Chapter 2: The Main Course

Chapter 2: The Main Course

The click of the lock was a sound of absolute finality. It severed us from the world downstairs, from the polite fiction of the party, from every rule I had ever lived by. We were in a new territory now, a private kingdom ruled by Madison. The guest bedroom was enormous, a sea of cream carpets and dark, heavy furniture. A king-sized bed, dressed in a pristine white duvet, dominated the center of the room like an altar. Muffled through the floorboards, the distant thud-thud-thud of the party’s music served as a primal, hypnotic heartbeat to the scene unfolding.

My own heart was hammering against my ribs, a frantic rhythm fueled by the drug and the dizzying aftermath of that kiss. I was no longer the detached bartender. I was a participant, a variable in an equation I couldn't begin to solve.

Madison still had her arm linked through mine, her grip a warm manacle. She turned her predatory gaze from me to Melissa, who stood frozen by the door, her expressive eyes wide with a potent cocktail of terror and fascination. She looked like a fawn caught between a wolf and a cliff edge.

"Don't look so scared, Lissa," Madison purred, her voice a velvet blade. "This is a gift. An education."

She unlinked her arm from mine, but only to place her hands on my shoulders. It wasn't a comforting gesture; it was a positioning. She turned me to face the bed. The professional part of my brain, the part that handled inventory and tracked tabs, was screaming bloody murder. This is your job. You are the help. Get out. But that part of my brain was a distant whisper, drowned out by the roaring in my blood.

"You're about to marry a man who can give you anything," Madison continued, her voice close to my ear now, but her words were all for Melissa. "But he can't teach you what you really want, because you don't even know how to ask for it."

With a firm, undeniable shove, she pushed me forward. My knees hit the plush mattress and I stumbled onto the bed, landing on my hands and knees on the smooth, cool duvet. The motion sent a jolt of humiliation and electrifying arousal straight through me. My carefully tailored uniform felt like a costume for a life I no longer inhabited.

Before I could scramble away or protest, Madison was on the bed with me, her weight sinking the mattress behind me. She was terrifyingly graceful. Her hands landed on my hips, her touch firm and proprietary.

"Watch, Lissa," she commanded, her voice dropping to a husky whisper. "Watch how a woman who knows what she wants takes it."

Her fingers dug into my hips, holding me in place. Her other hand slid up my back, under the hem of my crisp work shirt, her cool palm a shocking contrast against my heated skin. Every nerve ending lit up. My breath hitched. This was it. The point of no return. The obstacle of my professionalism wasn't just overcome; it was annihilated.

Her skilled fingers traced my spine, sending shivers through me, before moving lower, hooking into the waistband of my slacks. My body went rigid. This was no seductive caress; it was a deliberate dismantling. She wasn't asking permission. She was stripping me of my armor, piece by piece, her movements efficient and practiced.

My head was spinning. The drug, the shock, the sheer audacity of it all. I squeezed my eyes shut, my world narrowing to the sensation of her hands on my skin, the sound of her breathing, and the muffled beat from the world below. I could feel Melissa's eyes on me, a silent, horrified, captivated audience.

Madison’s mouth was at my ear. "You feel that, Jade? The anticipation? She feels it too." Her lips brushed my earlobe, and then she worked her magic. Her touch was not gentle. It was a targeted assault, precise and merciless, designed for one purpose: to shatter my composure completely. She knew exactly where to touch, how to press, the rhythm to build that sent waves of raw, illicit pleasure through me. My carefully constructed walls of cynicism and control crumbled into dust. A helpless moan escaped my lips, a sound I didn't recognize as my own. It was the sound of surrender.

The pressure built, coiling tight in my belly, a frantic, desperate climb. It was too much, too fast. I was an instrument she was playing with virtuosic, brutal skill. My hands fisted in the duvet, my back arched, and a cry was torn from my throat as a violent, explosive orgasm ripped through me. It was a white-hot flash of pure sensation, wiping out thought, identity, everything. My body shuddered, boneless and wrecked, and I collapsed onto the pristine white canvas of the bed, panting and utterly undone.

For a moment, the only sound was my ragged breathing. The lesson was over. My professional composure was a smoking crater.

I felt the bed shift. Through a daze, I heard Madison's low voice, no longer directed at me. "Now you, Lissa."

I forced my heavy eyelids open. Madison was kneeling beside Melissa near the edge of the bed, one arm around her friend's waist. She was guiding the trembling bride forward, toward me.

"No," Melissa whispered, her voice barely audible. "I can't."

"You can," Madison insisted, her tone leaving no room for argument. "She's not scary. She's beautiful. Go on. Touch her. See for yourself."

Melissa's wide, tear-filled eyes met mine. In their depths, I saw not disgust, but a profound, aching curiosity. The same curiosity I'd seen in the hallway, now magnified a thousand times. Madison gave her a final, gentle push.

Hesitantly, Melissa crawled onto the bed. She moved with an agonizing slowness, as if approaching a wild animal. She stopped a foot away from me, her body tense.

"Her skin is so warm," Madison prompted from behind her. "Feel."

A trembling hand reached out. Melissa's fingers, so different from Madison's, brushed against the bare skin of my back. Her touch was feather-light, tentative, full of a nervous energy that was, in its own way, as potent as Madison's dominance. It was a question.

I didn't flinch. I couldn't. I was pinned by the intensity of the moment, a living exhibit in this strange museum of desire. My body, still humming with the aftershocks of my climax, responded instantly to this new, gentler stimulus. A fresh wave of heat spread from her touch.

Seeing I didn't pull away, Melissa grew bolder. Her hand flattened against my back, exploring the shape of my shoulder blades, the curve of my spine. Her touch was one of pure discovery. Madison’s lesson had been a demonstration of power; this was an act of revelation.

Then, Madison’s hand covered Melissa's, guiding it lower, down to the waistband of my slacks, to the sensitive skin of my hip. "Good," Madison whispered, her voice a seductive hiss. "Now, again. But this time… for you."

Melissa's breath hitched. As Madison’s experienced fingers guided Melissa’s innocent ones, a shocking new current arced between the three of us. It was no longer a one-on-one performance. It was a circuit. My body, which I thought was spent, flared back to life with an intensity that was dizzying. The combination of Madison’s confident instruction and Melissa’s fumbling, breathtaking discovery was an overload. It was a shocking, intensely arousing two-on-one assault on my senses, pulling another helpless gasp from my lips as the world began to tilt on its axis once more.