Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
It’s the night of the initiation into the sex club, and what was excitement in my belly when I said yes has turned to nerves and nausea.
I don’t regret my decision. I just wonder what Kol is going to do in front of everyone, and if I’ll react properly or if I’ll mess up and embarrass him.
I’m wearing the outfit he left for me—a pale purple lingerie set that consists of a lace bra and panties, along with a thin elastic belt that sits at my waist and attaches to garters that rest mid-thigh. Along the top of the bra and the belt are small flowers that match the color of the lace.
When he said he was going to buy me my outfit, I envisioned leather with grommets or bright red lace, but this is pretty, sweet, innocent. Which is likely why he chose it.
I smooth my hair back into a high ponytail and braid it as Kol requested. It’s heavy on my head as it always is, and I stretch my neck side to side to alleviate the discomfort. Lately I’ve thought about cutting my hair. I’ve always worn it to my waist because it’s what my mother likes best, but it requires so much maintenance. I just think that maybe I’d like to try something different.
The thought of my mom threatens to drag my mood down with guilt, since I haven’t reached out to her yet, but I push it aside. I’m not going to think about her tonight.
I’m walking out of the bathroom when a knock lands on my bedroom door. A moment later, Kol strides through. My arms stretch to cover myself, but the look in Kol’s eyes stops me. There’s a hunger alive in them. Hunger for me. So I force myself to not hide from him.
He strides toward me. “You look… phenomenal.” His gaze rakes over my body like a caress.
“Thank you. You look…” I eye his bare chest and white linen pants. “Different.”
He laughs, and I admire the crinkle at the sides of his eyes and the way it changes the angle of his jaw. It’s not something I’ve seen often enough.
Kol looks down at himself. “The theme tonight is summer solstice. This is what I came up with.” He shrugs.
“There’s a theme?”
“There’s always a theme.” He rolls his eyes as though maybe he and his brothers have had fights about having themes, and he lost the argument. “This is for you.”
He hands me a white robe lying over his arm. I slip it on, noticing that his mask was hidden under the robe, hanging from the crook of his arm. My chest tightens when I think about how I’m the only one who will be without a mask tonight.
“May I?” I gesture to his mask.
He slides it off his arm, handing it to me. It’s heavier than I assumed and resembles the lion tattooed on his arm. It must come down over his nose because it even has the top two canine teeth.
I recall the mask Sid wore, a wolf’s mask like his wolf tattoo on his neck. I wonder if Asher’s is a bear like the bear tattoo I’ve spotted on his hand. Which makes me curious about Nero.
My chest squeezes tighter when I realize something I hadn’t before. “Your brothers are going to be there. Anabelle?”
He nods. “Yes.”
Blood drains from my face, and my windpipe squeezes. I struggle to get air as my heart pounds. The first signs that I’m panicking and going to have a panic attack.
Kol pulls me into his chest and rubs my back. “I know it might seem weird to you, but it’s not, I swear. Asher and Anabelle just end up going into their private room now. If I do my job right, you won’t be thinking about anyone but me and the pleasure I’m giving you.”
I nod into his chest, but I’m not sure I can make it not weird.
“You can back out. It’s not something you have to do,” Kol says softly.
My throat opens a bit with my next breath and a little more with my next until eventually I can breathe normally again. I pull away and meet his gaze. “I’m okay. I want to do this. I just hadn’t thought about them being there, that’s all.”
He smiles with that proud look I love to witness and takes my hand. “Let’s go then.”
The sun has long since set as we make our way through the dim manor, sconces flickering against the walls.
Kol leads us to a large wooden door and slips a skeleton key from the pocket of his pants, opening the door. In front of me is a long stairwell that’s dark at the bottom. A few lanterns dot the wall beside the stone stairs, but not enough to see below.
He directs me down the stairs. When we reach the bottom, he hangs my robe on a hook there. Music is playing at the end of a long hallway with an abundance of doors. I guess I’ll find out where they lead.
Before we move again, Kol slides on his mask and faces me. The result is arresting. He’s still Kol, but somehow not. In fact, he reminds me a lot of the man who showed up at the church to steal me away from my wedding. His appearance is different, the way he holds himself. More severe. More serious than he’s been with me the past couple of weeks.
