Night at the Opera 🌶🌶
“Batti, batti, o bel Masetto”
The gilded balconies shimmer under hushed light, chandeliers scattering diamonds over red velvet and polished mahogany. The orchestra swells, strings quivering on the edge of tragedy. The audience holds its breath, enraptured.
I feel his gaze before I turn my head, the heat of it lightly searing my skin. He subtly regards me as his amuse-bouche behind his otherwise unreadable intensity—an expression I now know well and that makes my pulse flutter, my thighs press together.
I let the moment stretch, feigning distraction, letting the tension pull taut.
Then, I lean a little closer to the man in the adjacent box—letting the diamond drop of my earring dangle dangerously as I tilt my head and laugh, my voice like a ribbon on the air, floating with the music, touching the opera glasses to my lips. I angle my neck, letting the low golden light catch the curve of my collarbone, the soft dip of my décolletage.
He angles his head to my ear and murmers, “Careful, little Zerlina. You know how this ends.”
I do.
It’s a game. Our game.
The one where I bait him, where I test the limits of his patience, where I see how long I can stretch the elastic cord of his control before it snaps.
I flash another coquettish glance towards the adjoining box’s mark, feathering my delicate hand to the skin of my chest and sliding the amethyst pendant playfully back and forth on its shimmering chain, then bowing my head and smiling “bashfully.”
A hand curls around the nape of my neck. Not rough. Not punishing. But firm. Certain. A leash made of skin, adoration, and longing.
The man beside me is still talking, oblivious, but my attention has already shattered, my body no longer under my control. A slow exhale ghosts across my ear, his voice a low, musky drawl:
“Having fun, are we?”
My lips part, but before I can answer, he presses a single, knowing kiss just beneath my earlobe—the most chaste, devastating threat in the world.
Not yet, it says. But soon.
The soprano’s voice soars to impossible heights as the box’s plush drapes swallow us in shadows. The intermission arrives. He stands, offering his hand, helping me up like a gentleman. Like a man who will guide me to champagne and tinkling conversation.
Like a double agent.
Instead, his fingers lace through mine, his touch deceptively light, deceptively polite, as he leads me through the velvet-curtained exit, down the semi-private corridor behind the box seats.
A seemingly hidden alcove—though, really, accessible to anyone.
The moment we are alone, the mask drops.
He spins me, pressing me flush against the wood-paneled wall, his hand sliding up my thigh, finding nothing but throbbing heat and intention beneath my gown.
“Flirting in my presence?” he murmurs, his voice dark silk against my skin. “Tell me, my little troublemaker—do I need to teach you a lesson?”
I bite my lip, feigning innocence.
His chuckle is low, knowing. “You should be more careful what you ask for.”
My breath catches and eyes widen.
“Lift your dress,” he murmurs, so quietly I almost don’t hear it. “Now.”
My fingers tremble as I obey, as I slide the liquid silk upward, revealing inch after inch of creamy skin. Then my arms snap around him. And hold him as if I were a hundred feet in the air hanging on to King Kong’s finger - wrapped so tightly.
His breath is steady. His posture immaculate as he turns me to the wall, pressing me forward, bending me like a folding chair. His fingers trail lower, teasing, tracing the impending evidence of my ruin. Then—his other hand slides around my waist, over my hipbone—until he grips the exposed flesh of the most perfect shape and surface known to man.
A beat. A pause. A deliberate breath. As if it’s only a moment.
But it’s so much more.
And then—crack.
The first slap is nothing. Just a tease. Just enough to make me flinch.
The second lands sharper, the sting blooming beneath the reprimand I had invited. My thighs clamp together instinctively.
“Tsk.” His fingers press into my flesh, parting me more. “You wanted to play your little games, darling. And yet, here you are, squirming.”
The third is firmer. Not painful, but undeniable. An echo of heat spreading between my legs.
A shudder wracks through me. My breath is a silent plea. A coaxing for him to take so much more that I have to give him.
A pink, decadent painting splashes across my skin, heat blooming beneath his hand. My body jolts against his. A gasp, sharp and involuntary, betrays me, my hands fisting against the wall.
Another slap. Then another, until the pain and pleasure coil together, a symphony of sensation singing beneath my skin.
“You wanted this,” he reminds me, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear, his fingers tracing the warmth of his own handprint. “Didn’t you, my sweet?”
I can’t speak. I can only nod and lick my plump, wordless lips, my breath and pulse a percussion section in my chest and throat.
He exhales, the sound both reverent and wrecked.
“That’s my good girl.”
And then—he rewards me.
His fingers find the heat between my thighs, stroking, parting, soothing where he has marked. His other hand cups my jaw and presses its thumb downward on my tongue as he turns me back around, tilting my face up, forcing me to meet his eyes in the cognac-colored light.
“Now behave,” he murmurs, pressing a lingering kiss to my lips. “Or I’ll have to finish what you started right in our cozy little box on display to the world.”
I shudder, molten, spent, entirely his.
And then, smoothing down my gown, he offers his arm—ever the flawless gentleman.
As if I am not already branded beneath the silk.
As if my body is not already tuned to his frequency, strung tight with anticipation.
As if I am not already poised for the second act, aching for my next cue.
xoxo, Firefly ❤️🔥