Twenty
ESSIE
F or the last eight years, I’ve woken up at five in the morning on the dot, no exceptions. But right now, it’s seven in the morning. It’s seven in the fucking morning , and I’m encased in Dalton’s arms. He has one hand against my bare stomach, the other fixed on my hip, and I’m wearing one of his t-shirts.
Panic surges through me, and I don’t even bother trying to be sneaky. I launch like I’m trying to clear the ozone layer and make a break for the edge of his needlessly gigantic bed, but I’m not fast enough. Predictably, Dalton tugs me back.
“You’re a lightweight, babe,” he murmurs in a groggy voice, rolling on top of me. His body radiates heat, and he’s wearing only a pair of boxer briefs. With so much hot, bare skin showing, it has never been more apparent: Dalton is thick everywhere. He grins.
“I can’t spend the night here,” I insist, making another futile attempt to wiggle away.
The motherfucker pins me down with his crotch. “It’s done. Can’t take it back. Plus, this isn’t the first time you’ve spent the night.”
“You were drunk,” I remind him, recalling the night we found out our parents were getting married. “I put you to bed.”
“That’s it?” he questions. “That’s all that happened?”
“Yes. I made sure you wouldn’t choke on your vomit, and then we both slept. That’s it.”
Dalton surveys me for a beat, expression even, before he exhales and pushes out a smile. “You did—and it’s exactly what I did for you last night.” His smile broadens, and he lowers his body, letting more of his abdomen touch me. “You’re so fucking cute when you sleep.”
“Dalton—”
“I was a gentleman,” he assures me, and his relentless hips are anything but gentlemanly. “I wiped off your makeup. Put your hair in a little bun.” He elevates on his forearms and bites down on the topknot on my head. “I even brushed your teeth.” He settles back against me. “Not going to lie: I thought about fucking you while you slept, but I was nodding off.”
“While I was asleep ?”
“Free. Use. You signed the contract.”
The idea of Dalton shoving up my shirt, tugging my panties to the side, and working himself inside me while I’m none the wiser is beyond hot, but I need to focus. “Our deal was to make money, not to share beds and cuddle. We’re trying to avoid a mess.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” he says, pretending to pity me, “when have I ever avoided a mess?”
“I still want to be friends when this is over.”
“Then back out,” he dares, lowering his head so our foreheads nearly touch, “and come with me to Rhinebeck.” When I don’t respond, he rubs his erect cock against my pussy—cotton against lace. “You have no idea how much cum I’m going to leave in you for the next four weeks,” he murmurs, tracing my jaw with his lips. “And not just this tight pussy. I’m going to work my cum into every little hole on you.”
My entire body tingles with the promise, but I temper my expression. “Fine. I said you could.”
“And you’re going to love it,” he asserts. “You’re going to be sore and swollen and leaking, lying exhausted on the mattress, and you’re going to have the sickest, most satisfied smile on your face. I won’t even have to tie you down. You’ll just be the best girl for me, legs open, waiting for another load.”
Damn it. He’s good.
“Tell me,” he urges, grinding and steering sparks of ecstasy through me. “Tell me you’re going to take my cum, Ess. Tell me all the things you’ll do with it.”
My lips part, and the temptation nearly forces the words from me. I do have definitive plans for his cum, but I’m in his bed, ready and wedged underneath him. This is too domestic. This is too real. I nudge his face away with a tap of my fingers against his chin. “I’m not doing this. I’m not spending the night like your girlfriend.”
“Baby, I’m not asking you to be my girlfriend,” he replies, abandoning the tease and pushing himself up. The sudden absence of his weight is jarring. Now, he’s straddling me, cock bulging against the fabric of his boxer briefs. His stare hardens. “You were supposed to be my fucking wife.”
My fucking wife. Those three words do obscene things to my heart rate. “Dalt,” I warn.
“And you would have loved being my wife. Guaranteed, I’m the kind of man people know is rich just by looking at his expensive fucking wife,” he continues. “You would have been so goddamn spoiled, not just with cash and presents and the humongous house I would have bought you. Any need you had, I would have satisfied. Any need.”
“Dalton,” I say, trying to be firm, “you have to stop this. Your endgame can’t be to make me betray your mother.”
His expression immediately turns stony, and his muscles tense.
My eyes travel down, taking in the elegant ledges of his sculpted body. There are men, there are deities, there are Hellenistic statues chiseled from marble—and then there’s Dalton Cavendish.
His skin is fair olive and gold, smooth, with a dusting of coarse hair on his chest. My gaze lingers there, tracing the undulations of his muscled pectorals until I land on the X tattooed on his left. The letter is small, delicate even, with straight lines and slender serifs. It’s an unassuming, otherwise innocuous tattoo—possibly unnoticeable at a distance—but up close, it’s so deliberately perfect.
