NightWhere

by John Everson

  “You can do anything at all here,” Sin-D said again. “We are invisible. We are outside the law. But you’ll never do anything here at the bar. If someone here talks to you, it’s just bullshit.”

  She put her hands on Rae’s breasts, gave them a gentle massage and then pushed. “Get out onto the floor and don’t listen to a word this loser tells you,” she said. Sin-D grinned and pointed to the strobing lights of the dance floor.

  “Go.

  “Get.

  “Fucked!”

  Kendrick shook his head and took a deep sip of his beer. “Whatever,” he said, nonplussed. “I’ll be here waiting when you get back. I’m always waiting.”

  “Because every now and then, there is a chicken that comes back,” Sin-D finished for him. “Ken bats cleanup.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  Sin-D shook her head and pointed towards the dark corners of the room beyond the bar, where men and women danced provocatively in the dark. Farther past them, in the blue light of shadows, he could also make out nude bodies strapped on some kind of contrivance.

  “This is the foyer of NightWhere,” she said. “Over there is the front room. This is the place to have a drink so you can kick off your shoes and move on inside. Sooooo…” she said, “…drink up, and get in there and get it on.”

  Mark took Rae by the hand and led her out into the smoke and lights of the dance floor. “C’mon,” he smiled. “I’ll get you started.”

  Rae kissed him, her mouth warm and soft. He could tell she was already excited. “You always do,” she said.

  An old New Order bass line slapped through the fog and green strobe lights, as the singer sang about playing with his pleasure zone. Rae let the strap of her tissue-thin black blouse slip down her shoulder as she moved her hips and shifted her feet in a careful kaleidoscope across the floor. The blouse was really just strategic. If you looked hard, you could see all of her through it anyway, but it offered the illusion of clothing. It was a lot like this place. The black walls and black floors and mirrors that made it all seem larger and more grand than it really was…all just illusion. The clean smell of the smoke machines and the dancing arcs of light that made the whole place seem like another world. All illusion. It looked like a goth dance club, but this was simply the antechamber. The lobby, for pretense. People gathered here, got their blood pumping with a couple drinks and the ultra dance mix of an ’80s Depeche Mode song and looked for the reason to walk farther inside. Because nobody went anywhere just to stand in the foyer.

  The dance floor was just the appetizer, not the main event.

  People danced singly for a while there, running their hands seductively across their bodies, as if making love to themselves in public. And pretty soon, they weren’t dancing alone anymore. Not long after that, they weren’t dancing at all. At least not upright. And they most likely left the dance floor at that point for the seedier, darker corners of the club.

  The beat from the speakers throbbed all around as Mark and Rae stepped into the mix of people on the floor. There were a dozen or so other couples moving in the circle that had been marked off on its perimeter with chairs and round tables. A few people stood on the sidelines, watching the action, but Rae loved to dance and didn’t slow as they stepped onto the floor. The vibration of the music sank into Mark’s bones, and while he was normally shy about dancing, it didn’t take long to fall into the rhythm. This was a dance floor unlike any normal goth or dance club because here…there were no rules. That was obvious at the start, as Mark watched one bald guy lift the black Harley T-shirt over the shoulders of a blonde woman. He dropped the shirt and fondled her tits right there on the floor as she ground her ass backwards against him. No false pretenses of propriety here.

  Next to them, another couple had been engaged in a slow, very tight sway, but at the sight of the blonde’s disrobing, the woman-a thin little thing with a short-cut shock of black hair-suddenly broke away from the sinuous embrace with an equally rail-thin guy and instead knelt before the sumptuous, formerly Harley-clad, blonde, pressing her face to the blonde’s belly and reaching her hands around to cup the ass of the bald guy, drawing the three of them tight. Her former partner didn’t waste a moment, but instead moved behind the kneeling woman and raised his hand to spank her miniskirted ass. The skirt slipped up after he delivered the first couple blows, driving the small woman’s face against the blonde’s bare belly, before she moved her mouth lower.

