Nineteen
DALTON
T hirty minutes later, I’m getting the interns and Weston into coats, listing off the best bars in the neighborhood, and ushering them out the door.
Essie follows closely, but I catch her by the arm.
“You stay,” I whisper.
As soon as the door closes, Essie fixes a glare on me. It lasts three seconds, partially because Essie likes me too much to stay mad, and partially because I’m holding up my shirt and showing her my abs.
…I mean, if we’re being honest, it’s mostly because of my abs.
“What are you doing?” she questions, but she doesn’t look away. In fact, her eyes are locked on the ridges of my muscles and she’s biting her lower lip, denting it.
“I’m delaying the scolding you were about to give me for making you come over…and then not making you come,” I explain, notching my shirt higher so one of my nipples peeks out. “How are we feeling? Horny and not mad?”
“Still mad,” she replies before she shifts her attention to my face. “Your abs aren’t miracle workers.”
“Sounds fake.” I drop my shirt and close the space between us. “We need to talk.”
“What is it? Did Warner—”
“Nothing bad,” I assure her, cupping her shoulders with my palms.
Her exhalation is slow and relieved. “Are you seducing me? Because if you’re looking to get your dick wet tonight, I’ll fuck you,” she replies before gasping. “Oh, I made it weird. Forget I said that. Just—” She makes a circular motion with her finger like she’s stirring in midair. “Something about…talking? Jesus, is that seriously as far as you’ve gotten?”
“Baby, please don’t spiral. As cute as it is, I just want to offer some mentorly advice.”
“That’s it?” Her brow tightens. “You have to know how dramatic you are. You put your hands on my shoulders like you were telling me my husband wouldn’t be returning from the western front.”
I bend, putting my face level with hers. “Essie,” I murmur, “don’t ever say the words ‘my husband’ in front of me unless you’re talking about me.”
“Yes, Dalton,” she replies, and her voice is wispy. She’s smirking though—and what a little liar. My abs clearly are miracle workers because I just defused an Essie moment by being a possessive dick.
I nudge her chin with a tap of my finger. “You know I respect the fuck out of you. In a perfect world, I would respect the fuck out of you every night until death do us part, but Mom and Dad beat us to the punch.”
“This is quite the prologue. Should I prepare for a lecture?”
“Banking is a culture,” I continue, not humoring her for once. “It’s not like other careers. It demands more than the hours you put in at your desk.”
“Overtime,” she responds without missing a beat.
“Relationships,” I clarify. “This is not a meritocracy.”
Essie’s lips pull into the most gorgeous mauve O. She’s quiet.
“You’ll get a full-time offer, and the salary is going to blow your mind. The bonuses are going to be big enough to make you come in your minuscule panties when you see one for the first time—and if we’re being honest, I’d love to watch.”
“Pervert,” she mutters.
“Glass houses,” I respond. “But if you want a senior VP desk before you turn thirty, you have to build relationships. Luckily, this should come easy. You’re a fantastic camgirl precisely because you’re a chameleon. Tell them what they want to hear and get ahead, Ess.”
Essie’s eyes travel over me, and I brace for the indignation—and she would be justified. Finance is a bullshit industry made by guys like me specifically for guys like me. I get a nod instead. “You make a good point.”
“Actually, I’ve made a repugnant point. I’m tempted to lick your pussy to get the taste out of my mouth.”
She sighs. “Do you ever stop thinking about eating my cunt?”
Cunt . The word sounds so much prettier when she says it.
“No. I quite literally never stop thinking about your cunt. I haven’t stopped for two years straight.”
“Well, to be clear: What you said was indeed repugnant, but I’m a woman of facts. Like you mentioned, I’ve spent the last four years pretending to be a drunk party girl to make money. Obviously, my integrity is for sale.” She claps her hands together. “Where do we start?”
“Easy. If you get invited to drinks or dinner, go. Order a club soda with lime so it looks like a cocktail, and meet the energy of whoever you’re with. That’s all it takes.”
“No, I want you to teach me.” She dips her chin. “Teach me to drink, Dalton.”
It takes me a beat to find words while I absorb the ungodly beauty of her focused expression. Nothing she said is hollow. If Essie found out she would have to bathe in the blood of her enemies in order to get ahead, she would pay Next-Day Shipping for a tarp and a claw foot tub before the end of the conversation. Still, I shake my head. “I’m not going to do that.”
Now it’s her turn to be quiet, and she carries out a slow cant of her head.
