Kharon said something, but she did not hear. Rae only had eyes for Peter, who lay beneath her. His face was drawn in an expression both fearful and turned on. His eyes flicked back and forth from the Watchers to Rae’s face. She moved him inside her, adjusting his cock with nudges and thrusts of her hips, and as she looked at his bleeding body beneath her, something that had long lain buried, but only barely, in Rae’s psyche surfaced. She suddenly realized that she was enjoying his pain. She watched his wounds gape and weep as she pressed herself on him, and when he gasped at the pain, she felt a thrill of pleasure run up her spine. A little orgasm. She had hurt him, and she was hurting him now, as she used him. And she liked it.
Rae knew in that moment that she was evil. Had always been evil. Wanted to keep being evil. She’d tried to hide from it, but the reality was…she wanted pleasure and didn’t care how she got it. And if she had to hurt someone to get it…
Her hips ground faster against Peter as she accepted the understanding of herself. She’d hidden from the realization in the sex clubs and “sharing/caring” trappings of the other swingers. They all pretended to care about each other and to be sharing a lifestyle. But suddenly it hit her in a flash. They didn’t care. She didn’t care. All she wanted was to fuck. And she loved the idea that she was fucking the life out of the man beneath her. With every push of her thighs against his, more blood flowed from the wounds in his sides. The word RAE on his chest grew difficult to read as the blood pooled and spread. She leaned across him and with her breasts rubbed at the gash of her name until the word could no longer be read.
“Your blood is mine,” she whispered, not really understanding why she’d felt the need to say it.
But then Kharon stepped forward and, with a simple thrust, dropped his silken black robe to the ground like the others.
“Your blood is mine,” he echoed, drawing his knife across the soft skin of her breasts. She felt a pinching sensation, and then suddenly heat, as the blood began to seep from her nipples like hell’s milk.
“Let him drink,” Kharon said, and Rae bent lower, until her nipple was at Peter’s lips. He opened his mouth and took it in, smearing his lips with crimson, as Kharon’s cut continued to bleed.
Rae felt the pain of the cuts on her chest, but they didn’t seem to stop her pleasure. Instead, the pain quickened her rhythm, and she pressed harder against Peter’s hips, drawing him as far inside her as she could. Their bodies slipped together in a bloody lubrication that was warm and wet and continued to build. Peter was bleeding steadily from so many cuts across his body that, every place Rae touched, she slid. It was hot and exciting and…she knew…deadly.
Peter moaned beneath her, and she could feel his lust within her, moving, pressing, shifting.
She increased her rhythm, excited by his entrapment, excited by his blood. He lay beneath her, face shifting through a kaleidoscope of emotions: pain, excitement, fear, lust…
Rae could feel her own orgasm approaching, as she pressed her hands to his wet shoulders and slapped her crotch to his. The room resounded with the echo of her passion, their bloody, wet skin meeting and retreating, and then, just at the moment of her release, Kharon leaned forward and picked up the knife she had discarded from the table. He held it out for her to take and smiled at her complete abandon.
“Kill him,” Kharon commanded.
Chapter Thirty
In the Darkest Hour…
The alley smelled like stale piss and old garbage. The sour scents reminded him of more desperate days. Back when he’d been a single guy, he’d come down into the seedy parts of South Chicago to take care of business here. Sometimes a guy had to cum, and if he didn’t have a woman at home waiting to accept it…well, he came here.
Literally.
The neon sign out front read Dreams in electric-blue light, only the D was unlit. So instead it was reams. That worked too. Guys went in there and got reamed in the video booths downstairs. And there were reams of bad sex videos lining every inch of the upstairs.
The entry door was glass but had been obscured by paper taped on from the inside. It had one message, just above the handle. Adults Only.
He pulled the door open and stepped inside. It was a whole ’nother world there. The walls were lined with porno DVDs and the glass case at the front of the store where the cash register sat was filled with imitation penises. Mark didn’t waste any time. He walked straight up to the cashier, a thin man with grey disheveled hair and a mustache that did its best to hide his lips. Mark had decided to be direct this time and simply come right out and ask everyone in the adult scene that he could find.
“Have you ever heard of NightWhere?” he asked, and the man looked back at him blankly. But in the overhead mirror, Mark saw that his question had interested someone. A head had popped out of the DVD aisles as soon as he’d said the name NightWhere.
Mark turned and stared down the aisle towards the man who had shown interest. The guy faded back as Mark approached, ducking around the aisle and disappearing. But Mark wasn’t fooled. He quickened his step and poked his head around the Bisexual aisle and found him. And the him turned out to be a familiar face.
“Kendrick,” he said. “What a lucky break-long time no see!”
The man pursed his lips and nodded, all of his body language saying that this wasn’t a lucky break in any way.
“How are you?” Kendrick asked, eyeing the end of the aisle nervously.
“Been better,” Mark said. “Rae hasn’t come home since she went to NightWhere last month. I’ve been looking for someone to help me get back to the club. I need to find out what happened to her.”
“I’m sure she’s okay,” Kendrick said. “You know Sin-D, she takes care of folks.”
“It’s not Sin-D I’m worried about,” Mark said. “I’ve seen some of what goes on in the back of the club.”
Kendrick shrugged. “Well, if you get an invitation next month, I guess you should go and check it out.”
“I don’t want to wait until next month to see my wife,” Mark spat. “I want to go see her now. And I need help. You are one of the in-crowd there. Help me get back to the club.”
“Can’t do that,” Kendrick said. “You know that. If I took you there, I’d never get invited myself again. I could get in big trouble just for talking about it with you.”
“Come on, man,” Mark begged. He struggled to keep his voice low. “You know the way. I need your help.”
“No,” Kendrick said. “And if you don’t want to end up chained up in one of the back rooms for the rest of your life, I’d suggest you stop asking people about the club. They don’t like publicity. And they will do just about anything to stop it. I promise you.”
Kendrick raised an eyebrow pointedly. His mouth was a thin line, his eyes flashed with something near anger. None of the laid-back, party-boy humor Mark remembered in the man was evident.
“Listen to what I’m saying,” Kendrick said. “Now, if you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to ask the cashier to call the police. Get away from me. Now.”
Mark put his hands up in the air, exaggerating abdication. “Fine,” he said. “But what if it was your wife out there? What would you do?”
Kendrick looked at him in total, cold seriousness. “I’d divorce her and find a nice girl,” he said. “But that’s me.”
Mark backed away from the man, who seemed totally different than the guy he’d had drinks with at Sin-D’s bar just a few weeks before.
But Mark wasn’t done with Kendrick. He had stumbled on Selena and had failed to pry any information from her. Now he had found another denizen of NightWhere. He didn’t expect that he’d be lucky enough to walk into the supermarket and “just happen” to find Sin-D or one of the handful of others he knew from the sex club.