Chapter 27 Reva
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
REVA
Sonny doesn’t take me anywhere near the front door.
She swings her car around the back side of Noir and eases into a narrow alley cut between the building and a brick wall slick with old humidity. The city feels different here. Less like New Orleans proper and more like something tucked under its skin. A service corridor. A vein.
No neon. No line. Just a steel door painted black to match the wall and a single amber light with insects buzzing above it.
I look from the door to Sonny. “This is…nice.”
She kills the engine and gives me a look. “This is the only place I could sneak you in.”
“I gathered.”
She reaches over and squeezes my wrist once, firm and brief. “You sure about this?”
No. Not even a little.
I smooth my palms over the dress, grounding myself in the slick black fabric and the shape of the gun hidden away in the little purse she brought for me. The idea of using it makes my stomach hurt.
“I’m sure enough.”
“That’s not good enough, baby girl.”
“It’ll have to be tonight. But, if something happens, I need you to get the kitten from the hotel for me. Please.”
Sonny studies me for a beat too long, her mouth flattening. “Fine. But we’re making a plan to keep this from going sideways, because I’m not an animal person.”
“A plan?”
“Yes, because unlike you, I like my life.” She points toward the door. “I’ll get you in there, but I obviously can’t stay. I’ll come back at the end of my shift and meet you out here. If you’re not out here—”
“You’ll leave?”
She snorts. “Please. I’ll decide whether to call the cops, a priest, or a cleanup crew. Probably in that order.”
Despite myself, a laugh slips out. Thin. Frayed. But real.
Her expression softens. “Text me if you can. If you can’t, get out when you’re able and come straight here.”
I nod.
She reaches for the handle, then pauses. “And Reva?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever this is—don’t confuse wanting something with owing someone.”
The words catch me off guard. They settle somewhere deep, somewhere inconvenient.
“I won’t,” I say, though I’m not entirely sure that’s true.
Sonny gets out first. I follow on unsteady heels, the pavement beneath me damp and uneven.
She leads me to the black door and knocks in a rhythm that sounds casual but probably isn’t.
A hatch slides open at eye level. Someone inside says something low enough I can’t make out.
Sonny answers with a name I don’t recognize and a smile I definitely don’t trust.
The lock buzzes, and the door opens.
Warmth pours out first. Then music. Not loud the way the upstairs bar is loud, but thick and low and expensive, all velvet and pulse with bass mixed in. Sonny tips her head toward the opening.
“Go on.”
I hesitate. For the first time since embarking on this whole insane trip, since packing a bag and fleeing Blackwood House and sleeping in a motel with a kitten as my only witness, I feel completely, entirely alone.
Not just lonely. Alone.
Alone in the way you are right before you step off a ledge and find out whether there’s water or rock below.
My fingers find my wrist automatically, searching for the rubber bands that usually live there, the ones I snap when I need grounding, when I need pain to narrow the world into something manageable.
I find bare skin.
I took them off before leaving Cleo’s. They didn’t go with the dress. Now it’s too late to do anything about it.
Sonny seems to read all of that on my face, because she gives me a small shove between the shoulders. “Move, princess. Before I change my mind and sedate you to keep you from doing something stupid.”
I go.
The door closes behind me with a heavy, final-sounding click.
For a second, all I see is the little anteroom I’ve stepped into—dark-paneled walls, low gold lighting, a small desk sitting vacant, a heavy curtain parted just enough to reveal the room beyond.
Then I look through it, and I stop breathing.
The club opens in front of me with a silent whisper of a secret too rich to be real.
Dark, intimate lighting pools over velvet seating and glossy black card tables.
The mirrored bar catches and fractures what little light there is, throwing back shards of movement and skin and diamonds and poured amber liquor.
The low hum of conversation never rises above a murmur, but there’s laughter in it, and hunger, and the peculiar confidence of people who believe money can buy privacy for any appetite.
They’re not wrong. In a place like this…their privacy is guaranteed.
