Chapter 25
VI
It’s darker than I remember. Low ceiling, warm air, the bass from somewhere deeper in the venue vibrating through the floor and up into my bones.
The last time I was here, I was still figuring out the rules.
Still being led. Still watching the three of them in their skeleton masks and trying to understand the version of myself that responded so completely to it.
That girl is gone.
The private room is the same, couch along the back wall, low table, armchair in the corner, the door that locks from the inside. The lighting is dull, and the guys’ bone-white masks glow against it, three grinning skulls with dark eyes above them. God, what that does to me.
Armen takes the armchair and settles in. Legs wide, arms on the rests, the posture of a man who’s here to play and has no intention of rushing. Rogue leans against the wall to the left, arms crossed. I can see his eyes above the skull’s teeth, amused and curious, willing to see where this goes.
Sting stands in the center of the room.
Three skeleton faces looking at me. Waiting. Because I walked in first, because I initiated this, because the energy tonight is different and all three of them can feel it.
My move.
I cross the room to Sting. He watches me come, his mask covering everything from the bridge of his nose down—the painted teeth, the hollow cheeks, the skeletal jaw—but his eyes are bare. Exposed and dark, fixed on me with the full, unblinking attention he gives to things he’s interested in.
I stop in front of him.
“Would you please sit down?” I ask.
His eyes narrow fraction. It’s not refusal, just consideration.
He sits on the couch, controlled, even now.
Knees apart, hands on the sofa back, head tilted with curiosity, looking up at me through his dark eyes above the skeleton’s grinning teeth.
The mask hides everything I’d normally read, like the set of his mouth, the tension in it, the way his lips part when he’s frustrated. All I have are his eyes.
But they’re telling me everything I need to know.
I straddle his lap.
His hands come up immediately by instinct, the knowing response of a man who knows what to do with a woman on top of him. His fingers find my hips, get a hold of them, and start to guide.
Not so fast.
“Hey. Like this.” I take his wrists and move his hands off my hips and press them flat against the couch cushion on either side of him.
His eyes change, something flaring in them that I’ve never seen.
It’s surprise. I’ve somehow managed to surprise Sting.
God, that does something to me. Sting, letting me run the show, Sting, with his hands pinned by nothing but my request, every tendon in his forearms standing out with the effort of staying still. The most controlled man I’ve ever met, holding himself in place because I told him to.
In no particular hurry, because I want to make this last, I roll my hips over his lap and trace the exact moment his control, his goddamn control, starts to wither. Behind the mask, his breathing goes ragged and when I glance down, I see his fingers digging into the cushions below us.
I can hear his every exhale, amplified behind the painted skull, the ugly anonymity that weeks ago scared me to death, which now makes me weak.
Without faces, these guys could be anyone. Or… anyone I want them to be. I shouldn’t like these masks, in fact, I should hate them. They’re designed to incite fear, to intimidate, to make the men less human. But when these masks go on, something in me changes.
I don’t need to know who they are.
I just want what they’ll do to me.
I reach for Sting’s mask, running my hands over the cold material of the skull, hooking my fingers under the edge of it, right where the bone-white paint meets his skin, and pull it down. Over his chin, past his lips, until it hangs around his neck.
I kiss him.
Not gently. Not tentatively. I take his mouth the way he’s taken mine, without hesitation, my hands on his face, and his whole body responds underneath me. He groans against my lips, low and involuntary, a sound Sting doesn’t easily make.
He’s losing it now.
His hands leave the cushion and he tears at my shirt, the only nice thing I was able to scrounge from the Rot, but I don’t care. He could take all my clothes and force me to walk around naked, and I’d hold my head high without a care.
Jesus, what’s happening to me?
I tilt my pelvis forward to rub against his now-huge erection and his breath stutters. His hands fly to my tits and he kneads, then begins to pinch and pull at my nipples.
How did he know I’d love that?
He kisses me back with an intensity that’s been building for days thanks to the distance and the damn indestructible tension between us.
Instead of all that, this, what we’re doing right now, is a conversation in a new language.
Do you want me? Yes. Even though you won’t say it?
Yes. Even though you’d rather do a security check?
Yes. Fuck the security check.
I pull his shirt up. He helps, his skin warm and taut under my palms. I press my hands flat against his stomach and feel the muscles contract, then run them over his shoulders and down his arms, where he continues playing with my tits.
For a moment, we’re still. There’s no mask between us now, nothing left to hide behind, just two people and the undeniable fact of what we want. And need.
I lean in and press my mouth to his ear. “Can I take the lead, Sting?”
I glance back over my shoulder.
Armen watches from the armchair. Rogue watches from the wall. They don’t intervene. They don’t join. Not yet. They understand something I didn’t plan, that this moment belongs to me and Sting, and that whatever’s been building between us needs to be detonated before it can include anyone else.
So they watch, and they seem damn happy to, watching a woman taking apart the most controlled man they’ve ever known, piece by piece, with her hands and her mouth and the absolute certainty of what she wants.
Sting follows me. All the way down.