ChapterNine
The road to Hunt Club meandered to the point Laina worried she’d misread Monty’s directions. But when the narrow drive ended at a row of picketers blocking a twelve-foot wrought-iron gate, she was concerned for an entirely different reason.
“Not in our town!” a woman yelled. She shook her fist at Laina on the other side of the window.
“Preaching to the choir,” Laina murmured under her breath. The picketers were from a place called Eternal Light Ministries. A dozen or more men and women pressed around her car, chanting and waving freshly Sharpie-d signs.
“God hates porn!” a darkly dressed man screamed through her windshield.
A black woman in a uniform exited the gatehouse with one hand on her gun.Damn!Security here was packing heat. “You can’t block the gate! Move aside.” The picketers parted, still chanting, and Laina pulled up to the window.
“I’m the temp,” Laina said, handing the guard the fake ID Monty had given her.
“Sorry about this. They come for every opening.” She rolled her dark eyes and sighed heavily. “We can’t call the police or take action as long as they remain peaceful and don’t block the entrance.”
The guard glanced from the fake ID to Laina’s face, then checked a list of names on a yellow clipboard. The ebony skin of her forehead furrowed.
The seconds ticked by, causing Laina’s stomach to clench. “I was added at the last minute”—she glanced at the woman’s name tag—“Taneesha.”
Taneesha frowned in her direction and flipped the page. “Ah, here you are. Anita Woody.” She handed the ID back to Laina through the window without the hint of a giggle at Monty’s attempt at humor. Professional. “Follow the drive around and to the left. You want to take the service drive to the back entrance. The staging area is in Studio 2.”
The massive wrought-iron gate in front of her opened, a scrollworkH Cparting to allow her through. She couldn’t see much beyond the gate due to a row of thick hedges that obscured anything beyond the next bend in the drive.
“Staging area?” Laina grumbled. As if she were a thing requiring assembly prior to use. She gently pressed the accelerator, cruising at the posted fifteen miles per hour down the smaller, less decorative service drive. At the end of the densely forested route, she tapped the brakes and looked up. Way up.
Hunt Club was a castle. An honest-to-goodness, belonged-on-a-mountain-in-Germany castle. It was bigger than Rivergate Manor and absolutely dwarfed Monty’s.
“What are you getting yourself into?” she asked herself. She coasted into a parking space at the back of a small lot near a relatively plain-looking door labeledStudio 2.
If the building resembled a fairy-tale castle, the man who opened the door for her could have passed for Geppetto, with a shock of white hair and thin, wire-rimmed glasses typical of clockmakers of times past. The man rubbed his rounded belly through his Tommy Bahama shirt and raised two approving eyebrows.
“They just keep makin’ ’em prettier and prettier,” he said through a wily grin. Extending his hand, he introduced himself. “I’m Wesley. I’ll be painting you today.”
“Nice to meet you.” She slipped past him and joined a small crowd of men and women waiting inside. At five foot eleven inches, Laina was used to being the tallest woman in the room, but the people inside dwarfed her. Each woman was more beautiful than the last: long-limbed, graceful perfection on high heels. She wondered fleetingly whether Jason’s fling was among them. The men didn’t disappoint either. Tall and stunningly handsome, their collective good looks made her head spin. She hadn’t seen so many muscles since the last time her pack shifted.A room filled with underwear models. She smirked. What she would give to take a picture and send it to Becca.
“You can leave your clothes in the lockers,” Wesley announced to the crowd, pointing at a bank of cubbies. “If your hair is longer than ear length, please tie it back for the painting process.” Before Wesley had finished speaking, the people around her started shedding clothing as though they were on fire.
Laina was no stranger to nudity. Being a werewolf meant that, by necessity, she stripped in front of her packmates once a month. Aside from preserving her wardrobe, stripping avoided any potential complications for her wolf. The difference between that and this was she knew her pack intimately. These people were strangers. Would they judge her? Would they laugh at her paunchy stomach or the scar on her hip where she’d been bitten as a young wolf? Would anyone question the tribal phoenix tattoo on her upper-right shoulder?
Her hands trembled as she drifted closer to the lockers.Fucking Monty.She chose a cubby and placed her purse inside, followed by her jacket, black T-shirt, and bra. When all her clothing was perfectly folded and the cubby was closed, she took a deep breath and turned to face the crowd. The women were completely naked. The men were wearing thongs that left nothing to the imagination. All of them looked totally at ease, already in line behind a cart laden with spray-painting equipment.
Wesley’s gaze locked on her first, his smile fading as he focused on the apex of her thighs. A red-hot blush crept onto her cheeks as, one by one, the others turned, lips parting. A breathy giggle escaped from behind someone’s raised hand.
What?She thought. Do I have some kind of rare vaginal deformity?She glanced down at herself and at the other women. One thingwasvastly different from her body and theirs down there—hair.
“I have a razor. I’ll help her.” A woman with a sleek platinum-blond bob jogged to her side and pulled a small vanity kit from her locker as the others resumed their conversations behind her. “You must be new.”
“First time,” Laina said.
“The latex doesn’t lay right over hair, and even if it did, believe me when I say removing it afterward would be a time-consuming and painful experience. Most of us go as far as to shave or wax our arms before a performance.” She ran a finger along the silky smooth skin of her forearm. “Although, a hot soapy bath will eventually soak it off.”
Laina glanced at the light dusting of dark hair over her arm. “I’ll take it all off.”
“Good idea.” The woman handed her a razor and a small can of shaving cream. “There’s a bathroom through that door.”
“Thank you,” Laina said genuinely.
“You’re welcome. Us girls have to stick together. If you need anything else, you know where to find me.” She gestured toward the line. “I’m Nickie, by the way.”
