode forward without looking back, fishnets pronounced and visible, corset overt and begging attention. She didn’t stop to stare into the doorman’s hypnotic eyes and get weak-kneed or to tell her husband where she was going.
Rae was on a mission.
Mark got it. He almost wasn’t hurt when she turned around inside the club and pecked him quickly on the lips before forcing a dismissive smile and then walking quickly away from him. She knew what she wanted.
Mark…wasn’t sure anymore.
He’d thought he wanted Rae, but now… He couldn’t satisfy her, and he didn’t think he held her attention anymore. He didn’t yearn for others to take her place, or even to have alongside her…she was the woman who made him hot! But she had told him to play the field, because she herself desperately needed to.
And now…he was bored.
He didn’t want this. He wanted a wife.
Mark cut across the room to the bar as Rae disappeared straight into the throng dancing in the center of the club. The fact that some of the women weren’t wearing shirts didn’t even interest him at the moment. Sometimes all you really wanted was your own set of tits to grasp. And Mark’s were walking away…looking for another thrill.
“Hey, stranger,” a voice said, and he looked up to see a pair of lilting blue eyes that he recognized.
“Hey,” he said, smiling faintly at Sin-D.
“You know, usually, it’s three strikes, you’re out.”
“Huh?”
“People don’t come to NightWhere to sit at the bar,” she said, “Unless you’re a loser like him.” She pointed at Kendrick who sat at the far end of the bar.
