“Damn.” She shifted in her seat, watching the dancers for a bit. They’d shed their clothes by now, and the man steadied a harness that had been lowered from the ceiling so his partner could step into it. Once inside, her legs were spread wide and an invisible pulley lifted her so her hips were level with her partner’s head. He began to spin her in time with the music, walking in wide circles as she whipped around, head thrown back.
“What time is it?” Sara asked after a few minutes, not looking away from where the man had abruptly stopped the woman from spinning, and pressed his open mouth between her legs.
“Nine forty-five.”
She sighed, and I couldn’t tell if she was as antsy as I was. The torture of the club was knowing that if I wanted to touch her, I could do it only where others could see us. Use us for their need as much as we were using them for ours. I wanted more than anything to do to her what the man on the dance floor had begun doing to his partner: tasting, teasing, fucking her with his fingers.
As the man spun the woman away again, a waiter approached our table.
“Good evening, sir.” He poured water from a crystal pitcher, beginning near the glass then raising it above his head without altering the water’s flow even a little. “The owner has mentioned you’ve been here but your guest is new. Would you like me to tell you a bit about what you can expect?”
“That would be smashing,” I answered.
He turned to Sara. “The club changes the room décor every couple of weeks. Our goal is to keep things fresh for our clientele. You’ll find a variety of scenes going on as you walk down to the rooms.”
I glanced to Sara and wondered how, beneath the mask, the sweet midwestern girl was taking all of this in.
The host continued, “Shows begin at ten, and go until midnight. I’m told your room is Six. Given that this is your first event, you should feel welcome to watch the other exhibits for a bit before deciding whether you would like to participate.” He smiled. “I’m also told the owner would very much like to add something a bit more intimate and sincere to the regular rotation. We’ve never had an exhibiting couple who looks at each other the way you do.”
I felt my eyes go wide, and beside me Sara shifted closer. I could feel the warmth of her thigh against mine. I was truly on the verge of exploding with my need to feel her.
The waiter bowed slightly. “But please do not feel any pressure.”
At ten, the lights in the hallway illuminated a warm gold. Other patrons around the main room shifted, finished their drinks, stood slowly. But Sara grabbed my hand and jerked me out of my chair.
The hall was at least twenty feet wide, with seats and tables near the windows looking in on the rooms. In Room One, the first room on the left, a young, muscular man stood in the corner wearing jeans and no shirt. On the floor, on all fours, was another dark-haired man with a horse tail extending from an anal plug. The man standing in the corner lifted a whip and cracked it loudly in the air.
Sara’s hand flew to her mouth, as I pulled her farther down the hall, murmuring, “Pony play, darling. Not for everyone.”
Room Two had a beautiful woman, alone and naked on the couch, just beginning to masturbate to pornography being projected across the expansive wall opposite her.
Room Three had an enormous, pale man in the tragic Melpomene mask, preparing to take a gagged woman from behind. Beside me, I could sense Sara grow more tense.
“This looks . . .” She gestured vaguely to the strangely fascinating scene.
“Adventurous?” I suggested. “You have to understand that people pay a lot of money to come here. They don’t want to see things they can see on the telly.”
I put my hand to the small of her back and reminded her, “Another thing you can’t see on the telly is real intimacy.”
She looked up at me and then her attention dropped to my mouth. “Do you think we’re really intimate?”
“Do you?”
She nodded. “When did that happen?”
“When has it been anything other than intimate? You just wanted to ignore it.”
She blinked away, but leaned into my side and we started walking again.
Room Four had three women, kissing and laughing as they undressed each other on a gigantic white bed.
Room Five had a man binding a woman up with rope, while a bound and gagged cuckolded man watched from the corner.
“We’re going to be boring,” she whispered, eyes wide.
“You really think so?”
She didn’t answer, because we’d arrived at Room Six, which stood empty. Without even looking to me, she slipped around the end of the hall to where we could enter the rooms from the rear.
The door handle to Six turned easily, and Sara stepped inside.
After a few moments, our eyes adjusted, and I could make out a bar in the corner and a huge leather couch with a low coffee table in front. Even in the darkness, the room felt very much like a corner of my own living room, and I suspected with a jolt that it was a replica of that space.
Without thinking to ask Sara first, I flipped on the light. I was right. Cream walls with deep walnut trim, a wide black couch, and the same plush area rug I had picked up in Dubai. Tiffany lamps decorated the two small end tables. The room was far smaller than my living room, which I used for large events, but the similarity was undeniable. The giant window through which people could observe us was framed by drapes, just like those at my flat, but from where we stood, it just looked like a window looking out upon a blank darkness.
Johnny had been to my house only once, but in a single afternoon he’d transformed a room in his club for me, no doubt assuming it would be familiar to us both, maybe put us at ease. He would have no idea that Sara had never actually been to my flat.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, walking closer and, realizing she could touch me in here, wrapping her arms around my waist.
“He’s made a replica of my living room for us.”
“That’s . . .” She looked around, eyes wide. “That’s crazy.”
“What’s crazy is that this is the first time you’re seeing my house. From inside a sex club.”
