Audition

by Skye Warren

  A flick of his fingers. Sharp pain on the back of my hand. “No,” he says. “I want you to wear it. I want you to keep it on so you always remember this. No matter where you go, you’ll always remember how it felt to be full of me, to be on your knees with my cock in your mouth and my fingers in your cunt, and when you’re onstage in front of a thousand people, the memory will make you wet.”

  It’s making me wet right now. I’m slick between my legs. If he felt the strip of fabric, it would already be damp, and I don’t know how I’m going to wear this in front of a thousand people.

  He pinches my other nipple, and I shudder against the pain and pleasure. “Say no, Bethany. That’s what you want to say. ‘Leave me alone. Don’t touch me. Keep your filthy hands off my sweet body.’”

  A hitch in my breath. “What if you say no?”

  Then he does laugh, and the sound has no cynicism. It’s almost boyish with its unguarded joy. “I’m not saying no to you, Bethany. I’ve never said no to you.”

  He sobers. I do, too, because he’s right about that. He never said no to me, even when I asked him to put aside his principles to protect my family. He said yes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper because I’ve never said that to him. Even knowing how this ends, I couldn’t have made another choice. I owed my brother my life, but Josh? He didn’t owe me anything.

  “If you say no, I still get to come. The same way I’ve come every night since I met you, fucking my fist, imagining your legs spread wide for me, your mouth open as I ride you.”

  Josh, present time

  I said too much.

  She doesn’t need to know how much power she has over me. Bad enough that I’ve been panting over a woman who’s been across the globe for most of these years. The idea struck me as fucking funny. That I would say no to her—to her little tits and her long legs? She could flay my skin open with a hot poker, and I’d be here saying, Yes, Bethany. Anything you want. In some ways the hot poker would be easier than this. Her eyes flay me open, liquid brown and full of undeserved trust.

  “On your knees,” I tell her, keeping my voice hard.

  The dilemma’s clear on her pretty face. She wants to tell me to go to hell, but she wants to orgasm on my dick even more. I’m sorry, I want to tell her. I’m sorry your biology makes you want stupid fuckers like me. I’m sorry your little vagina wants to be full of hard cock.

  That’s not what I actually say, though. “Tick tock.”

  A flash of defiance. It’s chased away by glazed desire. She drops to her knees, and the sight of her there is almost enough to make me come. “Now what?” she asks, her hands twisting in her lap. She’s nervous and excited and turned on as fuck, and it’s all I can do not to come in my pants. One pull and I’d be jizzing all over her smooth skin and worn leotard.

  I make myself open my pants in a slow, deliberate way. It’s the anticipation that gets her hot. “If I were a gentleman, I’d put you in a bed and lick your pussy until you creamed on my face. If I were a gentleman, I wouldn’t nut until you’d come once, twice, three times.” The cold air feels like knives on my cock. I’m so fucking swollen I have to pinch the end of my dick to hold it in. “I’m not a gentleman, am I?”

  She doesn’t answer me. Or maybe she does answer me, by leaning forward to lick the tip of my cock. I suck in a breath, and God, God, her little tongue. If she had sucked me, I might have been able to withstand the onslaught, might have lost myself in physical sensation. Instead she licked me right on the tip, and it was so goddamn adorable.

  “Again,” I grunt, pushing my hips toward her.

  She licks me again, and I have to grit my teeth against the surge of climax. I hold it back, barely, but there’s no more time for her to drive me insane. I flip her over, so she’s got no choice but to be on her hands and knees. Beautiful ass up. Cheek pressed to the mat. One upside of fucking a dancer—her body is designed to be moved however I want. She can hold the position for hours. I won’t last nearly that long. With two fingers I pull the placket of her leotard aside. Her pussy’s shaven smooth, and I have to fight against the urge to lick her. Patience, patience.

  Part of me wants to shove my bare dick inside her. I’ve never fucked a girl raw, and the urge has never been this strong. To feel her secret muscles pulse around me. To come inside her and see the seed dripping out. Christ. Some deeply buried shred of decency forces me to dig in my pocket for a condom. I wrap up and press the head of my cock to her folds.