I rest my hand against his ribs—against another of his four tattoos. “I didn’t know you got a new one,” I mention.
“Well, we weren’t fucking.”
The fact is true, and also highlights how being a camgirl has rewired my expectations for sharing bodies. I’ve shared myself with countless people whose names I didn’t know. Valeria and Cora have done the same, and I recognize their bodies with profound intimacy, but most friends don’t know each other’s bodies like we do.
I also know Lander and Everett’s bodies. I’ve watched them fuck my friends. I’ve watched Valeria slip her hands under Lander’s shirt and run her fingertips over his abdomen while we watch movies together. I’ve seen Cora inch up the hem of Everett’s shorts and tickle his thighs while we’ve lounged on the grass on muggy DC summer days. Dalton is different though. Our friendship has never quite crossed those razor thin lines. In spite of its beauty, his body has generally remained a mystery under his tailored shirts and suits, excluding a couple trips to St. Michaels when I saw him shirtless. I knew he had tattoos, but I never asked about them. And naturally, I don’t touch Dalton, even though he’s not shy about touching me.
And how horrible, I can’t help but think, because Dalton loves to be touched.
I move my hand, caressing his skin until I reach his hip. He’s defined—brutally so—and it’s a mouthwatering journey from the sinful divot above the brim of his boxer briefs to his thigh.
The tattoo there is a treehouse with wood board sidings. Branches surround the house, partially obscuring it in a canopy of detailed leaves and twisted stems. There’s a small door and two square windows, a quintessential, classic treehouse—the kind I would have loved as a kid if we’d had a yard.
Tentative, I move my hand until my index finger skims the swells of leaves atop the winding branches. All the while, Dalton is quiet.
“Tell me about this one,” I request.
“I got it when I turned twenty-five.”
“Say more.”
“That’s it.”
He’s lying—and staring at me with the most impassive of expressions.
I want to shake him out of the mood he’s in, so I touch more of his thigh. It’s astounding. Even before I knew he had a tattoo here, I’d toyed with a far-flung fantasy of rubbing my pussy against a muscled thigh until I made myself come. Now, I place my palm on his ink, covering the treehouse in the center and feeling the sculpted planes of his muscles. “What does it mean?”
“Who knows. I was drunk.”
Well, fine. I’ve dealt with enough sullen boys to know they get quieter the more I push, so I move my hand to the next tattoo: a series of coordinates on his lower abdomen. “What’s this place?”
“Again, drunk.” When I shoot him a skeptical look, he says, “Besides, we both know you’ll look them up next time you’re on your phone.”
He’s not wrong.
I move on to a sprig of flowers with delicate, round petals and speckles of stamens on his ribs. “And were you drunk when you got this one?”
“Stoned, actually.” His expression is somewhere between amused and cagey.
That leaves the X on his left pectoral. “And this?”
“To remind me where my heart is,” he replies before he lowers his face close to mine once more. “Are you done trying to decipher me? Because I’ll stop trying to make you my wife if you let me kiss you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on. I want your lips for once.” He leans even closer, and I feel the warmth of his next exhalation before he says, “I bet your taste would ruin me, Essie Romero. Everything I’ve tasted has been unreal.”
My heart flips at the realization—Dalton’s mouth has been on so many parts of me now. Kissing is a no-fly zone though. Kissing makes it real. Kissing makes it harder to stop.
He rubs his cheek against mine, and the stubble on his jaw prickles my skin. He repeats this on the other side, brushing himself against me like he wants to pass his scent. “You’re going to let me kiss you,” he informs me, speaking into my jawline. “You’re going to beg for it.”
“Unlikely.”
“You will.” Dalton pulls back again. The amber in his eyes catches the faint morning light trickling through his curtains. “You’re going to ask me to kiss your lips, and then you’ll open that mouth for me—for my tongue. Every morning, you’re going to expect a kiss. If I leave for work while you’re still asleep, you’re going to pout all damn day because you didn’t get your kiss.”
“I don’t pout.”
“You also don’t squirt, apparently.” He smirks. “First thing you’ll do is send me an angry text.”
“Maybe I’d show up in your office,” I reply—and the words sort of fall out.
Dalton knows I slipped up. The expression on his face is unprecedentedly gleeful, which is saying a lot because I once saw Dalton shout, Let’s fucking gooooo, and punch the air when there was a buy-one-get-one sale on chicken tenders at a Washington Capitals game we all went to last year. “Ask me. Ask me to kiss you, Essie.”
“No.”
“Come on,” he encourages, lifting the hem of my shirt even higher and exposing the lower part of my breast. “I could order you to kiss me. You’re my fuck toy. My needy cum holes. Mine for three more weeks. Free-use includes your sweet mouth.”
“You won’t.” Even Dalton—a guy who has less impulse control than he has body fat—wouldn’t deprive himself of hearing me ask for his kiss.
