SECRET Revealed (22 page)

He looked taken aback as he placed the crystal cap back on the decanter he was holding.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

Is this actually happening?

“Are you saying you … that
you’re
a recruit? For S.E.C.R.E.T.?”

There was that sly smile again. “I am.”

“But how? Why? Why would
you
be a recruit?”

He came out from behind the bar and placed our drinks on the glass coffee table.

“Well, I can ask the same of you. Why would
you
be a participant? A beautiful, accomplished woman like yourself. What do you need S.E.C.R.E.T. for?”

I stalled, a storm gathering in my stomach. Part nerves, part joy, part shock. Before I could answer, he continued.

“Because it makes total sense for
me
to do something like this. No-strings-attached sex with beautiful women any way I want, any way
they
want. And I get to leave without a trace. No obligation to follow through, guaranteed discretion, no money exchanging hands to cheapen the experience. Kind of perfect for a guy like me. Because I don’t do … intimacy. The emotional part. I don’t do that. On the screen, yes. In life, no. But I don’t expect that’s going to be a detriment tonight because I just want to have sex with you. In fact, I’d very much like to fuck you. What do you say to that, Ms. Faraday?”

My mind raced to Step Six.
Confidence
. I had it in spades when I was “on,” while I was interviewing a subject, playing my role as a journalist. And certainly this man exuded confidence. Enough for the both of us. But now, as a woman who’d thrown on some comfortable shoes and was wearing thick glasses and, Christ,
coral
lipstick, I suddenly felt inferior, old and dowdy, unworthy of this kind of star attention from this man—famous, handsome, smart, powerful—this man relaxing in an armchair looking exactly like a king overseeing his domain.

“Don’t be shocked, Solange. I’m just a guy in a pair of jeans, having a Scotch after work, who’d like to get a beautiful woman naked and in my bed. If she’ll have me.”

I approached the coffee table, picked up my drink, took a long haul and choked on the vapors. I wiped my mouth and placed the drink back down on the table.

“I accept.”

He smiled, seemingly relieved.
As though there’d been any doubt about my answer
.

“Good,” he said, placing his empty glass on the table. “Now come here.”

Jesus. It was on
.

I stepped closer to his chair, coming to a stop in front of his knees.
This is happening, this is actually happening
.

“Please take your clothes off.”

“Right here?” I looked around the room. “Can we at least … dim the lights?”

He opened the drawer in the table and took out a remote, hitting one button to bring down the lights, another to play a slow, liquid song, the kind your hips involuntarily sway to.

“There,” he said. “Proceed.”

I closed my eyes for a second and drew in a long breath, feeling the Scotch burn my tongue and throat. “You want me to … strip. For you. Right now.”

He smiled, leaning back. “Yes. I’d love that.”

Doitdoitdoit
.

I untucked my shirt, my shaky fingers finding the buttons, and at the same time I kicked off my flats.
I am going to
strip. For this MMS
. His eyes followed my fingers as they opened my silk shirt. I looked down. Fuck. The lacy beige bra wasn’t the worst one to be caught wearing, thank god, but I was not only in mismatched black underwear,
I had control-top nylons on under my pencil skirt! Christ, no!

“Um, so, about my lingerie … I didn’t know that I’d be … I would have worn—”

He laughed. “My favorite thing about this whole scenario? Your lack of lingerie. Do you have any idea how sexy it is to have a real encounter like this with a real woman wearing real … underwear? May I?”

He sat up and placed his hands on my hips, turning me around so my back was to him.
Now what?
He unzipped my skirt, letting it drop to the ground. Then I felt his firm fingers slide under the elastic of the pantyhose, peeling it down over my ass, my thighs.

“Impressive,” he said, plying the spandex. “I’m not just referring to your spectacular ass, but you could kill a man with these.”

Before the mortification could fully set in, he planted a long kiss on one cheek, then the other, his hands squeezing my ass together. His fingers gathered the back of my blouse and tugged it down off my arms. He flung it over the chair in front of me. Now he got busy with the clasp of my bra.

“You’re gorgeous, you know that? Your skin, your ass …” he said, turning me to face him again, my breasts hovering over his face, and me so drenched by then, it was all I could
do to restrain myself from climbing on him. And yet I was seized with something like … the giggles.

“What’s funny?” he asked, his brown eyes looking up at me, his scratchy chin against my stomach.

“You.
This
,” I said, now laughing openly, my hands in his hair,
that hair
.

“You’re laughing at me?” he asked, collapsing back into the chair to lift his hips to strip off his jeans. “Oh, I don’t mean funny haha.”

He smiled, pulling off his sweatshirt. For a fifty-something man, he was lean, not too muscular, just fit. I noticed white tufts of hair amid the black fur across his chest, beneath which his skin was burnished and tawny. His cock was among the nicest I’d seen, cut and fierce. He wrapped a hand around his erection, his eyes dancing across my body.

“Touch yourself, Solange,” he said.

You can do this
. My hand traveled slowly down over my stomach, which I was tensing, sucking in. I tried not to think of the dozens of supermodels this man would have seen writhing naked beneath him. How many were mothers? How many had stretch marks? Were over forty? Had that awful red mark around their tummies from wearing
control-top panties
?

Yet nothing in the MMS’s demeanor suggested he was anything less than pleased with what he was seeing. My fingers slid inside me. I closed my eyes; his attention too intense by now.

