Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
“Good.” Nox released him. “Then I will go in.”
“G-go ahead.” The Bouncer nodded quickly. “Help yourself!”
“Thank you.” Nox stepped inside.
He noted that The Whip was a noisy, crowded venue filled with humans dressed mostly in black. There was deep, pounding music that hurt his sensitive Kindred ears and dim lighting that seemed to give everything an ominous cast. He didn’t see Seline right away, but this didn’t panic him—he had a plan to find her.
Lifting his head, he inhaled deeply, searching for Seline’s scent. But, to his dismay, he couldn’t catch it anywhere. Possibly it was buried under a thousand other smells—the cloying florals and musks that the humans wore to either hide or enhance their body odor—as well as the strong, skunky stench of burning cannabis which someone was obviously smoking despite the large NO SMOKING sign on the wall.
“Where is she?” Nox muttered to himself. He was scanning the crowd again when the little pink flur’fa came fluttering around his head again. Nox waved at it impatiently. “What the fuck do you want, Peep-a cheek?” he demanded.
Then he realized what he had just said.
“Peep-a-cheek? Is that your name?” he asked the little flur’fa which came to light on his shoulder.
The little creature peeped in his ear. Then he flew up and settled on Nox’s head. Nox had the strangest feeling that he knew the little flur’fa—but more important, he felt like it somehow had to do with Seline.
“Listen, Peep-a-cheek,” he said to it. “Do you know Seline? I mean, can you find her?”
The flur’fa took off at once, flying high over the milling crowd. It darted back to Nox once, as though to make sure he was following it. But Nox had already gotten the message. He followed the flur’fa deeper into the crowded club, scanning for signs of Seline as he went.
He hoped desperately that he found her soon—he felt instinctively that her danger was growing by the minute!
FIFTY-FOUR
SELINE
When a new couple entered the Dungeon part of The Whip, Seline thought she was saved.
“Oh, please—help me!” she cried. The bald Dom—whose name she still didn’t know—was doing his best to manacle her to the St. Andrew’s Cross. And though Seline was fighting him with all her might, he had already managed to fasten her wrists above her head and was working on getting her ankles restrained.
None of her yelling seemed to do any good. The music was too loud for anyone to hear her, she thought in despair. But now there were more people in the Dungeon—a man and a woman both dressed in black leather.
“Please!” she begged them again. “Please help me! He’s doing this against my will!”
The woman looked uncomfortable and the man stepped forward with an uncertain look on his face, but the bald Dom who had grabbed Seline stepped in front of him.
“Hey, don’t pay any attention—this is just part of our scene,” he said. “We’re deep into Non-con role play. My sweet little sub here likes to pretend I’m taking her against her will, but that’s just how we play. I don’t stop unless she says her safe word—you know?”
“Oh…of course.” The looks on their faces cleared at once. The bald Dom— Lendrex whispered a little voice in Seline’s mind—sounded so calm and capable that Seline probably would have believed him too, if he hadn’t grabbed her and started tying her to the St. Andrew’s Cross!
“He’s lying!” she shouted, hoping to change their minds. “Please—I don’t have a safe word with him because I don’t even know him! He just grabbed me! He—!”
“That’s enough out of you, little girl!”
The bald Dom shoved a ball gag in her mouth and fastened it—tightly—around her head, effectively muting her. Though she whipped her head from side to side, there was no getting it off.
The couple who had come into the Dungeon were looking uncomfortable again but the bald Dom reassured them.
“Don’t worry, folks—all part of our scene. You can stay and watch if you want,” he added, picking out a particularly long, nasty looking cane from the wall and swishing it through the air. “We love spectators.”
But the couple didn’t seem inclined to take him up on his offer. With a final, uncertain look at Seline, they pulled aside the black curtain and left the Dungeon quickly.
However, for a moment the curtain was open and Seline saw something small and pink flit into the room. Was it a bird? It had a body like a bird but pointed ears like a fox and big, soulful eyes like a puppy. What was it? She couldn’t tell but as soon as it saw her, it flew over and began fluttering around her head crying,
“Peep-a-cheek! Peep-a-cheek!” as loudly as it could.
Peep-a-cheek? Seline wondered where she had heard that sound before. Or was it a name? It seemed so familiar but at the moment, her mind was too occupied with being bound and gagged to pay much more attention to the strange pink bird-thing.