S i n c l a i r o far, this evening has been the opposite of our Alchemy “dates” in every way, just as I intended it to be. Otherwise, what was the point of taking the action out of the club? And I can’t know how Elyse expects the rest of the night to go—she knew my initial pitch was “dinner and sex,” after all—but I’m pretty certain she assumes I’ll rip off my she ep’s clothing and her actual clothing and whisk her off to some clichéd, Fifty Shadesstyle playroom. Not a chance. I’m enjoying unleashing my softer side far too much. I’m having a wonderful evening with a beautiful woman. The thrill I get each time she reveals a new nugget of color about herself to me is equal to the thrill I’ve gotten each time she’s revealed her body to me in that private room. And the terrifying thing is that I’m not exaggerating. We’re building something sacred here, and I’m not about to desecrate it. On the contrary, I want to honor it. I want to honor her. It’s possible I want to prove to her that I’m more than the entitled animal she’s encountered on our previous occasions together. Tonight, she’ll give herself to me because she wants to, not because I’m paying her. She’ll let me consume her because she wants to, not because I have her restrained. And it will be hot as hell. Her mouth is so soft under mine as she leans in and acc epts my kiss. Soft—and rapidly eager, her slim fingers sliding through my hair, lips parting, tongue meeting mine. I widen my legs and grip both sides of her stool, dragging her closer with the harsh, grating sound of wood against concrete. Once I have her where I want her, I smooth my hands downward from the crown of her head, over her satin-smooth hair, cupping her jaw as I clamp my knees on either side of hers, locking her in. It feels like a first date, exc ept that the certain knowledge of how we are together ignites my anticipation even further. Under the attentions of my hands and my mouth, she blooms like a Fairwater rose in summer, mouth pliant, skin soft, the little noises she’s making a sure sign that she’s as locked in as I am. Making out is a criminally underrated activity, especially for men of my ilk, who frequent places like Alchemy to get right to the good stuff. But this, right here, is the good stuff, and it reminds me how wise I was to break my no-kissing rule for Elyse that first time. Who’d want to forgo the deliciousness of dragging their lips against a mouth that’s like a dew-soaked flower? After a few intensely pleasant minutes of our going at it like teenagers, the rest of my body grows more impatient, my fingertips toying with the tiny straps on her shoulders. “Bed?” I murmur against her mouth, and she murmurs back her acquiescence. When I take her hand and help her off her stool, she already looks a little dazed, something I suspect will work out pretty great for me. I lead her out of the living area and back through the foyer. My bedroom is at the end of a long corridor from which all the sle eping quarters can be accessed, as well as a home gym, wine cellar, and the study I rarely use. I prefer to work in the kitchen or, weather permitting, the terrace than hole myself up in a small room.
There’s nothing small about my bedroom, though. The double doors are flung wide open (an apt metaphor for my desire to smooth the path to burying myself balls-de ep in Elyse tonight, perhaps?). Inside, the room is what my designer called “austerely palatial,” the lobby’s hardwood floors continuing throughout. I had three priorities in here: the view, the bed, and the art. The view came with the property. Some of my favorite, most serene oils hang in here. And the bed is fucking huge, a marvel of engineering draped with gray linens in the finest cotton. I’m a big fan of maximizing my sle ep quality—insane bed, dark room—even if I don’t go for all the weird bullshit that Kieran tries to foist on us, like nasal strips and mouth taping. I mean, mouth taping? What the actual fuck? Tell me you sle ep alone, bro, without telling me you sle ep alone. “Oh, wow,” Elyse says, looking around with wide eyes. She’s taken off her heels, and I’m reminded once more of how petite she is. “It’s so beautiful. Look at that view!” The drapes are open, giving us an uninterrupted view of the city at night. I love the sense of peace that comes with being so high up, while still feeling a part of something bigger. Fairwater gets de eply, densely dark at night, but this city never sle eps, obviously. I like being aware of the thousands of lives going on all around me while being removed from them, too. It never