Chapter 9 – Sydney
SYDNEY
I’m still thinking about my conversation with Caroline hours later, as I pour myself a glass of wine and crawl into bed, book in hand.
It was almost…cathartic, talking to her.
Hearing her side of everything, learning I’m not the only member of the girls Chase has fucked over club.
I’m not sure I’m ready to completely forgive her, but at least I understand it better now.
Of course he lied to her. That’s what men like him do, isn’t it? They lie. Manipulate.
Pretend they aren’t married…
Stop thinking about them, I scold myself, fluffing my pillow. But the fluffing starts to feel more like punching, as my anger takes over. Alec, Chase, all of them. Stop it.
I prop my very well-fluffed pillow against the headboard and burrow against it until I’m comfortable, wriggling as I grab my book.
I finally have some time to myself to just lie about and catch up on my reading.
This is me time, no distractions, no thinking about men, nothing but me and my favorite escape mechanism.
I crack open the book and make it exactly two sentences before my mind drifts.
Does Annika know?
Nope, stop that. Gnashing my teeth together, I rearrange myself on the bed and open my book again. I am reading. That’s what I’m doing. I am reading.
Filled with a violent determination, I start back at the top of the page. But my mind wanders before I even make it past the third word.
Crap.
I can’t stop thinking about it. Them. Alec, with another woman. Alec, married to another woman.
It makes me feel sick, unwell. I can’t stop picturing her perfectly manicured nails scratching down the dark skin of his back. I can’t stop imagining Ash pressing into her from behind while Alec kisses her, touches her, holds her the way he held me.
It’s not fair. He’s not mine, never was. But the idea of him with someone else—anyone else—makes me feel sick. It makes me feel violent.
Does she know? Did he go home to her after our dates, get into bed with her, touch her?
I throw my book down, bury my face in my hands, and scream.
She deserves to know, doesn’t she? If the positions were reversed, and I were her, I would want to know, wouldn’t I? I mean, just recently, I was her.
Shit. Shit, fuck, goddamnit, shit.
Before I can pull myself back from the brink, I grab my phone and pull up the search engine.
Annika Basso and Mason Alexander Sterling, I type into the search bar.
Over half a million hits. My heart sinks. But scrolling through them, I realize quickly there’s plenty about Alec—article after article about him, his company, and his plethora of charity organizations—but nothing about Annika.
Annika Basso, I try searching for, instead.
Nothing. Not a single mention of her on any news site. No social media presence. No photos, no email, nothing. No way to contact her, even if I wanted to.
Confused, I try a third time: Mason Alexander Sterling wife.
This search yields more results, but not what I’m looking for. A few articles speculating on who he might be dating. An interview where someone asks if he’s looking for “Mrs. Right or Mrs. Right Now?” A question Alec tactfully avoids answering.
I scroll farther down the page and find myself reading a scathing Op Ed piece in The Fortune City Gazette from a few years ago. A Pastor Daniel Whitmore pontificating about the “moral decay rotting Fortune City from within” and Sterling Enterprises’ role in it.
“How can we trust the soul of this city to a man like that?” the article asks.
“A man with no moral compass? Mason Sterling is no family man, and certainly no man of God. Why would we put so much faith in a man who treats this city like a prom date he’s trying to coax into bed, and not a wife he wants to honor and protect? ”
A few clicks later and I discover that despite his supposedly low opinion of the Sterling name, Pastor Daniel Whitmore was given a position on Sterling Enterprise’s board of directors just a few months later. The Op Eds stop after that.
Frustrated, I set my phone aside. Even if I wanted to reach out and contact his wife, there doesn’t seem to be a way to do it. It’s like she doesn’t exist. But I know she does. I saw her photograph, and I saw the ring. I saw the marriage certificate.
He admitted it. He admitted he was married.
After he fucked you, my mind hisses. After he pushed you into the mattress, put his fingers in your mouth, and made you come so hard that—
Stop.
Stop thinking about that.
But once I start, I can’t stop. It’s all I can think about suddenly. The way Alec touched me that night, the things he said to me. How his fingers felt inside me.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, willing myself to forget about them.
Seeing Ashton the other day reminded me of how much I still want them. Both of them. After he’d left, it had been impossible not to remember what it had felt like to kiss him (heavenly). Or how he’d looked naked (criminally mouthwatering). Or how he’d used those toys on me, and—
Toys.
I drop my hands from my face and creep to the edge of my mattress, poking my head over the side. The box of toys Alec bought for me is shoved underneath, untouched since the night Ashton and I…
My thighs clench involuntarily, remembering it, and before I know it, I’m pulling the box out from under my bed and placing it next to me.
I never really got a chance to look at them all individually. I take my time going through them this time, picking through the ones that look more user-friendly and leaving the rest untouched. But my fingers pause on the vibrator Ashton used on me, the one I thought was too big at first.
I trail my fingers over it, licking my lips. I can feel my pulse throbbing between my legs, remembering how he’d fucked me with it. How he’d slipped the head of his cock between my lips at the same time, teasing me with his tip.
