Chapter 4: Revelation at the club
The VIP crescent was a ledge overlooking a simmering pool of desire. Reached by a narrow, curving staircase guarded by another bouncer, it felt like ascending to a predator’s blind. Plush, ink-black velvet couches formed a semi-circle, their backs high enough to create a sense of enclosure. The table was a slab of polished obsidian. From here, the view was unobstructed and devastating.
Emma sank onto the couch, her legs feeling like water. The music vibrated up through the frame, into her bones. She couldn’t stop looking through the sim and strobing lights. Two women near the bar were kissing, one backed against the wall, the other’s hand shoved down the front of her partner’s pants, moving with a ruthless, rhythmic purpose. A group by the dance floor passed a vape, each exhale a cloud of sweet smoke, their fingers intertwined on thighs, stroking necks, tucked into back pockets.
“Breathe, Emma.” Vivian’s voice was amused as she settled beside her, close enough that their thighs almost touched. She signaled a server with a mere glance. “It’s just a room. Flesh and chemistry.”
Before Emma could formulate a response, two women approached the crescent. The first, Lara, was Vivian’s reflection in a slightly softer material. Late thirties, severe black bob, a sleeveless figure hugging tight dress of raw silk. Her eyes were intelligent, assessing. The other, Kat, was the chaos to Lara’s order. She was maybe twenty-eight, a riot of honey-gold curls escaping a haphazard updo, her face all wide, blue eyes and a full, paint-stained mouth that seemed perpetually on the verge of a smile. She wore a cropped white jewelled tank top that showed a sliver of toned stomach and low-slung, artfully ripped jeans skirt that seems to show off her black panties beneath. Her gaze landed on Emma and stuck, a spark of pure, undiluted interest.
“Vivian,” Lara said, her voice a cool contralto. They exchanged a brief, intimate cheek kiss, the kind reserved for equals. “You’ve outdone yourself with the venue. The acoustics in here are absurdly good for a concrete shell.”
“Simone has an ear,” Vivian said, shifting to make room. “Lara, this is Emma, my protégé. Emma, Lara is responsible for the new maritime museum in Barcelona. She steals all my best contractors.”
Lara offered a graceful hand. “Don’t believe her. She poached my head engineer last Tuesday.” Her handshake was firm, brief, and her attention already drifting back to Vivian, a conversation of weights and measures beginning.
Kat, however, slid onto the couch directly on Emma’s other side, bypassing a handshake altogether. “Hi,” she said, her voice warmer, textured. “I’m Kat. You look like you just stepped off a spaceship and into a bear pit.” She grinned, not unkindly. “It’s a lot, right?”
Emma found her voice, thin and reedy. “It’s… new to me... and intense.”
“The best things are.” Kat’s eyes wandered over Emma’s face, down to the silk clinging to her chest. “That dress is a work of art. Vivian’s taste?”
The question was loaded. Emma nodded, swallowing. “She, um, she picked it.”
“Of course she did.” Kat leaned back, stretching an arm along the back of the couch behind Emma, not touching, but the heat of her arm was palpable. “She has a knack for finding the perfect frame for a hidden masterpiece.” She nodded toward the dance floor. “Ever see two women enjoyed themselves just dancing with each other?"
She followed Kat’s gaze. In the pulsating strobing lights, a tall woman in leather pants is dancing and grinding with her thighs into another smaller woman with a short skirt, whose head was thrown back in ecstasy, her mouth a silent ‘O’ against the noise.
“No,” Emma whispered, her own body clenching in response.
“It’s different,” Kat said, leaning in closer. Emma could smell her: turpentine, cigarettes, and a clean, soapy scent underneath. “There’s no… performance. No script. Just need recognizing need. It’s honest.”
Honest. The same word Vivian had used in the dark of their bedroom. A shiver traced Emma’s spine.
The server arrived with bottles—the rich amber whiskey for Vivian and Lara, the crystalline vodka and soft drinks mixer for Kat and Emma, enough to let Kat warm up Emma.
Vivian and Lara’s conversation was a low, sophisticated hum about load-bearing aesthetics and corrupt city planners. It was a familiar world, a lifeline Emma couldn’t grasp. Her reality was the fever-dream of the club and Kat’s relentless, gentle probing.
“So you’re an architect,” Kat said, pouring vodka over ice and taking a long swallow. “You build walls. Define spaces. Keep things in, keep things out.” Her blue eyes fixed on Emma. “What’s it like being in a space that’s deliberately designed to blur all those lines?”
