I can’t feel him anymore. Can’t hear his heartbeat or sense the vibration of him that I felt outside. It’s like he’s dead. Empty. It was there, though. Tempting me, pulling me into him. And then it changed, died. I heard a new heartbeat after that, a new sound rumbling along with my own and overwhelming my thoughts. The glass panel. I look at it, wondering if Gray felt it, too.
“Thank you,” the man says.
Thank you? What an honest thing to say. I look back at him and stare, bemused by the look of him and what we’ve just done. He threads his belt into the buckle, his fingers nimbly putting himself back together. “Who does that belong to?” he asks, nodding at my wrist.
I look down at the chain dangling from it and pick it up, looping the thin strand of gold back into my grip. Gray. “Why does that matter?”
He looks confused at my question, his lips quirking into the first smile I’ve seen from him. I don’t care if he’s confused or not. In fact, I don’t care about him at all, and my feet walking me to my panties prove it. I slip them on, no interest in the fact that he’s watching me do it, and then leave the room without looking back at him.
The heat hits me again the moment I’m outside the room, loud sounds coming back into my ears. A deep bass rumbles through the whole area, changing my thoughts from the silence I was in. Silence was an attempt at chivalrous and valiant, but I want flamboyant now. Vulgar even. I want fingers on me and in me that fuck without thought or decency.
A smile spreads over my face, as I cut through the crowds again in search of the next distraction, my veins humming with the drug inside. Smells, sounds, visions. These marks on my skin from the fucking I just took. I’m bombarded by a new life waiting. Chivalry or not, this is where I lose myself, and I need more. My blood needs more heat, more touch. More everything.
I watch a man in a tuxedo hitting a woman’s ass, as her mouth crawls down another man’s exposed chest. She seems so enthralled. Lost in her moment. Her fingers work at the man’s pants, unzipping and pushing them over is hips. My breath eases in and out at the sight, slowing from the more hasty intakes I had while that man fucked me. I’m not lost here, maybe she isn’t either. We’re mesmerised by it all, our eyes taking in every sight and scent. It’s all freedom and liberty, no care for the world outside. Lost would mean something we didn’t want. I want it all. And I want Gray with me while I do it, want his cruel eyes and his unamused face near me.
On me.
The music suddenly changes, the cut of a new song interrupting my meandering mood. I smile at the soft chant of a waltz, almost snickering at the sound with all the overindulgence around me. People move in my view, all of them forgetting what moment they’re in and grasping hold of a partner. And then the floor starts to spin. I look at it, then sharply upwards at large ball like lights spinning above. The floor isn’t moving, the people are. All of them. They swing round the room in a unison of waltzing, perfectly poised in their movements.
Another giggle bursts out of me. I can’t help it. All these people, hundreds of them smiling and laughing as they sway around a room in a dance. There’s an excess of pink clothes. Some suits and long ball gowns. Tight black rubber outfits, some with collars around their throats and wrists. Hands clasped, fingers poised on shoulders. Leather and lace everywhere, and yet they’re dancing an old fashioned ballroom dance.
“What is this place?” murmurs out of me.
It’s heaven and hell, a nirvana of fantasy and exploration.
I giggle again, spinning my own feet, and stare upwards at the lights again. They bounce and glisten in time to the waltz, the very fabric of the room vibrating and shaking. I can feel it under my heels like I felt the screen under my hands earlier, feel it boring into me. I want to dance, need to. I’ll find a partner and swing to the vibrations, fall into whatever hysteria I’m in.
“Hannah?”
I turn slowly and look at Gray, head tilted at his features. They’re so dark and torrid under these lights around us. Stormy and bleak. I lose myself in them for a while, no conversation in the way of our gaze. He smiles. It’s only a slight lift of his lips, barely removing the look of anger he carries so well, but I know that smile. I can feel it on me, in me. I can feel the vibration of his body all over me, the lack of actual contact irrelevant. I watch the air move around his smile, my hand reaching to swish it around his face. It blurs and changes, morphing the background into nothing but indistinct colours twirling and moving behind him. I’m spinning. Or the room is. I giggle and look at him some more, enjoying the view.
