CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
(Charlotte)
In my dream, I was in the ocean. The water was like silk against my skin; when I gave a lazy, slow kick, it whirlpooled between my thighs and cascaded over my cunt. The sea was pure sensation, and every nerve responded to its touch.
I spread my legs wider to embrace the wet warmth that engulfed my clit. Gentle currents wriggled around me and inside of me, tiny waves urging the tide of desire in my veins. It ebbed and flowed, raising me toward the crest of each wave but never breaking over me.
Don’t come, I reminded myself. You’re not supposed to come.
But how could I hold off the entire ocean? It was too powerful.
Suddenly, the water became an insidious thing, pushing me farther and farther away from the shore. And the farther I drifted, the keener the pleasure became. I can’t come. I can’t come. That was the rule. I didn’t want to be punished again. I didn’t want to wait an entire day.
I tried to swim back, gripping handfuls of the water and twisting as I pulled myself away. Something heavy snagged my ankles and kept me down, and the swirling pressure against my clit became more intense.
I couldn’t get away from it. I was going to come, hard, and be punished for it. I tried to push myself up, tried again to pull myself away from the grips of the water.
But it was too late.
My cry of pleasure woke me at the very apex of my release. I wasn’t close to going over the edge; my feet had completely left the diving board. Matt was between my legs, the head of his cock barely parting me, studying my face. His own was smeared with shining wetness.
“Good morning, princess,” he murmured, and slid his cock into my spasming pussy. “It’s eight-thirty.”
I clutched at his arms, arching up to take him in deeper as the tension from all the denied climaxes over the past twenty-four hours sprang free. A long, loud moan of relief poured uncontrollably from my mouth, but I ran out of air before I ran out of orgasm.
His deep, strong thrusts fit us tightly together, grinding the base of him directly against my clit in a relentless assault. The first climax became the next, and the next, and the next, never ending before the climb began again.
He never changed his pace or our positions. He’d found exactly what was working and kept at it. All the while, I couldn’t do anything but ride the rhythm of his hips, chasing myself down the impossible spiral of pleasure that seemed infinite.
“I…” I locked my legs around his hips, my knees digging into his rib cage. “I can’t stop coming!”
“Good. I don’t want you to.” He covered my throat gently with one hand, exerting slight pressure against my pulse points with his thumb and forefinger. “You’re going to lay there and take it, aren’t you, princess?”
I wetted my lips and nodded, my toes clenching before another unbearable climax took me.
“You’re going to have as many orgasms as your dragon wants you to have.” He lifted his hand from my throat and stroked the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “And when he’s done, he’s going to finish all over your pretty face.”
“Oh, yes, please, my dragon,” I practically sobbed.
“Give me your hands,” he ordered.
I did, and he pinned both of them with one of his own, gripping my wrists and pushing them down tight into the pillows above my head.
“You’re so helpless,” he murmured, and his teeth sank into my throat until I squealed in pain. “I fucking love having you completely under my control.”
And I loved being under his control, being helpless to his every whim. He kissed me, and I tasted myself on his mouth; he’d been going down on me while I’d slept. He’d brought me nearly to orgasm, timed it impeccably, with a skill no one I’d ever fucked would have been remotely capable of doing.
Either Matt was the world’s best lay, or we were made for each other.
Then again, it could be both.
“Your pussy feels so good,” he murmur red, the pace of his thrusts speeding up, “So fucking good.”
I squeezed down on him rhythmically, and he groaned.
“Do you like that, my dragon?” I asked through the spikes of pleasure that each clench drove higher.
“You’re trying to make me come,” he said with a breathless laugh.
“Is it going to work?” I stretched my body, lowered my feet to dig my heels into the mattress.
“Faster than you might expect,” he warned.
I grinned with satisfaction. I might be helpless to him, physically overpowered by his strong body and the hypnotic hold of his commands, but he was helpless to how much he loved the feeling of my cunt.
“Am I pleasing you, my dragon?” I asked, and gasped as his thrusts became more forceful.
“You know you are, princess.” He kissed me again, his tongue stroking against mine, the scent of my pussy on his lips, a groan trapped beneath us. He broke away, breathless. “You’re going to come again. Use your hand.”
I wriggled my fingers between us and rolled them over my clit. It pulsed with oversensitivity that faded into need, and that need gripped my pelvis, bursting and spiraling out as I shouted my release.
He pulled out and moved fast to straddle my waist, pumping his cock in his fist and tossing his head back with a growl before spraying hot streaks over my face, neck, and chest. He jerked off until every last drop landed on me, then sat back on my thighs, gripping his still-twitching member.
“Fuck,” he panted, scrubbing his free hand over his face. “What a way to wake up.”
