Chapter 4
Mia
“I’m in love with this dress, Aria,”
I gush, turning in the mirror so I can see the sequins catch the light. She pulled out a few dresses for me that she thought would look best on me, and I was drawn to this one immediately. It’s a long sleeve dress covered in magenta pink sequins, with a feather trim around my wrists and along the bottom hem that hits me just a few inches below my butt. It reminds me of a Barbie dress and I’m completely obsessed.
“Your legs look fabulous,”
Aria praises, and I have to agree. Especially with the heels I have on that are making my calves look lean and my legs all that much longer.
“And your boobs.”
Gia whistles, making me laugh. “Damn, girl.”
I blow them a kiss. “Thank you. That’s the reaction I was hoping for.”
I grab the little feathered clutch that matches the dress and we head out. Aria and Gia’s regular bodyguards are waiting for us down in the lobby of their building, and they look at each other for a split second before their eyes are back on us. I know exactly what they’re thinking from that look – oh shit, this is going to be a long night.
“Hi, Jonny.”
I smile up at him, admiring his green eyes, the sharp edges of his jawline, and his oddly pouty lips that would look feminine on anyone but him. My smile widens when my eyes meet the pair of chocolate brown ones beside him. “Sammy.”
“Hi, Miss Mia,”
Sammy greets, a shy smile spreading across his handsome face. I always found him adorably good-looking, while Jonny was more of a chiseled handsome.
“Now, boys,”
I start, my eyes darting between them, “tonight is a big night for me. I’m trying to have fun and I don’t want you to inhibit that. Got it? No scaring off guys who approach us, and you won’t be telling my brothers anything you see. Are we clear?”
“Miss Mia, we cannot promise you that. It’s our job to watch out for you. And it’s our job to report what we see if warranted.”
“Exactly. If warranted. And you’re only obligated to do so with Aria and Gia, not me.”
“Not true,”
Jonny says gruffly. “When you’re with them, you’re under our protection, and we watch over you as we do them.”
Sighing, I roll my eyes and look at Aria and Gia. “Should we go?”
“Yes,”
Gia says excitedly, clapping her hands together, and I don’t miss the tick in Jonny’s jaw or the narrowing of his eyes when she does. “We’re going to Elemental, boys.” Gia winks at Jonny and pats his bicep as she walks past him and out the door.
The warmth of the day is gone and has been replaced by the cool night air that lets me know fall is almost fully here. Despite it being October, the days here in the city are still plagued by the warm sun, but the nights are cool, which gives me a taste of my favorite season to come. Winter.
We bypass the line for the club that’s already extending down the block, and Aria and Gia walk us right up to the bouncers. They give them a smile, and that’s all it takes for them to unhook the velvet rope. “Hello, ladies. Good to have you back. Your usual table is reserved for you.”
“Thanks, Carlos. We missed you, too,”
Gia says flirtatiously, blowing him a kiss as she passes him. Jonny gives Carlos a death glare behind her back and I smile. That man takes his job a little too seriously.
The second I walk through the doors, my smile widens. I’ve been to a few bars and lounges with my cousins, but never a club like this. The bar takes up the entire length of one wall, with the DJ’s booth across the club and the dance floor stretched between it. The other two walls are occupied by U shaped booths and tables with red velvet curtains tied up beside most, with a few of them closed, adding an air of seductive mystery.
On the wood separating each booth are small sconces that have two fake tapered candles with red bulbs that match the dull red bulbs inside the black chandeliers that hang from the ceiling. In between the three massive chandeliers, hangs three large rings over the dance floor that have women spinning and dancing from them like circus performers.
The club is dark and sensual with the black and red color scheme, low lighting, and a dance floor packed with bodies swaying against one another as inhibitions are lowered. It makes me wish I’d taken the opportunity to go out with Gia and Aria more so I could enjoy my freedom while I had the chance.
I feel like I’ve wasted my life away being someone I thought I needed to be so everyone around me didn’t have to worry about me. I sat back and watched my brothers have fun, go out, and do whatever it is they do for the family, all while I was left to take care of our mother who did her best to put on a mask and hide her depression from everyone, except when it was just the two of us.
