She didn’t hear the footsteps moving across the polished marble floor until they’d stopped right in front of her. She looked up to find Anton’s friend, the one who’d watched as Anton had teased her and then made her come. She tried to block out how wanton and shameless she’d been.
She wanted to blame the arousal cream. It was like some hard illicit drug—as if it had been shot directly into her vein instead of rubbed carefully into her most private flesh by expert hands. What the hell was in that cream? There was definitely no craving for it. Not like a drug. In fact, the last thing she wanted was that cream on her because it sent her spiraling into a madness that she couldn’t find her way out of. She was just lost in the dark and the sensations between her legs and the aching need to come at any cost in front of any audience. Damn any consequence.
“Annette?” It was another Russian accent, much like Anton’s, though slightly different in a way she couldn’t quite pinpoint.
She couldn’t believe she’d just spent the past minute, knowing Sergio was standing there, yet still trapped in her hysterical mental zoo. She felt her face flame. She’d finished the chocolate and took a long, steadying gulp from the water bottle before finally looking up at him.
“Sergio.”
He smiled, no, beamed. “Yes. I am Sergio!” As if they had planned to meet all along, and he was relieved to have found her.
Annette braced against the arm rest of the bench to stand and eased out of Sergio’s personal bubble to drop the water bottle and chocolate wrapper in a trash bin nearby. Sergio followed.
“Annette.” He looked at her like he wanted to eat her or like he had X-ray vision and could still see her breasts on display.
She moved quickly toward the stairs. “I need to get back.”
But Sergio wasn’t the kind of guy who took hints. Or if he took them, he threw them right back—like a too-small fish—as if these hints didn’t really apply to him. They were for other less sophisticated, less attractive, and less suave men. Because of course, a woman would not say no to him. Ever. He gripped her arm and pulled her into the alcove under the stairs, pressing her up against the wall. His lips found the curvature of her neck, that curvature that lips were meant to live in, and he set upon her to devour her.
She shoved ineffectually at his shoulders. He was like a boulder underneath that pressed crisp suit. “Get off me.”
Sergio backed up, wounded confusion on his face as if there were somehow something wrong with her for denying him the right to maul her—a complete stranger—under a staircase at the ballet.
“I’m sorry. I thought it would be all right. I thought you would want...”
“I’m with Anton,” she said.
Finally some version of recognition seemed to light his features. “Oh. Such a good and loyal pet,” he said.
Those words seemed like they should be mocking. A cruel joke. But they were uttered with the most solemn sincerity that she couldn’t be angry at him. In another set of circumstances, she might have welcomed his advances. He was beautiful and smoldering. And his warm energy pressed against her had felt like sunlight for the moment it took her to weakly struggle against his onslaught.
Another set of footsteps joined them. And just like before, she’d been so caught up with the chattering chimps in her mind that she hadn’t noticed until he was right upon them. Anton.
“And what mischief are we getting into here? I thought I told you to get water and chocolate, collect yourself, and return to me?” This was the same tone he’d used when he’d dismissed Katya from the box earlier.
“I did. I was trying. I...”
“It’s not her fault,” Sergio said. “As always, you have managed to find the perfect pet. She doesn’t perform a trick until her master orders it. You must have been hiding her away from us for a long time to train her so well.”
Annette didn’t like being talked about like she was some coiffed poodle about to prance around in the show ring.
“Not as long as you would think,” Anton said. He pulled up a chair from just around the corner and sat down, his arms crossed over his chest. “Continue with what you were doing, Sergio. I want to watch.”
Annette couldn’t have heard what she thought she just heard. Anton couldn’t mean for Sergio to take her right here under the stairs where just anyone could happen by. This was far more exposed than the box. And how much longer did the ballet have? How long until all the elegant moneyed people began to pour out of the theater?
Sergio’s eyes darkened in a wild primal hunger as he pressed Annette back against the wall where he’d had her previously pinned. He didn’t ask her permission, either with his eyes or his voice. Because Anton said it was okay, so everything was right in the world again.
Though, in truth, with Anton permitting—no, demanding—this, Annette couldn’t find the will to resist his warm, wet kisses at her throat that soon turned into needy little bites, or the way his hands groped at her flesh, stroking under her dress and bra to touch the skin Anton had teased him with not so long before.
Sergio was on a mission. He wasn’t here for the slow, building tease of earlier in the box. He’d been teased for that long period, and now he needed release. With little fanfare, he undid his pants and shoved the strips of fabric—those easy access strips of her dress—out of his way. A moment later he’d pushed inside her, his girth stealing her breath for a moment as she gripped his shoulders and let out an indelicate grunt like some rutting animal.
She tried to think of all the reasons she should resist him. He didn’t care about her pleasure. He seemed to have no interest in getting her off right now—after all, she’d had her orgasm already… her mind numbing, soul shattering orgasm. It was Sergio’s turn. Though if anyone should be getting a carnal reward right now, it was Anton. Stoic Anton, who watched her with as much concentration as he’d watched the dancers on stage. Each movement, each sigh. It was as though she were performing choreography he’d created, and he wanted to make damn sure she performed it to his satisfaction.
Her previous phone sex job seemed distant years in her past, even though she’d been talking dirty to strangers less than forty-eight hours before. All those filthy fantasies were being brought to life—fantasies she hadn’t thought were really hers, just a service she had been performing for men with the money to pay for such idle talk. Now there was no talk, only action, as if it were now time to pay for all the teasing she’d done on the phone for years.
Despite her work, giving your actual physical body to random men was a much different prospect. With phone sex, you could hang up the phone and remain unchanged because it was all just acting—sweet little lies that got them off and put money in your bank account. But this was different. First Anton and now Sergio. Sergio who was here only to take from her—to use her body as his own personal masturbatory toy.
The thought should have made her angry or indignant, but instead, for some inexplicable reason, it turned her on. Maybe it was the intensity with which Anton watched them. Maybe it was the helpless vulnerability of the moment and the excitement and fear they might get caught. She was quickly learning that fear was its own kind of arousal, and sometimes the brain got confused about the whole thing. Sometimes fear that wasn’t supposed to excite you between your legs… did.