Red Hot Obsessions (180 page)

Saturday Night at The Devilhouse

After getting lost in the Devilhouse’s meandering white hallways again, Rae found a door that led to the main dance floor.

Music blared so hard that the beat reverberated in her lungs. Dancers packed the dance area and swayed like a prairie of thick grass buffeted by wind. Their bodies fumed with heat. As Rae finagled her way through, she had a lot of questions for Lizzy, but seeing as how Lizzy was otherwise occupied, literally occupied, Rae would have to wait to ask them.

At the very least, Lizzy didn’t seem to be helplessly mooning over Wulf anymore. She had moved on.

Really moved on.

Rae didn’t consider Wulf free game, but she felt less like a danged horse thief than she had that morning.

Rae looked over the bouncing crowd and up to the balcony and saw Wulf talking to a gorgeous platinum-blond woman. Her exaggerated figure bobbled. Her impossibly tiny waist linked her huge breasts and bubble ass, and she wore a strappy, skimpy gilt dress that looked like a gold necklace had been wrapped around an alabaster vase.

The woman bent over, pushing her boobs out at Wulf, and he glanced at her full breasts before he wrapped one arm around the woman’s waist.

Ah, yes. Wulf liked women, craved women, in the plural. Rae shouldn’t forget Georgie’s warning.

Now Rae felt more like a stolen horse than a horse thief.

She should just leave.

But she told Wulf that she would come back. He expected her to leave with him that night. Rae couldn’t just dash. Not to tell him would be rude.

One shouldn’t be rude to one’s boss. Rae had just put together her life plans. She didn’t want to get fired.

Even if, every time Rae saw Wulf, the bleeding, blond child screamed in her head.

Before that morning, every time she saw him, all her skin had felt like waving fern fronds, reaching and longing to touch him, shaming her.

This was not an improvement.

Rae watched Wulf clasp the blonde woman around her curvy waist and speak to her. The blonde giggled. Her whole body jiggled.

That vacuous woman was manipulating Wulf by shoving her fat boobs in his face. Rae swam through the crowd faster, pushing pint-sized people behind her as she struggled through the mob flailing in time with the pounding music.

Wulf dropped his hand away from the woman’s waist and kissed her on the cheek. She stretched their arms between them as she slinked away, letting his arm fall only when the crowd swallowed her up.

Wulf watched where the people had closed around the woman, then turned back to the balcony railing, braced one foot against the lower rail, and leaned on the upper rail to survey the crowd as if an animated doll hadn’t just tried to seduce him. He rubbed his palms together like he was washing his hands.

Rae watched him from the seething dance floor.

Wulf turned to look at the DJ booth, and Rae could have sworn that half the club turned with him to see what he was looking at.

When Wulf gestured to a man standing a ways down the rail, beckoning him to come over, the crowd turned to see who Wulf was looking at and watched the space between them close.

When Rae was in high school, a girl in her class who had fancied herself a witch had told Rae about ley lines, lines of magic power that ran along the Earth. The way that the crowd followed Wulf’s movements looked like he was wielding some sort of magic or dragging them all with ley lines, but that was impossible and crazy.

Rae fought her way through the melee of dancers to one of the metal stairways that led to the balcony level above.

At the base of the staircase, a wide, Hispanic man in a suit stood at parade rest, like he was guarding the stairway. He said, “Let’s see your wrist band.”

“I don’t have one,” Rae said, flustered. She hadn’t noticed any wrist bands. “The Dom expects me up there. I work here.”

The man peered at her face. “Never mind, Miss Stone. I apologize that I didn’t recognize you.” He moved aside.

“I’m new,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.” He gestured to the stairs, allowing her to pass.

Rae climbed the rough metal steps that clanged with footsteps to the first balcony level. Her spiky high heels nearly slid on the metal, but she caught herself. She found her way between the dining tables to Wulf. The kitchen must be through one of the double doors that lined the wall behind them because the smells of baking bread and sizzling meat sailed through the smoky air.

She swallowed and tried not to think about the terrible picture. “Um, hi.”