Emma took a gulp of her water. “It’s confusing.”
“Confusion is just curiosity with a faster heartbeat.” Kat’s foot, clad in a scuffed leather boot, brushed against Emma’s stockinged calf. Emma didn’t pull away. The contact was electric, a live wire in the sensory storm. “Enjoy yourself, lets explore this place later together. It is also my first time here.”
Kat’s comment hung in the thick air between them, an invitation cloaked in casual observation. Emma nodded, a jerky, nervous motion, and took another swallow from her tumbler. The vodka was a clean, cold fire this time, and she welcomed its numbing spread.
Her attention fractured. The sophisticated architectural debate to her left was a drone, a language she knew but now found meaningless. Her entire consciousness was pulled toward the living tapestry below their ledge. She watched, mesmerized, as bodies fused and parted in the strobing light.
Two women near the speakers were a single, undulating entity. One, her back arched, ground her ass in a slow, deliberate circle against the other’s pelvis. The woman behind had her hands flat on her partner’s stomach, sliding up to roughly palm her breasts through a thin tank top, thumbs circling nipples that were visibly hard even from a distance. Their faces were turned toward each other, cheeks touching, mouths open against necks, expressions of raw, unselfconscious bliss that made Emma’s own skin feel too tight.
Her eyes darted to the periphery, to the shadowy arches Lara had mentioned. A woman in a torn mesh top stumbled out from one dark passage, laughing breathlessly, her lipstick smeared beyond her lips. She was followed by another whose shirt was untied, barely clinging to her shoulders, her hair a wild mess. They shared a hungry, biting kiss before melting back into the crowd, their happiness a palpable, glowing thing. What was in there? What happened in that darkness that left them so utterly unraveled and yet so complete? A dangerous, thrumming curiosity, sharper than the vodka’s burn, took root in Emma’s belly.
She forced her gaze back to the safety of the table. Safety was an illusion.
Lara’s hand was on the back of Vivian’s neck, her fingers toying with the dark hair at her nape. It was a possessive gesture, intimate and casual all at once. Vivian allowed it, leaning into the touch as she listened to Lara speak, a slight, private smile on her lips.
“God, the bass in here is incredible,” Lara murmured, her thumb stroking the elegant line of Vivian’s vertebra. “But it’s making my teeth itch. Dance with me. I need to move.”
It wasn’t really a question. Vivian’s green eyes flicked to Emma, a glance that was both a check-in and a demonstration. “Don’t let Kat corrupt you entirely in the next five minutes,” she said, her voice a low purr that cut through the music.
“No promises,” Kat laughed, refilling Emma’s glass before she could protest.
Vivian stood, a seamless uncoiling of power, and let Lara lead her by the hand down the steps to the edge of the dance floor. The crowd seemed to part for them, a natural deference to their combined aura. Emma watched, her drink frozen halfway to her lips.
Now, alone with Kat, the focus intensified. Kat shifted to fully face her, one leg tucked up on the couch, her knee brushing Emma’s thigh. “They’re a force, aren’t they?” Kat said, nodding toward Vivian and Lara. “Like two panthers deciding not to eat each other. For now.”
“They seem… familiar,” Emma managed, the word inadequate.
“History,” Kat said with a knowing shrug. “The best kind. All heat and no paperwork.” She nudged the glass in Emma’s hand. “Drink. You’re still thinking in straight lines. The vodka helps the corners blur.”
Emma obeyed. The third drink was doing its work. A warm, loose languor was spreading through her limbs, muting the sharp edges of her panic, amplifying the sensory input. The colors were brighter, the bass deeper in her chest, the scent of sweat and perfume more potent.
“Tell me about the walls you build, Emma,” Kat said, her voice a coaxing murmur. “The pretty, respectable ones. The ones that keep a nice boy like… Mark, was it?… feeling like a man.”
The use of his name was a shock, a reminder that Vivian had shared even that. Emma’s defenses, softened by alcohol, trembled. “It’s not like that,” she whispered.
“It’s exactly like that.” Kat leaned closer. Her eyes were the color of a twilight sky. “You build a room for him. You decorate it just so. You lie back and think of fucking… of your dream woman, and let him hammer on the door until he’s done. Am I wrong?”
The crude, brutal accuracy of it stole Emma’s breath. It was a vandalism of her entire relationship, and it felt true. She saw the shower that morning, her own frantic fingers, the fantasy that had nothing to do with Mark. She looked down, her face burning.
