Finding Lily. Vivacia Ahwen K.

picking up, as a ripple of excitement and fear began coursing through my veins. ‘So turn on the light already.’

      ‘Preferably with you, given how much I’d like to be your belayer.’

      ‘Huh?’

      ‘Oh, I will harness you, watch you hang, guide your rope, then bungee you up against those phony rocks and have the two of us rotate together.’

      ‘What if you fell? Where’s your gear in this little fantasy?’

      ‘No ropes, no belts, not for this guy. It’s just a wall, not a mountain; I could run up this thing blindfolded. I don’t need protection, Lily. But you do.’ He closed his eyes, obviously visualising me hanging from the protruding artificial stones, crying like a baby while he leaped all over me like a half-starved mountain lion. Fearless of free-falling, because Holders Never Fall. ‘We shall see.’

      ‘Indeed we shall.’ I could picture him latching the safety belt around my waist, buckling the straps roughly around my thighs. In my fantasy, I’m not weeping, though. I am stone-faced and egging him on. Tighter, Dorian.

      ‘And no doubt we’ll find a way to use that anti-gravity yoga swing, sure. I’ve got faith in us. Et tu?’

      I didn’t answer.

      ‘Lily?’

      Dorian flipped a switch, and our strange surroundings came into focus. Like a good girl, I followed his directive and looked around the room.

      For the record, even before all of this phooey-hooey went down? Despite the fact that I worked for Apollyon LLC, supplier to the athletic, well-toned, extreme sorts? I have never so much as entered an outdoors-sporty store in my life. Should I have done so, I’d have been laughed out of there faster than you could sing the first verse of ‘Pretty Woman’. Despite Dorian Holder’s apparent fascination with a diamond-in-the-rough girl next door, he could have whoever he wanted, we had not made any solid promises, and somehow he was already Master of my Universe.

      But it wasn’t the array of complicated machinery that grabbed my attention, and I gasped against my will.

      Thousands of Lilies and Dorians were reflected in what felt like infinite mirrors. He had set the lights to dim, so our images and the shapes surrounding us flickered like candles, warm reds, oranges, yellows, displaying a strange and beautiful space where I could come and go as I pleased.

      Three of the walls were a masterpiece of the two of us in instant flashback, bevelled and placed at angles which made me feel as though we were in the centre of a fire opal, or swimming in a glasz ocean. The entire ceiling was a myriad of mirrors, catching the cerulean blue of his porcelain-tiled floor. For the multitudes of looking glasses reflected not only the two of us but another painting. A fuzzy-looking mural: a duplicate of Monet’s Water Lilies.

      Not a bad one, considering that he must’ve bullied a ‘paint it in twelve hours’ contract on some poor unsuspecting artist. The painter signing off, hoping it was his (or more likely her) big break.

      I could relate, 100 per cent. My big break.

      ‘Do you like it?’ his voice was husky as he drew closer to me.

      ‘It’s …’ Words escaped me, as he knelt at my feet, pulled my boots off and tossed them aside.

      He rose to his feet. ‘Now strip.’

      Since he’d asked me to do a pole-dance for him before, I assumed he wanted me to grab one of the aerobic pole-dance stands. Not tonight, it would have been too much. Instead, I slowly removed my garments, letting them drop to my feet like a puddle of cloth. I shivered, though the room was quite warm. Something about being entirely skyclad, while the man you borderline worship observes you with such a blank face, can chill a girl to the bone. But I lifted my chin, and tried to find emotion somewhere in his dark eyes, which now flickered with amber, emerald and desire. Which was something.

       Consider the lilies of the field …

      ‘Do you see yourself? Look.’ He stood behind me, gripped my shoulders hard, and we faced our reflection. ‘See, just for a moment, what I see whenever I look at you, Lily. You, darling girl …’

      I listened to my heart accelerate, while Dorian traced his fingers over my breasts, my soft belly, and at last reached my pussy. He opened me easily, and we watched ourselves. Though I tried to do my yoga breathing and keep my trembling to a minimum, my body betrayed me, as bodies are wont to do.

      My flower was open wide, red and engorged with want. Dorian wanted me to watch my dark descent into weakness and hunger, while he observed. He wanted me to see how much I needed him, how much I ached for him. How I could respond to even his merest touch, while he remained so cool and detached.

      ‘Dorian—’ I gulped, and winced.

      ‘What’s up, Tiger Lily?’ He slid his fingers inside me, and something broke. It were as though we had been fondling each other this entire time, and the hours spent without him were ongoing foreplay.

      No fair.

      I dribbled girl-juice all over his hand, but just as I began to close my eyes and drop into that sweet abyss, he said, ‘Don’t stop looking. See how beautiful you are when you come? See what I see. Watch yourself. That’s an order.’

      I tried to open my eyes, though in my state of ecstasy everything swam about me, as though we were underwater, Poseidon and I. A strange woman stared back. There had been the moment in front of the mirror while Beezus ‘fixed’ me, but this was so very different. This girl, this Lily.… Me? She had hair like a mermaid, eyes like the ocean, and her voluptuous curves shivered in the cool room. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips pouty.

      Maybe this was what Dorian saw.

      Were that the case, I wished I could envision myself that way all the time.

      This was the woman I wanted to be.

       How could this be me?

      Somehow I looked stronger. My muscles were taut from adrenalin, while my breath tried to catch up with my heartbeat. My breasts were swollen from the bloodflow of arousal, nipples pink and peaked. Dorian’s stiffened cock – pushing its way against his pants, poking against my bottom – was not helping matters. He brushed aside my hair, exposing my shoulders, baring my neck to him, as though he were a vampire seeking that perfect vein.

       CHAPTER 3

       Heart of Glass

       No. And yes, Dorian. Yes, please.

      He kissed just below my ear, trailed his lips lower, but stopped at my shoulder, waiting. There was a tenderness about him which seemed out of character, and I begged myself not to over-think the moment.

      For once.

      Just be here. Can you just be here, Lily?

      ‘See?’ Dorian licked his wet fingers, sighed, then circled my clit again.

      And, of course, he stopped.

      Because that’s how he rolls.

      Rolled.

      Out of nowhere, my MIA best frenemy Gwen’s words came back to me, echoing in my memory.

       Go find your playroom, Lily. Go have your fantasy.

      Ah.

      Suddenly, instead of the magical bowl of fantasy Dorian had created, I was only a nude girl standing in a room of metallic, angry gym equipment, pink flesh exaggerated by a bunch of mirrored tiles. Naked as a plucked jaybird, with some hotshot billionaire breathing everything I wanted to hear through layers of my hair.

      A