It smells like perfume and polished wood and expensive liquor mixed with sex.
Not the blunt, sticky kind upstairs at Noir when bodies grind close and everyone pretends it means less than it does.
This is different. This reeks of wealth and secrets.
A woman in a red silk dress sits in one man’s lap near the bar, her mouth at his throat while another man watches from the next chair over, fingers stroking the inside of her thigh like he already knows how she’s going to taste when he spreads her legs and shoves his face into her pussy.
In a shadowed corner farther back, I can just make out movement—a mouth against exposed skin, the glint of an eye, the silhouette of hands gripping hips. And the unmistakable thrust of a man taking his partner with rapid thrusts.
Couples in various stages of undress do things in the dark with the lazy confidence of people who know no one here will stop them. In fact, many of them have an audience, enjoying what they’re doing.
My pulse kicks. But that isn’t what really catches me off guard.
It’s the cages.
There are several of them, hung from the ceiling and lowered onto raised pedestals around the room, perfectly positioned for visibility. They gleam under directed light, making spectacles of the bodies inside them.
In the first, a woman dances nude around a pole, arching and spinning, her skin painted gold by the spotlights. That, at least, I can process. This is a strip club with better tailoring and richer clientele.
An actual gentleman’s club.
In another, a woman is on her knees between another woman’s thighs, her head moving in slow, deliberate rhythm while the second woman grips the bars and tips her face back in pleasure.
I have to watch her for a few moments because even though I’m a dick girl, it’s maybe the hottest thing I’ve seen this year.
In a third, a collared woman clutches the bars while a man swipes some sort of humming electrical device over her body in deliberate strokes that make her body jolt in helpless, shivering increments. Her mouth is open. Her eyes are dazed. She looks humiliated and adored in equal measure.
My entire body tingles at the idea that I could ever be treated like that. That maybe I want to be treated like that.
Liquid heat pools hard and sudden between my legs, and I take a step back before I can stop myself.
Then one forward.
I didn’t come here to be shocked and turned into a puddle of euphoric arousal.
I came here for Deacon.
I drag my gaze from the cages to the mirrored bar and start toward it, because bars are where information lives, and if I can get close enough, maybe—
I stop so abruptly my heel nearly turns under me.
They’re all there. Nash. Shiloh. Ever.
Waiting.
There’s no surprise on their faces. No scramble to hide the fact that they’ve caught me exactly where I was never meant to be.
For one sharp, disorienting second, the entire room seems to narrow until it’s just them and me.
The pulse of the music turns distant. The low red lights smear across glass and polished metal, catching on the hard lines of their faces.
My stomach drops so fast it feels like missing a step in the dark.
Nash stands at the center of them, one hand braced on the back of a barstool, immaculate in a tweed vest over dark pants, expression unreadable in that way of his that’s worse than anger.
Shiloh leans against the bar with his sleeves rolled and his mouth half-curved like he’s been entertaining himself for the last ten minutes with thoughts of this moment.
Ever stands a little apart from them, broader, stiller, all his attention locked on me in a way that feels almost physical.
Nash crooks one finger.
Come here.
A fine trembling begins at my feet and starts climbing. No. Absolutely not. I am not going to obey his silent command.
I turn to leave. I get two steps before Shiloh is there in my space.
He doesn’t grab me hard. He doesn’t need to. He just appears in front of me, one hand settling lightly at my elbow, redirecting me with that infuriating, easy grace of his.
“Ah-ah-ah,” he murmurs. “You came all this way.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Obviously you were trying to because you got caught,” he says. “Your timing is impeccable as ever.”
I yank my arm back. “Move.”
His eyes glitter. “Or what, Yank? You’re here. On our turf in a way you know you’re not supposed to be. What are you going to do?”
I open my mouth, then shut it again, because the truthful answer is I don’t know. Scream? Scratch? Make a scene in a room where I’m beginning to suspect scenes are purchased for sport?
Shiloh’s smile softens into something more dangerous. “Behave, brat.”