Wulf turned and raised one of his blond eyebrows above his half-smile. Spotlights swirled behind him in the darkness, and she could see the posed little boy in his face. He leaned in to ask her over the loud music, “Did you satisfy yourself that Lizbeth is all right?”

Well, Lizzy had certainly looked satisfied. “Yeah,” Rae said. “How did she end up with that guy?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, demurring.

“Man, you really don’t kiss and tell, do you?” she asked.

Wulf inclined his head. Disco ball light flakes glittered on his golden hair. “One of my very few virtues.”

“What are your other virtues?” Rae knew she was treading perilously close to asking him a question about himself, but what the heck, she figured.

“I couldn’t say. I prefer my vices,” he brushed Rae’s curling hair away from her ear, “which are beautiful women, good whiskey, and chocolate.”

“Chocolate?” The other two, she had figured out.

He leaned in, keeping his hands behind his back. His voice dropped to a whisper, and his breath tickled her ear. “At school, we had a hot chocolate break every morning at ten o’clock.”

“You’re kidding! Not coffee?”

“Not for children.”

“Wow, you guys had it made. No wonder you Europeans beat us American public school kids on those math and science tests. If my mom had packed me a thermos of hot chocolate every day, I’d’ve done better in school, too.”

“Not my mother,” Wulf murmured beside her ear. “I matriculated to boarding school at six years old. The dining room served chocolate.”

Wulf had looked eight or nine years old in those news pictures, the one with his twin brother and the one where he held his dead twin brother. Rae’s face flushed hot.

She stood beside Wulf, his breath brushing her neck, close enough to feel the warmth from his body radiating through his suit, and held her face still. Even though the image of him as a screaming, bleeding child flashed through her head again, she couldn’t let her knowledge of it show. She didn’t want him to know that she had betrayed his trust. He had been hurt enough in his life.

“Six years old?” she said. “I can’t imagine sending such a young child away to a boarding school.”

Wulf bent his neck and kissed her bare shoulder, though he still hadn’t wrapped his arms around her. “It’s common practice in Europe.”

Wulf had been shoved out of his home and dumped at a boarding school when he was only six, and then his brother had been murdered in front of him.

Rae put her arms around his neck and buried her face in his broad shoulder.

“Now, now.” His deep voice sounded confused. “Everyone does it.”

Rae cleared her throat to make sure that her voice was steady. “That’s terrible, to send a child away when they’re so young.”

“You are a tender-hearted thing, aren’t you?”

She felt his hands tug her arms. He wanted to see her face, or maybe this was too much PDA for him, and yet she wondered what the owner of a sex club would not do in public, and then she regretted such a vicious line of thought.

Rae scrunched her face into something resembling concern. As he pulled himself out of her arms, she said, “I suppose so.”

“You would like a drink?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, please.” Maybe a little intoxication would wash the crazy out of Rae’s head so she could think straight.

Wulf offered his elbow, and Rae slipped her hand through the crook of his arm. Under his suit, his biceps muscle bunched. Wulf wasn’t overbuilt like the guy who was screwing Lizzy, but hard muscle rounded his chest and arms. Most of his body was still a mystery to her, even though she still wished that she hadn’t exposed that scar on his back.

Wulf steered her to a table at the narrow end of the warehouse overlooking the dance floor and stages. Rae leaned over the metal rail for a moment. On the second floor, they were high enough for a wide view but close enough to see the men and women wearing red unitards, obviously professional dancers, gyrating on each of the five stages. Their smooth costumes clung like their bodies had been dipped in scarlet wax.

“What would you like to drink?” Wulf asked while signaling a waiter.

“Um, whatever you’re having.” She sat beside him. The sturdy dining chairs seemed like they should be in a high-end restaurant. She had expected rickety folding chairs.

Wulf said, “I’m having whiskey.”

“I like whiskey.” Rae wasn’t faking. She had heard that most people took a while to warm up to whiskey, Rae had liked the taste the very first time she had tried it a year ago. All that habanero salsa while growing up must have killed her taste buds.

