He patted my bottom and then helped me to stand, holding my arm, and I teetered trying to adjust to the cold, alien weight of it inside me.
“Okay?” he asked.
I nodded, “Yes, Master.”
“Good girl,” he praised, striding into the bathroom to wash his hands. “Tonight will be fun.”
My hand was in Alexander’s as I alighted from his Town Car just down the street from the club. I was wearing six-inch spiked black heels so my focus was on the ground as I stepped onto the curb, but something in the air made me pause and look up before I’d even finished moving.
Our eyes connected like two magnets.
He looked utterly, devastatingly beautiful. His obsidian waves were tamed and pushed in a perfect wave to the side of his golden forehead, his tall, leanly muscled frame was encased in an impeccably cut suit that made him look like the movie star I believed he should have been.
I’d seen my brother in many situations and forms of dress over the years, but I’d never seen him as he was then.
I’d also never seen nor heard of the woman who was on his arm. She was a petite thing but elegant as a swan, the long line of her pale neck accentuated by the gently curled halo of her ashen hair. I could see the clarity of her blue eyes even from ten feet away, wide and bright as a child’s crayon as they blinked at Sebastian for coming to an unduly halt.
There was a handsome man too, who wasn’t frozen in action beside him like the woman, but who continued half a step and slightly in front of my brother, as if ready to protect him from some potential threat.
That threat, apparently, being me.
Of all the times to run into my brother in London, it was outside a secret society’s sex club with the heavy weight of a plug in my ass and my Master at my side.
“Cosima,” he said at the very same moment I breathed, “Sebastian.”
Alexander tensed beside me and slid an arm around my waist to tuck me further into his side. His Alpha instincts ignited, his nostrils flaring and eyes snapping as Seb and his party unstuck and walked closer.
I tried to move out of the circle of his hold to meet Sebastian halfway as he somewhat woodenly greeted me with our customary three cheek kisses, but Alexander wouldn’t budge an inch, so my brother was forced to get intimately close with him.
I could have sworn the man behind Seb growled at their proximity.
“What are you doing here?” we asked each other at the same time, our voices inflected and accented in the very same places.
I laughed airily. “I’m in town for two nights unexpectedly. A drama queen dropped out of a shoot, and I’m filling in.”
“Why didn’t you call?” he asked, his face crumpled with the hurt he hid from his voice.
I bit my lips as I scrambled to find an answer.
“It was my fault, I’m afraid,” Alexander stepped in to say with a small smile. “I never see Cosima anymore, and when our mutual friend told me she would be in town, I bagsied both nights.”
When Seb frowned slightly, the man behind him offered, “Dibs, claimed, made her promise to see him both nights.”
My brother accepted the translation with a broad smile aimed over his shoulder at his friend. I took a moment to sneak a peek at him and found him to be even more gorgeous than the silent woman with the swan’s neck.
“We were, ah, just going to dinner too,” Sebastian explained, suddenly remembering that he was in odd company too. “Would you like to join us?”
“No,” Alexander said immediately. “We only have a short window for dinner before we’re heading over to a party with some of my friends. Lovely of you to invite us, though, and it was good to meet you.”
I squinted at the man over Seb’s shoulder again and then gaped as the information clicked. “Is that Adam Meyers?”
To my absolute shock, my brother flushed. “Yes, well, Cosima, mia bella sorella,” he continued in Italian so that we could speak privately.
He didn’t know Alexander spoke Italian as well as we did.
“I will call you later,” he promised. “Have a good night with your sugar daddy.”
“I’ll expect an answer when you telephone,” I called lightly after him as he walked backward a few steps before casting a wave over his shoulder in farewell and ushering his friends down the sidewalk back whence they came.
“That was very awkward and very strange,” I told Alexander as I blinked after my brother, my heart hurting that I knew so little about his life. I didn’t even know who his friends were.
“They’re clearly fucking,” Alexander stated in his mater-of-fact British way as he ushered me down the steps and into the unassuming front door of the club.