You can do this
. I opened my eyes again and followed his
lead, becoming the assertive, sexy woman he assumed I was. As my frenzied fingers worked their magic, he took a condom out of that same little drawer and quickly slipped it on his thick cock. He slid down a little more on the chair, motioning me closer with his hand.

“I want you to fuck me, Solange,” he said, as I straddled his firm thighs, my fingers getting lazy. I don’t think I have ever wanted something more; every ounce of me, from my hardened nipples to my weakened knees, wanted to fuck this man, to get him inside of me. I hovered over him for a few seconds, my fingers centering his tip beneath the opening of my wet slit. His fingers pressing the flesh on my thighs, he guided me down, and I sank around him, throbbing with every inch I took in. His mouth formed an O of utter astonishment, his brow knitted with the concentration of a man taking in every ounce of pleasure and committing it to memory, like he was filming this with his eyes, filing it away. I began to rise and fall, feeling his shaft press against my front wall where my g-spot, so often elusive, seemed to swell and awaken.

“Look at you … fucking me,” he said, his hand giving me a light slap on my left cheek while his hips thrust up into me.

I lost myself in the tide of hard and soft sensations, his cock pressing against that deep part of me, over and over, until he began to bring me to the brink of release. His hands traveled down to my hips, his fingertips raking my flesh as he fucked me harder, or maybe I was fucking him. All I know is the harder he gripped my hips, rocking my clit
over his groin, the more difficult it became to fight back the tide that was washing over my body and mind.

“Christ, you’re fucking gorgeous,” he growled, reaching up to cup my breast with one hand, while his other thumb stroked my fat clit just so. And then I felt the first spasm coming fast after that, my skin burning, my head rolling back, as another wave, a bigger, wider one, took me higher, to a new place of pleasure, where all I could do was laugh as he thrust into me, his hard cock cutting into the very core of me, his expression almost triumphant.

What else can I call it but cuddling? That’s what we did after we fucked one more time on the hotel rug, pulling a coverlet beneath us, followed by more sex in the shower, where he explored my sore pussy with that famous mouth of his. Sated, we cuddled in the tufted king-sized bed in the other room of that luxurious suite, interrupted only when Room Service called back to confirm what kind of cake he had ordered a few minutes earlier.

“I don’t know,
all
the cake,” the MMS said, rolling his eyes at me.

Later, after he fed me a bite of chocolate layer cake, a nibble of strawberry pie, and a sliver of passion fruit cheesecake, he got up and fished around in the pockets of his discarded clothes. He returned to my side, theatrically placing a small purple box in the center of my naked belly.

“And the winner is …” he whispered, lifting the gold foil lid. “You.”

While he made the sound of a crowd going wild, I gently plucked out my Step Six charm, clutching it to my chest in an exaggerated display of gratefulness.

“
For me
? Oh thank you, thank you
so
much,” I crooned. “And I’d like to thank the Academy, and of course my agent, and all the lawyers you generally have to thank in these situations, and the little people, of course …”

“What about your co-star?”

“
Who
? Nah, I’m going to take all the credit for this one,” I said, playfully shoving him away from my imaginary spotlight, blowing kisses to my imaginary fans.

“As well you should, Solange Faraday,” he said, pulling me back into a giggly embrace. “As well you should.”

T
here were three reasons I agreed to help train Ewan for a threesome: 1) Matilda was right. I didn’t have the nerve to put “threesome” on my own fantasy list, despite the fact that it was something I’d always kind of wanted to try; 2) I was attracted to both Ewan, the redhead we’d be training, and Pauline, the S.E.C.R.E.T. member who would be the second woman in our triangle. She was gamine, lean and boyish. In fact, it was her flirty, sexy behavior with her husband at the Café that initially lured me into S.E.C.R.E.T., made me curious, made me want the sexual confidence she had; 3) I wanted to even things out with Jesse after his Step with Solange. This was the biggest reason.

Juvenile, I know, and then Jesse one-upped me again by magnanimously offering to drive me to the Mansion the night of my training session, like it was no big deal to him, like a guy you’re sleeping with should be so generous as to drive you to a place where you’re probably going to have sex
with someone else, maybe even with more than one person. He said he had to be at a “thing” in the Garden District anyway, so it was on his way. Ever since he walked in on Will and me sharing that intimate moment a few weeks earlier, Jesse had maintained his policy of waiting for me in his truck. The day of my threesome, I found him a half block over, in front of the bike shop.

“Hey,” I said, hopping into the cab.

We said very little on the way to the Mansion. I hadn’t given him much information about what was going on that night. I took S.E.C.R.E.T’s policies on gossip as seriously as he did. But when we pulled up, he asked if I knew whose Audi was in the driveway. I said that it could be my recruit’s.

“When did you recruit someone?” he asked, throwing the truck into park.

“Last year, at Audubon Park with Matilda. She had her eye on one guy, and I liked his friend.”

That’s when I saw it: a subtle hint of jealousy flashed across his face; his nostrils flared, his eyes darted to the ground.

“Well. You better get a move on,” he said. “Don’t leave Audi guy waiting.”

I leaned over to give him a kiss just as he turned his head to adjust his side mirror. In another life, my earlier one, I would never have left a guy pouting in a truck. I would have pressed and prodded and found something to apologize for.