Page 33 of When Hearts Unravel (The Orchid #6)

I turn around and flee.

My pulse shoots through the roof as I dash through the crowds. I don’t know why I’m running away. Maybe because deep down, I know if I stop, if he catches me, it’ll be over.

Or perhaps I sense the inevitable—the two of us burning in the flames of hell as we maul each other to death with lust, kisses, and passion bordering on violence.

The hickey on my neck throbs, a reminder of how easily it burned out of control last time. How I wanted to throw every rule in my rulebook out the window with the last person I should ever fall for.

And so I quicken my steps, weaving around ball goers, ignoring the loud whispers, the quiet moans and shivery whimpers in dark corners.

Away from him. The devil. My temptation.

My panting breaths are loud as I adjust the mask on my face. Every inch of me is attuned to the man hot on my heels.

I plow into someone, nearly toppling them over.

“S-Sorry.” I gasp, my pulse frantic now. I dodge into the hallway. How many hallways are inside this castle?

Thud. Thud. Thud.

I hear his heavy footsteps gaining on me, and I sneak a look over my shoulder. His eyes are dark and searing, his attention unwavering as he breaks into a run.

The crowd parts for him.

“Shit.” I pick up my skirts and sprint into the throngs of people, hoping I’ll disappear into the masses.

I need to find somewhere quiet. Somewhere I can hear myself think.

Somewhere I can slap some cold water onto my face and tell myself to wake the hell up.

Ignoring the open rooms filled with people, I check the closed doors one by one, finding them locked. Eventually, I arrive at a gilded door at the end of the hallway. I pull on the knob, thankful to find it unlocked, before slipping inside and closing the door behind me.

The room is quiet and dark with only the moonlight streaming in from the window on the far wall, the heavy drapes half opened.

I navigate the dark shapes—a settee of some sort, a coffee table, a bookshelf or a cabinet.

My breath still rattles out of me when I reach the window, finding a small courtyard outside. I close my eyes and rest my forehead against the glass, hoping the cool surface will wake me up.

Because every fiber inside me wants to find the maddening man to finish what we started in the closet.

This isn’t you, Olivia.

But is that true?

Haven’t I been aching to break free of everything? The good daughter syndrome, the forgotten twin, the person who’s living life and yet…not really living?

Opposing thoughts clash in my mind and I focus on my breathing.

Calm. Calm yourself.

My insides are so chaotic, I don’t even notice anything’s wrong until it’s too late.

I feel his heat behind me before he tugs me flushed against him, his arms unforgiving.

“Got you,” he rasps.

My eyes snap open and I take in our reflections—a masked, dark-haired man with intense eyes slowly dipping his head over a masked woman with raven hair.

We look like extras from a historical piece—a rich man with a courtesan, two people sneaking around in dark nooks, as forbidden back then as they are today.

Like Duke Orsino and Viola from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. But does he know this disguise, this seductive siren, isn’t me?

Or is it?

Digging his fingers into my waist, he drags his lips up my neck to my ear, a groan scraping out of his throat.

My clit pulses and skin tightens. I feel him everywhere.

“What are we doing?” My whisper turns into a moan when his tongue snakes out and swirls around my hickey. His hickey.

“Face your fears to get over them… What are you afraid of?” He bites the mark and I shudder.

“Rules, ethics, responsibilities, I—”

“I will protect you. Always.” He places his finger over my lips before sliding his thumb into my mouth.

“Fuck,” he rasps when I lick his finger, tasting the saltiness of his skin, imagining it being his cock in my mouth.

Rex growls and hauls me tighter against him, his hard dick pressing into my backside through our clothes. His other hand snakes up my stomach, his fingers dragging trails of fire over my breasts, my collarbone, then wrapping around my neck.

He squeezes and I swallow a gasp.

“I don’t know who you are, and you don’t know who I am.” He tongues my ear before kissing my jaw, then angling my face toward his.

Stormy gray eyes sear into mine—eyes I’d recognize anywhere, even if he were covered head-to-toe in disguise.

