Chapter Text
The Crimson Lounge
~ Bella ~
“Guys, what did I tell you?” Bella demands, dread sinking into every bone in her body. “I said I didn’t want to do something like– like this!”
She stares up at too many neon, ruby coloured lights. They sit as a backdrop to the black exterior of the building, all hard lines and clear cut stone– and the polished chrome barriers with their rich velvet ropes, like something she’d expect at a Hollywood movie premiere.
It’s elegant, probably stupidly expensive, and already there is a small group of people lined up at the door waiting to be let in. Men, women, all dressed in smart clothes and sexy dresses.
Bella doesn’t want this.
But now she understands why Angela insisted on taking her shopping for tonight, and tugs self-consciously at the hem of her own too short, too expensive cocktail dress.
“How much is this going to cost?” she asks, aghast at the very thought of her friends wasting this much money on one night.
The bouncer is methodically checking IDs at the door, her muscles tight beneath her crisp button up shirt as she waves a young man inside.
“Oh god, I think I’m going to pass out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jessica waves away her concerns with excitement. She’s spotted the handsomely dressed bouncer as well, because of course she has. “Tonight is going to be so much fun!”
Bella’s still very much having a fit about it, even if her panic is mostly internal.
“Why do we have to do this at all?”
“Babe, you deserve this,” Angela sighs, wrapping herself around Bella’s arm and giving it a squeeze. “And besides, Eddie is paying for it, so let’s celebrate!”
Her fiancé paid for this?
She’s going to kill him.
“I don’t need to celebrate by having a half naked man gyrating in my lap.”
Angela giggles as she starts dragging her toward the club. “Oh Bella, who said anything about men?”
“That does not make it better.”
Jessica snorts with laughter. “What– because women are so unattractive? Please. Not these women, Bella. I promise even you’re going to enjoy tonight.”
Bella notices the sign above the entrance as they join the line. The Crimson Lounge, it says, in beautiful cursive. It’s lit up as well– blood red. But it’s only as the bouncer is checking their IDs that it really clicks, and only because the woman’s eyes quickly flit over their faces.
Oh my god.
It makes so much sense now. Jessica is flirting shamelessly with her as she checks their tickets, which are conveniently on her phone.
She’s sure it’s just another excuse for Jessica to get closer.
“Right, remember the rules– no touching without permission, this is a respectable establishment, so respect the performers. That also means no photographs, keep your phones in your bags and your attention on the women giving you theirs.” She lifts the red velvet rope for the three of them to enter, a crooked smile working its way onto her lovely face. “Keep your glasses full, enjoy your night.”
She’s probably used to charming every pretty face that walks through her door.
Bella is absolutely not one of them though. She is not charmed.
Not by the bouncer and her beautiful face, certainly not at the confident wink she throws Bella as she passes by, not by the loud music, or the dimmed lights–
It might be intimate and exclusive, but Bella just feels like the walls and ceilings are closing in on her. She swears the air is fucking pulsing.
Her friends have brought her to a strip club, but if that’s not bad enough, it’s one that very clearly caters to a particular group of people. Or maybe that’s not exactly right…
The bouncer is one of them, which means–
“Good evening, ladies,” A waitress materialises before them, her smile bright and her eyes the exact same shade as the bouncer’s. “I’m Alice– and my goodness don’t you all look delicious tonight.”
Her eyes sweep the three of them, but linger on Bella. More specifically, her very short dress.
Oh.
My.
God.
“Uh–”
They bought her to a fucking club owned by blood drinkers.
Immortals.
The undead.
“First time, hon?” Alice asks, dragging her gaze slowly to Bella’s face now. Her eyes sparkle with amusement. “That’s alright, I’ll take good care of you. Stage-side or something a little more private?”
“A booth please, if you have it,” Angela’s smile rivals the waitress’s. “We’re celebrating.”
“Oh yeah? And what are we celebrating tonight?” Alice’s fingers slip into Bella’s, encouraging her to follow first, but her attention remains otherwise on Angela as she teases, “Let me guess, one of you is getting married.”
“How’d you know?”
Alice winks. “Special talent of mine.”
She can feel Bella’s ring, her little finger is literally stroking it as she says it.
“We get a lot of bachelorette parties coming through our door,” Alice ushers Bella’s friends into a booth closer to the back before she lets Bella’s hand go so she can slide in after them. “Your group is a little smaller than the ones we usually get though. So!” She claps her hands, leaning her hip against the table. “What can I get you to drink? Something expensive? We’re celebrating, aren’t we?”
Bella opens her mouth to refuse, they don’t need expensive to get drunk, but Angela beats her to it.
“Yes, please! Top shelf but not too top shelf, something sweet, not too strong– your choice,” Angela flashes her a grin. “The groom to be is very generous, and very, very rich.”
Jessica snorts. “You can say that again.”
Edward is a surgeon, so of course he’s paid well, but what they fail to mention as the waitress, Alice, flitters off to pick their poison for the night, is that he works gruelling hours for that wage.
Never mind that his father is a surgeon as well, so yeah, maybe money isn’t exactly tight in the Cullen family, but still.
It sits wrong with Bella.
“Is Edward really paying for tonight?” she asks once they’re alone. “He knows where you’ve taken me?” There’s absolutely no way, and one look at Jessica’s face confirms her suspicions. She groans. “Oh my god, he has no idea, does he?”