His eyebrow rises slowly. “I won’t?” he questions before he reaches into his boxer briefs and takes out his dick.
I blink. It’s just… there. It’s darker than the rest of his golden skin, tinged with pink and a touch of mauve. A prominent vein runs down the center and meets the base, where his pubic hair is thick and curly. And it’s…well, it’s huge . There’s truly no other way to spin it. Length aside, it’s so unbelievably thick, and as it hardens in his hand, it becomes even more intimidating.
And yet this cock is so indescribably gorgeous to me. Already, the smooth head is shiny with a droplet of pre-cum, and the temptation to run my tongue along it and taste him from the source makes me bite my lower lip. Even though I know what’s coming—even though I know this cock will imminently be in my throat—I can’t help but admire it.
I get to suck this dick. He hasn’t let anyone else suck this dick in years because my mouth was the only one he wanted. This is my cock and my privilege.
“How big is it?” I ask, posing a question I’ve considered for two years now. How fucking big is it?
“You tell me. You probably have a decent frame of reference based on the toys you like to play with.” He tilts his hips, bringing the head closer to my face. “Is it bigger than your toys, baby?”
“Tell me,” is my response, and my voice has grown heavy. “I’d rather hear you say it.”
Dalton smirks. He’s proud of it—and he should be. “Six and a half around, nine long,” he answers. “Nine and a half on a good day.”
Six and a half around. Shit. I’m dying to see how much I can fit in my mouth, but we’re playing a game. I have to hold back—even if I’m face-to-face with the kind of cock I’ve only ever seen in silicone.
“You like it,” he states evenly while he strokes himself. “It’s perfect for you.”
I tear my eyes away from the absolute miracle in front of me and look at my friend. My coworker. My soon-to-be stepbrother.
He’s so ridiculously fine .
I want to agree. I want to tell him his cock is perfect for me—and I’ve waited most of my life for a cock like his. I shrug instead. “You won’t make me,” is my response.
The challenge gets him going, striking his inherently competitive nature, sharpened by the whetstone of finance. He’s used to getting what he wants. He’s used to getting what other people want.
He rises and holds his cock toward my mouth, stopping with the head less than an inch away. The way he’s not even telling me to suck it—just holding it like my mouth is there for him to use when he needs something soft and wet—is exactly like Dalton described: magical.
I part my lips, hating how I can’t pretend anymore. I’ve wanted Dalton’s dick in my mouth since the moment I met him, and this is nothing short of—
He pulls back. Motherfucking bastard.
“Wait—” I protest, following his retreat like a shameless cockslut.
Naturally, Dalton is so smug. “Ask for it,” he orders, tapping the tip against my nipple through my shirt.
I gasp. “ No .”
“Beg for it.”
The sensation is overwhelming. “ No .”
His free hand grabs my other tit, palming it roughly over the cotton. “Then you don’t get it.”
“Then neither do you,” I blurt out in exasperation, and my hands go to his thighs. “Jesus, Dalton. Use my throat. Let me suck—”
“Ask me to kiss you,” he interrupts—and it’s probably the most willpower Dalton has ever shown. “Then you’ll get the dick you want.”
I’m practically trembling from horniness, but I can’t give in and ruin us both. I shake my head.
“You’re serious? Not even one goddamn kiss ?” The sound he releases is frustrated—a groan and a muffled shout stymied by his fist between his teeth. He collapses next to me, stuffing his dick away while he settles back against his pillows. Sighing, he scrubs his hand over his face. “Fine. It’s fine . Let’s just get ready for brunch.”
“I have to go back to the dorms.”
“There’s a whole section of my closet for you already,” he informs me as he rolls off the bed and hops to his feet, brimming with energy as usual.
“Pardon?”
He gestures at his closet as he strolls by. “I wanted you to have things here.”
Sure enough, when I enter his walk-in closet, there are a dozen tiny, stunning, and expensive new dresses—mostly green. It’s so thoughtful, and my stomach is fluttering—but I can’t give him too much.
“Thank you, Dalt. All my makeup and stuff is still back at the dorm though.”
Dalton is standing in the doorway, pulling on a shirt. “Fine,” he concedes. He finds his wallet and takes out a credit card. “Add this to your account and request a ride—but we need a better arrangement. You’re sleeping over, and I’m not arguing about it. I don’t want to fuck you, film it, and then send you off in a car. It feels cheap.”
I’m completely fine. I have to keep breaking his heart, but I’m completely fine.
“Most coworkers part ways at the end of a shift,” I remind him, taking the credit card.
But Dalton doesn’t laugh.
He places his hand on my chin, raises my face, and after a pregnant pause, he says, “I’ll see you at brunch,” before he goes into his bathroom and closes the door behind him, shutting me out.