Dark Enchantment by Janine Ashbless Page A

as they start to argue, I slip quietly away. I’m seething with arousal and frustration and resentment, but I have enough of a cool head to get the hell out of there. It’s going to end badly, I know. I weave through the sardine-packed partygoers – they’re all a bit drunk by now but not a single hand squeezes me in passing: this crowd is just too well-behaved – and make a line straight for the elevator, catching it as the doors close.
    Its floor and walls are carpeted in wine-coloured fabric and for a moment my inner vision flashes:
Juice running down his fingers as he strips the rind away, scattering ruby seeds as he peels them from the yellow inner pith
.
    Then I’m back in the present. It’s nine floors to the hotel lobby. The big lift already has two occupants: a man and a woman pressed together in the far corner. I can only see her back as I slouch against the wall; he has his hands on her hips and he’s looking over her shoulder at me. He’s silver-haired, and his pupils are dilated. I know it would be polite to glance away but I stare truculently. It looks like they’re just having a bit of a cuddle, but from the faint movement of muscles in her arm I realise she’s groping him. She’s got his cock out, I surmise, shielded between their two bodies, and she’s playing with his length. His feet are splayed. I think he’s too far gone to resist. His gaze drops from my face to my breasts, his face masklike, his breath coming shallow.
    It’s just what I’d wanted from Patrick. Everyone’s getting some but me.
    I lick my lips, tasting the remnants of my lipstick. Nine cool floors of tinkling Vivaldi and her stroking him off, and him looking at me in my tight brief sheath of scarlet sequins. I lift my right hand to my breast and cup the swell of flesh for him. I can feel my nipple, as hard as a button. His eyes widen. I stroke that button, knowing that I’m pressing all his even as all my nerve endings ache. His breathing is louder, faster, harsher.
    Then we reach the lobby – and I’m the only one to leave the elevator. My panties are so wet I actually feel the night air as a cool touch between my thighs, reminding me of what I have been denied. I ache with all the formless bitter passions of an adolescence I’ve long abandoned.
    It’s so unfair! I roar inwardly. That bitch Demi wants to control my whole life!
    I stomp off down the midnight streets, my heels clicking on the stone slabs like snaps of a whip. I want to get lost, or at least I don’t want Demi catching up with me, so I take several turns down minor roads and alleys, clattering under the cement cliff faces, deliberately heading away from the upmarket area the hotel is in. What I really want is to find a strip joint and watch some pole-dancer shimmy her big ass in front of rapt faces, losing myself in other people’s lust, forgetting for whole moments at a time the gnawing emptiness within me.
    I need …
    Self-pity swamps all my senses, including my common sense. I’m crossing an open-air car park towards what looks like a promising glitter of multicoloured neon when I’m suddenly recalled out of my inner world by a throaty growl.
    It’s a motorbike. A big black-and-chrome monster that looks like it would break your leg if you lost your balance and let it tip. It’s moving slowly down the far side of a double rank of cars, paralleling my route, a little further back. Pacing me. The rider isn’t wearing a helmet, though he does have shades on, and sunglasses after dark is never a good sign. His long hair is held back by a bandanna, he’s got a black leather jacket on, open, and a black shirt beneath that; that’s all I can make out at that distance, in this light, with the cars ticking between us.
    My heart goes
ker-chunk
down into the pit of my stomach. And instantly a hundred thousand years of terror are right there in my bloodstream: I’m a deer in a wood; I’m a hare on the high wolds; I’m a girl in a meadow.