Shaking away thoughts I don’t want to be thinking when tonight is about me and having fun, I pull my shoulders back and glance around as I follow Aria and Gia over to one of the booths marked reserved. Every man and woman’s heads turn to look at my cousins as we pass, and I almost feel like a third wheel with them. They’re tall, beyond gorgeous, and twins. There’s a reason they’re such highly paid models and flown all over the world for campaigns and runway shows.
“Well, aren’t we special,”
I say, placing my bag down on the table.
Aria winks. “I made a call after you first called me.”
“Do you two get special treatment everywhere you go?”
They look at each other and then both lift their right shoulders in a shrug. “Clubs are always wanting girls from the agency to fill their VIP areas so they look like the hottest club in town.”
“And now I get to reap the benefits, too.”
“Exactly.”
She smiles.
Jonny and Sammy remain outside the booth’s entrance, melting into the wood with their all-black outfits.
It only takes a minute for a gorgeous girl to come to our table. “Hi, I’m Carrie. I’ll be taking care of you tonight. Here’s a list of our bottle services for you to look at.”
She hands Gia the menu, but she doesn’t even look at it before ordering.
“We’ll have a bottle of Grey Goose with seltzer, cranberry juice, and limes. Thank you so much.”
“I’ll be right back with that.”
Carrie flashes us a wide grin and hurries off towards the bar.
“Did you just order us a whole bottle of vodka?” I ask.
“Yeah, that’s what you do in places like this. Don’t worry about it.”
She gets a little glint of mischief in her eyes. “Tonight is about you. Go fucking crazy, Mia. Drink until you can’t remember why we’re here. Drink until you let your guard down and then grab the hottest man in here and dance your ass off. Drink until you black out and need to be carried out of here. For once in your life, you can just let go. Nothing bad will happen. The two oafs will watch over us.”
I pull her towards me for a side hug. “I don’t want to black out, but thank you for the option.”
The waitress comes back with the help of two others. An extra-large bottle of vodka is placed on the table, a bucket of ice, stack of cups, a pitcher of cranberry juice, a few cans of seltzer, and a cup of sliced limes.
“Let me make the first round,”
Gia offers. I’m not technically of legal drinking age yet, but since we bypassed the line out front without having our IDs checked, I don’t think it matters in here. Besides, I’ll be twenty-one in just over a month anyhow.
Oh God, will I even be of legal drinking age at my wedding? Because the only way I think I can get through it is with the help of expensive champagne. That thought alone has me grabbing the drink Gia just slid towards me and gulping down half of it in one go.
“Alright,”
Gia says, laughing, holding her cup in the air. “Cheers to Mia. Her last name may be changing soon, but that doesn’t mean she’ll ever not be one of us.”
“And may she find happiness no matter what,”
Aria adds, and we raise our cups to meet Gia’s. “Even if that means needing an extra-large pack of batteries to keep her vibrator at the ready.”
My smile is instant. “I could just get a rechargeable one.”
“Hear, hear!”
Gia shouts, and I finish my cup in another long gulp. “Okay, then,” she says on a laugh, her eyes dancing with humor. “I see how it is.” She lines up three more cups and pours a shot of vodka in each. She only raises her eyebrows and lifts her cup as a salute before the three of us knock back our shots and then makes me another full mixed drink.
The music is loud and the bass is hitting me deep in my chest. I watch the dance floor while I finish my second drink, seeing everyone swaying and grinding to the beat like the bass is living in their bodies.
I’m not used to drinking. I usually only have a glass of wine with dinner when I feel like it, so the vodka is hitting me pretty quickly and going straight to my head. By the time I finish my third drink and another shot, I’m feeling like my problems aren’t weighing me down so heavily.
“Oh, I love this song!”
I say enthusiastically when a Latin song comes on. “Let’s dance!”
I scoot out of the booth and grab Aria and Gia’s hands to bring them out to dance with me. Laughing, I lift my arms and spin around. My hips twist and roll, and it feels so good to have fun without thinking of anyone or anything.
I’m in my own little world, just dancing in a sea of people, and while Aria and Gia have men come up to them and ask to dance, they always decline. That is, until two guys who are beyond gorgeous ask them, and they grab their hands and wrap them around their waists. Hell, I wouldn’t be able to resist them either.