I used the sheet to wipe the cum away from my eyes and licked some off my lips. “How long were you going down on me before you woke me up?”
He shrugged. “Forty-five minutes, maybe?”
I laughed. “Oh, is that all?”
“I considered making you wait until we got back to the apartment, but… I’m not that mean. And I wanted to have breakfast here, because my chef doesn’t expect us back until lunchtime.” He swung his leg over me and laid down beside me. “You look so good with my cum all over your face, princess.”
“Mmm.” I scooped some off my chest with my index finger and sucked it into my mouth. “Do you want to know one of my favorite things about you in bed?”
“Please, stroke my ego,” he said.
“I love that you’re not quiet. Way too many guys are quiet.” Not Matthew. He was one of the most vocal male lovers I’d ever been with. It was an incredible turn-on.
“A lot of men think it’s not manly to moan or express any enjoyment,” he agreed. “But I honestly can’t imagine holding all that back. What’s the point of restraint when you can let go and let your partner know that you’re enjoying yourself?”
“You seem to enjoy me quite a lot, then,” I teased.
He rolled to his side and planted one big hand firmly on the mattress on the other side of my waist. “You’re right. I can’t get enough of you.”
His mouth covered mine; he didn’t seem all that concerned about what he’d left to dry on my face. I lost myself in the feel of his warm, hard body beside mine, the scratch of his morning stubble, until my stomach growling rudely interrupted us.
He lifted his head. “And that sounds like my cue to order us some breakfast.”
“It’s so weird to me that you can call down to room service in your mom’s house.” How did someone even feel at home in an environment that was basically a hotel?
I had to keep reminding myself that Matt was used to this.
If I was going to stay with him, I would have to get used to it too. From everything I’d seen this weekend, I would have to get used to a lot of things.
* * * *
We packed up to head back to the city, my lovely gowns zipped into their garment bags to await another occasion. Because there would be other occasions. As long as I was with Matt, this was the world I lived in.
Servants took our luggage down to the car, which would also be brought around by servants, and we made our way to the foyer, where Scott had texted us to meet him.
“I wanted to say goodbye before I left,” he said. Surveying my jeans and tank top, he added, “That looks more like my kid sister.”
Matt winced.
“Hey, man, don’t ask me to dance around the age gap,” Scott warned him. To me, he went on, “I’m in the city. Call me whenever you need someone to remind you where you came from.”
“We’ll have you over soon,” Matt promised, and I got a warm little thrill at the “we” in the sentence, the way it implied “our” residence instead of “his.”
The weirdest things made me go all gooey these days.
“Mr. Ashe?”
The three of us turned at the sound of Alan’s voice.
“I apologize for the interruption, but Mrs. Ashe is having her breakfast in the conservatory and asked if she could speak to you alone before you left.” Alan’s eyes went to me. “I can bring your guest some coffee while she waits?”
“Sure. Tell Mom I’ll be there in a minute.” Matt turned back to Scott, extended his hand, and, the moment their palms met, pulled him into a big hug. “I’m going to be less distant.”
“Me too.” Scott clapped him hard on the back. “And I’m going to stop being guilty about your mangled leg.”
“I’ll stop being guilty about dating your sister,” Matt replied.
Scott released him. “Nah. You can stay guilty about that.”
I elbowed him.
“Be careful going home,” I said, standing on my tiptoes to hug him. “And don’t tell Mom and Dad about all this, okay? I want to break the news gently.”
He tilted his head. “I thought they knew you were with Matt.”
“Right, but they don’t know I’m with Matt.” I grimaced. “It’s going to take them a minute to accept the May/December thing.”
“Oh, god, don’t say that. It makes me sound old,” Matt protested.
Scott laughed. “We are old. Face it.”
“See you in the city,” Matt said with a finality that implied he would not, in fact, “face it.”
Scott headed out the door and Matt gestured to a little seating area in an alcove. “Do you want to hang back here? I’ll keep it as short as possible.”
“It’s your mom. Say goodbye as long as you want.” But I wondered why she didn’t want to say goodbye to me. Not that I was some big, special guest; I was her son’s brand-new girlfriend, who’d randomly tagged along.
Matt kissed my forehead. “I’ll send Alan back with coffee.”
“Sure.” I watched Matt disappear into the house and wandered to one of the spindly, probably antique chairs in the alcove and waited, patting my hands on my knees. Elizabeth wanted to speak to Matt alone. It was probably super paranoid of me to assume she wanted to talk to him about me, but it was where my insecure brain immediately went. I’d put in a poor performance. I hadn’t behaved myself. I hadn’t belonged.
