I glance around the room, trying to find her, but every single woman is a mirage of Diana that fades in seconds as reality takes over. None of them are her, and I wish every one of them were.
I should go home, and then at least I’d be near her.
Get a fucking grip. Focus.
I am here to have sex with a woman who isnotDiana Marchetti.
Jesus.
A warning flare rises in my gut, but I push it down before I can wonder what it means.
“Hey, handsome,” a woman says, idling alongside me and tugging on my tie. “You just here as a spectator, or can I convince you to fuck me?”
She’s pretty with long dark hair, red lips, and a little black dress that caresses not insignificant curves. She flutters her eyelashes and pouts her lips, and I desperately try to imagine them wrapped around my dick.
My brain stalls.
I can’t do it, and don’t want it.
I tease my tie from her grip. “Sorry. Not tonight.”
She shrugs as if to say, ‘more’s the pity’, but saunters off looking completely unbothered by the rejection.
A flick of blonde hair in the corner of the room catches my eye. This time, even after I blink and tell my one-track mind to stop tricking me, the woman is still blonde, the curve of her cheekstill the same as Diana’s, but the way she holds herself is subtly different. She’s confident and flirtatious. Bold.
It’s her. The woman from last time. She’s wearing the same dress, the same shoes, the same mask. Her hair has the same large, buoyant curls. She’s standing talking to two men who are seated on a banquette before her, gazing at her like she’s a dream come to life.
Seeing her again is a shock to my system, reminding me how much I wanted her. How I couldn’t stop thinking of her. Sexually, no one has ever made as much of an impact on me as she did.
It’s a relief to feel desire for someone other than Diana.
She tips her head back and laughs; it’s louder, brasher than the way Diana laughs, but there’s an undeniable similarity. The colour of her hair too; her lips; her smile. Part of me resents the similarities; another part relishes them.
The men laugh too. She puts her foot on the low table that separates them, and one of the men touches her ankle, sliding his hand north.
Absolutely fucking not.I did not drag my ass all this way, and put myself through this, to watch her flirt with other men.
I cross the room, dodging through half-naked men and women, ignoring the sounds of rutting and moans of pleasure that surround me. I can see one woman only, and it’s my beautiful stranger with another man’s hand on her leg.
The men notice my approach first, both turning my direction. The man’s hand falls from her leg, like he reads the fury in my eyes and thinks she’s not worth fighting for.
She fucking is.
The woman is the last to notice, glancing my way with a turn of the head that has all that long blonde hair cascading down the opposite side of her body. I want to wrap it around my fist and punish her for making me feel like this, whateverthisis.
She lowers her leg and stands before me, deliberately looking me up and down. “Hello, you,” she purrs in that sugary-sweet southern drawl.
Her voice stirs me up like a tornado, making me feel completely out of control. Before I know it, I’m stepping close to her and growling, “You let another man put his hand on you, and I will punish you for it.”
She cocks her head, fire flashing in her gaze, a sly smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Role play, huh?”
“I’m not here to play.”
Her smile widens, her mouth so like Diana’s that noticing it up close makes my stomach swoop. “You should come here more often,” she says, stroking her finger down my tie. “I like you this way.”
Her compliment doesn’t land; I’m irritated and confused. Does she mean because I wasn’t this territorial last time? Of course I wasn’t. When we first met, she wasn’t mine. Tonight, she is.
She winks at me, then excuses herself to the men and walks away from all of us.
