Chapter 4
Chapter Four
OLIVIA
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
There were people behind the glass wall…naked people.
Very naked people.
A man and a woman, both absolutely gorgeous, sat on a black leather sofa that looked identical to the one in our room. They weren’t screwing—not yet, at any rate—but given the passionate way that they were kissing, it looked like they would get there any second.
Their arms were locked around each other, their bodies pressed together so tightly that it was hard to see where one started and the other stopped. There was no denying the sensuality of seeing two people embracing each other like that.
It was almost as erotic as the feel of Gabriel standing so close behind me. He wasn’t pressed against me quite so close, but staring at the other couple felt like a wicked promise that he might.
Yeah, I definitely didn’t have a scene like this back in my hotel room.
I didn’t know they had this anywhere . Except maybe in the movies.
“Can they see us?” I asked, a wave of self-consciousness washing over me.
Gabriel wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me against him. It should have been illegal the way that his body molded against mine, my ass fitting as perfectly as a puzzle piece against his lower belly.
“Not unless you want them to,” he answered. “Do you want them to watch us?”
I shook my head. I’d never had a reason to question if I was more of an exhibitionist or a voyeur before, but now I had my answer. I would definitely rather watch than be watched.
“No, thank you,” I said.
Behind me, Gabriel laughed, his warm breath washing over the sensitive skin of my earlobe and sending goosebumps cascading over my whole body.
“ No, thank you ? My God, you really are a good girl, aren’t you?”
I shook my head…or at least I tried to. I couldn’t move it much with Gabriel’s fingers tangled in my hair. “Like you said before, if that was true, then I wouldn’t be here with you right now, would I?”
“So you want to be bad?”
“Is that something you can teach me?”
His laugh this time was deeper. Darker. But the shivers the sound sent through me left me anything but cold.
“Liv, that’s like asking the devil if he can teach you how to sin,” he said.
Given everything that I’d heard and seen tonight, I had a feeling that the comparison with the devil wasn’t far off. “I think I’d like that.”
“I know you will.” His voice was as rich and smoky as the finest scotch.
As if to prove his point, he pulled my head back slightly, exposing the column of my neck. At first, his lips barely brushed against the skin there. The kiss might have been light, but the sensation it sparked off in me was anything but. My whole body tingled from head to toe, and I found myself trembling in anticipation.
I wanted more.
I tried turning around, anxious to stop the wordplay and hints of pleasure, ready to dive deeper. But the moment I moved, Gabriel tightened his grip, stilling me completely.
“So impatient,” he chided me.
Impatient ? That was funny enough to make me laugh out loud. Now, there was a word that had never been used to describe me.
“Are you kidding me? I’ve been waiting my whole life,” I told him.
“Then another few minutes should be easy,” he argued, his lips against my ear again. “Besides, this will be so much better if we take our time. Trust me.”
Every rational instinct in my head screamed that trusting him was the worst decision I could possibly make, but my body disagreed. My carnal side heard the wicked promise in his voice and melted even deeper into his touch, surrendering completely.
“That’s right,” he purred into my ear when he sensed my surrender. “Let me show you what’s possible. Let me show you what you really want.”
I bit into my lower lip, anticipating another kiss or caress—but instead, after another half-second of holding me tight, he released his hold on me completely.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how deeply I’d been leaning into him, relying on his strength to hold me steady. The instant his arms fell away, I stumbled forward, my hands flying up to catch myself on the glass wall.
The two-way mirror might have been thick, but not enough to completely stop the sound of me crashing against it.
“Oh shit,” I muttered as the couple on the other side slowly broke from their kiss and looked over. Even though Gabriel had sworn they couldn’t see through the glass, I still froze in place. Feeling my whole face beginning to burn in mortification, I confessed to Gabriel, “I think I screwed up and disrupted the…”
The what ? I wasn’t sure I had the vocabulary to describe people who made out for a living.
“… performers ?” I tried.
But behind me, I heard Gabriel laugh again. I turned around just in time to see him slip off his jacket, carefully fold it in half, and drape it over the back of the couch. Then he started loosening his tie.
Damn. Even though he was still fully dressed, my eyes were glued to his every move as if he were the one on stage. By the time he sat down on the couch and started rolling up his sleeves, I worried I might be drooling a little.
“You didn’t disrupt anyone,” he assured me. “If anything, Marcus and Bethany will be excited to know they have an audience watching. Look.”
He nodded casually toward the glass, and I glanced over my shoulder.
