Mostly Clean Excerpt from Collared in the Temple of Dendur

The night I met Ammon Fayed, he gave me what I thought was a small, blue rock. He hadn't introduced himself yet, so I was surprised and a little annoyed when he took my hand, palm up, and closed my fingers over the stone. He'd looked amused by the scowl on my face. That was six months ago at a party for my former linguistics professor's birthday.

He didn't look amused tonight when I met him at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, right in front of the Temple of Dendur exhibit. The intensity of his glare sent a flurry of butterflies through my stomach, but I smiled and strode across the marble floor, my heels announcing my approach. His dark eyes appraised my outfit. The black flounce skirt lay flat around my hips, but flared at the bottom, allowing it to move while I walked. The black, three-quarter sleeved blazer I wore covered the black lace bralette beneath it, leaving more cleavage showing than I would have chosen myself. My hair was in a sleek chignon, exposing my bare neck. I wore no jewelry, as he'd instructed, except the blue Met button on my lapel to signify my having paid the suggested donation to enter.

When I arrived in front of him, he took my hands and kissed me on the lips without speaking. His kiss was long and soft, with just a flick of his tongue over mine. My hands were cold and clammy against his warm fingers. I looked up, hoping to see him smile, but there was no crack in the intensity of his armor. Tonight was not about frivolity, and he wasn't going to indulge me.

He led me by the hand to the entrance of the Temple of Dendur, steadying me on the stairs when my knees shook. I stopped briefly to look at the view of Central Park in the fading daylight. The large room was far from empty, but that was his plan.

On that first night we met, I'd begun the day engaged to my high school sweetheart, even though I feared he could never make me happy. He was kind, intelligent, and well off, but he was a bore. We never went out. We had few friends. Every night of our relationship was a replay of the night before, bland food and dull sex.

By nightfall, wanting adventure and a good, hard fuck, I was single. Before the party, I'd removed the half-carat diamond from my left hand and left it on my fiancé's nightstand. He knew it was over. He'd been avoiding me for days. I ended it without his input. Without his consent. It felt like freedom.

At the party, I got drunk as quickly as I could, determined to celebrate my liberty from the shackles of boredom, from a decision I made when I was too young and inexperienced to know what I wanted, what I needed, what I craved. I celebrated. I danced wildly and sang out of key. I made toasts to people I didn't know. I told jokes that would have mortified my mother.

And then Ammon Fayed placed the turquoise scarab in my hand, his dark eyes gleaming with mirth. When I realized that he'd given me a fake insect, I was tempted to throw it right at his face, but something in his expression stopped me. I allowed him to lead me outside onto the terrace where we talked for hours over bottles of Aquafina.

Thirty-five years old, second-generation born in the United States, Egyptian scholar, professor of Arabic, tall, dark, and handsome. I did my best to sober up in a hurry to avoid looking like an imbecile. I was a twenty-four-year-old receptionist at headquarters of a major corporation on the Avenue of the Americas, watching my masters in linguistics go to waste before my eyes. If I hadn't been plastered, I would have wondered what this god of a man saw in me that made him spend the rest of the evening listening to my tale of woe, but when I woke up in his bed the morning after the party with his handprints emblazoned on my ass, it didn't matter.

That he held my arm was the only sign that we were at the museum together once we broke our kiss. We didn't speak. I imagined that we looked more like colleagues than lovers. He carried a briefcase; I had a leather folio, perfect for note taking. Perhaps other museum visitors thought we were professor and student. Maybe boss and secretary. Certainly not two people about to fuck in the antechamber of the Temple of Dendur in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I wanted to tell him that I was nervous. That maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. What if someone saw us and knew what we were doing? What if a guard or a security camera caught sight of our lewd act in public? What if someone from his department saw us fucking in the museum exhibit? Wouldn't it damage his reputation? He had much more to lose than I. I was screaming these questions in my head, but I wouldn't make a sound without his permission. I had to be good and do what I was told, or he'd take my hand and march me right out of the museum. This was my fantasy, after all, and I had to earn its fulfillment.

At least, I thought it was my fantasy. When we discussed it, my wrists and ankles were bound tightly to his bed. He was teasing me with a feather that looked like a cat toy, and by the time I spewed it, I would have said anything just to get him to fuck me and let me come. "I want you to fuck me in public." I surprised myself more than I surprised him. I didn't know I had an exhibitionist streak in me, simmering below the surface, and at first, I thought I was offering this adventure solely for him. Making him happy had become my greatest pleasure, and I found myself submitting to his sexual desires and then making them my own.

Of course, being tied up probably had something to do with it as well.

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