gets old. Still, I turn to Elyse and tell her the truth. “It has nothing on the view in here.” A little smile. “I’m serious.” “Deluded, more like.” “Don’t think so. Bet it’ll get even better in a moment.” I shoot her a grin. I suspect my face looks ravenous as fuck. “You look really fucking good in my bedroom.” In response, she reaches up and tugs me down by the collar of my shirt, not releasing it until she can access my mouth. Her kiss is hungry, her little hands roaming over my chest and shoulders. “This needs to come off,” she says breathlessly, groping blindly at my buttons. I love her hunger for me. “Hard agree.” But rather than helping her, I find the zipper at the rear of her dress and slide it down, down, until the entire back is open and I can slide my hand inside. I encounter warm skin, the delicate arch of her low back, and then a scrap of lace. Her thong. I’m unsure why everything feels miraculous with Elyse. I’ve put her on a pedestal, for sure. I’m still having issues recalling her face on demand during my waking hours. When I’m asle ep, it’s no problem. I’ve taken to furtively pulling up the PDF of Vanessa’s solène pitch on my phone when the craving gets too bad. My point is that she barely seems real, and the mere idea of her getting dressed at home, selecting a thong she thinks I’d like, and sliding it up those perfect legs... Every perfunctory act of hers has me star-struck. Star-struck and touched, somehow. She makes me ache—and there’s only one way to cure it. I map her skin with my hands before pushing the straps off her shoulders and letting the dress sink to the floor—a fact she allows by pausing her efforts with my dress shirt. She stands before me, breathing hard, a vision in nothing but her thong. Her breasts are small and wonderful, nipples pink and furled tight, and something in me breaks. “Stirrups,” I tell her, “have their place. But you belong on a bed.” With that, I pick her up, clamping a hand under her peachy ass, my arms full of her as she wraps her legs around my waist. At the bed, I lean forward
and lower her down before peeling her thong down her legs. She kicks it off and scoots farther up the bed without being told, bracing herself on her elbows as she slides one foot up over the sheets. I think I might die of happiness. It’s as if seeing her here, naked and laid out on my bed for me, is the most precisely perfect thing my brain could conceive of. I think she should never leave. With her hungry eyes spurring me on, I get my shirt off and make quick work of my belt buckle and pants. Off come my socks. I wrangle my boxer briefs over my erection and lose them, too, then I’m crawling over her on the bed, kneeling between her legs, staring down at her, stroking her hair. What the fuck was I thinking with all those Alchemy gimmicks? Sure, I acted out my de epest fantasies on her over those two sessions. But a woman like Elyse requires no gimmicks, and right now I want the anti-Alchemy experience. I want to fuck her in my bed, de ep and slow, and make her fall apart around me. The way she’s staring up at me is something I have no words for. I’d like to think this moment feels as charged to her as it does to me and, if I’m honest with myself, as monumental. As I lower myself down on top of her —just for a moment, just to revel in the sensation of bearing down—I take in her face. The face that torments me in my dreams and eludes me in my waking hours. The face I crave so much that I’m forced to drink it in from the pages of the very pitch I killed. But now it’s in front of me. She’s in front of me, all lush-mouthed and doe-eyed and luminous, and if I’m back in my dream, I never want to wake up. Fuck that pillory. Being eye-level with her cunt had nothing on this. Although that’s clearly where I should be: down there, making this worth her while. Vindicating the decision I made for her. She’s lying here, guileless and trusting. She thinks she’s here of her own free will. And what terrifies me beyond all compare is this insistent, intrusive thought, tapping at my consciousness like a tattoo: If she knew what I’d done, she wouldn’t be here. But she doesn’t know. She won’t find out. And she’s fucking here. I kiss her one more time. Slowly, memorizing the reality of her with all my senses, the present moment feeling almost bittersweet. Painful, certainly. I’m Bottom—or a more cerebral version, hopefully—kissing Titania, hoping her curse never lifts. Hoping she never finds clarity. Hoping I can make it so good for her that she never even thinks to seek it out. Then I tuck a pillow under her head and slide down her body, mapping it with my mouth as I go. A worshipful suck of her nipples. An awed kiss to her stomach. Eating her in those stirrups was merciless and intense and fucking hot, but this feels sacred. I lie between her legs, and we stare at each other. I don’t break eye contact as I seek out her wetness and use my fingers to stretch it open for me. She beseeches me with her eyes, and I