Sure enough, the couple were now fully facing the glass, making sure every move they made was fully visible. There was no denying the boldness of their display made it even more erotic.
This time, when I turned around, my flushed cheeks had little to do with embarrassment.
“Wait. You know their names?” I asked.
“Of course,” Gabriel answered, spreading his arms wide across the back of the sofa. “This is my brother’s club, after all.”
Right. But still…
“But doesn’t it feel weird to watch your friends fu—“ And just like that, I was right back to being embarrassed again. “Doing that,” I amended.
Apparently, it was too much to hope that Gabriel didn’t catch that verbal hiccup. His smile grew, becoming more knowing.
In any other circumstance, I might have been annoyed that someone like him found my tactfulness amusing, but truthfully, I was in no position to judge—not when I was enjoying the novelty of his quirks and mannerisms just as much.
“I don’t think I’d call them my friends exactly,” he said with a shrug. “But no. It doesn’t feel weird to watch them fuck .”
He hit the word hard. Hard enough to make me feel more than a little defensive.
“But they’re not fucking yet,” I pointed out.
Maybe not, but at this point, they were doing just about everything else—kissing and rubbing on each other so intensely that I didn’t know how they could stand holding out any longer.
“Is that a complaint?” Gabriel asked, letting his head lazily fall to one side. “Do you want to tell them to start?”
My eyes went wide. “We can do that?”
“Of course. You see that control there?”
I nodded as he gestured toward a red knob on the side table next to the couch. “Yeah.”
“Turn it to the center, and we’ll be able to hear the audio from their room. Twist it one notch further, and they’ll be able to hear everything we do and say.”
“Yeah… I’m not sure I’m ready for that.” Even though I said the words and meant them, I still couldn’t manage to look away from the temptation of the knob.
“And I’m sure that you are,” Gabriel countered. The absolute certainty in his voice made me doubt myself. “You can start slow. Just turn it halfway for now.”
I checked over my shoulder one more time.
The couple did look like they were enjoying themselves. And since we were already watching, surely there couldn’t be any harm in listening in as well. After all, the switch was right there.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I reached forward and turned the knob one place. Instantly, our room was flooded with the sound of heavy breathing and pleasured sighs.
It shouldn’t have been anything new.
After all, I wasn’t a virgin. And even though I’d always been a more reserved lover, I’d watched porn before. I knew what wild, passionate sex sounded like—at least what the internet wanted me to think it sounded like.
But this was different. These weren’t actors on a screen. They were real people who were only inches away. So close they were practically in the room with us. Hearing them pant and moan took on a whole new erotic quality I’d never experienced before. One that sent goosebumps up and down my entire body.
“Come here.”
I looked up to see Gabriel gesturing for me to move closer. My heart was hammering so hard, I didn’t think twice.
“Sit down,” he said, opening his legs to make room for me to settle on the floor between his thighs. “Watch with me for a while.”
I did what he asked.
Honestly, at that point, I didn’t think I had it in me to say no. I couldn’t remember ever being so wound up before. Nothing I’d experienced had even come close.
A moment after I sat, his hands cupped over my shoulders. Slowly, they began to move. Gently at first, then harder—kneading away all the nervous tension trapped inside. Just like the rest of him, Gabriel’s touch was demanding but not painful. Powerful but not cruel.
“Relax,” he commanded, and I was shocked when my body instantly complied.
He must have felt my moment of surrender because he sounded pleased when he leaned in closer to whisper, “Good girl” in my ear. I didn’t want to admit the electric thrill that zipped through me at the sound.
“Now look at the couple behind the glass.” Again, I did exactly what he asked. “And tell me what you like.”
In the next heartbeat, all the tension he’d drained from me came rushing back.
“I…I…”
“Don’t think, Liv. Just say it.”
Oh God, what was it about this stranger that made it so easy for me to hand over all sense of control to him? It had to be something about the temporary nature of the moment, knowing that it was just for tonight, that once I walked out of this room, I’d never see him again, that took away my fear.
The irony wasn’t lost on me that the only place a good girl like me felt free enough to be my true self was in a sex club with a total stranger.
“I like the way he’s touching her,” I said. “The way that he’s rubbing her breasts.”
“Like this,” Gabriel’s hands slid from my shoulders to my chest.
I hissed in a sharp breath as he began to mirror the movements in front of us. Even though my clothes were still on, the feel of his touch through the fabric of my dress was intense enough to make me close my eyes and let my head fall back.
But Gabriel wasn’t about to let me off that easy. After only a few seconds, he nudged my head back up. “What else?”
