Chapter 6
6
S ex hangs in the air.
Heavily perfumed, wrapped in silk and lace, or leather and latex. It’s all the same, really.
Just another night overseeing the depravities that this place trades in. The ever-revolving door of flesh and pleasure and specific tastes being catered to.
I don’t judge anyone or anything in this place, this temple to sexual freedom. What I do keep both eyes warily fixed upon are the scum hidden within the ranks of the House members who come here night after night to chase their perfect fantasy.
Casting my eye over the writhing bodies before me, dim lighting and a red glow paints the array of leather couches while music throbs in time with the swirl of raging thirst dripping down these walls.
Another night where I sit and watch over this place as it crawls with those who seek out the high of being lost in the throes of pleasure.
Another night where plans and counter moves coalesce in the whispers of my trusted few in between serving their clients.
Another night where it takes everything in me to bite my tongue and fake a polite smile when faced with someone who I want nothing more than to march out back, kick their knees out, and let them eat a bullet.
My brothers and I have spent so long amongst this world that it’s hard to tell where I end and it begins. Even more so in the years since I’ve found myself with the keys to Noire House under my care.
The Anguis Elite frequent this place, and while they groan out orgasms and climaxes and chase after whatever it is that aligns with their predilections for satisfying a primal need, I’m able to go about the real work this position affords me.
There is one level to the operations at Noire House, as the sex club for wealthy and powerful members of a secretive society, who live outside of any conventional ways of existing that most ordinary people can even comprehend. Then, there is the part where my past and personal demons are purged with every opportunity I get to dismantle the rotten core of this place.
One by one, we’re removing those who have gotten away with the worst kinds of abuse. With each successive raid and completed target taken down, it serves to allow me an opportunity to rest a little easier. Knowing the innocent lives lost to those sick fucks have been avenged, that is forever the goal.
Although there is one particular player still living at large within this Household, surrounded by his fawning, sick group of closest allies. He remains the piece to this puzzle I’ve yet to find a way to eliminate.
His time will come soon enough.
Until then, this is the mask I wear. The fake smile, the pressed suit, and the role they want me to let them submit to. A veneer I plaster on as I walk these corridors nightly, shaking hands with VIPs and overseeing the events that each and every person here enjoys indulging in.
This is a world where polyamory is the norm. The Anguis do not allow singular attachments amongst its members, and for the most part—whether it’s by nature or nurture, or maybe it’s just the darkest part that summons us all on some primal level—the world we inhabit has no issue with that fact.
Spend enough time inside this place, and you’ll find any combination of sex and pleasure and hedonism. None of which seems unusual for Household members. There are some who remain with the same groups of partners; then there are those who enjoy sharing, and others who freewheel around, perpetually unattached to anything or anyone. Such is the strangeness of the rules we are bound by.
It’s largely why Noire House has become such a calling card for the members of the Anguis. When you live this lifestyle, having somewhere to safely explore whatever those carnal wants might be, whether within a fixed group, or a straight-up orgy, that has been my duty and work to provide over the years.
Before stepping into this suit and this role, this place was a festering wound. Depravity and sordid behavior were the only calling cards, and even the secretive members of the uppermost ranks within the Anguis knew they couldn’t continue the way things were.
Port Macabre knew too much, and too many whispers began to circulate.
Twisted fucking perversions were the only currency inside these walls, and don’t my brother and I fucking know it.
So, they sent that aspect underground, and my role within the ranks of the Anguis came to light. A position I’ve had to not only spill blood to achieve, but have shed my fair share of in order to secure this opportunity also. Grey and Angel have been my right-hand men throughout the entire process of remaking this place into what it is now.
While I could happily burn it all to the fucking ground in a heartbeat, there is too much left to do, too much poison left to purge.
That’s what my brothers specialize in… hidden within the ve ry organization we wish had never cursed our bloodline. Yet, children who are sold to a secret society to pay debts and feed addictions end up either trafficked or worse.
We both know what worse looks and feels like.
Speaking of one of those devils, my phone vibrates softly in my suit jacket. As I lean back in my seat, I pull it out and see a name I’m not surprised to be hearing from, but it isn’t the person I’m expecting news out of all the same.
Ky:
Busy?
Never too busy for you, Kyron.
Well, of course, I know I’m your favorite.
I said I wasn’t too busy to text you back.
Didn’t say I had all night for your bullshit.
You fucking Callianos. I swear to god.
Even if I didn’t already know we aren’t related by blood, I’d have suspected something by now.
The two of you just live for practicing your asshole-of-the-year routine.
What do you want?
I’ve got something for Grey to play with.
Good.
Should be able to have it delivered in a few days .
I run my tongue over my teeth, weighing whether to involve Ky in this next part, or not.
Then I decide I don’t have the time to be delicate about the matter. The two of them goddamn live together, so if anyone is going to know, it’ll be him.
Have you heard from our fucking brother?
He keeps on ignoring my texts.
Thorne’s been in the city a lot lately…
Why does that not surprise me in the slightest?
Seems as though he’s conveniently forgotten how to answer the damn phone.
Yeah, well, welcome to my world.
Trying to get a text back from that prick is like pulling teeth.
How’s the girl doing?
That, Kyron Harris, is none of your concern.
…
I see the flurry of dots appear as the golden boy—the forever pain in my ass who my brother and I took in when he was a scrawny scrap of a kid and we were hardly more than kids ourselves—types what will no doubt be a smart-ass reply. Him sniffing around, poking his nose in where it’s not needed is the last thing I need on top of everything else going on.
The closeness of someone approaching, their proximity as they draw up to my chair, followed by a deep cough, cuts across my attention .
“You look a little dry over here.” The man before me muses with a wry smile. “Have a drink with me, Hawke?”
