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There's a coatroom with pulsing lights in the floor and an attendant dressed in a top hat, but we breeze right through and into the main part of the club.
I can see now why, even with the snow, I wouldn't need a coat.
Inside the Silver Skull, it's wicked hot, sweat already collecting on my brow as Copeland weaves us expertly through the gathered revelers, past women dressed in ball gowns, like cigarette girls, like vampires.
“What kind of club is this?” I shout when Cope pulls me close to his side and slips in between two other couples standing next to the bar. When he looks back at me, his turquoise eyes shimmer and then lift up, looking over the heads of the throbbing crowd toward a stage in the far corner.
I follow his gaze and feel my mouth drop open when I see the show. Men and women with black X's taped over their nipples, with whips and high-high heels and paddles are engaged in some light BDSM, seemingly oblivious to the sea of faces below.
My attention snaps back to Cope and even though I can hardly hear his laugh, I see him shaking with a deep chuckle.
“If you like what you see,” he whispers in my ear, drawing goose bumps up on my neck, “they have rooms in the back where you can pay dominatrices to show you a good time.”
“Seriously?” I ask, leaning back, intrigued and shocked both at the same time. It's not that any of this stuff really bothers me, just that I've never been a part of anything even remotely in this realm.
“Sure,” Cope yells as he flags the bartender down and passes over his credit card, “just ask Ransom.”
As if on cue, Ran squeezes in beside me, his muscular arms slicked with sweat. I find my fingers curling around them, tracing the hardness of his biceps before I can stop myself. He looks down at me with a wicked sad smile, bleeding his pain into an atmosphere already filled with it. In a room this crowded, this full of people, I shouldn't be able to taste loneliness in the air, but I do. That's not to say that everyone here is desperately seeking human connections, but a lot are.
Or maybe I'm just projecting?
“You … like BDSM?” I say and Ran shrugs his broad shoulders a little. “You paid people for sex?” I ask and his smile changes a little as he drops his dark eyes to mine and accepts a drink from Cope over my shoulder. He passes one into my hand next. I have no idea what it is but turquoise colored sugar frosts the rim and the drink itself is frosty and cool and absolutely laden with alcohol. Plus, just like Muse said—it's served in a silver skull.
“I've never paid for sex, honey,” he says as he glances over at the stage and then back at me. “BDSM can be sexual, but it doesn't have to be. For a lot of people, it's not sexual at all.” Ran looks down into his drink for a moment and then back up at me. There's a conversation here, but this isn't really the place to have it.
I turn around and lean my elbows against the bar, watching the crowd gyrate and thump and thrash. The music seems to be alternating between EDM or dubstep beats and hard, thrash-y metal tunes, but the DJ in the corner is talented and it all blends seamlessly.
“Hey.” It's Pax.
He leans in and puts his mouth to my ear.
“I got bottle service, love. Let's pay too much and see how many women we can get that want to sleep with us.” He takes my wrist, the one with my mother's charm bracelet, and starts pulling me through the crowd again. I follow after, unsure if Cope or Ran will follow, not sure what happened to Muse or Michael.
But then I see them together, sitting at a table in a second room, just off the main portion of the club. The silver surface of the table is shiny and shaped like a skull, but there are plenty of chairs clustered around it, hidden behind a black velvet rope that looks very official.
“I bloody hate bottle service,” Pax laughs as he takes a seat and very promptly pulls me into his lap. I get these dark butterflies in my stomach as he wraps his arm around my waist. Somehow, that conversation in the bus today is leading to a lot of casual touching. Even more than the sex, this feels heavenly, this easy skin on skin contact that pleads familiarity. I wish so deeply in that moment that I really knew these boys, that they were my friends, that I could hang out with them all the time, that I never had to give them back.
I place my own hand across Pax's and lean back against his chest.
