I want to undress, like the rest of the performers on stage.
I find the zipper at my side and drag it down so slowly I ache. Everyone watches as I reveal what’s underneath my floral sundress: the crimson Agent Provocateur slip I ordered in secret.
One strap falls.
Then another.
My skin prickles with exposure, with desire. A dancer helps me out of the rest of my dress, her touch professional but still electric.
I spent hours choosing this lingerie. Clicking through endless pages of lace and silk until I found exactly what I needed. The way it sits against my skin makes me feel powerful. Like I could be devoured whole.
When I look at him again, his legs are spread wider. His hand rests heavy on his upper thigh, touching the obvious bulge in his pants. It makes my mouth water. It makes me think about dropping to my knees right here.
The dancers move around me, teaching me their secrets.
How to arch. How to bend. How to make every movement drip with sex.
In the mirrors, I am transformed. My neck is flushed. My nipples are hard against the silk. I look exactly like what I am—desperate to be touched.
I’m grateful for the club’s strict no-phones policy. No cameras. No flashes.
Just this sacred space where I can exist as myself, not Reese Sinclair the actress, not anyone’s daughter or project.
Just a woman. Just movement. Just desire.
For the first time, I’m not playing at sensuality. I’m embodying it. Each sway of my hips is a love letter to my own liberation.
No more scripts. No more handlers. No more directors.
My pearls rest heavy at my throat. I lift them, biting his ring. My tongue traces it slowly, tasting the silver. Between my legs, I’m embarrassingly wet. The kind of wet that makes thinking impossible.
And, as if we’re on the same plane of the ether, he’s losing control too. I can see it in the way his fingers clench and unclench, the way his throat works as he swallows. The violence of his restraint feeds something dark and hungry inside me.
I want to break him. I want him to break me.
Dante rises from his seat like a man possessed, and the sight of his very obvious erection straining against expensive wool makes my body buzz.
My hair is still held in place by the same headband I wore to our first table read. When he got close enough to smell theperfume on my skin and neither of us moved away. I take off the headband and throw it directly at him.
He snatches it out of the air, bringing it to his nose and inhaling so deeply it’s like I am his oxygen. His careful mask shatters. Raw hunger stares back at me, honest and unashamed.
My gaze asks what my lips won’t.Do you like what you see?
Beautiful, he mouths.
He sees me—wild, wanting, finally free.
I close my eyes and give myself to the music completely, to the ache between my legs that pulses in time with the bass. After tonight, I can never go back to being anyone other than this version of myself. The thought makes me dizzy with possibility.
It makes me feel infinite.
I amon top of the world.
“Fuck yeah.” I giggle, thinking of the taste of Ivory soap, how Grandma would wash out my mouth if I uttered any curses.
I grab my hairbrush, staring at myself in the mirror as I attempt to tame my sweaty, hairspray-tangled mess. Dante should be here to help me undo this nightmare. Instead, he dropped me off at my cabin after my jet landed back in Crescent City with a forehead kiss and his responsible insistence that I get some rest.
So responsible.
