CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
(Charlotte)
Matt’s hand on my knee practically burned me.
Not as bad as the fucking ginger had.
“You think I’m going to be able to have sex with you without having an orgasm?” I laughed and moved to stand.
He caught me around the waist and pulled me back to his side. “You’re going to have to learn to control yourself.”
“It’s involuntary reaction to stimulus,” I argued. “You can’t turn it off.”
“You can learn to.” He gave me a quick kiss. “Maybe we need to think up a new word, so you can let me know when to stop. Something other than ‘mercy,’ so there’s no confusion.”
“Hmm, what about ‘diamond’?” I suggest. It won’t be confusing in context, and it very much fits with our theme. “Like the butt plug?”
“‘Diamond’ it is.” He gives me another kiss, this one longer and deeper, and desire surges to my core. When he leans back, it’s with a satisfied grin. “Let’s practice. Before we go back to the party.”
“Excuse me?” I laughed. He couldn’t be serious. We were in the middle of his mom’s birthday party.
“We have a perfectly private hedge maze,” he argued. “And I know you’re dying for me to touch you.”
“Are you going to let me come?” I doubted it, but I could hope.
“Not until tomorrow. But that’s why this is practice.” He pushed the tip of his cane through the gravel to rest between my feet, then slowly lifted my skirt. “What do you say, princess?”
I couldn’t resist him. “Yes, my dragon.”
“Step out of your panties.”
I wiggled the pale green silk down my hips and let it fall to my ankles.
“Give them to me.”
I put my hand on his shoulder to balance and slipped the panties off and handed them to him.
He brought them to his nose and inhaled deeply. Grinning, he tucked them into his jacket pocket. “I detect a hint of something…spicy.”
I narrowed my eyes but didn’t say anything, in case it qualified as disobedience.
“Hold your skirt up.” He kept his gaze on the apex of my thighs as I lifted the chiffon. “Widen your hands.”
I could only imagine what I looked like standing there with my skirt around my waist, held out to my sides. But Matt certainly seemed to appreciate the view. He took a long, audible breath and slowly brought the handle of his cane to touch my vulva. With the barest pressure, he glided the carved silver dragon up and down my slit until the snarling snout parted me and nestled against my clit.
“Rub yourself on it.”
The cold metal felt so good against my irritated flesh that I didn’t want to rub against it. I wanted it to stay still on my throbbing skin.
He arched a brow. “Is my princess disobeying me?”
I shook my head. “No, not at all.”
Holding my breath, I rocked my hips a little. It was awkward, trying to find the right movement, but once I did, I lost myself in the ridges of the highly detailed dragon head passing back and forth over me. If he’d done this earlier, right after he’d removed the ginger, I would have come immediately. But even now, it felt dangerously good.
“Remember to stop when you need to,” he warned me. “If you don’t, tomorrow will be a very long day for you.”
“For both of us, right?” I asked, my head dropping back. “Since every one of my orgasms belong to you.”
“I can be patient.” He rotated the cane back and forth.
I couldn’t. It was totally unfair to keep getting me wound up and then not delivering. But it was also so hot. Constantly teetering on the edge only made everything more intense when I finally did get to come.
The promise of what had better be a phenomenal wake-up call the next morning was all that stopped me, all that made me say, “Diamond.”
“Take some deep breaths,” he instructed. “Four counts in. Hold for four. Four counts out. Hold for four.”
I wanted to make a joke about this not being yoga class, but the breathing did help. It took my mind off the fact that I was seconds away from the point of no return.
“Take the time to calm yourself down,” he went on. “Eventually, you’ll get so good at this, you won’t need to say the word at all.”
I doubted that. I highly, highly doubted it. But Matt had never steered me wrong before, so I figured I might as well try.
“Do you want me to keep going?” I asked on my last, shivering exhale.
“If you can do so without coming.”
I fell back into the groove, rolling my pelvis to move my clit over and over the head of the cane.
“One more for practice,” he said. “Then, I’m going to fuck you.”
“Yes, my dragon.” My internal muscles clenched at the thought of him penetrating me. There was no way I’d be able to have him inside me after the ginger this morning and two denied orgasms without going over the edge.
But that’s what the word was for.
Just because I couldn’t reach the peak that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the climb. I slowed my movements, and he followed suit. I savored the zings of pleasure that arrived closer and closer together. I breathed deeply, counted those breaths, and closed my eyes to get hyperaware of my body. Four in, hold, four out, hold. Those spikes of pleasure softened, and the space between them lengthened.
I focused on the sounds around us. The faint party noise and the string quartet. The birds overhead, the fountain behind me.
My wet pussy slicking over the snarling silver dragon.
“That’s it, princess.” There was pride in my dragon’s voice. I didn’t want to obey him. I wanted to exceed his expectations of me. I wanted to see how long it could go, how long I could put off needing to stop completely.
How long I could stand, bare from the waist down, in the strange privacy of the hedge maze yards from a fancy garden party.
