“We’ll find out more if we’re on our own.” She nodded toward a willowy woman with breasts showing through a net bra, and long legs in leather pants. The woman licked her lips at Luther. “We’ll each have our flirts and find out what we can. I’ll meet you back at the entrance in an hour. If anything goes down, you’ll hear gunshots, trust me.”
He caught her by the nape of the neck. “
“That’s the plan.”
Knowing she was right, that they would accomplish more apart, Luther finally relented. “Fine. But I mean it, Ann. Take no chances.”
“Sure thing, Daddy.” She touched his face, then faded into the gyrating crowd, swallowed by bodies and smoke and menacing jeopardy.
Luther saw a woman accept a pill from a man, knocking it back with a shot of liquor. Another man danced with two women, one at his front and one at his back, both of them groping him. A woman climbed atop a table and began stripping.
It was the most outlandish display of decadent immorality he’d ever seen. The majority of young people were already stoned out of their heads.
A mostly naked breast brushed his arm, and Luther geared himself for the role he needed to play. It wouldn’t be easy, because for the first time in his life, guilt attacked him during the job.
He had to do this, but he knew how Gaby would feel about it, and damn it, that nicked his conscience.
Doing his best to tune out thoughts of Gaby, he faced the Goth chick with the decorated naked chest. He said nothing, just stared at her.
His scowl must’ve heightened her interest. She leaned into him, licked his ear, and purred, “Hey stud, you wanna dance with me?”
“Not really.” Luther stepped closer, his gaze as direct as he could make it in the alternating psychedelic light and obscure darkness.
When the lights flashed, he saw her smile and her dark eyes, dazed from drugs or alcohol, or both.
She took his hand and led him across the floor and around a distant corner where he could at least hear himself think. Several people gyrated together, their hips grinding in a semblance of dance.
As she tossed her head, glimmering lights shone in her inky hair. Close to his ear, she asked, “You with that other chick?”
“Does that really matter to you?”
She gave an insincere laugh and shook her head. “I guess not.”
“Our relationship is an open one.” He looked down at her breasts. She had an impressive rack, he’d give her that. As a man, he appreciated the sight. As a responsible person, pity for her dulled the enjoyment. “She’s off doing her own thing . . . and I plan to do mine.”
“Your thing being . . . ?”
His gaze moved over her, and dismissed her near-nudity as unappealing. “You’ll have to find that out on your own.”
She looked to be in her early twenties, and was too foolhardy to survive long. Using her didn’t suit him. He’d rather arrest her and get her someplace safe—but he couldn’t. Not yet.
She pouted. “You’re far too steady to have any fun. You want to take some ecstasy or speed with me?”
As if she wasn’t already flying? “Depends.” Luther put a hand to her bare waist. His skin was clammy, too warm. “Here . . . or someplace more private?”
“Private, silly.” Laughing, she started off on a winding path through the crowd of sweaty bodies.
Luther followed, making note along the way of things that should never occur in a public place.
At the back of the room, she went on tiptoe to kiss a hulk in a purple G-string. Ornate tattoos covered his whole body, delineating bulging muscles and even trailing into his very brief underwear.
The man accepted her kiss stony-faced, without inflection of any kind, and then he opened a heavy door for them to pass through. Once inside, low-burning red lights replaced the lasers and strobes, making it easier to make out their surroundings.
Another young lady fell into him, laughing hysterically, unsteady in every way. She twisted both hands in Luther’s shirt and held on. “Oh my God. This is off the hook, isn’t it?”
Luther pried her loose and relinquished her to a rubbery-legged young man who chortled with her. Red-faced and bleary-eyed, they stumbled off to the side and into a bean-bag chair.
At his sardonic best, Luther commented, “Very private.”
“It’s for special guests only.” She held Luther’s hand and walked backward, giggling at him.
“And I’m special?”
“Tonight, for me, you are.” She looked down at his crotch. “I’m Desiree, by the way.”
In the corner, on a decorated twin bed, two people fucked for a small but appreciative audience. Ahead of him, a woman perched on her knees as a man, holding a leash attached to a collar around her neck, spanked her with a leather paddle.
As crude public displays went, that was distasteful enough. But to top it all, behind a parted curtain, Luther saw a man piercing a woman’s nipple with a long, thin needle. A thin trickle of blood dripped down her chest. She moaned and squirmed and appeared to love it as the man leisurely licked away the blood.
Luther never paused as he stepped away from the repulsive act.
He’d expected a grisly scene of drugs and alcohol and possibly rape, but he hadn’t expected this orgy of depravity.
The malodor of stale sweat, musky sex, and drugged excitement hung thick in the air, assaulting his nostrils and violating his lungs. The red lights cast a carmine hue over everything, making shadows shift like liquid puddles of blood.
Luther’s stomach curdled.
So much wickedness.
Thank God he hadn’t broken down and brought Gaby along. He wanted to be honest, to share everything with her and build a partnership where they worked together . . .
But he couldn’t imagine her reaction to all of this.
Heads would roll—and then she’d bombard him with endless uncomfortable questions pertaining to sexual perversions.
Luther no sooner had that thought than he felt the forceful stare of someone watching him. The short hairs on his neck stood on end, but he didn’t dare look behind him.
He heard no disruption; bodies weren’t flying and people weren’t screaming. It
Anyone other than her, he could handle.
Desiree said something to him that he missed, and then she stopped before a small, cloth-covered table that displayed an arrangement of colored pills, a few drinks, and a line of cocaine already cut on a mirror.
A tall, thin man with long dark hair and very pale blue eyes awaited them. Given the faint creases in his face and the cynicism in his gaze, Luther put him in his late forties, early fifties.
If his eerie watchfulness wasn’t enough, his age made him stand out in the young crowd.
He seemed displeased with, and somewhat wary of, Luther’s presence. Desiree moved forward, put her head to the table, a straw to her nose, and inhaled the coke. Giddy, she stepped back, wiped a dainty hand over her nostrils, and laughed.
In a too-polite, too-moderated voice that barely carried over the music filtering into the isolated room, the man asked, “Who is this?”
Now more vague than ever, Desiree stroked a small hand over Luther’s crotch. “This is all
Revolted, Luther again removed her hand. “Not accurate at all.”
Undaunted, she clung to his arm. “We just wanted to get a good buzz going before we get . . . friendlier.”
The man’s gaze slid over Luther with the comfort of sticky oil. “He’s not your normal fare, now is he, Desiree?”
“He’s bigger,” she crooned, now sliding her hands everywhere. “And strong.”
