Chapter 47
NOVA
Fake snow dusted the ground, and the space was decorated with faux icicles, garlands, ribbons, candles, real ice sculptures—all illuminated by thousands of tiny lights hung around the space. Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker played softly through hidden speakers.
In the sanctuary, below the stained-glass windows, ballet dancers—nude except for their classical tutus and pointe shoes—performed on a wooden dais. Their skin shimmered, adorned with tiny jewels that reflected the light.
Chills crawled down my spine. The Christmas décor and the pews took me back to Tennessee, where Christmas was more about endlessly proving one’s holiness through impossible, excruciating tests than it was about celebration or togetherness.
No, in Pastor Roy Carter’s town, community was a facade, and everyone was out for themselves. My parents would’ve sacrificed me in an instant if it meant they’d be marked safe for the second coming.
They had sacrificed me. Lorelei too.
My gaze swept from the ethereal beauty in the sanctuary back to Santa Claus.
A small group of voyeurs had gathered around Santa’s spectacle beside a fake chimney, where a woman wearing antlers and heavy red blush on her nose arched her back and took a candy cane dildo up her ass.
She moaned, and the Santa Ho-Ho-Hoed theatrically, drawing quiet laughter from the onlookers.
I blinked. Well, at least I was no longer reflecting upon my childhood trauma.
I turned away to explore the rest of the massive space, scanning for Lorelei. One man was bent over a pew, taking a harsh whipping from a woman dressed as Krampus. She was perhaps the same Domme who’d been humbling finance bros at the Midsummer party while dressed as a clown.
In another alcove, Capricorn was tying up a blindfolded woman with ribbon and teasing her with a feather wand as she giggled. When she saw me, she smiled warmly and winked before focusing back on her play partner.
Near the pulpit and the mesmerizing ballerinas dancing to Tchaikovsky, Kingston stood in his trademark all-black priest attire, his dutiful votaries kneeling before him. When I passed, I caught his low, commanding voice.
“Your God is pleased with your behavior. Recite your prayers, and you will be free to play in whatever manner you wish for two hours. But when I come for each of you, I will not have mercy. Your God is a jealous God, and he will reclaim your flesh exactly how he sees fit.”
Before I could make it too far past them, Kingston stopped me. “Not staying for the show, Nova?” he asked.
I turned. Kingston looked at me, but his subs still gazed up at him like he was the giver of their every breath.
“What show?”
He smiled, waving toward the second story opposite the sanctuary. The rest of the room slowly turned their attention to the three women dressed as angels at the railing above us.
The orchestral music grew darker and louder. Men hoisted all three angels up onto the railing, and my breath caught in my throat. What the fuck were they doing?
I stepped forward, about ready to scream, as if that would stop them.
The angels floated in the air the minute they stepped off the railing, dangling above the nave.
My mouth fell open in horror, noticing the metal hooks pierced through the angels’ skin and attached to a metal rod above them like demented human marionettes.
One of the angels had them all over her back, tilting her like she was midflight.
Another hung vertically, the hooks piercing her chest and arms. I quickly looked away, feeling sick.
“What the fuck?”
Kingston walked toward me slowly. His icy Scandinavian presence was undeniably powerful. “Flesh hook suspension,” he explained calmly. “An extreme form of masochism and performance art. If it’s too much, you don’t have to watch, dear.”
His tone was surprisingly gentle, his features shifting from frightening Dom to concerned in an instant. “You look pale. Do you need to sit down?”
I shook my head. “I’m good, thanks,” I mumbled. I glanced up at the angels one more time, their concentrated, calm features. As soon as they began to glide forward, my stomach lurched, and I rushed out of the nave.
“You all right?” an older woman in red latex asked in the hall.
“I’m great,” I said as I nearly gagged, sweat breaking out on my forehead.
“Flesh hooks?” she asked.
“Yep,” I whispered, catching my breath as I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall.
She chuckled. “They have to keep pushing the limits, you see,” she said softly. “Sex parties are mainstream now that everybody and their mother has been to one. On their own, they’re boring. Common. What’s going to be left to do when everything’s been done?”
“I shudder to imagine,” I muttered.
She laughed at this. “I’ve been in the scene for decades.
I’ve seen it all. I’m here for business, not pleasure, but I will say…
it’s nice to see old school kink happening in such a large group here in the city, where space is scarce.
It’s a strange mix, but there are quite a few gems in the rubble.
At least people are being weird again.” She sighed wistfully, stroking the flogger in her hand.
“I don’t want to blabber on. You enjoy yourself, and stay safe. ”
“Thank you,” I said.
I watched her strut away in her Louboutins, fascinated as always by the varied experiences within The Circle. I briefly wondered what Wes would’ve said if he were here, but the thought stung. If he didn’t care about me coming tonight, then I wasn’t sure he ever cared about me at all.