grant her prayers with my mouth, licking a line upward until my tongue finds her clit, encircling it. Jesus, this is good. The way she tastes is diabolical. If I wasn’t the clear devil in this scenario, I’d think Satan had sent Elyse Ward to ruin me. I push her legs wider and feast on her, sliding my tongue in and out of her before r eplacing it with a couple fingers and sampling her clit again. My mouth is watering, and my heart is hammering, and my dick is jerking against the comforter. I’m losing myself in her when her lovely little moans escalate into words. “Come here.” I look up. Her brown eyes are hooded, her face etched with need. “I’m very busy.” A little laugh. “I’m close. I want to come with you inside me.” “There’s no universe where you have to choose.” I give my fingers a leisurely twist to underscore that truth. “I know, but—I want it.” Well, that settles that. I’ve already conspired, in a dozen dubious ways, to put Elyse in my bed tonight. I’ve pulled every string. Tonight, the lady gets what she wants. I crawl back up the bed and kiss her again, cradling her face, letting her taste herself on me. “Please tell me you have condoms,” she whispers against my mouth, and I hesitate. Of course I have condoms. Legions of them. But I wish for a second I was a different man, a man who could be okay with verbal declarations of birth control and clean bills of health. A man who could take the next st ep without having to suffer the knowledge of what Machiavellian machinations would await any poor woman who got accidentally knocked up by a Voss. But my cousin Charles set the precedent there. I am not afforded that ignorance. I am not a different man. “Of course I do.” I kiss her once more before pushing myself up and reaching over to the nightstand drawer. Condom secured, I kneel up. “I want you to know something,” I say as I rip off the foil and position it at my tip, pinching the end. “Protection is a good idea. Very good. No matter what. But I want you to know that I’m not fucking anyone else right now. I haven’t since our first time together, and I have no plans to. I just wanted to say that,” I conclude lamely. The significance of those red stamps at Alchemy aside, I really need her to be clear on the fact that the condom doesn’t mean I’m fucking around. She stays silent, gaze flickering between my face and my dick. “Neither am I,” she says. “Obviously.” Relief makes me gruff, not to mention the torment of touching my poor dick as I sheath myself. “Why ‘obviously’?” She gives me a you can’t be serious look. “Why would I want to sle ep with someone else when I’m sle eping with you? Come on.” “My thoughts precisely,” I say, lowering myself back down. “About you, I mean,” I add as she laughs at my apparent ego.
I press my forehead to hers as I notch myself against her. Without wanting to go full Madonna, it feels like the first time. I’m as rigid with need and anticipation as if I’d never been inside Elyse before. I thrust forward, and she yields with a gasp, and it’s so fucking snug that I might die. Another press, her body undulating around me, her breasts brushing against my pecs as I sigh every iota of agonizing pleasure into her neck. I reach down and hook behind her knee, pulling her leg up and pushing myself farther in as she shudders. She has one hand in my hair, one tugging at my hip, which is as far down as she can reach. More, her hands urge. More, her gasps whisper. Fuck, missionary gets a bad rap. Having her submit to me like this, splayed out across my bed, is so fucking great. I bottom out, head spinning, and take a moment to savor the infinite perfection of this moment. My hand still under her knee, I hook her leg higher and let that feeling land between us. She groans. “Oh my God, so good. Move, please.” Like I said, what the lady wants... I pull out and shunt forward, blackness already bleeding at the edge of my vision. “You think you can come in this position?” I grit out. A pained laugh. “Believe me, you don’t need to worry about that.” “Still close?” “Yeah.” “Show me.” I release her leg, shove an arm under her back, and flip us with ease. “Fucking ride me. Show me how