Audacity (Seraph)

‘If you want me to stop, you really are going about it the right way,’ Gabriel murmurs against my clit.

I pant against the smooth white sheets of our discreet bedroom in Claridges, willing myself to stop wriggling. This is absolutely not the type of establishment to rent rooms out by the hour, but it turns out it absolutely is open to accommodating local businessmen who choose to make a permanent standing room reservation.

All the more convenient for said businessmen to get their assistants naked and begging in their lunch hour.

I send up a mental prayer of thanks to the efficient George even as I grit my teeth with frustration, my hands flexing uselessly in their silk ties. ‘I didn’t know former priests could also be sadists.’

A little laugh against the skin of my thigh. ‘Oh, they absolutely can. And they’re definitely masters of being masochists, which is why I’m not balls-deep inside you already, sweetheart.’ He uses two fingers to part the lips of my pussy so fully that even the warm whisper of his breath on my flesh risks sending me over the edge. ‘Now tell me just one of your favourite memories and I’ll let you come, and all this misery will be over.’

Ever since I ambushed him in his prayer room last week, something has flipped. It’s as though he’s let himself go willingly to the dark side with me. As though he’s yielded to that inexorable downward pull I represent towards a dark underworld that, in his previous life, represented mainly a threat to his parishioners.

What that has meant is that he’s started to take the lead more in our sexual relations. Whether it’s because he finally understands that I’m giving him permission or because he’s finally given himself permission, I’m unsure.

Neither am I complaining.

Except for now, when this orgasm is as alluring and as inaccessible as the mirage of an oasis in the desert.

He has me naked and trussed up, spread eagle style, on an oak four-poster in Claridges. Our new arrangement lessens the risk of us being caught at work and allows us to get far more adventurous (though I’d argue that sex on a wooden prie-dieu was pretty enterprising of us both). He’s naked too, a beautifully wrought arrangement of tanned skin and hard muscle and dark hair crouching over me as he toys shamelessly, relentlessly with my body.

I need him to let me come, and then I need him to lay all that delicious weight over me and crush me as he fucks my brains out. He, however, has other ideas. He’s the seasoned CIA operative to my detainee, only his favoured intelligence-harvesting technique is orgasm denial.

‘I’ve signed NDAs,’ I say weakly.

‘Don’t care. I don’t need names, just generalisations.’ He slides a single finger so slowly, so carefully, inside my body, and it’s nowhere fucking near enough, and I just want to howl. ‘I’m still plumbing the depths of you, Athena, and I feel like I haven’t even started.’

He’s not talking about the depths his finger is exploring in such a torturously leisured way. He’s talking about the depths of me and my sex drive and my tolerance for depravity. And I get it, because I know he feels on the back foot with me. I know he feels out of his depth, like the sex we’ve had so far has been firmly in the shallows.

I won’t admit it to him, but a part of me feels conflicted. I was pretty open with him at that interview dinner, but I understand that I’ve operated in environments he can’t even dream of. He knows I’m dirty, but he has no idea, really, of the things I’ve done over these past few years while with Seraph. Of the kinds of men I’ve been with. And there’s some small, dark part of me that doesn’t want this former man of the cloth judging me for that.

It’s as though he can read my mind. ‘I want to go places with you, if that’s what you want. I want us to have some fun with this. I just—I’m still trying to map you.’

In the end, it’s this sweetness, this vulnerability, that hits the spot. A beautiful man taking the time to map out the lush kingdom of a woman’s desires is the dream, and Gabriel is offering to chart the heady highs of my dreams and the verdant valleys of my desires and, possibly, even the caves where my kinkiest fantasies lie—caves that may from the outside look dank and moss-laden and forbidding but are, when an intrepid explorer shines a light on them, beautiful inside.

Incandescent, even.

Because when my desires are illuminated, they cease to be dark caves and instead become softly radiant rose quartz formations, and milky selenite columns, and blood-like garnet, and swirling emerald malachite, and even amethyst geodes, their violet reflections as richly pigmented as light filtered through stained glass.

I look along my body at my intrepid explorer, at the plumpness of his lower lip and the quiet intensity in his eyes, at the manly heft of his shoulders between my legs, and then I let my head flop back down onto the pillow he’s thoughtfully stuffed behind me.

‘There are so many.’

‘Give me one that plays on a loop in your head.’

I sigh. ‘Once on my birthday, my boss at the time wanted to do something special for me.’ It was my first boss, a kinky fucker who worked me hard.

‘Go on.’

‘He stripped me naked and blindfolded me and put a big red bow around my neck and tied me to a high stool—a bit like the one you used in that hotel suite—and he invited some of his mates and business associates into his office at lunchtime.’ I pause, remembering how confronting and fucked up and indescribably arousing it was. ‘Um, he had a table next to me covered in loads of sex toys and a sandwich board, like the ones you see in hotel lobbies telling you where your conference is. It said in big letters IT’S MY BIRTHDAY. MAKE ME COME.’

