Page 12 of Midnight Curfew

Their eyes find mine as if I’m going to have plans of my own for them to consider, but they can have Macon. They know which one belongs to me.

The car dips just before it inclines, heading up a long, steep hill, and I don’t have to look to know we’re at the country club.

“We should take off for a couple of weeks.” Milo’s gaze meets everyone else’s. “There will be plenty of storms to face and plans to put in place when we return.”

The car passes the clubhouse, veers around the restaurant and patio, and heads toward the field house.

I shake my head. “I already know what I’m going to do.”

“Care to share?” Milo teases.

“No.” I toss him a smirk as we stop at the side door of a lonely brick building off the golf course. “You blab like a motherfucker when you’re drunk.”

Everyone chuckles, Milo flashing a little snarl. He knows it’s true. He’ll find out soon enough, but I don’t want him running his mouth tonight once all the attention starts feeding his arrogance.

The driver opens our door. “And you’re not going anywhere,” I tell Milo, climbing out of the car.

The Jaegers have an army over in Sanoa Bay, and I need one, too.

Walking up to the steel brown door with an average sphere knob that looks like any door on any utility building, I open it and lead the group down the dim stairwell. Dark carpet covers the stairs, small flame bulbs glowing against the black walls, and I hear the door slam behind us as I stop at the entrance at the bottom of the stairs.

Flipping open the keypad, I punch in the ten-digit password and then press my thumb to the scanner. Any St. Carmen couple who contributes the club’s annual membership fee—successful payment of which simply proves you belong in this crowd—has access to the Wolfe Room. For a little extra, rising adult sons twenty-one and over may also be admitted if their parents allow it. Daughters, not officially. Until they become wives anyway.

But unofficially? That’s a whole different story. I snap the cover closed again, twisting my neck till it cracks.

The door opens.

A young woman in a tight sleeveless black dress with bone-straight brown hair smiles at us. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

We step into the antechamber, a small round table to the right, a tray with a decanter and glasses in the middle. Shelves and monitors line the walls, and a fake fire casts a heatless glow into the room.

“May I take any jackets?” she asks.

Another girl approaches, and Milo and Vincent remove their suit coats, handing them off to the two women. Four doors branch off from the room, but I only look at the one ahead.

“How’s the selection tonight?” Milo asks.

May, the redhead, throws him a smile over her shoulder as she hangs up his coat. “Some of them have delayed their summer travels simply so they could welcome you young men home.”

“Oooh.” Milo damn near bounces on his feet.

The last time we were in this room together was four years ago. We had Dallas’s sister in our possession, and Dallas thought he would teach me a lesson that night.

The thin scar, like a fucking teardrop spilling out of my left eye an inch long, tingles.

That night is when I started playing chess, too.

Closing the distance to the door ahead, I open it, the music spilling out as my friends and I walk through.

The antechamber closes, and the darkness engulfs us, blues, purples, and pinks glowing throughout the club. “Enemy” fills the air, the laughter, the cheers, and the moans only faintly audible over the music. The walls are lined with alcoves, each holding a small table and cushioned benches, but there are no lights. A little more privacy for those who prefer that.

Milo drifts off to stand at the edge of one of three platforms around the room, each one with a pole and a woman with her hands tied above her head. Usually wives who are letting people look but not touch. Until they decide they’re ready, anyway.

There are couches all over, filled with couples drinking, laughing, and chatting, while others are getting it on in plain sight. Two women, one I recognize as Dr. Ainsley, riding another woman on a black velvet couch as their husbands watch.

Jerome trails off, too, brushing the face of someone else’s new young wife, and I pass a table with a man clearly getting blown by some invisible woman—or man—hidden under the table where he sits.

Men crowd around a couch in one of the alcoves, watching Mrs. Taylor masturbate with a dildo.