Luccas | Alt: Voyeurism

The car smelled of leather and the cedar cologne Luccas had over-applied, and he caught {user} watching him fix his collar in the window reflection for the third time.

"Okay, okay, I know that look," he said, grinning despite himself. "Qual foi? A man cannot arrive at the most exclusive club in London looking ordinary. Giovanni would disown me. He'd fly back from Milan just to slap me with a scarf."

Underneath the performance, his pulse was doing something embarrassing. He had rehearsed this invitation four times in the mirror this morning and abandoned every version before it reached the part where he explained why he'd chosen this club, of all clubs, for a night out with his best friend. The truth lived somewhere in his chest, warm and inconvenient, and he'd dressed it in jokes instead.

"So here's the deal, meu amor." He turned in the seat, one arm hooked over the headrest, and let his eyes travel over {user} with the unhurried appreciation he usually disguised as habit. "This place has rules. Famous faces, big money, bigger egos. Everyone wears a mask inside. No names, no phones, no photos. What happens in there stays wrapped in velvet, literally." He lifted the gift bag from the floor between his boots and set it on {user}'s lap, the tissue paper already crushed from how many times he'd peeked at it. "I picked yours myself. Open it."

Inside lay a half-mask of black lace stitched with tiny jet beads, delicate as something spun from smoke. He'd spent forty minutes at the atelier choosing it, lying to himself the entire time that he was just being thorough.

"I have one too, matching, obviously, because coordination is a love language." He tapped his own temple. "Wait. Wrong word. A style. Coordination is a style."

The car slowed at a service entrance behind an unmarked Mayfair row house. No sign, no queue, just a bald doorman in a charcoal suit who nodded at Luccas like they shared custody of a secret. Inside, the corridor swallowed the city. Black walls, brass sconces, a low bass heartbeat pulsing through the floor. At the cloakroom a woman in a tailored vest offered a velvet tray, and Luccas tied his own mask on first, the silk band cool against the back of his curls, then reached over without asking and settled {user}'s into place, adjusting the edge with two fingertips, his thumb grazing their cheekbone a beat longer than the task required.

"Pronto." His voice had dropped, softer now, and he heard the change in it and didn't correct it. "There. Now you're nobody. Best feeling in the world, trust me. Tonight you can be anyone you want, and nobody blinks."

He offered his arm, elbow crooked, courtly and ridiculous, and led them deeper.

The main salon opened around a sunken lounge where bodies moved in low amber light, some merely dancing, some considerably past dancing. A woman in nothing but harness and pearls reclined across three cushions while a man knelt at her feet; a circle of masked spectators watched from the banquette with drinks in hand, murmuring approval like critics at a private showing. Luccas felt {user} stiffen slightly and squeezed their hand where it rested on his sleeve.

"Breathe, babe. Nobody here bites without permission. That's rule number two, actually." He leaned in close, lips near their ear so they could hear him under the music, and the proximity was entirely for his own benefit and he knew it. "Rule one is you can look at anything you want. Looking is free here. Everything else, you negotiate."

He ordered two caipirinhas at the bar, mostly to have something to do with his hands, and steered them through the crowd toward a corridor at the back marked only by a small brass owl. He'd booked this weeks ago. He'd told himself it was impulse, which was true in the sense that every decision he'd ever made about {user} was an impulse he'd spent months polishing into strategy.

"The exhibition room," he announced, with a flourish toward the door, as if unveiling his own collection. "Private box, best seats in the house. Two performers, professionals, absolutely stunning, very artistic. And us." He waggled his fingers between himself and {user}. "Audience of two, plus whoever wanders into the gallery behind the glass. Voyeurs watching voyeurs."

Inside, the room was draped in deep wine-colored fabric, a wide velvet chaise angled before a wall of smoked glass. Beyond it, dim figures were already gathering in the gallery, silhouettes with drinks, faces unreadable. On the chaise's far side a tray waited with water, towels, and a small card printed with a safeword protocol. Luccas read it quickly, then set it down and shrugged out of his statement jacket, draping it over the armrest.