I Immediately tug up the hem of my shirt.
“Stop that,” she orders—but she doesn’t look away.
“You look homicidal,” I reply before drumming my fingertips on my exposed abs. I wink. “Nice, right?”
“Dalton, many men have ignored me when I’ve spoken to them, and if you want to be one, get ready for a week in Rhinebeck where I edge you to the brink and leave your balls the most gorgeous shade of blue.”
I genuinely believe she’d follow through too. I drop my shirt. “You don’t drink, and I respect that. It’s a slippery slope. One day you’re trying your first bourbon, and the next, you’re dropping out of Harvard Law and going on a coke bender that ends with Lander and Everett retrieving you at the Salem Witch Museum, which is, like, twenty-five miles from Harvard. Plus, I like how you’re not—”
“Sloppy but cute?” She steps closer. “Let’s not throw stones in glass penthouses.”
“Why don’t you drink?” I finally ask, reluctantly sidestepping the part where Essie called me cute. I am cute. “I figure you drank on Halloween because you wanted to dull the sensation of that stringy little punk, but what about the rest of the time?”
“Again, Alec was six-foot-three and two hundred pounds,” she reminds me. “And I don’t drink because people count on me. Why do you drink so much?”
The words “so much” hit me in a way I didn’t expect. My relationship with alcohol is…long. In that long history, there are good nights and bad. The good ones saw Lander, Everett, and me stumbling out of hot bars into frigid winter nights to find vegan hangover food for Everett. The bad ones were in Rhinebeck with Frank where I matched him drink for drink because it was the only way I could get him to spend time with me.
“Sometimes it’s hard to just be,” I finally admit. “If I’m drunk, I can blame something for the way I am. The alcohol. The blackout. The hangover. It’s like, I’m not a mess; those things are messy.”
Essie stares at me for a long time with her brows pulled together. Her gaze doesn’t settle, flicking between my features until her tense expression eases. “It’s okay, Dalton,” she finally replies, and her lips rise at the corner. “Sometimes I wear a mask too.”
I’m not often speechless, but this moment calls for my silence—my admiration.
I step forward, but she doesn’t come the rest of the way.
Free-use means I could take a kiss from her; I’m allowed to use her mouth for whatever I need. But right now, I don’t want to take anything from Essie. All I want is to give her what she needs.
So, I grin. And with our brown eyes taking each other in—just two best friends, soon-to-be step-siblings, and colleagues—I ask, “Have you ever done a body shot?”
***
“You want me to what ?” Essie demands, slapping my arm. “There’s no way this is real. You’re making things up to get me topless.”
“Baby, I have a free-use clause,” I remind her while clearing the last of the art books off my coffee table. “If I wanted you to lay down in your panties, I wouldn’t have to tell a long ass story about getting detained in Salem because I tried to steal Goodman Hawthorne’s puritan hat.”
“You never mentioned you were detained.”
“Surely I did,” I reply before clearing my throat. “I definitely also told you that when Lander and Everett picked me up, I was wearing a novelty t-shirt that said ‘Oops, they missed one’ over a picture of a witch on a broom.”
Essie bursts out laughing, and I’m obsessed with the sound. “You’re…”
“Too much?”
“No…I mean, yes, you’re a lot. But it’s so you, isn’t it?” And while she’s still smiling, she strips down to her lacy black bra and matching thong—and frankly, I’m kind of shocked this is going so well for me.
Still game, Essie positions herself on the coffee table and reclines, letting her legs dangle off one end. At the other, her hair fans around her, haloing her face in soft brown. “Now what?”
Now I make one of my unemployed friends research the process of starting a religion in your name.
“Beautiful,” I murmur as I kneel next to the table and take in her body. “You’re so beautiful, Essie. I don’t think you realize how much I want you.” I put my fingertips on her shin and glide upwards, tracing her. “Free-use is barely enough. I wish I’d written it into the contract that you’d be naked for the next four weeks.”
Then I rise on my knees, letting her see I’m hard—painfully hard. Her lips separate for the briefest of moments before she snaps them shut, trying to regain control before I see how easily the promise of cock does it for her.
“Enjoy this,” I tell her as I trace my fingers up the sinful valley between her breasts. “I plan to. The sight of you laid out for me is going to stick with me forever.”
She scoffs. “There’s no such thing as forever.”
“There is. I spent two years jerking off to this body. You think I won’t remember it?” I lean down and whisper, “I’m going to come on your naked tits tonight. You’d spend the rest of our lives covered in my cum if it were up to me.”
