Elegant Sins - Stasia Black Page 0,43

no less—before color rose in his cheeks and he looked firmly toward the door, proffering his arm again.

“Come on. Stay by my side. We’re fashionably late, but I didn’t want to be there for all the beginning small talk and bullshit. The quicker we can get in and out, the better.”

Was it just my imagination, or did he seem nervous tonight? I swallowed hard and a hand strayed to the thick black leather collar at my neck.

“Is everything going to be okay?” I asked in a small voice.

“What?” For the first time in hours, he looked me full in the face, his stern expression softening just the tiniest bit. “Everything will be fine. Just don’t leave my side even for a second.”

I nodded up and down like a bobble head. He didn’t have to tell me twice.

I hurried over to his side and took his arm. The rich, soft fabric of his high-thread-count tux coat was cool and smooth against my fingertips. A shiver went down my spine at the contact, and not just because of the air conditioning on the hot day or even the daunting unknown task that lay ahead.

It was because I was touching him. And if the past had been any indication, tonight we’d be touching a lot more. After a week starved of all contact, I was about to be tossed back into the deep end.

But I was wearing the black collar. He’d chosen it so that he’d be the only one touching me. It was ridiculous that the thought made my chest warm.

Before I had longer to linger thinking about all the night might hold, Montgomery was striding us toward the door and then out into the hall.

There I was, naked as the day I was born apart from the collar, striding down the smooth, oiled floors of one of the oldest and most well-respected mansions in the whole state.

I would have felt out of place, except that when we got to the grand staircase, there was already a tableau of naked and writhing bodies laid out before us, waiting downstairs in the room below.

My eyes popped wide open, something I immediately regretted considering some of the old, wrinkly, extra fleshy specimens on display.

There was one pot-bellied old man in the corner on a grand wing-backed chair being ridden like the young woman was trying for a barrel-racing championship. Another woman was contorting herself in a feat of gymnastic prowess over two men, one underneath and one on top of her, each of them grunting and humping each of her holes—

“Shut your mouth, dear,” Montgomery murmured in my ear and I could hear the smile in his voice. “You’ll catch flies.”

I immediately clamped my mouth shut.

“How nice that you finally decided to grace us with your presence,” bellowed a loud voice from our left.

I looked that way just in time to see a man—the same man I’d seen the first morning I was here with the discarded belle doing the walk of shame. Montgomery’s father.

He was shirtless and his— Oh my God, his half-limp dick was just hanging out. Convenient since he’d just stopped having sex with a woman who was still bent over on an ottoman, ass up, to wander over to us at the bottom of the stairs.

Montgomery’s jaw locked. “Father.”

Montgomery’s momentarily light mood was gone. His face was suddenly devoid of emotion, and he kept his eyes fixed on the upper wall, close to the ceiling. I couldn’t believe his dad was just walking around like that in front of him. It was obviously something Montgomery didn’t want to look at.

But it turned out I hadn’t seen anything yet.

“Little birds tell me you’ve been working harder than ever. Closing deals. Running the office remotely.” His father shook his head and grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waitress with glittering rainbow nipple pasties. The only other thing she was wearing was a thong, and Montgomery’s dad made sure to tweak her bare ass before she walked away.

I fucking hated it when customers did that to me. I bet that girl was just trying to make a buck to survive, but these bastards had their hands all over her all night. Considering this party, probably more than that.

Montgomery stayed silent, teeth clenched, eyes on the wall.

His father grinned at him, obviously pleased to be nettling him. “It seems to me that you’re missing the spirit of the Initiation. Or maybe you just chose poorly, if she can’t even manage to distract