“Look at them,” Kat whispered, her lips now close to Emma’s ear.
On the dance floor, Vivian and Lara had found a pocket of space. They weren’t just dancing. Lara had turned, pressing her back flush against Vivian’s front. Vivian’s arms were around her, hands splayed low on Lara’s belly. And they were moving. Lara was grinding the full, swaying curve of her ass back into Vivian’s pelvis in a slow, sinuous roll. Vivian’s head was dipped, her mouth at Lara’s ear, saying something that made Lara’s head fall back onto her shoulder with a throaty laugh.
Then Lara’s hands reached behind her, gripping the taut leather covering Vivian’s thighs. She guided one of Vivian’s hands lower, from her belly down over the front of her own silk trousers. Vivian’s long fingers pressed, then curled, cupping Lara possessively between the legs. Lara’s hips jerked, a sharp, needy stutter in their rhythm. Her other hand slid back, grasping the firm swell of Vivian’s ass, kneading it through the leather.
A hot coil of something ugly and sharp tightened in Emma’s stomach. It was jealousy, pure and volcanic. It wasn’t just the raw sexuality of the act—it was the easy intimacy, the silent communication, the way Vivian’s commanding presence was met and matched by Lara’s assertive hunger. She was supposed to be the focus of Vivian’s attention, the protégé, the project. Seeing her like this, hands and body claimed by another, felt like a betrayal she had no right to feel.
“See?” Kat’s voice was a hot, knowing current in her ear. “No walls there. Just want. Simple. Devastating.” Her own hand came to rest lightly on Emma’s knee, a point of searing contact through the sheer stocking. “What does your want look like, Emma? When you’re not building rooms for other people?”
Emma couldn’t answer. Her mouth was dry. Her eyes were locked on Vivian’s hand, still pressed firmly against Lara’s core, moving in a subtle, insistent rhythm that Lara was now openly pushing back against. The music shifted, the beat dropping into something deeper, more tribal.
Then, in a sudden motion, Lara spun in Vivian’s arms. She said something, her expression intense. Vivian listened, then gave a single, slow nod. Lara took her hand, not leading her back to the sanctuary of the crescent, but pulling her sideways, away from the main dance floor.
Toward one of the dark, arched passageways.
The same kind from which disheveled, happy women kept emerging.
A jolt of pure adrenaline shot through Emma’s vodka-hazed system. They were going into the maze. They were disappearing into that secret, wet darkness where things happened but unknown yet to Emma at this point.
“Where are they going?” The question tumbled out, breathless and too loud.
Kat followed her gaze, a slow smile spreading. “Where the music gets wetter. Where you don’t have to pretend you can’t hear the moans.” She squeezed Emma’s knee. “Curious?”
Emma was. It was a fever in her blood, overriding the jealousy, overriding the shame. The dream from the night before collided with the live scene unfolding before her—this was its logical, real-world conclusion. She had to see. She had to know what Vivian was like in that darkness.
“I…” Emma started, her voice a husk.
“Let’s find out,” Kat said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She stood, pulling Emma up with her. Emma’s legs were unsteady, a combination of alcohol and trembling anticipation. “It’s just exploring. Like checking out a new building site.”
They weaved through the crowd, the noise and heat intensifying. The archway loomed, a mouth of deeper shadow. The bass was different here, muffled, replaced by a more intimate cacophony—rustling, slick sounds, gasps that weren’t swallowed by the music, low, guttural commands, and the unmistakable, rhythmic slap of skin on skin. The air was heavier, muskier, thick with sex and sweat.
Kat led her in, not into the first offshoot, but deeper. The corridor was narrow, lit only by faint, blood-red emergency bulbs spaced far apart. Doors, some with gaps at the bottom spilling slivers of light and sound, lined the walls. They passed a couple tangled against the wall, one woman’s skirt hiked up around her waist, the other’s face buried between her thighs, the receiving woman’s mouth stuffed with her own fist to stifle her cries.
Emma’s heart hammered against her ribs. This was beyond anything her imagination had concocted. This was real, raw, and everywhere.
Then she saw them. Halfway down a branching corridor, in a slightly wider alcove barely illuminated by a flickering red bulb.
Vivian had Lara pinned against the rough concrete wall. Lara’s sleek silk trouser suit was undone, pushed down over her hips, bunching around her thighs. Vivian’s leather dress was unzipped to her waist, pushed aside. One of Vivian’s powerful thighs was shoved between Lara’s, holding her up and open.
