Page 29 of Midnight Salvation

“When Xavier brought Cassandra here, he said she was fascinated with all this.” He waved his arm. “You seem to be here on behalf of the health and safety board.”

I pouted. He was right. This place was filled with sexy and beautiful people and none of it even remotely turned me on. In my head, I thought I’d come here and find something I wanted to try behind every door. When I’d researched BDSM for a jewellery collection, I’d envisage Ash and me and I definitely got hot and bothered. Other people doing it did nothing to excite me.

To cover my confusion, I moved to the next room and watched my first orgy. It was a mass of undulating flesh and bodies sliding against one another. I waited for the tingles to start at the base of my spine, and my lady bits to burst into life.

Nope, it did absolutely nothing for me.

A woman screamed in ecstasy, her back arched as the man behind her continued to thrust rhythmically.

“Maybe there’s something wrong inside me,” I pondered out loud.

Ash’s arms wound around my waist to draw me against his chest. His chin rested on top of my head. “What makes you say that?”

“None of these people remotely arouse me.”

“I’ll glad to hear that,” Ash growled in a deep tone.

“There are some of the accessories that I’d like to try, but watching others using them instead of you and me leaves me cold.”

His arms tightened and he rewarded me with a kiss to the side of my throat. “Come with me.”

Part of me was so disappointed about tonight. In my head I had had it all planned out, dragging Ash into one of these rooms by his tie and allowing him to ravish me. The cold light of tonight revealed a different side of me. I thought I wanted people to watch me, but now I wasn’t so sure.

Ash led me to a corridor with a series of doors, each with a flower on it. His key card opened the one with a red rose, and he closed it behind us.

“I have a confession,” I admitted in a small voice.

Ash stood and silently watched me from behind his mask. My heart thumped in my chest and echoed in my ears. I chewed the inside of my mouth. After all my professions of wanting to come here tonight, now I felt silly.

“Not ready to show your ass to the world?” he queried and there was no doubt in my mind that his eyebrow was arched behind his mask. He prowled across the room to where I stood with my fists clenched unconsciously at my sides.

He lifted my hands, his fingers threading between mine to loosen them. There was something in his gaze that paralysed me until I couldn’t look away. He slowly drew me toward him.

“This room is ours for tonight. Did you really think that I would allow anyone else to watch you as you fell apart in my arms?” His head dipped and my mouth fell open. “There is zero possibility of that happening.”

“I…” My tongue skimmed over my lips in an attempt to moisten them and his gaze automatically dropped to the movement. “I thought I would be brave and experience everything in one night. I believed that I could be the woman you need at your side.”

The sides of his lips tipped up in the semblance of a smile. “I don’t need a woman that I can fuck in front of everyone, Angel. I need a woman who steals the darkness and protects my soul.”

One step at a time he walked me across the room. I didn’t care if the apocalypse was about to befall us, nothing could tear my eyes from his. The heat from his body warmed my core, and lust unfurled deep in my stomach.

My back hit the wall and he pressed my hands on either side of my head. There was a dangerous light in his eyes that sent tremors rippling through me.

“Tell me what you want, Angel,” Ash said.

“I want you to claim me,” I replied in nothing more than a whisper. How could I explain what I wanted without him thinking that I was needy and immature? My eyes closed because he always saw too much when he stared at me like that. “It sounds strange, but it has always been you, Ash. I need you to crave me with the same intensity that I do you. There wasn’t a single person here tonight that even interested me.”

“Look at me,” he commanded, the fingers of his right hand tracing down the side of my cheek.

I slowly obeyed him. Emotion blazed in the depths of his blue eyes.

“What makes you think I don’t crave you?” His voice was soft but the way he gripped my chin and wrist was hard. “There isn’t a single woman here tonight that holds a flame to you, Lucrezia. Even with a gun to my head, I would never have saidI dounless I wanted to or meant the vows I took. There may have been women before you, but there will never be anyone after you.”

Catarina used to debate if Papa took lovers over the years, but I doubted that he ever had. I’d lost count of the number of times I found him sitting with a glass of scotch staring at a photograph of Mama. The way Ash spoke made me believe him. Both men were made from the same core values that were unwavering in their intensity.

“No one ever saw me before you,” I said in a low whisper.

That wicked glint entered his eyes and his lips twitched. “Oh they saw you, alright, they were just too fucking terrified to touch.”

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