“Darklands is better,” he shouted back as he moved her easily through the crowded room. It wasn’t until they reached a door that had the words ‘Sinners Lounge’ on it that he paused. He turned his head in her direction, smiling wickedly. “You’re going to see some freaky shit when we go through these doors. There are rules, Olivia. One, you belong to me,” he reminded her as he tugged lightly on the torque around her neck. “That should keep most away; however, if anyone should ask, I am your master, your lover, and no one else is to touch you. Two, don’t make eye contact with the men; it’s considered a challenge to most. Three, don’t leave my fucking side for any reason. We get in and we get out, understand?”
“What the hell is behind that door?” she whispered breathlessly as his rules replayed through her mind.
“I’ll show you,” he said with a wicked grin before he pushed the doors open and pulled her gently through them.
Pulsating, sensual music and muffled moans of multiple people exploded around them the moment he pushed the door open, and the sound of it closing behind her was deafening. It was as if they had left the safety of the real world—and she immediately wanted to turn and leave.
She halted, unsure if she wanted to continue past the entrance. “What is this place?” she whispered. She jumped as the sound of a whip meeting flesh along with a woman’s moans of pleasure erupted from only a few yards away.
“This would be an exclusive, invite-only sex club. One of the most notorious ones on the West Coast of America,” he explained with a lopsided smile.
“I need to go,” she said as she shook her head, unsure of what the hell they were doing here. She listened to the moans and the whip as it snapped against the flesh again. Oh shit, she needed to run, quickly.
“I have you; no one here will touch you, Olivia. You’re mine.”
“I don’t belong here,” she whispered vehemently.
“Every woman deserves to be set free from the confined cage society tries to lock her into. Come; see what it is before you just reject it.”
He didn’t give her time to argue as he grabbed her hand and pulled her around the corner and into a room where the whip was meeting flesh, and the subtle moans of pleasure grew louder. A crowd surrounded a woman as a huge hulking man wielded the whip.
She was naked and secured with rope that made it impossible for her do anything other than stand on her tiptoes as she was whipped from behind. Welts crisscrossed her back, butt and thighs yet the skin didn’t look as if it was broken. Bile rose in the back of Olivia’s throat, and she pushed it down reminding herself that she’d been tied up once, and she’d enjoyed it. A lot more than she ever thought she would.
Olivia forced herself to remain stoic and ignore the people who encouraged the man to continue the woman’s punishment. She counted each lash, and as the crowd shouted, she watched as he dropped the whip and moved towards her, his hand gripping the woman’s hair harshly as he cupped her pussy with his other hand.
Olivia couldn’t imagine being placed on exhibit as this woman was, and yet she looked as if she wanted this.
“She’s willing?” Olivia asked in a barely audible voice.
“She’s more than willing,” a woman with bright red hair said as she turned back to answer Olivia. “She’s chosen to serve him, and most of us would beg on our knees to be served by him. Look at his cock,” the woman said as her eyes moved back to the naked male, who did have a hugely erect cock that he was currently rubbing between the woman’s legs. The woman moaned and did her best to bend her hips for his touch.
Olivia angled her head a bit to find Ristan watching them, his hand subtly rubbing her exposed leg through the side slit in her skirt. Her body responded to him as the sound of flesh meeting flesh resonated in time with the tantric music. Her eyes moved back as the couple fucked in front of the crowd, but as quickly as he had pushed inside of her, he pulled out as yet another woman was added to the scene, this one carried by four men and placed before the man.
This one was beautiful, and had blonde hair and green eyes. She was younger than the other woman; Olivia figured this woman was at least as old as she was. Her arms were secured behind her back, and as Olivia watched, the male switched partners. He moved to the new girl, easily picking her up as the crowd gave him their approval. He hoisted her onto a raised platform, forcing her to balance on it as he gripped her hair, and, without waiting, pushed his cock into her body as she screamed.
The crowd gave murmurs of appreciation as he took her from behind, and as Olivia watched, others moved in behind him, some moving to the forgotten woman, each helping bring her down from the ropes, and before she was even fully allowed to stand, two men were buried inside her body.
She cried out as if it was a gift, and Olivia turned to look at people in the crowded room. Some were pleasuring themselves as they watched as others took what the person beside them offered. More couples and threesomes were making use of the comfortable-looking loungers that ringed the room. Olivia felt her cheeks grow heated from the scene before her, and before her heart could burst from her chest, Ristan held out his hand for her.
“We can go now,” he said softly, waiting for her to gather her scattered wits before he led her from the room and down another hallway.
“That wasn’t right,” she whispered through a dry mouth.
“They wanted it, and if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be here,” he said quietly, reminding himself as to how naïve she really was. “Not everything with sex is black and white; there’s a lot of gray area. Some like to behave badly, so they will be punished or they like being an exhibitionist. Some women need it to get off, like those women out there. To them it’s not degrading, it’s freedom. It’s freedom to be who they really are without being judged for it, or hiding it. Too many people in this world spend their lives thinking they are sick and try to stamp down and hide their desires, when in reality, everyone has their own kinks. Not everyone’s ideal sex is monogamous, or simple. At least those here have embraced what works for them and no one gets hurt unless they ask for it.” He grinned at his little play on words as she shook her head slightly.
