"Stop it!"
Lance's face suddenly loomed above her.
She cried his name. Begged him to get her out of there.
"Shut the fuck up!" he snarled just before she felt the crack of his hand on her cheek. Even the pain was dull, but in the aftermath, her face stung. So did her soul.
Tears blurred her vision, but when she blinked and looked up again, she swore she saw Kat.
"Tiffany! Oh God, sweetie."
The woman dropped to her knees beside Tiffany, shoving the snakes away, gathering her close.
"Get away from her! Get away!"
Tiffany started crying again. It
was
Kat.
"It's OK, sweetie. I've got you now."
She reached out, looked into her friend's beautiful face full of compassion and anger and tears.
"Kat." It was really her. Tiffany clung to the slender arms that held her. "Don't leave me. Please, please, please. Don't leave me."
"I'm not going to leave you. Sweetie, can you stand? Come on. We've got to get you up. Get you out of this viper pit."
Tiffany tried to focus. Tried to block out the music that pulsed stronger and louder. She struggled to her feet, but her knees buckled. Then Lance was there again and he was shouting at Kat and Kat was shouting at him and telling him to get away. To leave her alone.
"I said back off, bitch. She's with me."
"Not anymore she's not."
"Ask her," Lance demanded. "Ask her who she wants to be with. Tell her, Tiffany. I love you, remember, baby?" His voice dropped to an intimate purr that stroked and soothed and reminded her why she loved him.
But he didn't love her. He couldn't. He couldn't love her and bring her to Forbidden. Hurt her this way.
"I want to go," she managed, pressing her face against Kat's shoulder and clinging. "I want to go with Kat"
"No, no, babe. You want to go with me. Come on. Come with me. I love you, baby."
"She's not going with you. Now get out of my way before I call the cops."
"Fuck the cops," Lance sneered, and from the corner of her eye Tiffany could see Abe walk up beside him. "Help Tiffany say good-bye to her friend, Abe."
Kat's arms tightened around Tiffany as Abe started prying her away. She clung to Kat, but Abe was too strong. Pain shot through Tiffany's shoulder as he wrenched her violently away from Kat and shoved her into Lance's arms.
She sobbed and begged him to let her go.
"Bitch in heat!" Lance shouted above the music. "Bitch in fucking heat! Come and get some!" he yelled, and as he dragged her away, Tiffany was vaguely aware of a swarm of bodies converging on Kat.
"Noooo!" she screamed as Lance picked her up and carried her from the room. Over his shoulder, she watched in horror as leather-clad fetish freaks shoved Kat down on the pillows.
Tears stung Tiffany's eyes, blurred her vision, as they forcefully stretched Kat's arms and legs out and held her down, spread-eagled, as the first of the mob went down on his knees in front of her.
Mac had thought he'd seen it all. But nothing had prepared him for the press of flesh and decadent reality of Forbidden. He'd sprinted for the archway when Eve had called and yeah, he knew he should wait for the rest of them to show before going in, but Kat was in there on her own. So was Tiffany.
He pushed through the heavy wooden door painted with a mural of a satyr with a monster cock feasting on the bloody breast of an angelic naked maiden swooning in trance-induced ecstasy. Inside the dark interior of Forbidden was more of the same. Only a sober eye could discern between the life-size lifelike wall murals of men on women, men on men, women on women, engaging in lewd sex acts and the real thing going on on spotlighted pedestals to a chorus of "oohs" and "ahs" and appreciative applause.
Jesus. Talk about sick. He quickly scanned the room. He didn't spot Tiffany or Kat, but a crowd had gathered on the opposite side of the den. He headed in that direction. A woman's scream had him picking up the pace, then shoving bodies aside as gut instinct told him he needed to get to her. Fast.
He finally worked his way close enough to see Kat on the bottom of the pile.
"Get the hell off of her!" he roared, and grabbed a sick pervert, wearing only bleached yellow hair and a leather thong, by his shoulders and jerked him to his feet.
Pure adrenaline drove Mac as he fought off clutching hands and sharp, biting nails. He didn't care what he hit— man, woman, or a confused parody of both. Outrage rolled over tact as he threw bodies aside. When he sensed someone behind him, he rounded on her, arm cocked, fist balled ... and barely managed to draw back before cold-cocking Eve.
Sven tore into the fray right behind her.
"What took you so long?" Mac muttered, and made fast work of a burly biker type who hadn't taken kindly to losing his turn in the rape and pillage line.
Beside him, Sven head-butted the closest sicko stupid enough not to have ducked and run. Eve made quick work of the restraints holding Kat down, and Kat—whom he'd reached in the nick of time—pushed to her feet in a blind rage and jumped on the back of the blonde who had been about to sexually assault her.
With Sven otherwise engaged beating a big bruiser to a bloody pulp, Eve targeted one of the women—an Amazon with some major muscle groups—who had been in on the impending assault and hadn't yet gotten the message that party time was over.
Despite being outsized and outmuscled, the little M&M-loving blonde in ankle boots and bustier had some serious moves—along with a deadly mean streak. Lord above, was she a sight. While a part of Mac wanted to dive in and help her, the sane part realized she'd turn on him if he didn't let her dole out a little justice.
Besides, Eve didn't need his help. She was fast. And she was accurate. And, holy mother of God, she was about to do some permanent damage.
"Easy, Rambo." He caught her around the waist and hauled her off the woman.
