Page 63 of The Broker

Her gaze landed on the guy next to me and his hand disappearing up his partner’s skirt, and it only took a fraction of a second for her to deduce what had happened. Her focus rose so she could exchange a look with me.

Her eyebrows lifted, right along with the corner of her mouth, and she seemed to be saying the same thing I was thinking.

Good for her . . . but too soon.

My chest swelled as I filled my lungs with a deep breath. I’d thought we had nothing in common, but the more time I spent with her, the more I realized I might be wrong.

Fucking hell.

What if we were the same person, and the only difference was we were at different places in our lives?

SEVENTEEN

Noah

I didn’t want to think about it.

Instead, I turned my attention back to the couple on stage. Travis had hold of Lilith’s head, sawing his dick back and forth, and pumping deep into her mouth. Although her eyes were closed, she seemed to be enjoying it as much as he was.

But the blowjob was quick.

He’d been mostly hard before it had started, and a few strokes was all it took to get him the rest of the way there. Her eyes popped open with surprise when he abruptly retreated. His underwear was pulled back in place, although his dick tented the front, and his feet carried him swiftly to the other end of the bench.

She was bent over it, and, like him, wearing only a pair of underwear, but he looked at the lace now like it offended him. His strong hands clamped down on the pale blue fabric covering her ass, and then he jerked them in opposite directions.

In one swift move, he tore the fabric apart. Threads ripped, the lace shredded, but he continued to pull and stretch until the panties were utterly destroyed. The ruined lace fluttered down her legs.

It was an impressive display of aggression, and he was putting on a show, after all, but I got the feeling that wasn’t his true motivation for doing it.

“Travis, fuck,” she muttered under her breath, trying not to sound annoyed.

Thiswas why he’d done it. He responded to her irritation with a sharp crack of his palm against her newly bare ass. “Ssh.” He spanked her other cheek, this one harder than the last, and then smoothed his palm over the skin. “They were in my way. We don’t want that, do we?”

He spanked her again, and the clap of skin hitting skin echoed in the room. The force behind it was more punishing than I would have expected... as was her response. Her eyes lidded with desire and her lips parted to sip in air. All her irritation was forgotten.

“No,” she murmured. “No, we don’t.”

Christ, she’d said it in the same tone I was sure she used when she begged for something.

He doled out the blows with the same precision he’d used with the crop. Fast, light swats, punctuated with sharp, biting slaps that made her skin flush red. I had to control my breathing so it didn’t go ragged, because this wasn’t supposed to be my first rodeo. I’d seen them perform before.

So why the fuck did it have such a strong effect on me?

I was already sweating inside my suit, and the heat in the room cranked up another fifty degrees when he jerked his underwear down across his thighs and buried himself balls-deep inside her. There’d been no warning, and she gasped with surprise, but a strangled moan came right on its heels when he began to move.

He gripped her hip with one hand, the clasps of her handcuffs in the other, and gave her a hard thrust. The force of itmade her entire body jolt from the impact. Then, he fucked her like he couldn’t care less if she enjoyed it.

But I knew the opposite was true, that every beat of this scene had been scripted with her pleasure in mind.

Clay didn’t share the stage with them, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t participating.

When he’d completed the pieces for my friends’ dungeon in New York, I’d gone to his workshop in his house to evaluate the finished products. I’d taken photos before they were boxed up, so we’d know if any damage occurred during shipping.

There’d been a journal open on one of the side tables with sketches of different pieces and lists of materials, but in the margins, he’d scribbledotherkinds of notes. I tried not to be nosy, but his shorthand wasn’t hard to decipher. There were detailed plans for scenes, some even included timelines.

He’d been distracted when I’d caught a glance, and because he was so private, I pretended I hadn’t seen a thing. But that journal had been fucking fascinating, and I wondered if he planned all aspects of his life, even his moments with Travis and Lilith.

It was entirely possible this evening’s show was being performed under his direction.

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