Chapter 1

A few days after we had returned to my parent’s house in Palm Beach from our mini vacation, Leigh and I were sitting in the hot tub together. We had just finished fucking, and Leigh lay nestled in my arms, her skin warm beneath the water. The summer had been one long, breathless exhale ... an unraveling of secrets and inhibitions. We’d talked plenty about her sexual awakening, but we hadn’t yet touched on the most recent parts: the moments where her boundaries had blurred, her decisions impulsive, her desires unchecked.

I ran my fingers slowly through her damp hair. “How are you feeling about everything that’s happened this summer?” I watched for any sign of discomfort, but she stayed relaxed, calm. So I pressed further. “Are you having any regrets? Feeling guilty?”

She pulled back slightly, lifting her head from my shoulder. Turning to face me, she looked me squarely in the eyes. “The only thing that would make me regret any of it ... is if you were disappointed in me.”

Her gaze locked on mine, searching. I’d heard something similar after the Midsummer Masquerade, but I needed to go deeper.

“You know I love you,” I said. “Nothing you’ve done has changed that. But I want to understand HOW you’re feeling.”

Leigh bit her lower lip, clearly weighing something heavy. “I’m okay, really. You don’t need to worry about me,” she said, her voice calm, but her eyes searching. “What does worry me ... is what I’m learning about myself.”

I reached out, gently brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “What are you learning?”

She gave a nervous laugh. “Besides the fact that I love being a slut?” Her voice faltered slightly, like she was testing the word on her own tongue. “I’ve been realizing that there are things ... dark, deviant things ... that don’t just turn me on, they overwhelm me. When they hit, all my inhibitions vanish. I stop caring about what anyone might think of me. All I want is to give in.”

“And when you do?” I asked.

Her cheeks flushed. “The orgasms are ... mind-blowing. It’s like something inside me breaks free.”

I nodded, inviting her to continue.

“It’s a scale, But the more taboo it seems, the hotter it makes me,” she said. “Just being naked in front of people turns me on. But if someone dares me ... or better yet, forces me ... it becomes electric. I didn’t even know how much until that camping trip with Fritz and Laura.”

“You started that, though,” I reminded her. “You were the one who stripped down first.”

“Yes,” she grinned, “but only after you dared me to go topless. That made me hotter. Same with that day at the beach when you wouldn’t give me a towel after I lost my suit. I hated you for a second ... but then I felt this rush. Like I was completely exposed, and I loved it. That’s when I realized how much I craved ... the danger of being seen. Especially by strangers. That turned me on so much that I lost my inhibitions and discovered what turns me on the most ... having sex with strangers.”

I had suspected as much. But this was the first time I’d heard her articulate it. “So what is it about having sex with strangers that excites you?”

She paused, looking for the answer inside herself. “Maybe it’s that I can lose control without being judged. If I don’t know their names, if I’ll never see them again ... it’s freedom. I can be the slut I want to be without anyone reporting back to my family.”

I was beginning to understand. Leigh had been raised in a world of manners and expectations, a descendant of the Texas Old Three Hundred ... a legacy of Southern prestige that came with strict codes of behavior. Her life had been a performance of perfection. Anonymous sex wasn’t just indulgence; it was liberation. An escape hatch from a cage made of gold.

“If I’ve never met them before, don’t even know their name and will never see them again it lets me be as slutty as I want. It gives me freedom to be a whore. And love it.”

She paused, watching for any flicker of judgment in my expression. I offered none.

“What initially scared me,” she continued, “ ... is that my desire becomes uncontrollable when the strangers are old, fat or ugly. If the man that is fucking me would be considered below my status and wouldn’t deserve a woman like me ... my orgasms are incredible! I think it’s a humiliation or submission thing.”

She covered her face for a moment, then looked up, vulnerable. “Does that mean I’m broken?”

I pulled her into my arms, holding her tight. I could feel her heart pounding. I understood her anxiety. The worlds we came from ... though both steeped in wealth ... were deeply different. I had been raised among the Northeastern elite, where “Old Money” values cloaked decadence in a thin veil of tradition. Behind closed doors, the most publicly pious were often privately lost in indulgence and vice. That was the world I knew. Leigh had caught a glimpse of it at the Midsummer Masquerade Ball just a few weeks earlier, and it had clearly ignited a fire in her.