“Your Highness,” she shot back with a grin. The force of that smile was a physical blow to his chest, one that nearly knocked the air from his lungs as he smiled back.
And he knew without a doubt he wasn’t leaving this club without getting a taste of her.
“In that case, follow me.”
Aria
* * *
Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
Keeping her outer calm was growing more difficult by the minute, especially when her mystery man stepped out from behind the bar, offering his hand for her to take. Inside, she was a mess of emotion and scrambling thoughts.
Most prominent of all: Was she really going to do this? Was she really going to let this man she’d only just met, a man who practically oozed sex appeal and confidence, take her somewhere to have his way with her?
Her mother would be horrified by the prospect. Especially here of all places, with a man who called himself ‘Master’.
But her mother had also taught her to never cede control of her life to anyone else. That if she wanted something, she should grab it with both hands and never let go.
So that was damn well what she was going to do.
Placing her fingers in his palm, she let him help her down from the stool, let him lead her away from the bar, toward the other side of the upstairs area.
And for just a moment, she hesitated. According to the tour Cordelia had given her, the opposite half of the second floor housed private rooms. Rooms where this complete stranger could lock her inside with him and do whatever he wanted to her, and nobody would know.
Would they even be able to hear her scream?
But then he paused, turning back to her with that perfectly sculpted face and those bright-green eyes and the salt sprinkled through his dark hair and her heart stuttered to a stop. Jesus, he was beautiful.
More, he was safe. He had to be safe, right? If he was here tonight, then he was someone her father knew. A member of the club, as he’d already told her, but also someone in Braden and Lottie’s inner circle, or he wouldn’t have been invited to the after party. And her father would never allow someone he didn’t trust down to his very bones anywhere near the people he loved.
Safe. Vetted, as Cordelia would have said—at least, she was pretty sure that’s what the fearsome Domme had meant when she’d used the term earlier.
All in all, the perfect man to lose her virginity to.
So she let herself step forward, let herself be led through the darkened hall. Master O—and god she hoped he lived up to that title—stopped in front of a plain wooden door, twisting the handle with his free hand and pushing it open.
A moment later, the lights flickered on, and she wasn’t quite quick enough to stop her audible gasp as she stepped into the room.
It was… Stunning was the first word that came to mind. Followed quickly by intimidating.
Two thrones—the only word she could think of to describe the ornate, high-backed chairs—sat in the middle of the room. The golden one on the left had a hole in the middle of the seat, and her mind skidded to a stop as she tried to imagine what that meant.
She couldn’t, so she focused on the smaller throne. No hole, and now that she was really looking at it, she realized it wasn’t really a chair at all. Instead, there were two leather pads where the seat should have been, and the tall white posts on the back of the chair each had two strips of leather dangling from the tops.
It didn’t take an expert in kink to imagine what those were used for.
“Tell me your limits.”
It wasn’t until he spoke that she realized he’d dropped her hand and was staring at her, rather intently, as he shrugged out of his bespoke jacket and reached for the tie around his neck.
Licking her suddenly too-dry lips, she forced herself to speak past the tightness in her throat. “Limits?”
The hand on his tie stilled, his mouth dipping down into a frown. “Yes. As in, what is off limits tonight, your highness?”
Heat rushed to her cheeks. Limits. Right. She knew what limits were, in theory.
But what the hell were her limits? How was she supposed to know if she’d never actually done any of this before?
