My last relationship had crashed and burned.

I felt demolished — a little frayed around the edges. What I needed, I decided, was a nameless fuck, something sizzling and powerful to take the edge off. Which is how I found myself standing in front of my closet asking the unique question: What do you wear to a sex party?

I’d been to sexy parties before but never a soiree intended solely as a space for strangers to hook up and get sideways. I didn’t know for sure what the appropriate dress code was. Come naked? Or: If you’re naked, you will come? Who do you ask for advice like that?

To be honest, I hadn’t been invited by anyone. I’d heard about the event, and I’d decided that this was something I needed to experience myself. I would crash, as seductively as I could. So I had to dress the part.

As I stared forlornly at my clothes, I replayed the conversation I’d overheard earlier in the week. I’d been in the elevator in my building, my headphones on as usual but in between songs. When the women in front of me started to talk, I pretended I was still listening to music, when in reality I was listening to them.

“Mr. M is having one of his parties,” the first woman said to her friend.

“Oooh, I’m so excited,” the second woman responded in a low voice. “Last time, I fucked the most beautiful man. He was like a model from a magazine.”

“I love the anonymity,” the first woman said, after sparing me a quick look. “Being able to hook up without any of the small talk. You. Me. Now. I need that.”

“So when’s the next one?” the second lady queried.

“Friday night. Nine o’clock.”

“At his penthouse?”

“Of course.”

I made it a mission right then that I’d attend. Maybe I wouldn’t be allowed through the door, but my life needed a change, needed a boost. I craved a “you, me, now” experience, just like the woman had said. I knew the time and the location, but not the dress code. Which is why on Friday, at nine, I stood nude in front of my walk-in, willing the right outfit to show itself.

My closet mocked me. Every item was suddenly too fancy, too frou-frou. Easy-access seemed to be the name of the game. Ultimately, I landed on a slim-fitting black number with one elegant zipper down the back. A quick tug, and all would be revealed. Except, I hoped, my nerves.

What do you say at a sex party?

I’ve read articles about making small talk at social events. Yet nothing I remembered ever dealt with situations like this one. I rode the elevator to the penthouse, working hard to get myself under control. What if there was a bouncer? What if there was a guest list?

Turned out, I needn’t have worried. Nobody stood guard. There was no secret handshake or password. I simply walked through the door following two well-dressed men, then took a moment to get acclimated. The music was on — loud — and the room was filled. Cautiously, I made my way to the bar, trying my best to blend in, to act as if I belonged. After all that mental turmoil, I seemed to be dressed correctly. My tight black dress fit in seamlessly, and I had a slim velvet cord looped around my neck as a choker. Most of the women had chosen from the same playbook as I had: the little black dress. The men wore slacks and oxfords or sweaters. There was a high-class vibe to the place, but above that — or throbbing right below that — was an intense sensual beat. I could feel the heat in my blood, in my bones. Everyone was there for the same reason. To connect in order to have sex.

How honest was that?

Generally, at parties there seems to be a make-believe layer that we’re really all there to get to know one another better. Not at this place. Fucking was in the air, like an aromatic aphrodisiac.

The couples around me were already in various stages of connecting. That is to say, the couple at my right was kissing madly, as if they’d invented the concept, as if they no longer needed to fill their lungs with the occasional gulps of air. And the couple to my left had taken things to a new level. He had his hand up under her black silk blouse. She was squeezing his cock through his pants in rhythm to the music. He looked as if he was teetering on the brink of ecstasy. I practically expected him to see him come in his slacks.

The man behind the bar added a twist of lime to my drink. I didn’t have to ask. He was lean, blond and handsome — with the perfect amount of rebel in his style. He said, “I’ll bet you don’t even taste that lime.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone as sweet as you? You must turn the lime upside down.”

I hesitated for one beat. He had all the makings of my model man — a little bit scruffy, as if the suit he was wearing was a mere charade, as if he usually made do with jeans and a tee. But I didn’t know if it was considered gauche to approach the help. Should I or shouldn’t I? He’d made the initial gambit. Maybe he was fair game. So I took a breath and said, “I’d like to turn something upside down.”

That was all it took. He strode around the bar to stand in front of me. “You don’t say?”

“Can you just leave your post like that? Leave these people thirsty?”

“A host can do whatever he wants.”

I blushed. “This is your party?”

“And you must be … ”

“The crasher.”

“You don’t say.” He echoed me, and he didn’t seem put out. In fact, he appeared distinctly interested.

“Well,” I told him, leaning in, “I had an ulterior motive.”

“Going upside down?”

“Something like that. Turning my life upside down.”

“Is it too normal for you? Too by the book?”

