Page 58 of Allure
“Tell us, estrellita, what you want from us, and we will always give it to you.”
Syra looked between both her men, desire and affection swirling in the space between them. She knew once they went down this road there was no going back, and honestly she didn’t think she could.
“I want you both, but I don’t think I can share you, Asli. At least not yet. Maybe down the line when we get into a flow, but for right now, I don’t care how hot last night was watching you with those women. I don’t want to share you.” She was being greedy, but she spent so much time hiding her feelings for Marco and being scared of them that she wasted years away from him and maybe even Asli. She wanted time to enjoy them and what they could be together.
“As you wish, little star.” He gently pushed her back, telling her to lay down on the kitchen island, while he gripped the back of her thighs and pulled her closer to the edge.
“What are you doing?” she whimpered as soon as she felt Asli’s tongue against her clit.
“Asli missed breakfast, estrellita.” Marco’s hand gripped her neck, guiding her head to hang off the kitchen island. “Let him enjoy you, while I feed you my cock.”
Syra walked with a little extra pep in her step as she headed toward Spencer’s. It was a small cafe where she was going to meet up with Delilah and Katrina. They’d all been busy pushing through to get Sirens up, especially in the wake of some legal troubles hitting Garrison Inc. The body they found in one of the buildings that had caught fire had been the missing woman, Christina Benson. What started out as an accidental fire quickly turned into means and motive.
There was more going on behind the scenes of Garrison Inc, but both Asli and Marco had been pretty closed-lipped about it. She didn’t take it to heart that they wouldn’t talk about what was going on. She knew when they could talk they would, so she didn’t worry about it. For now, her focus was on Sirens, and since what was going on at Garrison Inc hadn’t affected Sirens yet, she was going to take that as good news.
Syra’s phone buzzed in her pocket, and she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. She knew it wasn’t her friends, she had already texted them to let them know she was about five minutes away from Spencer’s. It was either Marco or Asli, texting to check in. Since that morning in Marco’s penthouse they had spent a lot of time reacquainting themselves with each other. She couldn’t remember the last time she spent more than an hour in her apartment since Orchard Tree. She usually spent her nights in Marco’s bed or Asli’s when he wanted her there. If she wasn’t with her men, she spent the night on Delilah’s couch because they had fallen asleep trying to get the questionnaire just right for Sirens.
Her smile dropped when she saw Joel’s name across her screen. The messages had come in back-to-back and she rolled her eyes. It had been too much to ask for the reprieve he had given her would last. She hadn’t heard from him in a while and thought he finally gave up on reaching out to her, though she still hadn’t received the signed divorce papers. She made a mental note to ask Delilah if she had found the name of the lawyer she knew because the one Syra had seemed to have up and disappeared.
“Hey, do I know you?” A man stepped into her walkway abruptly. She yelped and took a step back, hating that she got caught off-guard. She knew better than to be on her phone and walking at the same time.
“Um, no?” She looked at the man who looked more like a young college kid. He put his hands in his pockets, as if he was shy or embarrassed. The sound of snickering had her gaze moving past him to a group of what looked like teenagers standing by the corner.
She pressed her lips together, wondering if his friends dared him to ask her for her number and the best pick-up line he could come up with was, ‘hey, do I know you.’
“Are you sure? You look really familiar. Maybe I’ve seen you around.” His gaze dropped to her chest and lingered there a moment before sweeping back up to her face. He had lost some of his shyness and took a step closer.
Her hands tightened into fists. A scream built against the back of her throat. Something made her flight-or-fight instincts kick in, and she hated how deserted the sidewalk felt all of a sudden. Where the hell had everyone gone? The sun was shining and it was nice out. Shouldn’t there have been people on the street?
“I know what it is,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to her chest again. She had to fight the urge to cover herself up. She felt like a bug under a microscope the way he kept undressing her with her eyes as if he knew exactly what lay underneath her clothing. “I saw you on a TV screen,” he continued, and it hit her then that he had to have been talking about Christina Benson. Her name and face had been plastered all over the news when she went missing and again when her body had been found. The similarities between them had been noticeable and on a quick glance she could, maybe, depending on the day, see why someone would have thought it was her.
But Christina was dead.
The thought crept into her mind and with it came another possibility she didn’t want to think about. Marco, Asli, and her friends confirmed with her a million times that even if people saw her having sex at Orchard Tree, they wouldn’t approach her on the street about it. There was a code of conduct amongst those in the lifestyle that was built on mutual respect and privacy. She knew that was true for Raven and her club, but something about this guy was making it hard for her to believe that was the case here.
“Oh my God, I’m so glad I ran into you.” She heard Kat’s voice and turned just in time to wrap her up in a warm hug. “I didn’t expect you to be here. Who’s your friend?” She turned and gave the guy a once over before her gaze shot to the group standing by the corner.
The guy in front of her went back to looking shy and embarrassed. He mumbled something about a mistake and walked off to join his friends without so much as a backwards glance. They both waited until the group had left before they spoke at the same time and then started laughing.
“I saw you when I crossed the street. I didn’t think it was you at first because I thought you would have been at Spencer’s already and I was busy talking to that guy I met at Orchard.” She winked, a secret smile touching her lips.
She’d been the only one to gush about her night at Orchard, about the couple she found to play with and the guy who waited around to exchange numbers with her. They had been talking nonstop and were planning to meet up as soon as she had some downtime in her schedule.
“You guys have been talking a lot, huh?” Syra felt herself smile at her friend’s happiness. It was infectious.
“Yes, we have. He seems nice, but you know how that is through text messaging. You can’t really get a read on people. I want to meet up with him already to see if I still actually like him and it wasn’t just the idea of him. Anyway,” she waved her hand in front of her face, “what was that about with that guy?”
Syra shook her head, hooking her arm with Kat’s, and they started walking toward the cafe. “I don’t know. It started off harmlessly but got super creepy right away. He was like, ‘I know you. I’ve seen you on TV.’” Syra rolled her eyes. “It was just weird.”
She tried to brush what happened aside, but she couldn’t shake the unease she felt. Her skin crawled as if she had unwanted eyes on her body, touching her in a way she wasn’t comfortable with. She listened to Kat talking about the things she ordered for Sirens, but she kept gazing behind her, half-expecting someone to jump out and attack her.
Both their phones pinged at the same time and they laughed, thinking it was Delilah bitching at them for being late. Kat pulled her phone out. Syra wasn’t looking forward to seeing Joel’s name among her text messages.
“Oh no,” Kat whispered, and Syra’s stomach bottomed out. She held her breath, waiting for whatever bad news was on the other end of her screen. “There’s another missing woman.” Kat turned the screen toward her. “Lisa Mensa. I hate to say it, but this one looks a lot more like you than the other one did.”
Yes, she did. The resemblance was uncanny, though her eyes were blue and held a bit of softness to them, like she’d never felt the harshness that life could sometimes hold. Christina’s disappearance felt like a random tragedy, but Lisa’s disappearance felt like she was staring at a pattern. One that put her directly at the center because what were the odds that the two women who went missing—one already found dead—looked so much like her?
And was she next?
