A Prologue to Seduction (The Scarlet Diaries #1)

by Rowan Wells

  “Should we?” he pressed.

  “Y-yes.” My voice broke in time with my heartbeat. I jutted my hand beneath the door. “Give me the book.”

  Instead, the stall door rattled. I caught those thick boots as one crossed over the other. He chuckled. “Actually, I had something a little different in mind.”

  FIVE

  August 10, 11:41 am

  “Princess Raina couldn’t believe how wet she was already. She’d only caught a glimpse of the scarred prisoner’s calloused hands tugging away at his cock before the guards whisked her out of the dungeons. It was a scandalous display, and had to be calculated, too. But she’d bet her castle that the prisoner meant to frighten and shame her, not awaken her dormant female senses.”

  I scrambled to my feet, but they were half asleep, and I nearly clobbered face-first into the door in my haste to get to it. My glasses slipped off my nose, taking nearly the same trajectory as my book had. And just like the book, my stranger scooped up the glasses. Instead of handing them back, he kept them.

  Pressing myself against it, letting the metal cool my skin, I hissed, “What the heck are you doing?”

  “You don’t need glasses to—”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you darn well know it! What’s up with the narration?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like,” the man said. “I’m reading the passage to you. This was the one you were wanking to, was it not?”

  “This wasn’t part of the agreement! Besides, I don’t see how reading to me proves your thesis,” I said, “not when you have a voice like pure—”

  I caught myself just in time before I let this stranger in on too many of my thoughts. No way was I going to admit that his voice did to add to my own wetness.

  A contemplative silence settled over us for much longer than needed for him to figure out what I’d been about to say. He was far too smart to be oblivious but it seemed that, for once, I’d said something that’s tossed him off his game. Something that made him draw in a deep, long breath and release it with the force of a nasty right hook.

  Curious.

  “Never mind,” I said.

  “If you’re done interrupting, I’ll go back to what I was doing,” he said gruffly, I felt him settle against the door again. Instead of nesting on the toilet seat as I had been before, I mirrored my stranger and imagined I could feel his heat against the skin on my back.

  When he cleared his throat, I was ready.

  “No matter how brief that glimpse was of his chiseled body strewn against bales of straw, his hands moving in wicked ways she’d never seen from her husband, was enough to light the folds of Anabelle’s flower on fire. She needed to extinguish it now, before it consumed her core and called her to do far more questionable things than stroke her wetness. Hell, am I to believe women actually like this?”

  It was impossible to tell if it was the words or the fact that he read the words that had me tucking the hem of my skirt into its elastic waistband. My fingers itched to move, so I danced them through the sparse hairs and along the skin above the line of my panties. I didn’t want to take the plunge yet. I knew that inexperienced men were rumored to come quick, but had no idea if that was true for women. And I wasn’t eager to find out—on the off chance I’d never be this brave again, I wanted to savor my transgression for as long as possible.

  “Keep. Reading,” I ordered.

  “All right, all right. I hope you’ve at least got your hands in your pants by now.”

  “You know, you’re really demanding for someone who’s a perfect stranger to me.”

  “Your concern is noted.” He cleared his throat again, though I suspected this time, it was for show. “But Anabelle wouldn’t start by taming the liquid heat between her legs. She hadn’t reached anything beyond what her husband could make her feel, and the princess needed her private playtime to last longer than her nights fulfilling her wifely duties. So she started with her breasts first, pulling down the neckline of her chemise until her globes were exposed to the air. Globes? Really? Say, have you got your globes out yet?”

  “What do you think? Maybe you should try using your imagination,” I said coyly.

  I stunned myself even as the words left my mouth. Two could play at this game, and just how easy it was to go all in surprised me.

  But I wasn’t going to tell him that I did in fact have my camisole pulled down to expose one nipple to my probing fingers while the other hand traced the outline of myself through my underwear. Let him wonder as payback for all his teasing this far.

  He made a throaty noise of contemplation. “Touché. Well, the princess definitely had her globes out, and caressed them with her palm, paying special care to nurture the tiny pink buds up from their position of rest. Twisting them between her thumb and finger, Anabelle arched her back. She loved the play of her bedsheets against the growing perspiration that made her back tacky. Her reaction brought back the way the prisoner’s hips worked like a piston as he pleasured himself. Good god, I hope the man had some lube on hand if he just whipped it out and started going to town. If not, I can’t imagine there was much pleasure in that toss off. His poor, poor cock.”

  “Oh, my god.” Until it rolled from his golden tongue, I never thought the word cock as something that actually turned me on, yet him saying it was like a shot to my groin. I abandoned my breast and dug the palm of my hand against my crotch. Relief was fleeting before the friction of my cotton panties against over-sensitive skin made me choke back a gasp. A tight, light ball of pent up something fluttered around in my stomach before sinking, growing, beginning to unravel. “Less commentary from the peanut gallery, please.”

  “What’s wrong, doll? Feeling hot and bothered?”

  “More bothered than hot right now,” I said, lying through my teeth. I was so hot that I dropped my skirt completely, letting it pool on the floor. On the other side of the door, my stranger shifted, and I heard a sharp inhalation. “Cut it out with the critiques and the questions and just read.”

