Chapter 2 #3
His voice is rough and I don’t miss how affected he sounds. He lifts his hand to his mouth and slowly sucks my arousal from his fingers, his eyes never leaving mine.
Then he pulls a crisp handkerchief from his breast pocket and passes it slowly through my slick folds, cleaning me with a tenderness that makes my chest ache. When he's done, he tucks the handkerchief back into his pocket.
"Evidence that angels grace mere mortals with their beauty and desire."
Sexiest thing ever.
My heart wants to expand and faint all at once.
I wet my lips with my tongue, and as embarrassing as it is to admit, I lose the nerve to ask what comes next. I'm not ready for this night to end, but how do I put that into words?
He reads me like I'm written in a language he's spoken all his life. His finger hooks beneath my chin, tilting my face up, and he brushes his lips over mine in a kiss so light it barely qualifies. But it leaves me burning all the same.
"Ask me, beautiful. What is on your mind? I’m yours to command."
"Will you show me more?" I can't believe the words are leaving my mouth. I'm asking a complete stranger to take me to bed. But that's what I came here for, and he's everything I didn't know I wanted. "Will you show me more of that kind of pleasure?"
I glance back at the stage, where the three men have moved beyond oral and are filling their lover in every imaginable way. Their shared woman’s face is pure bliss, her body suspended between them like they're the only thing keeping her tethered to this earth.
I want that. I want to feel that. Just once.
His lips curve into a smile that promises sin and salvation in equal measure. He turns me in his arms so we're facing each other, and he cups my jaw in both hands, tilting my face up to meet his.
"I will show you everything, jungle flower." His voice drops to a rough whisper that scrapes over my nerve endings like silk and gravel. "I will take you apart piece by piece and put you back together with my hands and my mouth and my cock. I will ruin you for any other man who dares to try."
My knees threaten to buckle. His arm tightens around my waist, holding me upright, and that dark promise burns in his eyes like banked coals waiting to ignite.
"But first," he murmurs against my lips, "I need your name."
“Tsk, tsk.” I trace a finger along his jaw, feeling the coarse hair of his beard beneath my fingertip. "No names, remember? Isn’t the whole point of a masquerade to remain mysterious?"
His eyes darken with amusement and something hungrier. "I want to know what to call you when I make you scream."
A pulse of raw want shoots straight through my core, but I don't give in. Not yet. "You've been doing just fine with 'jungle flower.'"
A low chuckle rumbles through his chest. "Stubborn little thing, aren't you?"
I lift a leafy shoulder with a playful shrug. "Maybe I just like making you work for it." I rise onto my tiptoes and brush my lips against the corner of his mouth, a tease of a kiss. "If you earn it, I might tell you my name."
The challenge ignites something feral in his gaze. His grip tightens on my waist, possessive and promising.
"Oh, I'll earn it." The words come out low and rough, a promise wrapped in gravel. "I'll have you crying it out for me before the night is through."
I know I have no right to ask, but I’m feeling bold. "And what about you?" I tilt my head, studying what little of his face the mask reveals. "Do I get to know who's about to worship me?"
For just a moment, something flickers behind his eyes. A hesitation so brief I almost miss it. And then that devastating smile returns, easy and charming and just a little bit wicked.
"Dante," he says. "Call me Dante."
I don't know if it's his real name or a mask to match the one on his face. Fair is fair, I suppose. I kept my secret, and he's keeping his. In this place of fantasy and freedom, does it even matter?
Tonight, I don't care who he really is.
Tonight, I only care what he can make me feel.
He takes my hand and presses a kiss to the inside of my wrist, right over my racing pulse. "Come with me, jungle flower. Let me worship you the way you deserve."
I let him lead me toward the private rooms, my painted body humming with anticipation, my heart full of reckless hope.
I've studied the floor plan of this place late into the night in the weeks leading up to this moment.
I like to know everything there is to know about a place before I step foot inside.
The exits, the layout, where I can go and where I can't with my membership level.
Old habits born from a lifetime of looking for escape routes.
But right now, with his warm hand wrapped around mine and his thumb tracing lazy circles against my pulse, I can't remember a single detail.
Only the whisper of warning trying to surface somewhere in the back of my mind. A sense that this is too easy, too perfect, too much like fate.
I silence it.
Tonight, I choose pleasure over fear.
I have no way of knowing that choice will change everything.