Wicked Ride (10 page)

While The Blue Lion isn’t
an overly fancy place as I’m wearing jeans and a nice shirt and
that doesn’t offend their dress policy, it is a bit pricey and
this is taking a chunk out of my wallet. This says something as I
live pretty much hand to mouth, and I might be eating cheese and
crackers for a while to compensate, but I wanted to do something
“normal” with Auralie. Everything between us so far has
been so mystifying; it naturally calls upon the senses to deny it as
being real in any form or fashion.

Perhaps tonight…
I can manage to de-mystify this connection we have. Maybe I can shed
a light that would reveal this girl to be nothing more than a hot way
to get a nut.

Or terrifyingly, it might reveal
we really do have something that could be both magical and real.

Whatever.

The waitress leads us through the
restaurant and to the outdoor deck that holds about ten tables. I
requested outdoor seating as it was an unseasonably warm day, and I
knew the evening would be mild enough. Once we’re
seated, a waiter appears with a flourish and asks for our drink
orders. I order a local microbrew, but Auralie shakes her head and
just asks for water.

After the waiter leaves, I ask,
“Don’t drink?”

“I’m only twenty,”
she reminds me.

“Plenty of people still
order drinks… have fake ID’s,” I counter.

She looks across the table at me,
looking angelic from the glow of the crystal-encased candle in the
center, and shakes her head. “My
mom was an alcoholic. Drank herself to death. Always been afraid, I
guess, that the gene ran in me. I never wanted to take the chance.”

I manage not to wince at the
mixture of pain and determination in her voice, but I ask, “How
old were you?”

“Ten,” she says with
a bitter smile. “Been just Dad and me since.”

“That must have been
tough.”

Her smile grows fond. “My
dad did the best he could. We survived it together. But what about
your parents? And do you have any siblings?”

My stomach tightens, and I
realize what a dumbass I am. I invited this woman out to a romantic
dinner, hoping to figure out what there was going on between us, and
never once did I think she’d
turn an eye toward wanting to know about me. I’d gotten so good
over the years at keeping a barrier up and making it clear my private
life was private, that I’d not had to field a personal question
in a long time.

I swallow against the guilt over
my half-baked truths. “No
siblings. My mom and dad are still back in Chicago, but we don’t
talk much.”

Well, we don’t
talk at all.

Ever.

Not in two years even though they
tried and tried to reach out to me with unanswered phone calls. I
finally changed my number and that effectively stopped that. While
stopping contact with them helped to alleviate my guilt that they
were trying to help a son who couldn’t be helped, I was now
weighted with guilt that I was hurting them by not talking.

Seems hurting people is what I do
best.

Auralie picks up her menu, I
think a bit rebuffed by my curt answer, and my mind spins trying to
figure a way to get some normal conversation going without pushing it
in a direction that puts a spotlight on me. But then movement from
another table three over catches my attention, and I see Rand and Cat
standing up to leave the restaurant. I take in the fact that their
meals are half eaten and they appear to be leaving early.

Cat looks upset. She hurries
through the double glass doors and to the left, down to where I know
the restrooms are. My eyes go back to Rand. I find him staring at me.
With a quick, curious glance to Auralie, his gaze comes back to me.
He walks our way. Auralie looks up at him in surprise when he comes
to a stop by our table.

“Hey man,” I say,
reaching my hand out for him to shake.

“Just on our way out,”
Rand says in what sounds like glum resignation. “Thought I’d
stop by.”

My eyes slide over to the doors
that Cat just ran through, and I ask, “She
okay?”

Rand brushes a hand through his
long, blond hair before blowing out a breath. “Yeah…
she’s still a bit rattled, I think.”

I nod in understanding. While it
was just five short days ago that I had that amazing fuck session
with Rand and Cat, it was the night before last that someone attacked
Cat outside of Rand’s
apartment. I heard this from Bridger. While I had a brief
conversation with Rand that night to assure she was okay, I haven’t
talked to him since.

