by Bromberg, K
“You okay if I go talk to someone?” Linda whispered. “For work.”
“Text me.”
She moved away, revealing the tall, beautiful man in the dimness, and I froze. The proportions of his face and form electrified every nerve in my body, grabbing my attention with a reminder of his hand on my throat. My second reaction was fury. He had to be stalking me. Why else would he show up here? My next reaction was curiosity. Why?
A moment after, my brain caught up to my body, pulling it back by the shirt before I flung questions and accusations at him.
It wasn’t Byron.
It was his brother Logan, the quiet Crowne who wasn’t photographed. He had a subtle power that echoed Byron’s, and I understood why rumor in social circles was that he was being groomed to take over the Crowne fortune.
Note taken: Byron was brash and savage. Logan was understated but no less formidable. The sight of him gave me the same feeling of awe without the sexual arousal.
I walked into the main gallery.
“Olivia Monroe!” Alan Barton called as soon as my eyes adjusted.
“Hey,” I said before kissing each of his cheeks. He was wearing a traditional tuxedo that made him seem taller than his five foot nine. But I was in heels, so the poor guy was stuck looking up at me.
“You look amazing,” he said.
“You too.”
His dark-brown hair was brushed back, and his cheeks were shaved clean. He had the dimpled smile of an approachable heartthrob. Exactly the kind of sweet, unthreatening man I dated, back when I dated.
“I haven’t seen you since… when?” he said, taking stock of me.
“Three years ago, I think.” His wedding.
He laughed, and I was reminded of the charm of his smile. “Right. That.”
“How’s the world of international financial instruments?”
“Full of scrappers and sharks. But I’m used to it.” He offered me his arm, and I took it. “Win some, lose some. We come out ahead in either case.”
“Good attitude.”
“I’m getting out of this birdcage,” he murmured as he guided me across the room for no real reason, then smiled at Lisa Guggenheim before keeping us moving. That was the trick to having a conversation. “Everyone’s in my business. Ruined my marriage.”
“I heard,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. I’m taking a spot on the London exchange.” He took a champagne flute from a waiter’s tray and handed it to me.
“It’s ten times worse there.”
“If you’re British,” Alan said, taking a glass for himself. “I’m just an American.” He held up his flute. “To social expectations.”
I clicked and pretended to drink to that.
“Fuck them all,” he said, waving his arm at the black-tie crowd.
“When did you get so crude?” I nudged him.
“Does it not work for me?”
“Depends who you’re trying to work.”
“What if I’m trying to work you?”
In the moment he took to consider the effect of his admission and I took to ask myself if I wanted to be seduced, a flash went off. We both turned. An event photographer in a cheap tux jacket, black skirt, and pink bangs waved at us.
“Sneaky,” Alan said to her, wagging his finger. “Take it properly.”
He put his arm around me, and we faced the camera. The flash went off again, and she thanked us.
The bell rang for the start of a performance piece in the west gallery.
“I promised I’d see this,” Alan said. “Come with?”
“I have to use the ladies’.”
“All right. Find me though. I want to curse at you some more.”
“Good. You need the practice.”
I was looking at my phone on the way to the bathroom, which was why I crashed into a wall of tuxedo. “Excuse—”
The suit was stuffed with sex and topped with emerald eyes that burned through me. Why did he always look so angry? And why did that turn me on? His gaze was unequivocal, unyielding, branding me with fury, and I met it with my own intensity. If he was the unstoppable force, I would be an unmovable object.
“Me,” I finished but without apology. When he didn’t move, I repeated myself. “Excuse. Me.”
“I wouldn’t have touched you if I knew you were looking for a man you could crush.”
“Are we having the same conversation?”
“Alan Barton is a weakling,” he said.
My brow furrowed. What did he think he knew? And did he expect me to defend myself against it? I didn’t owe him an explanation. Not a word.
He took out his phone and, with a single swipe, opened it to the event’s private website, where the subjects of the pictures had approval. Alan and I were smiling together in the moments after he’d admitted he was trying to charm me. We weren’t touching, but there was an intimacy that came with mutual vulnerability.
“You’ve lost your mind,” I said.
“Yes. I have,” he growled. “You want me to fight for you. That’s your game.”
“Me? Mr. Not Now? Everything’s a game to…” I caught myself, glancing around to make sure no one could hear.
The valets were gathered by the podium, and the concierge was behind the counter. The personal drivers in their black jackets huddled around an ashtray by their Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. The acoustics were too unpredictable.
Reading my mind, Byron took my arm and pulled me back around the corner.
“You’re impatient,” he hissed.
“You can say no any time.” I jerked my arm from his grasp. “So can I.”
“What about now?”
“Now wha—”
He cut me off with a kiss. A smashing, brutal, demanding kiss that I surrendered to as soon as I realized it was happening. He tasted of seltzer and lime and smelled of leather and fire. The heat melted my irritation into a gum-sized black spot in the floor. He held me up with his embrace, and I let him.