“You watched me,” I state.
“Yes.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes.”
The floor keeps revolving around us, people’s faces blurring behind him, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t change his stance at all as I ask questions. It’s just us two now. No one else but a cycle of air spinning around us, blurred colours and sounds.
“Did you feel me like I felt you?”
“Yes.”
Yes.
A sigh sweeps through me, my whole body exhaling in a relief I’m not sure I understand. It loosens the last remnants of confusion in me, making this place seem more wonderful than it was a few minutes earlier. We’ll live here. Stay. Relax and enjoy. Yes. Nothing other than that word. Yes, he felt me. Yes, he was with me. We were together, regardless of that other man or that screen between us. “What do you want me to do next?”
I don’t know why I asked that, but his stare suddenly means more than anything around me. I wait, expecting the answer to come quickly, but it doesn’t. Nothing leaves his lips. He just stands and looks at me, quizzically drawing his gaze over my features. We’re bound in that. Nothing meaning anything other than the gaze and the vibrations under our feet. There’s a ring around us. A pulsing wall that only exists in our imagination. Maybe it’s the pills. It must be.
“Orange or white,” he says, reaching into his pocket.
The small bottle rests in his large hand, the cap being taken off and pills spilling onto his palm. I watch them tumble, no memory of what each one meant anymore. I don’t even know what I’ve already taken, but I want more of it. I don’t care now. This distraction is everything I want to linger in. It heightens and amplifies, making the usual seem immaterial.
“All of them,” I mutter, turning to look out into the sea of bodies still moving. “Any of them.”
His hand comes over my shoulder, a white and blue pill in his fingertips. I open my mouth, moving it towards his fingers without any care for what they are. I just want more of this, want to slip into no thought other than him and here. I hear the sharp intake of breath as my tongue wraps over his fingers, and then I feel the moment he begins snatching his hand away from me before he actually does it.
My fingers clasp around his hand, the chain going up to his wrist before he’s managed to take it away from me. My tongue lingers there on his fingertips, taste buds exploding because of it. One lap, two. I look at the chain linking us, stare at it between our bodies, and lick across his fingers for a third time. Salty. Dense.
A sigh leaves me from deep inside, giving me a new sensation. But then he tugs slowly, removing my grip from his wrist and turns me to look at him. Still no words. We’re still locked in some circle that is only ours while the room moves around us, until he picks up his wrist and looks at it, a wry smirk beginning to form on his face.
“For you, or for me?” he asks.
“Either. Both.” I don’t know.
I don’t know anything other than this connection.
More time with no words spoken, the noise around us becoming nothing other than a heartbeat, a pulse of dull thuds and aches, and then someone’s in between us. I watch, dazzled by a new face, and take a step back. He doesn’t let me. His arm wraps around my waist, dragging me closer. I’m moved before I know what’s happening, his feet driving me into the sea of bodies. Gray? I sweep my gaze back to where he was, trying to focus, but he’s already disappeare
d from view.
“Stop thinking,” the man says. I look back up at him, taking in his features, as I’m turned and twirled through the dance. “You couldn’t be in safer hands.”
Another handsome man, this time covered with a dark tan to match his eyes. Less torrid than Gray’s, though. They’re calmer, amused at me maybe. I smile and look at the background spinning behind his face, my head leaning back into the continuous spin. I’m held so tightly in his grip, as if my own feet mean little to the movement he’s making.
“This is my dance,” he says. “My wedding dance. Have you met her yet?” I stare again, confusion muddling me at his words. “She’s a bitch. Don’t decide to like her, Mrs Tanner. It’s all a veneer.”