Smiling, I continue dancing in my own bubble until a hand slides against my hip and I turn to see a really good-looking guy smiling down at me.
“Dance with me, gorgeous.”
I smile and he takes my hand, spinning me around before settling me against him – my back to his front.
I sway to the beat, and his hand settles on my lower stomach with his fingers spread wide. “You’re so fucking hot,”
the stranger says in my ear, loud enough for me to hear over the music.
I smile at the crass compliment and place my hand over his. He takes it and spins me around to face him, but before I can press myself against him again, another guy grabs my other hand and pulls me away so I stumble and crash against his hard torso instead.
My eyes are still looking at who I was dancing with, and I’m about to argue with whoever just pulled me away from my chance to get what I wanted tonight, but then I see the man who quite literally stole me away from that chance, and my words get stuck in my throat.
Holy shit.
This man is absolutely stunning.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more attractive man in my life.
No, I don’t think that. I know that.
He has dark hair with a sexy curl that’s fallen over his forehead, a sharp jawline that’s covered in a day or two worth of stubble that I want to rub my hands and cheek against, and striking eyes that are holding me captive. I can’t tell what their exact color are because of the lighting in here, but I have a feeling they’re something I’ve never seen before and will never forget.
He's older than me, maybe even by more than ten years, but he has an air of authority and experience to him that is undeniably sexy and alluring.
He doesn’t say a single word to me, just keeps his eyes on me as he takes both of my hands and brings them up around his neck. He slides his own back down my arms and sides, and around to my lower back. If I didn’t know with absolute certainty I was wearing a dress, I would think he was touching my bare skin with how much I can feel his touch through the fabric.
His eyes are penetrating, searching, and unrelenting with their intensity.
I have no idea what he’s seeing in mine, but I can’t look away. He’s holding me hostage, making it feel like we’re completely alone to where I can’t hear or see anyone else.
It’s just my pounding heartbeat and him.
I weave my fingers around his neck and see his eyes turn molten when I play with the hair at the nape of his neck.
He presses me flush against him and I can feel every inch of him – solid and secure. A wall of muscle that has my core clenching and my blood buzzing with need.
He guides my hips to start moving to the music again, and I oblige with ease, not even realizing I had been frozen in place, too entranced by him.
When I feel his hard cock against my hip, my eyes widen and my cheeks flame with heat. I don’t think he can see my innocent reaction with the red tinged lighting in here, and when I shift against him so I can feel more, his eyes grow darker and his hands burn me through my dress.
I scratch my nails against the back of his neck, causing his jaw to flex and his pulse to pound even harder against my wrist that’s resting against his neck. It gives me the urge to find out every single thing I can do to drive this intense, too-good-looking-for-this-world man, to the edge before he gives me exactly what I set out in search of tonight. Because if there’s any man in this club that I’d want to give some, if not all, of my firsts to so my future husband doesn’t get them, then it’s this man.
Licking my bottom lip, I rake my nails down the sides of his neck and grab his shoulders. His eyes dart away from mine to follow my tongue’s movements as I wet my bottom lip, and his hands slide a few inches lower so that the tips of his fingers are pressing into the top of my ass cheeks.
My lips part as a small moan escapes, feeling so much of him while not enough at the same time. The sound gets lost in the air between us, but his eyes snap back to mine and hold a newfound gleam like he really did hear me.
Every ounce of him screams ‘experienced’ and that he knows exactly how to touch and please a woman. And so help me God, I want to be at the receiving end of all of that knowledge. So damn badly.
The songs bleed together and I have no idea how long I’ve been dancing with my sexy stranger, but with each song that passes, my legs grower weaker and weaker under his gaze until I’m unsure if I can trust myself to walk away from him on my own. Not that I even want to. I know he knows exactly what he’s doing to me too, because his grip on me tightens as he starts to lead me off the dance floor, and doesn’t stop until my back hits a wall where the lighting doesn’t reach his face anymore. He’s even more of a mystery to me now.
He dips his head, his lips hovering just above mine.
I need him to close the distance.
I need to know how it feels to be kissed so thoroughly, I lose my breath. I just know that’s how he kisses, too. He doesn’t seem like a man who does anything half-way.