Which also makes me realize…

I haven’t
had sex since that night with Rand and Cat. Sure… I’d
had all kinds of amazing oral with Auralie last night, and a mediocre
blow job the night Auralie sucked another man’s dick, but I
haven’t fucked another woman—or man—since my time
with Rand and Cat five days ago. I’ve been content to go home
and get my rocks off while thinking about Auralie while I masturbate.

So fucking weird.

Rand’s
gaze cuts down to Auralie and back to me with a pointed look.

“Oh, fuck,” I mutter
and give an apologetic smile to Auralie. “I’m sorry.
Auralie… this is my buddy, Rand. Rand, this is Auralie.”

Rand breaks out in a big smile,
one that says he’s
immensely happy to see his friend out on a date with a normal girl.
He reaches a hand out to Auralie. When she takes it, he asks, “Are
you local, Auralie, or here on vacation?”

I open my mouth to jump in with
some immediate lie to help cover Auralie’s
reason for being in Wyoming because Rand hasn’t been to The
Silo in a while and has no clue about her.

But she beats me to the punch.
“I’m actually
just here temporarily visiting.”

“Oh, and how did you two
meet?” Rand asks her, still beaming that curious smile of
happiness.

Auralie looks a little unsure of
what to say, so instead, she says, “Um…”

She looks to me with a helpless
gaze. I shoot her back one that says,
It’s
okay. This guy is solid.

I look up to Rand and say, “We
met at The Silo.”

I look back to Auralie. I can
tell she’s a bit
tense to have revealed that, so I try to reassure her. “Rand’s
a member. Cat too.”

She still looks tense, so I
stretch a leg out under the table and slide it up against hers in
nothing more than a press of reassurance. She relaxes slightly, but
then tenses again when Rand says, “Oh…
wait. Are you the virgin who—?”

“What the fuck do you know
about that?” I growl in a low voice.

Rand looks chagrined and says in
a lower voice, “Sorry…
Bridger told me about her a few days ago.”

Auralie’s
head drops down, and even though it’s dim and I can’t
really tell, I think she’s embarrassed. This really bugs me. So
I turn to Rand and say, “Listen… nice seeing you and
all, but—”

He doesn’t
need the hint. “Yeah man… sorry. Good seeing you, and
Auralie, very nice to meet you. My buddy, Logan here, is a good man.”

Auralie looks up and gives him a
polite smile, but it’s
guarded. “Nice meeting you too, Rand.”

“Tell Cat I said hello,”
I say as an afterthought, and Rand nods his head.

As he walks away, I watch his
retreating back for a moment and realize something that’s
very interesting. Usually when I’m in Rand’s presence, I
will often think of sex. Not just because he and I have fucked and
sucked each other, but because we have had numerous women we’ve
shared over the past year. He’s a good friend, yes, but most of
our encounters revolve around fucking, and that’s because I use
sex as a drug and so I have it a lot. So naturally, whenever I was
around Rand, it would only seem to reason that I’d think about
sex.

And Cat…
who couldn’t think of sex when she was around?

But when I saw her just a bit
ago, and talking now to Rand, I didn’t
think of sex once during my conversation with him. Didn’t have
a stirring in my pants. No matter how hot our encounter was last
week, and I’m sure they’d probably be up for that again,
I didn’t have any desire to be with the two of them.

For now,
they merely felt like good friends.

“So, he’s a friend of
yours?” Auralie asks softly, and my head swivels to face her.

“Yeah, really good friend,”
I say, which is sort of true. Well, good as in as long as we keep
things simple, we’re good. He doesn’t know shit about me.
No one here does.

“Did you meet him through
The Silo?”

The waiter returns with our
drinks and asks if we’re
ready to order, but I decline and tell him we need more time. Neither
of us has even looked at the menu, and I’m in no rush for this
evening to end.

When he leaves, I answer her
question. “Rand and
I both got part-time jobs at The Wicked Horse around the same time to
supplement our full-time jobs. We got to know Bridger. He eventually
let us in on the secret club behind The Wicked Horse and offered us
jobs there as Fantasy Makers.”

“You get paid to…
to… have sex?” she asks hesitantly.

“No,” I say with
admonishment but temper it with a quick grin. “That would be
prostitution. But we do get a free membership. Bridger even gives out
‘quarterly bonuses’ to the Wicked Horse employees who…
shall we say… make the other full-paying members happy.”