My eyes widen at his use of my name, feet almost tripping over themselves to stop, but we keep spinning, his body leading me without effort. I shrug in his grip, trying to get away from it and the name he just used. Again, he doesn’t let me, just keeps me tight against him, continuously twirling and spinning.
“I don’t like that name,” snarls out of me.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“But it’s your name,” he drawls, half laughing. His eyes bore into mine, barely any effort in his body as he guides us through the maze. “Are you grieving your loss? Or fucking it out of yourself. I’m intrigued.”
I shirk again, trying to get out of his grip. “Where’s Gray?”
“Being dull. I’m not dull. Talk to me about fucking.”
I don’t know what to do with that statement, and over and over again we spin, to the point where I struggle to keep up. I frown, unsure if it’s the dance or the pills making me falter. I don’t know. Maybe one day I’ll understand where I am, or who this man is, or who the rest of them are, but for now the body’s just bump and glide and we keep turning.
I glance at my wrist, noting the chain dangling without Gray on it. Why did he take the chain off? I thought that couldn’t happen. He said he’d be there. My gaze searches the crowds for him, looking amongst the many. He should be here now, attached to me. He’s nowhere to be seen, though. Gone. I’m just twirling, never-ending without the support he offered me.
But then the man holding me abruptly stops.
I stumble over my own feet, body slamming into his and my head rebounding off his chest. It makes me stagger backwards, wondering why the dance has stopped. The music hasn’t, and everyone else is still moving.
“You do know you can’t have him, don’t you?” I right my feet and try taking a step away, create some distance. I’m clamped tighter black eyes staring down at me.
“What?”
“Gray. You can’t have him, Mrs Tanner.”
My brain tries to catch up with the conversation, but it’s unable to process thought let alone conversation. I stagger again, eventually disentangling myself from whoever he is, and find my own balance. He smirks and moves into me again, crowding me in the middle of this circle of space, and then pushes me harshly like a rag doll.
I stumble and trip on the trail of my dress, and then another hard push hits me before I’ve found my feet again. I land hard, knees taking the brunt of my fall. He laughs, continues laughing, until silence descends regardless of the noise all around me “How is your mind, Mrs Tanner? Spinning?”
My head whips around from the floor, hands trying to pull me up. Escape, that’s what I need. Away from this man. He’s confusing. Ominous. And he pushed me down here. Why? Confusion starts taking over, but the sea of bodies keeps moving around me, as I pull up to my feet again, creating a wall too fast to cut through. “You should leave, Mrs Tanner. He was wrong to tempt you here.”
I take another few steps backwards, and a prickly sensation overtakes the fun I was in. I’m shivering under his gaze, scared, and unable to either leave it or rally against it. I grab my head, trying to make sense of the situation I’m in, but the circle keeps spinning, a blur of bodies moving around his perfectly still stance in the middle of it. He’s so big, tall. Hands in his pockets, eyes focused on me and nothing else. “I … I don’t want him,” I eventually manage, stuttering the words.
“Yes you do,” he says, coming closer again. The room shifts with him, the circle spinning around him moving to accommodate his steps. “Be careful with that if you intend to stay. You’ll grieve twice over. It will hurt more if it’s because of him. You should choose someone else.”
My mouth moves, trying to counter whatever he’s insinuating, but everything’s a mess of confusion and misperceptions. Even this fucking room sways and muddles me now, leaving me shivering and trembling in the atmosphere instead of feeling light hearted. I stare at his face, watching as it morphs from amused to malicious. Dark circles form under his eyes from nowhere, veins seemingly visible under his skin.
I clutch the gold chain and back away, heels gingerly moving, but a body slams into me, sending me crashing sideways into the rush of couples. Another jolt and bang and my legs turn me, my head desperately thrashing back and forth to find a path through the endless floor. It doesn’t appear, and I end up twisting and flaying, my body being barged around as all the voices laugh at me.
