Rage's Story (Vanish Book 1) (2 page)

So that’s where I am. Sounds about right. “Just drifting through.”

“What’s your name, drifter?”

“Rage,” I tell her.

“Ooo,” she says. “I like that. It’s sexy. Mine’s Scarlett.”

“Nice to meet you Scarlett.”

The DJ’s voice kicks in over the speakers and call her to the stage for the first show of the night.

She pouts. “I guess I have to go. Chat later? Maybe a dance?”

I smile and nod. She hops off the stool and struts back to the stage, her cute butt peaking out beneath her tiny purple bottoms. When she grabs the pole, her body bends and twists like a gymnast. She’s talented, but I turn back to the bar for another whiskey.

This night slips past me, I’m throwing back drinks a little too quickly, but I don’t feel drunk. I’m not sure I can settle the nerves that are keeping me alert.

I ask for a triple from the redhead, tip her handsomely, and head to the tables. I find one off to the side, away from the other men drooling over the performers as they dance in succession, then make their way into the crowd, grinding on the laps of the patrons for a dollar a dance, some slipping away to the private rooms for ten a song. One gentleman, a short, stout figure, leans forward near the stage, uncomfortably close, but the dancer seems entirely fine with him. His red face grins, he’s more alert than the rest, which grabs my attention. In a place like this, low profile’s the norm, so his strangely ostentatious presence pops out against the aloof backdrop. Seems exceptionally creepy, but the girl can’t get enough of him, probably a big spender. She fawns when he leans back for her, inviting. Her pale body, thin, flush from the workout of her routine, glinting with the red lights, slides into his lap, her tits shoved straight into his mouth, opening to suckle. She grinds herself against him like no one’s watching. It’s uncharacteristic for this place, I can tell from reading the expressions around me. I’ve never seen anything like it. It distracts my chaotic thoughts for a moment. She takes him from his chair to the private couches. Show’s over, everyone watches the next girl up. Whatever it was, it’s none of my business.

I sip my whiskey, content on just watching while the women twirl about, showcase themselves in the dim lighting for a song and then slip out of their outfits for a nude number. Scarlett, Jazmin, Princess, Ruby, Diamond, come and go, collecting their night’s take.

A woman takes the stage, Rose, the DJ calls her. Brunette, tall, slender. Her lips, naturally red, glisten with a little gloss applied. She foregoes the glitter, her light olive skin glimmers with a natural sheen, adorned with the flashing red lights that shine off her curves. While the other women smile for the crowd, or stare sternly as they work, she wears a distant gaze, not frowning, but a little listless as she walks with a weight on her shoulders to the center of the stage. She raises a hand and her fingers rest poised against the pole, her head tipped down, her hair dangling before her face. Then the music kicks in and her body transcends.

She’s astounding. Her movement feels free, sensual and personal, her spine flexible to her every whim, rolling her belly as she glides to the floor where she rolls over and raises her cheeks towards me. Her body is exquisite, real, and I can’t help staring. The roundness of her ass is very arousing, but beyond it, I see her hair whip onto her back and a glimpse of her eye. Something about it entrances me, the way she gazes across the stage and through us, like she’s seeing into another plane, a scene far more glorious than this seedy place. I can’t help wanting to know, see what she sees.

I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s the exhaustion. Maybe I’m feeling lonely, knowing I’ve just severed ties with everyone I know.

Christ, the way she moves.

Her routine is up, she steps off the stage and catches my eye immediately. I try not to stare, I don’t want to be one of those men, but she’s drawing my gaze and I can’t look away. Her beautiful brown eyes lock with mine. She doesn’t look away, either. Does she see something in me? It feels like she sees straight through to the table behind me.

She steps into my lap, splitting my legs with her knees, staring down at me.

“You look like you could use a dance,” she says. Her voice is soft, a tinge of rasp, and it cuts through the noise that surrounds us.

I feel strangely intimidated.

I lean back and she starts to sway, dragging her hands along her body as they trace two parallel lines over her stomach and chest, upward through her hair, and intertwine in the space above her head. She’s long, her skinny body spread out before me is beautiful, and when her eyes come down from her fingers to meet mine, I see something like a diamond sparkle in the center of her pupil. It’s twisted and malformed, but shining all the same. When she smiles, it’s stolen, and her gaze goes dark. The act floods over her as she lowers herself into my lap and rubs her ass into my hard on, finding it with ease and focusing her soft buttocks against it.