  Mark watched the spectacle and Rae bit his ear and whispered, “I think you can get some blonde or brunette here if you want tonight. But you might have to use your hand on them.”

  “You know I don’t like that,” he smiled.

  She slapped his ass playfully. “Well, maybe what you need is a mistress, since you don’t want to be a master.”

  Just then, another man in a black silk button-down shirt split off from where he’d been moving closely with a fat woman whose heavy chest seemed ready to explode from the overly constricted confines of her pink blouse at any moment. He grinned as he shook his hips and stepped across the floor three strides to slip his hands up on Rae’s hips. Mark smirked at the tuft of wiry black hair that escaped the man’s equally black shirt. He had a sudden image of his wife braiding the man’s chest hair. Now that would be a different kink from the usual whips and chains…

  “Those who give it out, get it back double,” the man yelled at her over the music. He leaned in to smell Rae’s neck, then raised a hand and slapped her across the ass. Mark could hear the snap even above the speakers, and Rae visibly stiffened. And then she turned to give Mark her back, and the stranger her smile.

  “I hope so,” Mark heard her say.

  The tall man winked at Mark and pulled Rae in close, kneading her ass as the music changed tempos and went into a steady, pounding pulse. It was machine-gun sex set to music, and the new couple oozed together easily, Rae sinking into his chest and moving her hips to offer him access.

  He toyed with her, moving in and away from her, and then put both palms out in front of her face. Mark watched her grin at the game, and she answered by putting both of her palms on his and pushing their hands into the air as she danced in closer to him, close enough that her nipples brushed lightly back and forth across the man’s chest. Then he moved her hands down from pointing at the ceiling, and her blouse slipped down her thin biceps, exposing the upper half of a smooth breast.

  The man didn’t waste the moment. He put one hand on her upper arm and urged the sleeve lower. Then he pulled her arm up and out of it, and Rae was exposed on the dance floor, one breast hanging out for all to see. The man covered it with himself, palming her nipple in his hand. Instead of fixing herself or pulling away, Rae only tilted her head back and closed her eyes, running a tongue over hungry lips.

  The man leaned in and whispered something. Rae responded with an openmouthed kiss. He accepted, bending in to swallow her tongue as she slipped her fingers up his neck and into his hair. They writhed sinuously together for several minutes, their bodies locked, their mouths hungrily tasting, as their hips still moved with the beat.

  Finally, he began to lead her off the dance floor. As they moved, the stranger began to spank her ass, gently, but continuously, in time to the music. Rae looked over his shoulder and caught Mark’s eye and raised her eyebrows, as if to say wow!

  The green strobes poked the couple’s black outfits full of a hundred pinprick holes as they stumbled farther and farther away from the stage. The sound of the man’s hand against his wife’s ass echoed in time to the music and the two of them drifted across the floor away from Mark. He saw where they were going and shook his head.

  The racks.

  He didn’t understand Rae’s need for pain before accepting pleasure…sometimes it seemed that she wanted the violence more than the novelty of the new men inside her. But he knew he couldn’t give her the pain she craved. He’d tried using the floggers and paddles and he simply couldn’t go through with it. Not in a meaningful w
ay.

  Mark shook his head and smiled. His wife was insatiable; she could easily spread herself for five guys a day and somehow still wake up the next morning wanting more. He had been hurt and jealous once, when he realized that there was no way he could ever fulfill what she needed, not fully. But over time, he grew to realize that she did love him, even if she couldn’t tie herself to only one cock. She loved him even more for permitting her to exercise her needs with other men.

  He let her go, knowing that he’d be the man she went home with. Sometimes he found himself a good lay at these clubs as well, while she indulged her pleasures, but he wasn’t driven to it, as she was. Mark would have been happy to have fucked Rae and only Rae for the rest of his life. She was a dynamo in bed-not surprisingly, since she never tired of slapping the sheets. Mark wasn’t opposed to fucking other women…thanks to Rae, he’d met some amazing females in the past five years at clubs like this. But he didn’t need it.

  He couldn’t give her what she needed, that was for sure.

