Page 79 of Audacity

Mateis Benedict, I assume, who takes a firm hold of my waist with two large hands and begins to move me up and down. Not only does his gallant assistance relieve my burning muscles, but the very experience of being manhandled in this way, of being bounced up and down on Gabe’s dick as if I’m some kind of passive doll has arousal coursing through my body once more. It seems every single variant of this dynamic, in this room, turns me on.

I fasten my weary arms around his neck and hang the hell on as my body processes this deluge of pleasure, bracing myself for a third, cataclysmic orgasm. When it hits, it’s with brute force, turning every limb to molasses and my brain to cotton wool. I’m vaguely aware of Gabe coming inside me with fevered thrusts and strangled words of praise, of Benedict stepping away, and of the tears that come suddenly, thickly, flowing from my eyes and seeping into the starched collar of the shirt against which I have my face pressed.

‘Hey,’ he croons, banding one arm tightly around me and stroking the crown of my head with the other. ‘Hey. It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ve got you. You did so unbelievably well. You blow me away.’

‘She really did,’ someone who’s not Benedict says. ‘You, Athena, are an incredible woman. And you’re a lucky bastard, Sullivan.’

I don’t want to acknowledge anyone else. I burrow my face more closely into the crook of Gabe's neck and wrap my arms around him, blocking out the rest of the room. I’m done here—these men blew my nervous system apart in the best possible way, and I’m so grateful, but I have nothing left to give any of them.

‘Pass me my jacket, will you?’ Gabe murmurs in a low voice. A moment later, one of them drapes his suit jacket over my shoulders, restoring my modesty and providing some kind of physical cocoon in which I can come down. I’m glad of my blindfold. I’m glad to be in the darkness, Gabe still pulsing inside my body.

‘We’ll see ourselves out,’ Benedict says, also in a hushed voice, as if he and the others can sense that the time for jollity has passed and that quiet is now needed.

‘Thank you, guys,’ I mumble against Gabe’s neck, adoring the tender way he’s holding me. I’m nowhere near ready to leave my cocoon.

There’s the rustle of clothing being fixed and a couple of champagne flutes being drained and set back down before someone unlocks the door.

‘No,’ one of them says as he passes behind me. ‘Thankyou.’

CHAPTER 41

Gabe

The birthday “dinner” I promised Athena is, in fact, an oversized, over-engineered grazing platter in the splendid isolation of the spa at the Lanesborough Hotel on Hyde Park Corner, which I’ve rented out for the evening.

While I as good as knew she wouldn’t be in a fit state to endure some formal, public meal, I also knew I didn’t want her going home alone in whatever state of subspace or overwhelm she was bound to find herself in. This tranquil space strikes the balance, I hope, between privacy and indulgence.

I managed to get her dressed and back down to my office (via the fire escape stairs, so nobody would spot her smudged makeup or mussed hair or borderline drunk smile) before grabbing our things and bundling her into a cab.

The benefits of having exclusive access to a spa are many, and they most definitely include the prospect of naked swimming in the beautiful pool later, if she’s up to it and not too sore, but they also include the ability for me to accompany her to the women’s changing rooms, help her strip again, and wrap her up in a soft white robe.

She’s slowly come back into her body over the past hour, and it seems that working her way through her body weight in brieand charcuterie, figs and fennel-seed-encrusted breadsticks, is helping. After all, it was a serious workout she had back in that meeting room.

We’ve dragged two white loungers together and are lolling on them in our robes as we graze and drink a lovely crisp Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. I’m making sure she’s mainlining water, too, and she has an ice pack wrapped in a towel tucked under her poor, swollen pussy.

She’s bent over the grazing platter, industriously layering ingredients. ‘Here. Try this.’ She holds a morsel up to my mouth, feeding it to me when I open for her, her fingertips brushing my lips.

Thisis a perfect little package of pecorino drizzled with honey, layered with a segment of fig and wrapped in prosciutto. I groan with pleasure and she smiles at me, pleased.

‘Isn’t it incredible?’

‘Incredible,’ I murmur, looking at her mouth. She removed what was left of her makeup in the changing room, but her face still bears the glow, the flush, of all those orgasms. Her hair, now loose of its bouncy ponytail, cascades over her robed shoulders in big curls. She looks very young and terrifyingly beautiful, and I’m incapable of not staring.

‘I’m okay,’ she says, reading my stare as concern. ‘Honestly, I’m a pro.’

I frown. ‘Athena, regardless of what terminology you choose to use, that was a lot foranyone. You’re only human. Are you sure it wasn’t too much?’

She leans in for a kiss, and I oblige.

‘It was perfect. Perfect. And the best thing was that I never, ever saw it coming, you devious little bastard.’

I grin, childishly pleased that my diabolical plan worked. ‘Really?’

‘Really.’ She puts her hand on my thigh, stroking the hairs visible where my robe has fallen open. ‘And I was much more worried about you in there. How areyoudoing? How did you find it?’

It’s impossible to put into words how I found it. I had grave, grave misgivings beforehand, both that Athena would object to being blindsided in such depraved style and that I would be remotely capable of surviving watching her fuck other men in front of me. Contrary to the scenes some of her former employers delighted in roping her into—pun intended—this was very much something forher. A gift forher.

But amid the depravity and the sinning and the initial rude shock of seeing so many dicks and watching them plough intomyassistant, watching those men touchmyassistant, came a cocktail of emotions so heady that the only ones I could truly name were jealousy and arousal, the former most definitely igniting the latter.

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