Chapter Eight
I step out of the cab, blinking at the bright lights shining from the Den’s windows. Pavement pulses with a life of its own, the music from inside its heart. I paid the driver twenty bucks extra to wait while I ran inside Daddy’s apartment, but it was empty. Not a surprise considering he isn’t answering his cell. My stomach still sinks to the bottom of my feet, my whole body jittery and hot.
I’ve been this way since I found Avery gone, half-wondering if I’ll wake up.
If all of this is just a dream.
The Den is a private club for the rich and dangerous men of Tanglewood. I’ve seen the place dark, almost abandoned, with Damon in a half-buttoned shirt and no shoes. And I’ve seen the place glittering like an underground casino prepared for the biggest game of the city.
But I’ve never seen it look like a nightclub, purple and blue and pink pressing against the windows, smoke winding out of the narrow opening in the door. Two large men wearing black T-shirts stretched across muscle guard the door, a seedier version of the lions who guard fancy libraries. Patience. Fortitude. And a flat aspect in their eyes that makes me uncomfortable.
I drag my carry-on luggage behind me, thumping down the stone steps to the landing, the door below street-level. The iron railing is slick with dew, because it’s closer to dawn than midnight. The roar behind the heavy oak door shows no signs of stopping.
“Hello,” I shout over the noise. “I’m here to see Damon Scott.”
One bouncer looks at me, unimpressed. The other doesn’t even bother to look away from that place two feet in front of his face. Neither of them make a move to let me in. They don’t move to stop me, either.
“Can I go inside?”
The bouncer who acknowledged me gives a noncommittal nod. Apparently they aren’t very concerned with a guest list at this party. Or security, considering anything could be in this luggage.
What on earth is going on?
I step through the door, half expecting them to spring into action and block me. But I stumble into the dimly lit foyer, the mirror reflecting the light of a disco ball that appears to have been slung from the antique chandelier with rope.
My eyes struggle to adjust as I stumble over something blocking the path. It’s one of the leather chairs, I realize. The ones that normally sit in uneven circles around the gilt tables, for men to have dangerous thoughts. Now it’s sideways in the hallway.
And it’s moving.
In a flash of scattered purple light I see why. There are two people on the other side, half-naked, having sex. Or very, very close. They’re moving in rhythm with the music, making the chair undulate against me, almost as if they’re grinding directly on me.
I jump back and bump into another group of people in the opposite parlor. Not dancing. They’re kissing. They’re doing a lot more than kissing—having sex in a tangle of limbs and tongues. God, what’s happening here?
I feel like I’ve fallen through the mirror and ended up in some alternate version of Tanglewood, everything turned around and upside down. Daddy is missing, and now there’s some kind of orgy happening at the Den. Maybe Damon Scott is missing, too.
Or maybe he’s been pining after you.
Avery’s voice rings in my ears. What if he withdrew from the Den? From a life of crime?
He might not even realize what’s happening in this place, how they’ve torn it apart.
I push farther into the Den, determined to find the stairs. I know which bedroom is Damon’s, a fact that still brings heat to my cheeks despite all the sinful acts being performed around me.
Through the doorway I can see a dance floor, where a crush of people move to the music that seems to emanate from the walls. I have one foot on the stairs, the heavy little luggage lifted an inch off the hardwood floor, when I see something in the far corner of the dance floor.
A little space carved out of the crowd, an invisible velvet rope respected by these people who’ve respected nothing else in the Den.
I take one step closer, drawn by the mystery of it, the gravity.
And there’s Damon Scott, sitting in a high-backed leather chair, a devilish half smile on his face, two days growth shadowing his jaw. His suit is past rumpled, as if he’s worn it several days now, but he shows no sign of slowing. Dark eyes survey the crowd like a man looking out over his land—and in a way, that’s what these people are. The valleys and hills of his inheritance, fertile ground being sown.
In the opposite corner I can see a bell-shaped black-iron cage, six feet tall, with a woman dancing inside. Another one, taller, rectangular, has a muscular man wearing a thong and a collar. Their expressions are as blissed-out as the people dancing around them, despite the hands reaching through the bars to touch oiled skin—or maybe because of them.
Something small and pink withers inside me. It seems ludicrous to think that he would have pined after me. That he thought about me at all. I must have seemed like a child to him, whether my body had been grown-up or not—as innocent and foolish as a child.
It makes my crush on him that much more humiliating.
And it makes my presence here ridiculous. What did I think would happen? That I would find him lonely and halfway in love with me? That I would demand answers and he would give them? That he would magically produce Avery and then confess how much he missed me?
Half-naked women aren’t dancing on his lap, but it’s close. They’re near him, showing off bodies in lace and satin and leather. The kind of women you see on TV and magazines, too beautiful to be real. People say that there’s an epidemic of Photoshop in the media, but these women aren’t airbrushed. They’re moving with confidence and glamour and unabashed sexiness.
While I stand in the hallway wearing yoga pants, my hair in a rough ponytail.
I don’t know how long I would have stood there, debating with myself, hating myself, but Damon glances up. His eyes meet mine. For a moment I see a storm inside them—regret, anger. Accusation. It chills me to the bone, wind lashing me from twenty feet away.
Then he stands, and I taste something new. Metallic. Fear.
I don’t know the man walking toward me. My dreams cast him as the savior. My nightmares showed his father as the devil. But those were the imaginings of a little girl, the same as my terrible crush and my private yearning.
The crowd parts for him, some without even looking back. They feel his energy as strongly as I do, pulsing as if the beat emanates from him. Smoke rises up around him, behind him, framing him in such a demonic light that I know I feared the wrong man.
He stops in front of me, casual, expectant.
And I find myself filling the space between us. “I’m looking for my dad. I didn’t realize you were having a party. He wasn’t at home. I can wait until you’re… done.”
That makes him smile. “Will you wait for me?”
What if he waited for you?
My cheeks turn hot. I must be bright red from shame. Can he guess what I dreamed about? Because whether I meant to or not, I have been waiting for him. Living my life in books, in numbers on paper, the smell of wood shavings and chalk in my nose. There haven’t been dates. Not even many friends.
I have been waiting for this man, the illusion of him. Someone who doesn’t exist.
“No,” I tell Damon Scott. “We need to talk. Right now.”