“Holy shit,” I breathed.
“All day I’ve fantasized about doing that,” he said, wiping his sexy mouth victoriously.
“What else do you fantasize about?” I asked, already wanting more of him.
“This is your fantasy, Dauphine. It’s supposed to be about you. Don’t get me wrong. This works for me too.”
I leaned forward and pulled him by a belt loop to stand in front of my face. I flashed my eyes up at him, my mouth slackened, looking for silent permission.
“And that works too,” he said, as he stroked himself through his jeans.
My hands, shaking slightly, unbuttoned him, freeing his perfect erection, my god, taking his smooth tip in my mouth, never hungrier for anything. I looked up at him again as my tongue began circling his tip, and he died a little, his face collapsing at the site of my growing enthusiasm. Then I took him fully into my wet mouth, moaning at the same time, my firm hand pumping ever so rhythmically along his shaft, my other one under him, cupping him, feeling him rise with his aching arousal. He closed his eyes as I took him deep into my mouth. I sucked in my cheeks, my lips a firm ring, my throat relaxed, my low moan moving through his groin. He whimpered. I was good at this, had always been good at this, but I had never wanted to be the best like I did now.
My mouth and hands were working their magic, but it was the eye contact that did him in, just as I slid a wet finger back and around, pressing in on him at the exact moment he came, hard and loud, deep into the back of my throat, one of his hands stroking my hair, the other one outstretched on the wall, as he said god and my name over and over again until spent. After a few tender strokes, I let go of him, flinging myself back in the chair, deeply pleased. My eye caught the calendar splayed on the floor; it was dated five years ago. Just who was I back then?
“Holy shit. That was … mind-fucking-blowing, Dauphine.” His hands were on his knees, his jeans bunched around his ankles. “I’ve never … it was so … what the fuck.”
“Best ever?”
“Uh … yeah.”
“Well, that was my fantasy,” I said. “Complete.”
“Oh, but it’s not over yet. Let’s get the hell out of here. The Domino Suite awaits!”
“What’s that?” I said, reaching down for my bra.
“I don’t have a clue, but we’re going to find out.”
“So there’s more?
“So much more,” he said, plucking up our clothes and pulling me up to my feet. “More than you know.”
We dressed stealing soft glances at each other. And then we slipped out the back door of the club, where the same long black car that had dropped me off now took on an extra passenger. He held my hand in the back seat, and somehow this gesture was more intimate than what we’d just done to each other with our mouths at Tipitina’s.
“That Margaret Lewis song … so good,” I said.
“You know her?”
“Know her? I have all her records. Vinyl.”
“Who would have thought this is how I’d meet my dream girl,” he said, raising my hand to kiss the back of it.
His dream girl?
He noticed my bracelet for the first time. “You earned them all, right?”
I nodded.
“I think you get some do-overs tonight,” he said, kissing my fingers.
Matilda was right: this fantasy was unrolling in a way that I could not have imagined myself. We kissed the rest of the way there, coming up for air only when the limo glided through those ivy-covered gates. The Mansion was dark, one window lit on the second floor.
“This place is so freaky, don’t you think?” he said, exiting the limo in front of a small fountain with little angel statues.
“You’ve been here before?”
Mark looked at me.
“Right,” I said.
“I’m going to assume you’ve been here before too.”
“Once, and only back there,” I said, pointing over the crest of a hill to the garage at the end of the driveway.
“What were you doing back there?”
The look on my face told him it was best not to ask.
“Right. This is so insane,” he said, grinning widely. “I fucking love it.”
The side door was open, and instead of taking me to the right, where I assumed the front foyer would lead us upstairs, he tugged me to the left, down a long, black-and white-tiled corridor with swinging oak doors at the end. We were quiet as mice, creeping hand in hand into the massive kitchen. A single light over a stove cast shadows on appliances the size of cattle. The pots and pans hanging from the ceiling were big enough to prepare meals for Vikings.
Mark pulled open an industrial-sized fridge stocked with enough food to feed an army. Snatching a large serving tray from an upper cabinet, and a box of crackers, he bent into the fridge to scoop up handfuls of chocolate truffles, grapes and cheese rounds.
“All they have is romance food,” he said as he handed me the tray so he could continue to load it up. “They need to start buying cold cuts and bread.”
“Ahem. Hello.” The voice came from the kitchen door.
In my fright I screamed rather loudly, and Mark tossed the box of crackers in the air as a diminutive woman in a starched maid’s uniform turned the lights on full force.
“I’m so sorry to have frightened you. I’m Claudette. We waited for you earlier, but the driver told us there was a slight delay. Are you finding everything you need?”
“Yes. Thank you,” I said, trying to calm my heart.
“I’ll show you to your suite,” she said, taking the tray of food from my hands. “I’ll carry this, my dear. We’ll send up some drinks as well.”
We were like a couple of school kids caught breaking into the cafeteria, but instead of getting punished, we were being offered keys to the whole school.
The Domino Suite was up the side stairs and down a wide hall in the west wing. It was, as its name implied, entirely decorated in black and white, its key feature a marble claw-foot tub at the end of an all-white platform bed dotted with round black pillows.
Claudette placed the tray on a glass-topped banquette that faced a floor-to-ceiling window framed with black velvet curtains. A second later, another woman, also dressed in uniform, dropped off a bucket of chilled champagne and several bottles of sparkling water.
“Just call down if you need anything,” Claudette said as they left, closing the double doors behind them.
We waited a beat to make sure we were really alone. Then, with grins smeared across our faces, we leapt onto the platform bed, landing in a pile. I was happier than I’d been in a long, long time.
“This is so cool,” he said. “You are so cool.”
I noticed the iPod and speaker on the mantel of the fireplace.
“Any requests?” I asked, getting up and skipping across the room.
“Surprise me,” Mark said, echoing my instructions to S.E.C.R.E.T.
It occurred to me then just how well the organization had done that. They’d surprised me over and over again. But this was by far the biggest surprise—my favorite musician singling me out in a crowded room, pleasuring me in the back of a club, then bringing me to this beautiful place, making me feel wanted, special, treasured, if only for a night. I wheeled through the iPod menu, stocked with some of the best Louisiana blues and jazz, and chose Professor Longhair, which made Mark convulse with joy on the bed.
“Yes! He’s the king!”
“My favorite’s ‘Willie Mae,’” I said, joining him again, working my hand under his T-shirt. “Don’t you wish you could have seen him play at Tipitina’s?”