“I Put A Spell On You” by Annie Lennox played in the suite from some speakers I couldn’t see. It was low, soulful music with a beat I could feel inside my body. I shifted uncomfortably, looking away from him and back to the people below.
I felt him more than heard him. His arms wrapped around my body, pulling me close and moving us to the beat. I tried so hard to focus on the people below, on the twinkling lights, on the way the snow falling distorted the neon lights. I strained to focus on the famous musicians playing below and not the song playing in our own little bubble.
“I can take you anywhere, Frankie,” he whispered in my ear then spun me around. “I can take you to Iceland or Egypt.” I blinked, his knuckles trailing down my cheek. “I’ll take you to every city on every goddamn continent. Just be mine.” He pulled my arms around his neck.
Eyebrows pulled in, lips pursed, concern dripped from my pores. How had he gotten inside of me? How had he found that special part of me I kept hidden? How?
He pressed his lips to the hollow of my throat. With his mouth at m
y neck, I could see over the top of his head, see my reflection in the glass doors, but it was too dark to really make anything out. It was just a big shadow, a combination of him and me.
Anteros scooped me up, leading me away from the food we hadn’t eaten, the champagne we hadn’t drunk, and all the people below.
“We’ll miss the ball dropping.” I leaned my head against his chest, watching the world get smaller.
“You can catch it again next year,” he growled, slamming the glass shut. I expected him to throw me on the bed as he’d done so many times before, but instead he gently set me down. I leaned against the glass, watching cautiously as he slowly undid his tie. This was brand new territory for us.
“Do you know what I want from you, Frankie?” He threw his tie to the floor. I followed it, noting how it snaked and curved, the gray satin catching the lights from outside. “Frankie.” I snapped my head back to his.
He said he wanted me. “Yes. I do.”
Anteros stepped to me and spun me around. “I don’t think you do, mio cuore.” What test was this? What did he want? As I mentally went through everything that had happened that day, his fingers grasped the fabric of my dress.
“Love.” He ripped my dress open, the beautiful pearl buttons flying in every direction.
There was nothing beautiful or sweet about the way he kissed me. It was painful and broken and totally mind-bending. Through his lips I felt him, really felt him—Anteros—finally. It was demanding, torturous, cruelly awful, and I craved every minute of it. He controlled me with his lips.
Anteros growled and I could feel the reverberations all the way down to my toes. He took my bottom lip, sucking at first before biting, biting hard enough to draw blood. I cried out at the pain but went back for more, hungry.
He turned me back around, pushing me against the glass. His lips sucked and bit along my neck. One hand snaked through the back of my torn dress, grasping my breast in a brutal and agonizing way. His other hand pulled up the material, seeking flesh. He was hard as steel against my ass and I knew he would enter me soon.
“Fuuuuck,” he cursed and my mouth fell open, slack-jawed. Together we paused for a brief, tiny second as we felt each other. Then he moved inside me, deep, so punishingly slow and meticulous. He moved in a rhythm that was so attuned to my body.
Against the glass my mind bifurcated between past and present, between the very beginning and this moment, a moment of such exquisite, awful, terrifying passion it had nearly split me in two and now, pleasure.
Pleasure so divine I was sure it finally had.
Outside, colors blurred together as in a melting watercolor. I thought maybe the neon lights were trying to tell me something—the demanding bright clock denoting the impending New Year, the bright eager faces of the revelers counting down the time—but pleasure dazzled my brain, obscured my mind.
He slammed me harder against the glass. One of his hands was on my hip, gripping me, the other up against the glass, and I clung to that arm as he fucked me. I clung to him as I came. The world was giving way beneath me and he was the only anchor I had.
“Look at me.” Anteros grasped my jaw, twisting my neck so I could see into his eyes. “Look at me when you come, mio cuore.” Our eyes locked just as it hit me and I lost myself in his fervent, demanding depths.
It came over me slowly, like a rapidly mutating virus or parasite of pleasure. It started in my throbbing core, slowly spreading outward, tendrils of pleasure in my limbs and arms. Slowly my thighs tingled and numbed. My arms jellied. My jaw buzzed with pleasure.
It was like melted caramel in my body, or hot, liquidy butter.
But even that wasn’t just right, wasn’t delicious or addictive enough, because the farther it spread inside me, the more it changed me. There was a moment I realized I would do anything, be anything, so long as I could just feel this way. Beneath the melted sweetness was heroin, seeping into my veins, drugging me. Then it froze, the heroin turning to ice within me.
With a sharp crack, the ice shattered. I arched off the glass, into his chest as billions of heroin fragments shot through my veins. When it was over, I was panting and my core throbbed for him, pulsating.
What was left was a raw, aching need, like a junkie without a fix.
He pushed hair out of my face and murmured something I couldn’t quite understand, it sounded Italian. I blinked, looking away from him and out the foggy and sweaty glass. When I pressed my head against it I could see the ball had just dropped. The confetti was falling.
This was what I’d been afraid of, what I’d been holding off. He’d made me orgasm before, I’d felt the spasms in my core—there was nothing I could do about that—but nothing was like this.
I’d never come for him.