Sliding his hands down to cup my ass, he squeezes my sequin covered flesh, and I don’t even try to hold back the moan that escapes me.
His chest rumbles against mine in response, and then his lips are at my ear. “You can feel how much I want you,”
he rasps, the roughness to his voice making my pulse quicken further. “And if I were to slide my hand up under this sexy dress, how wet would I find you?” I suck in a ragged breath and bite my bottom lip, his warm breath and dirty words making me even wetter. “Answer me,” he demands, his impatience making my smile.
My lips brush his ear as I tell him, “Very.”
He groans against my neck, the vibrations traveling through me and settling in my core as he plants a kiss against my heated flesh that sends goosebumps flaring across my skin.
Feeling bold and in a trance of lust, I suggest, “Why don’t you feel for yourself?”
I know we’re hidden in the shadows, but that doesn’t mean no one can see us or isn’t watching us right now. I couldn’t care less at the moment, though. I just need him to touch me. I need him to relieve the ache pulsing deep inside of me that began the moment he put his hands on me.
His hot tongue slides up the column of my neck and I tilt my head to give him more access. He rewards me with another kiss below my ear before saying in a rough voice that’s fraught with strained restraint, “You do realize you can’t offer me what I want the most on a silver platter and not expect me to take it, right?”
“Please,”
I beg shamelessly. “Take it. Take me. I need you to touch me.”
“Fuck,”
he growls, sinking his teeth into the spot he just planted his kiss, making my stomach quiver and my core clench with the desperate need for his touch.
He keeps one hand firmly on my ass while the other slides over my hip and down my thigh, stroking my bare skin before finally sliding it across the front and up my inner thigh. He leaves a trail of fire in his wake, and I’m practically vibrating with anticipation.
He inches higher and higher, until he’s teasing the crease at the apex of my thigh with his fingers, sliding them back and forth along the edge of my lace panties that are hardly a barrier between him and where I want him most. I inhale a sharp breath at how close he is, then choke out a frustrated grunt when he doesn’t go any further.
His dark chuckle in response to my disappointment has me digging my nails into the back of his neck.
“So eager,”
he muses, his lips right at my ear again. “I can feel how hot your pussy is without even touching it. So needy.”
I nod my head, my voice eluding me with his brazen words. He cups my lace-covered center, pressing the heel of his hand against my throbbing clit.
I gasp, then moan.
I don’t know what’s happening to me.
I don’t know how a stranger I know nothing about can evoke such a visceral and potent awakening of my body.
“So fucking hot,”
he growls. “Your panties are fucking soaked. For me,” he emphasizes on a growl.
“Yes,”
I sigh, but I know the word gets lost in the music.
He runs his finger up and down the seam of my pussy through the lace, and my head rolls against the wall as I grow wetter and crazier by the second.
I don’t feel like myself, and I love that. I don’t want to be the good Mia I’ve been my entire life who keeps the peace. I don’t want to keep the peace. Tonight, I want to be a little wild and a lot free.
Once I’m married to that jackass who thinks he can have me simply because he wants me, I won’t have the chance to be free.
With thoughts of my upcoming nuptials on my mind, I stiffen at the thought of him touching me. Or, trying to touch me, since he probably thinks it’s an expectation in the deal. Fat fucking chance. That means this is my one chance to take away something that won’t ever be his.
“What happened?”
my stranger asks, pulling back to look into my eyes again – searching and probing for the truth.
“Nothing,”
I say too quickly.
His finger stroking me pauses. “Something just crossed your beautiful mind that made you tense up. Do you want me to stop?”
“No!”
I say fiercely, and his lips tilt up in a sly grin. “I mean, it’s just…”
“Tell me what’s wrong so I can make you feel good.”
His words are smooth as honey and cover me like a warm blanket, melting me into the wall.
He wants to make me feel good.
Every man in my life right now is doing nothing but bringing me stress and misery, and all this gorgeous stranger wants to do is make me feel good.
“Can you keep a secret?”
I ask him, wanting to lay my burdens on someone else for the moment. I’ll take them back and carry them with me again afterwards, but for a short time, I want someone else to hold them. Maybe if I tell this gorgeous stranger the truth, he’ll think of me from time to time after tonight.