But it was their hands that arrested Emma, freezing her in the shadows where she and Kat lurked.
Vivian’s hand was not outside Lara’s clothing. It was inside. Her fingers, glistening with wetness that caught the scant light, were buried knuckle-deep inside Lara, pumping into her with a ruthless, driving pace. The sound was obscenely wet, a filthy, sucking rhythm that syncopated with Lara’s choked gasps.
“Is that what you needed?” Vivian’s voice was a dark growl, devoid of its usual polished control. It was pure, feral hunger. “All that clever talk, just to get filled up like this?”
Lara could only nod, her forehead pressed to Vivian’s shoulder, her body bowing with each deep thrust. “More. Harder, you fucking tease.”
Vivian complied, her arm muscles corded with the effort. She twisted her wrist, a cruel, corkscrew motion that made Lara cry out, a sharp, broken sound. “You come when I say you can come,” Vivian commanded, her mouth on Lara’s neck, biting down.
Emma watched, paralyzed. This was the dream made flesh, but magnified, dirtier, more real. The explicit mechanics of it—the specific angle of Vivian’s wrist, the way Lara’s body clenched around the invading fingers, the sheer athletic force of Vivian’s penetration—were a brutal education. This wasn’t lovemaking. This was fucking. A contest of will and need.
Then Vivian’s other hand moved. It came around, fingers slick from Lara’s cunt, and found Lara’s clit. She didn’t stroke it; she pressed the heel of her hand against it, a hard, unyielding pressure, and began to rub in tight, vicious circles.
Emma felt dizzy. She was soaking wet, her own silken underwear drenched, the dull ache between her legs now a sharp, screaming demand. The jealousy was still there, a bitter acid in her throat, but it was drowned out by a shocking, shameful surge of pure arousal. She wanted to be Lara, like a straight woman taken against her will by another woman. She wanted to be pressed against that wall, being opened and ruined by that skilled, demanding hand. She wanted to know what that specific, corkscrewing thrust felt like from the inside.
Unknown to her as she looks on from her secret corner in the dark maze, mesmerized by the scene before her, Kat had slowly slipped up behind Emma, her hands sensually snaking around her waist.
Emma didn’t jump. The shock of the touch was absorbed by the greater shock of the spectacle, the two sensations merging into a single, overwhelming current. Kat’s body pressed flush against her back, warm and solid through the thin silk. Her lips found the shell of Emma’s ear. “Watch,” she breathed, the word barely audible over Lara’s gasped pleas and the slick, rhythmic sound of Vivian’s hand. “Just watch, and feel.”
Kat’s hands began to move. They slid up from Emma’s waist, palms flattening against her ribcage, thumbs brushing the undersides of her breasts through the expensive fabric. It was a ghost of the touch Vivian had used on Lara’s stomach moments before. Emma shuddered, a full-body convulsion that made her lean back into Kat for support. Her eyes remained wide, glued to the alcove.
Vivian’s fingers drove into Lara with a brutal, piston-like efficiency. “You’re so fucking wet,” Vivian growled, her voice shredded by exertion. “All that composure, just a pool for me to swim in.” She twisted her wrist again, the same corkscrew motion from Emma’s dream, and Lara sobbed, her nails scraping down the concrete wall.
As Vivian twisted, Kat’s right hand mimicked the motion. Her palm found the peak of Emma’s breast, and she rubbed her thumb in a tight, insistent circle over the silk, exactly where Vivian’s thumb was now grinding against Lara’s clit. The friction was exquisite, maddening through the layer of fabric. Emma’s nipple hardened into a painful, sensitive point, and a soft, involuntary whimper escaped her lips.
“Shhh,” Kat soothed, her other hand drifting down. It settled low on Emma’s belly, a mirror of Vivian’s possessive hold. “She can’t know you’re here yet. This is just for you. Our little secret.”
In the alcove, Lara was coming apart. “Viv, please… I’m going to…”
“Not yet.” Vivian’s command was iron. She slowed her thrusts, drawing almost all the way out before plunging back in with deliberate, slow force. “You’ll come on my count. On my fingers. You don’t get a choice.”
Lara nodded frantically, her body straining, every muscle taut with denied release.
Kat’s hand on Emma’s belly slipped lower. Her fingers traced the gathered seam of the silk dress where it met the top of Emma’s stockings. Then, with agonizing slowness, she pushed her hand down, over the silken barrier of Emma’s panties. The pressure was direct, blunt, and overwhelming. Kat cupped her entire mound, her palm a furnace against the soaked silk underneath.
