8. Harley
Harley
Scoundrels isn’t the best club in Sedona, but it isn’t the scuzziest either, and tonight that feels like enough of a recommendation.
I picked it because I used to be comfortable here, or at least comfortable enough to pretend I knew what I was doing.
More than a few of my hook-ups began in this building and ended in my bed, back when taking someone home meant company and pleasure and maybe a few hours of not feeling lonely, instead of memories I can’t scrub off my skin no matter how hard I try.
It’s been almost four months since I’ve been here, and I’m relieved to find the place hasn’t changed.
The same dark walls, same flashing lights, same sticky floor near the bar, same bass-heavy music pounding through the speakers hard enough to vibrate in my chest. I don’t know why the familiarity helps, except maybe everything else in my life has been rearranged without my permission.
My apartment isn’t my apartment anymore.
My body isn’t behaving like mine. The world has teeth and claws now, and apparently some people turn into wolves when nobody human is supposed to be looking.
So yeah, maybe a mediocre gay club staying exactly the same is enough to make me feel like I’m not completely untethered from reality.
The place is decently packed, bodies moving everywhere, sweat and cologne and alcohol mixing into a thick warm cloud that settles over my skin the second I get inside.
Men fill the room in every shape and label people like to fling around—bears, cubs, chubs, twinks, gym bunnies, leather guys, older men with confident smiles, younger ones pretending they aren’t scared.
I don’t care who is what tonight. Labels are just another way of making chaos look organized, and I’m way past believing anything is actually organized.
I only need someone, or a few someones, to help me not think.
The music shifts into something heavier, the dance floor packed with guys grinding and gyrating under the flashing lights.
I should head straight to the bar. I should get a drink in my hand before the apartment silence catches up with me, before my brain remembers the bedroom, before I start hearing Joshua’s voice beneath the music.
Instead my gaze catches on one couple in the middle of all those sweaty, swaying bodies, and for some stupid reason I can’t look away.
They aren’t dancing like everyone else. An older man with white sprinkled through his dark hair holds another guy close, both of them probably somewhere in their forties, maybe older.
They sway slowly, completely out of rhythm with the beat blasting through the club, but somehow perfectly in rhythm with each other.
The taller one has his hand spread wide over the other man’s back, fingers curved possessively but gently, and the shorter one has his face tucked against his partner’s shoulder like the rest of the room doesn’t exist. They’re in their own world.
Making their own music. Trusting each other enough to close their eyes in a crowded room.
Something sharp presses behind my eyes.
My chest aches.
I hate it.
I hate them a little too, which is ugly and unfair and probably says more about me than it does about them.
I don’t want that. I’ve never wanted forever in some big dramatic way, not the way people in romance movies talk about it, but looking at those two men makes me aware of an emptiness inside me I usually manage to ignore.
Once, maybe I wanted something softer than quick hook-ups and empty beds.
Maybe I wanted somebody who’d dance slowly with me even when the music was wrong.
Maybe I wanted a man who would look at me and not see easy, not see temporary, not see a pretty mouth and a body small enough to push around.
Someone bumps into me from behind, and the hand that follows is a deliberate grope of my ass, fingers squeezing like whoever owns them already has permission.
The ache in my chest turns instantly to anger.
I spin around, ready to snarl, and find a fairly handsome man smirking at me.
He’s tall enough, dark-haired, decent jaw, probably someone I might’ve looked twice at months ago.
But there’s something in his eyes that makes my skin tighten.
Something slick and hungry in a way that doesn’t feel fun.
He reminds me of a weasel, and I’ve always hated weasels.
“Wanna fuck?” he shouts over the music.
Blunt, at least.
Not happening.
I shake my head, because I’m not willing to screech over the music just to explain that he gives me the creeps and my ass is absolutely not open for business.
He leans closer like maybe he thinks I didn’t understand the offer, and my stomach flips in warning.
I push between two men beside me, ignoring the annoyed sound one of them makes, and head for the bar without looking back until I’m wedged against a stool with people on either side of me.
