Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Harry
“Potassium,” I grumbled. “The answer is potassium.”
A simple pop quiz, a hand-raising exercise to get the kids through the last few minutes of the day, and not one of them was engaged. We were all flagging, tired after a busy Monday to Friday in this hormone-ravaged building.
I was so glad it was Friday, and I’d be done with this for two days.
While I did love my job, sometimes it did not love me back.
Sometimes it made me feel like shit, drained and ready for a damn break.
This was one of those times. I’d been running on autopilot all week after that nightmare of a dinner, and my brain still hadn’t caught up with it all. A baby. A sister. A disaster.
“Mr Fitch?” one of my more… intellectually challenged students asked. He was a good kid, just, well, annoying sometimes. Mouthy.
“Yes, Gage?”
He scrunched up his nose, looking above me at the clock ticking closer to the end of the day. “Can we just, like, go?”
“Go?”
“Yeah, go home.”
Like I’d just injected them with pure sugar, the rest of the class perked up, looking at me with renewed interest. Now, if only I could get them this interested in chemical bonds. I checked my watch; it would only be five minutes. For once, a solid idea from Gage.
“You know what, sure.” I leaned back in my chair. “Have a good weekend, guys.” I gestured for them to leave, waving my hand toward the door. Damn done with it all. I’d be fleeing like them if I didn’t have admin.
A flurry of excited voices and quick activity flooded the room, a smattering of goodbyes directed my way before, in a flash, I was alone. The sophomores were dust in the wind.
“Well, shit,” I muttered to myself. “Just my thoughts now.”
“You talking to yourself?” a voice came from the doorway. Mr Lorenzo Perez leaned against the frame, grinning at me.
I nodded, not even a little ashamed to have been caught by the man. “Gotta talk to someone.”
He laughed and strode into the room, settling his ass on my desk and looking down at me, crossing his arms. He was my closest friend in this place, maybe in every place.
It was he who suggested The Bone Yard as the club to be…
he who put the idea in my head when he stole my phone and looked through my history one drunken night.
After laughing his ass off for ten minutes, something clicked, and he grabbed my phone back, showing me the place.
Any kink you can imagine catered for with the utmost discretion.
“Drinks tonight?” Lorenzo asked. “I threw my kids out early, need a fucking beer.”
We used to spend most Friday nights at one bar or another, but since settling with Victoria, that had become once a month or even less. “Anything in mind?” I was desperate not to go home. Victoria knew something was up, but she was giving me the space to come to her. Too fucking good for me.
“Nah, I’m easy.”
“I know where we should go,” I said, a wide smile spreading over my face. I was feeling damn reckless. Desperate. My skin itched with the need to find Rosa — Zora — and confront her. “That sex club.”
Lorenzo pulled a face. “What sex club?” He leaned forward, curiosity winning him over. “I don’t know about no sex club.”
I grinned and filled him in, jogging his memory. I might be a twisted-up fucker, but I needed to see the woman I’d screwed up my life with.
Heavy music pulsed through the club, dull lights making it hard to see what was going on in the heaving crowd.
Up on the stage, strobes and flashing lights showed off naked bodies, male, female, some I couldn’t tell, all moving, writhing, looking like they were having sex with the air up there.
Damn, the way some of them could move was like nothing I’d ever seen…
It was insane, with pockets of other dancers, some professional, some not. Everyone was moving, swaying, pulsing.
“Isn’t this place just so fucking cool?” Lorenzo said, his grin wide and glinting.
Once I’d jogged his memory, he told me he’d never been but always wanted to.
He was ready for a night of debauched fun, and I was a little bit in his way.
He’d made me promise we wouldn’t cock-block each other before he agreed.
We weren’t here for their additional services tonight, the paid-for rooms below our feet where we could fulfill our every desire, but there were still plenty of opportunities to have fun up here, it seemed. Today, we were here to drink and watch. And I was here to see if Zora was working.
Pregnant.
Shit.
She was pregnant. When we had sex, we’d been total idiots and not used protection.
She said it was fine, though, that she was prepared.
I’d been a fool to believe her. An idiot to go in unwrapped.
