Ophelia tsked her tongue.
“Hang it in the hall of your family home, will you?” She asked sarcastically.
Tristan looked back at her with a bemused expression, then plucked the sketch from the easel.
“I will put it in a place where it will be safe,” he told her, walking away from her with her sketch in his hands. She watched, unsureof what to say or do, as he tucked it under his desk. On one hand she was honored that he liked it enough to keep it. On another the hand…she was still severely caught off guard that has sketched thing at all.
Tristan then walked around his desk, picking up her mask as he did so.
“Put this back on,” he gently commanded, fixing it to her face.
“Why?” Ophelia asked warily.
“Because, my dear artist,” Tristan said, putting his own mask back on, “You need fresh inspiration, and of that we have plentiful supply. I realized what I want you to capture next.”
“Oh?” Ophelia asked, feeling her curiosity pique, “What is that?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Where are you taking me?” Ophelia asked.
Hell,Tristan thought as he led Ophelia out of his office. Or perhaps he was already there. He wanted to scream from how aroused he was; from how Ophelia’s little experiment had ended up teasing his senses just as much as hers. His tumescence was now begging for release, and for the first time ever, he was in the erotic club- that he owned- and he could not do a thing about it. Not yet anyway.
“So I take it you liked what you saw on the swings in the main room?” Tristan asked as he led her down the hall.
For a moment she didn’t answer, as if she was worried it was a trick question.
“There is no shame in saying so,” he said, stopping her just outside an opened bedroom. “Tell me. I know you only sketchedtwo people, but there were multiple on the swing. At least three or four. Did you enjoy seeing so many people together?”
“Yes,” she confessed at last, “I did. I have read romance novels about two people but…”
“Go on,” he urged her. “I want to know.”
“I never knew more than two people could actually be compatible that way. That so many bodies could seem to fit together so perfectly.”
Tristan smiled with satisfaction under his mask, and pulled her back to his chest as he faced her toward an open room.
“That is what my club is for,” he whispered in her ear, trailing his fingertips down her throat. “Everyone has fantasies. Deep and dark that society must never know about. They come here to give into this parts of themselves. To make their fantasies come true with people who have the same as them.”
He lifted his gaze then to the sight before them, reveling in the way Ophelia’s breath hitched as she too settled her gaze on the two people in the bedroom.
“What do you see?” Tristan whispered into her ear. “Describe it to me.”
For a moment Ophelia seemed lost in watching the two people writhing and kissing on the bed, their lips and arms intertwined very much like the couple in her sketch.
“Two people kissing. A man,” she finally said, “strong. Handsome. Even with his mask on I can tell. And a woman. Naked from the waist down.”
“Why do you think that is?” Tristan asked, nibbling at her ear. “That he is fully dressed and she is not?”
He felt Ophelia shake her head.
“I do not know,” she whispered back as they watched the two people break their kiss. The man started to lavish kisses along the half-naked woman’s throat. As he did so, she nestled back into the pillows, as if relishing the attention, and slowly opened her eyes. The woman seemed to lock eyes with Ophelia, and Tristan watched as a wicked smile spread across her face.
He shifted his gaze down to Ophelia’s face, and saw that she was looking back at the woman with equally rapt attention.
“It is a power dynamic,” he explained, trailing his fingertips down his arm. “A show of being in control. One forced to be bare. The other completely covered.”
Ophelia continued to stare intently back at the woman as the man slowly made his way toward her naked breasts.