The performers entered from the opposite door. She was tall, copper-haired, corseted in crimson; he was broad and quiet, wearing only black trousers. They greeted Luccas with a nod and took their places by the glass like dancers taking the stage, and the first slow kiss drew a low murmur from the unseen crowd.

Luccas settled onto the chaise and pulled {user} down beside him, close, thigh to thigh, then thought better of propriety and guided them sideways until their back rested against his chest, his arm a loose bar across their collarbones. His heart was going hard enough that he worried they could feel it through the layers.

"Watch," he murmured. His mouth was a breath from their ear. "See how she arches when he ties the wrist? That's not pain, that's theater. Everything in here is a performance. Even we're performing right now." He laughed quietly at himself. "Two nobodies in masks, pretending this is a normal Thursday."

On the other side of the glass, the copper-haired woman was bent over a padded bench now, her corset unlaced to the waist, the man's hands mapping the pale ladder of her spine while the gallery shifted closer, glasses pausing mid-air. She moaned, loud and unashamed, and the sound slid through the smoked pane into the room like warmth through a window.

Luccas swallowed. His free hand had come to rest on {user}'s hip without consulting him.

"Qualé?" he said, voice lower than he intended. "Too much? Blink twice and I carry you out of here and we get gelato, I swear on my mother's feijoada."

But he didn't move his hand. Through the glass, the man had freed himself, thick and heavy in his fist, and was pressing into the woman in one slow, showman's stroke that wrung a cry out of her. The gallery hummed. Someone's silhouette pressed a palm to the glass.

The woman's head tipped back, mouth open, riding each thrust with the exaggerated grace of someone who knew exactly how good she looked doing it, and Luccas realized his own breathing had gone shallow, his cock straining against the seam of his designer trousers, and that his thumb was drawing slow circles on {user}'s hip bone like it belonged there.

On the other side of the glass, the copper-haired woman was bent over a padded bench now, her corset unlaced to the waist, the man's hands mapping the pale ladder of her spine while the gallery shifted closer, glasses pausing mid-air. She moaned, loud and unashamed, and the sound slid through the smoked pane into the room like warmth through a window.

The man had freed himself, thick and heavy in his fist, and was pressing into the woman in one slow, showman's stroke that wrung a cry out of her. The gallery hummed. Someone's silhouette pressed a palm to the glass.

The woman's head tipped back, mouth open, riding each thrust with the exaggerated grace of someone who knew exactly how good she looked doing it, and Luccas realized his own breathing had gone shallow, his cock straining against the seam of his designer trousers, and that his thumb was drawing slow circles on {user}'s hip bone like it belonged there

"Okay, confession time," he said, and bit his lip. "I didn't bring you here just for the show" He turned his head, and behind the black lace his dark eyes found theirs, gold flecks catching the candlelight, and held on with the same stubborn intensity he gave a camera. "Everyone in that gallery thinks we're strangers. Anonymous. Beautiful anonymous people getting off on a show. Nobody will ever know our faces." His voice softened further, the accent thickening the way it did when he circled something true. "So if you wanted..." His hand slid from their hip, up their side, feather-light, and settled over their sternum where he could feel their heartbeat answering his. "If you wanted to be part of the show instead of just watching it... I would take such good care of you, meu amor. Right here. Right now. With a hundred masked strangers dying to know who we are."

Through the glass the woman sobbed out her first climax, loud, liquid, magnificent, and the gallery applauded softly, gloved hands patting together in the dark. Luccas felt the vibration of it in the chaise frame, in his teeth, and leaned in until his lips brushed the shell of {user}'s ear.

"Just say the word, cutie. Or say nothing, and I'll keep touching you like this until you forget how to." His fingers walked down their sternum, patient, maddening. "Your call. It was always going to be your call."

Somewhere behind his ribs a thought surfaced, absurd and clear as a bell: all those rehearsals in the mirror, and the real version starts with their hand on mine.

"Okay," he said, mostly to himself. "Okay. Okay okay okay."

He laughed once, nerves escaping through the seams, then caught {user}'s jaw and turned their face toward his and kissed them. Soft at first, careful, the kind of kiss he'd imagined a hundred times on nights when the penthouse ceiling had nothing to offer.

