Chapter 16 Sloane
Sloane
I’ve heard the term before, But I’ve never seen it in real life: Orgy. Group sex. Gang bang. My mind shorts out after that. I can’t think of any more names for what I’m witnessing.
A large open-plan living room sprawls before me, within which at least fifty people mill around in various degrees of undress.
Some men are still fully attired, while beautiful women—dresses slipped down revealing their breasts, ridden up to display shaved pussies—sit on their laps or kneel at their feet on the floor.
Black leather bindings bite into flesh wherever I look. Couples kiss, groping at each other, hands everywhere. On the far side of the room, a man rocks his head back in sheer bliss as a woman on her knees, completely naked, sucks on his rock-solid cock for everyone to see.
My mouth hangs open. I turn around and Michael, still standing there, shrugs.
“If you’re looking for Zeth, he’s in the back room.
But you’ll have to go through the apartment to reach it.
” He smiles ever so slowly. “Boss told me not to close the front door behind you, though. He doesn’t think you’ll make it. ”
Well, fuck me, he was right about that. I don’t need this shit.
I shake my head, stepping toward Michael and the still-open doorway.
Michael lifts one shoulder again. “He said you were a prude. He bet big on you walking out as soon as you saw…” He looks over my shoulder into the room beyond, smirking. “Well…”
“He’s an arrogant son of a bitch,” I snap.
“He sure is. Leaving won’t prove him wrong, though, will it. There’s only one way to do that.” He winks. “Go rip into him. He deserves it.”
I narrow my eyes. “Did you bet money on this?”
The left side of his mouth kicks up. “Thousand bucks.”
A thousand dollars? Zeth’s so sure of my reaction to this that he put a grand on the line? That’s probably pocket change to him since he paid cash for Carrie’s hospital bill, but hell. Surely it would sting to lose it. I take a deep breath.
You’ve come this far. You’ve already seen what’s going on behind you. All you have to do is go find him.
“Fine.” I don’t give myself time to think.
I spin around and make for the hallway on the other side of the huge room.
I’m stepping over bodies before I know it.
I do my best to keep my eyes up and front, but I can’t help but catch sight of a few things.
Things that will be burned into my mind for all time.
When I reach the hallway, there are eight doors, four on either side.
Most are open, but a few are closed. Low moaning slides under the wood.
Groans of ecstasy and the loud slap of skin on skin.
I’m too scared to open the closed doors, so I peek into the open rooms instead, bracing myself each time: a tangle of arms and legs greet me first, four women and two guys so interlaced it’s hard to tell where each one of them begins and the other ends.
I back the hell out of there pretty quickly.
The second room contains a group of men and women all still in their suits and beautiful dresses, watching a couple screwing on the floor.
The observers sip politely from champagne flutes while touching each other subtly, a hand slipped up a dress, rubbing at sensitive skin.
A manicured hand squeezing an erection over the top of expensive-looking pants.
A guy wearing an ornate tiger mask with fierce golden stripes turns and sees me.
He takes a sip from his drink, pauses in caressing the exposed breast of his companion, and holds out his hand to me.
Oh, hell no.
I backtrack quickly, heading for the last door on the right. For a second I think the door’s closed and I’m about to turn around, but then I realize my mistake. The door is wide open. The lights are just turned off.
You son of a bitch.
I grip my medical bag tight around its handle and take another deep breath. I walk inside.
“You’re sick, you know that?” I say into the darkness. A soft rustling greets me, followed by the shift of movement. Yes, the lights are off, but the corridor is lit behind me, so it isn’t like last time. I can see enough to make out the looming figure that slowly paces toward me.
“I know I’m not normal, if that’s what you mean.” A terrible devil’s mask slowly emerges from the shadows. Dressed head to heel in black, the suit Zeth wears is a thing of beauty even in the muted light.
Dark eyes shine from within the mask, sharp and hungry. “You’ve surprised me, Sloane. I like being surprised,” he rumbles.
“Well, you’ve surprised me, too. Although I can’t say the feeling is mutual.”
He laughs, voice so deep and powerful I feel it in the soles of my feet. “You should open up a little. You never know what you might enjoy until you try it.”