Even though I knew what would happen next, I didn’t hesitate.
“The way he’s kissing her neck,” I said.
In an instant, he pulled me up off the floor and nestled me into his lap. In the same breath, his lips were on me. His open mouth pressed hard against the exposed column of my neck as he hungrily began to kiss that vulnerable part of me.
My lips fell open, and a sound I’d never made before came out of me—an echo of the unrestrained, pleasure-filled cries of the woman I was watching. My spine arched, and as my ass slid against the silk of his pants, I felt the hard length of his cock rubbing against me.
“Oh God, yes,” I moaned before trying to twist myself around to face him.
But once more, Gabriel stopped me, one arm clamping tight around my waist as he held me still.
“So greedy,” he scolded me.
For the first time in my life, I was so riled up that I wanted to howl in frustration. “I just want?—“
“Oh, I know what you want,” he growled. “And I’m going to give it to you…but not yet.”
Dear God, if my panties weren’t already soaking, they were now. That had to be the sexiest thing anyone had ever said to me in my whole life.
“Gabriel.” Somehow, I was able to pack an entire lifetime’s worth of pleading into just his name.
“I said, but not yet .” I should have known he wasn’t the type to give in to simple begging. “Keep telling me what you like.”
“I’m not sure.”
It wasn’t a lie. At this point, I was so wound up that the sensual foreplay we were watching was starting to seem tame.
Gabriel must have been getting to that point himself because he said,” Then tell me what you wish you were seeing.”
The thinking part of me knew what he was doing. I understood how perfectly he was manipulating me—knowing I was too timid to ask for the specifics of what I wanted outright and using the couple in front of us as a buffer.
I knew it…but I didn’t care.
If anything, I appreciated the mastery of his seduction.
“I wish…I wish he would go further,” I said, my voice shaky with a combination of nerves and desire. “I want to see him touch between her legs.”
And as if by magic, in the next moment, what I said started to happen.
I watched through lust-glazed eyes as the man nudged the woman’s legs wide and began to stroke between the lips of her pussy. The sound of her moans echoed through our room, heating my blood even further.
And then it started happening to me.
Gabriel’s hands dipped down to my inner thighs, pushing them apart. The hem of my dress stretched as far as it could before rolling up to my hips, giving him access to the most intimate parts of me.
Well…not quite.
His chest began to rumble as his palm over the slick satin of my panties. “I don’t like these,” he said before curling his fingers around the thin strip of material at my waist.
Then he pulled—hard.
I gasped, more at the sound than at the sensation of my underpants shredding. In the next breath, cool air washed against my skin as he pulled the tattered scraps free and tossed them to the side.
“Better,” he said to himself before his hand once again came back to me.
His fingers were ridiculously capable as they pressed against the juncture of my legs. I could have sworn I could feel every rough ridge on his fingers grazing over my clit as he circled it.
My head fell back against his shoulder, and I cried out.
“That’s right.” Gabriel’s gravelly voice raked against my ear. “See what happens when you let yourself want things.”
Oh God, help me, I did.
I’d never felt anything so good in my life. Not even the battery-operated boyfriend I kept in my bedside drawer (the big one, which took D-size batteries) had ever made me feel this way.
“Now tell me what else you want,” he demanded.
Everything . I wanted everything.
But still not enough to ask for it directly.
“I want to watch them have sex,” I said.
Gabriel gave a disappointed tsk. “No, you don’t.”
“I do,” I insisted.
Keeping one hand on my cunt, he lifted the other to encircle my neck. Strangely, there was nothing threatening about the move, nothing violent, and I found myself effortlessly submitting to his commanding touch as he pulled me back until I was flush against his chest.
“No, Liv,” he said, his voice dripping with confidence. “What you want is to watch them fuck while I fuck you.”
“Yes. Oh God, yes.” He was right. That was exactly what I wanted. I don’t think I’d ever wanted anything more.
“So say it,” he demanded.
I bit into my lip, nearly wild with want. “Fuck me, Gabriel.”
He tsked again, his hold on me tightening. “Good girls say please.”
Holy shit. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could stand. Everything inside me felt tight enough to snap.
“Please, fuck me, Gabriel. Please .”
This time, he didn’t answer with words. Instead, his fingers fell away from my clit, and a second later, I felt him unzipping his pants. Releasing his hold on my neck, he pushed me back up to a sitting position.
This time, I wasn’t surprised to see the couple behind the glass in the same position. I was too wrapped up in the moment to care about the whys or hows.