Emma’s breath hitched. Her hips gave a tiny, involuntary jerk forward, into that waiting hand. It was an admission. A surrender.
“That’s it,” Kat murmured, her mouth hot on Emma’s neck. She began to move her hand, not lifting it, but applying a steady, rhythmic pressure through the layers of silk and lace. It was a direct echo of the heel-of-the-hand pressure Vivian was using on Lara’s clit—a relentless, grinding stimulation that bypassed gentle teasing and went straight to deep, thrumming need.
Emma was drowning in double sensation. Her eyes fed her brain the explicit, raw image: the gleam of fluid on Vivian’s wrist, the desperate clench of Lara’s body. Her own body, under Kat’s ministrations, translated that image into a physical language of burning ache. The line between watcher and participant dissolved. She was both. She was Lara, being fucked with ruthless precision. She was herself, being melted from the inside out by a stranger’s hand.
Vivian increased her pace again, her thrusts becoming shorter, harder, a focused machine. “Now,” she snarled. “Come for me. Now.”
Lara’s cry was ripped from her throat, a raw, guttural sound that seemed to shake the walls. Her body bowed, rigid, then shattered into violent tremors, her hands scrabbling for purchase on Vivian’s leather-clad shoulders.
The moment Lara’s climax hit, Kat’s fingers found the exact, desperate heart of Emma’s heat through the silk. She pressed two fingers directly against Emma’s sopping panties, right over her swollen clit, and rubbed with a firm, circular cadence that perfectly matched the final, punishing snaps of Vivian’s hips.
It was too much. The visual, the auditory confirmation of Lara’s release, the targeted, mirrored pressure through her clothes—it detonated something in Emma’s core. A climax, shockingly intense and utterly silent, ripped through her. It was not the sharp seizure from the shower. This was a deep, rolling wave of release that turned her bones to liquid and her mind to white static. Her knees buckled. Only Kat’s strong arms around her waist kept her upright. She bit down on her own fist, just as the woman they’d passed earlier had done, to contain the scream tearing at her lungs.
In the alcove, Vivian was murmuring something to Lara, low and approving, as she gently withdrew her glistening hand. Lara slumped against the wall, breathing in ragged, shattered gulps, a portrait of utterly wrecked satisfaction.
Kat held Emma through the last tremors, her hand still pressed firmly against her. She didn’t move it, letting Emma ride out the aftershocks against her palm. The heat between them was palpable, a damp, shameful secret in the shadowy corridor.
Slowly, Emma’s vision cleared. The aftermath was a cold, crashing shame, so profound it felt like nausea. She had just come in her expensive underwear, fully clothed, in a public hallway, while watching her boss fuck another woman. A stranger’s hands had been all over her. And she had leaned into it. She had fucking come from it.
She tried to pull away, but Kat’s arms tightened, not as a restraint, but as an anchor. “Easy,” Kat whispered, her voice now gentle, almost pitying. “The first time you see it… really see it… it does that. It rewires you.”
Emma was shaking. Her body thrummed with spent pleasure, but her mind was a carousel of horror. Mark. Fiancé. Normal. House. Dog. The words were like stones sinking in a tar pit.
In the alcove, Vivian was helping Lara rearrange her clothing with a detached, almost clinical efficiency. She zipped her own dress, her expression settling back into its familiar mask of composed authority, as if she hadn’t just had her fingers buried in another woman’s cunt against a wall. Lara was straightening her hair, a dazed, satiated smile on her face.
Then Vivian’s head turned. Her gaze, those piercing green eyes, sliced through the red-tinged gloom and landed directly on the shadows where Emma and Kat stood.
She had known. She had known they were there the entire time.
A jolt of pure terror electrocuted Emma’s spine. She tried to shrink back, but there was nowhere to go.
Vivian didn’t look surprised. She looked… satisfied. Her eyes held Emma’s for a long, paralyzing second. They dropped, taking in Kat’s arms around her, the intimate press of their bodies, the likely disheveled state of Emma’s dress. A slow, knowing smirk touched her lips—the same one from the bedroom, but now laced with the heat of recent exertion.
She said something to Lara, who glanced over, her gaze curious but not offended. Then Vivian started walking toward them, her heels clicking a deliberate rhythm on the concrete floor.
Panic surged in Emma’s throat. She finally wrestled herself out of Kat’s hold, stumbling a step back. Her face was on fire. “I… we were just…” The lie died, pathetic and stillborn.