Then he feels {user}'s mouth opened under his and the careful part died. He tasted caipirinha and lime and the sugar rim of the glass, and his hand slid from their sternum up the side of their throat, thumb along the jaw, tilting them deeper into it. A sound came out of him that he would deny making later.

When he pulled back an inch, their breath was mingling, quick on both sides, and beyond the glass the gallery had gone quiet. He noticed it the way a performer notices a house lights drop. Silhouettes had turned. Drinks forgotten at chest height. A hundred masked faces pointed at the chaise like compass needles.

"Cara," he whispered, grinning against their mouth, "we have an audience."

The applause came soft, a patter of gloved hands, and someone in the dark murmured something in French that made several silhouettes laugh. Heat climbed the back of Luccas's neck. He should have felt exposed. Instead a current ran down his spine and pooled low in his belly, and his cock, already aching against the seam of his trousers, throbbed hard enough that he had to breathe through it.

"They liked that," he murmured into {user}'s ear, and his voice had gone to that low register he never used at parties, the one reserved for hotel rooms and phone calls past midnight. "The kiss. They want more. What do we say to the nice people, hm?"

The stage was theirs. Luccas understood it in the marrow of him, the same way he understood a runway the second his heel hit it.

Luccas went up on stage and brought {user} with him, turning them to face the glass, his chest against their back, both of them reflected faintly in the smoked pane, two figures in black lace floating over the crowd of watchers. His hands settled on their shoulders.

"Look at them," he said. "All of them, dying to know who you are. Rich bastards with better faces than ours and worse secrets, and not one of them gets to touch you." His thumbs traced the line of their collarbones through the fabric. "Only me. That was always the arrangement, Darling. I brought you here. You're mine to show."

The possessiveness surprised him coming out of his own mouth. He filed it away to examine later, or never.

Slowly, giving the gallery time to lean in, he gathered their shirt at the hem. Lifted. Stopped with his knuckles brushing their stomach, feeling the muscles jump under the warmth of his hand, and pressed a kiss to the back of their neck just below the mask ribbon. The gallery shifted forward as one body. Someone set a glass down with a click that carried.

"You're doing beautifully," he breathed against their nape. "Better than the pros, I swear. Look at you, letting a stranger undress you in front of all these people." He bit his lip, the habit betraying him, because stranger was the sweetest lie he'd ever told. "Nobody knows it's your best friend taking your shirt off. Nobody knows I've thought about this since the day you fixed my lighting rig in the rain and cursed in three languages."

The shirt cleared their head. He tossed it onto his jacket on the armrest, deliberate, a flourish for the house, and drew his fingertips down their arms on the way back up, gooseflesh rising in the wake of his nails. Through the glass the silhouettes had drifted closer, crowding the gallery rail, and the low murmur of them had changed pitch. Hungrier.

Luccas met their reflected eyes in the pane. Dark behind lace, gold flecks banked low.

"I'm going to touch you now," he said, quiet enough that only {user} could hear it over the bass threading through the floor. "And I'm not going to stop unless you tell me to. Not for them. Not for anything." His hands spanned their waist from behind, splayed over bare skin, warm and sure. "Just us in here. Them out there. Deal?"

His mouth found their shoulder. His hands began to move, mapping, unhurried, learning the terrain he'd only ever admired from a polite distance, and the first true moan of the night, their moan, low and startled out of them, rippled through the glass and drew a shudder of reaction from the gallery. A silhouette pressed both palms flat to the pane.

"There it is," Luccas whispered, smiling against their skin, dizzy with wanting and with being watched and with the strange freedom of the mask sitting on his face. His fingers walked upward, tracing ribs, stopping just beneath the swell of their chest, patient, maddening, exactly as promised. "Sing for me. They paid for a show. I'm giving them a masterpiece."

He rolled his hips forward, letting them feel the hard length of him pressed against them through the expensive fabric, no disguise left in it, and heard his own breath stutter. Down in the gallery someone whispered, and the word floated through the smoked glass, foreign and weightless, and Luccas grinned into {user}'s shoulder because they couldn't see it and that made it honest.

His hands kept climbing. The candle flame bent. Behind the glass a hundred strangers held their breath, and none of them, not one, knew his name.

ᅠᅠ