I instinctively knew I should have walked away. A wiser woman would have fled. But I was drawn to the loud moans. My hand went to the doorknob, and my heart twisted in my chest. I turned the handle slowly, slowly, slowly.
I expected a dark room. My fumbling experiences with sex involved a high school ex-boyfriend who wasn’t worth mentioning. Our twisted experiments were always in the dark. Always while Mom was working a double shift at the restaurant. Always with the pillow clenched between my teeth to stop my moans from shattering the paper-thin walls of my bedroom.
But this wasn’t two bodies seeking pleasure in the silent shroud of darkness. The entire space was drenched in light. It was like they didn’t care if they were seen or heard. They were too lost in the power of pleasure. It was loud and chaotic. Intoxicating.
Directly across from where I was standing at the door, was an old vanity with a large, lit up mirror. Two bodies moving on and against it. I immediately recognized the girl, the hard lines of her face a picture of pleasure in the mirror’s reflection. She was a younger waitress who worked with my mom. They were acquaintances at best, just someone Mom liked to gossip with during her lunch break, but Mom needed people to stand beside her at the altar, and Colleen looked amazing in a dress.
Her partner pressed her cheek into the tabletop, and her exposed ass was angled toward him. Her moans were loud and harsh, cutting at my eardrums with splitting cries.
But my eyes were locked on the muscular backside flexing and poised at her back. He was thrusting into her from behind. Tan, broad, strong. He had dark hair and a tattoo of a detailed, shaded skull staring menacingly at me. With every thrust, his ass cheeks clenched, and the vanity slammed against the wall. “Yes, darlin’ keep going,” he groaned before pushing into her once more.
“Harder,” she demanded back. I nearly snorted. Any harder and he would be sending her straight through the drywall.
I watched with an open mouth. The room smelled like sex, and clothes were strewn across the floor in a shocking display of passion. I looked up at the vanity mirror and gasped when I saw a pair of charcoal eyes staring right back at me.
His mouth was plump and framed by a light dusting of dark facial hair. His jawline was razor-sharp. The brown hair on his head looked like someone had been running their hands through it, my guess Colleen.
We were locked in an intense stare down. “You like that?” he asked, but I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me or Colleen.
“Yes,” she moaned.
The man smirked while tipping his head back in bliss. It was a sight I’d always remember. His mouth parted. His eyes squeezed shut. Every muscle in his body was flexed. I could feel my heated pulse thudding at the sight of him. My legs shook. I gnawed on my lip.
“Get out,” the man demanded before looking over his shoulder at me. All snarky playfulness had disappeared. Now he challenged me with his stare. My cheeks flushed in embarrassment. What the fuck was I doing?
I should have argued that this was my room. I should have screamed for the security team stationed at the front door. I should have done a lot of things, but instead, I ran out of the guest room and shot down the stairs like a bullet from a smoking gun. I heard them cry out in tandem as the pleasure of their mutual orgasms tore through them. I went outside as their screams seemed to echo around me.
2
The wooden boards creaked under my feet as I walked along the back porch of the Beauregard home. Some of the wedding decorations from the night before were still perched in the yard. The cleanup crew wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another hour, so I felt comfortable sitting in my flimsy silk pajamas on a lawn chair.
The yard smelled like fresh flowers and insect repellant. I clutched my coffee in my palm, willing my body to wake up as I stared out at the yard. My heavy eyes itched from exhaustion and allergies. I didn’t sleep last night, and though I wanted to enjoy the comfort of my bed, I also wanted to see my mother off for her early morning flight. We’d agreed to have coffee together before she left, and I was looking forward to some alone time with her. The last couple of months had been such a rush that I couldn’t remember the last time we’d been together with just the two of us.
The back door sliding open caught my attention, and I turned to greet her, pausing when I realized it wasn’t my mother coming outside but, instead, the man from last night. After the wedding was over, I had gone back to my bedroom with a sense of trepidation. Luckily, the couple had vacated my room, but I still asked the housekeeper for new bedding in case they took their wild night from the vanity to my king-sized bed. I spent most of last night thinking about our strange encounter and picturing his flexed body moving in and out of her.
I quickly smoothed out my petal-colored silk pajamas and sat up straighter, realizing my nipples were probably poking through the thin material of my shirt. Fuck.
The strange man looked handsome but hungover. He looked like the kind of man to make cherry stems out of women and tangle them up with his talented, twisted tongue. His olive skin had a sheen of sweat on it, and his black eyes scanned the deck before landing on me.
“Well, if it isn’t my little voyeur,” he said with a grin before smoothing his shirt and licking his lips. “Did you enjoy the show last night? Come back for an encore?”
He bit his lip while sweeping his charcoal eyes over my exposed skin. I flushed at his words. “I didn’t mean to watch,” I stammered. Then, I remembered that I wasn’t the sort of woman to be flustered fuckless by a pretty man. “You were in my bedroom, you know.”
He sauntered over to me. “Your bedroom, huh?” he asked while scratching the back of his neck. The movement showed off the curve of his muscles. I exhaled. “Last I checked, that was my bedroom.” He clutched his shoes in his other hand, eyeing the empty chair beside me. “May I?”
I wiggled anxiously in my seat, a fresh but foreign desperation dictating my movements, and he didn’t bother to wait for an answer. The strange man plopped down in the chair beside me and started putting his shoes on. What did he mean, his bedroom? Did he live here, too? I spent three breaths watching the careless way he moved, like he was fully comfortable in his skin. Shockingly, he wasn’t embarrassed about what happened last night. He effortlessly met the awkwardness like his life depended on it. While I blushed from my toes all the way up to the tops of my ears, he just shrugged the entire experience off, as if fucking for show was something that happened regularly for him—maybe it was.
I picked up my coffee cup and took a sip, mostly because I wanted something to do with my hands. He smiled as I did. “Is this going to be awkward between us now? I’m technically your uncle, but—”
My eyes widened, and I choked on the coffee I was drinking. Sputtering. Coughing. Choking on the truth. It was a long moment before I could respond. “U-uncle?”
He chuckled and pulled the cup from my hands, so I didn’t spill on myself. Our fingers brushed, and a tingle of awareness shot up my arm. “I’m Joseph’s younger brother. I’m sure they’ve told you all about me, right?” His tone had a sarcastic quality to it that I quickly processed. I had no idea that Joseph had a brother. The only family I’d met was Jack. And even so, there was no mention of anyone else. He must have seen the confused look on my face, because he forced a smile. “The name is Hamilton.”