  She always begged for him to hit her harder, and then begged him not to make her beg. He knew that he could never give her what she craved and so he let her go find it elsewhere, praying each time that she still loved him enough to come back.

  And she always had.

  Across the room, he saw her hold her wrists up in complete subservience, asking to be bound. Mark watched her clothing slip to the painted floor. After a while, he heard the sound of her twisted pleasure bleating above the screams of the techno music.

  He edged his way off the dance floor after two men tried to sandwich him in a dance. In the regular world, Mark was pretty liberal-he let other men fuck his wife and had worn masks and costumes while fucking others himself. He’d given some floggings and taken them too, and he had no judgment on virtually any bacchanalia that Rae or his partners wanted to engage in. But he did have his preferences. And while he’d let a man flog him a time or two, he had no interest in dancing with one.

  At the bar he ordered a bourbon, neat. Sin-D delivered it wearing only a smile. He couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows at her sultry brown skin. A pink jewel glimmered in the club light near the shadow of her belly button, and her breasts looked full and achingly ready for sin. She reminded him of the kind of girl you’d see playing volleyball in the middle of a summer’s day on Miami Beach. He realized that, below her neck, there didn’t appear to be a hair on her body.

  “Looks like you’re a free man already, and I’m just a girl trapped here at the bar. I need to get me a double shot of love,” she said, stepping around the bar to ease her legs up and around his. She straddled his knee and he smelled the scent of vanilla and liquor on her breath. “You buying?”

  Mark laughed at the bad pun and tilted back the bourbon, taking it all down with a burn and a cough.

  “Let me pour you some,” he said and pulled her fully onto his lap. He ran his hands up her naked back and felt knobs of scarred flesh there. So, she likes the taste of the whip too, he thought to himself. After a moment, she slipped off his thighs and led him around the bar to a couch tucked against the wall. “I might need to stop to pour a drink once in a while,” she warned.

  “Occupational hazard,” he began, but her tongue choked out the rest of what he’d been about to say.

  Amelia didn’t pause as she walked into tonight’s NightWhere. She knew the layout by now. No matter what old building they settled in for the night, the space seemed to look exactly the same. Just beyond the doorman was the rookie bar and grill. The newcomers fresh from the Triple A league of swingers clubs and peep show hallways clung there for a while before they discovered what the club was really all about. The Blue Room was the just the starting dance of the damned for those who had been recruited. With its go-go cages and air of total orgiastic abandon, it seemed like nirvana to the first-timer, but the reality was, its offerings were pedestrian compared to the deeper reaches of the club. They needed to prove they were worthy to take that next step before they were invited in. But most of them eventually were. Something set each of them apart from the usual pleasure-seekers at strip and swing clubs. Some deeper weakness, some darker kink. Some need that took them beyond the mundane pleasure-seeker and kink jockey.

  The Blue Room held some S &M trappings-wooden racks with chained manacles lined one wall, where the pain play began. The sound of whips cracking echoed above the industrial dance music now and then, when the synthesizers grew quiet. But the neophytes were still all about the tease-strutting and baring it on the dance floor, switching partners with the unabashed glee of kids set loose without rules for the first time in the midst of a toy store. They tried everyone and everything as fast as they could, anxious to embrace the dark seduction of NightWhere.

  After a few nights, the Watchers intervened. Nothing happened in NightWhere that wasn’t seen by one of their number. No sin was too small to be savored. And those who were ready received a second invitation, different from the ones that got them into the club. The Blue Room was the appetizer. There were some who never really grasped that and never traveled beyond its blue strobe lights. But those people eventually stopped getting invitations to come to NightWhere…because the Blue Room was not the point. Not really.

  The Watchers were quiet, but they were always in the shadows. They walked the club at midnight and passed paper discreetly into waiting palms.

  Amelia had received hers six months ago. And now she wore the invitation around her wrist. The mark of the snake. Its blue-grey scales wound around her skin like a bond. The serpent’s mouth swallowed its tail, the ultimate act of self-indulgence.

