He excused himself from the conversation, his mind racing. He badly didn’t want to let Lucien down tonight, this was the acid test. Equally, he didn’t want his image splashed across tomorrow morning’s local papers, or more worryingly, over the pages of entertainment industry magazines. The slim chance that someone back home would see the picture was enough to bathe his body in clammy foreboding. He followed Kara slowly because there was no other choice that he could see.
A few weeks here and already this place and these people felt dangerously like home. He didn’t want it entangling with his former life. Fuck.
He met Lucien’s eyes as he drew close, and saw the question in them. Was it written all over his face how much he didn’t want to be photographed?
“So much charisma in one photograph,” Kara said, linking her arm through Sophie’s, her eyes on Dylan and Lucien. “Hope they don’t break the camera lens.”
Lucien reached into his pocket for his phone, flicked the screen on for a second and frowned.
“Sorry guys, minor emergency,” he murmured to the photographers. “Dylan, the DJ’s having some last minute hitches with the energy supply. Would you go and see what’s going on? We open in five.” Lucien moved between Sophie and Kara, an arm around each of their waists. “A thorn between two roses,” he smiled graciously for their benefit, jerking his head imperceptibly at Dylan to disappear.
Moving away into the safety of the crowd, Dylan was well aware that the DJ would not be waiting for his help. He let his breath out on a long, slow huff. That had been close. Too close, and he now owed Lucien his thanks and some kind of explanation. He’d already been more economical with the truth than sat easily with his conscience. He really didn’t want to lie to these people, but there was no way he was dragging them into his mess.
Chapter Eighteen
A couple of hours later, and Dylan was too busy and too fascinated to give any more thought to his problems. The club was full to capacity, the opening night guests were spending freely on cocktails and champagne, and the steady, sexy beat of the music provided a perfect backdrop to the scene unfolding in front of him.
He knew clubs like the back of his hand, but not this one.
He knew clubbers like the back of his hand, but not these people.
They had the same exterior gloss as conventional clubbers, more so, actually. They were exquisitely groomed and dressed to impress, albeit in flesh-revealing outfits and in some cases, lingerie. He’d ducked into the boutique earlier and found it full of interested customers, with Kara in her element as she helped someone choose between two different vibrators. He laughed softly as he moved back towards the bar, remembering back to the first time he’d met her, brandishing a vibrator at him like a gun. She sure was a woman of many facets. Unflinchingly honest, sexy beyond words, and sweet as spun sugar on the inside and out.
Around him, people drank and danced, warming up for the night ahead. There was a sense of expectation in the air, an alive, sexual pulse that throbbed through the entire place. He was finally experiencing the difference between this club and any other he’d managed. Here there was a sense of freedom and of daring, of anything being possible for those brave enough to grasp the opportunity.
Lucien appeared as he moved around the bar and checked in with the staff.
“Walk with me.”
His low tone brooked no argument, not that Dylan would have shied away in any case. He needed to clear things up with Lucien, to show him that the trust he’d placed in him was not misdirected. Satisfied that all was well behind the bar, he caught up alongside his boss as he began to weave through the throng. Together they worked their way around the periphery of the club.
“What do you think?” Lucien asked. Dylan heard in the question confidence and pride but also a desire for reassurance. He knew how much this mattered to Lucien.
Dylan took a few seconds, drinking in the images around him. Dancers. Couples entwined around each other. Groups of revellers in the booths, a few celebrity faces among them. Their clothes would stay firmly on, but their status would be enhanced by gossip column inches and pictures the next day. Dylan knew that most of them were there at the behest of their PRs and advisors, targeted carefully by a comprehensive Gateway publicity campaign.
Champagne corks were flying. Nearby, a woman naked from the waist up ground slowly against the guy behind her, her eyes closed as his hands moved over her breasts.
A regular club with added erotic extras.
“I think it’s fucking amazing,” he said truthfully.
Lucien nodded, leading the way through to the spa area. Things had certainly kicked up a gear since Dylan had last been in there an hour back. Several people lounged naked in the jacuzzi, talking, flirting, and as he watched, one woman turned to another beside her and kissed her lingeringly, their bared breasts pressed together as their arms moved around each other. It wasn’t so much exhibitionism as uninhibited freedom, a distinction Dylan hadn’t fully appreciated until then. When a third woman joined them, he glanced away, back to Lucien’s knowing eyes. It was a hard line to walk, being here in a professional capacity rather than as a pleasure seeker. He supposed it was like being on the set of a classy porn movie and having to keep your jeans on.
“It’s natural to be turned on by it. It’s the best fucking job in the world,” Lucien said, interpreting Dylan’s thoughts without difficulty. “It gets easier to detach in one way, but the day you stop wanting to strip off and fuck someone is the day to walk away. You need a healthy appreciation for sex to do this job justice.”
A healthy appreciation for sex was one way to put it. A burning desire to hunt Kara down and screw her hard against the wall in the next five minutes was another.
Lucien headed up the nearby staircase at a jog, a man at ease in his environment. Dylan followed, knowing that if what he’d seen downstairs was any kind of yardstick, then upstairs was going to blister his eyeballs.
“This is how it’ll be here, night in, night out. People come to drink and to fuck, simple as that. No drugs, no fighting, just fucking.”
“As someone who has managed some rough clubs over the years, that is music to my ears, man,” Dylan said, peering into one of the playrooms as they passed the open doorway. Seven or eight naked clubbers writhed on the oversized bed, a nest of nude bodies, their mouths feasting on each other. Painted lips sliding over rigid cocks. Tongues lapping between spread legs. Hips banging hips, mouths sucking nipples. It was a veritable sex carnival, the players utterly lost in the acts of giving and receiving pleasure.
“There’s an absolution and purity to fucking that strips people back to their primal core,” Lucien said, and his eyes moved from the playroom to Dylan. “Life is filled with double meanings and hidden secrets. There’s no hiding here.”
They moved along from room to room, scene after scene of sex, from vanilla through to deepest darkest kink, the kind of stuff Dylan had barely even considered let alone taken part in. And he was no prude. But Lucien’s words sat heavier on his mind than the scenes unfolding before him. No hiding.
Was he hiding? And what kind of a man did that make him?
“Lucien, I know I’ve given you no reason to trust me.”
Dylan watched the man he’d come to think of as a friend lift one shoulder, the other leaning on the doorframe of a room set out for people who liked a little pain along with their pleasure. Cages. Shackles. Whips. And suddenly Kara was foremost in his mind once again, her promise of being a very bad girl suddenly more real as he watched a blonde gasp with pleasure as a riding crop left red welts across her exposed ass.