Feel My Pain (Curse Bound 1)

He approached Elizabeth with a smile. “Future Mrs. Henkel!” He was a performer, and he’d be doing his best whether it was at a concert or a bachelorette party. There was nothing he wanted more than to take some of the load off Roach’s shoulders, and if the money could cover a chunk of the nurse’s pay, he’d play even the dumbest, worst written songs out there.

So he started with a ballad, sung while he sat in the bride-to-be’s lap. But peace didn’t last long, and the party turned wild fast. Elizabeth had to perform a series of embarrassing tasks her friends had come up with. Zane had no idea whether they were the standard bachelorette party fare, or if this group of people was particularly kinky, but the assignments included having to ask a perfect stranger to explain to her how to put a condom on a banana and eating a donut off the blow-up doll’s plastic dick.

There was a theme there. A theme that suggested a thirty-something woman who lived with her fiancé needed schooling on how to handle dick. Zane found the whole thing kinda humiliating in comparison to the things that happened at the average bachelor party, but that was none of his business. Maybe Elizabeth was secretly getting off on this?

As the evening progressed and everyone got increasingly drunk, the rising temperature warranted the changes to Zane’s outfit. The jacket went off first, then the T-shirt and belt, which the bridal party’s single male member insisted on removing himself. Not that he wasn’t encouraged by all his female friends.

Zane made sure they all knew he wasn’t a stripper, even if he did so in a joking manner, but as everyone poured more liquor down their throats they seemed to ignore some of the pre-set boundaries. The only guy in the bridal party was a thirty-something goth with a heavy New York accent. His creeper shoes brought him to Zane’s height, and he wore a thick slather of kohl around his eyes. In a bar like Tony’s, Grit, Ohio, he stood out far more than the future bride who’d dressed as a rockabilly princess with her black hair curled into victory rolls.

“Maybe Joe and you should get to know each other better once this party’s over?” the head bridesmaid suggested, nudging Joe at Zane with as much discretion as her intoxication allowed. None.

The guy was equally drunk as the others and had been making eyes at Zane throughout the party. But tips were a big goal for tonight, so Zane kept brushing off all the comments flying his way, as if putting together the two gay men those women knew was their idea of entertainment.

He discreetly pinched his own nipple behind the guitar, just to feel Roach’s gaze on him.

Joe bit his lip when Zane ended in the one free seat, next to him. “Must be lonely in this dump.”

Zane smirked, swinging his hand across the strings to set the rhythm for a wild dance Elizabeth decided to do after her fifth Martini. With heavy makeup and a tight black dress, she no longer looked like a polite librarian but rather someone who’d rip pages out of book alongside Zane, just for the hell of it.

“It’s not that bad.”

“Game time!” Tamara, one of Elizabeth’s friend’s yelled, shaking her violet wig.

Zane didn’t remember there being anything else in the party plan, but what the hell? He was getting a load of cash for being singing eye candy, so he might as well go with whatever request was coming his way.

Tamara chuckled, producing a pink scarf, which she tied around Zane’s head, covering his eyes in a thick layer that didn’t let through any light. “You need to show Elizabeth how to catch her husband in the dark.”

So he’d be chasing around for the blow-up doll. Fine.

“Oh, God! No!” Elizabeth was laughing, so he figured she must have gotten blindfolded too.

Someone grabbed his hand, and he judged the fingers as belonging to a man. Joe, then.

“Who will find your husband first, Eli?” Joe laughed and led Zane along, as Elizabeth continued giggling a few steps behind Zane.

“You guys are the worst.”

Zane reached forward when Joe let go of him, intent on going with whatever silliness they wanted. “Oh, Mr. Henkel! Where are you?”

The world around him was a bubble of noise—confusing without vision—but he vaguely knew where the doll had been and tried to steer that way, waving his hands in front of him so as not to walk into a wall.

“Don’t you molest my husband,” Elizabeth cried.

Zane’s hand slid over polyester, so he turned to grab it, but his fingers landed on a warm male chest.

Joe let out a theatrical gasp from up close. “Mrs. Henkel, your hair has grown so long…”

Before Zane could come up with an answer to cool off the mood, smooth lips touched his, and his nose picked up the scent of unfamiliar cologne.