Chapter 36
Aida
“The Infernal Serpent”
—Milton, Paradise Lost
As soon as the bulky security guy opens the door for us, it’s like I’m stepping through a portal onto a different planet.
Holy fuck.
I don’t even know how to process what’s in front of me other than sensory overload.
My first impressions? Smoke. Dim lighting overall, flashing lights coming from one side where it looks like someone is performing on stage.
People, or more accurately, bodies, intertwined.
Writhing. Loud music—far louder than in the bar—that’s a well-known aria I can’t currently place overlaid with some hypnotic techno beat.
Chunky white pillars punctuate the room, white drapes flowing between them.
I’m taking everything in while trying not to look at anything too closely, because I still don’t know how I feel about seeing other people having sex.
The idea of it still kinda gives me the ick, so I’m grateful all this smoke and darkness is muddying the picture to the point that I see skin and grinding but not the raw details. Not yet.
‘Cloakroom,’ my very own thug says against my ear, tugging me to one side, and I nearly laugh, because he made a big fucking deal of this feature via text. I have nothing to check, but I follow him over to the kiosk.
He stops and turns to me. ‘Take off my shirt, baby,’ he says, and I widen my eyes in surprise.
Not that him taking off his dress shirt in the middle of a sex party is weird in itself, but because I wasn’t expecting it just yet.
But who am I kidding? I suspect this gorgeous former rugby player is a total exhibitionist. I bet he was one of those guys at college who always took his shirt off on the dance floor after a few beers.
‘Sure,’ I say, and my fingers go to his buttons.
He has most of them undone already, anyway, so it’s not exactly a tough job.
I tug his shirt tails out of his pants and undo the bottom few buttons so it swings open.
Even in the dim light, his stomach is clearly flat and toned with a dark trail of hair leading south that looks so insanely male it has me salivating.
He holds out his wrists and I unbutton one cuff and then the other.
‘Take it off,’ he says above the music. I look up at my masked man and snag my lower lip between my teeth, because I’ve been wanting to get my hands on his skin so badly.
I reach up and glide my palms over his chest, pushing the shirt further open.
Mmm. His skin is warm, and smooth, and gorgeous, the smattering of dark hair soft beneath my fingertips and the curve of his pecs perfectly firm.
I slide his shirt over his shoulders, down his arms, exposing a body so beautiful and male and young it’s frankly ridiculous.
God, he’s in great shape. Like, ridiculous, Magic Mike shape.
He’s fucking huge on the shoulders and arms, like I knew he would be, but seeing the definition of his muscles is a whole different thing from feeling them through his clothes.
The lights dance over his skin, throwing his sculpted, gym-honed physique into sharp relief.
But best of all?
He has a tattoo.
A huge one down one side of his abdomen. A thick, twisting, intricate serpent.
I didn’t expect that at all, but now I’ve seen it I realise I shouldn’t have been surprised. And if I’ve known since I met him that he was a naughty boy, then seeing him like this, shirtless and masked and tattooed, has that understanding ramping up to a whole other level.
I’m out of my depth here, that much is clear. In this place. With him. But as I take in his sheer beauty, he slips his shirt the rest of the way off his wrists and catches it in one hand, holding his arms out in a look your fill kind of way.
‘Touch me, baby,’ he says, and I step forward, because there’s nothing I want more.
I lay my hands on his chest again and let them wander over his soft skin.
I trail them down his arms, skating over the ridges of his triceps.
I bend my head and kiss a line across his pecs.
And when I look back up at him, he’s quiet.
Watchful. The single eyehole is large enough for me to see his eyes clearly.
They’re impossibly dark, his lashes long.
He is the most sinful looking man I’ve ever laid eyes on. He’s a fucking fantasy come to life. He’s ridiculous, frankly. He’s—
Two women interrupt my ogling. They flank Cal, and even though they’re in masks, their lithe figures and long, blonde hair and teeny, flimsy dresses and perfect skin suggest they’re seriously young.
Belle and Maddy’s age, probably. I don’t hear what they say to him, because they’re each whispering in an ear, but they’re handsy as fuck.
I back away, suddenly reminded that we’re standing at the outskirts of an orgy.
This is a free-for-all. Normal nightclub etiquette absolutely does not apply.
Cal gives them a tight smile and takes a step back so he can shrug them off before holding up his hands.
He shakes his head, and it’s pretty clear he’s telling them no.
They turn to go, pouting as they do, and Cal reaches for me and pulls me roughly against his body. As I inhale the gorgeous, masculine scent of his skin, a thought hits me, so horrifying it knocks the breath right out of me.
Because I am so fucking stupid. Stupid and naive and rusty and unable to read the fucking room.
This should be Cal’s big night.
Maddy said so. Cal said so. It’s a major staple in Alchemy’s calendar. An orgy of more dramatic and epic proportions than any other night at the club. So it stands to reason that on occasions like this, he lets loose.
I mean, look at the guy. He could fuck every single woman in here if he wanted to. That night he told me about—the orgy where he put his dick inside something like twenty different women in one night—was probably one exactly like this.