So caught up in the moment with her that it hadn’t even occurred to me not to trust her words.
But we were both culpable. Despite the tiniest instinct to blame it all on her, it took two to fucking tango.
Full sex wasn’t supposed to be on the agenda that night; nothing had been planned for it.
But it’d happened, and it was incredible.
Lorenzo moved to the bar, and I followed, joining the crush to get to the front. They served alcohol, but focused on non-alcoholic alternatives, giving perks to those who chose them.
“This is a sex club,” Lorenzo yelled in my ear, like I didn’t fucking know. “Apparently, a few years ago it got into some difficulties, reopened last year as it is now. Much safer! They have all these safety measures, incentives and shit.” He paused. “I read about it on reddit!”
I nodded along, only half paying attention, wanting to find Zora. Any sign of her reddish-blonde hair, her soft body. She maybe didn’t even work here at all anymore, what with the state she was now in. My fault. My state. I think.
I realized she’d never said either way. But then it wasn’t like she was expecting me to pop up in her sister’s apartment ready to join her family.
God, we’d made such a mess of it.
Lorenzo and I ordered two non-alcoholic beers from a witchy-looking guy behind the bar and let him stamp our hands. Four stamps, he said, and we get a free non-alcoholic drink of our choice.
Lorenzo shrugged and muttered something, then we moved into the main crowd of the club, watching the dancers, the other patrons, just hanging out. It was nice. Too loud to speak to each other, only able to people watch. Meant my mind could wander, study my surroundings.
But still no Zora.
“I’ll be right back!” I yelled in Lorenzo’s ear before drifting away. I was going to find her.
He gave me a thumbs up and dipped onto the dance floor, his body fast matching the beat, lost to the music already. Boy moved quick.
As did I, apparently, because I was growing obsessed.
Moving through the club this time was so different from before.
Last time, I was nervous about what would happen, about who I would meet and if I would even want to get off when it was time to get started.
When I brought up the club to Victoria, just testing boundaries, seeing if she would want to consider going, she told me to go and do what I needed.
She said she didn’t want to hear about it, but she understood I had these…
needs. Needs she had no desire to fulfill.
She told me a professional was better than a random, and to have at it.
I wasn’t sure she really meant it, if it was a joke, and we didn’t speak about it before or after, but I ran with it.
It was a prime example of how emotionless she could be with me.
Even if she was joking, she still made it clear she didn’t care.
So, four beers deep, I booked a session through The Bone Yard website, laying out everything that I wanted, and a day later, I met Zora. Sucked on Zora and succeeded in living my ultimate fantasy.
Well, almost.
If she’d had actual milk in those tits, I might have combusted.
This time I truly was going behind Victoria’s back, trying to hunt down her pregnant sister to find out if the baby she was brewing was half mine. How could I ever be forgiven for that? The club session, that might be argued as a gray area, but this was insanity.
I reached the sectioned-off area of the club, where patrons of downstairs signed in, and smiled at the worker there. She looked angry, right on the defensive. Different to the man who’d signed me in last time.
“Can I help you?” she asked, looking me up and down, like she already knew I didn’t have a booking.
“I want to speak to Zora,” I said. No beating around the bush here.
She eyed me with open suspicion, the lollipop in her mouth sticking out from the corner of her purple-painted lips as she studied me. “Why?”
“I have something important to talk to her about?” I tried, wincing.
They must have so many people doing this, trying to get back into the pants of the person they thought they’d had a transformative time with.
It made me feel like such a fucking creep, so I flashed a cheesy smile.
Dropped it when she pulled a face right back at me.
“You wanna do something weird?” the woman asked with a tilt of her head.
I shook my head. “No, promise. I just need to talk to her. It’s urgent. It’s about her sister.” This time I winced internally at the lie, but if it worked…
The woman took out her phone and tapped away, not telling me what she was doing. Was I dismissed? Was she helping?
“Excuse me?” I said after half a song played through the speakers.
She looked up through her eyelashes. “What?”
“Is she coming?”
“I’ve texted the bosses. One of them can decide.”