I donned my cloak and excused myself to the restroom. As I walked, I was conscious of being nude, stretched open, damp between my thighs. In the hallway I passed a couple kissing, gained a brief impression of a woman’s silver hair pulled taut into a high ponytail. Not that they would likely have cared if I had looked more closely. After all, voyeurism seemed to be the fetish most indulged.
But I wasn’t so interested in other people. I was far too caught up in my own turmoil of emotions.
How far I had come in two years, from being shocked at Seb’s suggestion of a threesome to initiating my own. Tonight had been the threesome we’d never had. I wasn’t entirely sure why I had done it. Pushed myself to do it. Maybe subconsciously it was more of closing that thematic circle.
Or maybe I’d just wanted to see that look on Sebastian’s face, the way he’d been slack-jawed at the sight of me with another woman. He’d been turned on watching me with the woman in the black silk mask, but I wasn’t certain how I would have felt if it had been the other way around, if I’d been watching him fucking her. Maybe I wouldn’t care, but somehow the seemingly greater potential for disease was too closely entwined with desire. Or rather a lack of. Maybe this would have been sexier in the seventies, before AIDS was a crisis, before there was antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea. Or maybe it was sexier in the Regency period, when Harridan House first began.
But supposing none of that was a concern (and those monthly tests the club demanded were supposed to help make it less of one). Supposing that we all knew for certain we were disease-free, how would I feel about watching him? Would it be a turn-on? Just how depraved was I? And did I really need to judge my sexual activities? Judge anyone’s?
I found the washroom finally. Similarly to the one next to the spa, it was decorated in gilt and marble. Whoever designed this underground club had spent a fortune on it.
I cleaned up quickly and avoided looking at myself in the mirror on the way out.
I pushed the door open. The distant sounds of sex and laughter made it clear the party still continued. Seb was waiting for me, leaning against the wall in the otherwise empty hallway. A small wave of relief swept over me, as if I had been worried that maybe in these minutes away he’d found more entertainment.
When I reached him, he pulled me into his arms, buried his left hand in my hair, cradling my head. I stumbled against him, our cloaks half-trapped between us, half-parted so that in places we were pressed skin to skin.
“That was, without a doubt,” he said softly against my ear, “one of the most erotic things I’ve ever seen or been a part of.” It was less his words than the feel of him rising, semihard against my thigh, that sent a tendril of that acute, nauseous desire through my stomach. “And I must admit, I was . . . deliciously surprised. But I shouldn’t have been. God, Mina, you’re everything I’ve ever wanted.”
I’d fed directly into some classic male fantasy. I’d done it intentionally. But what happened to sex between two people once the wall of monogamy was broken?
I pushed away from him, the emptiness overshadowing any thread of desire. What would happen when we left this idyll in Harridan House?
Who would I be when I returned home to the States?
Had I crossed a line that changed things, changed me, forever?
Chapter Sixteen
I KNEW SEB was puzzled by my moodiness on the way home. No doubt confused about why the sexually playful companion of earlier had disappeared. But he said nothing as, dressed in our normal clothes, bare-faced to the world, we passed through the streets of London.
I rested my head back against the seat, eyes closed.
It was late, and, in the morning, more research awaited me. For the first time since arriving in England, none of it excited me.
“I didn’t . . . make you do that?” he asked suddenly.
I opened my eyes and looked at him. He glanced over for a moment to meet my gaze before looking back at the road. Ugh! How did he have the ability to just look like this sweet, needy boy sometimes? Someone I wanted to protect. Someone who maybe cared about me the way a boyfriend would.
In some other universe, two years ago he might have been my boyfriend.
“You didn’t make me do anything,” I said tightly. Other than question everything about the way I live my life. Other than puncture my stupid, childish romantic idealism and propel me on a search for meaning in making sex as meaningless as possible. But I could no longer blame my own warped psychology on him.
“Then what’s wrong?” He seemed relieved but still confused. Of course he was confused. I was confused!
“Just because you didn’t make me fuck that woman doesn’t mean I’m okay with what I did.”
He laughed. “You hardly fucked her.”
“I had my fingers up her cunt,” I said crudely, suddenly angry. “I was penetrating her as surely as you penetrated me. That’s how girls fuck.” Then I added in an irate mutter, “Well, one of the ways.”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Mina. It was beautiful. Erotic. You shared pleasure with another human.”
Ashamed. I wasn’t ashamed. Was I?
“The point was to turn you on, and I did,” I said finally, brusquely, wanting the conversation over.
He was thankfully silent, and we didn’t speak for the rest of the drive, not when he pulled into the garage or we rode the elevator to his flat. But when we’d crossed the threshold, when the door was shut behind us, he caught me and pushed me against the wall, gripping my wrists with his hands.
Breathless and surprised, I stared up at him.
His blue eyes were hooded and darkly intense as he pinned me with his gaze as firmly as his hands did.
“Mina, you turned me on, yes, but you turn me on just being you. I don’t need to see you with another woman or take you to Harridan House to want you. That’s just a fun diversion, a window into another life. I’ve wanted you since the first day we met.”