The hand that was gripping my ass loosens and he rubs circles around my bare upper thigh. “I can,”
he assures me.
“I’m being forced to marry someone I’ve never met,”
I begin, and he tilts his head just the slightest, his eyes probing mine even more intensely than before. “But do you want to know an even bigger secret?” I continue, rubbing my own circles on his neck ever so lightly.
My stranger nods once, his eyes gleaming with the collection of secrets he’s coaxing from me.
“I have a very overprotective family. Which means I’m going into a marriage I don’t want, with a man I don’t know, as a 20-year-old who’s never been properly kissed or touched in any way, and I don’t want him to be the first one.”
I don’t want him to touch me at all, but I still want to be able to tell him he’s not getting the perfect, untouched angel he thought he was getting by marrying me.
“He doesn’t get that privilege,”
I continue. “He doesn’t deserve that privilege for demanding me in the first place.”
My stranger’s lips tilt up in a sneaky grin as he presses a finger against the lace separating him from slipping right inside me. I pinch my eyes closed as desire barrels through me with a renewed ferocity and urgency.
His voice comes out low and smooth when he says, “So, you want to use me as revenge against your husband?”
My eyes widen, surprised that he doesn’t sound at all bothered by that. Actually, he sounds intrigued. “He’s not my husband yet,”
I tell him.
“But you want me to touch you,”
he says, the tongue I want to feel licking every inch of my body wets his bottom lip. “You want me, another stranger to you, to kiss you, touch you, make you come, and ruin you for your soon-to-be husband?”
I arch off the wall, smashing my chest to his. “Yes,”
I confess, unabashedly laying all my cards on the table for him.
“And just how much do you want me to ruin you for him? Just how much do you want me to take from you?”
“However much we can get away with right here and now.”
His forehead touches mine. “A better man would walk away and tell you no.”
“But you’re not a better man, are you?”
I challenge, already knowing the answer because his fingers haven’t stopped stroking me. “You want to ruin me, don’t you?”
His jaw ticks and he leans in so close, I can feel the air swirling between our lips when he says, “No, I’m not a better man. And yes, I’m going to ruin you, baby.”
I melt a little more at the way he says baby. “I’m going to make you come so fucking hard, you’ll spend every night in bed with your husband wishing it were my fingers inside you and not your own or the vibrator you’ll use when he leaves for work. I’m going to make you forget your name.”
A strangled moan catches in my throat, and my sexy stranger plasters me against the wall.
“I’ll gladly ruin you, farfalla,”
he growls, crushing his lips to mine in a kiss that touches every square inch of my body and permeates into my soul.
I’m fucked.
I’ve been kissed before, albeit sweetly and hurriedly in a dark corner of my high school during homecoming, and I felt the butterflies of finally feeling wanted. But then he came to school on Monday with a black eye and wouldn’t look at me. I didn’t bother asking him why, and I never brought it up to my brothers. I already knew it was them and I refused to bother starting a fight. It would’ve been a waste of my breath. At that point, I was already so used to them keeping boys away from me.
But this kiss…
This kiss is more than butterflies taking flight in my stomach because I’m being kissed by the boy every girl in school wanted. This kiss is a damn fireworks show, setting every nerve ending and cell in my body on fire as I’m drawn closer and closer to exploding.
His fingers that have been stroking me push my panties to the side, and the second he touches me with nothing between us, I moan shamelessly into his mouth.
“So fucking wet. So fucking hot. I knew it.”
Growling, he kisses me harder and deeper. The fact that I might not know what I’m doing flies out of my head because my sexy stranger is in charge of this kiss. I take his lead and shut my brain off.
I’m lost as his tongue strokes mine at the same time one of his thick fingers slips inside me. My inner muscles squeeze him. My God, it feels good. So good. I’ve never had anything other than my own fingers touch me, and I never imagined it would feel like this.
“Fuck,”
he grunts, tearing his lips from mine to drag his mouth across my jaw to my ear. “You’re fucking perfect. So hot. So wet. So tight. So made for me.”
I don’t have any words in response. My brain is mush and no longer in communication with my mouth or body. I’m at the mercy of his hands. And mouth. And tongue.
