What do you say to a man who delivered the greatest, most mind-numbing and simultaneously humiliating orgasm of your life?

Absolutely nothing.

Not unless you wanted to let a party full of VIPs learn every sultry detail of your life’s dirtiest and most exotic sexual experience.

So I stopped my panting, fished my dignity out of the pool filter, and let Anthony hand feed me oysters in our private cabana, curtains drawn, completely secluded from the eyes of the party.

The champagne went straight to my head.

Or maybe that was the music. I always did love a quartet.

“First time I’ve let myself listen to this type of music in months…” I shouldn’t have said it. Anthony’s eyebrow rose, and I hid deeper in the fluffy white towel.

“Why, pet?”

I shrugged. That wasn’t a good enough reason. “Just…don’t like it now.”

“A musician without music?”

“It’s not that unusual.”

“I think it is.”

“Are you a big music lover, sir?”

“Not like you.”

“I’m not much of a music lover anymore.”

“What song are they playing?”

I listened to the quartet and sipped my champagne. The bubbles didn’t help. “Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker.”

Anthony hadn’t put his clothes on. He also hadn’t covered himself with more than the towel. He motioned, and I couldn’t help myself. I snuggled next to him in the reclining chaise, safe and warm from the world by virtue of only a thin, practically sheer cabana curtain. Didn’t matter. His arms just felt…

Right.

He held me perfectly, and I snuggled next to him so deeply, so wonderfully, that even talking about the nightmare that was my musical career didn’t seem so bad.

“I couldn’t identify a song like that,” he said. “You have a good ear.”

No, I’d just played the song over and over during the eighteen years I’d owned a violin. “What sort of music do you listen to?”

“Silence.”

“Oh.”

His hand tickled over me, tugging at the strap of my bathing suit just to tease. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like a little melody now and again.”

“A lick?”

“If you insist.”

I hid my face against his shoulder. “No. It’s a musical term. A snippet of melody is a lick.”

“I can see why you like music.”

“Liked.”

I nuzzled against him again, some sort of weird post-orgasm glow or something. I didn’t understand it, but it felt right to settle so close to him.

Close and protected.

His arms shielding me from the world. Letting me think. Letting me cool down.

Letting me understand.

He offered me a strawberry from a little platter—perfectly ripe and oh-so-juicy. Anthony held it to my lips, and I stared into his eyes as I took a bite.

Could this man be any more amazing?

“How do you do it, sir?” I whispered.

“Do what, pet?”

“Push me like that?” I couldn’t look towards the pool without the tingle of humiliation creeping over my skin. That sensation had a bad habit of pulsing a little too low in my belly. “You took me right to my limit. I thought I was going to panic or freak out or something, but…I didn’t.” I bit my lip, tasting strawberries and his kiss and absolute lust. “I trusted you.”

“Even when you didn’t trust yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Do you want the crazy answer…or the insane explanation?”

“Both, because I think they’re one and the same.”

I didn’t have the strength to bluff. I lowered my head to his shoulder. “I feel like…I know you. I can trust you and read you and you won’t hurt me—physically or mentally. You’re in my head.”

He didn’t shy away from the conversation. Always confident. Always so self-assured about his own feelings and thoughts.

How did someone become that comfortable with who they were?

“You intrigue me, Morgan.”

“Just intrigue?”

“I meant every word I said in the pool, and I have every intention of fulfilling those desires one day.”

“All of them?”

He plucked another strawberry from the tray, teasing me with the fruit, studying how the crimson contrasted with my dark skin, the white towel, the pink swimsuit.

“I’ve never had a submissive as new to this as you.” He took a bite of the strawberry but rubbed the sticky side over my arm. He ducked his head down, licking the sweet trail. “I’ve never had someone learning under me. Never had anyone as…beautiful.” He held the berry to my lips. I took the rest in my mouth with as sigh. “Never anyone as much a mystery.”

There was nothing special about me or my past. Just the usual crushing defeats and self-inflicted miseries of a girl in her early twenties, lost without a purpose or ambition. I smirked.

“I’m the mystery?” I asked.

Anthony acted as though it were obvious. “There’s so much I don’t know about you yet.”

“Ask away.”

“I can’t ask these things, pet. They aren’t for me to learn. I have to experience them.”

I liked the sound of that. “For instance?”

“Anyone can know your favorite color, movie, and Christmas.”

“Pink. Phantom of the Opera. And 1998—when I got my…” I hesitated, memory of five-year-old Morgan struggling to open the box both lovely and haunting. “My first violin.”

Anthony picked another strawberry from the bunch—big and juicy, covered in a sheen of dew from the humid night.

“I’m not talking about those types of special quirks and preferences, pet…” He cradled me close. The strawberry drew dizzying circles over my skin. He let it drift, teasing over my breasts…then lower. He teased the berry just over that still-sensitive part of me. I flinched. He shushed me with a quiet growl. “The things I want to know about you, I have to discover for myself.”

I stared only at the thin cabana curtain. If someone walked in, if someone peeked inside, they’d see the strawberry rubbing the outside of my swimsuit…delighting a greedy little slit that had already had her fill for the day but wanted so more.

