Chapter Fifteen
Dean
Solange and I leave the bathroom, then she gestures for me to follow her. The home is lit in red, a set of pendant lights hanging from the ceiling creating a starburst effect on the walls. Now that I’m no longer in shock, I’m able to appreciate the seductive atmosphere, the ease with which people are reveling in their partners.
“Let’s go down here,” Solange says, jutting her chin in the direction of a long hallway. She weaves through the crowd, periodically turning back to make sure I’m still with her. At some point, we lose each other, but then she doubles back and places her hand in mine. She steadies me with her intense gaze and gives me a firm squeeze. I feel her touch all the way down to my toes, but I school my features. I’m consumed with the need to touch her. Desperate to be the one to give her pleasure. Still, Solange has consented to being here, nothing more, and I will always respect her boundaries.
We dip our heads in the first room that we come to and find naked people massaging and fondling one another as they engage in substantive conversations. I mean, one guy’s talking about air fryer recipes. What the hell?
“So many PDEs,” Solange observes, her gaze bouncing around like a ping-pong ball.
“Don’t you mean PDAs?”
A corner of her mouth lifts before she explains: “No, I meant PDEs. Public Displays of Erections.”
Welcome to Solange World, where the official languages are English, Portuguese, and Inventive Acronyms. If I’m not careful, I’m likely to be sporting my own PDE before this night is through. How the hell am I supposed to hide my arousal in a place like this? With this woman by my side? Brilliant plan, Dean. Just brilliant.
Seemingly impatient to move on, Solange tugs on my shirt and leads us to another room and . . . jackpot.
A woman is lying in the center of a platform bed. Her legs are spread out as two naked men kiss and caress her. She’s wearing garters without stockings and nothing else, suggesting that we missed part of the disrobing.
Solange and I aren’t the only observers, but we’re the only people who appear to be together. We inch our way to an open spot, our bodies close but not touching because she slipped out of my loose grip as soon as we ventured inside.
“Is this okay?” I ask her.
She nods, her teeth pressing into her bottom lip until she releases it to speak. “This works.”
One of the men slips a finger inside the woman, and she lets out a breathy moan. Fuck. My eyeballs were expecting to be eased into this, but nope, that’s not happening. Beside me, Solange shifts. I turn and meet her gaze.
“My shoes,” she explains in a whisper. “Taking them off isn’t an option, though.”
“Get in front of me, then,” I say. “You can lean against me to take some of the pressure off your feet. You’ll see better too.”
“No, it’s okay,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s not bad.”
Someone at the other end of the room shushes us. We’re plainly doing this wrong, and everyone knows it. I shake my head at her, and although she smirks at my expression of mild frustration, Solange accepts my offer and slips in front of me. Slowly, so slowly I can barely detect her progress, she rests her back against my chest and puts most of her weight on one hip.
I lean in and whisper my question near her ear. “Better?”
“Yeah.” She angles her head to the side, as though she’s signaling to me that her neck is fair game, and the impulse to suck on the skin there nearly makes my knees buckle. Fuck, I’m reading signals where there are none.
Trying to get a handle on myself, I focus on the exhibitionists on the bed, but it’s a struggle. Solange is surrounding me on all sides: her touch, the faint scent of vanilla on her skin, the miniature clouds of hair filling my peripheral vision and tickling my jaw. Her presence so easily diverts my concentration that somehow the sensual scene in my line of sight is the distraction rather than the main attraction.
There’s no use denying it: I want this woman so bad I can’t think straight. For a man who prides himself on always keeping his wits about him, that’s a serious problem.
Solange
Is this really happening? Am I watching three people having sex in public as I lean against Dean’s chest? Yes, yes, I am.
I wish I could pretend this is an out-of-body experience, but I am very much in my body, and said body is very aware of the man behind it.
The woman on the bed could be me, could be anyone, and I gather that’s where my mind is meant to go. But I don’t think I’m supposed to superimpose Dean’s face on the two men pleasuring her. I’ve created a pair of Deans in my head, and oh my God, they’re experts at bringing me to the brink and electrifying every inch of me.
What was it he said once? I’m never dull when it counts.
Not wanting to torture myself any longer, I squeeze my eyes shut and try to clear my brain. When I return my gaze to the scene, I make every effort to consume it as a spectator rather than a person wishing to be an active participant.
The men are what most people would consider conventionally attractive, both fit but not overly so. One of the men is Black, his skin a deep brown and enviably smooth. The other man is white, his eyes and hair dark as night. The woman appears to be a natural redhead, a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks her most arresting feature.
Until this point, the spectacle has largely been a lesson in the many ways one can evoke pleasure simply through touch. But now the men are looking at each other, communicating their intentions, it seems, and despite the absence of a verbal exchange, they lie on the bed in a coordinated dance, each snaking an arm around one of the woman’s legs. It’s a tight fit, but the men manage to share the space between her thighs. She opens for them, and a wave of heat washes over me when one man slides two fingers inside her and the other kisses her clitoris.
In that moment, I want to be her. And I want one of the men to be Dean. Desperately.
The woman cries out, her voice piercing the bubble of silence among the onlookers. Startled, I stumble back, but there’s nowhere to go except farther into the cocoon of Dean’s body. He keeps me upright by placing his arm across my middle.
“I got you,” he says, low and slow, each word sticking to the next one like honey.
My nipples tighten, the arousal in the air and the deepness of his voice working in tandem to heighten my reaction to the spectacle in front of me.
I grasp Dean’s hand as if doing so will keep me steady, but I’m more unbalanced than ever, teetering on a seesaw in my head, unable to make sense of what’s happening to me or around me. Somehow, I cut through the mental haze and register Dean’s heavy breathing, an awareness that sizzles across my skin and settles between my legs.
Before me, the men switch places, one set of fingers sliding out, another set of fingers gliding in. A different tongue. More pleasure. Keening cries. They continue this pattern, taking turns as they drive her wild with their mouths and hands, until she arches her back high off the bed and screams through her orgasm.
I’m no longer grasping Dean’s hand—I’m gripping it—and then our fingers are entwined, squeezing together almost painfully as we come down from whatever has us in its clutches. It occurs to me that we could make our way to a dark corner and fuck each other senseless, and no one would raise a brow; for a millisecond, I consider asking him if he’d like to. Without meeting his gaze, I turn into him, my forehead grazing his chin and my free hand fisting his shirt. Propelled by pure need, I rise on my toes.
“I can’t help myself,” he whispers above me. “Can you?”
My chest expands, and I melt against him, ignited by his consent. “I can’t either.”
But before our lips can touch, reality returns as the room suddenly brightens, the stark white walls and flustered faces of the people around us revealed for all to see.
A man jumps away from a spot near the door, revealing the dimmer switch behind him. “Oh shit,” he says, his cheeks pink from arousal or embarrassment or both. “Sorry about that. I hit the light by mistake.”
A collective groan fills the room, and everyone quickly disperses, the evening interrupted by the clumsy person who killed the mood and saved me from myself.
“I think I’m ready to go now,” I say to Dean, not daring to look at him as I step out of his embrace. “You?”
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely. After clearing his throat, he tries again. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”