Private Research: An Erotic Novella (15 page)

“Mina,” he gasped into my ear as his hips pistoned against mine in an increasingly frantic rhythm. “I could fuck you forever.”

The way he said my name made the vulgar words sound tender and meaningful. Like no other woman would have satisfied him.

“Do it,” I whispered, closing my mouth over the smooth skin of his neck before the movement of his body sent my head back against the wall again. At that moment, sex wasn’t about finding my way to orgasm. Instead, I enjoyed the power of this male body inside me and around me. Every sound he made, every hint that he was nearing his crisis, gave me intense pleasure that had little to do with my clitoris or any of the myriad nerve endings on fire in my body.

He stiffened, pushed up into me hard, my breasts flattened against his chest, and I wrapped myself even more tightly around him as he shuddered, hips still moving but more slowly now.

Finally, he pulled out and held me until I was steady on my feet, his forehead pressed against mine. “Thank you,” he whispered.

I let out a breathy laugh. He took my face in his hands and kissed me lightly on the lips.

“Thank you for finding Harridan House. For being here. For sharing your body with me. For everything.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.
You’re welcome
hardly seemed appropriate. But he didn’t seem to expect a response. Instead, he slid down my body, his mouth finding my right breast, closing over the nipple, and I sighed at the sweet sensation of that touch.

T
EN MINUTES OR
so later, we found our way back to the office.

Rouge glanced over us. A small smirk twisted her lips. “I see you’ve enjoyed your visit to our little club.” Two blindfolds lay prominently on the desk. We’d be leaving the way we’d arrived, in secrecy. “Will we be seeing you again?”

This unworldly moment, hidden underground in a secret sex club, this wasn’t part of regular life. Certainly not mine. But Sebastian? Was this what he wanted?

I looked over to him and found him watching me. Then he turned back to Rouge decisively. “Yes.”

“Excellent,” Rouge said. “I’ll be in touch. Thomas will see you home.” She rounded the desk and picked up the blindfolds. I watched her tie the cloth over Sebastian’s eyes first. Watching her touch him emphasized clearly that this was the beginning of the end. I’d been staying at Sebastian’s for maybe six weeks, but it felt like far more. Like an eternity, and I had six weeks before I was scheduled to go home. But now he was planning to return to Harridan House. And he wouldn’t just be an observer.

Which . . . unsettled me.

I didn’t have any sort of claim over him, nor did I want one, but it did mean that our little affair might end earlier than I had anticipated.

Rouge turned to me. I was shorter than her, even in my heels, so she didn’t need to reach up like she had with Sebastian. The cool silk settled over my eyes, turning the world dark, and then I felt her fingers brushing against my hair, the sensitive skin of my scalp, as she tied it firmly. Her fingers brushed down over my neck, my arm, and then her touch and her scent were gone.

Chapter Thirteen

B
A
CK AT
S
EBASTIAN’S
apartment, we sat on the sofa and stared at each other.

“So that was . . . interesting,” I said with a nervous laugh.

Sebastian stared at me. “Compelling, rather. And to think it’s been here all these years. Even my grandfather didn’t know.”

“Perhaps it was revived only recently.” But even as I suggested it, I knew it didn’t entirely make sense because that would have meant that people knew the history and had decided, all these years later, to begin the club anew.

“Perhaps,” Sebastian said, noncommittal.

“Not that it exists even now,” I said, opting for a more lighthearted approach. We couldn’t speak of the place on pain of death, at least, that was the gist of Rouge’s unspoken threat.

“All these years the conspiracy theorists worried about Bilderberg . . . And forget deals forged over a golf course. Did you see who was there tonight?”

I tried to remember, but all I saw was a sea of masked faces. Would I have recognized anyone even if their faces were as bare as their naked bodies? I shook my head.

“These are the power brokers, Mina.” His eyes were alight with excitement, and I knew that the idea turned him on as much as the sexual acts we had witnessed. “It isn’t the same as the club grandfather frequented. This isn’t just the playground of the bored and aimless nobleman. Not by a long shot. No wonder it’s so secretive. No wonder we were brought into the fold.”

Because it was easier to control us and to control what information was released.

“Amazing that it managed to remain underground all these years.”

“Amazing,” I repeated. But inside, I felt unsettled. Sebastian was thrilled, but I was confused, unsure of who I was and what I was doing. Harridan House had been like a mirror in a fun house, reflecting my past actions but distorted, writ large. It was one thing to read about a place like that but another entirely to experience it. To have sex in a changing room on the premises.

The funk stayed with me late into the next day. And when, just after dinner, Sebastian announced, “The doctor is coming tomorrow night,” I was painfully aware of the schism.

This was real. Sebastian was joining, taking the next step. “Oh,” I said simply.

“What? Do you have a fear of needles?”

I stared at him, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

“I told Rouge that we were joining.” He emphasized the word
we.

