Page 123 of Top Shelf

My mouth twitches. “I am behaving.”

“Mm.” She bites her lip. “Such a good husband.”

The words leave her carelessly, but my body does not receive them that way.

I lean in until my mouth is near her ear. “Show me, min fru.”

Her breath shivers again, and then she smiles at our reflections and takes my hand. The first room is social, with low couches and a bar lit from beneath. People in masks move through conversation with the ease of a private party, except a woman in a sheer black robe walks past with a jeweled leash trailing from her hand. The man at the other end follows on his knees with the focus of someone who’s exactly where he wants to be.

Heidi glances at me, and I look again as the man tips his face up and the woman brings the glass to his mouth. His eyes are half-lidded behind his mask, with his hands resting on his thighs.

“He seems happy.”

She hums her agreement. “He’s very happy.”

“Then I am happy for him.”

Heidi stares at me for several seconds, and whatever she sees makes her laugh under her breath. “You are so weirdly reasonable.”

And then her hand flexes in mine, fingers between my fingers, palm warm against mine. It should feel normal, but in this room, with strangers watching other strangers, her hand feels like a decision. She’s not holding me because she is nervous. She is holding me because she wants to.

I lift our joined hands and kiss her knuckles, and she grins, then pulls me deeper into the club. The rooms change as we move through them. Some are open for watching, with doorways flung wide and scenes unfolding inside.

I watch, but I do not stare. The club is erotic, yes. Unapologetically. There are bare breasts, hard cocks, parted thighs, desperate sounds of pleasure slipping past doorways. But beneath it all, there is structure. Staff ensuring safety. People stepping back when someone shakes their head.

“This is what you meant,” I say.

Heidi slows beside me. “What did I mean?”

We stand near the edge of a viewing room where a woman in a green mask rides her partner with a hand braced on his chest and the other between her own legs. The glass separating us from the room keeps the sound muted, but not the sight. Her head tips back, and her mouth opens. The man beneath her looks ruined by the privilege of touching her, his hands gripping her hips like he has been given one job in the world and intends to do it well.

“When you said you felt safe here to be yourself,” I say.

“Yes,” she says, her voice rough at the edge as she watches the couple.

“You learned things here.”

She nods. “I did.”

“What you like.” My gaze drops to her mouth. “How you want to be looked at.”

Her fingers flex around mine, and in the room beyond the glass, the woman’s body starts to shake. The man sits up, wrapping an arm around her waist, his mouth finding her nipple while her hips turn frantic. Heidi watches them, but I watch her. The flush beneath the edge of her mask, the small pull of her lower lip between her teeth. The way her thighs shift under the pink silk.

My body responds hard enough that I have to adjust my stance.

Heidi notices, and the corner of her mouth lifts. “You like watching too.”

“Yes.”

We keep walking, and the night keeps changing. A woman in a silver mask and a backless white dress asks Heidi if she would like to dance. A man with inked hands asks me whether I share. A couple near the bar asks if we’d like to join them upstairs, and the woman’s gaze stays on Heidi’s mouth long enough that heat slips through me.

Heidi is beautiful, and the woman sees it. The man beside her sees it, too. Half the damn room sees it. I’ve known men who would make that uglier than it needs to be. I have played beside men who think jealousy is proof of love because control is easier than trust. But Heidi doesn’t shrink when she is looked at, and she doesn’t become less mine because someone else wants her.

She is only mine because she wants to be.

Every invitation closes around the same answer. No. No. No. And each one makes the yes between us louder. By the time we reach the west corridor, my body is so aware of hers that I can feel her even when we are not touching. The heat of her shoulder and the pace of her breathing. The brush of silk against her thighs when she walks, revealing the brief flash of skin when the slit of her dress opens.

She stops outside a door marked with a small smoked-glass moon.