close you are.” She’s glued to my front, face buried in my neck, hair everywhere. Planting her palms to my chest, she pushes herself upright and, incidentally, further around my dick, which pulses de ep inside her. God. This is even better. Finding her seat, as it were, she flicks her hair back off her face and gazes down at me. Now this is a look I like a lot: a triumphant warrior queen, about to demand her spoils of war and take no prisoners. Her eyes are glazed with desire, her face flushed. “Show me,” I r epeat. “Fine.” She arches backward, clamping one hand to my thigh as the other finds my balls, and begins to move. I watch in awe and delight and amazement because firstly, she even fucks like a ballerina—called it—and secondly, I can tell this isn’t some kind of porno rodeo performance. Elyse isn’t like that. She’s not super experienced, and she’s definitely selfconscious in bed. So I believe what I’m seeing is nothing more than her chasing her own pleasure. While impaled on my dick. Jesus fuck. I will not last long if she ke eps fondling my nuts like that. The sensation is so good that my eyelids want to drift closed, but not a
chance. No way am I missing a second of this. The sight of her, back arched and tits raised and my dick disappearing inside her body, is spellbinding. Just spellbinding. Her cunt is stretched tight around me, that swollen clit of hers just visible. I find it with my fingertip and play with it while gripping her hip with my free hand. I want her to ride me hard. I grit my teeth as she goes for it, fantasies of slow lovemaking abandoned in favor of chasing this wild orgasm. Every time she pushes down on me, I shunt upward with all my might. Our eyes ke ep meeting in a Can you fucking believe this? type way. She grows slick with sweat, as do I, my entire world shrinking to the twin, noble goals of making her go off like a rocket and letting myself go. She fucks me and fucks me, her slim body writhing above me, milking my dick as if it’s her life’s work, while I lie here and try to survive as if I’m the hapless rider and she’s the untamed bronco. And when I think I can take no more, the fluttering of her inner walls around me grows more insistent, her whimpers more anguished, her movements more desperate. She grinds down against me one more time, and I work her soaking clit as much as I can. Then she’s cursing and thrashing about as her climax sucks her in and wrings her out. I dig my fingers even harder into her hip to hold her in place as I let rip, unleashing my own savage orgasm. On and on it goes as I spill myself into the condom, wave after wave of pleasure crashing over me. Even before it’s fully subsided, I’m grabbing her shoulders and tugging her down and holding on to her for dear life, as if she, and only she, can save me from this onslaught. Afterward, when we’ve caught our breath and I’ve tied off the condom and lobbed it somewhere into the distance and we’re a tangle of draped, exhausted limbs and breathlessness and speechlessness in general, I close my eyes against her skin and know that it’s safe to do so. They’re shut, and I can still see her. She’s imprinted onto my mind’s eye, and it seems inconceivable that she’ll ever fail to be. “Stay,” I say. I vaguely recall telling her she wouldn’t be required to sle ep over when I was attempting to negotiate a paid arrangement, but this is now an actual date, and I’d be a madman to forgo the opportunity to ke ep her here as long as possible. To sle ep next to her and wake up to that reality of that face. In the cradle of my arms, she sighs de eply. It’s a sign that communicates a whole world of burdens. “Shit. I can’t. I’d love to so much, but I have family... responsibilities.” “Oh yeah?” I stroke her back. “All okay?” I’m digging—for information, but also for evidence that she’s not blowing me off. That she has real commitments. “I mean, not really, but kind of? It’s fine, but I do need to get back.” I hate that this bubble is about to burst, and I hate even more that I get to stay in my warm bed while she has to go out into the cold night like expended goods. And in this moment I know, no matter how grotesque the burden of debt I owe to her is, that I am relieved beyond all measure that she refused payment for tonight. Letting her slip away as if I’d gotten what I’d paid her for would be insupportable. I’ll get dressed, and I’ll wrap her up warmly, and take her downstairs myself, and I’ll have my driver take her safely to her door once again. That’s a given. But it’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough.