13. Scarlett #2
“Learn to stand in what you did, Margot. The world isn’t going to coddle you forever the way Father did, the way I did.
It’s done. The bill came due for both of us, and the difference is I always knew mine was coming.
” I straighten. “You never learned that. Maybe you will now. For the kid’s sake, I hope you do. ”
“Scarlett.” Reid’s voice, behind me, careful. He’s come out of the building and stopped a few paces off, reading the whole scene in a glance, his jaw set, his hands loose at his sides like a man deciding whether he’s needed. He isn’t. I’ve already finished this.
“We’re leaving,” I tell him, without turning. I open the car door myself.
Margot is still standing there as I slide in, one hand on her belly, the other empty at her side, alone in the middle of a parking lot under a flat gray sky. I don’t look back at her as Reid pulls out.
I’ve spent my whole life looking back at Margot. I’m finally, finally done.
“You all right?” Reid asks, once the building is behind us.
“My scalp hurts.” I press my fingers to the spot where she pulled. “But yes. I think that’s the last conversation I’ll ever have with my sister, and I feel almost nothing. Isn’t that strange? I keep waiting for the grief to land.”
“You felt it for years.” He reaches over and threads his fingers through mine. “You’re allowed to be empty now. You earned the quiet.”
***
The masquerade things are waiting when we get back to his place, boxes from the atelier stacked on the bed, and the sight of them resets me, pulls me out of the parking lot and back into the war I’m choosing instead of the one I was born into.
I lift the gown out of its tissue. Midnight, almost black until the light catches it and turns it the deep blue of water at the bottom of a harbor, with a neckline cut to make a statement and a back cut to make a threat.
It’s nothing like the soft, forgettable things Vincent liked me in.
It’s armor that happens to be beautiful.
“Turn around,” I tell Reid. “I’m trying it on.”
“I’ve seen you in considerably less. Today, even.”
“Turn around, Vanderbilt, or you don’t get the reveal.”
He turns with the put-upon sigh of a man who’s enjoying himself, and I step out of my clothes and into the gown.
I’m still reaching back for the zip when I give up and say his name, and he turns without being told and crosses to me.
He does it up slow, his knuckles dragging the length of my spine, sending a shiver straight to my core.
“There,” he says, and then he doesn’t step back. His hands settle on my hips, squeezing the flesh there, and I watch us in the mirror, the two of us, his chin at my temple and his eyes very dark.
“Well?” I say.
“You’re going to walk into that room and every person in it is going to remember why they were afraid of you before they ever learned to pity you.
” His mouth finds the bare curve where my neck meets my shoulder, his tongue darting out to taste my skin.
“And I’m going to have to stand across the room and pretend I’m not thinking about exactly this. ”
“About what?”
“About taking this very expensive dress off you with my teeth.”
Heat goes through me, low and certain, and I turn in his arms with the gown whispering around my legs and pull his mouth down to mine.
The kiss is hungry and deep.
I open for him, my tongue tangling with his in a wet, desperate slide. He groans into my mouth, the sound vibrating through my chest, and I bite his lower lip just hard enough to make him hiss.
There’s nothing tentative left between us, none of the careful negotiation before. I know him now. I know the catch in his breath when I bite, the way his hands flex when I press my breasts against his chest, the low sound he makes when I walk him backward toward the bed without breaking the kiss.
“The dress,” he manages, his voice a ragged growl as the backs of his knees hit the mattress.
“Stays on.” I push him down and follow him, my knees on either side of his hips, the skirt pooling over both of us like a silken tent. “For now. You said teeth. Let’s see if you meant it.”
He means it.
He sits up under me and gets a hand in my hair and drags the neckline aside with his mouth.
He doesn’t just kiss me; he devours the skin of my breast, his teeth grazing my nipple through the fabric before he sucks the peak hard into his mouth.
I arch into him, a sharp moan escaping me, and I forget, gloriously, that there’s a single other thing happening in my life besides this.
He reaches under the gown, his hand sliding up my thigh, pushing the silk aside until he finds my pussy.
I’m already soaking, and he lets out a low, triumphant sound when his fingers slide through my wetness.
I whimper, my head falling back, as he rubs his thumb over my clit in a rhythmic, punishing circle.
“You’re so wet for me,” he whispers against my skin.
We don’t undress so much as come apart at the seams.
He tugs at the gown, pulling the fabric up and twisting it around my waist, using the expensive material to bind me closer to him.
He uses his teeth to tug the strap off my shoulder, ripping it slightly, and I don’t care.
I want him inside me now. I reach down and fumble with his trousers, freeing his cock, which is thick and pulsing in my hand.
I guide him to my opening and sink down on him in one slow, agonizing motion. I let out a loud, shaking moan as he fills me completely, stretching me wide. I stay there for a second, trembling, feeling every ridge of him inside me.
“God, you’re tight,” he gasps, his hands gripping my hips to hold me steady.
I start to move, lifting myself and slamming back down on him.
The friction is electric. I can hear the wet slap of our bodies meeting, the sound of the gown rustling beneath us.
I curl down over him, chest pressed to his, and catch his mouth in a deep, open kiss as I ride him.
I begin to whimper, the pleasure building into a tight knot in my belly.
He flips us over with a sudden, powerful surge, pinning me into the mattress. The gown is bunched up around my chest, leaving my legs wide open and exposed. He doesn’t waste a second, driving his cock deep into me with a forceful thrust that knocks the breath out of me.
“Reid...” I cry out, my fingers digging into his shoulders.