The absurdity of it all seemed to hit us both at the same time and Sara dissolved into giggles, pressing her face into my chest. “This is the weirdest thing anyone has ever done. Ever.”
“We can go . . .”
“No. This is the first place we’ll have sex where we’re supposed to,” she said, grinning. “You think I’m going to pass that up?”
Fuck. The woman could ask me to kneel and kiss her toes and I would do it.
I almost said it: I love you. The words got so close to escaping that I literally turned away from her, and walked over to the bar to fix myself a drink.
But she followed me. “And it’s probably late to be asking this, but what are we doing here?”
“I believe we’re trying to find a way to enjoy this aspect of our relationship without jeopardizing our careers or getting our faces plastered all over Perez Hilton.”
I lifted the bottle of scotch, silently offering. She shook her head, eyes wide beneath her mask as she watched me pour myself a drink.
“Three fingers,” she whispered, and I heard her smile in her voice.
“Just one, for now.”
She stepped close after I took a sip and stretched to kiss me, sucking on my tongue.
Fuck she tasted good.
The feathers of her mask brushed against my cheek. “Three,” she insisted.
As she kissed down my neck and spread her hand over the front of my trousers, palming me, I looked over her shoulder at the dark window. Out there, customers might already be sitting and watching, curious about what would happen. Or maybe we were all alone here at the end of the hall. But the idea that we weren’t, the sheer possibility that others could see how she touched me . . . for the first time I understood how being out in plain sight with me had allowed Sara to be whoever she wanted to be. She could play. She could be wild and adventuro
us and take risks.
And so could I. Here, I could be the man who was desperately in love for the first time in my life.
“Do you really want to fool around here?” I asked, wincing internally at my own bluntness.
But she nodded. “I’m just nervous. Which is slightly insane considering our history.”
She laughed and reached out to lightly scratch my abdomen. Fuck. I’d never felt such a tormenting mix of protectiveness, worship, and a blinding need to completely own someone physically. She was so beautiful, so bloody trusting—all fucking mine.
I bent down, kissed her jaw, and slipped the top few buttons on her shirt free. “What do you imagine when you think we’re being watched?”
She hesitated, toying with the hem of my shirt. “I imagine someone seeing your face and how you look at me.”
“Yeah?” I sucked on her neck. “What else?”
“I imagine a woman who wants to be with you, seeing you with me. Seeing you wanting me.”
I hummed against her skin, pushing her shirt off her shoulders and reaching around to remove her bra. “More.”
When I kissed her neck, I could feel her swallow against my lips. Her voice came out quieter when she admitted, “I imagine some faceless person who saw Andy treat me badly. I imagine the woman he was caught with seeing how you look at me.”
There it is. “And?”
“And him. I imagine him seeing how happy I am now.” She shook her head, digging her fists into my shirt and pulling me close as if I’d pull away. “I don’t think I’ll always hold on to it, but I hate that I still feel so much anger.”
Leaning back, she looked up at me. “But you make me feel amazing, and wanted, and yes, part of me still wishes to rub that in his face.”
I couldn’t hold back my grin. I fucking loved the idea of that bastard seeing me fuck Sara senseless. Because the biggest mistake of his life—his infidelity—had given me the best part of mine.
“Me, too. I’d love him to see how you look when you’re coming. Since I bet he didn’t really manage to see that much.”
She laughed, licking up my throat. “No.”
And fuck, for the first time in my life, I wanted to be someone’s only.
I led her to the couch, then kneeled on the floor between her legs.
Her hands laced into my hair.
“What do you want me to do?” she whispered, looking down at me, always so willing to give me anything.
What do I want? I struggled to find the right answer, suddenly more than a little overwhelmed with the enormity of that question.
You over me.
You under me.
Your laugh in my ears.
Your voice in my chest.
Your wet on my fingers.
Your taste on my tongue.
I think I want to know you feel the way I do.
“I just want you to enjoy this tonight.” I leaned forward, pressing my mouth between her legs. She smelled dizzying, tasted too good, looked too beautiful. Sara’s sounds were quiet and aching and seemed to be tailored entirely for my ear. Her fingers ran over my head, scratching my scalp lightly before she let go and pulled her leg higher, spreading wider, giving me better access. She didn’t move with exaggerated sexuality; she was slow and calm and easily the most accidentally sensual being in history.
And as I focused on making her feel good, I imagined how she looked from outside this room, with my fingers in her and my mouth devouring her and her back arching up from the couch. I was so used to seeing her with the mask now that it wasn’t jarring or distancing; the way she looked at me from behind it made me feel like I’d just been given the entire world. The silky black wig framed her face, made her skin paler, her lips redder. Those same lips parted as she began to beg quietly, instructing me to move faster, to not stop sucking on her, to fuck her harder with my fingers.
As she began to fall, her hand moved up her torso, over her breast and up her neck to her face, where she slipped her mask off, exposing the last bit of her skin that had been covered.
Her huge brown eyes were trained on my face, her lips still parted in a quiet pant.
When she came, she never once looked away, never once even blinked her attention to the windows behind me.
