“Doesn’t it?” the wraith repeated.
My arms throbbed where he held them, cinching down until my skin stretched tight.
“Yes, Mazzy,” I replied.
“Good boy.” He released one of my biceps to give my face a pat that conveyed more annoyance than affection.
Expelling a breath, Maslow looked me up and down. His anger had been replaced with an almost ravenous sneer.
“Now,” he began, “I’m gonna take what I’m owed plus a little more. Call it a late fee. A small penalty.” Maslow’s features took on a more severe slant as he added, “Next time it’ll be a bigger one. But there won’t be a next time, will there?”
My head wobbled through a shake. “No, Mazzy.”
“No, Mazzy,” he agreed. “Because if anyone uses your holes, you’re gonna come straight to me, loaded with cum and cash. Am I making myself clear?”
I wanted to gag. To cry more than the slow leakstreaming down my face and dripping off my chin. Maslow was clear. Beck was clear. Everything was painfully clear. As someone who thrived in the spotlight, having my existence cast in such a harsh glow made me appreciate darkness. I thought I wasn’t ignorant, but clearly I had been.
“Yes, Mazzy,” I whispered.
The wraith smiled. “Good. Now hold still or I’ll make it hurt.”
At first, nothing changed. He was already touching me, already unbearably close and prepared for what had been inevitable from the start. Then something happened. Like a flicker in the club lights. A wrong note in the music.
My limbs went heavy, and my eyelids drooped. It hit me, slow and seeping: the pull, the pressure, the drain.
Maslow’s fingers curled, and it felt like he’d hooked something deep inside me, some invisible thread stretched from the base of my spine to the back of my skull. Then he pulled. Fist clenched, he yanked it free, and I came undone, unraveling from the inside out.
I gasped as my knees gave.
My vision swam. My lips tingled with numbness.
I couldn’t tell if I was shaking or the world was.
When the wraith finally let go, I slid down the wall. My whole body echoed with emptiness, a shell scraped hollow and discarded.
Maslow stepped back and adjusted his sleeve cuffs while I sat slumped, still alive and breathing because he didn’t takeeverything, only the best parts.
I was subsisting on scraps again. Crumbs I tried to gather into a pathetic pile as the wraith left without a parting word.
As the sound of his footsteps faded, I wrapped my arms around myself. Not for warmth, but for something to hold.My skin throbbed with the aching heat of bruises, the shape of the wraith’s hands stamped into me like some sick signature. I’d ask Darby to cover them later, pretend they weren’t there. Pretend I was fine.
Around the edge of the parted red curtain, I caught sight of my silks hung high in the rigging. So far away. Out of reach.
All I ever wanted was to fly.
But now I felt more grounded than ever.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Beck
It took me a week to work up the nerve to return to the club.
Really, the delay was less nerves and more logistics. I spent one day researching rates for prostitutes in Vegas, then another debating whether a tip was customary or expected. If so, was it calculated in terms of percent or performance? What message did I want to send the man who’d let me fuck him twice? Who I’d called Beauty because it suited him so well, and who suckled my fingers in a way that spurred me to waste an entire afternoon pondering his head game?
I’d gotten off to it. Multiple times. So, should I tip him for the masturbation material that was the memory of his legs, neck, and the lips that I definitely did not kiss?