“I know exactly what I enjoy, Zeth, and standing around watching fifty naked people grind on each other isn’t it.”
The eyes behind his mask flicker with annoyance when I say his name.
He stalks toward me and reaches out, tracing his fingertips across my jawline.
He seems pensive, intrigued by my stillness—I can’t freaking move—as he touches my skin.
“If you don’t like watching, Sloane, you could always join in. ”
I slap his hand away, glaring out from behind my own mask. “Give me back my phone.”
He watches me for a second, smirking, before sliding a hand into the pocket of his pants and pulling out my cell phone. He offers it to me, and I just know he plans on snatching it away from me as soon as I reach for it. I hold out my open hand instead, waiting for him to place it into my palm.
He pouts, game ruined, and does it. I slide the phone into the medical bag I’m still clutching on to for dear life. “I came tonight because you needed to know that I’m not scared of you, Zeth. And I want to know what you know about my sister.”
“Really?” He eyes the bag in my hand. “By the hand luggage, it looks like you knew all about our little gathering and brought some toys to play with.”
I remember his black duffel, the one he’d had with him at the hotel, and I harden my jaw. “Like yours, you mean? I’m not the pervert who carries around a stash of bondage gear.”
Zeth looks down, a calculated tilt of his head. His bag sits on the floor by the doorway to my left. I shiver when I see it. “My bag of tricks is slightly bigger than yours, Sloane. And there’s more than bondage gear in there. Maybe if you’re brave, you’ll open it and find out?”
Infection is a major problem after surgery.
We doctors spend a great deal of time battling to ensure that it doesn’t happen, that the wounds we create or try to fix remain clean, but sometimes it just happens no matter how careful we are.
A wound becomes infected. Organs become inflamed.
The body rejects new limbs. I’ve watched it happen time and time again, but I’ve never experienced it firsthand.
Until now, that is. Zeth is performing butcher’s surgery on my open chest cavity, and my heart is already inflamed.
It pounds behind my ribs, fighting the strange, alien feelings he’s infecting me with.
“I’m not touching that thing. And I brought my medical bag with me so I could see to Carrie.” I emphasize the fake name he fed me so that he knows I’ve seen through his lie. He doesn’t seem fazed.
“Carrie is sleeping. But you’re more than welcome to play doctor with me?
With the right inspiration, I can be a very good patient.
” His hand rises slowly—the same way a person might approach a nervous horse.
My mom demonstrated it to me when I was little—Let him see your hand, honey.
Let him know you’re not going to hurt him.
But I can see from the amused spark in Zeth’s eyes that he is going to hurt me.
One way or another. He wants to tear the bottom right out of my world.
He touches my cheekbone, light as a feather.
A far cry from the way he touched me back in the hospital, but his gentleness now doesn’t make up for his rough treatment then.
“I’m not playing anything with you, Zeth.
If you care about Carrie at all, you’ll let me see her.
Her wrists aren’t healed. She needs medication, and she needs her dressings changed. ”
“She’s on amoxicillin and her dressings are changed three times a day.
More if they need it. She has a drip to help replace the plasma she lost, and she’s been restricted to bed rest. And right now, she’s sleeping,” he growls.
I’ve pissed him off, that much is clear.
I swallow when he shifts forward, subtly leaning into me so that his body is less than a foot away from mine.
Twelve inches has never felt like such a short distance.
“Now, Sloane, if you don’t mind, I’m hosting a party.
If you’re a coward and you’re going to bolt, then I suggest you do it now before things really heat up. ”
Before things really heat up? He doesn’t think things have already escalated to surface-of-the-sun degrees out in his living room?
Maybe he hasn’t been out there. Maybe he has no idea what’s going on.
Maybe he thought his guests would actually use the finger food to…
well, eat. My subconscious laughs at me, pointing a finger.
He was sitting here in the dark… waiting for you.
He knows exactly what’s going on, you stupid girl.
“Fine. I’ll leave. But you have to tell me one thing first. Is she alive, Zeth?”
I don’t mean Carrie.
I mean Alexis.