Someone was on the other side of that glass. I could feel it. But I don’t think we could have been any more alone in this room even if we really were at my flat. Nothing in this world existed other than the way she pressed into my mouth, crying out when she came.
Then she sighed, tugged on my hair, and laughed. “Holy shit.”
So maybe if I ever met this Andy twat I wouldn’t actually punch his smug face after all. Maybe I’d shake his hand for messing things up with Sara so epically that she moved to New York and stopped being the woman who did what she was supposed to do, and started to be the woman who did what she bloody well wanted.
I kissed my way up her torso, let her suck her taste from my mouth, my tongue, my jaw. Beneath me she was warm and slow; her arms curled lazily around me, her laugh faded into my neck.
“I think that was the most fun I’ve ever had,” she whispered.
And I suspected I’d do almost anything to spend the rest of my life making this woman happy.
Fifteen
I knew it wouldn’t be good to have every night of the week filled with Max, because it would shatter my ability to think about anything else. On my morning run, I thought back on what we’d done together, and came up with some of the wildest fantasies I’d ever had in my life: crawling under Max’s desk and sucking him off while he spoke on the phone, or having him in the elevator on the way up to his apartment.
It was fun to finally let myself indulge in these sorts of daydreams, and I was starting not to care that he disrupted so much of my structured life. And after what he did for me at the club, I was beginning to realize I’d walk across flaming coals for the man.
I’d been nervous, no doubt. The club felt darkly indulgent and was supported by patrons who’d been thinking about this kind of sexual fantasy maybe longer than I’d been alive. I wasn’t sure if there were unspoken rules I was meant to follow. Don’t speak too loudly. Don’t cross your legs. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Don’t drink your cocktail too fast.
My parents were so wholly innocent next to this world. Their idea of a wild night out was seeing The Vagina Monologues and dinner at some trendy Asian-fusion restaurant. To this day, my father considered sushi just a little too adventurous for him.
And here I was, walking into a secret sex club, and on my first night there, letting Max go down on me where anyone present could watch.
I had no idea, in the end, if anyone had in fact been watching. We left through the back door to the room, where Max’s friend Johnny met us and let us leave through a service entrance. Max watched me carefully the rest of the night, like he was wondering if I was ready to bolt or break down. But in reality, I was shaking so hard because everything about it had felt right. Max had been on his knees, between my legs, and had refused to let me reciprocate. Instead he kissed me for long minutes, helped me dress, and gave me a look so pregnant with meaning that goose bumps spread across my skin.
It was one thing to play in a library, but compared to the club last night, that felt tame. And on the way home after, with Max’s hand on my knee and his lips on my neck, my ears, my mouth, and—finally—his body over and inside me, completely wild on the backseat, I realized how crazy my life had become.
Crazy good.
Crazy amazing.
It’d been so long since I’d been infatuated like this that . . . I had forgotten how fun it was.
“You’re swooning,” George said Thursday morning as I approached his desk. He stuck the end of his pen back between his teeth, murmuring around it. “You’re thinking about your Max.”
How the hell did he know that? Was I grinning like an idiot? “What?”
“You like him.”
I gave up. “I do,” I admitted.
br /> “I saw how he looked at you when he came in here Monday. He’d let you carry his balls around in your pocket.”
Grimacing, I opened my office door. “I’d rather they stay where they are, but thanks for the idea.”
“He was here this morning,” George offered, casually.
I froze, halfway into my office, waiting.
“Seemed sad to have missed you, but I told him you’re kind of a bear in the morning before you’ve finished your seventeen cups of coffee and rarely get in before eight.”
“Thanks,” I grumbled.
“No problem.” He sat up and pulled an envelope off his desk. “He left this.”
I took the envelope into my office to read. Max’s handwriting was tiny, scribbly.
Sara,
I’m leaving Friday morning for San Francisco for a week for a conference. Might I see you tonight?
Max.
Lifting my phone, I swiped my thumb across the screen and pressed his name.
He answered after only half a ring. “Are you still in bear mode?”
I laughed. “No. I’m at cup sixteen.”
“Your assistant is a character. We had quite a lovely chat about you. I’m pleased to know he’s unlikely to be hitting on you while I’m away.”
“I think he’s more of a Max fanboy, if you want the truth. If you had any inclinations to play for the other team you might never be able to get rid of him.”
“I heard that!” George called from his desk.
“Then stop eavesdropping!” I yelled back, and then smiled into the phone. “And yes, I’m free tonight.”
“Where?”
I hesitated only a beat before offering, “My place?”
The line went quiet.
I heard the smile in Max’s voice when he finally growled, “For a bed?”
“Yeah.” My hands were shaking. Hell, everything had changed last night. The idea of being with Max in a bed felt like the wildest adventure yet. I almost wondered if we would survive it.
“Meet you there at eight? I have a late call with the west coast.”
“Perfect.”
I changed my outfit three times before eight—casual? sexy? casual? sexy?—before finally changing back into the outfit I’d worn to work. I straightened my bed, dusted my entire apartment, and brushed my teeth twice. I had no idea what I was doing and was pretty sure I hadn’t been this nervous on the night I’d actually lost my virginity.