Locking the screen without reading Ky’s response, I slip the phone back into my pocket. Raising my eyebrow in the direction of the suited figure—it’s not a question, even though he’s phrased it as if I have a choice. We both know I don’t.
“Are you offering to open up your private cellar for me, boss?”
Lowering himself into the leather armchair across from mine, Andreas Noire rests both arms on the back of his seat and crosses an ankle over the other knee, ever the king at leisure when he frequents these halls after dark. A predator surveying his own private savanna for fresh carcasses to feast upon.
“Always trying to get your paws on my best vintages, you boys. I’m liable to wake up one morning and find you’ve crept in and stolen the lot during the night.” Raising a finger in the direction of the bar, the man whose name is stamped all over this place already knows that his preferred drink is about to arrive in all of twenty more seconds.
It’s all for show, him sitting here like this. A nod to the elites who choose to fawn over him.
Fortunately for my sanity, he rarely frequents the public areas of Noire House anymore. Not since his preferred tastes are sickeningly innocent, and the nature of flesh this man and his followers trade in, is a sordid story he purposely keeps hidden away.
A darker, more foul layer is hidden within the walls of this place that doubles as his family estate.
Not for much longer, if I have anything to do with it.
“Thank you, dear.” He flashes a polished white smile at the server, who delivers the vodka martini garnished with three olives. Andreas’ favored poison. “You treat an old man well.”
The twenty-something man with impeccable cheekbones and elfin features flushes across his chest, the peachy skin tinging pink above the neckline of his corset as he sets my drink down.
“This one is very pretty.” Andreas muses as he leans forward to pick up his glass. “Where did Calliano find you, hmm?”
William flicks his green eyes to mine, hesitant.
“Lilith House.” I lie.
There’s every chance Andreas will find out anything he needs to know if he desires. However, if I can do a little to deflect any unnecessary attention, it costs nothing for me to conveniently misplace my staff and their House of origin. After all, everything and everyone beneath his roof is required to bow to the Noire legacy.
At least in public, that is.
“Collecting quite the number of Lilith Household members in your orbit, aren’t you?” Andreas sips his drink, keeping his penetrating gaze fixed on William, who shifts his weight under this unwavering inspection. Knowing that he hasn’t been given permission to leave, yet.
“Hardly a monumental gathering. Angelos made his own arrangements to be here, as you know.” I tip my whiskey neat in his direction. “We have any number of other Households represented at the club who I can introduce you to, if you like.”
The man makes no effort to disguise his open interest. Mind you, someone like him doesn’t bother with anything but reaching out to take what he wants, whenever he wants.
“Lovely,” Andreas says thoughtfully after finishing a sip. Making it entirely clear that he isn’t talking about the martini.
“You can go, William.” I gesture his way with my chin. There’s nothing I’m able to do if the man occupying the seat across from me with his designer suit and foul, perverse tastes decides he likes what he sees.
William is more than aware of that fact, too. That’s what he, and many of the others I bring in to work in this place are trained for in secret .
They know the role they’re here to play.
“Can you see to the group in the voyeur room for me, please? I promised them a complimentary bottle of champagne this evening.”
“Of course, Mr. Calliano.”
Andreas reaches forward before William has a chance to make a move, and catches hold of his slender wrist. “I hope our paths cross again soon, dear.”
“Didn’t know you were in residence,” I say, hoping to draw his attention. All the old, sickening feelings of what it’s like to catch the eye of a member of the Noire Household are sitting right there, strangling my chest like barbed wire.
“Ahh, well, you know the auction is always a reason to rest my head here, even if just for a night or two.”
He sips his drink, taking in the floor around us. Observing the members of the Anguis seeking an escape within these walls. None of his particular loyal following are here tonight; they usually only come for the specialist gatherings and events. That’s when they crawl out of whatever holes they reside in like maggots drawn to rotting flesh.
Our conversation remains firmly in the territory of the club, our patronage, and events we have planned. I brief Andreas on the auction night and confirm that he’ll receive all the profiles of the individuals who will be available for bidding in advance.
Although I know for a fact that none of it actually interests this man.
He operates a secondary tier of depravity; the worst kind of abuse goes on at the hands of him and those loyal to this man and the Noire lineage. Children are his preference. His sick and twisted tastes are the worst examples of humanity that my brothers and I work to secretly pull apart while hidden in the shadows.
Nothing quite compares to slicing the belly of the beast from the inside .
While Andreas Noire will spend the night of the auction shaking hands with VIPs and drinking champagne in the ballroom, he has trafficking operations running through the basement of this very mansion. Using the cover of glitz and glamor and all that distracted pleasure-seeking as a means to disguise the trade in flesh he has been responsible for too many years.
There are only so many pieces we can dismantle at a time without drawing undue attention. However, our trusted security teams will do what they do best. Even if I’d rather be with them, helping tear apart the foul empire this man perpetuates, I put on the suit and play my part.
We all have a part to play.
Mine so often involves having to endure nights like tonight. Moments like this.
Settling back in my chair, I watch on as Andreas drains his glass and makes his customary exit. I let myself remain seated for a moment, to watch him move on for the night.
There are a hundred things I need to do. Clients I need to attend to.
The powerful members of the Anguis Elite often bring unique requests my way. It’s part of this mask I’m bound to wear that I say yes, and make it happen, and my only constant is the knowledge that my role is to guarantee their demands are fulfilled.
It’s a unique prospect, but one that affords me a certain level of privilege to be left alone to do what I do best. They trust me with their secrets and fantasies, and I provide their feast to gorge upon until they can no longer stomach another mouthful.
Meanwhile, beyond all of that, perhaps the biggest quandary of all is sleeping in my house right this very second.
And she’s a very precious commodity I’ve been entrusted with the instruction of, indeed.