PROLOGUE
CAROLINE
My thighs quiverwith the effort of staying open, even as the strong, calloused fingers of the man between them dance across my skin. His snakeskin mask sits askew on his nose, obscuring most of his face except the upturned nose holding it and the eyes, the blue of the bottom of a pool in your memories. His breath gently brushes across the exposed, delicate skin of my sopping wet pussy, and I shudder, the ties on my wrists restraining the movement.
Next to him, his brother, a man of equal height but a more barrel-chested build, pulls off his shirt to reveal a tattoo on one pec—a small clover with a dagger through it. He sees me notice it and smiles a slow, slippery smile, showing me his almost perfect teeth, save for the one crooked one on the bottom. I wouldn’t notice except that it’s his only imperfection. Everything else about him is flawless, from his physique to his tousled brown curls, his eyelashes curling out against his black crow mask, his gray-blue eyes deep set beneath the black of it. The sexuality he exudes clashes against the long beak of the crow, and his smile seems somehow sinister underneath it.
When he crashes his mouth against mine—tilting his head so the crow’s beak curves along my cheek—as his brother’s mouth finally begins to explore my slit, I bite his bottom lip hard, a gasp escaping from me. I don’t know where it came from.
In fact, I don’t know what’s gotten into me at all. Everything that’s transpired to get me here, tied to a bed while three strange men ravish me, feels like I’m watching it happen to someone else.
I was walking down the street with a friend from college, Mitch, letting him hold my hand and wrap his arm around my shoulders, letting him buy me a slice of pizza, when we decided to go into a bar I’d been to a couple of times before, a place called The Crazy Susan,a name I always thought was ridiculous.
Mitch had seemed overly excited to get me drunk. When I mentioned the bar, he got this glint in his eye and started to walk faster, and I could see where his mind was, could see the gears turning as he decided right then that if I drank, he could get laid.
And as we sat at the bar, he talked about a party he’s going to next week that he wanted me to go to with him, and I sucked olive after olive off a toothpick and onto my tongue, letting the brine sit in my mouth.
Now, I can still taste that brine as the masked man, his black, silk beak against my cheek, doesn’t fight as I bite his lip, doesn’t pull back. He only encases my jaw in his hands, holding my face up to him as he leans over me, still standing, and bites me back before he slips his tongue into my mouth. Our tongues play a game, swirling around each other, and soon my mouth tastes like his, the memory of Mitch long gone as this man I don’t know at all takes over all the spots left open.
From between my legs, the snake-masked man pushes my legs apart and murmurs, “Stay open for me,” in an Irish accent that makes my walls clench. The third man appears, his eyes flecked with green, and holds my legs open for his brother, his hands firm against my thighs. His fingertips dig into me, and my chest heaves with anticipation as his brother’s nose rubs against the crease of my thigh, already soaked in my juices.
“Wait,” I manage to croak, peeling my face away from the passionate kiss. “Please, let me see your face.”
He chuckles, and I get the irony of me asking to see his facenow, after all three of them have already been fucking me for what feels like hours. After I’m already full of their cum.
He peels the snake mask from his face and says, “My name’s Kellan.” I feel a sense of belonging as I look into his eyes. Then he winks and adds, “Feel free to scream it,” before plunging his tongue into my center. As his tongue goes to work pumping in and out of me and licking flat against my slit, I breathe, “Oh God,” and he murmurs, “That works too.” My mind blank with desire, I replay how I got here, the one choice that changed everything.
Mitch had said something not unlike a million things we’d said to each other before. I was bored, but I didn’t know it. I thought this was life, that this was normal conversation with people. I got up to use the restroom and saw a couple disappearing into a room I had never noticed. It was just a second, a flash of silver and a hand on a lower back, and then they were gone. I looked back at Mitch to see if he had noticed, but he held his palms up as if to askwhat?
I think I knew it would change my life. The dull chatter of the dive bar seemed to slow, and the lights somehow got brighteraround the door, the rest of the room darkening behind me, as my hand stretched out for the door.
When I pushed it open, I was facing a purple curtain. The door closed behind me swiftly, and as my hands struggled endlessly with the fabric, as though there would never be anything behind it, a hand wrapped around my wrist and I was pulled inside a room with thumping music, flowing fabric, and smoke. The bouncer let go of my hand, gave me a lazy glance down and up, and said, “You can stay. Your date can’t come.”
I didn’t know how he knew I had a date or why I was allowed in, but I didn’t turn around.
Kellan’s tongue continues to lap at my slit until he wraps his mouth around my clit and lets his tongue massage it, and I feel myself start to climb that mountain of orgasm. Two fingers slide into me; the man holding my knees open is pumping into me, his hand hooked. He hits my G-spot religiously, and I gasp out, “Stop, please! I’m going to pee!”
Kellan laughs against my clit, a light puff of air that makes me shiver, and the man kissing me slips his crow mask to the top of his head. His cheekbones sit high, almost against his eyes. He’s all angles, and he somehow looks even more sinister with the mask off. “You’re not going to pee,” he says firmly as his hand moves toward my breast. He cups all of it in one hand, and it’s strangely soothing to feel my nipple harden in the middle of his palm.
I whisper, “It feels like it,” my eyes searching his even as my head tips back in ecstasy and the third man’s fingers continue to fuck me closer and closer to an orgasm.
“Even if you did, we wouldn’t care,” he mumbles, sinking to his knees to take my nipple into his mouth. Around the small, hardened mound, he says, “Let go.” I feel exposed in every possible meaning of the word, and somehow it’s also the most delicious I’ve ever felt. I could cry. I could scream.
Instead, I give in. My wrists pull against the silk ties as my whole body tenses with the wave crashing through me and out my mouth in a scream that doesn’t sound like me.
“Scream, princess. Let it go,” the man at my breast murmurs.
The man pumping his fingers in and out of me leans over to kiss me. His mouth is saltier than the other man’s, his kiss gentler, like we’ve kissed a hundred times before. His fingers slow as my walls tighten around his knuckles, and he pulls my wetness out of me, letting it soak the bed beneath me.
Ecstasy takes over as the sensation of an orgasm and peeing both happen at once. Kellan’s mouth clamps over my hole, licking as quickly as he can, like I’m nourishing him with my cream, and then something changes.
In the haze of my lust and satisfaction, I miss the shadow looming behind the beige chiffon that separates us from the club scene.
But the men notice. They each bristle with alertness like a dog at the ring of a doorbell. The shadow grows, and their bodies tense over my nipples and my pussy. The hush is solid, a thing I can feel.
As the shadow’s hand begins to move, the men spring into action. Everything is fast around me, and I’m helpless, watching it like a movie even as my body undulates with the satisfaction ripping through me.
The man at my knees, still masked, is already pulling out a knife—did he have a knife this whole time?—and the man who was sucking on my nipples is pulling on the shadow while Kellan is prepared to grab it from behind. Tangled in sheets, a clearer picture of a man emerges—someone with green eyes and a snarl for a mouth.