NightWhere by John Everson Read Free Book Online Page A

above the dance floor, fondling and fucking the gyrating cage prisoners before returning to the floor.
    Beneath the cages and against the black metal walls, a dozen men were down on all fours, collared and chained to hooks on the walls as women strode back and forth fondling riding crops in their hands.
    Periodically people slipped away from the strobing blue lights in twos and threes, and sometimes fours, to claim the only partly public cots that were strung out around the place beneath velvet tents. Many of them returned from the tents without even bothering to pull their clothes back on, driven by the beat of a favorite song to dance clothed solely in the sweat of their bacchanalian passion.
    The band slipped into a dreamy interlude, with something like a sitar punctuating the still-urgent beat as the singer suddenly opened up and showed he could sing more than two notes. And he could sing …with a charisma that melted inhibitions.
    The couples on the floor surged closer to the stage, bodies pressing against each other indiscriminately as the singer hugged the mic. You could taste the lust in the air at that moment. Mark felt himself growing erect from the scent of sex all around him, as much as from the sight of it. Rae shook the chains of her leather bra against Mark, and then twisted to the right to rub her barely concealed breasts teasingly against a man’s biceps with a smile at the man and a wink back at her husband.
    A thickset redhead with a wide face and too-bright eyes shoved into Mark and Rae’s circle and leaned closer to Mark, as she kept an eye on Rae to gauge the other woman’s reaction to the intrusion. Rae only smiled and slipped her arms around the biceps guy to make space for the woman to move in. And she did…leaning forward to make sure Mark saw that her freckled chest was braless beneath the thin red dress she almost wore.
    Mark shot Rae an evil look—she knew he was not into big girls—and humored the woman with a couple of short hip sways together, before he put his hands on her shoulders and excused himself.
    He could almost hear Rae laughing as he escaped to the bar. He wasn’t worried about leaving Rae…she was eager to explore. An obligatory dance with her hubby was a nice gesture, but…he knew the score—he was only holding her back.
    The band stepped up the energy and launched into something gothic behind him, maybe Bauhaus…or Joy Division…Mark wasn’t sure. He just knew it sounded like the growlingly ’80s club scene he vaguely remembered. Hell, the singer even looked like Ian Curtis from his brief Joy Division heyday—wan, thin face and close-cropped hair broken by two intensely wide eyes. He looked angry as he sang, but the sound was comforting somehow, regardless. Mark watched for a minute and then turned away to the bar with a smile, ready to order a Jack and Coke. His eye was caught by a blonde woman who sat alone, at the far end of the bar, so he didn’t notice who was mixing drinks until she spoke.
    “Just couldn’t stay away, could you?” Sin-D said. She leaned forward across the wood, the intricate tattoos on her bare shoulders exposed. Finely detailed, her left arm showed a witch star in a clouded sky and the hands of the dead rising from the earth beneath it. A broken tower faded into the horizon of her biceps beneath the low-hanging strap of her black tank top.
    “Once you’ve had black, there’s no going back?” Mark joked.
    “You better be talking about my shirt, not my skin, baby. This is a hard-core tan! You want black, you’ll have to hit the floor some more,” Sin-D said. “You want hot, fast and naked white girl with a shot of tequila…get your ass back here.”
    “I warned you last time, she’ll do anyone, and usually does!” A broad-shouldered man in a red-and-grey-checkered shirt held out his hand. “Kendrick, remember?”
    Mark took the hand and nodded. “Sure, I remember. Only my wife gets to call you Ken.”
    “Gotta separate the