“Of course not,” she says, waving her off. “You think Eddie would approve of this?” Her attention is already drifting to the stage, where a woman dances so provocatively that it has Bella blushing from the tip of her nose to the roots of her hair. “He just tried to hand us his credit card to have at it instead. I told him cash was better.”
Disappointingly enough, that sounds exactly like something Edward would do. Bella looks away from the centre stage designed to draw every eye in the room and instead tracks their waitress as she leans on the bar, directing the breathtaking woman behind the bar to mix the drinks she wants.
So, she’s a bossy little thing.
“I’ve personally never seen such a ridiculous amount of money in my entire life,” Angela says.
Well, at least he won’t have a heart attack when he gets his next credit card statement.
That’s a small relief.
Letting her gaze drift, Bella will admit it’s not the worst club she’s ever stepped foot in. It does ooze a certain level of… opulence. Sheer curtains, leather backed seats, silk–
God, there’s so much silk.
Bella catches the eye of a woman in a booth on the other side of the stage. She almost doesn’t see her, hidden in the shadows as she is, but it’s hard to look away once she does.
She lounges there, one long leg crossed over the other, exposed by the truthfully obscene split up the side– sipping her drink, watching.
Is she…?
She’s watching Bella.
“We, er–” Bella blinks and quickly looks to the surface of their own table, her entire body flushing with heat. “We should probably agree not to tell him about tonight.”
What the fuck was that?
“Who aren’t we telling what?” Alice appears at their booth holding a tray of drinks, which even look like they cost a small fortune. She places them down on the table and, as another waitress breezes by, hands off her empty tray with a flourish.
Bella steadfastly avoids looking back across the room.
Angela reaches for a glass as Alice slips in beside Bella. “Bella’s fiancé,” she says, and then slides Alice three one hundred dollar bills. “He'll have an aneurysm if he finds out we spent his money on women.”
And then Jess giggles, because it’s no secret that she likes to ruffle her fiancé’s feathers. Bella gives her a look, which only makes her laugh harder.
“Mm– how scandalous,” Alice is already leaning in closer to Bella, distracting her. “We'd best make sure you get his money's worth then, hon.”
And when Alice spreads her fingers out across the bare skin of her thigh, dangerously fucking close to places it really has no right being, Bella could literally think of so many other things they could be doing with that money.
Instead she watches Alice fold it into her bra.
Another woman joins their table, sliding into Jessica's lap to the utter delight of Angela, who giggles and holds out more money.
Oh god, they're really paying for this.
Edward is paying for this.
“No need to look so worried,” Alice's words murmur directly into her ear. “I don't bite without permission, honey.” Bella’s breath catches, and Alice rewards her with a soft squeeze of her thigh. “Have a drink. Then tell me all about this very rich, very proper fiancé of yours who disapproves of me.”
“I– I don't want to talk about him,” she admits, but Alice is right.
The alcohol will help her chill the fuck out.
She hopes.
Bella’s eyes cut to the enchanting woman in the shadows without her permission.
“Mm– have a drink then. It's very good,” she promises. “Rose might not dance, but she makes a mean cocktail.”
“R–Rose?”
“Mm– the woman you were watching me talk to behind the bar.”
So she did notice Bella staring, great.
Alice's nose runs the length of her throat, breathing Bella in…
And the woman across the club– god, her perfect head tilts, like she finds Bella’s reaction to a woman’s touch the most interesting thing in the room, and a lock of fine blonde hair falls onto her face.
Bella’s not sure she can take even a single sip of her expensive drink without choking on it right now.
“You definitely don’t share your fiancé’s outdated beliefs.”
It isn't a question and– well there's no use denying it.
Alice can probably feel, smell exactly how little Bella shares Edward's beliefs, even as out of her fucking depth as she is right now. She’s only fucking human, and Alice is gorgeous, running her fingertips up her leg, down, over her knee, teasing just beneath the hem.
And wearing only the tiniest matching set of lingerie.
Bella’s eyes fall to that soft spot between her breasts.
She’s never been attracted to women before, not that she’s noticed anyway, but Christ. She’s noticing tonight.
“Would you like a private dance, honey?”
Would she? Bella blinks, but there’s this heavy sort of fog coating her brain, distracting her.
Oh god, is she attracted to women?
“... yes.”
She bites her lip to stifle the noise she wants to make when she feels a wet tongue flick her earlobe. She’s apparently very attracted to women tonight.
“Would you like to touch me?”
Yes.
As much as Alice will let her, the answer is undeniably yes.
Alice giggles. “Good.”
“I– I didn't say anything.”
“You don’t need to,” She pulls away long enough to accept more crisp bills, this time from Jessica, who barely even glances their way. She’s too busy with the brunette grinding in her lap. “Come on, honey,” she purrs, tugging Bella to follow her. “Bring your drink– you're about to get real thirsty.”
Bella already is.
When Alice leads her past that shadowed booth and back behind the stage to the rooms where Bella assumes the private dances are given, the enchanting woman has turned her attention elsewhere.
More specifically to the scantily dressed dancer now perched in her lap.
Still, she sips from her glass, eyes downturned, hidden from Bella as she passes.
It leaves a sour feeling in her belly that she can't shake.