At this point, it was strangely natural to look into the mirror and follow the movements of the couple on the other side. I lifted myself up on my knees as she rose up. And when she slid down, impaling herself on her partner’s hardened cock, I?—
“ Oh my God !”
My cry reverberated through the room.
There had been other men before. Maybe not a ton, but some . But none came close to the feel of Gabriel filling me up and stretching me tight.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t the only one caught up in the moment. Behind me, Gabriel let out a sound that was downright primal.
At first, I tried my best to match the motions of the woman in the mirror, but in the end, I couldn’t keep up. After all, she was a practiced professional, and matching her stroke for stroke wasn’t something I could do.
But Gabriel wasn’t about to let fantasy die.
Grabbing onto my waist, he guided me, helping me keep up with her punishing rhythm. Even when the pleasure became so intense that I didn’t think I could keep myself upright any longer. Then, he simply used his strength to keep me up and going.
I wasn’t sure how much I could take. Desire built up inside me until I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, could barely breathe.
And then, with a snap, everything inside me broke.
My back arched, and my eyes closed as the most piercing pleasure I’d ever known swept through me. My whole body shook as I tightened around Gabriel, gripping his cock. It was almost as if my soul was desperate to keep him at my core. I bucked and trembled as he roared as loud as any animal. It was all so intense that I struggled to breathe as his heat filled me.
I don’t know how long the moment lasted, somewhere between a few seconds and eternity itself. All I knew was that even before the waves of fulfillment had fully subsided, something inside me had changed.
There was no pretending otherwise.
I’d gone into this night as a levelheaded adult. A responsible, professional woman. The only reasonable one in my family.
And now?
Well, now I wasn’t sure any of those descriptors applied. Not after what I’d just done.
Before I opened my eyes to see the couple on the other side of the glass smiling knowingly in my general direction, shame started to creep into my head.
No. I tried to tamp it down. Like I’d said back at the hotel lounge, surely I deserved a little anonymous fun.
But old habits died hard, and the constant critic who lived inside my head couldn’t be kept down for long.
How are you going to explain yourself if Theo goes to jail?
Sorry, Mom and Dad, maybe I could have done more, but instead of preparing for the meeting with the creditors, I spent the night screwing a stranger in a sex club.
Even the words in my head echoing in my head felt like a punch to the gut.
As soon as I caught my breath, I closed my legs and pushed myself up, rolling my dress back down as I stood.
The one thing I didn’t do was turn around.
Just like before, it was a hell of a lot easier to stare blankly at the performers in front of me than face Gabriel…or myself.
“Liv?” he said with the same sardonic laugh I’d found so attractive just minutes before. “Are you still with me?”
“I…” I replied, feeling more out of my depth than ever before. I didn’t have a clue what to do next. “… I’m just a little shaky.”
“You still haven’t eaten,” he said, providing me with the excuse I was having trouble coming up with myself.
“Yeah, that must be it,” I said, finally turning around.
Instead of looking at Gabriel, though, I let my gaze settle on the side table by the couch. Even though a part of me already knew what I’d see—the audio knob turned to the two-way setting—the sight only deepened the sense of shame that had taken root in my belly.
Wow! When you fuck up, you really go all the way, my inner critic sniped.
I couldn’t look away even when, out of my peripheral vision, I noted Gabriel zipping up his pants.
“I’m sure the carbonara I ordered has arrived by now,” he said before standing. “There’s the bathroom. Why don’t you join me in the shower after you’ve had a few bites?”
This time, I opted for a non-committal hmm instead of a nod. Not that Gabriel seemed to notice the difference. He was already walking past me toward the door he’d gestured to.
The instant it clicked closed behind him, I reached out and quickly turned the audio knob all the way off. Then, suddenly grateful that we’d never gotten around to taking off our clothes, I strode over to the front door. A tray with two plates of absolutely delicious-looking pasta and a bottle of wine greeted me as I threw it open. I ignored all of it as I stepped out into the hall.
Then I started running, my modest heels clicking loud enough to be heard three blocks over as they pounded against the marble tile. And I didn’t stop until I was out of the club, past the bouncers, and frantically flagging down a cab on the sidewalk.
Mercifully, one pulled up right away.
“Where to, miss?” the driver asked once I was safely inside.
Even though I’d never wanted to be back home so badly in all of my life, I somehow doubted a New York cabbie would drive the nearly nine hundred miles to Milwaukee.
“The Central Park Ritz,” I said.
“ Oh …classy,” he said with that trademark NYC accent.
I figured he had to be describing the hotel because, in that moment, I had never felt more trashy in my life.