There it was. The acknowledgment of our situation, the threat of being discovered in such a wildly inappropriate setting, doing wildly inappropriate things, that made me squeak, “Diamond!”
He held the cane still but didn’t move it away. “Tell me when it’s safe.”
In four, hold four, out four, hold four, I chanted in my brain, my cunt fluttering with the threat of climax. Then…nothing. I didn’t come. Still counting my breaths, I nodded to Matt that it was okay to move the cane.
“Good girl.” He took my panties out of his pocket and used them to clean the head of the cane before pushing himself up from the bench. “Bend over.”
I braced my hands on the bench and let him push my skirt up.
“This is going to be fast,” he warned. “But that doesn’t matter, since you’re not getting off, anyway.”
The teasing was so bratty, I almost laughed.
“But on the off chance that I don’t come within seconds, remember to use your word.” The head of his cock nudged me and slipped inside. His deep groan vibrated along every nerve. “You’ve looked so good to me all day. Not while you were grinding yourself on my cane. Not standing here with your dress hiked up, begging to get caught.”
He stroked slowly, his breathing audibly shallow.
When he spoke again, his voice was tight with strain. “It was just you being close to me. Standing next to me at this fucking party, looking beautiful and innocent…then letting me…”
He surged forward, and a hot burst flooded my cunt.
Vain pleasure flushed my cheeks. He’d lost control of himself so quickly, and all because of me.
That was almost as satisfying as an orgasm.
He pulled out with a curse. “Wow. That was…”
“Fast. You’re welcome for me being so hot.” I straightened and turned to face him. “I’ll need my panties back now.”
He frowned. “No. You gave them to me.”
My mouth dropped open. “Um, we’re at a party and someone, I’m not pointing fingers here, prematurely ejaculated inside me.”
“It’s not premature if I planned it to be a quickie.” He zipped up and took his cane from where he’d left it leaning against the bench.
“Yeah, but gravity.” I gestured in the direction of my crotch. “I can’t walk around this party—”
“With my cum smeared all over your thighs?” He pointed his cane at my hem. “You have a long skirt. I don’t think anyone will notice.”
I planted my hands on my hips. “I’ll notice. And if we run into my brother, it’s going to be all you can think about.”
A look of horror passed over Matt’s face.
He gave the panties back.
* * * *
By the time we made it back to the party, things had begun to wind down. Apparently, weekends in the country included “excursions.” Most of the guests had moved through the house, to the front, and Matt led me there looking for his mom.
“Matthew!” she called out, gliding toward us with her long cigarette holder waving in the air like a conductor’s baton. “They’re leaving for the winery.”
“We don’t have to excurd, do we?” I asked Matt quietly as we watched some guests get into a shuttle.
“Not if you don’t want to,” Matt said with an expression of pure relief. To his mother, he said, “You know, I think we’ll skip the winery. I’ve been.”
Elizabeth pursed her lips. “Don’t be antisocial, dear.”
“I’m not—”
“He’s trying to avoid me.” My brother’s voice was loud and clear behind us. He used a friendly tone, but I knew a passive-aggressive accusation when I heard one. We were raised by the same damn woman.
I turned, ready to snap at him that he’d been avoiding us all through the party, then remembered that this wasn’t the time or place for a sibling spat. Instead, I smiled brightly at him. “How could we avoid you when we didn’t even know you were going to be here?”
“You’ve both been difficult to contact,” he said, returning fire and setting a trap. “No cell service in the Caribbean?”
Matt returned Scott’s smile, but tightly. “It can be spotty.”
“You’d think with all your money you’d be able to afford an international SIM card.”
Scott had barely finished speaking before Elizabeth tutted and said, “Please, boys, no talking about money. It’s vulgar.”
The irony briefly ejected my consciousness out of my body. Don’t talk about money, it’s vulgar. But we were at a weekend-long birthday party in a palace.
“Sorry, Mrs. Ashe,” Scott said, and I fully expected him to bow to her.
In fairness to my brother, Elizabeth Ashe was intimidating, with her perfect updo, elegant caftan, and fluid movements that managed to make cigarettes look glamorous and appealing. I guess I couldn’t blame him for being cowed, especially since she was his best friend’s mom.
“Are you going to the winery?” Elizabeth asked Scott.
He shook his head. “I thought it would be better to get some rest before the party tonight. I’d rather miss the winery than the desserts.”
Elizabeth laughed, almost manically, and touched Scott’s arm.
Just as I thought to myself, it wasn’t that funny, I came to the horrifying realization that she was flirting. With my brother. Who was the same age as her son.
“We’re not going either,” Matt said, interjecting his words like a knife through awkward butter. “Scott, you and I should hang out.”
“What about poor Charlotte?” Elizabeth asked, and I shot pleading eyes at Matt. If he left me alone with his mother…
“She can hang too,” Scott said, throwing his arm around my shoulders. “I haven’t seen my little sister in a long time.”