She leans back and her lips meet my ear. “Feeling better?” she asks.

“Not sure I deserve to,” I hear myself say. It comes out without a forethought.

She pouts. Still more of the act and we’re far from what I saw moments ago. She sees a score, not a connection, but when she offers a private dance, I can’t refuse.

She leads along the front of the stage as Scarlett grinds herself against the pole, frowning at the sight of myself following behind Rose to the private couches. I don’t have a moment to think of her before Rose parts the beaded streamers that fill the doorway into the private rooms. We pass a few on our way to an open couch, naked women rub intimately against men drooling onto their shoulders. I catch one with his cock out, the girl’s hand wrapped firmly around it. It’s that sort of place, then. I have no intention of engaging Rose in that way, but I’m intoxicated by her presence for some mysterious reason and I want to just be around her for the moment.

She sits me down into the leather couch and I sink deep into the cushion. She pulls a stool up and seats herself between my parted legs, then removes her top. Her natural breasts show attentively, perked most likely by the draft sweeping through the room, but she presses her chest forward like she enjoys it.

“So,” she says. “Just looking for a good time tonight? Relieve some stress?”

“No,” I respond. I know this dialogue. “Sorry, just needed a place to rest.”

“Hm,” she responds, somewhat incredulous. “Interesting choice.”

“Reminds me a little of where I come from,” I say.

“You’re ripped. Were you a bouncer?”

I rub the back of my neck. “Not exactly. There was a club, sort of an ancillary part of a larger business I was a part of.”

She narrows her gaze. “I see,” she says. She leans forward. Her breasts press together by her shoulders, which glisten with the small light placed above us. Her skin is stunning. “You some sort of bad boy?”

I shake my head. “Try not to be.”

“What’s your name?”

“Rage.”

She grins. “Sounds like a bad boy. But maybe you’re sweet inside.” She plants her elbow against her knee and props her fist under her chin, eyeing me. “Are you sweet inside, Rage?”

I shrug. “Sweet doesn’t make it too far where I come from.”

She nods slowly, in understanding. “Sweet’s hard to come by for us, isn’t it?”

“Worth protecting,” I say.

“Is that what you did, Rage? Protect?”

I see the battered face of Lacey for a moment. I blink it away.

“Auna.”

“What?”

“My name. My real name,” she says. “I think we know each other, don’t we, Rage?”

“Wes,” I say.

Her lips part for a toothy grin. “Rage and Rose,” she whispers. It’s like she’s laughing at it. Two faces made facetiously to survive in their respective worlds. But then she sighs, and I know what it means. Rage and Rose are real. A part of us. Masks fuzed to skin.

She places her hands on my thighs and grips. “So, Rage, how about a dance?”

She lifts herself off the stool, placing both palms against my shoulders, caressing my muscles as she leans into me, her softness making contact against my hard body. She slides along me and twists before me, bending forward and exposing her ass. When she straightens her back, flicking her hair onto her back, rising slowly, I feel a pang. Then she turns, her head dropped to meet my eyes, and she straddles me. Her fingers spread into my hair as she pulls my lips into her cleavage. I breathe heavy against her skin, moist from her dancing. She’s naturally scented, the sweat exuding a sweet aroma I inhale. I take her in as she grinds herself against me.

Then she stops.

It’s a frozen second while the song still plays in the background. She lowers her head to mine, and she stares at me. Just stares. And I can see deep into her brown eyes, despite the shade cast over them by the light behind her. I see her, all, raw.

“Wes,” she whispers, and her lip trembles.

I can feel the heat of her body ramp up. She’s nervous. I place my palms against her hips, her skin hot against my fingers. I caress her with my thumbs. “Auna,” I say. Her name. It’s all I have of this woman, and yet I feel deeply entangled with only that. Bound. Ensnared, but willing. And in my arms, she’s feeling caught, too, but she doesn’t fight against herself.

Her lips slam suddenly against mine and her taste is every bit as sweet as her scent, her tongue a passionate and eager visitor to my mouth.

Goddamnit, Auna. Why do we hold it in for so long?