“I don’t understand it, I get that. But I would never do that, nor would I put myself on display for others to see,” she said out loud, needing him to know where she stood on it. “I prefer a closed door, and if that makes me a prude, so be it.”
“Most have their reasons for what they do, and some just don’t give a shit what others think. Every woman in that crowd, except for you, would have jumped to be in those women’s places. They didn’t come here to just hang out, they came here to fuck. It’s a sex club, not a mall, Olivia, and by Fae standards, that was very tame.” He gave her a warm, indulgent smile. The scene out there, by Human standards, had been wild. For a sheltered girl like Olivia, it was probably the wildest thing she’d ever encountered.
“I’m not sure why the ownership is so insistent on the dress code if they’re just planning on ripping each other’s clothes off anyway,” she mused thoughtfully, and heard a soft chuckle from Ristan at her observation.
He gripped the bag tighter as he walked her up a flight of stairs and through a hallway lined with dark windows. She occasionally turned her head to stare at her own reflection and wondered just who it was who stared back at her. She had seen a lot over the last few days, and she’d never considered herself judgmental. Never. This went way beyond anything she could have ever imagined and she wasn’t sure if it was the shock of watching people be ‘punished,’ live and up close like that while an entire crowd had witnessed it, or how she’d felt watching it.
Ristan turned them towards a large door and knocked on it as she chewed her bottom lip nervously. She wasn’t even sure why she was so nervous. The only thing she knew with certainty, was the further down the hall they’d gone, the more uneasy her nerves had gotten.
“E
nter,” a male’s voice said. Ristan twisted the knob, and Olivia felt the uneasiness of her nerves spike to screaming levels.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The office they entered was immense. The entire wall directly across from where they entered the room was glass. It gave the occupants of the office a bird’s eye view of the nightclub below. Olivia figured it must have been made of two-way glass, or a mirror, which she must have missed as they’d entered the club earlier.
A man stood with his back to them, watching the revelers in the nightclub. He was similar in height to Ristan, and his black hair barely skimmed his broad shoulders. From where she stood, she could see the fine details in his suit and knew it was tailored and probably cost more than her yearly salary at the Guild. He didn’t turn in their direction immediately, so Olivia continued to look around the office.
It had a masculine design with dark mahogany and leather furniture, obviously belonging to the man who couldn’t be bothered to turn towards them. On one of the walls was a painting of a beautiful woman with caramel colored hair. She was wearing a dress from the early 17th century, and even though she didn’t smile in the portrait, her eyes seemed to look straight through the viewer, and Olivia could sense the woman was more than just beautiful, she was powerful.
Olivia couldn’t help but stare at the painting. Before she could stop herself, she was moving towards it with an itching in the back of her skull that gave her the notion that the subject in the painting resembled someone she knew. Kendra? No, this woman was more delicate than Kendra, and her eyes weren’t the same color. She did look as if they shared some sort of a familial bond, and this beautiful woman was dressed in an elaborate gown that probably would have been the height of fashion sometime around 1610.
“She’s beautiful, is she not?” a deep male’s voice said right next to her, causing her to gasp as her eyes moved to the man beside her. She hadn’t heard a single noise to alert her that he’d even moved. The man seemed to be oozing power, and had somehow masked that power when they’d first entered the room. She felt as if she was standing next to a transformer that was actively conducting power. Raw, physical power.
“She’s very pretty,” she agreed.
“And deadly,” he added.
“She looks as if she was looking beyond the painter, to something or someone in the background. Whatever it was, it made her uncomfortable,” Olivia said, sensing the woman’s mood from the way she held her body; it was tense, as if she wasn’t posing by choice. “Almost like she didn’t want to sit for this painting,” she amended.
“That’s an astute observation from only looking at it for a few moments,” Lucian said.
“Her hands are the giveaway. Her knuckles are white, as if she’s tense,” she pointed out, not daring to actually touch the painting in case it was actually real. It looked real, yet it also looked like it was painted with oil based paint. It also looked as if the red of her lips was a beautiful shade of ‘Dragon’s Blood’ which was a pigment made from Asian gum resin that women used long ago to color their lips. “Is this real?” she blurted.
“Very,” he said softly, his eyes locked on the woman’s as if he was lost in memory.
“Do you know how much this is worth?” she asked as she turned to fully look at him, and paused.
He was freaking gorgeous, but where her heart beat faster for Ristan, it sank to her stomach and the hair on her nape rose, so she took a giant step backwards. His eyes moved to hers, holding them captive as she paused. Black? What the hell kind of creature had black eyes? His irises were almost the color of midnight. He smiled; she almost expected him to have fangs, but instead he had perfect teeth.
“Olivia,” he said as he nodded his head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Olivia turned to find Ristan and found she’d almost scooted right into him as she’d sought safety. He was less than an inch away and she welcomed the heat his body offered along with the protection.
“Olivia, meet Lucian,” Ristan said as he pulled her body against his.
