sleep with her, he was not going there. He was stubborn and formal that way. It’s what kept him sane when the world grew crazy. Boundaries and rules, even when the rules were about cheating.
He watched Selena wind through the cars and knew that he needed to find another way to track Rae down.
He just couldn’t think of what that way might be.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After the doors closed at dawn, NightWhere went to sleep.
She had intended to go home, though she didn’t really want to. And then Kharon asked her if she wanted to stay. How could she say no?
She didn’t.
He led her down a hall behind The Red. It wound in a spiral, slowly descending as they passed room after room, all the doors closed. The carpet was the color of ash, the walls a fresh claret. They reminded Rae of the blood room, glinting with light like flowing liquid. Most of the doors were closed, and those that were open… slammed shut just before they reached them.
“Where are we going?” Rae asked.
“You’ll need a place to sleep,” he said. “And after the past few hours, I’d guess you need a place
As if on cue, she stifled a yawn with the back of her hand.
Her guide smiled and ran a cool hand down her back. She trembled at his touch; her skin was puckered and torn from the whips and flogs and hooks that had kissed and bitten her skin over the past few hours.
“Here we are,” he announced presently and opened the door to a suite. Rae stepped inside and Kharon followed, closing the door behind them. Rae walked a couple steps down a hall. To the left was a small kitchen and straight ahead a couple more steps was a living room. A black leather couch hugged one ocean-blue wall, while a black widescreen TV occupied most of the visible surface area of the other.
She walked through the living room a couple steps down a hall, past the open bar that looked into the kitchen. The bedroom occupied the end of the hall, past a small bath. The room seemed immense as she stepped inside, but that may have been due to the color; the entire room was painted in black-ceiling and walls were the hue of midnight, and even the carpet was a shade of black. Framed around the room were photographs of humans in coitus-but these were not simple art porn prints. Some of the women had been photographed lying on silver steel beds, while being penetrated by women with gently tapered knives fastened to their waists in place of strap-ons. There were bloody men strapped and stretched on racks, while women adorned only in chains straddled and fucked their faces and cocks. In one image, a woman forced her sex upon a beefy man’s face as she held a pipe cutter to his hard cock. Blood dripped from the place where the metal touched his flesh. There were images of men and women bleeding from a hundred whip marks, all of them clearly aroused and enjoying whatever partner they mounted or were mounted by. In one scene, a man with two bleeding stumps for legs French-kissed a woman who had hamburger where her hand should have been. The handprint on her naked white ass dripped fresh blood and both of their bodies were dotted and smeared with the quickly draining remnants of their lives. Yet their tongues still played…
In the midst of the gallery of pain porn was a huge, king-size bed. Its bedspread and pillows were silken black, and as Rae stood still in the room taking it all in, Kharon put his hands on her hips, holding her firmly from behind.
“I hope you approve,” he said.
“Oh yes,” she smiled. Even after the night’s exertions, she felt herself warm at the mood the room set. “It’s perverted as hell. It’s…amazing.”
Kharon slipped his hand under her shirt and softly stroked the fresh wounds on her back. His touch was like a balm to her; all of the complaints of her tortured skin faded. His hands did not stop on her back. He reached around to press his palms to her tummy and slipped them lower to toy with the swollen lips of her labia, exposed beneath her skirt. Then slowly, he drew his hands up her sides and rib cage until his fingers neared the underside of her breasts. In seconds he had slipped above them too, gently cupping her softest flesh and then teasing her nipples hard between the cool tips of his long fingers. He breathed against her neck and Rae melted back against him, dying for his touch. She had dreamed about him since the first moment they had met, but she had never dreamed that she would have him like this. Alone in a sensual room, all to herself.
Kharon drew the shirt over her head, and Rae didn’t resist. She took a deep breath and enjoyed the sensation of being undressed by another, as if she were a child.
Then he loosed the button of her tiny skirt and drew down her stockings until she stood nude, a white statue unmoving in the center of the black room.
He undressed himself then as Rae watched, slowly exposing an emaciated form. His ribs were visible, barely covered, it seemed, by his blue-white skin. He was pale as a corpse and thin as a rail. She could almost see his bones move beneath the parchment of his flesh. Every vein on his arms stood out in blue relief. Rae realized that he was hairless-completely, utterly hairless. Could he be this way from shaving? Or was he naturally bald? She didn’t care, she just had to feel it for herself.
She stepped forward as he stepped out of his long black pants. His body was day to the night of his clothes, and Rae put her palms on the pale, bluish nipples of his chest, anxious to feel this strange but powerful man. He was not beautiful; just the opposite. And yet, something about him drew her, attracted her, and she knew that whatever he asked, she would do. No matter how evil or dirty or foul. She pressed her breasts to his and kissed his neck as he stretched to the side, allowing her access. She breathed in his scent, faintly acrid, like burned hair. She felt his cock shift and grow between them, until it pressed against the inside of her thigh.
“What do you want from me?” he asked, pushing her hair aside to whisper in her ear.
“You,” she answered. “I want you.”
He bent against her and slipped an arm under the backs of her knees and then hoisted, lifting her all at once into the air. He laid her on the bed and climbed on after. He crawled on top of her, propping himself up on his arms to stare down at the small erections of her breasts. He bent to lick and then bite them. She squirmed at his kiss.
His mouth moved from her tits to her neck, and then his tongue was in her mouth. It felt strange. Liquid smooth, but winter chill.
“You’re freezing,” she whispered, when he slid closer, and his penis pushed for her to give him access.
“Then warm me,” he said. “Before you grow cold too.”
She spread her legs wide, lifting her ankles to rest on his shoulders.
“Whatever you want,” she said.
“I want you, here, in the dark for me,” he said, pushing himself like melting ice inside her. She moaned and accepted him, pulled him closer in a way that she hadn’t with a man in a long while. She wanted him to be not just inside her, but
“Take me,” she whispered. Part of her thought of Mark at that moment, as there was something about this sex that was different from just a swinger’s tryst. Something deeper was happening.
“If I take you, you belong to the dark forever,” he warned, long black eyes staring hard into hers as he shifted in small, tight circles against her groin. She drew in a breath and let it out, again and again, small sharp gasps of pleasure. Rae looked deep into his eyes and thought about his words. She thought about the pictures of people being impaled all around her and of the rabbits she had helped run not so long ago. She thought of Mark and smiled. He’d been good to her but…
“I’m yours,” she agreed, dragging her nails down Kharon’s back and closing her eyes as she felt the rush of his orgasm cascade inside her.
The cool flesh of him drove her heat to an explosion that left her senseless, head spinning on the damp black pillows. She cried out again and again as he spent himself inside her, and her moans continued even after he drew