Her expression doesn’t change.
To be fair, I don’t know what I expected. Forever doesn’t mean anything to a girl who lost her mom and whose dad abandoned her. Showing her how badly I want her is a job for Future-Dalton.
Right-Now-Dalton’s job is to suck tequila out of her bellybutton.
My fingers trace the edge of her bra, skimming the top of one of her pert breasts. “I’ll never get over how tight everything is on you. But you’re also so…” I tug her bra cup, exposing a pearled nipple. “You’re down for anything. You’d let me do anything to you, wouldn’t you? Put anything in you. Fill any part of you.” I pick up a lime wedge and place it between her teeth. “Hold that—perfect.”
Finally, Essie’s expression shifts, going from skeptical to downright lusty.
I knew she’d be into this shit.
I sprinkle a line of rock salt over the fabric covering her pussy before I grab the bottle of tequila. “Try not to flinch, baby,” I say before I pour a slow stream into the divot of her bellybutton—not much liquor, but the effect is glorious. A golden droplet slides down her side, and I catch it with my finger before I bring it to my lips and suck.
Fucking delicious—and I need more.
I dip down to Essie’s pussy and lick the salt off her thong, inhaling the heady scent of her arousal while my tongue slides over the fabric. Then I move up and suck the tequila out of her bellybutton, relishing her inhalation when my lips touch her skin. Quickly, I swallow the tequila before licking a trail along her body until I reach her mouth. There, I bite into the lime wedge between her teeth.
Lime juice floods my tongue while I study her. Eyes hooded, she’s running her pink tongue over her lips, tasting the same hit of acid I’m tasting. I give the lime wedge one last suck before I put it aside.
The moment feels heavy.
Slowly, I run my hand over her body, skimming her tequila-damp belly before I elevate on my knees. “Again?”
She nods.
This time, I sprinkle the salt between her breasts and drag the lime wedge over her lips. The shot is the tricky part though. I tap her lower lip with my finger. “Open,” I instruct before I hold the shot glass over Essie’s mouth.
She gets the picture immediately.
Opening wider, she takes the shot glass between her plump lips and holds it there, not moving a muscle—impressive—but no shit. My girl is a professional.
I pour a shot into the glass, and then it’s round two. Keeping my hands behind my back, I lick the salt from between her tits. Then I capture the shot glass with my own mouth, slide it out of Essie’s, and throw it back—no hands. It’s an old party trick that once prompted a guy from my econ class to speculate I would be amazing at sucking dick—but I haven’t done it in years.
Hands-free shots, that is. I’ve never sucked a dick.
And speaking of sucking, the pair of lips in front of me would do astounding work on a dick—and they’re waiting for me.
I force the shot glass out of my mouth with my tongue, letting it clatter to the hardwood floor before I lick the lime juice off Essie’s lips. I groan, indulging in the closest we’ve ever come to kissing—and I’m shocked when Essie groans too.
When I pull back, her lips are parted and her chest is heaving. “Dalt,” she murmurs. “Please give me a drink. Or am I going to shoot tequila off you now?”
Even if I didn’t know every damn thing about Essie Romero, I’d be able to tell she was desperately seeking something to ground her against her arousal. I grab the bottle of tequila by the neck and take a swig before I lean over and tap her chin. When she parts her perfect lips, I drip the liquor directly into her mouth from mine.
“Good girl. Look how good you take it,” I murmur, watching her throat flex as she swallows down the liquor with a slight grimace. I place a lime wedge between her lips. “Bite, baby,” I guide, dabbing at the corner of her lips with the tip of my thumb. “Suck on it.”
Essie groans before taking the lime wedge out, and the corner of her mouth rises. “Again.”
I take another swig from the bottle and repeat, spitting more liquor between her parted lips. Another lime. A third swig. Another lime. It’s filthy but it’s natural—the act of drinking from each other. It’s a level of intimacy most people never share, and yet it’s part and parcel with who Essie and I are becoming—more than intimate, just more .
And sharing my vice feels intense somehow—that for once, our bloodstreams carry the same substances, the same pieces, and I was the one she trusted. I was the one she asked to take care of her.
After the third shot, she presses her hands to her bare stomach, feeling her own skin. “It tastes better this time,” she murmurs, letting her eyelids fall. “I feel warm.”
“Getting tipsy?” I ask, joining her and running the backs of my fingers over her exposed skin. “God, everything about you is pure sex…. Can I film this?” Without waiting for a response, I pick up my phone and switch to the camera.
