Boy in the Club a boy & billionaire novel - Rachel Kane Page 0,1
spends his empty hours tending his greenhouse—told me it was like when flowers open in spring, and suddenly the bees show up out of nowhere, and I thought that was a good description. You can’t swat away bees. You need them. You just don’t want to be surrounded by them.
“I’m leaving if I hate it.”
“You won’t hate it,” says Daniel. “You really won’t.”
I hate it the minute I walk inside. There’s no doorman, no. No bouncer, big and broad with a cord dangling from his ear, wearing sunglasses in the dark for intimidation’s sake. Worse. There’s someone helpful.
“Gentlemen,” he says in such an ingratiating tone that I expect him to bow. A short man in a black suit, his thinning hair combed impossibly flat against his small round skull. “You’re expected. If you’ll come this way.”
What was this, the rich person entrance? Where are the models? There’s nothing here but a dark corridor. I am thinking of cattle chutes in slaughterhouses. The bold new trend in haute cuisine, boeuf de billionaire.
“Go on,” Daniel urges.
Hawk, more gently, puts his hand to my back. “You can do this,” he says, like it’s my first time on a bike, rather than my millionth time in yet another club with yet more male models.
Maybe a sex club would have been better. Remove all the pretense. Find some guy I couldn’t connect with, have emotionless, numb intercourse, be on my way.
Nope. The only thing I was going to suck on tonight was a bottle of scotch.
Some kind of significant look passes between Hawk and the little man, and I can practically hear his thoughts: It’s Colby’s first time, and he’s a little nervous. I should thank Hawk for not saying that aloud. I’m not allowed to be nervous. I’m not allowed to feel anything at all. Emotions are outside the job description.
I’m not nervous. I’m about to start laughing. It’s so serious. I have to hold back the bubbling in my chest, that wild feeling, that frantic feeling, it was the same at Dad’s funeral, I nearly started laughing and I would have died if that had happened, I just couldn’t bear it, all his worshipers, all the ass-kissers and yes-men lining up for one last shot at him, he would’ve hated it, and I could feel the chuckle starting low in my throat, just like now.
I can stifle it. I can stifle anything. But this is ridiculous. All this to get laid? It’s too much.
“Will you need any assistance?” the short man asks, and he reminds me of this sad terrier my mother used to have, pathetically grateful for any attention, rolling on its back the moment you entered the room. I haven’t thought about Patches in years. Let’s add him to the list of things to mourn at some point in the future, when I’m allowed to feel things again. That unspecified point.
“We’ve got it,” says Daniel. The brusqueness cows the little man, who nods and steps out of our way. “Come on.”
“They’re really trying to set a mood,” I say of the darkened corridor my friends are leading me down. “Maybe they should add some horror movie music.”
“It’s just a hallway,” says Daniel.
“The place Daniel wanted to go has a dressing room—”
“Shut up!” says Daniel, but Hawk will not be stopped now.
“—and you have to strip down and put on a wrestling mask so nobody can see who you are—”
“Hawkins, I swear to god—”
“—and then you go in and choose another masked man based on what kind of tag he has around his neck—there are all these color-coded tags depending on what the guy wants to do!”
I look over at Daniel, who is blushing furiously. “Masks?” I ask him, and that has really done it, the laughter can’t be controlled, there’s an edge of madness to it, a sick energy that I know is going to offend one of my best friends, but I can’t help it, it pours out of me like a coughing fit.
“It’s like someone saw Eyes Wide Shut and thought it was a business model,” says Hawk.
“Leave it to the gays to make getting laid into work,” I laugh. “So these guys we’re about to see, they have to have sex with you?”
“What do you mean have to?”
I roll my eyes. “You know what I’m asking. Is this place just a bunch of rentboys? Are you taking me into a house of ill repute?”
Daniel groans. “Jesus, Colbs. We’re not that hard-up.”