7. Sage
SAGE
I’m still in a daze.
On a post-climactic cloud nine.
I’m not sure I ever want to stop floating.
I want to savor the afterglow even as Eliza and I dart away from the party, head down the hall, swing around the corner to grab our phones, then reach the elevator.
Once we’re inside, I raise a hand and clasp my cheek, feeling the heat there.
I brush that hand over my hair next, the ends mussed up, and I can recall how the Englishman played with my hair, curled it around his fist. I slide my hand down my satin skirt, remembering my American and how his strong hands explored me.
A shudder speeds through my body.
I check my mask, trying to focus on the practical, not on the sense memories that are still turning me on. My mask is the slightest bit askew. Not enough to reveal my face, but enough that I slide it back, adjusting it.
The telltale signs of tonight.
Of that most unexpected tryst in an alcove.
I draw a deep breath.
Was that real?
Did that truly happen?
And am I the worst friend ever?
I blink away the searing memories, shove off the lingering sensations. I focus on Eliza, on the urgency in her voice moments ago when she fetched me. “Is everything okay? You didn’t run into an ex or your father, did you?”
She laughs, shaking her head. “Neither, thankfully.”
My brow knits. “Oh. Did you just need to go because of your early meetings?”
Another shake of her head. “Friend, I would not tug you away from whatever exploit had you tucked out of sight in an alcove because of a meeting. Or because of my beauty sleep. I can get myself home on my own just fine if I need to, thank you very much.” She takes a beat as the elevator whooshes down.
“I went looking for you,” she says, giving me an inquisitive once-over, her tone more serious, “because Beverly showed up at the party.”
I cringe at the mention of my ex’s new woman—the woman I stumbled upon him with at the Wynn Hotel several months ago.
I’d been out of town, visiting one of the Carmichael Hotels properties in Kauai, and my flight had returned early.
I’d planned to surprise my beau, since he’d been so busy handling an auction for Expressionist art held at the Wynn.
I was going to show up, take him out to dinner, and whisk him away to a penthouse suite after the auction.
That had been the plan.
But he surprised me instead when I ran into him and the woman who was keeping him busy at a bar in the Wynn.
Very publicly canoodling.
Very publicly kissing.
And then very publicly denying there was anything more to it.
He’d been spending all his time with his coworker. The fellow art lover, who handled the Expressionist art, had also been handling him.
To make matters worse, I’d helped her land the job with him. She’d been my curator at The Extravagant, working on the collections we showcase in our gallery.
And yet he denied it all, rushing after me and publicly declaring he hadn’t been cheating on me in front of all the patrons at the roulette tables, the dealers, the casino manager.
The liar embarrassed me publicly, with one of my former employees, at a hotel run by one of my colleagues.
Such a cad. And she earned her stripes as a backstabber.
I’m over it. So over it, but even so, I can still recall with crystal clarity how it felt to see him with her, her long red hair spilling down her back, his hands threaded in it.
“I wish Beverly could be banned from any event I attend,” I say with a heavy sigh. “And Derek too.” But he’s one of those men about town. One of those people you run into. “Was she with him?”
Eliza shakes her head. “I only saw her. She had on an itty-bitty mask, barely covering her eyes, so she was easy to recognize with all that hair. She was with a friend, it looked like. So I went looking for you, so you wouldn’t have to run into her inadvertently.”
“You’re an angel,” I say, gratitude in my tone, lucky to have a friend like her having my back.
But another thought flicks into my brain too.
Should I have been more careful? Caution was the furthest thing from my mind when I left the party.
I was intoxicated. High on their voices, their words, the way the men had touched me.
I was lured by the opium fix of pleasure, heeding the siren call of seduction, following the filthy wishes offered from a genie’s lamp.
And I had been, admittedly, a little thrilled by the chance I might be discovered.
What does that say about me?
I don’t even want to excavate the meaning behind what I did tonight.
I groan, frustrated with myself. “What did I do? I was caught up in a tryst in the corner of a party. At the Aria. I know the owners of the Aria.”
“No,” Eliza speaks sharply. “Just no.”
I look up, raising my chin. “No, what?” I ask as we reach the ground floor and I text Carlos that we’re here and ready.
“There will be no ‘What did I do?’ No shame. No guilt.”
“But what if Beverly had seen me?”
