Page 86 of Devil

I hear dress-shoed footsteps and then the slide of the drawer where Bell keeps his trash can. The running of the kitchen sink. The short snick of a zipper. I still can’t make myself move.

He returns, and instead of helping me ease my thigh off the table and back down, he keeps me as I am and then squats behind me. I can feel his breath on my wet cunt and the lube-slick skin near my anus. I can only imagine the sight if I were able to see it in the reflection, him entirely put-together in his tuxedo and me with my dress hiked up, already wet, swollen, and open. Already made use of.

He presses his lips to my pussy, a soft kiss near my clit, and then he makes out with it, tongue kissing, sucking and swirling and seeking, and just as I start to whimper, he stands up and slides his hand over my hip and down to my cunt from the front. His fingers find my clit and press in to rub with firm, arrogant strokes.

He was right earlier.

It only takes a few seconds after that.

36

BIRDIE

The gala isinside a 1930s skyscraper made of glass and stone. My heart is pounding even before Bell has handed his fob to the valet, but walking inside to the press of tuxedos and chiffon and live jazz, to the threat of being perceived, being judged, I am truly and horribly overwhelmed. I catch only flashes of the space as we walk inside—marble columns, a crowded mezzanine, art deco fixtures and fittings—before I have to drop my eyes and concentrate on breathing.

Bell doesn’t miss a beat, however, and as soon as he’s checked us in, he’s pulled me to a tower of champagne glasses, placed one in my hand, and subtly slid his hand in his tuxedo pocket.

The ensuing vibration staggers me. Unbelievably, I’ve forgotten the toy is there at all, so crushed by the number of people and the pulverizing awareness that I don’t belong here in any way, shape, or form. I’m not actually Bell’s girlfriend, and I know nothing about how to behave at an event like this, what kinds of things everyone might talk about. I can’t even cope with sayingpeace be with youat church. I can barely cope with talking to customers at Buddy’s, and those conversations only last for thirty seconds.

But now I have something else I can barely cope with: the toy Bell has inside me tonight. The toy that he was supposed to be inserting well before he actually managed to, because once he started playing with the muscled eyelet, once he started sliding it inside me, he got too hard, too worked up, which was how I ended up with a satin gown shoved up to my waist.

“I’ll keep it low,” Bell says conversationally as he tucks my free hand into his elbow and guides me to a mostly empty corner deep in the room. “It shouldn’t make you as aroused as a vibrator in your pussy would—you should be able to talk through it. But it’ll keep you aware of its presence, I think. Are you aware of it now?”

We’ve reached the edge of the space, and Bell arranges me so I’m facing the room while he’s in front of me, one hand braced on the wall by my shoulder, the other dangling the champagne from his fingertips. He could look like anyone trying to flirt right now, any adoring, attentive boyfriend, since no one else knows about the tender, recently used place under my dress or the toy currently buzzing inside it.

“Yes,” I say, trying to gather hold of my emotions, because they’re everywhere—animal panic from being in a room like this; an odd, girlish thrill at wearing a gown; rough and carnal vignettes from an hour ago, when Bell was wedging himself inside me. The gentle but incessant rumble of the plug. “I’m aware.”

“When things get too loud or when you feel like too many people are looking at you—when the dread is creeping in—I want you to focus on that awareness, okay?” He’s standing close enough that I can smell his woody, spicy cologne, that I can see the individual strands of platinum hair in the lock that’s broken loose to hang over his forehead. His attention is wholly on me, and I realize as he dips his head closer and breathes in, like he’s scenting me, that if he had his way, we’d still be at the converted warehouse, with plenty of lube at the ready and frozen waffles for later. We’re only here because he and his brothers need to unleash their charm campaign for the shelter, because he’s imagined a better city and his brothers are helping him build it.

That centers me enough to attend to his words, because the shelter matters, that idea matters. It matters more than being anxious, than wishing I could hide.

“Can you do that for me?” he prompts, and I finally nod.

“Yes. I can focus on it.”

He leans in farther and presses a kiss to my cheek. It looks chaste enough, except he’s murmuring as he does it, speaking with his lips resting along my cheekbone. “When you focus on the toy, you can remember how it felt to be bent over and pinned down. Violated and wet about it anyway. You can remember that you’ll go home with me, and I won’t let you make it two steps past the front door before I’m getting inside that slick cunt and filling it with cum. You can remember that I’m the worst thing that’s going to happen to you, so you’re safe from anyone or anything else. Don’t worry, Birdie. I won’t let them take my crown.”

My eyes close, my lashes resting on my cheeks as his words work their dark, smoky magic on me. He smiles against my cheek where he’s kissing me, his lips curving against my skin.

“That’s right,” he murmurs. “You’re mine to torment. I’ll never give up that prerogative, my little hell of the two of us. And I’ll hold everything else back for you, protect you from everything that isn’t me.”

“You’re the worst thing that’s going to happen to me,” I echo, my eyes still closed. The thought is so comforting, so achingly lovely. Bell is the worst thing that will happen to me. All I have to do is let him be.

“I’m the worst thing that’s going to happen to you,” he agrees. His voice is pleased, proprietorial.

“When it gets to be too much, I’ll focus on the toy,” I say to myself rather than him. And then again: “You’re the worst thing that’s going to happen to me. When it gets to be too much, I’ll focus on the toy.”

I open my eyes to find that he’s pulled back just enough to stare at me with that fervid hunger of his, and the otherworldly blue of his eyes might as well be the only source of light in the room.

“I want,” he says in a low, uneven voice, “to take you home so badly right now.”

We stare at each other for a long moment, and then he lets out a long sigh, a pained, eternally suffering sigh, like he wasn’t the one to make us come here in the first place.

“You’re still new to plugs, so I won’t leave it inside you for longer than three hours. I promise not to keep you here any longer than that.”

“You need to talk to the city council members,” I remind him. “I don’t want you to leave before you feel like you’ve done what you came here to do.”

He tosses me one of those wide, boyish grins, tilting his chin down to look at me from under his lashes. Combined with the Old Hollywood hair and tuxedo, the effect is devastating. “Birdie, I don’t need three hours. I won’t even need one.”