RAFE
Iwork late and show up to Delirium alone.
I don’t feel excited; that’s not really what’s going on here.
But in my mind, this is an absolutely necessary step in reminding myself that there are options other than my daughter’s best friend, and that I cannot entertain the idea of having any kind of relationship with someone who is fifteen years my junior.
And yet…
I shake my head like I can toss the thought out onto the street where it belongs.
I enter the bar and order myself a scotch, which I down in one, then I proceed to the den. I haven’t made specific arrangements with the beautiful stranger. She didn’t send more details or any other message, so I have no idea where she’ll be or when she’ll turn up.
I can only assume that all she wants is sex, and to be honest, tonight, that’s fine with me.
The lights are dim, the chandelier overhead casting glittering shards of rainbow light like a high-end disco ball.
Dark, wipe-clean banquettes line the walls, and on a raised stage in the centre, which I don’t remember from before, two scantily clad women are performing.
The light hits their slick skin as they dance.
Neither is blonde like Diana, but for some unfathomable reason, I still see them both as her.
This is horrendous. I’m sick. I must be sick.
Fucking hell.
I wrestle my thoughts under control, determined to keep my mind on the search for the woman I met last time I was here.
I glance around the room, trying to find her, but every single woman is a mirage of Diana that fades in seconds as reality takes over. None of them are her, and I wish every one of them were.
I should go home, and then at least I’d be near her.
Get a fucking grip. Focus.
I am here to have sex with a woman who is not Diana Marchetti.
Jesus.
A warning flare rises in my gut, but I push it down before I can wonder what it means.
“Hey, handsome,” a woman says, idling alongside me and tugging on my tie. “You just here as a spectator, or can I convince you to fuck me?”
She’s pretty with long dark hair, red lips, and a little black dress that caresses not insignificant curves. She flutters her eyelashes and pouts her lips, and I desperately try to imagine them wrapped around my dick.
My brain stalls.
I can’t do it, and don’t want it.
I tease my tie from her grip. “Sorry. Not tonight.”
She shrugs as if to say, ‘more’s the pity’, but saunters off looking completely unbothered by the rejection.
A flick of blonde hair in the corner of the room catches my eye.
This time, even after I blink and tell my one-track mind to stop tricking me, the woman is still blonde, the curve of her cheek still the same as Diana’s, but the way she holds herself is subtly different. She’s confident and flirtatious. Bold.
It’s her. The woman from last time. She’s wearing the same dress, the same shoes, the same mask. Her hair has the same large, buoyant curls. She’s standing talking to two men who are seated on a banquette before her, gazing at her like she’s a dream come to life.
Seeing her again is a shock to my system, reminding me how much I wanted her. How I couldn’t stop thinking of her. Sexually, no one has ever made as much of an impact on me as she did.
It’s a relief to feel desire for someone other than Diana.
She tips her head back and laughs; it’s louder, brasher than the way Diana laughs, but there’s an undeniable similarity. The colour of her hair too; her lips; her smile. Part of me resents the similarities; another part relishes them.
The men laugh too. She puts her foot on the low table that separates them, and one of the men touches her ankle, sliding his hand north.
Absolutely fucking not. I did not drag my ass all this way, and put myself through this, to watch her flirt with other men.
I cross the room, dodging through half-naked men and women, ignoring the sounds of rutting and moans of pleasure that surround me. I can see one woman only, and it’s my beautiful stranger with another man’s hand on her leg.
The men notice my approach first, both turning my direction. The man’s hand falls from her leg, like he reads the fury in my eyes and thinks she’s not worth fighting for.
She fucking is.
The woman is the last to notice, glancing my way with a turn of the head that has all that long blonde hair cascading down the opposite side of her body. I want to wrap it around my fist and punish her for making me feel like this, whatever this is.
She lowers her leg and stands before me, deliberately looking me up and down. “Hello, you,” she purrs in that sugary-sweet southern drawl.
Her voice stirs me up like a tornado, making me feel completely out of control. Before I know it, I’m stepping close to her and growling, “You let another man put his hand on you, and I will punish you for it.”
She cocks her head, fire flashing in her gaze, a sly smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Role play, huh?”
“I’m not here to play.”
Her smile widens, her mouth so like Diana’s that noticing it up close makes my stomach swoop. “You should come here more often,” she says, stroking her finger down my tie. “I like you this way.”
Her compliment doesn’t land; I’m irritated and confused. Does she mean because I wasn’t this territorial last time? Of course I wasn’t. When we first met, she wasn’t mine. Tonight, she is.
She winks at me, then excuses herself to the men and walks away from all of us.
What game is she playing?
I follow her, my blood boiling, heart racing.
She doesn’t stop, doesn’t turn as she heads out of the main room and takes a door that leads down a corridor to the private rooms. I don’t know if she thinks she’s lost me, or that I won’t follow, or if she’s doing a Eurydice and Orpheus, leading me down to the underworld rather than away from it.
“Wait,” I call.
She turns, her chest heaving, and it’s the only sign that she’s moved by this situation. “Are you stalking me?”
I balk at the question. “Fuck, no.”
She reaches out and curls my tie about her hand, tugging on it gently. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She tugs gently on my tie again. “Do you want me?”
“Yes.”
Fire burns through my torso, laying everything to waste, propelling me towards her.
She gasps as I slam one hand against the wall near her head, caging her in.
A mistake, because her scent invades my nostrils, and I’m flooded with an intoxicating mix of Oud and Amber that transports me back to the last time we were here, when my hand glided up her thigh, finding her sweet pussy soaked and ready.