“I overheard two women in the elevator talking about this party,” I confessed. “ Where anything goes. Or anything could happen, and I … ” I indicated the couple fondling each other right beside us.

“You came along for the ride?”

“To be ridden,” I said, “if we’re putting our cards on the table.” Why stop now? “ To be turned and twisted and taken. I’ve never done anything like that. So I dressed,” and I indicated the sparkly black sheath I was wearing. “And I put on my best shoes, and I left my best panties at home.”

“Best panties.” He smiled as if tasting something delicious. “ You’ll have to show me those one day.”

“Maybe,” I said. “If you tell me your first name.”

“Is it that easy?” he asked. “I tell you my name, and you’ll show me your knickers.”

“Not wearing any,” I reminded him. “But I could show you something else instead.”

He gave me a smile that was more horny than happy. “I’m Jay,” he said, “and I’m thrilled that you crashed my party.”

“I’m Elena,” I said, “and I’m here to be crashed.”

He took my hand and led me from the canoodling couples. They seemed grateful to be able to spread into the space we’d left behind. Jay moved me with him through the throng. Some partiers were dancing. Others, I noticed with wide-eyed wonder, were actually fucking. Of course, this is what I’d hoped for, to be a part of some type of bacchanalian adventure, but I hadn’t dared to think things would be this out in the open. One man had his lady up against the wall, her palms splayed and her face to the plaster. He was holding her hips and plunging his thick cock deep inside her.

I gasped. So did she.

Then there was Jay and I. He brought us to a bedroom away from the fray and spread me out on a mattress so big it wouldn’t have fit in my room at home. He unzipped me and then tugged my dress up and off. I waited while he shed his suit. The two of us fell back onto to the bed together, and in seconds we went from kissing to fondling to five steps from fucking.

If we’d gone to dinner first, if we’d gotten to know each other over iced teas or gin and tonics, then maybe I would have felt tongue-tied when asking for what I wanted. Maybe I would have experienced that quiver of worry or that pang of self-doubt. Speak out or stay silent? Let him take the lead or demand your desires be fulfilled?

“I had no more words because his dick was all I needed, all I wanted.”

I’d taken a major leap by attending the party on my own, and doing something so outrageous created what felt like a chemical change inside me. I said, “I want you on top of me. Nothing fancy. No special tricks. Just your cock inside me.”

“That’s what you want?”

I thought of the women in the elevator. You could say what you needed. That was it. That was all.

“I need to feel you inside me,” I said.

“I need that, too.”

Then he was as naked as I was and we were having sex on his big bed.

I couldn’t believe that less than an hour before I’d been standing, antsy, in front of my closet, and now my dress was in a rumpled, spangled heap and Jay was holding my hips and driving his cock all the way to the hilt inside me.

I understood, as he stroked my clit in rhythm with his thrusts, exactly why people attended parties like this. The heat between us was brutal. We’d connected — the two of us — in that crowded room. And now, now we were fucking, hard and raw, the most dreamy fuck I’d ever experienced. We’re all craving creatures. We humans. We pretend that we’re something else, something elevated, and we put on our clothes and go to work and to the grocery store and run our errands, and drive our cars. But really, this is what everything boils down to: cock and cunt, together, grinding. I was breathless from the intensity, and then Jay moved me so that the two of us were facing our reflections in the glass doors leading out to his mammoth balcony.

Was that really me?

Yes, it fucking was. With my hair all tumbling down and my lips parted. I was transformed, exactly as I’d hoped, exactly as I’d imagined.

Jay said, “You walked through that door and I was mesmerized.”

I said, “I felt your eyes on me.”

Then I had no more words because his dick was all I needed, all I wanted, reaching deeper inside me than I’d ever felt another before.

He said, “After you come, I want you to suck all your juices off my cock.”

I nodded, helpless, unable to speak.

“And then I’m going to eat your pussy,” he said, “and taste the flavor of you and I mixed together.”

Again, I bobbed my head. I felt as if I were one second away from melting into a puddle of nothingness. I’d never been this turned on before. I could hear the sounds from the main room, the noises of other couples getting busy. But Jay and I were by ourselves — as if we were the only couple on earth, or the only couple who mattered. He made true on his promise. As he felt my cunt contracting on his dick, he pulled away and spun me around. I slurped every last drop of my sex juices from his shaft, showing him exactly how hungry I was. Then he moved us into a 69, so he could return the favor.

Once we were satiated, at least for the moment, I felt myself welling up with a type of pride. I had done it, I thought. What I’d set out to do. I had broken my boundaries, demolished my sense of decorum. That’s when I realized Jay was talking to me.

“You can crash my parties anytime,” he said.

I promised that I would.