I pull her in close, place my hand against the small of her back, really take her in. Christ, she’s so warm, and smooth. My hands can glide along her skin with ease.

She parts for a moment and we exhale into the small space between our lips.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s not professional.”

“Don’t sweat it,” I tell her.

She smiles.

But the DJ’s voice blasts in to ruin it all.

She’s called back to the stage, and I’m alone again.

Several more drinks wasting time, and I’m out the door. As I stumble towards my bike, I hear her voice. I pivot to see if it’s me she’s talking to, but I see some pretty boy in a black suit all over her. It’s blurry, eleven shots don’t serve my vision, but I can make out ruffled black hair, an orange tan, and a white dress shirt with the top undone. Perfect image of a fuckin yuppie. Auna walks off with him, toward the other end of the parking lot, obscured by the building. She couldn’t be with that, could she? After what happened, what she showed me? Rose. A face. And a thorn.

Serves me right.

My heart belongs to the road now.

I straddle my bike and shoot off down the street, back towards the edge of town. But as this midnight wind rushes over my face, it can’t wash away the scent and the taste of Auna. I want more.

3.

It’s an off chance, but I’m not taking any risk. While the crickets fill the air, I shove my bike deep into a collection of bushes across the street from a motel. It’s unlit, a good distance from the road, and far from the intersection where a turning car might pan its lights and shine across the silver exhaust. If any of my former brothers from Devil’s Right Hand were to somehow look for me in Westwood Valley, I wouldn’t want to broadcast my whereabouts with my bike in plain sight. She’ll stay here for the night, then it’s the road again tomorrow. Keep moving. Can’t stop. Not yet.

The night attendant at the motel is an old man, heavy bags beneath his eyes, thin wisp of grey hair draped over his scalp, and his focus directed towards a small, worn book in his lap. He doesn’t bat an eye at me, but when I plant my twenty on the table for one night, he swipes it off with the agility of a child. The things that keep us moving.

My room is four off-white walls holding in a shaggy, stained blue carpet, a double mattress, a nightstand, and a small, antique television that I plan on ignoring. I fall onto my back and feel the springs dig into my shoulder blades, but my weight pushes back. Just a night. Tomorrow I’m gone. To the next trashy motel. The next unattainable dream.

I rub my face, but I can still smell her. Auna. She’s all over me, I can’t shake it. It’s the exhaustion. The road makes me lonely, but the solitude fortifies. I’ll be alright.

When I close my eyes and feel slumber start to sweep me, the shot rings out and my eyes dart open again. Transposed on the ceiling, I see him, lifeless and dripping, the hole gushing into a pool collected beneath his cheek. The man I once respected. The man that once led me, now astray. Goddamnit, Mike.

A noise outside distracts my thoughts. It’s a low grumble echoing from a decreasing distance. I know this sound very well. What time is it?

My head spins to the side and I read the little red digits on the bedside clock. 4:32 AM. I throw myself off the bed, onto my feet, and I rush to the window, pulling the shades down, then parting them gently with my fingers to peer. The street in front of the motel is quiet, but the rumbling grows. It’s creeping nearer. I peer with groggy eyes, fighting twenty four hours of wakefulness filled with murder, running, drinking, and fried nerves, but they stay wide open watching the road. I see the lights, faint at first, illuminating the cracked pavement before the motel’s entrance. The rumbling now is unmistakable. Judging by the faint beams, it appears there are three racing down the road.

And here they are. Four, in fact, the familiar black bikes ridden by men in leather jackets, the backs of which feature the red hand, long, thin fingers ending in sharpened nails, black lettering across the palm reading the name Devil’s Right Hands. Why the fuck are they here?

As they cruise past the motel, the thought occurs to me they might have business in Westwood Valley beyond me. If they’re coming in now, they’ll probably be here through tomorrow. If I ride out, they’ll find me. I could kill them. No. Violence isn’t an option. I can still feel my stomach burning, and it’s not the whiskey. Goddamnit. I’m stuck in here, in this shitty motel. Those foolish bastards ride around, stretching that red hand over the countryside, Mike’s ghost at their heels, nipping, urging the fatal charge. I can’t stay for this, be anywhere near it while they unwittingly destroy themselves with his vices. But I can’t leave.