“But I’m not.” I couldn’t go back there. If I did, I’d lose any sense of who I was. It would be a mistake. A mistake like all the other mistakes I’d made in the past two years. Like Sebastian was a mistake. How could I have thought him a sign that my life was changing again, turning back? I struggled for something else to say. “I could never afford it.”

“Mina, I want you on this journey with me. I’m willing to pay for that. I’m single. I don’t have outrageous expenses. I can afford this.”

He was going to pay tens of thousands of dollars for us each to belong to a sex club. I wouldn’t even be here more than a few weeks. It was hedonistic and wrong.

I shook my head, tension rising inside me, making it difficult for me to stay in one place, sit still in that chair. I’d put myself in a terrible situation. Of course Sebastian thought I’d be up to join him in this. I hadn’t given him any other impression. I’d fucked when he wanted to fuck. Dropped to my knees and sucked him off at his slightest command. I was malleable and easy.

He studied me silently. I pressed my lips together hard, struggling not to say all the things pressed up against my mouth. Not to accuse him of still ruining my life.

“It’s not right.” But I knew I shouldn’t have spoken the minute I did.

“What’s not right? You had fun tonight. I saw you. You were as turned on as I was.”

“It’s sybaritic. Debauched.”

He frowned. “There’s nothing wrong with sex between consenting adults. Nothing wrong with the sex we have. It’s not like we have to have sex with other people.”

I stood. Looked around the room. My things were everywhere, but I needed to grab it all and get away. I started for my backpack and my research first. But I’d accumulated so much stuff I’d need another suitcase to take it all home.

“What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

He was next to me, his hand on my arm. I shrugged it off.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s the middle of the night. There’s nowhere to go.”

“I don’t care. I can’t stay here. Ever since I met you, everything’s been fucked up.”

That shut him up, and I pushed my stuff into bags as fast as I could. Everything
had
been fucked up.

“What do you mean?” he said finally, the words slow, his tone serious.

Oh God, he wanted me to explain. Of course he did. He’d been pushing for this for weeks. What makes Mina tick? What made Mina turn from naive girl he wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole into a woman who would want a one-night stand? I was a mystery to him the way Harridan House was. A temporary obsession.

Well, fuck him and his obsessions. I stalked into the bedroom, pulling the few items I had from the drawer he’d cleared for me. He followed me, filling the room with his overwhelming presence, which angered me more.

“I mean I’m going to go to a hotel. Or a hostel or something. I can’t stay here, and I can’t go to that club again.”

“Forget the club,” he said. “This isn’t just about that. What did you mean?”

I filled my duffel with clothes and dragged it out of the room to the door, depositing it next to my stuffed backpack and the overflowing shopping bag.

“Be reasonable. If you still want to leave in the morning that’s one thing, but you can’t leave now. Mina, talk to me.”

I looked for my purse, which had my cell phone inside. I needed to find a place to stay, but maybe the doorman at the desk downstairs could help with that. I didn’t dare look at Sebastian as I swung my backpack over my arm.

“Mina!” And then silence.

I lifted the shopping bag, holding it on my hip with one hand because it was very likely to break under the weight if I tried to use the handles.

“Mina, take your clothes off.”

Even through my fury, I heard those words and that commanding tone of voice, and they made me stop in place.

“What did you say?” I asked slowly, turning to face him, trying to direct my fury to this but stunned and failing. Instead, it was all caught inside me. I was trembling and hot. And wanting him.

“Even with you going nuts, I want to fuck you. Maybe I want to fuck you more.”

“Are you saying I’m crazy?” I dropped the shopping bag. Heard it rip with an internal wince.

“I meant you are acting crazy right now.” He sighed, running his hand through his hair in a gesture I knew so well. “You aren’t going anywhere and you know it. So take your clothes off and let me fuck you.” Stupidly, unreasonably, I wanted to do that. Give in to his desires and forget who I was. So much easier. He stepped closer to me. “The way you want. Unashamed of wanting it.”

Unashamed.

I was ashamed. The girl who grew up on Austen and Brontë, on Burney and Gaskell, on almost puritanical values despite living in a relatively secular household. I’d spent most of my life obsessed with the nineteenth century and its social mores. Not that it had stopped me from having sex at twenty, but I’d still judged everything.

I stood there, practically shaking with the intensity of my emotions, and yet, I couldn’t speak. All the anger, the frustration, self-loathing, and despair were trapped inside.

There was that night after Sebastian had graduated that I’d had my first one-night stand, a political-science grad student who’d been more than happy to come back to my apartment. I’d enjoyed the look on Tanya’s face when we’d strutted past her across the living room, the guy’s hands all over my body. I hadn’t so much enjoyed the next morning. Staring at myself in the mirror, not knowing who I was.

From that moment on, I was unmoored and desperately trying to find my way. Men seemed to sense that I was open to suggestion, and they flocked to me. Knowing I could attract them, attract nearly anyone I wanted but the one person who was no longer in the vicinity, I started taking care of my appearance, molding myself into some other version of Mina—one I didn’t know. The first time I plucked my eyebrows was nearly as shocking as sex because the face that stared back at me in that immovable mirror looked different from before. Each time I went out with a new guy, it was as if there would be answers there, some clue to who I was or should be. And yet . . . it was exactly the reverse.

