away and ran his fingers across the soft skin of her cheek, delicately, yet she could feel the edge of his nails.
“Until tonight then,” he whispered finally and slipped off the bed.
The lights turned off in the other room, and then the door to the hall opened and closed, leaving Rae exhausted and spent, in the midnight room.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The ad read:
Do you want it?
Mark bent the page over and leafed through the rest of the free magazine. Nearly every page featured an ad for an escort service or adult video store. He had been in the adult scene for a while now with Rae, but he’d had no idea there were so many outlets locally.
He pulled another magazine off the rack in the vestibule of Galaxy Adult World and skimmed through the pages looking for any other options. The last six pages were dedicated to personal ads, and he thought those might be a source for leads as well. He’d decided that his only hope of finding Rae was to seek out some of the more extreme sex events that hid in the city’s basements and warehouses after hours.
He and Rae had been recruited at a swingers club…so obviously NightWhere looked for people in those places. With its focus on pain, where better to search than at the city’s extreme bondage clubs?
At least, that was Mark’s theory.
He rolled the two magazines up and stuffed them in his back pocket. Then he went inside.
The cash register and a case display of condoms, jellies and vibrators was next to the door as soon as he stepped into the store. The place had racks of porno mags in the front, from
On the counter by the door, a small poster board was covered with Polaroid photos of women holding their shirts up to their necks to expose their tits, obviously taken right there in the store. At the top, in marker, it read
Mark stood and looked at the Polaroids for a minute, wondering if he’d recognize any of the women. There were Mexicans, blacks and whites, fat and thin, old and young. But none that he knew.
“Need help?” a voice from behind the counter asked. Mark looked up to see a thin, older guy watching him. The man wore heavy black-rimmed glasses that made his eyes look too close-set. He apparently hadn’t shaved in a day or two.
Mark opened his mouth to say no, but then caught himself. He was used to dismissing shop clerks, but…that’s why he was here.
“Actually, yes,” he said. “Have you ever heard of a place called NightWhere?”
The guy raised an eyebrow. “That some kinda underwear store?”
Mark grinned. “No-it’s
“Private club?” the guy asked. “I’ve heard of Bondage-A-Go-Go, but not NightWhere. ’Course, those dominatrices are always starting up some new dungeon. One gets busted and they pop up with a new name the next week a block away.”
“No, it’s a bigger kind of deal than that,” Mark said. “But it’s in a different place every month.”
The man grinned, looking at Mark over the tops of his glasses. “That’s smart,” he said. “Keep the prudes and the police away.”
“Something like that.”
The man shook his head. “Can’t help you though. I guess if you’re in the scene, you’ll find it.”
“Or it’ll find you,” Mark mumbled.
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” Mark said. “Thanks.”
He left the store. The next Bondage-A-Go-Go gathering was just two nights away, according to the free adult magazine ads. He prayed that he had better luck there.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Her back was groaningly stiff when Rae sat up. The silk of the sheets slid easily down from around her skin as she rose in the bed. Part of her was surprised that the blood from the wounds she’d sustained on the rack the night before had not dried and scabbed the sheet to her. She stretched and looked around in the dark, momentarily disconcerted. She remembered the night before, but for a minute she wasn’t sure where she was. And then she remembered that Kharon had left her here.
Kharon.
Images of his white body moving on top of her own flesh came at her in a rush, and she felt instantly warm.
She had agreed to stay in NightWhere, here in this room, after everyone else had gone home. She had promised herself to Kharon forever.
The memories all came back in a rush, and she found herself whispering one word.
“Wow.”
Rae assumed they had to get up and out of this building though. NightWhere couldn’t stay in one place for long, or the place would get busted. The police would never let any adult club be this extreme. She knew that most bondage clubs kept the patrons at least partially dressed and never broke the skin with their floggers. They were more for play than foreplay.
She shifted in the bed and was reminded of how different NightWhere was. They didn’t shy from doling out pain here.
She slid from the bed, feeling her way along the nightstand to the wall. There had to be a light somewhere… Kharon had turned one on and off in the living room last night. But at the moment, she couldn’t see enough in the dark to even find a switch. There were no windows here; this truly was sensory deprivation, level black.
“Good sleeping room,” she whispered.
Finally she found a switch and turned it on, squinting her eyes against what she assumed would be a wash of light. But she quickly opened them. The switch turned on a row of three red bulbs in the ceiling. They lit the room enough to get around in, but she felt as if she were walking in a photographic darkroom.
Rae frowned and stepped into the living room. There she found a more utilitarian light. She stood naked in the center of the room, taking it all in. Again she wondered at the decor. She appeared to be in a regular, permanent