Silence. Gabriel shifts on the bed, his finger flexing inside me. ‘Jesus Christ, love. And they did?’

I give a little laugh. ‘They certainly did.’

The memory of that day crashes over me, a wave of disbelief and wonder at the things my boss let them do to me—the things I let them do to me. It has my desperate arousal ratcheting up impossibly further. I feel as though every inch of my skin is on fire. I ache everywhere. I want Gabriel to make me come, but if he could find ten friends to help him then that would be excellent.

‘And you were okay with that? Weren’t you scared? Did they treat you well?’ There’s concern in his voice, but the gruffness I hear tells me this is turning him on far more than he’d like it to.

‘I was terrified at the start,’ I admit. ‘I was worried it would be really overwhelming. And it was, obviously. But I was also so aroused—I was whipped up into this whirlwind of anticipation, and it was just so incredible. I really trusted my boss, and he was engineering the whole situation, and they all knew my safeword, so… yeah. That’s one of my dirty little secrets. Best birthday ever.’

It really was. The fact of being naked and spread open for these powerful men to play with in the middle of the working day, to be the only person they were focused on, to be a body with a set of holes that they were allowed to tease and fuck with all manner of silicone toys so that I came over and over and over…

That was a cave of amethyst and labradorite and quartz, the subspace that followed as blankly, blissfully tranquil as the ocean bed.

Apparently, I’m not the only one affected by my sordid little story, because he extricates his finger and crawls up my body, laying his weight on me. His latex-sheathed dick jerks between us, and the way he’s pressing down on my pelvic bone is really fucking unhelpful, but it’s his face that’s the most distracting thing of all.

Those black-lashed eyes.

That plump lower lip.

I may be the whore in this room, but he looks like sin.

‘So you loved it,’ he mutters, his gaze dancing over my face.

‘Mmm-hmm.’

‘Ever been gang-banged?’

‘Yep.’

He closes his eyes for a brief moment as if drawing strength from some inner well before fixing them on my mouth. ‘Let me guess. You loved that, too.’

‘I adored every second of it,’ I whisper.

‘Clearly, I need to up my game.’ He braces on one arm and reaches between us so he can position his dick at my entrance. The feel of that bluntness poised against me has me inhaling shakily. ‘They warned me, you know. Your previous employers. It’s in your references, how much you love dick.’

He pushes inside me desperately, without finesse, as if he won’t survive a single second more outside my body. His groan is so low, so male, and the sensation of him filling me up as I lie here, spreadeagled and helpless on this bed, has me on a precipice. I love that he’s compiling his filthy mental dossier on me. I love that each new insight may be making him bolder, braver, giving him more ideas for how to profane me.

I want him to feel like he has carte blanche to do with me as he pleases. Because yes, I love dick. There is no denying that.

He bottoms out in me, and there’s a moment where we simply stare at each other. Restraints aside, this is pretty vanilla fucking, especially in light of the story I just told him, but nothing about the way he lowers his mouth to mine and kisses me feels vanilla. I suppose it’s because we’re both so hopelessly aroused by the image I’ve branded onto both of our brains, but having his tongue in my mouth and his dick in my pussy feels like exactly the right amount of overwhelm.

Forget blindfolds and faceless guys and silicone toys: for some unknown reason, Gabriel Sullivan is hitting every spot in this moment, in this luxurious, light-filled hotel room.

He releases my mouth and braces on his forearms so he can start to move inside me, every thick stroke of him teasing me higher, our eyes locked. But with my legs outstretched like this, I can’t tilt my pelvis enough to get the friction I so desperately need against my clit, and I let out an involuntary squeak of frustration. He halts immediately, his dick pulsing inside me.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s nothing—I…’ I trail off. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to forget quite how much these men are paying for the privilege of fucking me. For six figures a month I can suck it up and forgo the occasional orgasm.

‘Tell me.’ He puts his weight onto one arm so he can slide a hand over my breast, and I shiver.

‘We’re all good. I promise.’

His look tells me he’s not buying it, but he pulls out slowly and slams back in, and I grimace as I try and fail to roll my hips. I’m so turned on that it’s impossible to focus on anything else but my shimmering, elusive orgasm.

He stops again immediately, looking between our bodies.

‘You can’t come like this.’

‘I can come on my back,’ I admit, ‘just not with my legs stretched out like this.’

‘Fuck, I’m so, so sorry.’ He looks utterly horrified, and I hasten to reassure him.

‘Gabriel, I’m your employee. This is precisely what you’re paying me for. This is about you, not me.’

With a grimace that tells me what he thinks of that comment, he reaches between us to secure the condom and pulls out of me, scooting down the bed and untying the silk ties with rapid tugs. Once both of my legs are free, he turns to crawl over me again. I bend my legs luxuriously, the soles of my feet sliding over the cotton sateen of the sheets, and he snags one ankle, cuffing it before sliding his hand up my calf. My thigh.

