“You’re full of surprises tonight,” I said, trying for lightness, but my voice caught on the last word.
“It seems that, for you,mila, I’m doing many things I’ve never done before.” His response barely carried over the music. The admission registered as a tectonic shift, like hearing a glacier crack.
He led me through the threshold and down a corridor lined in glossy black panels, the floor a haptic squish that sucked at the soles of my stilettos. The music thickened, a bass line so deep it felt like a second heartbeat. The corridor opened into a concave alcove faced entirely in black marble, veined white and gold. The surface gleamed like a placid lake at midnight.
Luka turned me toward it. The polished stone caught us instantly—two masked creatures lacquered into the dark, predator and prey rendered in high gloss.
The reflection hit me like a blow.
The woman staring back wasn’t the one who’d checked into a London hotel three days ago, heels clicked and hair pinned, every line of her suit a boundary.
This version of me was exposed and collared, a streak of arterial red against my throat, my body poured into a leather corset that hoisted my breasts high, the boning carved my waist into something sharper, more deliberate. The microskirt was barely a suggestion of fabric, a narrow slash that left long lines of bare thigh above sky-high stilettos. Under the marble’s sheen, my body looked polished, almost lacquered. Refined, distilled, remade.
I looked like someone built for sin.
Built for him.
Heat climbed my throat as the woman in the stone parted her lips—my lips—soft, unguarded. The mask erased half my face, leaving only wide eyes and a mouth slack with want.
I didn’t look polished. I didn’t look professional. I didn’t look safe.
I looked…ravenous.
A low sound rumbled behind me, dark and approving.
“Look at you.”
He stepped in close, his heat coiling around my bare skin, his reflection folding into mine in the marble—broad, masked, inescapable.
“Fucking sinful.”
Luka ran his palm down my spine, fingers slowly raking through the corset laces, before gripping my waist and pulling me hard against him.
“You wanted honest, Alex,” he murmured. “Let’s see how much truth you can take.”
The mask did something to him—stripped him down to something unyielding, something less human. But there was an undercurrent, an edge I couldn’t name. And it unsettled me.
I nodded, the gesture more submission than affirmation.
He took my wrist, grip warm and certain, and steered me into the main chamber of the club.
The heat hit first—dense, humid, alive. Bodies packed close, skin slick with sweat and friction, the air thick with spice and sex and the charged tang of too many people breathing the same oxygen.
The sound came next.
Not music.
Breath. Gasps. Low cries swallowed and lost in the bass. The wet rhythm of mouths on skin. The sharp slap of contact. The room throbbed with it—raw, unfiltered, nothing held back. Lightfiltered through black steel mesh overhead, breaking across bare shoulders, latex, leather, and exposed hips. The ceiling pressed low, the world condensed to heat and motion.
There was no dancing.
Only contact.
Bodies rolled together in slow, deliberate movement. Hands disappeared beneath skirts and waistbands. Fingers moved with intent, urgent and unapologetic. A man stood motionless while someone behind him worked inside his open trousers, his head tipped back, mouth open to the lights.
A woman braced against a column, thighs shaking as the person kneeling between her legs held her steady.
No one stared. No one pretended not to see.