“Tonight,” he whispers the words onto my lips, “we’re two strangers at a masquerade. No names, no titles, no rules. Give me tonight.”

I sway, my head dizzy as my senses are inundated with everything that’s Rex Anderson—his smell of amber and bergamot, his deep, smooth voice, his fingers firmly digging into my neck.

I want to be his plaything for tonight.

I want to be free.

Barely canting my head into a nod, I watch his eyes flare and darken. He slides his thumb out of my mouth and I whimper my discontent as I try to suck him back in, to hold any part of him inside me.

He groans and presses me against the window, one hand coiled around my neck, the other yanking my low neckline down until my breasts are exposed.

“Fuck,” he grunts when he palms my breast.

It feels so small in his hand, but he doesn’t seem to care. He kneads it, his fingers tugging at the nipple, sparking pain-laced pleasure in my veins.

I tremble in his arms, my ass rubbing against his front, feeling him elongate and dig out of his pants.

“You’re hot for it, aren’t you, my whore,” he rasps, taking on the role of the nobleman slaking his lust with a fallen woman.

I like it. This degradation. It’s freeing.

“Yes,” I whimper when he moves to the other breast, slapping it hard before smoothing out the sting with a gentle caress.

“Is that pussy of yours wet for me? Have you been a naughty, filthy girl, waiting in the dark, needing a thick, hard cock to spear you in half?”

My legs turn to jelly, my mind barely processing his words as my blood reaches a boiling point.

Rex fists my skirts, and drags them up, up, and up, baring my leg to the cold air. Then he reaches around and cups me between my legs.

“Soaked. You’re fucking soaked for me. You want to be used and degraded, don’t you?”

He yanks my underwear to the side and, without warning, thrusts two fingers into my tight channel.

“Ah!” I cry, my head dropping back onto his shoulder as he curls his digits and quickens his rhythm.

Electricity courses through my body as wetness seeps out of me. The brocade chafes my skin, and the dress feels heavy. The corset restricts my lungs from taking a full breath.

He coils his hand around my neck again, and my pulse beats into a turbulent rhythm. He steps back, taking me with him, my pussy stuffed with his fingers, and I’m helpless to fight back.

The slick sounds of him finger fucking me echo in the room, joined by our lewd moans and guttural grunts.

He tightens his hold around my neck and I gasp for breath.

“Look up, my bewitching vixen. Look at our reflections in the window. See how well we fit together. See how horny, desperate you look with your tits hanging out, your nipples hard, begging me to suck on them, to bite them.”

“Oh my God,” I whimper, my hips gyrating to the hammering of his fingers, my eyes rolling back. The sharp pleasure coalesces into a singular point of ecstasy.

I’m going to break into a million pieces.

Then pain explodes between my legs and his fingers are gone.

He slapped my pussy. The asshole slapped my pussy!

My eyes snap open, and his madness finally infects me. I thrash in his arms, fighting his grasp. His low, deranged chuckles reach my ears.

“That’s it. Break free, sweetheart. Now, keep your eyes open and look at our fucking reflection. I won’t repeat myself.”

Opposing emotions clash inside me—obedience and disobedience, dominance and submission. It’s maddening. It clouds my mind and my vision in a haze of red.

I fight, claw, scratch at any part of him I can reach. All the while he grips my tits and twists my nipples, the heady pain joining the fury and oblivion in my veins.

“All you have to do is say stop and I’ll stop, vixen,” he growls into my ear.

“No. You’re not the boss of me,” I hiss. Who is this vixen?

His eyes flash before he cinches my throat again and angles my head toward the window. “Really? Are you sure? Because. Look. At. Our. Fucking. Reflections.”

He pins me in place, his voice dropping to a low, devilish whisper. “Now, look at us. Look how horny you are in my arms.”

My eyes finally refocus as I take in our reflection, my mouth dropping open.

The woman there isn’t me—hair wild and tumbling out of her braids, skin reddened, breasts heaving and my core glistening under the moonlight on full display.