My stomach was settled enough to forge on, so I continued my meticulous search for Lorelei.
In one room, a man was inside a vacuum bed, latex hugging every inch of him, leaving only his mouth uncovered as a female Domme monitored him.
Next to them, a man was creating huge latex balloons for giggling women to crawl inside of.
No Lorelei in the latex bondage room.
I forged on.
She wasn’t in the more sensual rooms either, where men watched an orgy of women get each other off under the twinkling lights.
I tried the basement next, where several rope scenes were happening. Rope suspension, I could stomach. In a smaller room in the basement, a woman pissed on a man in a golden bathtub, his mouth duct taped and wrists bound.
I jumped when a woman suddenly screamed, and I watched masked men drag her deeper into the darkness.
It wasn’t Lorelei.
Back upstairs, I was starting to get irritated. If this was another wild goose chase, I swore to God, I would never—
At a flash of light brown hair and pink ribbon lingerie, I turned my head.
Maisy.
Seeing the look on my face, her eyes widened and then narrowed. She crossed her arms as I approached.
“You said you ascended the same time I did. That you’d been trying for six months. But I heard you’ve been a part of this since the beginning.” I glared. “You lied.”
Maisy rolled her eyes dramatically. “What are you, a toddler? Yeah, I lied. People lie, Nova.” Her lip curled. “It was for the greater good. It would’ve been for your greater good if you hadn’t been a petulant child every step of the way.”
“Where is she?” I spat, stepping closer to Maisy as I saw her for who she truly was, mask off. “Where the fuck is Lorelei?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. I’m not helping people who can’t be helped.” She lifted her chin and blew past me, bumping my shoulder.
My fists clenched, but I managed to stay calm. I climbed the stairs to the second floor, and I regretted entering the first room immediately.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered under my breath.
Archer, wearing only fur and a silver crown, was fucking a stack of women under a Christmas tree. Not figuratively. Three human women were literally stacked on top of each other as Archer kneeled behind them, able to alternate fucking each of them from behind as he pleased.
My nausea returned. I flashed back to the first party, when Wes and I had stood staring at each other as people fucked all around us. His words haunted me, twisting my heart into knots.
At a certain point, it’s all just flesh, ain’t it?
I don’t merely desire your body, Nova. I need your soul.
I took a step back, and Jayne appeared as if out of thin air. I turned to look at her instead of Archer’s grunts and clenched ass cheeks. She was dressed as a snow queen, Archer’s counterpart, even as she watched him fuck everyone else.
“How can you stand it?” I asked her quietly.
She didn’t look at Archer either, only at me. Her beauty tonight was ethereal, adorned with diamonds and a dramatic icy crown. “It’s just nature. His nature. Loving someone means accepting them as they are.”
I scanned her eyes, searching for hurt, but as always, Jayne presented as a true believer of her every word.
“Where. Is. She.” Venom seeped into my irises as I curled my lip.
“The last private room on the right,” Jayne answered.
I laughed bitterly. “You all gaslit me, made me feel fucking crazy. You lied over and over again. Why? And why keep playing with me when Wes was the one you really wanted?”
Jayne remained infuriatingly serene, her every feature soft and supple. “Because of The Circle, you are now free.”
I gritted my teeth.
“You can’t go back to your self-imposed chains even if you wanted to. If you choose to leave us now, your eyes will remain open forever. Your old life cannot be resurrected. But the extraordinary life you dreamed of as a girl is alive. It’s been waiting for you.”
Jayne grinned, and Archer groaned again.
“My dreams are dead,” I spat. “And I won’t be selling my soul to get them back.”
Jayne’s lips twitched with displeasure, her nearly-golden eyes losing a touch of their sparkle. Satisfied, I turned from her and headed toward the hall of private rooms. As I went, I passed elves, Mrs. Claus, snow fairies, men in suits and masks, and naked subs on all fours.
But I couldn’t focus on anything but the blood rushing to my head and the heavy beat of my heart.
It had been over eight months since I’d spoken to Lorelei in the flesh, the woman I’d grown up with, the woman I’d tried and failed to save—from her dad, from our hometown, from alcohol, from men, from a fucking sex cult.
I had no idea what to expect. If Lorelei knew it wasn’t safe to message me on PicWave, it was possible she knew she was in danger. This was what I hoped: she’d woken up, and she finally realized she needed my help.
Moaning, vibrating, screaming, and thumping created a symphony of hedonism as I slowly crept toward the last door on the right.
I reached for the doorknob. I took a deep breath. What if she wasn’t in here? What if—
I pushed open the door.
Lorelei turned from the window, somehow gaunter than she’d looked during The Hunt. Her black gown nearly brushed the floor, exposing just a sliver of her bare feet. Her blonde curls were full and bouncy as she brushed them over her shoulder and placed a delicate hand on her hip.
“Oh, Nova,” she said softly. “What a disappointment you have been.”