As rehearsal started, the music began to swell, the lights dimming further as I descended the final rows to take a seat next to her. I could barely see my own hand in front of my face, but as if she’d known I was there all along—or maybe hoped I would find her—she hardly reacted. A simple glance, a small smile, and the tiny gold pendant I’d given her for Christmas twisting slowly between her delicate fingertips. I placed a hand on her thigh, felt the warm, supple skin beneath my palm, and motioned silently up to the stage.

A man counted down as girls in skimpy jeweled costumes balanced on pointed toes and spun themselves around. I was dizzy just watching them. They danced, circling one another and finally stopping beneath a concentrated beam of light, to kiss.

I tightened my grip on her thigh, swiped my thumb beneath the hem of her skirt, and heard the slight hitch in her breath. There was no one but us in the darkness beyond the stage and I wondered, would Sara’s love for being watched translate into watching someone else?

My hand traveled farther up her thigh and I leaned in to kiss her ear. She sighed, tilting her head as I moved her hair, and traced my tongue down the curve of her neck.

She pulled back just enough to meet my eyes, letting hers flicker quickly to the performers in wordless communication. Here? she was asking. While they dance and touch each other on stage?

Another woman spun around a gold pole, the single spotlight accentuating every acrobatic movement of her graceful arms and legs, the way her body bowed to the pulse of the music that played in the background. It was erotic, and I felt myself harden even further both from the show in front of us and Sara’s reaction to it.

I smiled, shifted in my seat to whisper against her cheek. “What are you thinking?” I asked.

“You have to ask?”

“Maybe I want to hear you say it,” I said.

She swallowed. “Are we going to?” There was need in her voice. The edge of that hollow little ache I’d heard earlier at the Black Heart.

“Maybe not everything, Petal,” I said, letting my fingers trail higher, pushing the lace of her pants to the side so I could run a finger along the soft folds of her pu**y. “Are you still wet from me?”

She swallowed, flicked her tongue out to lick her lips. “Yes.”

I dipped my finger inside. “Do you feel like you were f**ked earlier? Can you still feel me?” I pressed deeper and she hiccupped the tiniest breath; her mouth went soft and round, glistening in the dim light.

“Someone might see us,” she murmured, head falling back against the seat and eyes fluttering closed. She struggled to find words as I added a second finger, pushing them both in at once. I smiled at how breathless she was, how immediately incoherent.

“Isn’t that the point?”

“Cameras . . .”

I glanced up and shrugged. “And what would you do, sweet Sara? If someone saw you this way? Would that make it better? Would you come on my hand as soon as you heard their feet on the stairs?”

She moaned quietly and I couldn’t look away from the hint of movement between her thighs where I touched her, the way she spread her legs farther to open herself up, arching into it. I liked her pliant for me, boneless, where I could arrange her the way I wanted and just take. But I liked her like this, too, desperate and forgetting herself.

I groaned, squeezing myself through my trousers because—Christ—would it always be like this? Would I always want her in this way that made me dizzy and completely stupid?

I wanted to put her on my lap and ride up into her, hear her screams and the way she said my name over and over, hear it echo off the high ceilings, echoed above the music. It would ring around us, sound back to me, and the people still dancing on the stage would know that she was mine.

Of course we couldn’t, and when a small moan left her lips I leaned in, whispered a soft “Shhh,” against her skin. Her eyes were pinned to the stage, where a woman danced topless, and in the almost pitch-black auditorium I struggled to make out the side of Sara’s face. The rustle of fabric dragged my attention lower, to where she played with her breast, tugging on her nipple where her shirt had fallen open the tiniest bit. And the fact that she was getting off on what we were doing and where—by being watched but also watching in return—well, the thought alone was enough to get me riled up, have me almost shooting in my pants.

My heart kicked at my ribs and I palmed my cock, watching, hearing as Sara got closer and closer. In the glow of the stage lights I could see a thin sheen of sweat across her forehead, could feel her beginning to tighten around my fingers. Her sounds changed, growing longer with every circle of my thumb over her clit, every rhythmic rock of her hips.