I’d lost myself in increments until the day I’d woken up in some stranger’s bed, hungover, just beginning to recall how bad sex had actually been as I stared blearily at the number on my phone. My advisor. Who wanted to know why I’d missed our appointment.

Which wasn’t the only important thing I’d missed.

I’d thought that my lowest point.

Now here I was, fucking Sebastian in a sex club’s changing room, watching other people have sex and gratify their deviant sexual desires. The little affair that I’d decided would be a fitting end to my tangent was not over. Maybe the tangent was not over.

I was making another mistake.

“Stop thinking,” he demanded, and he grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him. “Or tell me.”

“Tell you what?” I bit the words out, glaring at him.

He stared at me hard. Then he let go of me, pulled his loosened tie free of his collar. He took my wrist and lifted it over my head.

“What are you doing?” I asked, panicked, and yet I didn’t move, let him slide the backpack off my shoulder and take my other wrist in his hand.

“What do you think I’m doing?”

He was tying me up.

“Fuck you,” I whispered. But something flickered inside me. I was both terrified and soothed. I couldn’t leave, even if I wanted to.

“What the hell is the point of this?” I looked up at the ceiling, teeth chattering. “You think
I’m
insane?”

My eyes stung with tears.

He lifted me in his arms and carried me into the bedroom, and with each step he took, my tears came harder. He laid me on the bed and stretched out next to me.

“Mina, what happened?” He pulled me into his arms.

“You.
You
happened,” I said bitterly, kicking at him. He shifted to rest his leg over mine and, finally, fully trapped, I burst into tears.

Then I told him. Every embarrassing little detail of my dark ages, from the very first night to the men I barely remembered, to the self-disgust I felt. Through it all, he stroked my hair, my cheek–listened without saying a word. When I was done, he held me in silence. I didn’t know what he thought of it, but I almost didn’t care. The worst he could do was think I was crazy, as he had said earlier. And so what if he did? I was leaving anyway. He’d wanted to know what was inside my twisted little brain, and now he knew. He knew I blamed him.

“Mina,” he said finally, “I feel like I should apologize again, but I can’t. We’re not static people. We evolve, become more the people we
want
to be. We can’t know what would have happened, or if
we
would have happened. So maybe the pendulum swung for you a little too far for comfort, but here you are now, and you’re perfect.”

“Perfectly broken,” I returned sullenly. “I have no ideals anymore.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” he said, his hands moving to my shoulders, pushing me away so that he could look me in the face. “That’s called growing up. Maybe those weren’t the right ideals to have.”

I blinked.

With a sigh, he untied my hands.

“Come on, let’s get ready for bed and get some sleep. We can talk about this in the morning.”

I followed him into the bathroom, where I’d forgotten to pack my toiletries. Silently, I brushed my teeth and washed my face. Then I stripped down to my tank top and underwear and climbed into the bed. As I huddled on the far edge, his words ricocheted through my head. Maybe he was right. Right about all of it.

Maybe it was time to own my actions.

I
WOKE TO
bright daylight sneaking through the cracks in the draperies. I stretched and snuggled into the mattress, holding tight to the lingering pleasure of sleep. The sound of the shower turning off, the flow of water through the pipes shifting, and Sebastian’s footsteps in the bathroom brought me full out of dream into consciousness.

I turned my head into the pillow and squeezed my face against the memory of all that had happened the night before. But I hadn’t forgotten the lesson learned:
time to own my actions.
And not just in a “deny and return to some golden era of the past” sort of way.

I was a twenty-six-year-old woman forging a life for herself. I could handle this. I didn’t need to run away.

So what did I
really
want?

To stay here with Sebastian until I had to return to the States? Accept the unconditional enjoyment of each other’s bodies?

Yes.

Okay then. What about the rest? What about his membership in Harridan House and the one he wanted to get me?

It was his choice what he did with his money, where he ventured, whom he fucked. Though knowing he was at Harridan House, walking through those deep underground corridors, would have a potential impact on my physical relationship with him. I couldn’t imagine being okay with that. Not for a week. Not for a month or a summer.

So would I join him?

Jealousy was not a good enough reason to do so.

So what was?

Wait. Was I looking for reasons to accept his offer now? Did I
want
to go back to Harridan House?

I felt the air shift in the room before he even made any noises, like opening the dresser drawer or draping his towel on the other edge of the bed.

I flipped over in bed to face him and lifted myself up on one arm. He was beautiful in the thin light, that strong, tall, naked body. I loved that body. I wanted to kiss it, lick it, suck it, fuck it.

I wanted to do that here in his flat or out on the streets of London. Or in some decadent club that allowed me to be a voyeur to all the daring sexual acts in which I didn’t
actually
want to engage. And he’d said we didn’t have to sleep with other people. Maybe, for these last few weeks of my time in London, he’d be satisfied with that.