  I brace my hands on her hips, more to steady myself than her. A long, hard thrust finds me inside her body, and I can’t contain the groan of satisfaction. That sound doesn’t hide the whimper she makes. Her whole body’s vibrating like a pulled tendon. Her hands curl into fists against the mats on the floor.

  One. Two. Three. I give her the seconds to adjust, but it only seems to get worse. “Bethany,” I mutter, fighting with myself for control. “How long has it been?”

  Her body is flexible and strong. I never imagined she’d have trouble taking my cock, even if she hadn’t been with a man in a while. Her muscles feel like a vise.

  I slap her hip to force an answer. “How long?”

  A gasp, and for a second I think she might be laughing. Then I realize it’s a quiet sob. “I’ve never—I haven’t—I’m sorry.”

  Oh no. Oh fuck. She’s a virgin?

  This cunt that’s holding me like I’ve finally found home. A virgin. I drop my forehead to her back. “I’m the one who’s sorry, sweet thing. I didn’t know. I didn’t think. And I can’t even pull out and fuck you the right way, because you feel like fucking heaven.”

  “Don’t you dare stop,” she says, her tone so fervent that I let out an unsteady laugh.

  “Adorable. How can you be so sexy and adorable at the same time?”

  In slow degrees I feel her relax her body. It’s not something that happens on its own. It’s a force of will, because she’s an athlete. She can master the pain of an eight-hour workout. She can push through the wall that tells ordinary people to stop. That’s how she takes my cock—as a challenge.

  “Do it,” she says, like a prayer, a chant. “Do it, do it, do it.”

  I’m caught between her body and the moral thing to do. That’s always where I’m caught. It’s the space where I’ve lived my life since I first saw her dance in that shadowed warehouse years ago. I should pull out of her body and walk away. Or at the very least I should come in a degrading spray across her body. Then she’d really learn to hate me. Instead I fuck her in small movements, careful thrusts, forcing myself to be gentle with her—as much as I can with my dick wedged in her clenched channel.

  I press a kiss to the back of her neck, and she shivers. I do it again and again and again until I find a place that makes her pussy clamp hard. The climax starts at the base of my spine. It blinds me, until I’m sucking the back of her shoulder, bucking against her like an animal, being milked by the spasms of her pussy as I make her feel nothing but pain.

  We collapse in a pile of sweaty limbs. A gentleman would never crush a lady, but I land on her with no grace and no concern for her well-being. She’s strong enough to take it. That’s the best thing I can say for me—that I picked a woman strong enough to survive the way I fuck.

  When I finally manage to pull myself up, she’s still sprawled on the mats, her legs bent, chest rising and falling in an endless pant. She looks relieved. She hasn’t come yet, but she still looks relieved, because she survived the ordeal that was Joshua North.

  It’s not over yet. That’s the part she doesn’t know. We’re only getting started. Virgin or no, this was going to be a long night for her. I needed to take the edge off, needed to slake the smallest fraction of lust that I’ve felt for five years so that I could work her over good.

  I leave her in a puddle of unsated lust to take care of the condom in the bathroom. When I come back, she’s actually sitting up, smoothing her hair back from her face.

  As if we’re done.

  A nudge with my foot
to her inner thigh. She looks up, confusion in her brown eyes. If only I could warn her. Find yourself a nice doctor to have missionary sex with the lights off. It’s too late for warnings. I kneel between her feet and make a home for myself. A tug of her ankle, and she topples over on the mat. I press my face between her legs and breathe deep. Salt and sex and woman. I want to drown here. I lick her through the damp fabric of her leotard.

  “I want you wet every time you wear this,” I mutter, biting at the inside of her leg. “It’s going to be so fucking embarrassing, having a wet spot between your legs every time you dance. Doing the splits and knowing everyone can smell how aroused you are.”

  She moans something that sounds like protest but feels like surrender.

  “All the men in their suits. They’ll pull out their dicks right there in the theater, watching you spin for them, watching you dance like it’s your goddamn art, and all they want is a piece of this pussy.”

