Chapter 21
NOVA
Ipicked up my pace.
I ignored everything but her. The increasingly dreamlike masks and attire and spaces designed to evoke all the senses melted into the periphery.
“Lorelei?” I called to the woman leading me through the mansion.
She didn’t turn. Someone called my name. I heard sounds of flesh against flesh, cutlery scraping against plates, laughter, thuds and slaps, classical music.
I ignored everything but the woman who refused to turn when I called her name.
A server stepped out of a kitchen carrying two platters of hors d'oeuvres, and I nearly toppled him and the food over onto the ground. I halted as he made a squeaky panicked noise and raised the platters into the air.
“Sorry,” I said quickly, darting around him.
I’d lost sight of Lorelei, but backdoors were in sight. Beyond the tall glass panels was an array of lights, tall hedges, and bodies on the move.
A woman on the patio was handing out glowing wristbands of various colors, but I wasn’t paying attention to the instructions she was giving the group of girls to my right.
I scanned the area quickly. Lorelei wasn’t on the vast patio.
Several masked men were, however, and many had turned to look at me. One was smoking a cigar.
On the lawn before us was less of an enchanted forest and more an enchanted labyrinth.
Or a maze. Exactly like the ones from my recent dreams, where I was chased by people I couldn’t see.
At a flash of blonde hair moving behind a tall shrub, I ran into the yard, ignoring someone loudly telling me I needed a wristband.
I turned a corner, and I heard laughter—but it wasn’t Lorelei’s. String lights illuminated the path, and a few lightning bugs floated through the summer air. I rounded another corner, passing a man who’d pinned a helpless fairy against a shrub, slamming his mouth to hers.
I quickly grew disoriented. The sound of an animalistic noise to my left made me jump out of my skin, as if I really had entered a land of gods and monsters.
A woman screamed. Sweat beaded on my forehead. I made turn after turn, possibly going in circles, until I finally saw my target. Her back was to me, and I heard her panting, as if she was catching her breath.
She finally turned.
Our eyes locked.
My heart dropped. It wasn’t Lorelei.
No sooner did I have that realization than a man leapt out from the darkness and tackled the woman to the ground.
“Caught you.”
He shoved his hand over her mouth to muffle her cries, jerked her panties to the side, and plunged inside her with a grunt.
I backed away—right into a solid chest.
I yelped, quickly spinning.
A man with a lean build and a black, demonic mask with ram’s horns laughed as he looked me up and down. He was in all black like some dark prince of the underworld, interpreting the theme in a similar way as Jayne.
“Someone’s a little rulebreaker,” he teased. “No wristband, so you’re off limits.” He sighed, as if that was a pity.
I swallowed and inhaled deeply, forcing air back into my lungs. I made the quick calculation that the wristbands were some kind of indicator of what the prey were willing to do with their hunters.
“You look as perfect as I knew you would,” he drawled, slowly moving closer until my back hit a shrub.
Roman.
“I couldn’t help but investigate where you were running off to in such a hurry,” he said, his devil mask inches from my face. “However, this feels akin to seeing my bride before our wedding. It’s just bad luck. Enjoy yourself, Nova. I’ll see you at the auction.”
He turned and left me there without waiting for a response—the response that would’ve informed him I would not be engaging with their questionable charity efforts. I was sure he was used to buying whatever shiny new toy he wanted, but I was not going to be one of them. I was not for sale.
When I finally found my way back out of the maze, the woman handing out wristbands eyed me with a hand on her hip. I ignored the pointed sass and reentered the mansion, wandering through the realm of gods until I found myself in a grand dining room. Heads swiveled to me when I entered.
“Nova,” Archer said, delighted. He was seated between several men of various ages, each dressed like royalty. For all I knew, some of them were royalty.
But my gaze landed on the centerpieces of the table.
Women.
One was hogtied with a small apple in her mouth, a vibrating dildo shoved inside her pussy.
“If that dildo falls out again, it’s going in your ass,” a man said casually to her before giving her ass a slap.
Men at the other end of the table were eating sushi off a nude woman lying on her back. As their chopsticks lifted the pieces, they didn’t pay her any attention. It was as if she really was just a serving plate.
The men surrounding Archer had stopped talking about real estate to watch my no-doubt scandalized reaction.
“Care to join us?” Archer asked.
“Beautiful,” a man next to him remarked, nodding at me.
“Thanks, but I’ll leave you to it,” I said slowly, my voice coming out smaller than I intended.
Eyes bored into my exposed skin, and for the first time since I’d entered the mansion, I didn’t feel entirely safe. The energy here was in sharp contrast to the kinky exploration happening upstairs.
