Own Me (The Wolf Hotel, #5)

The Fun House in Greenbank was a simple structure made of plywood, fabric, and paint, with an endless loop of ominous laughter playing over a crackling speaker. People in costumes jumped out from behind black curtains to scare you, and then you stumbled through a mirror maze lined with smudged fingerprints until you surfaced on the other side. It was a few minutes of excitement and then it was over.

The moment we step through the sinister clown mouth entrance and into a long curtain-lined corridor lit by black light, I suspect this Fun House will be like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.

“It’s easy to get lost in here. Stay close to me,” Henry warns as we move deeper inside, as if I’m not gripping his hand tightly. Plenty of people mill, but it doesn’t feel tight except in a few areas where small crowds form. A curtain draws open as we approach, illuminating a small room beyond a plexiglass window. A naked blond woman is strapped to a swinging contraption, bared to the audience, a black ribbon tied over the eye holes of her mask. She can’t see us, but we can certainly see all of her.

The mime in suspenders from the bucket ball game paces, tapping her thigh with the handle of a black flog, her painted face screwed up as if considering what to do to this woman.

“What is this?” I whisper, feeling equal parts fascinated and awkward.

“Guests pay to be participants in these little window displays,” Henry whispers. “Some of them are tamer than others.”

I peer up at Henry with incredulity. “She paid for this?” To be stripped down and strung up?

Henry shrugs. “Everyone’s got their thing, and no one knows who she is, so what does it matter?”

I guess, but … “What will she do to her?”

“Whatever she wants to.”

As if answering our question, the mime mouths, “I know!” and then slaps the woman’s mound with the flog.

The woman’s body jolts with the strike, and her yelp carries through the glass.

The mime grins as she continues her pacing around her subject, tracing the curves of the woman’s body with the leather fronds. Each step is like that of a ballerina.

“So when she suggested fucking you in the Fun House, this is what she was hoping for?”

“Or something equally depraved.”

The mime strikes the woman between her thighs again and this time her yelp morphs into a moan quickly after. And all around us, people watch with fascination.

But it’s not the only crowd forming in this long corridor. “You know who would love this party?” I whisper.

“Don’t say it—”

“Connor and Ronan.” They would lose their minds over a place like this.

“It’s too bad you can’t tell them anything about what you see here. Ever.” I hear the sharp warning in his voice. “Come on, let’s see what else there is.”

There is plenty to see, and as wanton and graphic as some scenes are, I find myself unable to look away. People come to this party once a year so they can participate in this? It’s like some sort of underground sex house for the obscenely rich.

In one, a woman is strapped into a chair, her legs spread wide as a mime brings her to the edge of an orgasm with a vibrator before pulling away, over and over again. In another, a man is trapped in a pillory that lowly revolves on a platform, giving us a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view as a mime whips and paddles him.

Not all displays are with people being sexually tortured by mimes in playful costumes, though. We come to three in a row with couples having sex in various positions—on beds, on chairs, standing near the glass. They don’t seem to pay any attention to the audience.

I don’t think I’d have the nerve to do that, nor do I feel any urge to. And yet I can’t deny that watching these attractive bodies convulse and listening to their cries of ecstasy stirs something inside me, especially behind the anonymity of this mask.

“How many of these booths are there?” I ask as we pass a window with its curtain drawn. They’re preparing for the next participant.

“A lot.” He points ahead to where the tunnel webs off in other directions. “And they’ll be occupied all night long.”

A curtain pulls open just as we reach it, revealing a naked woman on her knees, bound in ropes, her hands tied behind her, clamps affixed to her nipples. A mask covers her face, save for her lips, painted a bright red.

A fit, naked masked man strolls up to her, stroking his remarkable length as he approaches. “Open,” I hear him command and she does.

Fisting the back of her blond head, he jams his cock into her mouth, forcing her all the way down on him. He only relents when she gags, releasing his tight grip on her hair. She leaves a red ring of lipstick on his veiny flesh as she pulls back for a reprieve. It only lasts a few seconds before he makes her swallow him whole again.

“She’s going to choke on him,” I mutter.

“From what I hear, it’s her thing.”

From what he hears? But that would mean Henry knows her. I examine the man’s mouth, his hair—rich brown hair tied back in a small ponytail. And gasp. “Is that—”

“No names here,” Henry chides. “But yes.”

Which means the woman with Warner’s dick down her throat is Tatiana. The lipstick certainly matches.

“Maybe this is why she didn’t eat anything tonight.” She didn’t want to puke up a seven-course meal.

Henry snorts.

Warner leans down to whisper something in her ear, his hand slipping between her legs to stroke her clit. She answers with a simple “yes,” which earns his wicked smile.

They fall into a brutal, depraved pattern of Warner thrusting into her waiting mouth, only pulling away for brief moments when she makes a strangled sound, until Tatiana’s face is red and spit dribbles out of her mouth. I’m sure her pristine makeup that she fussed with all night is now streaked beneath that mask.

I don’t understand how Tatiana could enjoy this, but who am I to judge.

“This isn’t our kind of thing,” Henry whispers as if reading my mind. He kisses my temple and then leads me away.

Everywhere I look, people are having sex or watching sex. This event is drenched in it. I know who my future husband is. No wonder he never misses it. But it stirs questions. “Have you ever been in one of those rooms?”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

“Every time.” He didn’t hesitate to answer.

My stomach swirls as I try to picture that. I knew Henry enjoyed watching. I didn’t think he’d be so eager to perform. Maybe there is a video waiting to be leaked. “And what happened?”

He looks at me and I don’t have to see his face to know his eyebrows are arched in a “What the fuck do you think happened, Abigail?” way.

“Was it something like that?” I point to a man in the window, bent over as a mime pegs him.

Henry stifles his laughter. “What impression have I ever given that I would be into that?” He pulls me away by my hand. “I don’t enjoy giving up control.”

“You don’t say.” Henry Wolf is control. It could be a slogan.