Page 53 of Casanova LLC

He made me wait like that for a few seconds before saying, in that particular part of his voice, “Tell me. If I pushed you to your knees right now, with that pretty tongue out like that, what would you do?”

I didn’t overthink, I didn’t get embarrassed, I didn’t hesitate. “Give you the best head of your life.”

His eyes flashed behind the mask. “Is that a fact?” For a suspenseful beat, I wondered if he was going to take me up on that. Right here, in front of everyone. Grab the back of my wig and push me down and?—

But he did the opposite. He swooped his glass out to the side, inviting me away from him. “You lead. Tonight, I follow.”

I clinked his outstretched glass and walked over to the first room on the right.

It looked like a stage set of a cozy café. There were intimate bistro tables, where two straight couples were kissing and touching, their empty glasses and plates between them. In another corner, one club chair hosted a couple cuddling—enthusiastically—while, from the chair opposite it, another couple watched. A candlelit banquette on the opposite side had two very stimulated men and one nothing-but-a-mask-clad woman. One man was stroking the other while the other man rolled the woman’s left nipple in his mouth.

I felt Alessandro’s presence behind me. Hovering, but not touching. Waiting for my next move. Did I want to sit down at the table just now being vacated? To watch more? To join?

I couldn’t answer the questions. I wanted more time.

I wanted to see what else there was first.

The next room was an entirely different décor. It was lavishly filled with harem-esque pillows, mats, billowing silks. Every cushion was in use. Much use. There was entirely too much going on. I doubted anyone knew who was touching them. I couldn’t even determine which parts belonged to whom. The room was alive with writhing bodies.

“Snakes, I hate snakes.”

Alessandro’s lips found my ear. “What?”

“Oh,” I whispered, “just, for some reason, this reminds me of the snake pit scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

His laugh was so loud it made me jump. It also made several people whip their heads in our direction. Alessandro waved a charmingly apologetic hand and then pulled me back against him. Nuzzled my neck. Let his hand skate down my hip, my thigh, begin gathering the material of my skirt. Fisting it incrementally upward. It was a show, being done to make the other people feel comfortable. See? We’re just like you.

But it was making me feel comfortable, too. Almost too comfortable. I felt like a stranger to myself. Which was how everyone here saw me, too. Which was exactly what I’d come for. An anonymous freedom. With the mask, I was just a woman. A woman in a beautiful dress with a beautiful man behind her rucking it up. I didn’t have to be me…but then who was I?

I wanted him so badly right now, everyone in this place could watch and so what? But would I want them to watch? It seemed to me that to belong in this room you not only had to not care if people watched, you had to actively desire it.

I reached down and took his hand off me, spinning myself out of his grip and leading him around, over, and to the side of the menagerie of bodies, out the open doors, across the mezzanine, and back to the bar. It was like reaching an outcropping of rock after swimming across a lake. I belted back the final swallow of champagne in my glass and found that I needed to catch my breath. This damn corset.

I could feel Alessandro peering at me. I tried to keep my breathing steady. I didn’t want him to think I was uncomfortable, because I wasn’t. I was surprisingly not uncomfortable. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it all, or what I wanted to do here. But I was fully imbedded. Embodied.

A server approached with a tray of lamb lollipops. Perfectly situated above the tray, were the most beautifully abundant natural breasts I’d ever seen. Just lushly decadent. If I were Alessandro, I would have felt compelled to do something with them. Touch them? Paint them? But he wasn’t looking. He was focused on the tray, collecting two for each of us, and plucking napkins from her outstretched hand like cards from a deck. As she walked away, and he handed me a lamb chop, I looked down at my own chest, two petite, red-flushed apples about to bob above the surface of the corset. I glanced at him and saw his eyes were where mine had just been. I took a breath, which moved them dramatically, because there was literally nowhere else for oxygen to go in this thing, and I was about to open my mouth to somehow explain I wasn’t trying to draw his eye, I wasn’t trying to compete with the feminine ideal of our server, when his gaze came to mine and he said, “They’re perfect. You’re perfect.”

I had to remind myself of what he’d told me at the beginning of the massage: he meant everything he said to me.

And I felt myself start to love him a little more.

The sound of champagne being poured behind us distracted me. I turned around and a beefy bartender was wordlessly filling our empty glasses. When he was done, he simply turned away.

“Grazie,” I called.

Surprised, he glanced over his shoulder, looking at me for the first time. Had no one said thank you to him tonight? After an assessing moment, he nodded. And then he grinned. And then he turned his body the whole way around, opening it up to me as he watched my masked face. He was…astonishingly well-endowed. When my eyes finally flicked back to his, he simply winked, and walked to the other side of the bar. Alessandro put his elbows down next to me and inclined his head toward mine, stage-whispering, “Remind me to order my martini shaken, not stirred.”

I swallowed a laugh and whispered back, “Where do you think he keeps the olives?”

His head dropped and his shoulders shook. We were being quiet, but I knew if I allowed myself to, I would lose it. This whole thing was so surreal, so absolutely, utterly bizarre that if I stopped to acknowledge what was happening, I would make a fool of myself.

Without looking at me, Alessandro held up a lamb lollypop and I took it. We nibbled and gnawed, watching the room.

Eventually, he murmured, “Thoughts?”

“Many.”

“Care to share?”

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