“Drink?” Lucien asked, raising his voice over the music. Sophie frowned.

“It doesn’t seem very professional.”

“Consider it part of your disguise.”

He guided her to the bar, and Sophie’s eyes wandered as Lucien ordered drinks from the immediately attentive barman. A guy was perched on a stool at the end of the bar, and it took several seconds for it to register with Sophie that his cock was buried in the mouth of the brunette between his knees. Holy fuck. She looked away hurriedly and found Lucien’s amused blue eyes watching her. The subdued lighting shadowed his face and gave him a slightly menacing air. Could she trust him to take care of her here? What if he suddenly stripped his clothes off and expected her to jump naked into the writhing hot tub? It was strange. She’d only known him for a tiny amount of time, yet she was – unfathomably – certain that she could trust him.

He offered her one of two tumblers.

“What is it?”

“Vodka.”

“Neat vodka?”

He shrugged. “You can have ice if you like.”

She sipped it cautiously and straight away choked on the throat-stripping intensity of the spirit. Lucien rolled his eyes and held out her glass to the barman, who emptied a silver shovel of ice into it without a flicker of expression.

Lucien turned to lean against the bar and surveyed the room.

“Sit for a second. I need to watch it all working.”

Sophie glanced down at the high designer metal stool next to him and wished she had some hand sanitiser.

“Just sit on it. It’s scrupulously clean.” Lucien anticipated her thoughts once again, and it was her turn to roll her eyes as she climbed up onto it. Why did they make these things so bloody awkward?

Lucien steadied the stool with his hand. “I wish I’d been standing in front of you just then. I think you just flashed that guy over there.”

Sophie’s eyes shot around in panic. There was no one watching her except for Lucien, who was openly laughing. He patted her knickers in his pocket.

“Funny,” she muttered sourly, and crossed her legs to be doubly sure that no one could see up her skirt.

A woman with long black curls and a sprayed on red lace dress sashayed up to the bar next to Lucien, close enough to make ignoring her impossible. Her curvy body brushed against his from shoulder to thigh, and fear prickled along Sophie’s skin. Had she got him wrong? Would he accept this woman’s none-too-subtle invitation? Sophie glanced up at him as he inclined his head at the woman in impersonal greeting, then turned his back on her to face Sophie with deliberate slowness. The unexpectedness of his mouth on hers a second or two later knocked the breath from Sophie’s lungs. He tasted of vodka and lust, and she opened her mouth to let his tongue glide over hers. His lips were firm, his hands even firmer as they held her hips.

“Was that another part of the disguise?” she breathed when he released her, her mouth tingling from the vodka and his kiss.

“No.” His thumbs massaged her hipbones. “I kissed you because, even though you’re totally overdressed, you’re still the sexiest woman in the room.”

He had a way of saying the last thing Sophie expected, of mixing up the tender with the filthy that rendered her speechless.

Even here in the middle of this charged, sexual atmosphere, Lucien shone. A carnal beacon. Dangerous. Delicious.

“Let’s walk.” He helped her down from the stool and led her around the edge of the dance floor. Sophie tried not to look too closely at people as she passed, but she couldn’t stop her eyes from straying, or her body from reacting to it.

A woman wearing a tiny black thong hung upside down on the pole, a guy’s hand between her spread legs. On the sofas, couples groped each other openly. Lucien’s fingers laced through Sophie’s and she held on tight when they passed a couple screwing against the wall, his trousers around his ankles, her legs wrapped around his hips. Lucien’s arm fell around Sophie’s waist. Reassuring. Predatory.

“This way.”

He headed through an archway at the rear to somewhere he hadn’t shown her on the earlier, tamer tour.

“Do you like the movies?” he whispered, and pulled her sideways into a darkened room.

It took a few seconds for Sophie’s eyes to adjust to the darkness and realise she was inside a cinema, but not any kind of cinema she’d ever been to. Something told her that they wouldn't be buying popcorn here. The seats were all grouped in pairs and covered in leopardskin, and the movie scrolling across the screen was hardcore porn. Sophie stared at it, transfixed. She’d never really been attracted to any kind of porn, so to see it suddenly so lewd and huge in front of her came as a shock. There didn’t seem to be all that many people in the room, but those that were there made no secret of the fact that they were having sex.

Lucien tugged her into a love chair tucked away right at the back of the room.

“Lucien, we can’t…”

“It’s marked private. No one will look unless invited.”

His mouth landed on hers the instant he had her cornered, and the fire in her belly lit with indecent speed. She was surrounded by wall-to-wall sex, and in the arms of a man who wanted her with a passion that bordered on obsession. His lips clashed with hers, and his tongue thrashed and licked inside her mouth as his fingers sought her nipples through the material of her dress.

Lust slayed her. Fast, hard need made her crawl over to straddle his lap. His erection burned between them as he dragged her skirt up roughly and pushed his hand between her legs. She cried out, and he clamped his other hand over her mouth.

“Don’t make a sound.”

He pushed his fingers inside her, and her face contorted with the effort of silencing her pleasure.

“People will consider it okay to come and watch if you make a racket,” he whispered, taking his hand off her mouth. She nodded, wide-eyed, afraid he was going to stop, knowing he wasn’t. Operating on instinct, she reached down and massaged his bulging erection, then popped the top button of his jeans. This was the third time he’d touched her intimately, and she wanted to even up the score. She wanted to feel his length in her hands, in her mouth, inside her body. He moaned and shifted underneath her.

“Not here, Princess.” Sophie grumbled in frustration when he caught her wrist. “I want to hear you scream the first time I fuck you.”

He pulled her own hand down between her legs and nipped her ear.

“Get yourself off.” His fingers still pumped inside her, rhythmic and deep. Sophie could feel her clitoris under her fingers, and she couldn’t resist the urge to do as she was told. He licked the fingers of his other hand and reached around her thigh to stroke her perineum. She tensed, knowing where he was heading.