I shrink inwards, suddenly small and fearful in this maze of corridors and contradictions. I can’t breathe with it all so fast around me, can’t see my way through or find my way out. My throat rattles around words of help, but I can’t get them out. I turn and watch that man following me, the sea of bodies opening for him with every step he takes. He’s laughing at me, a dark cackle coming out of his mouth, as he moves. What does he want?
Gray?
My head shakes. Grieving twice over? What did that mean? One hand leaves the man’s pockets, the fingers reaching for me across open space. I turn and head into the bodies again, raking a way through them without any care for who I knock out of the way. Run. Must run. Get away.
More and more bodies, though. More and more laughing.
I can’t breathe, as I’m banged and bashed. Can’t…
A solid block of chest hits me, hands gripping my arms. I batter my fists at it, head thrashing some more to get away from the man. He’s coming. He is. He’s coming with his eyes and his face of veins and his laughing. The grip of a hand wraps around both my wrists, pinning me still, and then I’m lifted. I feel my weight come off the floor, heels falling from my feet.
“Nooooooo,” screams out of me. “He’s coming!”
My face gets turned into a chest, held there by some force I can’t escape, and I hear a voice mumbling. Another voice joins in, hushed words mumbled under the music that’s still blaring. Can’t understand them, though. Nothing makes sense. It’s all noise and chaos and bad men with veins in their face and fingers that grip tightly. I tap my fingers in his grip, clutching the chain desperately and trying to find a rhythm.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
There isn’t any rhythm, though. No pulse. No sense of a heartbeat anymore.
I’m alone.
Chapter 18
Gray
“F aith will deal with her. Calm down,” he says.
My feet pace the screen like a trapped wolf, eyes looking into the room and the bed she’s laid out on. The dress has been removed, a heavy blanket thrown across her body and tucked in tightly. I sneer and lift out the bottle of pills, meticulously checking each pill as they fall into my hand. They’re exactly what they should be, colours exact, the ingrained stripes in place.
“Gray. She’ll be fine,” Malachi says, as I watch Faith pull a syringe out of the drawers.
The serum gets pulled into it and then injected into Hannah’s arm, regardless of the thrashing still continuing. I know it’s safe. It’s my own serum. But the minutes pass by, Faith’s hands holding her firmly on the bed, and the thrashing continues.
I keep pacing and looking at the gold chain being flung around in her turmoil, part ready to go down there and deal with her myself. It’ll make it worse. I know that. It’ll make her centre on me more when she comes round, make
her think I’m her counter, her balance. I’m not. Fucking hero? Unlikely, no matter how much I want in that room with her now.
Thankfully, the lashing out starts to slow before I do something inconceivable and break my own rules. I drink some water, trying to ease my reaction to the stimulant off, and pace some more by the window. Stupid. Idiotic. A smile forms on Faith’s mouth, her body gliding upwards from the bed. She looks at the screen we’re behind and winks at me, as if she’s enjoying my torment up here. Bitch. Never has been anything other than that. And her continued stare at me, head tilted as if she’s trying to work out how to wind me up further, is fucking annoying.
“Why are you so wound up?” Malachi asks.
I turn and look at him, then look straight back at Hannah. I don’t know why I am, but I am. This shouldn’t have happened. She should have been having a good time, relaxing, distracting herself for the time we’re here. This is not how it was supposed to go. Yes, I was playing with fire letting myself connect to her, but she wasn’t supposed to trip out like this. This isn’t the type of distraction anyone wants.
“Did you do anything to her?” I grumble.
“Me? What do you take me for?”
My head swings back sharply, a glower sent straight at him. “She was fine with me. And then not with you. What did you do?”
He laughs and relaxes back into his chair, one heavy booted foot kicked up onto another chair. “I can’t help being terrifying. It’s in my nature.” I glance back at her, watching as she breathes evenly under the blanket. “She was pretty as she ran, though. I enjoyed the stalk.”
A Distraction of Lies Page 12