Vivian stopped before them. She smelled of sex, sweat, and her own sandalwood scent. Her presence was immense, dominating the narrow space. She completely ignored Kat, her focus solely on Emma.
“Enjoy the show?” Vivian asked, her smoky voice even deeper, roughened. It wasn’t a real question.
Emma couldn’t speak. She shook her head, then nodded, a mess of contradictory gestures.
“Lara needed a reminder about overstepping on my bid for the waterfront lot,” Vivian said casually, as if explaining a minor business negotiation. She reached out and, with a fingertip, brushed a stray strand of hair from Emma’s damp cheek. Her touch was electric. “It’s a language she understands. Direct. Uncomplicated.”
Her eyes flicked to Kat. “Thank you, Kat. You can go. Lara’s asking for you at the bar. She needs a drink.”
It was a clear dismissal. Kat, to her credit, just winked at Emma, a silent gesture of conspiracy, and slipped away without a word, melting back into the labyrinth.
Now they were alone. The sounds from the other alcoves seemed to fade into a dull roar. Emma was hyper-aware of the cold stickiness between her legs, the way her silk dress clung to her trembling skin.
“You’re trembling,” Vivian observed. She didn’t move to comfort her. She just watched.
“I want to go back to the suite,” Emma whispered, her voice broken.
“Do you?” Vivian asked, tilting her head. “Or do you want to stay here, in this honest place, where what you want isn’t a secret you have to hide from yourself?” She took a half-step closer. Emma could see the faint sheen of sweat at the hollow of her throat. “What did you feel, watching that?”
“It was… obscene,” Emma choked out, the last vestige of her old self clawing for the surface.
Vivian laughed, a short, dark sound. “Obscene is a word used by people who are afraid of their own appetites. What you felt was arousal. Pure, simple, devastating arousal. I saw it on your face. Kat confirmed it with her hands.” She leaned in, her lips almost touching Emma’s ear. “I could smell it on you from across the hallway. Your pretty little cunt, weeping through all that silk.”
The filthy, direct language was a violation in itself. Emma flinched, but a fresh, traitorous throb of heat pulsed in her core. She was humiliated, laid bare, and still, somehow, aroused.
“I’m engaged,” Emma breathed, the statement a feeble talisman.
“To a man who will never, ever understand the sound you just made biting into your own hand,” Vivian stated, cold and absolute. “He will never work you open with his fingers and feel you clench like a fist. He will never make you come so hard you forget your own name, just by watching.” She pulled back, her gaze scanning Emma’s devastated face. “You have spent your life in a beautifully appointed waiting room. And you just got a glimpse of the house.”
She offered her hand, not to grab, but to be taken. It was the same hand. Emma’s eyes dropped to it. Long, elegant fingers, still subtly gleaming in the low light.
“The car is waiting,” Vivian said, her tone shifting back to one of casual command. “We’re leaving.”
The shift was disorienting. From raw sexuality to cool departure. Emma stared at the offered hand. Taking it felt like signing a contract. Refusing it felt impossible. Her body was not her own. Her will was shattered.
Slowly, trembling, she placed her hand in Vivian’s.
Vivian’s fingers closed around hers, warm and firm. Not a lover’s clasp, but a captor’s, or a guide’s. She turned and led Emma back through the maze, past the murmuring alcoves and the still-coupling bodies, back toward the pounding music of the main club.
No one looked at them twice. Two women leaving the dark corners was the most ordinary sight in the world here.
The cool night air outside was a slap. Emma gulped it down, but it did nothing to clear the fever in her blood or the shame in her mind. The black sedan was idling at the end of the dock. Vivian opened the door and nudged Emma inside before following, sealing them in the quiet, plush interior.
The driver pulled away. The silence in the car was thicker than the club’s noise had been.
Emma sat pressed against the far door, as far from Vivian as she could get, staring out at the blur of dark ocean and sporadic lights. Her body felt used, hollowed out, and yet still humming with a low, insistent current. The memory of Kat’s hands was a brand. The image of Vivian’s fingers moving inside Lara was etched on the backs of her eyelids.
“Look at me.” Vivian’s voice was quiet but inflexible.
Emma couldn’t.
“Emma.” The name was a command.
She turned her head. Vivian was watching her, her face half in shadow from the passing streetlights.
“What happened tonight was an accident, I didn't want you to know this side of me.” Vivian said. “I didn't expect things to happen so fast."
Emma just didn't want to hear anymore. She just wanted to clear her head. She then turned and ran out of the club.