I closed my eyes against the intensity of his expression, against the strangeness of being immobile against the wall. Against the way being trapped by him was making heat gather heavy between my legs.
Seb wasn’t dense. Maybe it took him a while to figure it out, but he’d heard everything I’d said and not said.
“Okay,” I choked out, knowing I needed to say something.
“What’s your fantasy, Mina?” His voice was deep, and his grip loosened, his touch gentling, thumbs caressing the insides of my wrists. “What turns you on?”
I was turning to jelly in his arms, and he was asking me that. I opened my eyes and met his.
He growled deep in his throat. His grip tightened again even as his head swooped down, blocking the light, mouth claiming mine.
He let go of one of my hands and lifted my dress, pulled my thong to the side, and stroked me once, his fingers easily sliding between the folds of my sex, where I was wet and needy. Then my other hand was free, and he was down on his knees between my thighs, roughly pulling my thong down, mouth latching on.
This wasn’t my fantasy, but I wanted everything he was giving me, the rasp of his teeth against my sensitive skin, the swirl of his tongue—oh God—the thrust of his tongue inside me! I sagged against the wall and blindly reached for his head, fingers just grazing his hair. Then his mouth was gone, and he was pulling me down to the floor.
“Over,” he said, and I shifted onto my hands and knees, willing to do anything he wanted for the feel of him inside me. He pressed tight and rubbed himself against me, the fabric of his shirt rubbing against my backside, the length of his cock stroking my sensitive skin. I arched back, wanting more, wanting him in. He leaned over me, his mouth close to my ear. “I’m not going to use a condom. I don’t want anything separating us.”
“Yes.” I nodded, too, my heart pounding in anticipation, until I felt him bare and parting me. I gasped as he slid in, at the electric feel of skin to skin, of the thrust of his body deep within mine, no barriers.
“God, you feel go
od,” he said, his hands grasping my hips, the urgency of his movements making my elbows bend till the parquet floor was cool against my cheek.
The thrusts and retreats found a rhythm, relentless. My skin tingled all over, nipples tender against the fabric of my lace bra, and yet I centered there in the muscles that gripped him, that reacted to every impulse of his body.
“Touch yourself,” he ordered. I reached back to do so, and my clitoris was slick under my fingers, making it hard to find the touch I knew I liked. My fingers distracted me, too, made orgasm the end game. I moved my hand back to the floor, focused on him, on the delicious sensation of him inside me over and over again, on the quickening of his breath, the way his body tightened against mine. Pleasure was sharp within me, and when he came, deep inside, I felt everything his body shared with mine. Then I came, too, surprising me, as if my body and his were having a conversation of which I was merely an observer.
I would have collapsed fully on the floor, but Seb held my hips tight against him, still thrusting gently against me, wringing every last shudder of passion out of us both.
I savored the feel of his semen sticky on my thighs, of the damp between my legs being a mixture of both of us. Risky and stupid, perhaps, but I felt . . . closer to him. More his.
And maybe that was the stupidest thought of all.
A CERTAIN DESPONDENCY claimed me, infected everything I did. In contrast, Sebastian seemed to need to have sex with a new frequency and fervor, which meant that we spent the evenings that week lingering in bed for hours, barely speaking in a language other than sex.
I met with the archivist, and she helped guide me through the Creighton and Wolford collection. I spent days there, poring over documents, few of which had been cataloged. There was a letter from Anne Gracechurch to Wolford, apparently in return to one of his own, in which she declined an offer to publish with him instead of his erstwhile partner.
I wondered about her loyalty to Maddox when it seemed as though Wolford was offering more money than she had previously received for any of her work, especially since she had expressed time and again in letters that if not for the need for income, she would not write another word.
But there was no mention of what works Wolford had asked about. The date was after the last of the three Mead books, and there was no overt mention of James Mead.
When I’d finally exhausted the collection, I hit a wall. I spent the next day on the couch, hair unbrushed, breakfast and lunch forgotten.
I was not going to find the connection. Certainly not before I returned back to the States. I’d been through every known link to Anne Gracechurch and then some.
I would be leaving with that failure.
All too soon, I would be departing the crazy world in which I’d been ensconced here in London. In Sebastian’s apartment
It was August. I stared at the computer screen, at my university’s Web site, rereading all the deadlines and regulations for what should be my last year as a graduate student. I’d been avoiding this, living in the present only, trying to ignore the future and the inevitable parting.
I’d fallen hard for Sebastian.
Which was ridiculous and stupid because all that we had was sex. His casual words two years earlier had turned me into a female version of him, sexually experimental, as I’d proven that last night at Harridan House. These last weeks had been one big grand experiment in depravity.
So maybe I needed some sort of finale. Some other boundary to cross. Then I could go home, go back to my life. No regrets.
I was still in the tank top and shorts I’d been wearing all day when he walked in the door. Six o’clock already?
He looked tired and somewhat rumpled, and something about that made me jump up off the couch and go to him as he dropped his leather bag on the chair of the kitchen table.
“Long day?”
“Nothing unusual,” he brushed off. Which was usual too. Despite his decade of schooling in the States, he had never lost his reticence to share his emotions. He reached for me, his eyes lighting up. I still wasn’t entirely certain how he’d spent the six months before we’d hooked up celibate, as it was clear that he found release from the stress of his job in sex. He worked hard and played hard.