“Who cares? She should still be groveling. She should be ashamed for using you to snag a job, then messing around with your boyfriend. Not the other way around,” she says as we weave through the late-night crowds, past the lobby’s library display.
“I only went to find you so you wouldn’t be caught unawares again. I know you hate that.”
“I do,” I say softly as we walk. “I truly do.”
“First, you had a mask on. No one recognized you. Second, you were off in a corner. Third, you’re allowed to feel good.”
I breathe a sigh of relief that seems to last for an eon. She’s right. She’s so right. There was nothing wrong with my choice tonight.
Nothing wrong at all with a private tryst in an alcove with two strangers.
Two delicious strangers who want to see me again.
A pulse beats between my legs, and a rush of tingles shoots down my spine.
Taunting me.
Teasing me.
Reminding me how it felt.
Electric. Ecstatic.
“So . . . how was it? Your tryst?”
“Amazing,” I whisper, uttering the first piece of my confession, one I love admitting.
Eliza grins, an eager one that says I need more, so much more. “Good. I want to know everything. And I had a feeling you were busy. That’s why I called you Cinderella, so you’d know it was just me.”
“You are heaven-sent.” I set a hand on my heart, trying to settle it as we pass a bachelorette party wearing sashes with the saying “I’m with the bride” emblazoned across them. “I’m so glad I didn’t run into anyone, even with the mask on. I wanted to just be in the moment.”
Eliza wiggles her brow. “Was it amazing, the most amazing, or ‘Holy fuck, that was so fucking amazing’?”
Laughing, I glance around the main floor, bustling with activity, then whisper, “Did you see anything?”
She laughs, tossing her head back. “No. Not a thing. But now I’m damn curious.”
I pat the feathers of my mask, needing and wanting to remain unrecognizable. We exit the hotel, heading for my car in the portico as a reel of images flicks before me. The highlights of tonight insist on replaying, and I am bursting to share. Needing to tell her.
Once Carlos opens the back door for us then shuts it, I rip off my mask, and Eliza does the same.
Her grin is wicked, eager. She’s ready for the salacious details, and I’m ready to share them, now that we’re in the car, the partition raised. She wiggles her fingers as Carlos pulls away from the Aria. “Serve it up. I’ve been counting down the days till you had a proper banging.”
Peals of laughter fall from me. I’ve missed this. Missed the chance to dish with my girlfriend. “I’m so glad to know you were rooting for me in the boudoir.”
“Hello? I’m all about positive energy and putting it out into the universe.”
I shoot her a playful look. “So you were offering prayers and well wishes for my sex life?”
She lifts her chin proudly. “I’m thoughtful like that. I asked the goddess of Os to watch over you. Did she listen?”
With a deep, satisfied breath, I flop back against the leather seat, then sigh contentedly. “She listened, and she listened well.”
Eliza grabs my arm, practically squealing. “This is huge for you. You’ve been so nose to the grindstone since the whole incident . Been so buried in work. Tell me everything.”
My lips go all crooked and naughty. “Everything?”
I kind of want to tell all.
I want to give voice to what happened to me. So it feels more real. So it doesn’t seem like smoke, curling away in the night air as we drive away from the scene of the liaison. So it doesn’t feel like merely a naughty memory, fading at the edges already.
I don’t truly know that I’ll see them again.
I have no idea if the promise of the next party is an empty one.
“So it’s obvious there’s an everything to tell?” I say.
Arching a brow, Eliza points at my mouth. “Well, your lipstick is noticeably absent, your hair is a mess, and you have that general JBF look.”
“Just been fucked. Thanks.” But inside, I’m dancing a fox-trot. I like that I look well-pleasured. I am well-pleasured.
“Am I right, or am I right?”
I drop my voice to a whisper. “Not fucked. But . . . you did say earlier some things require two sets of hands.” I wiggle my fingers. “There were two of them.”
Her jaw falls to the floor of the limo. She pretends to pick it up. “Yes. Everything. I require every dirty detail.”
And I’m dying to share every detail, because tonight was all new.
Tonight was a revelation. I discovered things about myself I never expected.
“I never thought I would like that. The things they did to me. Both of them. The way they touched me.” I shake my head, not quite believing it. “I want it again.”
Eliza clears her throat dramatically, then pretends to write in a book. “Dear diary, today my best friend discovered her brand-new kink.”