“It's a fucking joke, a trick for middle-aged techie losers that can't get laid to lure young girls into their webs.” He grabs the drink from my hand and downs the rest in a single swallow. I trace my freshly painted fingernail down his tattooed throat as he sets the glass aside and smiles his cold, cruel smile at me.
“Who wants to sit down in a club anyway?” Muse asks, his hazel eyes sparkling as he takes in the smaller but more densely packed crowd in this section of the club. On the wall to my right, an old black and white horror movie plays, but nobody's watching it.
Ran and Cope appear a moment later, more drinks in their hands. They pass another one to me—something bright green and currently smoking with dry ice—and pause at the edge of the table. They could not look anymore different, Ran in his hoodie with his glittering black eyes and Cope in a pair of those expensive and admittedly sexy jeans that he likes, draped in black corded necklaces and bracelets. Cope's red hair is styled in its usual faux hawk and his turquoise eyes are lined with black. He's like the punk rock version of the boy next door in his loose white Dracula tank, a half dozen leather belts wrapped around his hips, each with a different fantastical buckle, and a pair of red skate shoes on his feet.
Ran's wearing scuffed black combat boots with his torn white skinny jeans and sleeveless hoodie, his scar vibrantly visible in the strange half-light of the club, the black and grey tattoos that stretch down both arms a stark contrast to the vibrancy of the ones on the back of Cope's wrists.
To me, they're both beautiful in completely different ways.
I wiggle on Pax's laps, the fabric of his expensive slacks slick and foreign feeling against the backs of my thighs. Dressed in that dark eggplant suit jacket and grey button-up, I feel like he must be sweating buckets, but when I glance over my shoulder at him, he looks cool and calm as usual.
“Dance with me?” Muse asks, finishing up his drink and smiling tightly at the scantily clad waitress as she walks by with swaying hips and teases her fingertips down his arm. He starts moving into the crowd before I get a chance to respond, drawing me along in his wake. I suck down as much of my drink as I can, trying to get a decent buzz going, and skip down three steps into the thick of the crowd.
Muse grabs me before I can lose my nerve, dragging me into the fray, into a bouncy, sweaty mass of bodies, his hands curling possessively around my hips. His mohawk is styled outrageously today, in a way that emphasizes the ombre effect of his black to silver hair and the short dark buzz on either side. He's wearing the glittering black cuff on his earlobe again, a perfect match to the black piercings above his brow and the tattoos on his right arm.
He's also not wearing a shirt under his leather zip-up hoodie, the hard muscles of his chest and tummy slick with sweat. That's where I put my palms as we dance in the outrageously dressed crowd. To me, the boys all look like glittering rockstar statues, like demigods just barely connected to their human roots, but in here, they're some of the most casually dressed people.
For some reason, I find that funny and start laughing as Muse twirls me and I come back around, reaching up and slicking a hand along the length of his mohawk. I get a sexy smile in response as I drop my palms back to his tummy. His black jeans are so low-slung that the waistband of his boxer briefs is visible, advertising the brand Andrew Christian in white across the black elastic. I curl my fingers around the dark denim of his pants and get a little thrill inside my belly when my fingertips graze across the bulge of Derek's cock.
“Maybe you should borrow one of Cope's belts?” I shout as I stand on my tiptoes and press my lips to Muse's ear. He laughs, but he doesn't stop dancing, swirling me around the room, his hands traveling all over my body, touching every part of m
e but the parts I really want.
“I want to see what's in the back rooms,” I shout after a few songs and Muse grins, turning me around by the shoulders and pushing me back towards Ransom. As I go, I see Michael dancing with some girls near the wall where the movie's being projected. I watch him for a second, but all he's doing is dancing. When the girl closest to him gets a little hands-y, he gently removes her fingers from his jeans and twirls her in a circle.
Pax is on the other side of the crowd with Cope, laughing with a group of guys dressed like priests. Seriously, five dudes dressed like priests with colored hair, piercings, and tattoos. Muse steers me past them all and grabs Ran by the arm; it's just so fucking loud in here that it's easier to snatch people by the hand than it is to talk to them.