We walk down the hallway and step through an archway into a cavernous room that’s carved from stone. Music pumps throughout the room, and the bass vibrates in my chest.
Everyone in the room turns to face us, as if they somehow knew we were coming. I guess we are the main act tonight. It’s impossible to read their expressions to know what they’re thinking, which brings back my nerves.
Kol gives my hand a reassuring squeeze and leads me to the other side of the room. The crowd parts as though Kol is the king of the jungle, leaving a path straight to a dais. I avert my gaze on the way, not wanting to see the eyes that will be watching us. It’s easier said than done though when I feel all their eyes on me, assessing.
Are there women in the group who have slept with Kol? Who are silently nitpicking me for not being good enough for him? Wondering why I’m so special? I push away all the doubts because he asked me, and that’s why I’m here.
Kol helps me up onto the dais and pulls me into his chest, leaning down and whispering in my ear, “Still time to change your mind.”
When he pulls back, I meet his gaze through his mask. Steeling myself, I nod.
Yes, I’m afraid, but maybe that’s exactly the emotion I should be feeling. And isn’t that what I’ve been yearning for? To feel the array of emotions from living life? Not only the boredom of being stuck in an apartment? Besides, I want to do this with Kol. No one else, just Kol.
He nods, and his jaw sets hard. His eyes go blank, and he says loudly enough to be heard over the music, “Get on your knees.”
I suck in a breath and fall to my knees, staring at him.
We haven’t done this before. Correction—I haven’t. I’ve never given oral sex to someone, and I worry that I’m going to mess something up, accidentally bite him or something. But I look in his eyes, and my worry dissipates. Kol knows that I have no experience with this, and I trust him to guide me through whatever he has planned.
He runs his palm down my face, tilting my head farther back. “Take out my cock, sweetheart.”
My gaze flicks to his waist where the hard length of him presses against the linen pants. Swallowing hard, I undo the button on his pants. My fingers tremble on the zipper, but I slide it down. Sliding my hands around the sides of his hips, I tug the pants down and they crumple to his ankles. I’ve seen Kol’s member before, but the size and width still take me back.
“Let’s give everyone a good show, shall we?” He smirks.
The kind, reassuring man from upstairs is replaced by his usual cocky, stoic demeanor. The man standing in front of me, cock splayed for any to see, is a different man entirely.
“Run your tongue from my base all the way up to the tip, then suck the head into your mouth.”
I’m still nervous, but just listening to his instructions makes me wet between the thighs. I push everyone else out of my mind, let the thrum of the music fill my body, and bring my tongue to the base of his thick cock, running it up his hard, smooth length until I reach the top. I wrap my lips around his tip and suck the head as he instructed.
“Fist the base and jerk me off while you suck on the head.”
I do exactly what he requests, the way I saw him do it before, and his chin tips up toward the ceiling on an exhale. Not sure what to do with my free hand, I splay it on his upper thigh, feeling the hard muscle beneath his heated skin twitch.
I grip him a little harder, testing it out, and he groans, looking at me with wide pupils and amber eyes full of lust. That powerful feeling at being the one to make him make those sounds arises inside me.
Determined to please him, I open my mouth wider and bring him farther down my throat, until he hits the back. I gag and think maybe that’s a bad thing until a pleased look pierces Kol’s face, as though he’s proud of me.
For the next several minutes, I use Kol’s reactions as my guide. When he flexes his hips into my mouth, I almost smile around his cock. He wraps my braid around his hand several times, using it as leverage to keep me from moving, keeping me in place while he pumps his hips. My eyes water, and I gag on the length of him, drool running out of my mouth, but more noises and curses fall from Kol’s lips.
“Men are jerking off to you right now, sweetheart. How does it make you feel to know that you’re turning them on so much they can’t help but fist their cocks?”
My insides flutter at his words, and my nipples draw tight. I’m desperate for some friction on my clit, but rather than use my hand to satisfy myself, I bring my hand to his balls and take the heavy weight of them in my palm. Kol grows harder in my mouth, and he unwinds his hand from my braid in favor of placing his hands on either side of my head.