“Let’s talk later, okay?” Archer said as I backed up. His grin was as cocky as the other men’s, hunger burning in his eyes.
I nodded with a forced smile. Right before I turned, the dildo fell onto the table, lightly buzzing. The hogtied woman made a defeated sound into the apple.
I didn’t stick around to see what happened next.
I was dizzy and overstimulated by the time I’d found a quiet alcove in a dark, quiet living room. As I entered, a plainly dressed attendant whispered to me that this room was off-limits for play, which was fine by me. In fact, it was ideal.
A hand encircled my wrist.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Maisy whispered.
How the hell did she always manage to find me when I most desperately needed a break?
“Are you still looking for that friend you were telling me about?” she asked.
I paused, assessing her features. “Yeah. I was hoping to see her here,” I said, praying Maisy was asking because she had a lead.
Maisy nodded. “But you haven’t yet?”
I shook my head. We sat down on one of the couches, and I gratefully took water from one of the servers. I thanked her before turning back to Maisy.
“Everyone’s here. But I heard that some people don’t leave the VIP area, so it’s possible she’s there,” she explained.
“And how does one get into the VIP area?” I asked warily.
Maisy smiled, reveling in all her dutifully acquired inner circle knowledge. “You have to be one of the Golden Circle members. It’s a six-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year membership.”
“A fucking what now?”
She laughed. “I guess you don’t know about the Platinum tier either.”
“I don’t want to know.”
Maisy’s eyes flashed with irritation, like I wasn’t reacting with the giddy enthusiasm she’d been hoping for.
These displays of wealth didn’t impress me. They made me rather ill.
“What’s the bottom tier?” I asked, now thinking of Wes. I bet he hated giving money to these people.
“Fifteen thousand per party,” Maisy said with a disinterested shrug, as if that wasn’t lifechanging money for most people.
“Let me get this straight,” I said in horror. “Everyone paid at least fifteen thousand US dollars to be in this mansion tonight?”
“Well, obviously not everyone. Plus ones who have ascended are free to come, as well as chosen members like you and me.”
“The entertainment,” I elaborated. “Attractive young people who don’t have that kind of money.”
Maisy bristled. “No,” she said haughtily.
“People who deserve to be here, because they’ve freed themselves of their basic fears and have stepped into their authentic selves.
People who want to actually live. To find the sacred in the sensual and transcend.
Everything costs money, Nova. We wouldn’t be able to offer the experiences we do if we didn’t have generous donors. ”
Had Maisy forgotten she’d only become a we like two weeks ago? That she’d been strung along for months before that?
Whatever. This wasn’t worth the fight. I nodded and redirected. “That’s a good point,” I lied. She relaxed an inch. “So the only people who can get into the VIP area are the Gold and Platinum Circle members?”
“And their plus ones,” she said with an eyebrow waggle, back to her usual bubbly self, as if all tension had dissipated.
Fuck. I glanced up at the ceiling, as if to God himself for assistance in this sea full of demons. “And let me guess: Roman Graves would be one of those Platinum members?”
Maisy nudged me, taking a champagne flute from a floating server. I thanked the man on her behalf, as Maisy left him unacknowledged.
She giggled. “Now you’re getting it.”
Where the hell was Wes? I was starting to worry. I hadn’t expected him to take this long to find me—or for me to find him.
No sooner had the thought of Wes being in some kind of trouble crossed my mind did I catch a glimpse of a tall man with snake tattoos in one of the downstairs rooms. A threesome was happening on a canopied bed, but Wes was on the opposite side of the room, his back turned to where I’d entered.
I stopped my approach the moment I saw he was talking to a petite woman in a delicate pink lingerie set. She looked emotional, her big blue eyes teary as she spoke to him with exaggerated hand movements.
It looked like a lovers’ quarrel.
All the times Wes had scanned a room, as if looking for someone, came rushing back to me. Was this girl the mysterious answers he’d been searching for? Was she who had tipped him off about this place? Or who he’d been meeting in the diner?
I couldn’t be sure. All I was certain of was that instead of finding me in the past two and a half hours we’d been here, he’d found her.
The woman placed a hand on his shoulder, her brows drawing close. Wes hung his head. I had the distinct feeling I was witnessing something I wasn’t supposed to see. Something heavy and personal and revealing, a side of himself he’d refused to show me.
Perhaps she was why.
My heart sank. Her eyes met mine.
I turned and left the room. In the hall, I asked a man in a jeweled chest harness where the auction would be taking place. My throat was tight, a heaviness pressing against my heart.
“Grand ballroom. They’re gathering the volunteers right now,” he said. He looked me up and down and snapped in approval. “Slay.”
“Slay,” I echoed mournfully.