Rex chuckles and I watch in fascination as his hand grabs my pussy, then spears three fingers inside me, sending sharp torrents of pleasure and pain through my body once more.

“Fuck. This cunt. You’re so tight. You take me so well,” he grunts, his fingers pistoning, his eyes smoldering as they meet mine in the mirror. “You are devastation, a natural disaster. You are wildfire and poison.”

The sounds grow wetter, my legs already incapable of standing, and I’m completely reliant on him hoisting me up.

My lungs constrict, my nails digging into his hand around my neck, wanting both to break free from the shackle around my throat and to have him tighten his grip.

“Just say no,” he reminds me as his fingers quicken to hammering.

My clit throbs and pulses and wetness drips out of me, but I don’t care. My lurid cries echo in the quiet room.

My cries. I don’t sound like the good doctor, the rule follower.

“Yes, feel your pussy gripping me. Fuck, you make me so hard.” He emphasizes his point by whipping his hips against my ass, letting me feel his hard cock against my butt. “Taking me like a good slut, aren’t you?”

“Y-Yes, yes, yes…” Our reflection—me gyrating half-naked, moving lewdly against his fully clothed body, my eyes glazed over in passion—brands into my mind.

I don’t recognize the woman in the window, and yet I know her. She’s been hiding inside me all along.

“Anyone outside can see you. Horny, wet, your soaked pussy aching to come, needing my cock. But I won’t give it to you now, won’t I? You only get what I give you when I give it to you.”

He scissors his fingers inside me, hitting a spot I don’t even realize exists.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” I moan as his hand tightens around my neck, further sharpening my senses to the fire burning between my legs.

Bam!

Someone opens the door.

Rex slaps his other hand over my mouth, muffling my cries.

Logic and fear sweep in as Rex drags me to a nook behind the nearest cabinet.

Muffled conversations reach my ears—the words too soft for me to pick up because of the rioting pulse battering my eardrums.

Just when my mind threatens to awaken, Rex does the unthinkable.

He thrusts three fingers back inside me.

I bite back a cry as he resumes his scissoring motion, the sparks which never faded away growing like a brush fire under one hundred mile per hour winds.

Burns. Everything burns out of control.

“Quiet, or you’ll give us away,” he rasps, his fingers fucking me.

Harder. Faster.

My muscles lock, then tremble, my teeth chattering, his other hand still covering my mouth. A pulsing I’ve never felt before begins deep inside my core, then radiates outward, invading every nerve cell.

“Come. Give me your cum, sweetheart, and don’t let them hear us.”

He nips my earlobe.

The dam breaks. I bite my cheek to silence my scream.

Wetness gushes out of me, making a mess of his hand, my dress, my thighs. I hear droplets hitting the floor before Rex thrusts his thigh between my legs, so my cum drips onto his pants instead.

“Good girl, my fucking good girl. Next time you squirt, I want you to drench my face.”

He shushes me, alternating between sweet words and degradation. He strokes my pussy, massaging it, extending the aftershocks.

This time, I melt under his praises, my body not really mine anymore, my mind in a haze.

What on earth was that? Because that wasn’t just an orgasm. It felt like so much more.

“A beautiful squirter. I want to see you soak our mattress like the good slut you are.” He licks the column of my neck and I shudder.

Squirt. I squirted. My face flames.

Then I hear the door opening, then closing. Whoever was here just left.

Ring.

Rex’s ringtone blares like an alarm, and I jolt in his arms.

He kisses my cheek, then slowly steps away from me.

My face is on fire as I squeeze my eyes shut and collapse against the window, the cold glass doing nothing to cool my body.

“What? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ll be right there,” he says into the phone.

I hear his heavy footsteps, then feel his muscular body behind me.

His cock, harder than ever, digs into my back. A ragged sigh throttles out of him. He slides my hair to the side, then presses the softest kiss on the tender point where my neck meets my shoulder.

“Such a good girl. Bewitching. Made for me.”

Then he disappears, leaving me half-naked in the room.

Five minutes later, my phone pings with an incoming message.

Rex

We’re not done. Not by a long shot.