I hit the floor in a half split. A ball of fire had sparked inside my chest, its grip transforming me into something else. I let go of the hammock and bent forward before standing up straight. I untightened the blindfold, letting it drop to the floor. The screen behind me had lightened up. It was some kind of inside of a futurist sex club—with red rooms and dark shadows of women dancing.
I reeled around with a smile. I’d let the madness and the trance have me. Demons would dance wickedly. The shoulder strap of my dress slipped, then the other. I strolled closer to them, meeting Radcliff’s piercing eyes.
I wore my darkness with a cruel beauty meant to torture him so he’d come back to me.
Beautiful but terrible.
Our chemistry was undeniable; we had our own language. Our souls spoke in an endless torment and fought in silent war. The both of us were condemned to be sucked into a dark vortex.
Goose bumps scattered over my skin in colossal welts when I let my dress fall at my feet.
“Fuck, she played us well,” the chatty man encouraged.
With a sudden burst of courage I hadn’t known I’d possessed, I swayed and twirled my hips like a belly dancer. I pulled my hair up sensually with my arms. My fingers danced to the sensual tempo of the music.Radcliff, my eyes called as I moved like an Egyptian snake. I hoped to be Cleopatra and Aphrodite tonight, inhabited by the same passion as them.
Radcliff gulped his whole drink with a predatory expression, watching me rub my body against the hammock. I caressed every inch of it with my fingertips, keeping my eyes locked on him. The intensity of our stare could have shattered the boundaries for this world to forge a new one.
I parted my legs, bent forward, and arched my back. My butt cheeks shook, each of my movements daring him to give up his control. I walked back like a catwalk model in the direction of the chair. I sat on it, my back facing them. I opened my legs on each side of the chair and grinned against it, flipping my hair.
Radcliff, I called in a silent moan, hoping to be the siren urging him to come to me.
Arching my back again, I let myself slip onto the floor from the chair. Lying on my back, I snapped my legs up together, rolling the part of my legs below my knees like a clock in a cabaret move. Not keeping my seductive eyes away from Radcliff, I opened my legs like scissors.
My belly then melted with the floor, giving the men a view of my side. I pulled my ass up and down, my hand trying to reach an invisible bedsheet. I slid to the floor up and down like I was making love.
Radcliff was close to breaking, judging by the way he eased his hand into a fist. The cracking of his neck. The bobbing of his throat. His lethal veins.
I pulled myself onto my knees, my hips gyrating. I rolled my belly and hips in a wave. Continuing with the floor tricks, I crawled on the parquet, my eyes flaming at Radcliff.
With a strong grip, his glass shattered and fell to the floor.
He had betrayed the fact he was boiling inside. I rose up, feeling victorious. I was ready to push him even more if I had to. But when I stepped to move toward Radcliff, one of the men had grabbed my wrist, forcing me to face him. His pungent, fishy smell invaded my nostrils, and I held my breath.
“Enough games, schoolgirl.” In one move, the man shifted me against the wall with the objects. “Now it’s time you let us play with you.”
I gazed around in panic when the other chatty man took an instrument meant to restrain me. They and their disgusting odors wanted me at their mercy.
This wasn’t a striptease; it was a wicked fantasy.
“I-I don’t want to,” I murmured pointlessly.
“I’m sure you like it, judging by the bruises on your body.” The fishy-smell man laughed. “You like to be dominated, don’t you?”
“No, there’s been a mistake. I—” I was surrounded. I searched for any sign from Radcliff, but his stare had drifted away from me. Hands in his pockets, he wasn’t acknowledging me. Radcliff was gone, possessed by the mask he entertained the world with.
The one who had remained silent approached me at his turn. His scent irritated my nose with something spicy. It burnt like needles or a searing fever. I grimaced. The smell was familiar to me. A memory tried to resurface, but the panic didn’t allow me to focus.
“Let’s not force a lady like cavemen,” the spicy man finally spoke.
I thought he would release me. That I’d be safe. I was wrong. His fingers trailed up my legs to my belly and stopped at the curve of my breast. My hair stood on end, like a shield wanting to repel this unwanted touch.
“She’d be fun to break,” he added.
I narrowed my eyes. “You can’t do that.”
“This one is a brat,” the chatty one commented. “No one will make us stop. You stepped in voluntarily.”
This was what happened in these rooms. Sexual games. Orgies. People came to hide their sexual tastes with masks from the face of the world. All these men were cowards.
