Sicko(57)

James strolls toward a small bar area where a tender stands behind in a white suit. He orders a drink and turns to face me.

His voice comes through again, only distorted. He likes his toys to manipulate his words. As if he knows why he does what he does and who he’s hiding from.

“Change” from Deftones starts playing loudly, and I find myself checking everyone who is here.

Two are wearing dark hoodies, their mouths blanketed with white bandanas, one is wearing an expensive suit with a black leather mask, hiding the top half of his face, and the final guy is wearing a leather jacket with a hoodie underneath, with the same plain white bandana around his mouth.

I run my tongue over my lips, placing my phone onto the floor and making my way to the makeshift stage. This isn’t new. James has had me dance for people in the past, but it was always for a purpose. To entertain rich, fat men who had too much money and not enough humanity. It would tease them. James would say that I was a direct image of the kind of girls he had for sale.

I found that disturbing, but there’s nothing I could ever do about it.

The song continues to play into the chorus and my fingers flex around the cold pole as I tousle my hair out of the braid. Rolling my body off the pole, I allow my mind to drift to other places, only once I’m turned away from them, someone is at my back, his fingers spread out over my lower belly.

I recognize his touch almost instantly, and before I can think too much into it, I realize the reason why I recognized it is because he was one of the two guys from the first night I attended.

Sighing, I press my cheek against the cool metal of the pole as his finger dives into the waistband of my panties.

When my eyes fly over my shoulder to find James, he’s gone.

My shoulders relax as my fingers flex around the pole, grinding my ass into the crotch of his pants. His fingers move around my hips as he yanks me around to face him.

His head tilts.

“Lapdance” by N.E.R.D starts as his hand finds the curve of my throat, his other diving into the front of my panties. Frustration fights pleasure as I attempt to find his eyes. Who the fuck are you?

His fingers come to my ass as he lifts me off the ground, and I wrap my legs around his waist, just as someone else comes up behind me, unzipping my dress. It falls around my shoulders and he tugs it off, over my head, my hair flopping down my lower back. The guy in front of me rolls and leans down and sinks his teeth into the skin at my collarbone.

I moan, tilting my head for him as the one behind me dips beneath my panties.

“Fuck!” someone roars behind us, so loud the music is drowned out momentarily. “Yo! Stop!” Hands come to the shoulder of the guy who is holding me.

The voice sounds familiar.

When the guy who is holding me sets me back to the ground, spinning around to face his friend angrily, I watch in slow motion as he snatches my phone off him. His shoulders tense as he slowly turns with my phone in his hands.

My phone? Shit.

“What!” I snap, annoyed that I‘m sitting in the middle of a makeshift stage in my bra and panties while they’re all staring at me like they’ve never seen it before.

He throws my phone across the room and takes three angry strides to me, yanking me up by my arms and tearing off my mask.

I gasp, my eyes furious. “What the fuck!”

He pulls off the bandana that’s around his face and my world stops. My stomach falls to the ground and solidifies at my feet.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Duchess?” Royce’s face comes into full view, and I blink a few times to make sure I’m not hallucinating.

Reaching up to the rim of his hoodie, I shove it off his head until it falls around his tattooed neck.

“Oh shit,” I whisper, my blood turning as cold as ice.

He backs me up until I’m colliding into the chest of the guy who is behind me. Royce’s eyes furiously fly over my shoulder, and I watch as his jaw sets to stone, his eyes burning up all the energy in the room. “Get. The fuck. Away from her.” His tone is low, dangerous, and a thousand levels above the temperature of Hell. The music cuts off in the background as Royce gathers up my clothes from around my feet and shoves them into my chest. “Get changed. Fucking now!”

I do as I’m told. What is happening? Shoving on my crop top and yanking my skirt back down, panic seizes my muscles as I furiously search around the room. Royce pulls at his hair in frustration as he sits on the sofa, a cigarette between his two fingers.

“Roy, what the fuck?”

“Shiiit,” one of the others murmur, removing his bandana.

I still. “Orson!”

Orson shakes his head, running his hands over his mouth. “‘Sup, Duchess.”

I pale, walking over to him and wrapping my arms around the back of his neck. “You’re married! What the fuck are you doing here?”

“We have a different kind of marriage.”

My muscles tense. “L’artisaniant, it’s French…” Putting the pieces together about Orson being part French. He flashes me a sad smile. “Yeah, Dutch. We—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Royce growls without looking up at us. When I turn to see the final two guys have removed their bandanas and masks, I’m not even slightly surprised to see one is Storm, but I am to see the other is Wicked.

I gulp, my eyes falling down his body. Judging by the fact that Storm is too lean and Orson too tall, I’m gathering it was him and Royce who I had sex with the first night.