I blamed Anthony.

His scent. His eyes. His words.

How easily he wound me tight with just a little swipe of that secret place.

“I need to know if you’d enjoy being teased…” His whisper warmed my ear. The heat spread, dangerously low. “Or if you like it direct, hard and fast.”

“Anything…” I stared only at his hand, the berry, and almost giggled. A strawberry rubbing a cherry. This wasn’t fair.

“I don’t know if you prefer rough or gentle…”

I couldn’t breathe.

“If you want it on your knees or on your back…”

Was I grinding against the berry?

“Maybe you like spankings. Maybe you like when someone licks your little pussy until you cream on their tongue?”

If only I could answer honestly. “Sir…”

“Maybe you’re not even sure what you want because you’ve never had a real fucking.”

Or any. “I want everything, sir. I’ll take anything you give.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will, my pet.” He gently bit my ear as his fingers pulled in the seam of my swimsuit. “If you’re serious about this…” The strawberry brushed over my clit. I arched. “Then you will do everything I say. You will take me in every way I command it. No matter if it’s hard, frustrating, pleasurable…” The berry pushed against me. I gasped as my slickness coated the fruit. “You’ll take every last inch, isn’t that right, little one?”

“Y—yes, sir.”

Anthony hummed. He dipped the strawberry, smiled, and pulled it away. Then he offered me the first bite. I did as he asked, nipping the top of the strawberry even though it glistened with my own desire. He took the rest, a whole bite, with a smile.

“What do you want from this, Morgan?”

“Whatever you just said.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded, slowly, gasping as he studied my little slit, puffy and swollen from the earlier games. He rubbed my clit, watching as I flinched and bucked.

“I’ve never taken someone so inexperienced,” he said. “But I suppose there’s a first time for everything.”

He could say that again. I nearly giggled, but Anthony was serious.

He stared at me, covering my pussy once more only to take my chin in his hand. “How much experience do you have, pet?”

Now was the time to be truthful. Now was the time to tell him I had no experience. I’d never been touched like that. Never grinded against a pool jet. Never teased my body with fruit. Never ate sushi off a naked girl. Never had a spanking.

I’d never had sex.

I had to tell him.

My virginity wasn’t anything to be ashamed of, but would he dare to take me if he’d be my first?

The words jumbled in my throat. I swallowed my honesty and gave him a shrug instead.

“Nothing I’ve done compares to what you can do, sir.”

Anthony chuckled. “You have no idea, pet.

I believed him. He brushed a hand over my tummy, across my breasts. Just admiring. Gentle. Almost a compliment.

“Are you willing to take this to the next level?” he asked. “Be honest with me.”

I was never more honest in my life. “Absolutely, sir.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Do you know why you’d like to keep exploring?”

That was easy.

Him.

“I’ve never felt this way before, sir…” That much made sense, but the rest of my feelings, desires, and resistances were a jumble of confusion that would need a vibrator and gallon of chocolate ice cream to figure out—in no particular order.

“And you like the way this feels?”

“Yes.”

“Even in the pool? Even with everyone watching?”

I nibbled on my lip, ashamed to admit it. “Especially that.”

Anthony’s smile grew. He shifted, the hardness in his trunks part of the reason why we weren’t mingling with the party. He poured me a glass of champagne, clinking the flutes as he celebrated something I wasn’t sure I understood yet.

“Things will get real now,” he warned. “I’ll take you to Duchess, but we have rules there.”

“More Sirs and Ma’am’s and being polite?”

“Well, of course, but also…instructions for new girls. Are you on birth control?”

The question twisted me with embarrassment, but I had no reason to lie. My failed attempt to live a little during college began with the implant in my arm.

“Yes. I’m clear for three more years.”

“Efficient.”

It could have been—had I made any time for boys or fun instead of panicking myself about music, concerts, auditions, and other instruments.

Anthony brushed a lock of hair behind my ear. “And you know you’ll have to get tested.”

My stomach dropped. “There’s an exam for this stuff?”

He began to speak, paused, then shook his head. “Not that kind of test, Morgan. A blood test.”

There was that humiliation again. He wasn’t kidding when he said things were getting serious. I nodded. “I can do that.”

“I know a doctor. He’s discreet. I’ll make you an appointment.”

“I have my own doctor…”

Anthony shook his head. This must have been one of the things women didn’t argue with him about. I surrendered.

“Okay,” I said. “Whatever you want.”

“This is what you want, pet. Once the…incidentals are completed, your world is going to change.”

Because my life hadn’t altered at all after he tossed me in a pool, splayed my legs open over a pool jet, and forced me to orgasm while he chatted with his utterly gorgeous and potentially sociopathic ex-lover.

“I can’t wait,” I whispered.

“So I’ll ask again…” Anthony leaned in close, just barely grazing my lips with his. “What is it that you want to get out of this? Pleasure? Pain? A new kink?”

I shouldn’t have revealed so much.

Shouldn’t have sunk deeper into his arms.

Shouldn’t have sighed over his kiss.

But what was done was done. I surrendered, nibbling the truth over his lips.

“You, Sir. I want you.”