She held out her hand for Lucian to shake, only to watch as he dismissed it and moved away. Her eyes moved down the length of him and didn’t mind the view as he moved to his desk.
“You have what I seek?” he asked when he was seated and looked in their direction again.
“I do,” Ristan replied as he swung the bag off his shoulder and moved to where Lucian was seated. He carefully placed the bag on the desk. Ristan opened the top of the black bag and slid it down around the box as Olivia watched. Ristan pulled out several file folders that had been on the top of the box and set them on the desk before pushing them closer to Lucian. Lucian’s eyes closed briefly, but whether it was in relief, or something else, she couldn’t be sure.
“The Guild had it, yes?” he asked, his eyes briefly moving to Olivia and back to Ristan.
“They had it,” Olivia answered, her body tensing as the box was handed to Lucian; something inside of her warned her to run. As if she could sense he wasn’t what he appeared on the outside, and all of her alarm bells were going off like crazy.
“It belongs to the Guild,” she said as she moved to take a seat in the chair beside Ristan.
“Is that what you think?” he asked softly, as his eyes moved with her as she lowered herself in the chair, following her with humor marked in their inky depths. “Just because they claim something doesn’t make it theirs. This box was stolen decades ago.”
Decades ago? He barely looked to be over thirty. His fingers gently caressed the box, which drew her eyes to it. She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and a sense of foreboding she couldn’t shake.
“Do you know what is inside the box?” he asked, his eyes never straying from her face.
“No; neither did the Guild, from what I was told. I have no idea where the Elders hid the key, or if they even had it.”
“It doesn’t need a key,” he said with his lips curling into a sardonic smile. “Hence why people who don’t know what something is shouldn’t fuck with it.”
“How does it open then, if not with a key?” she whispered, her curiosity getting the better of her.
“The world isn’t ready for it to be opened,” he said assertively. He opened the file folders that Ristan had placed on the desk and briefly skimmed through the pages. He pushed away from his desk and opened the top drawer, from which he pulled out what looked to be an old set of skeleton keys. He pushed them across the desk to Ristan and sat back in his chair. “These keys belong to a cabin just outside of Chelan; it’s heavily guarded by Seekers, and the runes have been placed by a powerful coven of Witches. No one can get out of it once they’ve entered unless the owner allows it. This is the deed,” Lucian said as he opened a lower drawer and pulled out a package. “Congratulations,” he said crisply. He used a dagger that had a bone handle to cut the package open, and the look of pure bliss on his features made her wonder just what type of bone it had been created from. He pulled out a piece of paper and placed it on the desk and slid it to Ristan. “Sign it and the house and ninety-two acres it sits on are yours. Of course, the Seekers will be a permeant fixture there since they died on the land. They’ll protect you and anyone who is inside the house.”
“Seekers?” Olivia asked, and her eyes narrowed as he turned those midnight eyes in her direction.
“Cursed souls,” he explained slowly. “They’ve been prevented from entering heaven or hell, and are much akin to Revenants. Only where the Revenants terrorize the living, the Seekers work in the opposite to protect them.”
“So, ghosts?” she questioned.
“Not quite. More like cursed souls who have no place that their immortal essence can go to. They are outside of heaven or hell—purgatory or any of the ‘circles’ Dante described,” he explained as his eyes watched Ristan’s progress and narrowed on him. Oli
via turned to Ristan and watched as he carefully read every minute detail of the Deed of Trust he’d been handed. “It is also important to keep in mind that Seekers prefer to protect only those who they deem worthy of it. If they find the occupants lacking in the moral department, they can make the stay on the property quite hellish.”
“Oh,” she replied easily and folded her hands in her lap as she turned away from the obsidian eyes that looked through her, rather than at her.
“Is that why you’re so eager to be rid of it?” Ristan asked as he lifted his head to smile at Lucian.
“Actually, they don’t tend to fuck with me,” he said absently as he looked over the paperwork. “It’s done,” Lucian said as he pushed a button on his desk and nodded at Ristan. “Our business is concluded, but you’re more than welcome to enjoy the club for as long as you wish. I had a room cleaned and furnished for your preferred taste of pleasure. I thought you’d prefer not to share your woman, since you were protective of her the last time we met, and you’ll not be disturbed for the duration of your stay. The doors to the club have been secured for the night and there’s no leaving until morning. Safety measures against my enemies. You understand, I hope.”
“We’ve become very selective of who we allow inside our own clubs as well,” Ristan admitted, even though he didn’t like the idea of Olivia being locked in a sex club with creatures that belonged in hell slinking around it.
Olivia turned a wide-eyed look at Ristan as the scene from earlier pushed into her mind. She was about to turn and ask Lucian if they could make an exception for them to leave, but he wasn’t in his chair, and she hadn’t heard him even move, again!
“I don’t make exceptions, little girl,” Lucian whispered against her ear before he pulled out her chair for her to stand. Ristan moved so quickly that she hadn’t even heard him until she was pulled close to him, and the room grew tense. The air was thick enough to cut with a knife. Her eyes moved from Lucian’s to Ristan, and back.
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