“I hope you don’t mind giving an old friend a ride,” she said.
“You’re not old,” he pointed out.
“But I am a friend?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Well, you have kept me company,” he smiled.
“I’d like to do that some more,” she suggested. When Mark looked at her, she had one blonde eyebrow raised and a hopeful smile on her face. He stared at her for a minute, taking in the pale softness of her features, the gentle slope of her cheek and the ice-blue stare of her eyes. If he weren’t married, he would have thrown himself at her feet begging for any kindness or favor she’d deign to give.
Now…he looked at her and thought she looked amazing…and then reminded himself that he was married. And without Rae participating or condoning, he wouldn’t go any farther. Mark had never been the one who really, really wanted to swap. He knew that was stupid and counterintuitive and all that…guys were always the ones who wanted to play the field, right? But it was what it was.
“So how can I find NightWhere?” he asked again.
“You can’t,” she said. “It only is found by the people it wants to find it.”
“I need to find it,” he said. “I need to find my wife.”
“Let me guess,” Selena said. “She didn’t come home after the last time?”
Mark described how she’d left him out two months ago, but how she’d driven from the club and picked someone up to take back.
“So what did she say about that afterwards?” Selena asked.
“She just said there was a guy who needed a ride, and she volunteered to go get him. And she promised that she’d take me with her to the club the next time we got an invitation. But then two weeks ago I came home and she was gone. She hasn’t been back since. And I found out that the guy she picked up never came home after the night she picked him up.”
Selena leaned across the seat and put her hands on his shoulders. He couldn’t help but see the shift in the milky-white skin of her cleavage as she leaned into him. It made him want to pull her closer…he did intend to stay true to Rae and honor their deal, even if she wasn’t right now…but God, Selena was beautiful.
“Mark, listen to me,” she implored. “If Rae has given herself to NightWhere, then she is damned. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’re just torturing yourself if you try to find her. And if you go into the club again, you may not get out of it alive either.”
“I can’t believe that,” he said. “Rae loves me. She’s just been sucked into this club and has lost her head for a while. I need to find her before she really gets hurt.”
“It’s already too late,” Selena insisted. “NightWhere is more than just a club. I think you realize that by now. Once someone enters The Red it’s really too late, but if she’s been with them for two weeks…”
“Help me find her,” he begged.
“I can’t, Mark. You don’t know where they are.”
He looked at her with eyes brimming with anger and frustration. “I need help here,” he said.
Selena touched his face and smiled sadly. “I know,” she said. “And I want to help you. I really do. Let’s go out to dinner or a movie or something. But I can’t lead you to NightWhere.”
“I’m going home,” he said, looking at the beautiful woman in his passenger’s seat. “Where am I dropping you?”
“I’ll stay here,” Selena said. She reached into her handbag and pulled something out. A pen. Finding a scrap of paper, she wrote down a number and handed it to Mark.
“Give me a call,” she said. “I’d like to see you again. Preferably not in NightWhere.”
She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry about your wife, I really am.”
Then she slipped out of the car and closed the door.
She waved before turning and walking away from him across the parking lot. Mark was tempted to call her back. Just the scent of her left behind in the small space inside his car excited him. She had offered herself to him, and he’d said no. The brain in his pants was now thinking of ways to convince himself to call her back, but Mark shook his head. She was beautiful and sexy and nice. But he wanted Rae. And until Rae agreed that he could go 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 After Hours
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 now.”
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.”