Page 36 of Fallen Angel

Violet continues watching them closely, waiting for the right moment. Billy’s eyes are half closed, glazed with impending ecstasy. Tyler is busy pounding away, and she doubts he’s even aware of his surroundings at this point. He’s not trained, as Billy is, to be acutely aware of her every move during these sessions.

She bends down to discreetly retrieve her handbag.

“Fuck me!” Billy cries.

Oh, I will, Violet smiles to herself, clutching her phone. She steps back to a position giving her a view of both Billy’s face and the guy riding his ass, and snaps three photos. Just then, Billy erupts in a loud and messy orgasm, and she takes her final shot: the money shot.

Tyler convulses in spasms and moans, and she slips her phone back into her bag.

Her work here is done.

Chapter Eighteen

Alec returns on the red-eye the morning after the Halloween show. When Mallory feels him slip into bed, she rolls over to check the time. Her alarm is set to go off in one hour.

“I missed you,” he says, spooning her from behind. She turns to him, her face against his neck, and notes he smells like carpeting or the inside of a department store. It’s the airport-and-stale-plane smell, and it makes her feel like a stranger is in her arms.

“Welcome back,” she murmurs. Despite the unfamiliar, institutional scent, her body instantly heats up. Alec kisses her mouth and his hand slides between her legs, rubbing her over her underwear and then slipping his fingers inside the lace. He strokes her clit, and she opens herself to his touch, moaning as he fingers her deeply. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been aching for him; her body is so ready, she’s almost embarrassed by her wetness. Alec uses one hand to tug down her panties, and she kicks them off the rest of the way. She’s so eager to get his boxers off she has the urge to tear them.

But when she holds his hard cock, she wonders if anyone else touched him in the past few days, and then she pushes the thought aside. She wants him too much to let reality—or her active imagination—interfere. In that surreal moment between night and day, between dark and light, technicalities don’t matter. Nothing is breaking through her ceaseless love and desire for him.

He stops touching her long enough to help take off her blue sleep tank. It’s just a plain cotton one from the Gap; she’d considered wearing something sexier but didn’t want to seem to be trying too hard. The best thing to do was act normal, even though she was feeling insecure.

Now, the way his eyes take her in with such intensity makes her stomach flip. She kisses his chest and works her way down to his cock, sucking on it while he strokes her hair.

“Get up here,” he finally says, his voice almost a growl. She knows what that means; she straddles him on her knees, then lowers herself onto his wet cock. He squeezes her ass as she slides up and down slowly, hitting the perfect spot inside herself. Usually, at this point, she feels him growing more and more excited—and impatient. He rarely lets her ride him for long; inevitably, he holds her tight and starts thrusting up into her, setting and controlling the rhythm until they both come. Alec is always a top—even when he’s technically on the bottom.

But this morning, he seems strangely disconnected as she works her pussy against his shaft, and soon she can tell he isn’t even hard.

“What’s wrong?” she says.

“Nothing,” he says. “I don’t know. Maybe I just need more time after being away for a few days. And I’m exhausted.”

“Oh,” she says, trying not to take it personally. But she does.

“But don’t stop,” he says. “I want you to come.”

“That’s okay,” she says, because of course there’s no way she can keep going.

She’s sure he knows this when he pulls her against him, back in the spooning position. For some reason, she feels awful. Like she wants to cry.

“Alec,” she says softly. But he’s already asleep.

It’s probably for the best. Today isn’t a good day to be late for work. Gavin will be in court all morning, so she’ll be in charge of the office.

While she gets the coffee started, she turns on her phone and is confused by an unusual number of messages. She checks her group chat with Allison and Julie, where it reads:

You’re famous!

Nice photo, by the way. Call me!

What are they talking about?

The next message is from Bette. Heads up: Page Six got us.

Mallory jumps on Google and does a search for Page Six, yielding a photo of the two of them leaving the Blue Angel Saturday night. The caption reads Zebra’s paramour Bette Noire exits burlesque hot spot the Blue Angel with performer Mallory “Moxie” Dale.

Uh-oh. This is the last thing she wants. Less than forty-eight hours ago, she was going to ask for time off to focus on her legal job. And now she’s afraid the opposite will happen: She’ll lose her legal job and have only the Blue Angel. And no, working for Gavin wasn’t as rigid an environment as her previous job, but she doubts he’d be thrilled to learn his paralegal is a burlesque dancer. Especially since he’s been commenting on her nightlife lately—not helped by her forgetting to wash off her painted tattoo.