  “I don’t think so. How am I supposed to know whether you’re really getting off, and getting off because of this book, if you don’t tell me what’s going on in there?”

  Well played. Again.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. With a door between us, I could still pretend that somehow, someway I was removed from him and what we were doing. Describing just where my hands were and what they were doing was like handing him a first class invitation into my bubble. Once the thin barrier between us burst, there was no going back, and who knew what else it might lead to. Hesitation crept into my arousal, dampening it.

  “No good? Too shy? I admit I don’t know much about you, but I can’t say that I pegged you as the timid type, doll. I wonder what exactly led me to that opinion.”

  My eyes squeezed shut as I withdrew my hand to safer, more neutral territory. “Please, don’t tease me. Not about this.”

  More pages flipped. The book’s spine cracked. “Is that what you think I’m doing here? Teasing you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re doing here. In fact, I’m pretty sure I have no idea what I’m doing here. Get out of the way. I’m done.”

  “Wait.”

  For some insane, stupid reason, I actually waited.

  “I see your boundaries. I’ll stay on the safe side of them, all right? I just—need to do this.” And then he uttered one final word that was more fatal than any taunt or rejection. “Please.”

  Please. A single syllable, fired rough and hard, delivered to my ears and my ears alone was all it took to unravel my resolve to end this madness. I became heightened to every sound—the drip of water splattering from a leaky faucet, the ragged draw of each of my stranger’s breaths—and then the unyielding truth of what lingered between us hit me raw, swift enough to make my breath hitch.

  He wanted me.

  SIX

  August 10, 12:09 pm

  And he was right about one thing—I had a powerful imagination, one th
at kicked into gear once his desire seeped into me and warmed my core. All this time, the focus had been on what I was doing to myself, how I was feeling. But what about him? His name and his face remained a mystery, yet I grasped an understanding of something far more important. My stranger wasn’t a robot. He probably had his hand down the front of his own pants. Or maybe…maybe he’d pulled back his zipper, and freed his penis. Maybe it was hard now, or starting to get there, and he was coaxing it to life with the rhythmic tug of his hand.

  I whimpered.

  A hiss of breath released from behind his teeth. “Just let me finish.”

  I was vaguely aware that he was reading again, but his words failed to register with me over the drum beat of blood in my ear. Far more important than what he said was the audible tightness in his throat, the swallow before he described the princess toying with her clit or caressing her breasts, the way the door creaked as he shifted his weight again and again. I didn’t need to see him. I was sure that this stranger desired me and while I’d remain a technical virgin after our taboo encounter, someone desiring me was a heady first. The image of him hot and eager, and all because of me, tore down an flood gate. The fabric barrier of my underwear was too much this time. I shoved my hand past the waistband, sighing when the cool skin of my hand struck molten, throbbing flesh beneath my curls. My gasp came raspy, reverberating like a shot off the tile walls.

  This was good. So, so good. The loose fluttering my stomach gathered into a ball of emotion I couldn’t identify, forming a sensation that was both light and that sunk deep into every bone in me. The tipping point neared, and I was ready for it.

  Until he stopped reading. Momentary silence threw a kink in my onward march to a climax, and though I hadn’t been fully paying attention to what he’d said, I readied myself for another snide remark.

  Instead, he murmured, “Are you touching yourself?”

  So much so that I couldn’t muster the breath to answer him. Two fingers slid a steady beat between my folds as I imagined him fisting his penis in time with my own hand. And when I thumbed my clit, my minds eye envisioned him rubbing the head of his cock with his thumb. The scent of my arousal struck me hard as I worked my hand. Could he smell it too?

  “I bet you are,” he said. “I bet you’re rubbing yourself right now. You’re probably nice and wet, too. That’s your body preparing itself to be entered. I’d be willing to bet you have a strong need for something to be inside you right now, don’t you?”

  I licked my lips. The begging between my legs intensified at his attention.

  “The princess had a solution for that. Shall I read it to you?” He didn’t wait for a response. “The outward caresses pleased her but her body cried out for more. She could not invite her husband to bed, for he would become suspicious at her sudden eagerness for bed sport. In the moments she spent wandering the castle and grounds alone, Anabelle had many opportunities to overheard the often lurid conversations of the maids. Sex was a common topic, and because the maids outnumbered male staff, so was the issue of self pleasure. It was said that a woman could fill herself up, too. And so Anabelle took two fingers to her entrance and pressed them inside while she used her other hand to spread herself wide. Can you do that, I wonder?”

  He delivered the challenge with a delicate prod, as if to say he knew he was toeing past the boundary I’d set up. And though I knew that, my walls didn’t snap up. I was too lost in pleasure, too busy chasing completion that, this time, retreat never crossed my mind. With a throaty moan, I pressed two fingers at my entrance. I met resistance, and instead tried again with one. The muscles in my arm burned, and my jaw gritted at the sensation of intrusion. Natural dampness between my legs eased the way. After my finger went in slow and steady, the race was won—my finger was inside, and I pulled it out before plunging the digit back in. The stranger’s bots scuffed against tile when my attempt to stifle a content sigh by bitting my bottom lip.