A man can say a lot with a kiss, but the tongue twisting against mine and lips that locked on my mouth couldn’t explain why he hadn’t fucked me when I’d asked or why he came to the Eclipse show at all.
“Tell me there’s not another man between us tonight,” he said between kisses.
“There isn’t.” He sucked away the rest with his lips. I couldn’t leave it there. I had no idea what I was promising him. I pushed him away just hard enough to break the kiss without leaving his embrace. “Byron. There isn’t anyone. There isn’t an us either.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, tightening his jaw. “I can’t stop thinking about having you. You’re burning a path through my mind. Ever since I had you in the palm of my hand, it’s been you. I need to have a night with you before it’s all ash.”
“I’m just a mountain you want to climb.”
He kissed my neck, gently running his teeth along sensitive skin. I groaned with pleasure, clutching the shoulders of his jacket.
“Let me climb it. Let me conquer you.”
“We shouldn’t,” I said, but what I meant was, Give me a reason to say yes.
“I keep a room at the Waldorf. Let me take you there. One night is tonight. Let me hear you come. Let me feel your legs around me. I want to see your eyes roll back with pleasure. I’ll kiss the rug burns on your knees. I’ll feed you strawberries and champagne after I fuck you, then I’ll fuck you again. I want to mark you with my teeth. I want to make your ass red and your cunt so sore you can’t walk without thinking of me. And then…”
When he pulled back to look in my eyes, I was breathless and soaking wet.
“Then when the soreness wears off, you forget. We both forget. We can hate each other again. We can be mortal enemies the rest of our lives. We’ll fight for what we want, and one of us will win.”
His eyes were so close I saw through the arrogance to the rawest of human needs. Or maybe they were mirrors and I saw my own. He hadn’t given me a practical reas
on to say yes, but he’d given me plenty to agree to.
“I’m confirming about the condoms,” I said. “I have them. You wear them. The second you argue about it, we’re done.”
“Agreed.”
“Good.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“So, it’s a yes?”
“Yes,” I said.
He failed to hide his surprise. That was gratifying.
“Let’s go now.”
I texted Linda to let her know I was leaving.
I shut the phone before she could ask for an explanation.
* * *
Discernment is the enemy of delight. Pleasure and its pursuit take the shortcut around logic. Knowing better didn’t mean we did better.
His driver was a ruddy-cheeked Asian man at least as tall as Byron, and he opened the back of the Bentley without judgment. Why I was expecting judgment was a mystery that could wait.
“Thank you, Yusup.” Byron let me in the back first, then he spoke to Yusup for a moment before sliding in across from me.
The door closed. The heavily tinted windows shrouded the night. We didn’t say a word as the car exited the lot. He set his feet wide and laid his hands on his knees, regarding every part of my body with utter seriousness. That was my moment to back out. Go back to the party.
When the car made it to the street and the stern ardor of his face was lit in the intermittent pattern of the streetlights, I checked in with myself. I could stop it. I could still go back and make small talk with old friends. I could, but I didn’t want to. At all.
“You ready?” he asked from the shadows.
“Yes.”
“I’m in charge. I think you’ll like it that way.”
“I’ll let you know if I don’t.”
“Open your legs.”
His low, commanding voice wedged itself between my knees and pushed them apart as far as the skirt allowed.
“Wider.”
No one had ever spoken to me with the assumption that I’d obey. Especially not a lover, and I knew I didn’t want to ever live without it again.
I pulled the skirt over the tops of my stockings and opened up until the air conditioning hit the wet crotch of my panties.
“Good girl,” he said, making me gasp at the thought he was pleased. He smiled, leaning forward, and ran his hands inside the bare tops of my thighs. “What do you want tonight?”
“Your cock.”
“You sure?” He drew the backs of his fingers along the fabric of my lace underwear.
“Yes. Please yes.”
“Pick your butt up a little.”
I did, and he hooked his fingers on the waistband of my underwear, pulling them down a few inches above midthigh. My open legs stretched the elastic lace to near breaking.
“You want to come,” he said, laying his thumb on my clit.
“Yes.”
He pushed two fingers inside me and increased the pressure on my nub. “I want to possess you completely. For this night, I own your orgasms. You come when I say. You ask. You beg to give them to me.”
“One night.” I managed to breathe out some sense as he rotated his thumb.
“That’s all.”
“Yes. Okay.”
“You are so sexy. Your nipples are hard. Your breaths are coming with the same rhythm as my hand on your cunt. I could do whatever I wanted to you, and you’d beg me to keep going.”
His attentions went from turn-on to tease, keeping me on one side of release.
“Do it. Do whatever you want.”
Leaving my panties stretched between them, he pushed my legs up and kneeled on the floor between them. He bit the tender insides of my thighs, sucking through his teeth until I gasped with pain.
“Stop?” he asked, looking up at me.
“No.” I surprised myself. He’d come close to breaking the skin. I shouldn’t have wanted more this badly. “Keep going.”
He moved to the other thigh, biting and sucking one painful spot that was now connected to my pleasure by a thick electrical cable.