I was just play.
Which I hadn’t minded this summer. After all, he was play for me too.
And more, that tiny voice in my mind reminded me.
“Well, I hope you’re not too tired,” I said suggestively. His thumbs pulled on the waistband of my shorts, stroking the skin underneath.
“I think I can manage.”
“Mmm.” I pulled away. “Not here though. I thought we could go back to Harridan House.”
Like that, the air between us shifted. The mood charged with something other than sexual anticipation. He didn’t seem excited by the idea. In fact, he looked at me warily, as if he suspected there was something more to my suggestion.
“Mina, is that really what you want? After the other night?” When I didn’t answer right away, torn between wanting to admit that it wasn’t and needing to go there, needing to find a way to say good-bye. “Harridan House was an obsession for me, a diversion from work, which, as much as I enjoy it, is stressful. So I wanted to find out what had happened to it. But simply because the club still exists doesn’t mean I need to go there every night. Or ever again.”
I laughed. Seb was saying this. Seb, who had started me on my journey of sexual adventure. Now he was willing to step away from it all? After he’d spent the equivalent of a new car on our membership?
“I enjoyed it,” I said finally. “And you’re right. Shame is stupid.” He smiled, like I was a pupil who had at last learned her lessons. “Even more, I’m going home next week.”
He frowned. “I can’t believe it’s so soon.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Anyway, you asked me what my fantasy is,” I said, as if he hadn’t satisfied it the night he’d thrust inside me bare, flesh to flesh. Had continued to do so every time since.
He relaxed slightly, interest sparking in his eyes. “Whatever it is, I’ll do my best to satisfy it.”
A shiver ran through my body at his expression. I knew he would satisfy me. Amply. He was a wonderful lover and I’d miss his touch. I’d miss his body.
“Okay. Good.”
He stepped closer, took me into his arms, and one hand cupped my cheek. I melted where he touched me, my lips parting. All plans nearly falling away at the desire to have him naked and inside me now, here.
“What’s your fantasy, Mina?”
I blinked.
He ran his thumb over my lips, and I grabbed at it with my teeth. He pushed inside my mouth, and I sucked on his thumb greedily, using my tongue to run up and down his skin.
He made a small sound, half groan, half sigh and then pulled his hand away, threaded it through my hair, and lowered his mouth to mine. He destroyed me with his tongue and his teeth, searching, pulling, until I wasn’t certain where his mouth began and mine ended.
His other hand was grabbing at my butt, fingers sliding between my legs, under the fabric of my shorts, nearly touching my core through my cotton underwear. Each movement pushed me closer against him. I lifted one leg to wrap around him, to feel him hard and hot against me.
Almost three months and I was still insatiable. But there wasn’t anything about him and his body that made me feel uncomfortable with mine. He was so at ease, so natural.
One of his fingers slid under the cloth of my panties, and I moaned into his mouth as he stroked me. I was always so impatient and greedy, wanting to be penetrated, filled, at the first touch.
But this was one of those days when Seb wanted to torture me, to go slow.
Then his hands were on my waist, running up and down from the slight indent to the curve of my hips, finger closing down almost painfully.
He broke the kiss, his breath coming in short gasps.
“It’s not enough,” he said, “It’s never enough.” His mouth c
losed over my neck, and down.
My eyes burned damply, and my chest ached, his stupid, careless, meaningless words making me yearn for something that was impossible and foolish.
“Stop,” I whispered gruffly. “Let’s save this for the club. I want you there.”
He pulled away slowly, taking deep breaths. “Mina, if you’re doing this because you think that’s what I want—”
“What about what I want?” I interrupted him. “I didn’t ask to be a member, but I am, and now I want to go back. I want to make the most of the time I have left.”
He looked confused, or maybe distraught. I didn’t know, and I looked away so I wouldn’t have to analyze how he felt or worry about his emotions. What mattered now was me. Saving myself.
Chapter Seventeen
IT WAS AUGUST but I was shivering as we walked from Sebastian’s car to the storefront that hid one of Harridan House’s entrances. So innocuous to walk through the highly respected wine shop, flash the silver bracelet with its iconic design, and make our way into the storage rooms and down to the concealed door. And through there, down a plush, carpeted hallway to more stairs, which took us down to one of the entry halls.
It was a bit cooler down in the club, but that didn’t account for the tremors that racked my body, the chattering of my teeth that I fought desperately to conceal from Sebastian. But he kept glancing at me as if he thought something was wrong, as if he didn’t want to be here, and each solicitous look made me angrier. Warmed me up until the trembling ceased.
We didn’t touch each other as we changed, stored our clothes in the gilt lockers, padded out in our velvet slippers, cloaks, and masks. Tonight was different, and Sebastian knew it, even if he didn’t know why.
“After you,” he said, gesturing in front of him. He was pensive, even quieter than usual as I led him through the warren, peering briefly in the open rooms, searching, and then finally stepped into the lounge.
“Drinks first,” I explained, but even as he ordered for us, I scanned the room.
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