The memory of him praising me while he fucked me with his tongue has me lying back on my bed and spreading my legs. The guttural way he’d sworn—voice raspy and hungry, like I was giving him everything he’d ever needed—has me gripping the toy and switching it on.
There are so many settings. I flip through a few of them, perplexed by some (I’ll call this one slow-motion morse code), horrified by others (this one will forever be known as jackhammer turned up to 11), until I find a soft buzz that feels…right.
Don’t think about them, I tell myself, sliding the toy under the fabric of my underwear, and closing my eyes.
Don’t think about how good it felt to have Ashton’s cock in your mouth. How much you’d liked it when he slipped it deep into your throat. The way he’d looked at you when you swallowed for him. The taste of him on your tongue.
Don’t think about the way Alec’s hand felt around your neck. How far he’d pushed himself inside you when he came, and how you felt every twitch.
Don’t think about Seb on his knees, looking up at you, tongue flat against your clit. Don’t think about—
“Fuck!”
I pull the toy away and fling it away from me, furious and unsatisfied, panting for breath. I can’t do it. I can’t not think about them.
Clenching my teeth together tightly, I shove everything back into the box and slam the lid down. I push it back under my bed with more force than necessary, and pick up my book again, determined to distract myself with a good, smutty story.
But when I finally fall asleep, over an hour later, I’ve barely made it past the first page.
It starts slowly. Someone is touching me. Warm, rough hands moving up my sides and encircling my ribs. A thumb rubs against the base of my breast, almost like he’s asking for permission.
I moan, desperate for more, and arch my back in answer. I’m naked. Uninhibited. And I need those hands to keep touching me more than I’ve needed anything before.
A mouth against my nipple, hot and demanding. A touch of teeth. Then the mouth is moving higher, kissing and biting up my chest and neck. A tongue slides over my jaw.
“Who do you belong to, darling?” Alec’s voice asks, his breath a hiss against the shell of my ear.
“You,” I gasp. His hand envelops my breast, thumb flicking over my hard nipple.
He’s naked, too, I realize, when I feel the head of his cock nudge against my entrance. I spread my legs wider, rolling my hips to help guide him inside me. When he enters me, it’s like the planets have realigned, like the universe has changed course.
We fit together in a way that’s too perfect to be explained.
“Just him?” another voice asks. Familiar.
Ashton’s hands are softer than Alec’s, more gentle. And I can feel him behind me, suddenly, his chest against my back.
Alec’s cock moves slowly inside me with deep, purposeful thrusts. It’s just what I need, just what I’ve been craving, and it only gets better when Ashton tilts my head to the side to kiss me, tongue dancing with mine as his hands roam over my body.
More. I need more.
And just like that, it changes. I’m on my knees suddenly, Alec behind me, his hands on my hips. He’s still inside me, still fucking me, but now Ashton is right there, right where I need him, kneeling in front of me with his cock in hand.
“Look how beautiful you are,” Ashton praises. He rolls the head of his cock over my lips, painting them with his precum. I moan, opening my mouth, begging wordlessly for more.
“Such a good toy.” Alec’s voice is breathy, uneven. His hips move harder, faster, as Ashton eases himself between my lips.
There is nothing else that exists but this.
Nothing but this moment, right here, right where I need to be, between the two of them.
I moan around Ashton’s length, taking him deeper in my throat than seems possible, closing my eyes and focusing on the way it feels to run my tongue along the base of him.
More. I need even more.
Even before I open my eyes, I know what I’ll see. There’s a chair, now, not far from where Alec and Ashton pleasure me. And I know who’s sitting there, watching us, even before my gaze finds his, and I stare into those icy blue eyes.
Sebastian.
He’s relaxed, legs spread. He stares at me like I’m the only thing that matters—the only thing that has ever mattered. I suck harder on Ashton’s cock, pussy clenching around Alec, as Sebastian watches me.
Then he raises two fingers, and gestures me toward him.
“Come,” he says.
And things change again.
They’re gone, Alec and Ash. And it’s just me and Sebastian, his eyes flashing behind his glasses.
I don’t even consider disobeying. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. I was made to please him, made to obey him. I crawl to him on my hands and knees, stopping when I reach him. He pulls me up into his lap effortlessly, spreading me open, his fingers sliding down to fill me.
“You were made for us, weren’t you, Sydney?” he asks.
His fingers feel impossibly good inside of me, stretching me, curving at just the right place. It’s like he knows my body better than I do.
“Our perfect, filthy girl.”
It sounds like praise, the way he says it. Like a compliment. And I love it, I love hearing it, love moaning against the skin of his neck as I ride his fingers.
I’m close. So very close. His hand moves faster, touching me like he can read my mind, driving me closer to the edge.
I’m lost in pleasure, gasping his name, and I don’t notice the dream has changed again until someone grips the hair at the base of my skull and jerks my head back.
Something sharp and dangerous presses against my throat.
“Scream for me,” Viper hisses in my ear, drawing the knife to my pulse.
And I do.
I wake up with a scream, hands fisting my sheets, heart pounding in my chest, thighs wet.
When my fingers slip between my legs, where I’m slick and throbbing, it takes no effort at all to make myself come.