“You like that,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I hope that’s not your first pleasant surprise.”
Before I could reply, he ran his tongue along my seam, tickling the tip of my clit. The bite marks throbbed in a complementary pulse, rising to meet the arousal of my pussy as he gently wedged his fingers inside me.
My hands gripping the back of his head, he spread my lips apart and flicked my nub, then sucked gently, before flicking again, playing my body like a game he’d mastered.
I groaned, jerking into him. So close, I was so close. What was stopping me?
“Count down from five,” Byron said from the other side of my closed eyelids. “On one, you may come.”
He went down again, flicking and sucking in the same rhythm as if he didn’t need to wait for me to agree to his game.
I might as well play.
“Five.”
Three fingers inside me.
“Four.”
His thumb, slick with my juices, slid to my asshole.
“Three.”
All sucking now.
“Two.”
Thumb pressed to my ass but not entering. The tingling sensation. The anticipation of a violation.
“Oneeeeeee…” I exploded in a long nnn, body left behind as my consciousness disappeared into an ecstasy Byron elongated with the precise manipulation of his tongue.
When I came around, I was gripping his scalp as if I wanted to take out the hair.
“Sorry.” I let go.
“Taste yourself.” He kissed me deeply, filling my mouth with the salty tartness of my pussy. The flavor was layered with brine and bitters and lost to the elusive mint taste of his tongue as it wore off.
“Now you.” I reached for his belt.
“No time,” he said without looking up to see where we were. “We’re here.”
The car stopped under the warm lights of the Waldorf as if Byron had a direct line to his exact placement on the earth.
I reached for my panties, but he stayed my hand. “Keep them down under the skirt.”
He closed my knees and pulled my dress down with a smirk of delicious mischief as he sat back in his seat. I didn’t have a moment to object before the doorman opened the car. Byron got out, holding his hand to me to help me out of the back seat. Behind him, men in red jackets whistled for cabs, tourists milled about, and a klatch of girls looked at the city through their phones.
Suddenly, the world had gone from deep shadows and dark, secret places to brightly lit and very public. I’d be seen pulling up my underwear.
“Come,” Byron said.
I took his hand and stood on the pavement. “This isn’t what we agreed to.”
I struggled to mount the steps with my underwear sliding down to where my garters met the tops of my stockings. They wouldn’t fall farther, but they were restrictive and admittedly wet.
“It was implied.” With my hand in his crooked arm, we walked the length of the crowded lobby. “And your hot little cunt needs some freedom, don’t you think?”
Without the protection of the fabric, every step rubbed my legs against my swollen clit, and his expression told me he knew it.
A red jacket opened the brass door of the private elevator. “Penthouse, Mr. Crowne?”
“Please.”
“The service you ordered is ready in your room.”
“Good.”
We got into the elevator, and the attendant pressed the button, staying in the car with us.
“This isn’t making me not hate you,” I whispered.
“But it’s making you want me.”
“Fuck you,” I murmured.
“It’ll be my pleasure.”
The doors opened, and I had to take three little steps out. Byron opened the only door and guided me in, closing and locking it behind him. We stood on the marble, looking at each other, me with my panties down,
him in a tuxedo. He opened his jacket button, exposing the enormous shape of his erection.
Seeing other people had woken me from my sexual haze. I still wanted this, whatever this was, but being in public had shone light on the stretch of my life, and it didn’t include Byron Crowne.
“Just one night,” I said.
He yanked open his bowtie. “That’s all we need.” He shrugged out of his jacket. “Don’t you agree?”
“I do.”
He came behind me and methodically unhooked the fastening of my dress, then he pulled the zipper down, letting his fingers graze the length of my spine. He unhooked my bra. Slowly, he brushed the dress and bra off my shoulders and let it drop to the floor.
“Look at yourself,” he said into my ear, reaching around me to turn my chin slightly, making me face a foyer mirror over a table.
His gorgeous face was over my bare shoulder, my breasts were high and tight, and my thighs were still restricted. He unpinned my hair, letting it fall down my neck.
“You’re so beautiful.” Wrapping his arms around me to cup my breasts from behind, he said, “Watching that beauty collapse when you come…” He closed his fingers on my nipples and pinched them. I leaned back into him, throwing my head against his shoulder in pleasure when his fingers were tight enough to hurt me. “It’s all I can think about. That moment when you go from beautiful to transcendent.”
“Take it,” I groaned. “Take that moment. It’s yours.”
In the mirror, I watched as his right hand released my breast and moved up under my chin, holding my jaw steady while his left slid down my torso to where my lowered panties exposed me. I edged my body upward and parted my legs so he could maneuver, and maneuver he did, pressing hard against my clit before flicking it.
I uttered a long nnn between my teeth.
“Open your eyes,” he said softly. “Watch yourself giving it to me.”
I hadn’t even realized they were closed. His face was next to mine in the mirror, watching my reaction as he worked me, going from soft to hard and back again, taking the stimulation away long enough to make my brows knot with hunger.
“Do you want to come?”
“Yes.”
“How badly?”