And I hadn’t. Most people didn’t show up as guests to fancy parties and smoke weed on the lawn. Most people didn’t sneak off and give their boyfriends head before dinner or hide in someone else’s hedge maze to play orgasm denial games. And yes, Matt had initiated those things, but I should have held myself to a higher standard.
Fuck. I’d messed everything up. Elizabeth was probably threatening to cut Matt out of her will if he didn’t break up with me.
Calm down. You have no idea what she wants to tell him. Maybe it’s about his sister’s affair or something.
I glanced over at the doors. Maybe Scott hadn’t driven off, yet. Maybe he could talk me out of spiraling.
The front doors were heavier than I expected; Alan must have been ripped under his stuffy uniform. I only exerted my spaghetti arms enough to wriggle outside. There were two cars in the driveway, Matt’s and what I assumed was Scott’s, based on the “My other car is the Millennium Falcon” bumper sticker. But Scott wasn’t inside.
I frowned and started off on the sidewalk that ringed the circular drive, unsure of where he could have gone. Then, I heard voices near a cluster of immaculately manicured shrubs.
One was definitely my brother. I could tell from the exasperation when he said, “Believe me, it was great being the last to know!”
Wait, was Lauren here? Because it was a woman’s voice that answered. But Lauren being here would make no sense.
“We were never exclusive, Scott!”
“You were going to leave your husband for someone who wasn’t ‘exclusive’?” He cursed. “Who the fuck am I kidding? You were never going to leave him.”
“I’m sorry that things in my world aren’t as simple as packing up a one-bedroom apartment and fucking off! Do you know what people would think of me? I have commitments, not just to Jackson, but the foundation—”
A high, ringing whine filled my head.
The voice undeniably belonged to Catherine.
“I saw you were seated with my mother’s paramour…”
Conflicting feelings paralyzed me in my tracks. Was I going to vomit or scream? Because I was disgusted enough to do either. Scott had been having an affair with Catherine? And her child had tried to tell me. Gross, so gross.
On top of that, the way he’d reacted when he’d found out his best friend was fucking his sister, and the whole time, he’d been fucking his best friend’s sister?
His best friend’s married sister?
The audacity! The hypocrisy! The urge to launch myself through the topiary and punch my stupid brother right in his big, fat nose!
“I forgot that your life is so much more complicated than mine,” Scott snapped back. “Because I’m a peasant and you’re the goddamn queen of Manhattan!”
“Fine! If that’s how you want to describe it, fine. But I do have more to lose than you do! I’m not going to put my stability at risk—”
“You’re not going to put your wealth at risk!” Scott shouted over her.
“—because what? You love me?” She scoffed, as if it were the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.
“Oh, that is rapidly declining as a factor in my anger, believe me.” He huffed a sigh, and I could vividly picture the body language that went along with the sound. A hand through his hair, a scowl wrinkling his brow. “If you didn’t believe any of the things you said, why did you say them?”
“Because I believed them at the time.” The fight seemed to be going out of both of them. “Because I wanted to believe that I could walk away from this and into a different life.”
“You love the money too much,” he accused.
“Could you walk away from it? For love?” she asked.
And without hesitation, he said, “Yes. For you, I could have walked away from billions.”
His shoes crunched on the substrate, and I panicked, racing back to the house and through the door, praying he didn’t see me when he emerged. I held my breath until I heard his car start. If he’d seen me there, he would have come in to confront me right away. I sat in the alcove where Matt had left me, my heart pounding so hard that it visibly moved my shirt.
The front door opened and Catherine stormed in, shouting, “Alan!”
He entered the foyer, pushing his little coffee cart, his face showing no sign of irritation at being bellowed for like a naughty dog. “Ma’am?”
“Get Nanny Grace and the children and tell them that we are leaving now.” Her gaze landed on me, and her eyes narrowed. She said nothing. Didn’t even acknowledge my presence before snapping at Alan, “And for fuck’s sake, send someone up for my bags. I’ve been waiting all goddamn morning!”
My mouth fell open as I watched her stomp up the stairs.
Alan brought the cart over as if nothing had happened. “Two sugars, was it?”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Who the hell talks to another human being like that?”
But he didn’t remark on it at all, dropping two sugar cubes into the little cup and tipping the steaming carafe to pour. “We have some lovely pastries this morning. I could box some up for your trip.”
“No, thank you, I…” What was I going to do? Argue with the guy that he deserved respect from his employers? He clearly wouldn’t agree with me.
Besides, I didn’t have time to deprogram a butler. At the moment, my biggest concern was my lying, liar pants brother.
And whatever the fuck it was that had gone wrong with him that he could fall in love with someone as vile as Catherine.