Jesus. I’ve waltzed in and hijacked his big night of fuckery, and now he’s stuck babysitting some middle-aged woman when he should be showing off that gorgeous body and capitalising on all the women he can get.
I lift my head, aligning my mouth with the bump in his mask that denotes his ear. I know what I want to tell him, but I have no idea how to articulate him.
‘I can—’ I begin. ‘Look, I’m sorry. It hadn’t occurred to me that you’d probably want to fuck around tonight. I didn’t—I can go. Or we can, like, do this quickly, and then I’ll leave you to it.’ I stop, embarrassed.
He grabs ahold of my biceps so he can hold me at arm’s length. The look he shoots me is one of total bewilderment before he leans back in toward my ear. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I’m cramping your style,’ I say. ‘I railroaded you into making tonight about us, but this is your party. You should be having fun and fucking whomever you like.’
He releases one arm and hauls me over to a huge pillar which he uses his body to press me up against. Then he bends his face towards mine. I watch his lips move through the hole in his mask.
‘Do you want to fuck me tonight, Aida? Because if you’ve got cold feet, no hard feelings.’
‘I do,’ I protest, squirming at the sensations his proximity is giving me.
‘Good,’ he says. His eyes look so much more intense surrounded by the menace of his mask. ‘Because I want to fuck you, too. Do you know why I didn’t want to do this with you tonight?’
I stay silent.
‘Because I knew that if I got you in here like this, with our masks on and everyone fucking around us, I’d be so fucking wound up that I wouldn’t trust myself to take it easy on you. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ I say meekly.
‘It’s not because you’re cramping my style. Jesus, I haven’t even been in here since before your massage.’
‘What?’ I ask. Surely that can’t be true. I thought he’d be in here every night—I’ve just tried not to think about it.
‘Seriously. The only woman I want to fuck is you.’ He’s speaking through gritted teeth, like I’m really driving him to the brink.
He steps closer, pinning me against the pillar with his hips, and I suddenly understand why he’s on the brink, because his dick is like a damn baton inside those fitted black pants.
His lips go to my ear again. ‘The only thing I can think about is fucking you every which way, and my only concern right now is that I’ll go so hard on you you’ll run for the hills. It is not whether I can have a piece of those vapid blondes or their little friends tonight. Got it?’
‘Got it,’ I say. My breath is coming fast now. This is a lot. The mask. The erection. The soaring opera and its pulsing techno beat. The bodies writhing around us. Cal’s words. His intensity. And, above all, the feeling I can’t shift that he’s a different version of himself tonight.
A hungrier one.
My smiley, jokey, good-time-guy Cal is gone and in his place is this ridiculous, hulking masked man who seems unsure of whether he can control himself around me.
That makes two of us, buddy.
That desire to please him is back, because he’s extraordinary. And if this thing began as a polite, professional agreement for him to fuck me and show me a good time, then it’s quickly spiralling out of control.
I’ve gotten us here. I sensed a better story than the one I was writing in my head, I put my hand up for more, I insinuated my way into tonight’s debauched circus, and I can feel said circus weaving its twisted magic around me.
If our masks are the starting point—the props that allow us to shelve our usual personas and assume darker, more daring, more carnal ones—then the sensory alchemy this place is creating around us will take us the rest of the way.
Cal keeps me pinned to the pillar. His head is still bent.
His lips brush the skin of my neck and I shiver.
The touch is light, but I wouldn’t call it gentle.
I’d call it threatening. He puts his hands on my hips, his fingers digging into the flesh there, and I allow myself to touch him, too.
To trail my fingertips up his impossibly smooth back. To learn the curves of his muscles.
‘I know you’re a woman who needs hard evidence,’ he says, and I’d giggle at his unintentional pun if I wasn’t so fucking turned on. ‘We’ll get our room shortly, but how about you let me show you how much I want you in here?’
His thumbs squeeze between our bodies and press into the skin in front of my hip bones, a possessive gesture that has me grinding against him. This wasn’t the plan, but I blew the plan to smithereens when I moved our little rendezvous to the scene of an orgy.
Besides. The vibe in here is getting to me. Over Cal’s shoulder, a guy wearing just tight boxer briefs and an eye mask is tugging the dress off a woman and bending to take her nipple into his mouth. Cal has me facing away from most of the action, but just seeing that is making me feel wanton.
And don’t get me started on Cal himself. This mask of his is making me feral, as is the fact that we haven’t kissed properly this evening, and I want his tongue in my mouth so badly I can barely think straight.
Strike that. I want all of him. I want us both naked. I want him ranging over me, bearing down on me, thrusting inside me. I want his tongue and his fingers and his dick. And in this brief, heady moment of insanity, I want it so much that I’ll do whatever he wants right here.
Because tonight I’m not a mom or a news anchor or a divorcee. I’m a masked, incognito woman in the arms of a man who looks like the sexiest serial killer I have ever seen, and I am all in.
‘You can show me however you want,’ I tell him.