On the second level, Maisy waved to me from between two dangling bunches of artfully arranged plants and fairy lights. She beckoned me to join her.
Wes didn’t immediately let me go. It felt like the confusing invisible cord between us was only growing tauter, hurtling toward some greatsnap.
I wasn’t sure what exactly was going to happen when it finally broke.
“Nice to meet you,” I said to Elliot, not because it was true, but more because I promised Hudson I wouldn’t get disappeared tonight.
“You as well,” he said.
“See you… later?” I said lamely to Wes.
His sharp gaze knocked the air out of my lungs. His voice was low yet icy. “I’ll find you. Remember what I said.”
The shift in him startled me. The words weren’t gentle or caring. They were a hard order, final and inarguable.
And as my spine straightened and the space between my thighs pulsed as I took the staircase, I slowly realized the reason for Wes’s coldness. I glanced back at him, speaking in a low voice to Elliot.
The only language they speak is power,he’d said.
His show of dominance was protection. It was his way of communicating to Elliot a claim on me, even if it wasn’t real.
None of this is real.That was also something Wes had told me—weeks ago, at the first soirée.
The sound of a booming voice at the top of the stairs made me jump. “Welcome all to the land of gods, beasts, and every creature in between. We have entered the realm of myth.”
A dark-haired man in a stag mask, tight brown pants, and no shirt had positioned himself in the center of the banister, calling down below like some divine messenger. The girls next to me laughed and clinked flutes of champagne. Or, at least, they were making laughing sounds, but their immovable faces made their true emotions uncertain.
From above, I glanced back down at the woman in the glass case. The stag man bolted down the stairs, and a crowd gathered above and below to watch. Maisy linked her arm with mine.
“Oh my God, it’s the first performance of the night!”
The room, the staircases, and this generous upper level overlooking the foyer quickly filled with bodies, but the area around the glass case remained clear.
The shirtless stag made a show of slowly lifting the top of the case.
“In the original Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, the prince does not awaken the princess with a kiss,” the man said. He stepped out of his bottom layers, and my eyes popped as they homed in on his impressively large member, fully erect.
I was guessing he, too, was theentertainment.
Wes and I locked eyes for the briefest moment before returning our attention to the spectacle.
“No, no, no,” the man said, his voice carrying impressively through the vast space. I suspected a background in theater. “The lord finds the princess trapped in an enchanted slumber, and he impregnates her.”
19
NOVA
The serene beauty lay perfectly still, eyes closed, even as the man removed the rose from her blood-streaked hands. He trailed the thorns across the length of her, leaving pink lines in their wake. He handed the rose to a man on his left before gracefully climbing inside the cushioned tomb.
“They’re acting, right?” I whispered to Maisy. “She’s not actually unconscious…”
“She’s hypnotized. Jayne said she won’t be able to move or speak until he comes, breaking the spell,” Maisy replied, giddy. “So cool, right?”
The music was dark and rhythmic, the volume rising.
The man delicately brushed his thumb against her lips. He leaned down, giving her a soft, gentle kiss.
He worked her clit as the crowd watched with rapt attention. She didn’t react. She was the embodiment of peace and tranquility as the man feverishly played with her tits, teased her nipples, kissed her neck. He lifted one of her arms and let it drop, as if to show us the enchanted slumber was still in full effect.