  Her hips jerk, and I hold her down, licking hard through the fabric, using my tongue and my teeth. It will never be enough friction with the leotard between us, and she keens her dissatisfaction with the barrier.

  “The women would all be jealous of you, of this tight little body, of the way their husbands pretend to be interested in dance so they can imagine fucking you.” Finally, finally I push aside the leotard. She’s burning hot and so wet, the scent of her stronger now. “They want to be the ones onstage, instead of you.”

  Bethany rocks her hips in silent plea. “Josh.”

  “It’s okay,” I reassure her, soothing her clit with an almost-chaste kiss. “You can come.”

  I follow that up with a swipe of my tongue, and she comes with small, hard waves, her whole body clenched, her fingers tight in my closely cropped hair.

  When she’s done, she collapses again on the mat, but I don’t let her have a moment. Instead I clamp my lips around her clit and suck. A high-pitched squeal fills the gym, but that only makes me suck harder. Her hands claw uselessly at my hair, pulling it, yanking it from my scalp, but it does not fucking matter. I work her body until she comes again, right on the heels of the last orgasm, her whole body bucking against me, a hoarse scream bouncing off the mats.

  My lips are slick with her desire. She keeps shivering, her body out of her control now. It’s under my control, and now she understands that. “You said—” She breaks off in a helpless moan. “You said you’d stop.”

  “Did you tell me no?” I offer an innocent shrug. “I don’t think you did.”

  She’s shivering and shaking, as if her body can’t decide what to do. I gather her in my arms and press a kiss to her cheek. “Close your eyes,” I murmur. “Rest a moment. We don’t have to hurry through this. We have all night.”

  Then her eyes do fly open. “All night?”

  “You didn’t think I was finished with you, did you? Under the circumstances.”—such as the fact that you were a fucking virgin—“I won’t ride you anytime soon. There’s no help for it. I’m going to have to use your mouth extra to make up for it, though.”

  Her chocolate eyes are wide now. “I thought—”

  “You thought one and done? No, ma’am. If you wanted someone without stamina, you should have slept with Landon. You let me into your body, and I’m real comfortable here. I’m a soldier first and foremost, and I’m not leaving until I know every inch of this terrain.”

  Still cradling her in my arms, I slide my right hand down her flat stomach to the bare skin of her cunt. She jerks away when I find her folds, but I’m persistent. A steady finger fuck brings her to inexorable orgasm, and she sobs in my arms as it takes her. “I know,” I say, kissing her forehead. This is what she needed. It’s what I needed, too. To hold her in my arms as she releases every dark thought. “Let it out. I’m here. You can trust me with this. You can fall apart.”

  I stroke her through the last of her climax. When she’s done, I lick the desire off my fingers. My fingerprints are already wrinkled with the proof of her arousal. Gently I carry her down to the bed. She’s sweaty and exhausted, and we’re only getting started. I stroke my cock, which is ready for its turn again. I press the head to her lips. “Lick,” I say, my body strung tight. I’m leaned over her like a predator, and I can reach her cunt with my right hand. “I’m going to come down your throat this time. And when you drink me, that’s when I’ll finally flick your clit and let you come again, too.”

  She doesn’t tell me to stop. I knew she wouldn’t. All we have is tonight, and I’m going to squeeze every drop of pleasure from her lithe body while I have the chance. I learned early in life that nothing lasts forever.

  Sooner or later someone is going to leave.

  Sooner or later that someone is me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Misty Danielle Copeland is a ballet dancer for American Ballet Theatre, one of the leading classical ballet companies. In 2015, Copeland became the first African American woman to be promoted to principal dancer in the company’s 75-year history.

  Bethany

  In my dream there’s warmth and grass and green eyes that sparkle with sensual promise. Sunlight brushes its thumb across my cheek. I stretch with my eyes closed, but instead of the plush earth, there’s only silky sheets. Reaching my hand to the left, I feel for the solid body that should be there. The sheets are cool. My eyes fly open. I’m alone in the bed. Alone in the room. Maybe even alone in the house. Disappointment surges in my chest.