“So you
are
getting paid for sex,” she points out but her face is still
questioning. It’s asking,
What
motivates you to do that?

So I enlighten her. “I
don’t do it for the money although it’s nice and it helps
pay the bills, and frankly, I don’t do a lot of fantasies there
so I don’t make a lot of money. I just take advantage of my
membership, and I use it a lot.”

She just stares at me.

“I do it because I like the
kinky sex,” I clarify further, and wait to see how she takes
that.

“I’ve seen a lot of
weird things go on in that building that I never even knew were
possible,” she murmurs, and I don’t mistake the sensual
heat in her voice.

I can tell she’s both put
off and attracted to the debauchery that she’s seen. It makes
my dick start to swell at the thought that perhaps we share that in
common too. Because while I love sex, even just normal, missionary,
fuck-pussy-until-you-get-off sex, I also get off on the perversion of
the things that happen in The Silo. Never even blinked an eye the
first time I fucked Rand—my first guy. I wanted to be different
and drown my misery in the new and exciting world of unrestrained
sexual play.

“Anything you saw that you
liked in particular?” I ask, my voice husky without meaning it
to be.

She drops her eyes in only the
way a virgin would when an experienced man asks what turns her on.
This strangely does not turn me on. The one thing that makes my
attraction to Auralie very weird is that I like my women experienced,
bold, and adventurous. Those are not words synonymous with virgin.

“I like watching other
people have sex,” she says in almost a whisper.

“It’s living porn,”
I agree with an encouraging smile.

“It’s still shocking
to me.”

Not so much to me.
Most times now in The Silo, I’m
not even really paying attention to what’s going on. My mission
is simple, and that’s to find an interesting way to have a
release. I’m almost numb to the experience.

Except last night.

An amazing performance in front
of the entire club last night with a woman who made me hornier than
I’ve ever been in my
life. I’d recreate what we did last night, every night for the
rest of my foreseeable future, and be happy with it.

“Can I ask you a question,
Logan?” Auralie asks.

I have to blink to orient myself
back to the present and this beautiful woman who is having dinner
with me, not sucking my cock. “Sure.”

“You truly don’t do
it for the money? Just because you like ‘kinky’ sex?”

Well, isn’t she persistent?
Still, I hedge because she’s pushing too close at my personal
boundaries. “What’s
not to love about kinky sex?”

“I don’t buy it,”
she says with a shake of her head, her long, black hair falling over
her shoulders. “I watch the people in there, and something
drives them. It’s more than just feeling good or carefree. It’s
more than just being a libertine. I mean, the men who want a virgin…
they want that because it represents something rare and precious that
they’ll likely never get another crack at. It’s like
someone who collects rare antiques or works of art. There are
bragging rights and inflation of ego. Every person in there wants
something, and they are being driven by something personal to want
it. I want to know what drives you.”

I stare at her, my heart
thundering so hard in my chest that it feels like it will punch
through bone and flesh and race right out of the restaurant without
me. She’s asking me
the one question that would explain everything about my life in the
last two years, and it’s not something I discuss with anyone.

Ever.

I take a deep breath, will my
pulse to calm down, and try to tactfully decline her curiosity into
the reasons Logan McKay is the way he is. Besides, she hasn’t
offered up any of her secrets to me, and even if she did… I’d
still never tell her. I’m not prepared to suffer “the
look” that I would invariably get. Not ready to destroy what
little bit of attraction and connection she has to me.

So I lie to her…
yet again, and I try to shock her at the same time so that she gets
misdirected. “I’m just a very sexual man, Auralie and
that’s all there is to it. I like sex, and I like variety. I’m
adventurous. I like trying everything, and The Silo is the perfect
place to do so. It’s just as simple as that.”

“How adventurous?”
she asks, eyes wide with almost a childlike curiosity, and that
totally makes my dick twitch. Any further conversation along these
lines, and I’m going to have to pull her out of here and do
something about it. Maybe drag her in the bathroom and have her suck
my dick since she’s getting me riled up.