LOGINA shadow slid across his face—there and gone like a passing storm—before the thunder followed.
“Blondie. This? Here?” Alonzo fisted the front of my shirt and pulled me off the freezer’s breath. The door thudded shut. In the same breath he pinned me to it, thigh wedged between mine, heat and steel. “We’re practicing,” he said, voice low enough to vibrate in my ribs, “because when I fuck you, I want you screaming. Real pleasure. Not polite. Not pretend. And we’ll practice again, and again, and again—until that overactive brain of yours shuts up and the only thing left in it is my name. Your first climax is just the beginning of this. Understood?”My throat clicked. Your first climax will only be the beginning of this. Air vanished; the room tilted.“Understood?” His fingers closed around my chin, firm enough to send a hot shiver down my spine.“Yes,” I managed, a rasp.“One more thing.” He bent, lips ghosting along my cheekbone. The growl in his chest stroked the sAlonzo grinned down at me as he started unbuttoning his shirt. “Well, now we can call it even for you masturbating inmybed.”Coherent thought left me, because Alonzo was shrugging out of his shirt and his body had to have been sculpted by Michelangelo himself. The way his shoulder muscles sloped down from his neck, the way his stomach was clearly outlined without him flexing, and his arms… God, I wanted to wrap my hands around that dip of his biceps.“Miss?” My head snapped up. One of the girls held out a hand for me and it took me a moment to realize she was already holding Alonzo ’s shirt.“Sorry,” I mumbled and pulled the Kimono off, heat shooting to my face. I felt Alonzo ’s eyes on me and didn’t have to look up to know the huge grin he was sporting right now. The girl scanned his key fob again, then sauntered off towards a backroom. Props to her for not ogling the customers, even when they looked like Roman statues. She had better composure than me.Alonzo pl
I was going to a sex club.I was going to a sex club.I told myself if I repeated it enough times, my nerves would get bored and leave my body. They did not. They perked up, pulled out lawn chairs, and settled in to watch the meltdown.I’d fired off a panicked message to the group chat the moment I left Alonzo’s. Subject line (if texts had subject lines): How does a person escape going to a sex club with a man who has already fingered her. Twice.The replies were mercilessly on Team Alonzo.— frap sluts —Tatiana: loving this freaky new version of youDaphne : Bring condoms! And dental dams! Be safe!Tatiana: now I want to go to a sex clubTatiana: would it be weird if I showed up at the same one?Daphne : Bring lube, too! Just in case.Me: what am I even supposed to wear??Tatiana: leather or nothingDaphne : agreed. leather or… nothing-nothingLeather or nothing. Great. Which is how I ended up half an hour before go-time, sta
Allie snapped her book shut with a loud thwack, the sound cutting through the quiet like a slap. I glanced up from my laptop, where I’d been slogging through Southern Europe’s summer booking reports. Her groan was long and theatrical, forehead wrinkling so deep she looked carved from stone.“I am dealing with a conundrum,” she declared, pivoting her body toward me as though about to present a case in court.I leaned sideways, catching the title on the spine. “A conundrum about the sexual liberation movement of the sixties?”“Sort of.” She tapped her fingers against the book, drumming out her impatience.I closed the laptop with a sigh, bracing my elbows on the desk. “Alright. Let’s hear it.”Her tone sharpened. “I’m all for women owning their bodies, doing what they want, when they want—but Bruce said something to me while you were off having your little water-cooler talk with Ivanis. And she’s still a girl, not a woman. I think I should tell her mom.”My sto
My eyes flew open and I burst out laughing because his face was twisted in absolute horror as he wiped green goo off his hands like it had personally insulted his entire bloodline.“We should work on your complimenting skills.”“Alright, how’s this?”Before my brain could process what was happening, his hands locked around my waist and he hauled me into his lap like I weighed nothing. I let out a squeal that probably violated several noise ordinances, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt to keep from toppling backward while he positioned my legs on either side of him with the casual efficiency of someone rearranging furniture.Holy shit. When did he get this strong?“Look at me,” he said once I was settled, then softened it with, “Please.”“What are you doing?” I met those charcoal eyes even though the laser focus in them made me want to hide behind my hair. Nobody had ever looked at me with that kind of intensity. Like I was the only thing in his entire field of v
Rationalizing everything into neat, logical categories while I spiraled through seventeen different worst-case scenarios. Those gray eyes stayed locked on mine, completely steady, ready to talk me through whatever chaotic thought tornado was currently destroying my brain.Except this wasn’t about sex or orgasms or research. This was just me and my overactive anxiety machine doing what it did best: turning simple problems into existential crises.“Don’t you have plans tonight? Business dinner? Hot date?” I asked, because surely a man like Alonzo Benington had better things to do on a Wednesday than babysit someone’s housing emergency. “I don’t want you canceling anything for me. You should go do your important billionaire stuff, but I’d feel weird staying here alone without you.”“Actually,” Alonzo said with that slight smile that suggested he found my rambling adorable instead of pathetic, “I do have plans tonight. But you’re welcome to join me.”Famous last words.
My new schedule was dangerously addictive. Days at Alonzo’s researching human sexuality like it was my doctoral thesis, nights playing dress-up at charity galas with people who acted like they’d known Constance Montana since kindergarten. The fake familiarity was actually perfect – nobody questioned why I didn’t reciprocate their “remember when we did shots at the Hamptons” energy.I’d gotten disturbingly good at deflecting hard questions with strategic compliments. Someone asked about Constance’s father? “Oh my God, I absolutely love your necklace – where did you get it?” Boom. Topic changed, crisis averted.Sometimes Alonzo showed up to these events, sometimes he didn’t. When he was there, he never left my side, sliding into conversations with the kind of social fluency that made networking look effortless.Monday morning of week four in my career as a professional imposter, I showed up at his place with my backpack like some kind of academic nomad. He let me claim the