  He’s gone.

  That ancient fear rises into the back of my throat. Maybe sex was all he wanted from me. My body at his beck and call. I pull the sheets over my head with a frustrated groan. I am too old for this fear to still be following me around like a vengeful ghost.

  “Go away,” I tell it, but it doesn’t budge. I throw the sheets back. Josh’s T-shirt flies out of the tangle and hits the floor next to the bed. Good enough for me.

  I hear the clanging as soon as I step into the hall.

  Josh is in his personal gym, one floor above me, lifting weights. I find him in the cramped space, the racks squeezed together, too close for comfort, because he moved them to make room for my dancing. Sweet relief. He’s not gone. He’s just involved in the manly pursuit of lifting heavy objects. For once I’m not the one being watched. I’m watching him as if he’s on a stage. I lose myself in the way his muscles work. His bare skin glistens in the morning sun streaming through the windows. Joshua North is a hell of a sight, shirtless in his gym. I watch him unabashedly until he catches my eye in the mirror. A knowing smile moves across his face, and then it’s back to concentration as he puts the weight in the rack and leans on the bench.

  Standing behind him seems like the most natural thing in the world, so I do it, skimming my hands along his shoulders and looking at him in the mirror. His eyes trace the line of his T-shirt against my thighs. He looks for a good long time, making me hot under the T-shirt. “I’m going to see your brother,” he says.

  The relief scatters like sidewalk chalk under a downpour. All that courage I gathered to find him here, and now this? “My brother?” It doesn’t make sense. “That’s what you were doing the night everything blew up before. You came back with blood on your clothes. On your face. And then you walked away from me.” I can’t stop my grip from tightening on his shoulders. I can’t stop my nails from digging in. So I let go instead. “What the hell, Josh? Is that the future we’re headed toward?”

  “Of course not.” He’s so matter-of-fact that it pisses me off even more.

  I take a step away from him, putting distance between us even in the mirror. “When are you going? I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Oh, I hate how that firm tone makes me feel underneath all my anger. I hate how my body responds in spite of every single effort my mind makes. Ignore it. “Yes, I am.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “He’s my brother.” I plant my feet and stand up tall.

  “He’s a traitor and a murderer.”


  My reflection flinches in the mirror, and heat skims across my cheeks. “He became a murderer because of me. That first time—he was protecting me.”

  He gives me a look in the mirror that makes me want to avert my eyes. He knows the truth now. He knows the full story. “That wasn’t murder, and you know it. That was self-defense. That was putting down a rabid dog.” Josh stands up from the weight bench and turns to face me. “I don’t blame him for killing your father. That’s one thing he did right in his life, but everything he’s done since then? That’s not on you. That’s on him.”

  I’m standing here in bare feet and Josh’s T-shirt, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to lecture me about my own brother. That doesn’t mean he’s going to forbid me from leaving his house. I lift my chin an inch. “If you respect me, then you have to take me with you.”

  The moment shimmers between us. My heart runs wild. I don’t know what he’s going to do. If he shakes his head, if he dismisses me, then this can’t go on. None of it. I’ll leave his mansion right now, and I won’t come back. I rehearse my reaction in my head. No yelling. No tears. Just a cold acceptance, a quick turn on my heel—

  “I agree.”

  “In that case—what?” One blink of my eyes and he’s a different man. The Josh I knew five years ago never would have done this. He would have broken before he bent. He’s changed. My lungs fill with sweet possibility. This feels momentous, and it is. It absolutely is.

  He crosses the room so I can see his eyes with a crystal clarity. “I agree. You should come with me.” But even in the afterglow of victory, I know that this isn’t just about Josh growing up. It’s also about fear. Fear for my safety, I realize when he leads me out of the gym at a fast clip. I saw it in his eyes.

  Josh

  Caleb lives on Frenchman Street in the Marigny, in a three-bedroom apartment on top of a famous tattoo shop. The fucking prick has been hiding in plain sight for years. I suppose he thinks that if he plays the part of a popular society man, people will forget about the fact that he’s a murderer and betrays this country on a regular basis. Fucker.