When I glance over my shoulder, Weasel hasn’t followed.
Relief slides through me before I realize I was holding fear in the first place.
Great. Wonderful. That’s exactly what I need tonight—more proof I’m barely holding my shit together.
“What’ll you have?” the bartender yells.
I look at the shelves behind him and point to the first familiar bottle I see. “Give me a couple shots of that.”
Top-shelf tequila. I don’t even like tequila that much, but it does the job faster than beer and cleaner than cocktails with stupid names.
It makes me reckless. Makes me horny, or at least it used to.
Fine, it gives me courage. Or demolishes my restraint.
Pride. Common sense. Whatever barrier keeps me from dropping to my knees for some stranger just so I don’t have to go home alone.
The bartender pours two shots and slides them in front of me. “Enjoy.”
I toss both back quickly, skipping salt and lemon because I forgot to ask, and because props seem unnecessary when the goal is to get fucked up enough not to care.
The alcohol burns all the way down—throat, chest, stomach, even my nose somehow—and my eyes water as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
The old tequila I used to drink when I was poor tasted like gasoline and regret.
This stuff is smoother, which is probably a bad thing.
I’m not poor anymore, or at least not in the immediate sense, which is a thought that brings its own nasty little twist of guilt.
There’s money in that blue duffle bag. Too much money.
Shifter money. Blood money. Compensation money.
Buying-my-silence money, maybe, though Nathan’s note didn’t feel like that.
Drinking helps soften the guilt of accepting it.
Drinking helps soften everything.
I turn on the stool and scan the room for a likely prospect, one who doesn’t make my nerves crawl.
Weasel is already occupied with another guy, his hand low on the man’s hip and his mouth near his ear.
The guy doesn’t seem bothered. Maybe he likes the slick predator thing.
Maybe I’m just seeing monsters everywhere now.
Either way, Weasel’s attention isn’t on me anymore, and I let the last bit of fear tied to him slip away.
Then the front door opens. I don’t know why I notice. People have been coming in and out the whole time. It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
Except my pulse jumps. And not just a little.
It kicks hard, sudden and startling enough that I put one hand against the edge of the bar to steady myself.
At the same time, something flutters low in my stomach, warm and strange and not quite nausea, though for a second I wonder if maybe I took those shots too fast.
But I’ve done that before and this is different.
I stand before I decide to.
My gaze locks toward the entrance, but the crowd shifts between me and whoever just came in.
Lights flash blue, then red, then white.
I catch movement, a dark shape, someone tall maybe, but bodies keep blocking my view.
The music pounds through me and the whole club suddenly feels too loud, too crowded, too full of people in my way.
“Fucking have to be short, don’t I?” I mutter, forgetting I try not to talk to myself in public.
I climb onto the stool rung to get higher, but even then I can’t see enough. Men are packed too tightly near the entrance, laughing and touching and blocking whatever invisible thing my body has decided is important. Irritation spikes through me, irrational and hot.
I need to see him.
The thought comes so clearly that I freeze.
Him?
I don’t even know who came in.
The flutter in my stomach turns into a buzzing warmth that spreads under my ribs and down through my hips.
My skin prickles. My breathing changes. The tequila is probably hitting my bloodstream all at once, maybe mixing with whatever is left from last night, because nothing else explains this weird, electric pull taking hold of me.
I step down from the stool.
Pursuit feels like the only option.
I’m halfway across the club before I become properly aware of the distinctly uncomfortable situation happening in my pants.
I stop so abruptly someone bumps into my shoulder and curses at me, but I barely hear him.
For several seconds I just stand there in the middle of the crowd, stunned by the sharp, pinching pressure trapped behind the too-tight black fabric.
My dick is hard. Not half-interested, not vaguely stirring, not some sad little twitch of biological proof that I’m not dead below the waist. Hard.
Painfully hard, because I did not exactly package myself tonight with the possibility in mind.
The realization hits me like a slap.