“We’ll have two of the Middleton Very Rare,” Wulf told the waiter. He asked Rae, “Have you tried that one before?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve tried Chivas Regal.” And that fancy whiskey at Wulf’s party a couple weeks ago, whatever it was. The label looked like Johnny Walker, but she had never seen Johnny Walker with a blue label before.

“I think you’ll like this. It’s an Irish whiskey, so it isn’t smoky like Scotch whiskies, though I admit a fondness for a peaty Scotch.”

“Me, too.” She sounded like she was sucking up, but she meant it.

He tilted his head and smiled at her sideways. “Most women don’t enjoy Scotch. I have some interesting bottles that we’ll have to try some time.”

That sounded weird. “Sure.”

Talking about whiskey had distracted her from the image of the bleeding child in her head. Staying in the moment might keep her from thinking about it.

A bell’s toll shook the building.

The dance music faded away, and the crowd on the floor applauded.

“What’s going on?” Rae asked Wulf.

He sighed. “It’s ten o’clock. Time for the show.”

The scarlet-clad dancers clambered down from the round stages and blended into the crowd. One woman leaped from her podium and floated on top of the crowd like a red X before she sank into the milling people.

Other people carrying duffel bags climbed onto two of the stages via small steps on the sides. Soft music played from the overhead speakers. The people looked like carpenters, which surely couldn’t be the decadent entertainment that Wulf wanted her to watch. The carpenters held flashlights that blazed in the semi-darkness. They assembled scaffolds and equipment in under a minute, then climbed down.

Rae said, “That was quick.”

Wulf shrugged. “Theatrical props.”

“Right.” Rae had seen quick scene changes in the theater department.

The music died, and the bell tolled again, each peal slamming louder until Rae reached to cover her ears.

People rose from the crowd, climbing the steps onto the stages. Most wore variations on Dom and sub clothing, but one girl on the stage nearest to Rae’s vantage point wore a flowing pink sundress that swished below her knees. Her partner wore black leather fetish gear studded with brass spikes.

“To be clear,” Wulf said, “this is for entertainment purposes, and it is not an example for your work.”

“All right.” Rae looked down at the people taking their marks. On the main stage, a burly man stood in the center of a circle of five curvy women who spanned the human skin spectrum from milky to cocoa, each wearing a different candy-colored leotard. On the stage farthest away from their table, two medium-brown women wore black bikinis and nothing else.

Stage lighting flared over the crowd, lighting the people’s faces below Rae. Some looked eager. One man in the crowd stripped off his shirt, revealing his skinny chest.

With a harsh downbeat, hard rock music blared through The Devilhouse, and the lights blew out.

White spotlights picked the five stages out of the darkness. The performers began moving to the music, strutting like magicians about to do a grand illusion. The five women on the center stage circled the one man like a spinning rainbow. The two women began kissing, each sinewy caress more grandiose than the last. The woman in the pink sundress skipped around the man in brass and black leather, who stood with his burly arms wound tightly across his chest, seemingly unaware of her. Over on the left stage, a woman bound a man to a chair with brutal knots.

Rae reached for Wulf’s hand in the dark warehouse. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him glance at their hands, then up at her.

The crowd around the stages seethed and bounced to the music. Several hundred people must be down there.

Georgie had said that the party last Saturday night was part of the client selection process. “You’ve vetted all those people?” Rae asked.

“The performers? Yes, certainly. The employment regulations in this state make it easy to ascertain that all are of age. Indeed, since alcohol is served here, they must all be over twenty-one.” He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb.

“I meant the crowd. Georgie said that you check up on everyone who comes in here.”

“Ah, pardon me. The main floor crowd must produce identification, like any pub, and pay the entry fee. Only clients are permitted on the upper floors. There is an extensive application process for clients.”

“Upper floors?” Rae stuck her head out past the balcony rail and looked up. Another balcony level was suspended above the dining level where they sat. “What’s up there?”

“I believe you Americans call them sky boxes.”

Rae found a drink on the table in front of her. She peeked sideways, over their hands on the white tabletop, and saw through the gloom that Wulf had a drink and was sipping his.

Their whisky had arrived without her noticing the waiter bringing it. The people sashaying in the follow spotlights below must have distracted her. She sipped, too.