Works in Progress

What Lurks Beneath ~ Prologue

The familiar beats of the new hipshaker, 'Bend My Back' blasted through the speakers, as Luka stepped through the front door of his favourite club, Aurtan.

No better tune could have described the antics that went on in here.

It was your ordinary club, with underage dancers here for the booze, hot young things snapping the latest selfie and the big heavy dudes looking for a new pup. That was the public face of the club; the one that everyone saw and accepted. The one he had left behind, when he stepped through that door.

This place...this was where the real fun was to be had.

After stepping through those padded leather doors, he descended the dozen steps to the 'basement' level and sighed at the comfort he felt here. Everything was bright and decorated to keep the spirits up, unlike those black dungeons in the city. This place was marble, crystal, leather and glass; everything shimmered in whites, silver and muted greys. All bar one thing...the cages.

At the very back of the cavernous room, the length of a football pitch, stood wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling steel cages full of gyrating dancers. Only, they weren't peddling the latest moves for the dancefloor, they were flaunting the merchandise. Men dressed in all manner of revealing outfits; some with headbands that had ears, some with butt plug tails, and others showing their true animal natures to reveal their real tails, their real claws and horns and fangs.

Luka had booked one of the private rooms behind those cages, for the night. A room where, he hoped, one of those men might leave their little cage and give him a private performance. He hadn't decided who he wanted from the menu, maybe the sykyo, Lose, who could dislocate his jaw like his snake nature; or perhaps he'd go old school and choose Ender, a human who liked to wear an almost permanent tail plug.

If he'd turned right, before stepping through those doors, he'd have been led into a room full of scantily clad women in g-strings and bras, the hottest of the hottest women in the country. By turning left, he was met with sweat-covered chests, thick thighs and bulging boxers, instead.

Just what he needed.

Luka slipped off his old-fashioned baseball jacket, with the white arms and trim, and smiled. Out the corner of his blue eyes, he caught the handsome bouncer standing at the bottom of the stairs, ogling him with hungry eyes, as he undressed. Following the protocols of the club to a tee.

Turning just enough to peek at the bouncer a little more clearly through his overhanging fringe, he nearly groaned at the sight he beheld. Tall, full of muscles, and so wide! The man had the distinctive features of a lupi; a canine species from Emard, the place where humans had evolved after the war into all kinds of deliciously strong creatures. Luka had been there once, to investigate a suspected smuggling ring, only to discover underground cage fights between the creatures. They were willing and consensual, but their games were too vicious for the rest of the world to understand.

If this bouncer was a lupi, with all that muscle, he probably won every fight. The fact that he was handsome as hell probably helped; thick neck muscles rolling up to blood-red hair and rust coloured eyes.

Yes. He was exactly what Luka had come here looking for.

A discreet cough reminded him that the Groom was waiting to take his clothes. A courtesy given to every customer. Admittance to the lower levels was by invitation only, so they all knew the rules before they walked in, and those who didn't or who disrespected those rules were immediately thrown out.

There were only three rules for Aurtan:

everyone gave up their clothes, upon entry – to prevent concealed weapons and to reveal true forms