“Don’t call me that.” Every nerve fiber in my body bristles at his use of that name. But he’s not wrong. I know how I’m behaving.
“Then don’t act like a brat.”
He guides me—not roughly, but with no room for misunderstanding—back toward the bar where Nash and Ever wait. My skin is buzzing by the time I stop in front of them. Fury. Adrenaline. Humiliation. Something wetter and more traitorous underneath.
Nash looks me over once. Head to toe. Dress. Heels. Hair. Mouth.
Nothing in his face changes, but I know that look now. It’s approval sharpened into possession with a dash of surprise.
“So,” he says. “This is where you decided to run.”
“I didn’t run.”
Three pairs of eyes tell me exactly what they think of that lie.
Shiloh laughs softly. Ever says nothing, but his raised eyebrow calls my bullshit.
Nash tilts his head. “You broke out of Blackwood House, hid in a motel, and snuck into a private club through a side entrance using one of our staff.”
“I walked out of Blackwood House.”
“You are committed to semantics in a way I almost admire.” He licks his lips. “If I wasn’t ready to spank you.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “I left, because none of you were doing anything to help me. If you’re going to drag me back, drag me back.”
Nash’s gaze flicks to my crossed arms and the swell of my breasts, pushed up by the gesture, then returns to my eyes. “Maybe. But first, since you wanted to see what’s down here so badly…”
His mouth curves. Not kindly.
“You wanted to see Noir Night…so we’re going to show you.”
My pulse stutters. He turns without waiting for agreement.
Ever touches the small of my back. Shiloh falls into step at my side, and suddenly I’m bracketed by them, being guided deeper into the club.
No, not guided. That’s too gentle to describe what’s happening. This forced tour feels less like hospitality and more like a sentence being read aloud.
“I feel like a prisoner on Death Row.” I mumble the words under my breath. Nash glances back, one brow lifted. Ever’s finger traces the line of my spine, a warning under the glancing touch, because he never just touches for the sake of it. There’s always a purpose. A message.
We pass curtained alcoves with narrow viewing windows cut into the walls.
Through one, I glimpse a couple on a chaise, the woman’s mouth open in a silent cry while a man kneels between her spread legs devouring every ounce of her pleasure and another watches from a chair, stroking himself slowly.
Through another, a woman is bent over the edge of a velvet couch while someone behind her grips both wrists in one hand and thrusts with lazy, punishing force.
She’s enjoying it, if her moans and gasps are anything to judge from.
I drag my eyes away and find Shiloh watching me watch.
His mouth curves. “Educational, isn’t it?”
“Is that what this is?”
“Depends,” he says. “On what you came here hoping to learn.”
We move on.
Another corridor opens into a guarded room where the sounds are different. Less moaning. More voices. Male. Intent. Sharp with calculation. Through the door, I catch green felt, cards flashing under careful hands, towers of chips, whiskey, men who look like they could be judges or gangsters.
“High-stakes poker,” Shiloh says lightly when I slow. “You don’t get to go in there.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Nash says without looking back, “you haven’t earned the privilege of losing that much money.”
By the time they stop at the last door, my heart is a hammer in my throat. Nash opens it and gestures me inside.
The room beyond is quieter than the rest of the club. Intimate. Sealed off. Empty, at least of people.
A giant bed dominates the center, all black linens and carved posts.
In one corner stands a large cross-like structure—wooden, polished, unmistakably built to bind a body to it.
There’s a padded bench nearby, a wardrobe, a pair of heavy chairs, and a few scattered side tables holding things I make a point not to inspect too closely.
I’ve seen them before, in porn. But I’ve never used them. Never had them used on me.
The air in here feels thicker.
Once I’m inside, Nash closes the door behind us. The click of the latch lands somewhere in my spine.
Nash moves to one of the chairs and sits with infuriating calm, crossing one ankle over his knee as if he’s settling in for a business meeting rather than whatever this is. Then he begins rolling up his cuffs with slow, precise motions.
“You’ve been a bad girl, Reva.”