Without a word passing between us, we find our way down a dark, narrow hallway crammed with people. Men and women in outfits each more outrageous than the last kiss and fondle each other in all variety of combinations—men and men, women and women, groups and couples—and we ignore them all, finding ourselves in a circular room with several doors and hallways leading off of it.
“Ransom Riggs,” says a man with more piercings in his face than I have fingers and toes, “Derek Muser, I just want to say that I'm a huge fan of Beauty in Lies. I have tickets to the show tomorrow and VIP passes for the meet and greet.” There's a breathless pause as he glances at me with interest, sandwiched between the two men, and then flicks his gaze between the two musicians. “If you'll sign my boots, I'll get you in wherever you want for free.”
He hands over a silver Sharpie and Ransom takes it, bending down and scribbling his name across the toes of the man's boots. Muse does the same and then they both stand up.
“We just want to watch tonight,” Ransom says, putting his arm around me and pressing the most deliciously decadent kiss against my hair. Even with all these people and the smell of sweat and cologne and perfume, I can taste the flirty scent of violets on the back of my tongue. “Muse and I have a new girlfriend and we don't want to share.”
“Sure thing,” the guy says as my cheeks color and the word girlfriend gets stuck in my head on a loop. Obviously, Ran just said that to make things easier—who wants to explain a situation as unique as ours to a stranger anyway—but I can't help myself. I get both excited and terrified at the same time. I just escaped being a girlfriend after five straight years, but … the idea of being Ransom's or Muse's—Ransom and Muse's—girlfriend fills me with jittery excitement.
The man with the piercings leads us down the hall and opens a door, stepping back so we can squeeze inside. It's much cooler back here than it is in the front of the club, and strangely empty. Music still pumps into the small dark room, but the only people here are us.
“This room's technically out of order for the night, but everything's clean and it's got the best view in the house.”
Piercing Guy smiles at us and raises his metal studded brows before bowing out and disappearing.
I take a second to look around, heart beating frantically, that strange otherworldly feeling creeping over me again. Like, where the fuck am I? I smile softly as I try to imagine Kevin in a place like this. It'd never happen; he'd call all these people freaks and leave with his face that ugly purple-red color it gets when he's angry.
“What exactly goes on in here?” I whisper as I step up to the window and put my palms against the glass. On the other side, a whole story below us, there's a room dressed in black and gold and silver, with chains and tables, benches, contraptions I have literally no name for. A woman in leather has a man on a leash and she's leading him around the carpeted floor on his hands and knees.
“All sorts of play,” Muse says, standing next to me, his unzipped leather hoodie drifting down the shoulder with the bats, flashing me delicious swaths of skin. “As long as it's consensual, it happens.” He pauses and glances over at Ransom, watching as his friend pushes his hood back. “What do you do in places like this?”
Ransom shrugs his broad shoulders, watching the action below with glittering black eyes. But when he looks over at me, they darken even further with hunger and I feel my pussy bloom with wetness.
“Most anything short of sex,” he admits as he reaches out a hand and traces a finger down my arm. “Just enough of whatever to make me feel something other than the usual, sweetheart.”
“And what's the usual?” I ask as music thrashes the room from the speakers in the corners of the ceiling. Ran and I are staring hard at each other, this electric feeling in the air between us. He could seriously be the other half of my soul's pain and that scares me. A lot. The way we process heartache and hurt, it's the same. The exact same.
“Gaping emptiness and regret,” he says as I drop my hand and curl my fingers through his, glancing back down through the window at the two story room room beyond it. The man and his mistress—sorry, I don't know the official terms—have paused their walk so she can spank him with a pink leather paddle.
“Can you tell me about Kortney and Chloe?” I ask tentatively and Ran sighs, running his hand down his face. His brunette hair is mussed up and sexy from his hoodie and I reach up a hand to ruffle it with my fingers.