“No mask, so no faces,” she warns, but she doesn’t stop dragging her hands over her body—and sliding her breasts out of her bra.
“All tits,” I promise, holding the camera over her now-exposed breasts. “And pussy,” I go on, delving my fingers under her thong—and I click my tongue with approval. “Those shots got you so wet, sweet girl.”
“Yeah?” she asks, almost as if she’s excited.
“Drenched. This pussy always does what it’s supposed to.” I hook my middle finger in her panties and tug them to the side, exposing her plump lips. “I’m obsessed with it. I get obsessed with a lot of things, but this perfection between your thighs has me down so damn bad.”
“The taste?”
“The taste. The way it squirts. I can’t wait to see my cum splashed over it, puffy lips coated in it. I’ll lick it off too.”
Essie hoists herself up on her elbows and looks at the lewd sight I’ve been filming—her tequila-wet, spread body.
“I like it filled,” she muses, speaking quietly. “I like it stuffed.”
I don’t know if she’s talking like this because we’re filming or if this is what Essie likes, but the girl has a mouth on her. “Tell me more.”
“The more the better,” she goes on, lowering a hand to rub her own clit. Slow, small circles—like she always does. “When it’s so full that I can’t even breathe, I feel special. Capable.”
“You are all those things.”
Essie’s eyes meet mine, and she presses more firmly on her clit. “But I like to prove it,” she says succinctly. “I can take anything.”
And she deserves everything she wants. Determination swells in me, and I pass her my phone. “Hold this please, baby.”
She takes the phone and continues to film her hand on her clit, only glancing at me when I pick up the bottle of tequila and cap it—then she does a double take.
“This is a four-thousand-dollar bottle,” I tell her, waving it in the air. “That’s why it tastes so good.” I drag the top along the center of her body, pushing the blunt cap into her skin. The glass neck isn’t much wider than the neck of a wine bottle, and the cap only flares slightly at the top.
She can take it.
When I reach her pussy, I wait for her to say yes.
“Please,” she murmurs.
I notch the bottle at her entrance and insert it slowly, waiting for her to tell me to stop—but she doesn’t. In fact, her legs spread, inviting more of the intrusion when she rolls her hips.
“You’re so ready for it,” I murmur in admiration and start slowly fucking her with the tequila bottle. “Is there anything you won’t take in this pussy?”
“A cock that isn’t yours,” she responds before her eyes drop to my crotch. “Please take it out.”
Without hesitation, I pull out my cock, and Essie’s jaw lowers when she sees it for a second time.
“Fuck, that’s special,” she says, reaching for it—but I shake my head.
“I’ll take care of it. You focus on that clit.”
Like a good girl, Essie speeds up her motions while I jerk myself to the sight of her breasts, watching them jiggle when the bottle slips into her. The tequila is sloshing, Essie is groaning, and I’m getting there fast—so unbelievably fast.
“Faster,” she murmurs. “Please don’t stop, please, please, please. Do it with me, please. Make me come when you do.”
“There you go,” I grit, working myself more aggressively now. “Look at you, letting your stepbrother fuck his bottle into you. Look at your pussy weeping onto it. Thousands of dollars—and I’d buy a hundred more just to fuck you with them.”
“Holy shit,” Essie gasps, and her back curves as her orgasms slams into her. I drop the bottle and plunge my fingers into her, finger-fucking her recklessly against her g-spot with the same pace I’m using on my cock until she does it—she gushes right in the middle of my living room, squirting with abandon for the second time. …And so much for my seven-thousand-dollar couch. But fuck the couch, frankly, because in the next beat, I come in a spurt, spreading cum over Essie’s stomach and tits, painting her with me.
She catches her breath before her eyes blink open, and she looks at my ceiling. Her gaze orients to face me as she sits up, swaying slightly.
Eyes locked on mine, she holds out her hand.
I’m confused, so I move to give her my cock, but she looks at my hand. I place it in hers. Pulling it low, she slides my fingers through the splashes of cum covering her skin, starting at her belly button and up between her breasts. And when my fingers are loaded with my cum, she slides them between her lips.
And she sucks hard .
My jaw goes slack. My heart rate is life threatening. My entire body is ready to fill and take her for hours, but before I can do a damn thing, Essie removes my fingers from her mouth.
Staring at me, sporting the most gorgeous smirk I’ve ever seen, she picks up a lime wedge and bites down on it.
…I’m so fucking done for.