Page 1 of Noire Moon
Chapter 1
“Imagine a sex club and a haunted house had a baby.”
I roll my eyes at my best friend’s words while readjusting the seat belt across my chest. The damn thing feels like a snake constricting tighter around my ribcage with every corner.
My gaze lands on Rita’s immaculately painted baby pink and gold nails. They’re the kind you get from spending an hour relaxing in a comfy chair at a salon while a trained professional practices some kind of witchcraft to create perfect nail art. Not like my patchy home manicure, which has already chipped, and I don’t want anyone to look too closely in case they see the wonky edges adorning my left hand.
Of course, Rita’s immaculately put together. As always.
“What you’re saying is that I’m going to spend tonight both scared and horny?”
Snapping those social media-worthy fingers, she points at me. “Exactly. The perfect concoction for the most insane orgasm of your life.”
“Jesus,” I mutter as my fingers wrap around the belt crossing over my chest.
This isn’t me. How I’m in this car by choice and actually agreeing to this insanity is beyond me.
Rita is the closest thing I’ve got to a best friend in Port Macabre. With her curls piled high, large gold hoops, and a black sequined jumpsuit, my girl looks like a starlet as she drums on the steering wheel. Humming along with an effortless matching pitch to the music thumping through the car speakers.
I keep quiet and stare at the darkening sky outside.
We wind around another corner to the background of some nineties grunge classic, descending further into mist-clad rolling hills in the middle of fucking nowhere.
This is the part on the outskirts of the city reserved for wealthy elites. Not those of us earning minimum wage in our mid-twenties, who cringe at the thought of checking our bank accounts and live off the sniff of an oily rag.
In fact, at this point, I’d sell the oily rag. If only I could get my hands on one to sell.
“Remind me why I agreed to this again?” I let go of the belt and start fidgeting with the hem of my too-short skirt.
She blows out a bubble of pink gum and pops it, making a loud snap with a chomp of her perfectly matched shade of lipstick.
“Because, my little deviant, when the universe gives you a golden ticket to the most exclusive event of the year, you don’t just jump at the opportunity.” She gives me a wicked grin. That amber gaze sparkles at me in the twilight. “You drop to your knees and say, thank you, Daddy.”
I scoff and give her shoulder a gentle shove. “At least we know your kinks are going to be well catered for. I bet this place is going to be crawling with silver foxes.”
“Oh, you can bet your ass there will be plenty on the hunt tonight. Ones with massive… credit card limits.” Her squeal of laughter can surely be heard on the moon.
Rita and a group of her other friends had purchased their tickets for this event almost a year ago, whereas I stumbled upon one by pure dumb luck. Winning a contest I don’t even remember entering, but apparently, my perennially overdrawn bank card swiped at the right time and place, and before I knew it, the cashier was shoving an envelope into my hands and congratulating me on my winnings.
Trying to sell the damn thing proved futile. Even though I could really use the money, there were all sorts of non-transferable clauses written in fine print. Besides, once Rita got wind of me having a ticket in my possession, she waged an insurmountable campaign to have me join them for the night.
I don’t even have a car, so what could I have said other than thank you for the ride to get here—whereverhereis? It wasn’t like there were any other options to transport myself all the way into the heart of rich-fucking-wanker territory.
As we slow to a crawl and Rita pulls into an immaculately groomed driveway, my eyes scan our surroundings. Tall wrought iron gates rise up in front of us, blocking our way, with long black stone facings spanning either side of the drive. It gives a certain kind of fuck off energy. We’re so far from the actual house on this property that all I can see up ahead in the growing shadows are ancient-looking trees with gnarled branches and drifting curtains of mist.
Even the gravel crunching beneath our tires looks expensive.
I realize this is the kind of place where gardens are measured in hectares or acreages. Out here, they have things like forested woodlands and herds of deer roaming around. The people of this world spend their weekends attending pheasant shooting parties during the day, followed by gin on the rocks before getting dressed in tuxedos for dinner.
It’s fucking laughable wealth.
The kind that you’ve been born into and don’t know anything except what it’s like to be tenth in line to some kind of meaningless, but no less powerful, title.
Not a lifestyle where bills glare at you from where they’ve been stuffed in a hiding spot on the kitchen bench. A vague attempt to disguise the giant ‘past due’ stamped in passive-aggressive red text.
Rita leans out her driver's window holding up our tickets to the intercom camera. A sudden clunking sound signals the moment the gates start to swing open, and she wriggles in her seat like an excited lamb.
“They’ll all be here, you know, but because of the masks, they can keep their identity hidden.”