  “The princess shut her eyes tight. Imagining her fingers were the prisoner’s cock entering her, she caressed the other hot parts of her craving attention, from the dip of her belly to the swell of her breasts. I wonder if you’re imagining that something else is inside you, and if you are, just who or what you’re thinking off.”

  I wanted to say it. You. The well of ecstasy bubbling up in my stomach, threatening to overflow, robbed me of coherent speech. Whatever came out of my mouth was pure babble, eliciting a deep chuckle from him.

  “You won’t say?” he mused. “Or you can’t? I bet you’re too close to coming. Should I help you over the edge?”

  God, yes.

  “Anabelle felt a tightening in her gut and she knew she was close to tipping into nirvana. With her fingers inside her, she pressed her thumb to her clitoris.”

  I stretched my thumb up to my own.

  “She moved the pad of her finger in circles, small and light first until a climax became something to be chased instead of warding off. Her nipples peaked. Goosebumps spread across her belly. If she closed her eyes and opened her mind, Anabelle could picture something she had never experienced before with her husband but just knew the sensual, reckless prisoner would eagerly slither down the bed to do. He would be between her legs. Her imagination replaced her thumb with his tongue, and his fingers with her fingers, and believed the musky scent of her sweat and sex was partly his, too. Long, languid strokes turned fervent as the cascade of pleasure came nearer and nearer until—”

  I never heard what happened next. I don’t know which image or sensation pierced the fluttering, tight fireball igniting my belly—the thought of my stranger’s mouth between my legs, the thought that my fingers could be his tongue, the steadily increasing pants coming from the other side of the door. Whatever it was, my orgasm hit hard. My muscles clenched at the first waves of pleasure, then released with a force so powerful that I couldn’t keep to my feet—or keep my mouth shut any longer. As I slid to the floor, a shout of long-awaited release slid from my mouth.

  Something clattered to the floor. Hurried footsteps followed, until the door creaked open and then shut.

  The only sounds after that was the whirling air conditioner and me, panting.

  “Hello?”

  No answer.

  After swallowing to moisten my parched throat, I cleaned my fingers with a piece of toilet paper, pulled up my skirt and then slowly crept out of the stall. The bathroom was empty. My book sat on the floor, it’s pages crumpled as if my stranger had clenched them in his fists before snapping and fleeing.

  SEVEN

  August 10, 12:49 pm

  “Magdalena, where on earth have you been? And why are you so flushed?”

  I could barely meet Mom’s eyes. Until I returned to the sales floor and saw the dwindled crowds and the vendors packing up, I hadn’t realized just how long I’d been gone. Mom had acquired the help of the convention worker from before and was in the middle of hauling boxes back into our cart. The look she gave me from the corner of her eye said exactly what she thought about me at the moment, and it wasn’t very nice.

  It’s not like I could tell her that I’d been off masturbating in a public restroom to the narration of a stranger, but as I shuffled back to Mom’s table, a frantic part of me suspected that she could tell. I’d rubbed my fingers clean and dry, wiped down my face and even took a damp paper towel between my legs. I’d even harassed someone into spraying me down with the body spray I’d seen sticking out of her purse.

  All the while, I’d been hoping my stranger might come back to the bathroom, or that I’d meet him in the halls, just to prove to myself that I had enough courage to face him and what we’d done together. After all, my transformation from a shrinking wallflower to a confident, full-fledged woman was only partially complete. A confident woman didn’t shy away from facing the guy she’d fooled around with. I needed to prove to myself that I could do it.

  But in the end I hadn’t found him, and now that I stood in the ballroom facing down no one else but
my mother, I had bigger things to worry about.

  There was no objective way that she could tell, just by looking at me, what I’d been up to. Of course, she wouldn’t need to look for clues if I ended up confessing my sins to her in a fit of repentance. I’ve rarely kept a secret from my mother, and it felt weird to start with a secret as wicked as the one I held now. I didn’t know if I could convincingly hide it from her, but I had to try.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I went for a walk and got a little side tracked.”

  “A walk? In the middle of a convention?” Mom put her hands on her hips and eyed me. “Are you hiding something from me?”

  “Uh—”

  “Did you at least meet a nice young man on this walk of yours?”

  A flushed surged up my neck and into my face. Well, there was a young man, but there was no way in hell she’d consider him to be nice. To hide the tell-tale sign from my mother, I lunged for a box of books and hauled it to the cart. That’s when I noticed that she had a lot of unsold books, and found just the thing to switch the topic.

  “I handed out all of the bookmarks,” I said. “How’d you do today?”

  It worked just like magic. Mom cast a glare at Kat Boots, who was shuttering her stand, too, but with far less left overs that Mom. “Terrible. I saw lots of women coming by with the bookmarks, but they pointedly avoided my invitations as they went for that—that filth. I’ll be asking for a refund of my registration fees for sure!”

  And Mom didn’t leave the convention center until she had a check for four-hundred fifty dollars tucked into her purse. Only Mom could talk—or annoy—someone into giving her back a non-refundable fee, and though I wanted to melt into the floor while she complained to the convention organizers, four weeks later I was glad she’d gotten the money back.