He opens his mouth, hesitating before speaking. ‘You are, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever had the privilege of being inside. You’re probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, in fact. I look at you naked and I know, I just know, that you were created in the likeness of God Himself. Every single hair on your head is astonishing. So you honestly think I could fuck you without caring whether you’re enjoying yourself?’

I stare at him wordlessly, unclear as to why my eyes are beginning to sting. His face is so full of intent. He’s beseeching me to hear him, and I do, and God knows, my self-confidence is pretty high, so why hearing those words from his lips feels like the most moving kind of benediction I have no idea. Perhaps it’s that, by bringing his beliefs into it, he’s elevating this far beyond what it is—great, if transactional, sex. He’s elevating me beyond being a genetically blessed woman who’s excellent at what she does into some divinely blessed creature.

‘Forget the money, Athena. Making you feel good—seeing you come—is so intrinsic to this whole thing we’re doing that I have no earthly idea where your pleasure ends and mine begins. None at all.’

He releases my leg and lowers himself so he’s ranged back above me. As he slides back in, I fold my legs up further and tilt my hips so my greedy clit can rub against his pelvis. I simultaneously love how powerless the restraints make me feel while wishing fervently that my hands were free to roam through his hair. To tug his face down to meet mine. To dig into his arse and push him even deeper inside me.

At least he doesn’t deprive me of his mouth. He dips his dark head again, and I open for him, savouring the feeling of his tongue entangling with mine as he fucks me, slow and deep. Frantic though we both are to come, he takes his time, and I force myself to take mine too, to drink in every last drop of this intensity.

For some reason, the way he’s fucking me feels filthy. It’s the leisurely drives of his hips, the rough grind of his pelvic bone against my thrumming clit and his hair-dusted pecs against my nipples, the sensual laps of his tongue. As the pleasure ratchets up and up inside my body, I abandon myself to it, the heel of my foot digging into his arse cheek as his kisses swallow up my cries and mine engulf his grunts.

Why is it that moaning into another person’s mouth is so unspeakably hot? Maybe it’s knowing that they’re greedily taking all your noises for themselves. These sounds I’m making are meant only for him, after all.

He breaks away enough to whisper brokenly, ‘I fucking love that you love dick. God, the things I want to do to you. Every time I think there’s a limit, you and your filthy little fantasies remind me there isn’t.’

My body is a whirlwind now, a maelstrom of sensation far too powerful to withstand. A storm rages inside me, sweeping through me, rendering me incapable of anything other than riding it out until it’s wrung me dry. I usually close my eyes when I come—shutting off my sight heightens my other senses, of course—but I can’t look away from his hooded eyes and lust-clenched jaw. He’s my co-conspirator as much my captain in this moment, as helpless to withstand this as I am.

The alchemy, the sorcery, our bodies are weaving together has brought this good man metaphorically to his knees, and I hope it feels like a prayer to him, because this miracle of sweat and skin sure as hell feels like the closest thing I can imagine to a spiritual awakening.

I can’t. I can’t hold on. I’m⁠—

‘Gabe,’ I gasp out, ‘Gabe.’ It’s a warning that comes too late, because I’m splintering, shattering into nothingness, a force that feels positively atomic detonating inside me with shock wave after perfect shock wave rippling through my body, and I am nothing but smoke and light; I’m outside my body and yet conscious of nothing else but my body.

Nothing else, that is, but the man above me and inside me, feeding off my orgasm as he explodes into his own cataclysmic climax.

I have no earthly idea where your pleasure ends and mine begins.

That stinging in my eyelids returns as I wrap my legs around him as much as I can, cradling him through his orgasm as he fucks deep into me before his thrusts subside. He holds himself there, and I turn my head to the side as he buries his face in my neck, peppering my skin with kisses.

His hand is wrapped around my wrist and I stare at it with blurry vision, at the beautiful dark hairs on his wrist and the long, slender fingers, at the short, square nails. I swallow, attempting to quell the low-level panic bubbling up inside me. This is good, I tell myself. You had fan-fucking-tastic sex with a total god who is paying through the nose for you and who seems deeply invested in your wellbeing. The chemistry is off the charts. This is a good thing. There are no problems here, so don’t invent issues where none exist.

I’m quiet as he tugs at the sashes around my wrists, pulling the bows open easily, and collapses next to me, pulling me towards him. I go willingly, rolling onto my side and burying my face against his chest as I attempt to get a handle on this perplexingly emotional reaction I’m having to an excellent fuck. He throws a leg over me and bands an arm around me, his palm pressing between my shoulder blades to keep our bodies flush.

It’s not until our breathing has regulated that he murmurs, ‘I really, really liked it when you called me Gabe.’