Chapter 9: Dominant Display
The chill of the supply closet had seeped into my bones. I moved through the rest of my shift on autopilot, the ghost of Nebula’s touch a brand on my skin. It wasn't desire I felt; it was a corrosive residue, a shared stain. Her words echoed. Now we both have a new secret to keep.
But my old secret, the one that gnawed at my ribs, was more insistent. Salem. Her name was a compass point, and my feet, traitors that they were, carried me toward her territory long after the final bell had rung. The east wing pool was officially closed, the lights dimmed. The only sounds were the hum of the filtration system and the persistent drip from a showerhead.
I wasn't supposed to be here. My cart was parked by the staff entrance as an alibi. I moved through the shadowed pool deck, the chlorinated air heavy and still, toward the glowing crack under the door to the girls' locker room. A maintenance panel, loose and forgotten, offered a sliver of a view from the poolside wall. I’d found it months ago. A coward’s perch.
Tonight, I needed it. After Nebula, after my own pathetic surrender, I needed to see the real thing. To feel the sharp cut of the unobtainable, to cauterize the messy wound she’d left.
I slid my phone from my pocket, thumb hovering over the record button. My hand wasn't shaking from fear. It was a tremor of pure, undiluted craving.
The scene inside was a study in humid intimacy. Steam curled from the showers in lazy, phantom tendrils, softening the edges of the tiled room. Salem stood in the center, a goddess in a black one-piece swimsuit that gleamed under the damp, strategic lights. Ruby was before her, her back pressed to Salem’s front, her damp crimson hair dark against Salem’s shoulder. Ruby’s eyes were closed, her lips parted. Salem’s right hand was splayed low on Ruby’s stomach, holding her close. Her left hand was moving, a slow, deliberate stroke under the edge of Ruby’s blue swimsuit bottom, between her thighs. Ruby whimpered, a soft, surrendering sound that pierced the steam.
To their left, propped against a bank of lockers, was Reese. Her long green hair was plastered to her neck, her own suit a dark green. Salem’s other arm was extended, her hand possessing Reese through the fabric. She wasn't gentle. Her fingers twisted, gripping the hardened, pierced nipple clearly outlined under the clinging lycra. Reese’s head was thrown back, her teeth biting into her lower lip, a sharp groan escaping as Salem pulled and rolled the metal barbell between her fingers.
“See the difference, Ruby?” Salem’s voice was a low, instructional murmur against Ruby’s ear. “Reese needs the sharpness. The bite. You…” Her hand moved deeper between Ruby’s legs, making the younger girl gasp and arch. “You need the slow ache. The stretch.”
Ruby could only nod, her breath coming in quick, shallow pants.
From a bench near the showers, Maria watched. A towel was draped over her lap, but her arm was moving beneath it, a frantic, tense rhythm bunching the fabric. Her silver eyes were fixed, unblinking, on Salem’s hands—on Ruby’s trembling lower lip, on Reese’s captured breast. Her own breathing was a ragged, quiet counterpart to the sighs and groans echoing in the tiled room.
My phone trembled in my hands. The recording light was a tiny, accusing red eye. It captured the swirl of steam, the sheen of sweat and pool water on their skin, the way Ruby’s knees buckled and Salem held her upright. It captured Reese’s choked cry as Salem’s grip tightened. It captured the raw, open worship on Maria’s face as her own unseen fingers worked under the towel.
I was a phantom. A voyeur. A hollow man in the dark, trying to steal a piece of their heat. The memory of Nebula’s desperate, angry coupling was an ice pick in my gut. This was different. This was a ceremony. Salem was not forgetting a name; she was engraving hers onto their very nerves.
She shifted her hand on Ruby, her fingers moving with a slick, audible sound that made Ruby cry out. “There. That’s the spot. Remember that feeling. Own it. Use it in the water tomorrow.”
Then, as if sensing the cold, empty space behind the maintenance panel, Salem’s head turned. Not fully. Just a slight tilt. Her dark eyes, hazy with a commanding pleasure, sliced through the steam and the shadow and found the crack in the wall. Found me.
My blood froze.
A slow, knowing smile touched her lips. It wasn't a smile of invitation, nor of anger. It was pure, absolute acknowledgement. She saw the janitor in his hiding hole. She saw the phone. She saw my pathetic, starving face pressed to the gap.
And she didn’t care.
She held my gaze for one endless second, her fingers still working on Ruby, her other hand still pinching Reese. Her smile widened a fraction, a queen amused by the ant of a subject. Then she turned back, dismissing me utterly, and lowered her mouth to Ruby’s neck.
“Again, Ruby,” she commanded, her voice humming against Ruby’s skin.
Ruby’s moan this time was louder, helpless, a beautiful breaking sound. My phone recorded it all. The final, shuddering convulsion of Ruby’s body. The sharp gasp from Reese as her own climax was wrung from her by Salem’s unrelenting grip. Maria’s soft, choked sob from the bench.
The steam curled, eternal, obscuring nothing, revealing everything. I watched, a statue of longing and loathing, until the screen of my phone went black.