do with her desire to re-join the party, or her worry that she might be missed. It’s more than that. She needs me.
I push up on my elbows, staring down at her, but I want to see more. I want to watch her come. More than just her expressive eyes and pouting lips, I want to see her whole face. I move my hand to the mask and begin to shift it but she jerks away and, from what I can see, her expression sobers instantly.
‘No.’ The word is deadly serious. ‘It stays on.’
Shit. I forgot. Anonymity is part of the deal.
‘Sorry.’ I grimace. ‘I just wanted to see you.’
Her smile is laced with pleasure. ‘You can see enough.’
I arch a brow but inwardly I disagree. Still, it’s better than nothing, and sure as hell better than I expected when I agreed to this.
I’m no stranger to random hook-ups, but something about this woman’s approach fascinated me. Her desire for anonymity, and the fact she is new to the club—I haven’t seen her profile on any of the forums before and thanks to networking I’m pretty familiar with most of the members.
So she is new. Someone who has just come into money?
No. I can’t say how, but I can tell she’s old money. Cultured. She has a certain air about her, a way of speaking that’s instinctively familiar.
‘You do realise we’re here to sleep together?’ she prompts, her brows lifting above the edge of the mask.
My laugh is immediate. ‘Are you complaining?’
‘Nope.’ She digs her white teeth into the pillow of her lower lip and need rushes through me. Fuck, she’s hot. So hot. I drop my head and pull her lower lip between my teeth, my whole body mashed to hers, her nakedness its own kind of torture, so close to me, so close and yet there’s still a scrap of cotton between my cock and her sweet warmth and suddenly I’m done being patient and I’m done with the idea of making this last.
Sex is sex. She wants a wild time, and that’s what I’m going to give her.
I push up onto my elbows. ‘Stay here.’
There’s a box of condoms in the bedside table. I pull it out and cross back to the bed. She’s watching me in a way that fills me with a torrent of needs and I intend to indulge each and every one of them.
There’s something about not knowing who she is that makes this even sexier. Except…
Ridiculously, for the first time, I wonder about her life outside this, outside this room and our agreement. ‘You’re not married?’ I prompt, staring down at her as my lungs work overtime trying to suck in enough air to keep me alive.
‘Married? I told you, I haven’t done this in a long time.’
My smirk is to hide my cynicism. It doesn’t work. ‘I don’t think celibacy and marriage are necessarily oxymoronic.’
She grins, and I hold my breath, needing her to tell me she’s single. I like sex. I fucking love it, unapologetically, but there are some lines I will never cross, and fucking someone else’s wife is one of them.
I like my women to be completely mine, even if it is just for one night.
‘No, Nicholas.’ The words are soft, sweet, and they run over my skin like oil. ‘I’m not married.’
Good. But I don’t feel a burst of relief—yet. ‘Engaged? Seeing someone? I’m not getting in the middle of anything?’
Her teeth are gnawing at that perfect, full lower lip again. She pushes up to kneel and moves across the bed, somehow managing to look elegant and coordinated. Her hands connect with my chest and my breath hisses out of me.
‘I am definitely not in a relationship with anyone. Except my remote control. And my MacBook.’ She grins, and I feel a kick of curiosity about who she is outside this.
I ignore it.
Tonight isn’t a prelude to anything except sex.
And I’m more than optimistic that this will prove satisfying.
In the back of my mind is my father’s edict.
‘Five years, Nicholas, and each year I expect you to come home wiser and ready to make me proud. And each year you disappoint me.’
I slide a finger into the box of condoms and pull a foil square out. Miss Anonymous takes it from my fingers, lifting it to her lips and tearing the top off. I watch with a racing heart as she pushes my boxers down, just low enough to release my cock, then her hand is cupping my length, her fingertips brushing my tip, delighting in the drop of cum she finds there.
‘I’m so glad your reputation isn’t exaggerated,’ she teases, sliding the condom over me and easing it down my length. My breath hisses out of me as she snaps it at the base, then squeezes me in her palm, my cock jerking against her hand, my whole body standing to attention.
‘I’ve had enough. Reading about you on that idiot gossip blog, seeing you with a different woman every goddamned night. If you’d married Saffron you’d have three kids by now.’
Everyone seems to have forgotten Saffy left me—for a firefighter from Bristol, as it turns out.
‘If you’re not married by the time you’re thirty then you can forget about becoming Lord Rothsmore. You can forget about the whole damned thing.’
It has been distinctly tempting to tell him to go to hell with his bloody title and inheritance. As if I give a damn.
Except I do. I care about my mother, and I care about my father, I even care about the legacy into which I’ve been born. But more than that, I’m becoming a little bored of this lifestyle. What started off as rebellion has become an unbreakable habit and it’s all just a bit too easy.
Miss Anonymous is right. My reputation precedes me. Women fall at my feet, doors open because of my name and the title I’m due to hold.
I’m ready for a challenge. I’m ready for something different and unexpected.
I’ve decided I’ll go home soon—before I turn thirty—and show my parents that, heirs or not, I am someone they can be proud of. I am someone who can think with more than his dick.
But for now, for tonight, I’m going to enjoy being the man my reputation has made me.
‘Exactly how long has it been?’ I prompt as I find her lips, tangling my tongue with hers, pushing her head back, so she falls flat against the mattress once more.
Her eyes, expressive and somehow familiar, swirl with uncertainty and then they zip closed a little, hiding herself from me. ‘A while.’
‘A month?’
She laughs, a skittish sound. ‘Longer.’
‘Six weeks?’
She shakes her head.
‘Jesus. Two months?’
Pink spreads across her décolletage. ‘A bit more.’
I frown, hating the thought of that, and hating it for her—because she’s so sensual, so responsive, so completely driven by desire. I can’t imagine how she could go even a night without sex, let alone months.
I nudge her thighs apart with my knees, and push my tip to her entrance, running my fingers over the bright pink of her wig. ‘Let’s see what we can do about that, huh?’
She nods, no smile on her lips, but I feel her anticipation and I recognise it because it one hundred per cent matches my own. Her breath is held; the room is quiet except for the incessant ticking of the clock against the wall. Outside, Sydney sparkles, beautiful, old, subtropical.
My hands press against the bed on either side of her and I watch as I slide inside her, slowly at first, but her muscles