“Do you want me to leave?” Muse asks softly, but Ran shakes his head.
While I wait for him to speak, I take in the rest of the room: there's a king size bed with red velvet blankets and black leather pillows, chains hanging from the headboard and footboard. To the right of that, there's a whole wall of random instruments—whips, paddles, feather dusters, ropes. The walls themselves are covered in some thick textured burgundy wallpaper with black roses on it. There's even a small fridge next to a counter with a sink.
“Is sex not allowed in here?” I ask as I turn back to the window and watch the man on his knees continue his leashed walk.
“It's allowed, honey,” Ran says as he lifts his face to look at me, curving that hot dangerous mouth of his into a sad smile. “It's just not something I was ever interested in.”
I imagine him looking at me standing here in what I thought was an edgy shirt-dress feeling totally out of my element and loving it, and I picture his lips adding, “Until now.”
I press my own lips together, feeling the slick shiny slide of the lipstick and gloss I slathered across my mouth.
“That woman,” I start, touching my fingertips to the glass, “she works here?”
“The Dom,” Ransom says, his voice as soft as silk, dripping with innuendo, audible somehow even with the music pouring into the room, “and the man is the sub. Maybe they're a couple? Maybe they just rented the room?”
“It's okay for us to watch this?” I ask as the man climbs to his feet and the woman attaches him to a big black X hooked to the wall, latching his wrists and ankles to the device.
“That's a St. Andrew's Cross,” Ransom explains idly, tilting his head to the side and tucking his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie, “and if they didn't want us to watch, we wouldn't be in here. Don't worry, doll baby.”
“Doll baby,” I whisper with a faint smile, giving him a look that he returns with a slight smile. “That's a new one.”
“Stick around long enough and you'll hear some real crazy ones,” Muse says from beside me, drawing my attention back to him. While Ran's finally removed his hood, Muse has pushed his up, squashing his mohawk a little, silver and black strands of hair sticking out the front. “What did you use to call Kortney? Crazy Legs?”
Ran makes this disgusted sound in his throat, putting his forehead against the glass.
I turn to look back at him and happen to catch the 'Dom' literally tearing the shiny black briefs off her subject, his cock bouncing out and making me squeal.
“Oh my god!” I shout as I turn around and put my back to the glass, breathing heavily. “You said there was no sex involved!”
Both Ransom and Muse laugh at me as I put a hand to my chest and try not to act like the complete prude that I am … was? Must be was because I just had a fuck
ing foursome in the living room of a rock star's tour bus. My sexual revolution has arrived apparently.
“I said that I didn't have sex here, darling,” he reminds me, putting his hands on my shoulders and trying to turn me around. I close my eyes as he does, wrapping his body around mine from behind, holding me against the big warm expanse of his chest. My heart flutters and my cunt feels hot and desperate, but I don't open my eyes. “Don't tell me you have a problem with cock all of a sudden? Because that'd be a shame.”
“Just strangers' cocks,” I blurt and then feel slightly uncomfortable. This is only my fourth night hanging out with these guys; they're almost as strange and foreign to me as that man and his Dom down there. But that's not how it feels; it feels like I know them already. Pain speaks to pain and all that, and they saw me at my lowest … are still seeing me at my lowest because I haven't recovered yet. I think I'm still in denial, like there's no fucking way this tour won't end with my dad smiling at me from our porch in New York, standing there with his arms out and welcoming me home.
I have no home to go back to.
I feel stupid for a second, standing here in some club partying while my dad's body gets burnt to a crisp and my stepmom throws away decades of memories without my getting any say in the matter. And then there's all the practical stuff, like how I still only have two hundred bucks and no job and no apartment and my car's all the way back in Phoenix.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes for a moment.
When I open them, I catch Muse's gaze and find him smiling at me, leaning his now bare shoulder against the glass as the leather hoodie hangs casually off his elbow.