Page 71 of Revelry

I stare at her, uncertain if she’s just trying to mess with me or not. It’s so hard to tell with Deb. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m really not,” she says, as she gestures for me to lie down. I give her brother a nervous glance, and he smiles at me as if he’s not just as terrified as I am that his sister might ruin my vagina. I climb on the bed and lie down, staring up at the ceiling and taking short, shallow breaths. Deb pries my legs apart with her gloved hands. “Jesus Christ, what did you do? Just dip the whole thing in like a toffee apple? Ash, get me a cold washer and get the hell in here. Coop, you can leave.”

“Wait, why the fuck is Ash staying?” Cooper asks.

“If Ash is staying, we’re staying,” Levi announces from the doorway. “He’s not doing her.”

“Neither of you are staying,” Deb says.

“I volunteer as tribute,” Zed says, poking his head into the room.

Ash pushes through the crowd of his band mates and hands Deb the washcloths. She tosses them on the couch and points to my head. “Go stand by her head. Hold her down if you need to.”

I laugh humourlessly. “I’m not having a baby. It’s just a bit of wax. How much can it hurt?”

“Oh, naïve, Ali. Your vagina is covered in wax. Wax that is stuck to your skin and going to pull your pubic hair out by the roots.” She smiles. “It’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker. Now, lie back and think of England.”

No sooner does she say this than she grabs the corner of a strip of wax and rips it up.The pain. The searing pain that brings water to my eyes and pulls a scream from my throat. “MOTHERFUCKER!”

“Jesus Christ,” Coop says, and a glance at him shows his face twisted into a grimace. Levi peeks through his fingers and Zed watches on in open-mouthed horror. Ash presses a cold hand against my forehead and murmurs, “Breathe. You’re doing great, Ali. Just keep breathing.”

I should protest that everyone but James is up here, staring at my vagina while Coop’s sister rips the hair from it, but she grips another strip of wax and pulls … and thepain. That god-awful pain is back again. And right now, it’s worse than ever.

“Son of a fucking bitch!” I scream, as she just keeps on ripping up the wax. “Holy fuck, I’m never ever having sex again.” I spot the boys across the room, their faces all twisted in grimaces of shock, and I narrow my gaze in on Coop and Levi. “This is all your fault. I fucking hate both of you.”

Several excruciatingly painful yanks later, Deb covers me with the soft cool washcloth, and the relief is so immense I could turn lesbian right this very second.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, oh god,” I whimper to Deb, who just rolls her eyes and removes the gloves that she’d pulled out of what we liked to refer to as the “fun” drawer. I don’t even want to know what was going through the mind of the person who put them there, but I’m thankful right now.

“Next time you need a wax, I’ll take you to a fucking beautician. Just don’t do stupid shit like this again.”

I just nod, because I’m afraid moving will cause my poor naked pussy to feel as if it’s on fire—or, even more on fire than it already is. “If either one of you care even remotely about her, you’ll get some ibuprofen and a cold pack, and keep it fucking coming all night.”

Everyone leaves the room in a flurry of excitement and I want to die. I hold the washer to the space between my legs, but even that has warmed against my flaming-hot skin, and I whimper a little as I roll onto my side. Why in the fuck do women do that to themselves? What the hell just happened? I feel like I just … like I just signed onto some fucking BDSM porn shoot, had the shit fucked out of me, and then was shoved out into the cold without so much as a hug for aftercare.

My whole vagina is throbbing, and sadly it’s not in a good way.

When Coop returns ten minutes later it’s with a glass of water and ibuprofen, Levi comes in clutching a cold pack, and I cry because apparently I’m a motherfucking pussy when it comes to pain, but also, I adore them both for bringing me offerings of pain relief. They climb up on the bed. Cooper lies by my side and Levi settles between my legs. He wraps the end of the sheet around the gel-pack and lays it carefully against my vagina. It’s cold as fuck, but kind of nice too.

“Looks fucking hot, Red,” he says, lifting the ice pack and licking his lips.

“Do not touch me,” I warn. He gives a childlike little pout and runs his finger over the sensitised flesh of my outer labia. I hiss and jerk away. “I said, don’t touch me, fuck face.”

Levi sniggers and crawls farther up the bed, flopping down beside me. “Wow, you’re really a bitch when you have the hair ripped out of your vagina.”

Cooper chuckles, and I take the pillow from behind my head and whack them both with it.

Wax on, wax off.

My arse.

Different city, different hotel, same shit. The bus couldn’t get anywhere near the front entrance in Little Rock. Instead our roadies went ahead, assessing the damage and radioing back that we’d be using the back entrance to the hotel, and we’d be ushered directly to our rooms. We were still stopped by a bellboy and two cleaners asking for autographs. It wasn’t like it mattered—it was just a scrawl on a piece of paper. It wasn’t even my real signature. Ordinarily, I was happy to sign anything for our fans—didn’t hurt that most of them preferred to have their tits and arses signed in the privacy of a hotel room, or backstage, or in an alleyway behind the venue—but today it was making me antsy.

This thing with Ali had rattled me more than I’d liked, and the fact that we’d been booked rooms again on different floors bugged the shit outa me. Worse still was that James had booked Ali and Deb in a room together. I knew Ali could hold her own, but I also knew my sister, and I knew she wasn’t a big fan of the redhead. What I wasn’t expecting to find when I went down to their room was Deb, Zed and Ali laughing when Zed pulled back the door and let me in.

“Hey, brother,” Zed said, bringing me in for an awkward hug “Whatcha doin’ here, man?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” I reply, looking between Zed and the girls on their beds. What the hell was he doing here? Zed and Ali had become close back in Sydney, and Deb and Zed had known one another as long as Zed and I had, but something felt off.Why the fuck was he hanging out in their room?

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