Page 4 of Velvet Sin
My blood was humming after the second martini.Two drinks plus the copious pregaming we’d done at the hotel meant I was good and tipsy now.And irritated.Fuck this.I didn’t have to go off and, like, have sex in front of a bunch of people, but I could loosen up and enjoy the vibe a little.He had already taken so much from me, and he was no longer my problem.I’d be damned if I wasted another minute thinking about him.
I heard my friends cheering as I stepped away from the bar and started exploring the room a little.They meant well.I knew they did.Even if I resented being treated like their pet project now that the divorce was final.Like they were living out all their dreams through me—single, childless, with nobody to answer to.It was like they wanted to explore all of their what-ifs.I had to wonder if they planned on having fun tonight, not that it was my business either way, but it did feel sort of hypocritical to imagine keeping their secrets for them when their husbands kept Cameron’s for him.I couldn’t be mad at the guys if I looked the other way, could I?
“Hello there.”
At first, I assumed the tall, burly man was talking to somebody else.I’d noticed him before, though it would’ve been impossible not to since he stood head and shoulders above most of the room.
“Hi,” I offered, ready to move along.He loomed over me, making me feel very small and defenseless.This was exactly the kind of scenario I had dreaded ever since finding out the girls were bringing me here.
“You look lonely.”His smile made me want to put a lot of space between us.Immediately, if possible.“Somebody as hot as you shouldn’t be lonely.”
To my horror, he reached out like he wanted to stroke my hair.I was suddenly very sorry I had gone so extreme and dyed it blonde in an act of defiance the day I filed for divorce.Maybe if I were still a brunette, he wouldn’t have noticed me.
“What have you done to yourself?”Cameron’s horror when he first set eyes on me in the lawyer’s conference room made the hours I’d spent in a salon chair worth it.“What, you leave me and decide to turn into some bleach-blonde floozy?Could you at least be original?”
Of course, I could never do anything for myself because I needed a change.It always had to be about him somehow.If there was any hint of regret or second-guessing in my heart that morning, he managed to wipe it out with those three questions.
Now, though, regrets were starting to tug at the back of my mind as this stranger looked me over like I was a snack.Inching away, I wore an apologetic wince.“I’m all right.Thanks, anyway.”His smile twisted into something like disappointment as I made an escape, melting into the activity away from the dance floor if only to disappear.I didn’t belong here.I couldn’t loosen up enough to grind up on a stranger the way so many others were.
I was so busy questioning myself that I didn’t realize I had drawn close to a man and a woman wrapped up in each other, making out on a small sofa set in shadow along the wall.Making out was putting it mildly.She had a leg thrown across his lap, and his hand was all the way under her dress, rhythmically moving while she ground her hips and their tongues danced.She slid a hand down his chest, over his flat stomach before cupping his crotch.
My face was on fire.I had no business witnessing any of this.At the same time, they were doing it right out in the open, where anybody could see.Maybe they liked it.Maybe they wanted the attention.I looked around, my heart hammering, my breath strained, and I was shocked to find a man standing a few feet away, stroking himself as he watched.
Something hot unfurled in my core, like a snake slowly uncoiling and lifting its head.My mouth went dry, and my pussy went moist.I had to walk away, flushed and trembling.
I was in such a hurry that I walked face-first into a chest.A very broad, firm chest that made me stumble backward when I rebounded off it.
“Careful.”A deep voice, strange yet somehow comforting.Like everyone else, he wore a mask covering the top half of his face, but I could see his smile—full, luscious lips and a jawline sharp enough to give a girl a papercut.
Get it together.This was a situation in which a girl could make a big mistake, and I had already made more than enough to last me a lifetime.My next drink would be water, for sure.
“Sorry,” I mumbled while trying to find my footing, avoiding what, in the darkness, looked like chocolate brown eyes, ready to stare holes through me.
When I stepped aside, ready to run away after making a fool out of myself, he grunted a single word.“No.”It was stated as a fact.The hand he’d touched my arm with to steady me tightened into a strong, inescapable grip.
“Excuse me?”There were rules we had to agree to before we stepped foot beyond the front lobby, like no touching without consent.If someone said no, they meant it.Anybody breaking the rules left immediately and never returned.
Either somebody hadn’t clued him in, or he didn’t care.He wouldn’t let me go, too busy looking over the top of my head watching something.His already sharp jaw tightened, his eyes narrowed, and it did something to me.I wouldn’t have admitted it with a gun to my head, but what was already hot and wet started aching.
“You didn’t notice?”Finally, he released me long enough to turn me in place so I could watch the tall, intimidating man being led away.“He’s been following you around ever since you turned him down.”
No, I hadn’t.I was too busy living in my head, questioning myself, totally absorbed in my thoughts.
“You would lose your head if it weren’t attached to your neck… sometimes I worry about letting you leave the house by yourself, the way you space out occasionally.”Cameron’s voice was in my head, reminding me of another reason why I was an idiot to stay with him as long as I had.
“Thank you.”Though honestly, I didn’t know what I was thanking him for.He seemed kind, and maybe I needed a little kindness.There was something the girls didn’t understand, no matter how supportive they’d been.I might have been in the right, divorcing that cheating son of a bitch, but it wasn’t all champagne and celebration.I was one big, raw nerve, ready to throb painfully at the slightest touch.My whole identity and network of friends, everything I’d come to rely on over the past decade was tied to Cameron.
“Let me guess.This is your first time.”He wore a knowing smirk, the sort I had seen so many times from my now ex-husband.There was humor in it, but it was gentler.He might have been laughing, but he wasn’t laughing at me.
Still, my hackles rose, even as the hand still resting on my arm did unspeakable things to my pussy.“I should go,” I decided, which was probably an answer to his question.This was my first time here or in any club like this, and I was feeling too vulnerable to be safe.It had been too long since a man touched me when there wasn’t anything in it for him, I realized.No coercion, no lame attempt at getting me aroused long enough to part my legs so he could do his thing.And I had put up with it.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
“Hey.Come on, now,” the stranger grunted out when I took a hitching breath and blinked back stupid tears.“This is a place for fun.Not for tears.How could someone as beautiful as you cry in a place like this?You should be indulging.Enjoying yourself.”
“Like you said, this is my first time anywhere like this.”And why was I telling him?Maybe because he was a stranger.I would never see him again.No stakes.
It didn’t hurt that his eyes were like molten velvet, hypnotizing me, denying me the chance to look away.I was much too drunk for this.He was much too dangerous.
