I can almost hear the crowd breathing as one in the darkness, like we’ve become a combined living entity in our united experience and anticipation of what is coming. On a collective inhale, pyrotechnics fire towers of sparks, lighting up the darkness and breaking the silence.
The bright flash briefly reveals a robed figure standing in the center of the stage. I think my eyes are playing tricks on me until a red spotlight shines straight down onto the stage, proving it really is him, the masked man. I shiver at the eerie sight.
A primal beat with a low singing voice starts in. The suspense builds until the hooded man drops back his hood, revealing the raven mask. The crowd goes absolutely wild, as he spins, raising his arms as if embracing us all. With a flourish, he whips off his robe and flings it to the circling strongmen below.
This guy is magnificent, tall and lithe, heavily muscled but not beefy. He has on tight leather pants and struts across the stage to stand facing me. I look from his masked face, down his upper body, rippling with muscle and crisscrossed with a leather harness that looks like it was custom made to highlight the dips and valleys of his body. Light glints off his nipple piercings.
I can feel his heated stare through the mask. Something niggles at the back of my brain—I should know who this is. Wait, it can’t be. Can it?
As if in answer to my unvoiced question, he rips the mask off and tosses it to a waiting strongman below.
“Luke?” I gasp his name out loud, shocked to see him on the stage. There is no way he should be able to hear me over the music, but he meets my eyes, and in the red spotlight, his smile is demonic and sinful. He leans down to grab a whip in each hand from his helpers off stage.
Fuck, this is hot on the heels of that dream, or vision, or whatever that erotic happening in the stairwell was. He winks at me and spins, showcasing his magnificently inked back. An enormous raven covers his rippling muscles, and as he lifts his arms, it appears ready to take flight. It's stunning. He’s stunning.
Like a Viking warrior, he had braided and pulled back his long hair. He struts along the perimeter, swirling his whips, wrapping one around his body while he does some cracking work with the other and then with both together.
The sound of them is deafening and each crack ratchets my heart rate up. Once he whips the crowd into a frenzy, literally, he makes his way back to stand on the edge, facing me again.
He hands the whips off to another of the strongmen and they pass him a fresh set. He spins to face the audience and yells, “Do you want to burn?”
The crowd goes absolutely wild.
“Do you want to burn?” he yells again, tendons in his neck straining, spinning in a circle.
I yell along with the crowd, “Yes!”
We all want to burn with him. I feel the mad mob mentality taking over, all of us swept up in the show's drama. Yes, we want fire from this gorgeous man. I swig down the last of my bourbon, the fire on my tongue matching the mood of the crowd.
Yes, I want to burn with Luke.
He faces me again, staring directly into my eyes. I can’t breathe, can’t blink, as he lowers the tips down to where the waiting strongmen light them up. The flames lick up the length of the whips, and he sprints to the center of the stage and starts cracking them in an impressive display of speed.
They crack in quick succession, breaking the barrier of sound. He dances around, wielding the whips with speed, precision, and so much damn showmanship. It feels primal. Raw.
The poppers sail through the air, cracking repeatedly. He looks like controlled chaos as his body moves, in complete dominance over the fire whips and the audience.
The noise from the crowd surges louder and louder, almost overpowering the sounds of the cracking. The firelight flickers over his body as he spins. His nearly naked torso ripples and flexes, sweat dripping down. I want to chase the drops with my tongue.
I think every person here is ready to tear this man apart. He pivots again and meets my eyes, moving the whips faster and faster until the flames extinguish. We all leap to our feet, yelling and cheering.
Luke spreads his arms wide and drops his head back, yelling, “Do you want more?”
Fuck, yes. I want more.
“More, more, more,” immediately breaks out, a massive chant from the audience. He’s awakened the beast in all of us and we all want more fire. More Luke. It seems to appeal to the caveman part of the brain in all of us.
Fire.
Heat.
Lust.
He keeps his arms spread wide and swaggers to the edge. He drops the whips down and turns and faces the middle of the stage. The spotlights point back up, swirling through the air, to illuminate the redheaded goddess again. Instead of a cage, this time she is descending on a swing.
As she drifts down, she swings it out over the crowd in a large circle. They gasp as she flips backwards, almost falling, but catching herself with her legs at the last second. She wraps one around one side and drops the other leg, arcing over the audience like an upside-down ballerina.
Her mass of wild red curls hangs down, catching the light, and I realize this is why she looked familiar. She is the female version of Luke, down to the exact shade of their hair.