His thumb rubs my clit and my knees buckle. Luckily, he’s right there to hold me up with the press of his hips so I don’t collapse to the floor in a puddle. His dick is thick, long, and hard, and feeling it against my stomach, I wish I could fully experience it for myself.
“I’m going to fuck you with my fingers,”
he tells me, his voice calm, yet strained. “If I could get away with fucking you against this wall with my cock buried so deep in your virgin pussy that you’d feel the aftermath of me being in you for days to come, then I would.”
I whimper, and my core floods with a new wave of need as my pussy clenches around his finger.
“More,”
I demand, and he chuckles against my ear.
He adds a second finger and I grip his biceps. The hard muscles beneath his black dress shirt are making me wish even more that I could see him better. I want to see all of him.
“I’m the first one to feel your tight virgin pussy squeeze like this. You’re squeezing me like your goal is to break my fingers, baby. Like you want them buried deep inside you and you want to keep them there.”
He pumps his fingers, working some kind of magic on me that has me trembling and lost in a daze where it feels like the room is spinning as the bass of the music pounds to the rapid heartbeat thumping in my chest.
I squeak out a moan and bite my lip.
“That’s it, baby. You’re stretching to fit my fingers. Imagine how good it would feel to have my cock stretching you.”
He licks my bottom lip and bites down on it. “Imagine how good it would feel to have me moving inside you. With you. Claiming you. Ruining you.” He bites down on my lip again and I moan, his mouth right there to capture it for himself. “And I would, you know.”
“What?”
I ask frantically, feeling completely out of my mind.
“Ruin you.”
He presses down on my clit with his thumb and curls his fingers inside me. Without warning, I explode like a thousand little fireworks are going off all throughout my body.
I don’t know if I’m screaming, choking, drowning, moaning, dying, levitating, or what. All I know is that I’ve never felt anything like what I am right now, and I’m pissed it’s going to be a one-time occurrence.
“Fuck,”
my stranger chokes out, but I barely hear him past the roaring of my blood in my ears.
I blink up at him, and when my vision clears, all I see are his dark eyes already on mine.
“You’re so fucking beautiful when you come.”
He brushes his lips against mine with a gentle kiss that sends a shiver down my spine, and my inner muscles clench around his fingers that are still inside of me. “It was like watching a beautiful little butterfly being set free for the first time.”
He rubs his thumb over my sensitive clit one last time before removing his fingers. I whimper against his lips at the loss and feel his own tilt up in a smirk while I come down from my orgasmic high.
Bringing his fingers up between us, I watch as he licks them clean.
“Mmm,”
he hums. “You’re just as sweet as I knew your virgin pussy would be. If I thought I could get away with it, I’d drop to my knees for a full taste, but then your gorgeous face as you come would be seen by anyone who looks over here, and I can’t have that.” I stare at him, wide-eyed. “Do you think your husband would mind sharing you?” He presses his hips against me in a lazy motion, letting me feel just how much he wants more from me.
“W-what?”
I stutter, not expecting him to ask that.
“I want more of you, even if that means I take what’s meant for another man. In fact,”
he says, licking my bottom lip, “it only makes me want you more.”
I have no words. I have no response. But my body breaks out in flames of desire again, wanting to feel what he just gave me all over again.
“Yes,”
I breathe on a sigh, wanting that too.
“You’re the most exquisite woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of touching.”
He kisses my cheek. “It’s too bad this is all I’m going to take from you tonight.” Disappointment lances through my chest in a burning strike. I want more. I want to keep feeling this good.
“Oh, one more thing,”
he says with a wicked grin. Reaching under my dress, his fingers skim over my throbbing core and I bite my lip to keep from moaning at the brief touch on his way to my hip. “These are my prize.” He snaps the delicate lace at my left hip, and then my right. “I’ll find you again, my little butterfly.”
With his parting promise, he takes a step back from me and brings my ripped panties to his nose before throwing me a wink and a sexy little smirk as he stuffs them into his pocket and walks away.
What just happened?
Did that all just happen?
I didn’t even get his name.
I didn’t ask a single question before handing myself over to him. I honestly think if he didn’t step back just now, I would’ve let him do whatever he wanted with me. Everyone in the club be damned.