I was adjusting it and considering adding another couple of dresses to layer it for more modesty, but the guards swung the door open and ordered me to follow.
I found Ryker waiting for me, wearing a pair of grey sweatpants that left nothing to the imagination as well. You could almost see the defined head of his flaccid penis as it hung low, swinging as he walked.
“You look incredible,” he said to me, raking his heated gaze up and down my body. “I approve of the dress, but not the intended audience.”
“Same to you,” I replied. “That fabric looks paper thin.”
“It is. I feel naked,” he said. “But I guess it’s better than Thackeray’s wet dream silk boxers they normally have me wearing.”
“Silence!” the head guard barked back at us, and I flinched with fear. I hated how visceral my reaction was when he yelled his orders at me. I was always waiting for the burning touch of the electrified baton.
We walked around a couple corners and were back close to the casino pub I’d been in before. We weren’t exactly in the same place, but it felt close.
Finally, at last we approached a wide arched doorway. The head guard pushed one of the beautifully carved doors open, and we stepped inside.
The room was large but still intimate, with velvet furnishings and had a couple of round card tables set up around the space. It wasn’t the pub casino from before, this one was much more elegant.
It had heavy brocade hangings on the walls and stunning crystal chandeliers hanging from the arched ceiling. The interior felt like a brothel or a gambling hall from the early nineteen hundreds. Cigar smoke hung in the air and waiters in black and white tuxedos hurried back and forth, carrying drinks and appetizers for the guest. Each one was wearing a glittering golden mask.
The guests in this room were exactly who I thought of when conjuring up images of the Organization’s member ranks. Each one of them wore a black leather mask, but only across their eyes. They were formed into the shape of animals, a fox here and a bear there. I saw more than a few wolves, and Thackeray was wearing a black leather lion’s face. All of their mouths were exposed for their drinks and cigars, so I could still see the thin slashed lips of Thackeray’s mocking grin.
“There she is, the beauty I was telling you about!” Thackeray’s voice exclaimed from nearby. “Everly Hayes, come here.”
I turned to find him sitting at one of the round tables where there were seven other men playing poker. Cigar smoke slithered around them like poisonous auras, and Thackeray’s face was red, as if he was more than a few drinks into the amber liquid in the tumbler in front of him.
They were all impeccably dressed in tailored suits, the kind that wealthy men wore in that way to let you know they commanded the world around them.
They were all older, as well. Men who had been at this for decades, the cruelty and casual abuse of human lives. The lechery and perversion as they used and abused young people to amuse them. So they could forget about the inevitability of their pathetic lives coming to an end one day.
“I said come here, girl,” Thackeray sneered and motioned for me to come towards him, like I was a dog.
The head guard next to me jabbed me with the end of his baton right in the ribs where I suspected a fracture. I winced and sucked in a sharp breath as pain jolted me out of my subservient fog.
“Watch it,” I hissed at the guard and stepped towards the table as if I was visiting royalty, and not just a girl in a see through dress forced to perform for the amusement of old men.
“That’s my girl,” Thackeray laughed as if I was the cleverest thing he’d ever seen. As if I was performing just for him.
Ryker picked up on it, too, and grabbed my hand in his. He walked to the table with me and stood close to me as Thackeray waved to a waiter for another drink.
“He can go,” one of the men at the table grumbled as his eyes traveled up and down Ryker’s intimidating body. “He’s not my particular taste.”
“At the moment,” another man guffawed, and the table laughed with him.
I shivered, but didn’t let go of Ryker’s hand.
“Let him stay,” Thackeray said and held up his fresh tumbler of amber alcohol. “Let them perform for us.”
My head snapped up at that, and I glared at him across the table, the pile of money in the center, and the old men all around.
“Perform?” I asked, and Ryker stood taller, as if he was ready to fight them for me.
“Yes, perform,” Thackeray said. “Your virginity is of no use to us now, you’re no longer Tribute. We might as well watch this savage beast take it from you tonight. Who wants to make a wager that she’ll pass out from the pain?”
He laughed cruelly and his fellow Organization members joined in. They didn’t realize that I wasn’t a virgin, and that Ryker wasn’t a beast when it came to me. We wouldn’t be here if they did. We’d be punished for it, or killed if they knew what I’d done with the four guys at Mitchell’s party.
I glanced up at Ryker who was looking straight ahead, his teeth clenched tightly and a muscle in his jaw twitching so hard I thought it might hurt.
Here I was, about to get my wish. I was going to have sex with Ryker. But it was forced, it was for the entertainment of cruel old men, and it wasn’t the way I wanted it to happen at all.