"Hey, hey. Easy now. I'm one of the good guys," he protested when Eve kicked and squirmed in his arms, ready to fight to the death if necessary, as the woman took the opportunity to scramble on all fours toward the closest exit door.
"Sorry," Eve muttered when she finally realized it was him.
"Note to self." He set her back on her feet. "Never piss off the blonde."
She shoved a tumble of hair out of her face and adopted a combat stance, ready to take on the next comer.
Fortunately, it was all pretty much over but the heavy breathing. The bulk of the crowd had dispersed, the injured had slinked off to lick one another's wounds, and the four of them were left standing back-to-back in a circle, ready to fend off anyone looking for more action.
"Tiffany," Kat said, rubbing her wrists and catching her breath. "He took her. She was so scared. She wanted to go with me, but he took her."
When Mac asked what he looked like, Kat described Reno and added details on Gorman.
"Which way did they go?"
Kat shook her head. "I don't know. He sicced the pack on me and I couldn't see."
"Are you all right?" Sven squared off protectively in front of her, gently rubbed the circulation back into her wrists.
She nodded, but she looked a little shaky.
"You should not have come in here alone," Sven ground out, his eyes filled with rage and relief and fear.
Kat moved into him. She wrapped her arms around his waist as Sven's arms enfolded her. "Tiffany needed me. And I knew you'd get here."
"Too late to help Tiffany," Mac said, dragging a hand through his hair.
"I slipped her my cell phone."
All eyes turned to Kat.
"Managed to shove it down her skirt at the small of her back. If she sobers up enough before this Reno person finds it, she'll scan the phone book and realize it's mine. Maybe she'll have sense enough to hide it, then use it when she gets a chance."
"You may have missed your calling," Mac said, beyond pleased that Tiffany had the means to contact Kat. "Good work."
"Better than good." Sven smiled at Kat with unconcealed pride. "Her phone is equipped with GPS."
"GPS?"
"A Global-Positioning System."
"I know what it is, but why in the hell would you have one?"
"Sven and I bought the system to keep track of each other—you never know about road conditions, late hours— and our schedules often find us in different parts of the world. We like to keep track."
"I think I love you," Mac said, and, with a grinning Sven looking on, kissed her full on the lips.
Chapter 15
They canvassed the club before they
left. No one they spoke with had seen Tiffany leave. No one remembered seeing anyone matching Reno's or Gorman's description.
"Amazes the hell out of me," Mac sputtered, "given that even among the weird and weirder the three of them were not the kind of characters anyone would soon forget."
"They closed ranks," Eve said beside him in the limo as they left Oracle and headed for Kat's condo.
"We didn't exactly make friends in there." Kat snuggled into Sven's arms in the seat across from them.
She was still a little shaken, but she was holding up. It was Sven who was having trouble keeping it together. "I could kill those bastards for touching you."
"I love it when you go all Terminator on me," Kat said, managing just what she'd wanted—to ease the tension— with her gushy delivery.
Sven heaved a heavy breath. "Just don't pull anything as foolish as that again." He rolled his eyes at Mac. "Look who I'm talking to."
"Tiffany's lucky to have such a loyal friend," Eve said, genuine respect for Kat in her voice.
"Here's to new friends." Kat looked Eve directly in the eye before shifting her gaze to Mac. "Thank you. Thank you both for caring about Tiffany. And for getting to me before it was too late."
If only it hadn't been too late for Tiffany.
Quiet settled over the four of them in the aftermath of the danger they'd been in. Kat leaned back when Sven pulled her into his arms again and kissed her long and deep.
Mac was about two conscious thoughts away from doing the same to Eve as the limo cruised through the New York night. And he might have taken the chance if he hadn't had such fresh, crisp memories of her course in Ball Busting 101 earlier in the evening at Time Squared.
He was horny—an adrenaline kick was always good for a blood rush to the groin—but he wasn't stupid. Still, she could use a little settling. Frankly, so could he. Oracle had been an intense experience, for lack of a better term. So yeah, she could use some settling, but since he couldn't guarantee that if he got his hands on her again he wouldn't take it past the settling stage, he kept them to himself.
In the meantime, though, just looking at his little Conanette had him so hot and bothered he was stretching leather and pulsing against that crotch-hugging codpiece like Jack's damn beanstalk trying to break ground.
Hell. He was only human. And damn, she was a sight. Her hair was a fine mess, her skin still flushed from the fight. Her pale breasts rose and fell above the skimpy black corset, all but popping out of the marginal bra cups. He swore he could see a hint of a dusky pink areola kissing the lip of leather.
Sweat broke out on his brow. OK. So now was not the time, this was not the place, to get bogged down in fantasies of stripping off bits of leather, then using his teeth to unhook her fishnet stockings from the garter belt.
But how much was a man supposed to take? Whatever stuff they'd had burning in the club clung to her wild mass of silver-gold hair just as the scent of sweat and forbidden sex dewed her skin. And he'd seen her sneaking looks at him when she thought he wasn't watching. He'd seen the heat in her eyes. So it was fueled by their brush with danger. That didn't make it any less real. And it didn't make him any less aware.
Adrenaline still hummed through his system like a conductor for a high-voltage power source. If he didn't miss his guess, Eve was fully charged, too. Between them they might not be able to light up the city, but there was more than enough energy to light up his life.