“Relax your throat for me.”
I force myself to do as he says though it takes me a few tries to be successful. Then he pistons into my mouth, using me for his pleasure. I meet his feral gaze, shocked at how much it turns me on.
“I’m going to paint you with my cum, you want that?” he growls.
I give the smallest nod, and the feline smirk that tilts his lips, along with the satisfied gleam in his eyes, is a vision I commit to memory, it’s so damn hot.
Kol bucks into my mouth a few more times, then he drops his hands from my head, dragging his cock all the way out and leaving a stream of saliva between my lips and the tip. Jerking himself a few times, he cries out as his seed pours onto my collarbone and chest. Then he brings the tip to my lips, and I seal my mouth around it, swirling my tongue and lapping up what’s left while he watches with a satisfied grin.
He holds my gaze for a few beats before he bends at the waist and tugs up his pants, then fastens them. “I think you deserve to be rewarded.”
He holds out a hand to me. I take it, getting up off my knees and standing before him. He whips me around so that I’m facing the audience, his one arm over my collarbone and the other around my waist. My back is pressed to his front, and my chest heaves from my heavy breathing—partly from surprise and partly because I’m so horny over what I just did that I’m desperate for him to make me come. I don’t care if it’s in front of all these people.
Not wasting any time, he brings the hand on my waist down into my panties, finding my swollen clit and spreading my arousal over it with his fingers. I sigh and lean back into him, arching my hips, wanting more. More of whatever he’s willing to give me.
Seeing the audience from this angle gives me a whole new insight. Some of the men are indeed jerking off, watching the show Kol and I are putting on. Some of the women have their hands between their legs too. A surge of shame flares for being turned on, but I push it aside. I can examine my feelings later. Right now, I just want to enjoy this moment.
Kol brings his mouth to my ear and nips at my earlobe while his fingers circle my clit. A moan escapes me, and he must like what he hears because he brings his mouth to the space where my neck meets my shoulder, opens his mouth, and bites down. I cry out as the pleasure below my waist mixes with the pain above it.
I’m so close to coming that my hips move of their own accord.
“All these people are about to watch you fall apart. Watch you come on my fingers. Do you think they’ll be remembering it days from now when they’re at home, rubbing one out?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer, which is fine. My mind is so overloaded with sensations right now, I’m not sure I could form a sentence. “I know they will, because I know what you look like when you come, Rapsody, and it is fucking glorious.”
He doubles down his efforts. Every muscle in my body draws taut right before a swell of sensation fills my veins and shatters my thoughts. I come apart like shattered glass ricocheting through the cavernous room. My body vibrates with bliss, and the air in my lungs seizes until I start slowly knitting myself back together.
I sag against Kol’s chest, unable to stay standing on my own.
He tucks his face into my neck and inhales me. “See? Glorious.”
My eyes close. I don’t have the strength to open them, even when I feel him pick me up and step down off the dais. I don’t know where he’s taking me, but I wrap my arms around his neck and tuck my face into his bare chest.
He smells like he always does—crisp air and pine, a scent that is intrinsically Kol, and it comforts me in ways I’ve never felt before.
I didn’t expect what we did to be so intense and overwhelming. I don’t know if it’s because of the audience and setting, the fact that I gave someone head for the first time, or because what we just did felt more weighted with emotion than just the physical aspect.
Kol places me on a mattress, and I open my eyes to see where we are. We’re in his room, and just the bedside lamp is on, leaving the vast space beyond the bed in shadows. Kol stands over me, looking down with a mixture of ownership and awe. The look makes my chest ache because I realize that’s what I’ve wanted from him all along.
I may have begun staying here because I wanted some breathing room from my mother and my old life, but the truth has always been that I really want him. I want the Kol I had back in Atlanta. But I found something even better because this Kol, the one he’s shown me, is the real Kol. All of him. The broken and shattered pieces, the jagged edges, all of it. It’s all a part of what makes him who he is, and he is so beautiful when he lets me see him.
I’m tired of waiting.
It’s time I take what I want.