  Amelia walked through the middle of the dance floor, letting one hand slide across the hairy chest of a man whose eyes were closed in pleasure. She smiled and ruffled the hair of the head that worked at the man’s groin and then passed on. Getting off on the dance floor was like premature ejaculation. They’d learn.

  She passed the wooden racks where a woman and a man were tied to polished oak arms, as a bare-chested, brawny man swung a flogger in each hand. He smacked the leather straps against the man’s back, which arched with every contact. The woman was braver. Her short, spiky blonde-and-brown hair was matted in sweat as she stiffened with each blow from the leather. Each blow caught her across her small, tight breasts. Her nipples were hard and the sweat pooled in her belly button. The woman whispered one thing after every blow.

  “Harder,” she begged.

  Amelia nodded as she watched. The woman reminded her a lot of herself. Taking it right on the chest. Needing it to go deeper, below the skin.

  She didn’t recognize the body, and so she violated the torture zone, forcing the flogger to stop. Amelia slid one finger beneath the woman’s hair, lifting it from where it had plastered against her forehead.

  “What’s your name?” Amelia asked.

  “Rae,” the woman whispered. “Tell him to make me feel it.”

  Amelia kissed Rae softly on the lips, enjoying the heat of her need there. “I’ll take care of it,” she promised. Then she took the flogger from the big man, who was streaming sweat already from the exercise.

  “Let me show you what she needs,” she said.

  When the first slap of the leather caught Rae’s breasts, she cried out.

  “That’s better, isn’t it?” Amelia asked, and Rae nodded quickly yes, biting her lip as the straps fell again, and then dragged away.

  Amelia whirled her wrist gently, but the sting of the leather on Rae’s flesh was audible every time she let her wrist go. Rae lost control and screamed out at one point, but she didn’t ask for it to stop.

  The man in the rack next to her turned his head to stare at the whipping. His mouth creased, and he blinked back sweat nervously. The sweating “master” laid a hand on Amelia’s shoulder and gripped her tightly, a silent urge to take it easy. But Amelia only hit the girl harder, leaving line after line of red welts along Rae’s belly and thighs and then-smack, smack, smack-working her way up the girl’s body
. Rae’s cries of hurt turned to mangled moans…but there was something orgasmic in the tone as the flogger turned red trails of agony into broken skin. Beads of blood now trailed in the wake of the leather when it bit the skin.

  At last, Amelia set the flogger down and undid Rae’s bonds. She held the trembling woman close and kissed her hard on the mouth and neck, as Rae shivered with the aftermath of her first true paingasm.

  When the trembling stopped, Amelia held Rae’s face between her palms and smiled. Rae struggled with a barrage of feelings; she wanted to kiss Amelia, and slap her at the same time. Her flesh burned, everywhere, and in the back of her mind she wondered how she would be able to wear a bra tomorrow. But mostly she felt a surge of love for this woman who had known exactly how to give her what she craved. No holding back. No halfhearted spankings or slaps. She had drawn blood. Amelia’s eyes held her own with a green flare that was piercing. Filled with a need that the beating had awakened in the other woman’s own flesh.

  “I’ll look for you in The Red,” Amelia said. She bent down to take one last kiss, and was gone.

  Rae sank to the floor and pulled her slut clothes close. She put her arms around her knees and rocked slowly on the floor, closing her eyes now and then to just live in the burn that followed every drip of sweat down her breasts and belly and thighs. Sweet heat.

  The two men stepped over from the other rack and knelt beside her. Their erections were as obvious as their concern.

  “Are you okay?” the flogger asked.

  She looked up at him with eyes crying in desire and pained joy.

  “Oh yes,” Rae said. “This is what I’ve been looking for.”

  She pulled him down to the ground with her, wrapped her arms around his chest and cried.

  Chapter Three

  Deeper

  The anxiousness that had plagued her earlier was gone now, thanks to the warmth and power of wielding the whip. Sometimes she just needed to be reminded of what she really needed. Amelia could fight against herself, but she would never win. She needed what NightWhere gave as much as she needed food or sleep.