But layered on top of it is the memory of Diana, hesitantly pressing her lips to mine.
I grit my teeth to focus on the now; on the woman gazing up at me. “Don’t walk away from me again.”
She arches off the wall, her breath hot against my lips, her gaze locked on mine. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t fucking want you to,” I growl, feeling more strung out by this encounter than I should. The music is loud, and the corridor is dark, pierced only by a flickering strobe.
Her hand lands on my chest, neither pushing me away nor pulling me in.
“Tell me your name,” she purrs.
For a second, I contemplate not sharing it, and then I say, “Rafe. My name is Rafe.”
She edges up on her tiptoes, whispering her words into my mouth. “Good boy. That’s what I’ll scream when you make me come, Rafe.”
The sound of my name on her tongue sends arousal spiralling through me, and I take a deep inhalation of her scent. Diana’s scent. It messes with my head, but if I can’t have Diana, this is the next best thing. I feel a pull to this woman I can’t explain. “Jesus, fuck,” I curse.
She hums, amused, her beautiful mouth curved into a smirk. Her lips are painted darker than Diana’s ever are. “Tell me you want me.”
“I already told you.”
“Tell me again.”
I groan, and she leans in, swiping her tongue over my bottom lip, and it’s a lightning strike right to my dick.
“Tell me why you followed me out here, when there are plenty of other women next door.”
“Because you’re the only woman I want.” The words come quickly, but my torso burns like something radioactive is harbouring inside my ribcage.
I’m lying, and I don’t want to lie, but when I speak again, I’m no longer talking to this woman.
I’m talking to my daughter’s best friend, and I let the words fall because I can never say them to the person I wish could really hear them.
“Because I’ve wanted you for months. Because you’re all I think about.
Because I’m going fucking crazy not being able to have you. ”
She slides her hand to the back of my neck, urging me closer. “Me too. I touch myself and think of you. I moan your name in the darkness.”
“My name?” I ask. She didn’t know my name before tonight.
Her pause is long enough to have tension wringing my insides. “Stranger,” she whispers.
I relax, hanging my head, touching my forehead to hers.
“Fuck.” My thoughts are tangled, and everything is confused, but I will never be able to forget her confession and the images it conveys: her naked body writhing in pleasure, and her sensual mouth calling out for me.
They will be branded on my memory until the day I die.
Everything around us fades into insignificance.
Nothing is real but her: the strands of blonde hair that fall across her cheek and down her shoulder, the perfect tip of her nose, the rosebud petals of her lips.
All so similar to Diana’s. Exactly the same, a small voice murmurs in the back of my head.
I dismiss it, reassuring myself that maybe it’s not Diana I’ve wanted at all.
Maybe it was always this woman, and Diana’s resemblance to her was a cruel coincidence that twisted my mind.
I want to dive into her mouth and be swallowed whole. I want her to consume me. It’s crazy; I’ve never felt like this. I’m unanchored, untethered. Wild, but restrained.
Our lips almost touch. Her exhalations are my inhalations; I want to breathe her in and keep her locked in my lungs so she can never escape.
I am fucking insane. Delusional. Delirious.
I shouldn’t want any of these things.
I should walk away, because I’m out of my mind, barely keeping a handle on reality. I will destroy this woman.
But I’m not walking away. I can’t. She might not be Diana, but she makes me feel desire so intense I can’t do anything but act on it.
Her lips are still hovering over mine. “Kiss me.” Another breathy gasp. “Please, Rafe. Kiss me again.”
My mouth clashes with hers, a meeting that’s soft yet raw; a sensuality barely concealing the desperation beneath the surface.
Her tongue slips inside my mouth and wrestles with my own, and our kiss turns feverish, months of repressed tension bursting forth.
I haven’t been able to have Diana the way I wanted; I’ve fought it at every step, and now I’m unleashing that desire on this woman. And it feels good; so fucking good.
Her hands are in my hair, tugging on my collar, clawing at my shirt. She’s as desperate as I am.
I grip her hips and tug her towards me so our bodies are flush; my erection pulsing and hard between us. I groan into her mouth, and she pulls away.
“There’s something I should tell you,” she says, each breath a soft pant.
“No,” I say quickly. “If it’s not dirty talk, I don’t want it.
” By repeating her words from last time, I hope to distract her from my obvious resistance to whatever truth she wants to give me, but I might as well be on my knees begging her not to give me anything real.
Let me have this. Let me have this time with you, let my mind play games, let me imagine you’re someone else.
Let me take what I want, even if I’m not supposed to have it.
Her lips skim my cheek as she raises herself to press them to my ear, and my heart jolts that she’s going to do something, confess something, that will ruin everything. But instead, she slides her hand between our bodies and cups my dick, shifting her hand up and down the fabric-covered swell.
A low rumble of a moan escapes me. No words. I can’t think. Her proximity is too much. My skin is burning where it touches hers.
“Do you want to fuck me?” she asks, the question caressing my skin like steam; her seductive tone a balm to the fire raging through me. She squeezes my dick again. “Is that what your hard cock wants?”
“Yes.” My fingers dig harder into the soft flesh at her hips, and another lust-filled groan escapes me. This woman makes me weak. “Fuck, yes.”
“You want me to put you out of your misery?” she whispers.
How she knows I’m in misery, I have no fucking clue, but the pained response slides from my lips like she’s pulled it out on a hook. “Yes. Yes.”
“Yes, what?” she taunts.
“Yes, please.”