“Well, you three have fun,” Elizabeth said, taking a drag off her cigarette. “I’ll see you all at dinner.”
She drifted away on a cloud of nicotine and expensive perfume, leaving Matt and me to face my brother.
Like a coward, I turned to Matt. “Where’s the bathroom?”
“Do you remember the way to the library?” he asked, and when I nodded, he continued, “That way, second door on the left.”
“Thanks. And… Stay right here. Don’t let me get lost in this house.” If I could even find my way back.
I followed the path we’d taken the night before and found a half-bath tucked away at the end of the hall. When Matt had said, “second door on the left,” he hadn’t mentioned that “the left” went a long way before any doors got involved. I had to walk past the library and another parlor before I got to my destination.
When I was finished, I exited to the sound of urgently hushed voices from that parlor. Though the door was closed, I could make out enough of the consonants to know what they were saying.
“The other guests didn’t have any trouble with traffic.”
“Because they were probably already here when the accident happened.”
I recognized the first voice as Catherine. The second, I assumed, was her husband.
Until he said, “Does it matter? I beat Jackson here, anyway.”
Wasn’t that what Catherine said her husband’s name was?
Heels clicked on the parquet in a slow walk. I flattened against the wall.
“But we could have had so much more time,” Catherine whined coyly, a little louder. “I had a big, empty bed all night.”
“I’m sure it’s still empty,” the man replied.
Those heels clicked closer and closer. I cast a fearful glance over my shoulder, trying to work out my retreat. But there was nowhere to hide, and no way to make it back to the bathroom. If Catherine came into the hallway—
The parlor door locked. I let out a silent sigh of relief and tiptoed past, hoping they wouldn’t notice my shadow in the frosted glass panes.
Matt appeared at the end of the hallway. He managed to get out, “I was w—” before I silenced him with frantically waving hands. I ran as quickly as I could on the balls of my feet to prevent my shoes from making noise. I felt, inexplicably, like I was running from a murderer.
Looking past me down the corridor, Matt said, in a lower voice, “What’s going on? Did you see the ghost?”
“No, I—” I blinked. “The excuse me now what?”
A loud moan from down the hall caught his attention. “Um… Who is down there?”
“Your brother-in-law’s name is Jackson, right?” It was better to have my facts straight before casting aspersions.
“Yeah. Is that…?” Matt made a disgusted face and pointed toward the parlor.
“It’s not what you think,” I said quickly, though I wasn’t sure the actual explanation was any better. “Your sister is having sex with someone who isn’t her husband in there.”
Matt considered a moment, seeming somewhat impressed. “Well. Good for her. I don’t want to hear it, though, so let’s move along.”
That struck me as an odd reaction. “You’re not upset?”
“Why would I be? It’s not my marriage,” he said, taking my hand as we returned to the foyer. “I’m not a huge fan of sexual monogamy. You know that. It would be hypocritical of me to judge.”
“Yeah, but doesn’t it make your sister a bit of a hypocrite, herself?” I asked. “She’s so uptight and judgy.”
“True. But her husband cheats on her constantly. What’s good for the gander, etcetera.”
“The last time we used that metaphor, you had a stranger’s fist up your ass,” I whispered.
“I’m glad we have such romantic memories,” he said with a laugh that cut short as we entered the foyer and ran straight into Bennett.
“Uncle Matthew,” he said with a nod, like a fancy nineteenth-century gentleman meeting an acquaintance on a stroll. “I was looking for my mother. Have you happened to see her?”
“You know, I just came from the bathroom, and that hall was like, totally deserted,” I said quickly. That was not a core memory that a child, no matter how mature they might seem, should ever have to grapple with. “But I did hear her kicking around the idea of the winery trip.”
“Hmm,” Bennett intoned seriously. “That seems unlikely. Mother feels the winery is too touristy. But perhaps she was in a better mood than she was this morning.”
“Perhaps,” I echoed.
“I’m sure she’ll be in a great mood when you see her,” Matt quipped, then quickly added, “Sometimes, it’s fun to slum it a little.”
Though I knew those words were meant as a withering criticism of his sister, they stung. Being with normal folk was “slumming it?” Was that what Matt was doing with me?
“Well, in any case, I’m off to the nursery. I find being around so many people exhausting. I need to decompress,” Bennett said in the voice of a world-weary thirty-seven-year-old. “If you do see Mother, tell her I was looking for her.”
“Absolutely,” I promised.
We watched him go, and an unexpected lump rose in my throat. He might be the creepiest kid ever, but he was still a kid looking for his mom, who was busy getting railed by a guy who wasn’t the husband who constantly cheated on her. No wonder the kids were creepily precocious; their homelife was a fucking wreck.
“Hey,” Scott said, appearing behind us like an overzealous school dance chaperone.
Matt and I turned to him, almost guiltily, as if we were children about to get a scolding.
And Scott was more than ready to play the part of the disapproving parent.
“It’s time we had a talk.”