Chapter 28
The car ride home was agonising. Estella had sometimes wondered what Kenneth really knew about her, from years of following her for protection and driving her around the city.
He’d seen her at her worst. She knew suddenly that he’d understood more than she’d suspected by the way he just nodded silently when she’d said take us home instead of take me home, Ellie sliding into the backseat next to her.
He kept his eyes fiercely averted toward the road the whole way home like he was paid purely to stare at the white lines on the asphalt.
Ellie was silent too. She stayed utterly still, her own gaze fixed out the window like she’d never seen the lights of Melbourne city glide by before.
Estella made no pretence she wasn’t staring at her.
The way her glossy hair had come loose in strands from where it had been neatly tied when she’d first walked into Estella’s office.
Estella couldn’t even remember touching that hair, but, maybe, when she’d grabbed her— Oh, she throbbed at the thought.
She wanted to grab Ellie, to manhandle her, to tug hold of that pretty hair, to mess her up. What was happening to her?
She let her eyes run over Ellie’s pale skin, saw her breath speed up and realised that Ellie knew, clear as day that she was looking, that she could feel Estella’s want as easily as if they were touching.
It scared Estella all over again. Who was in control here?
Why did it feel like it wasn’t her that was driving this, even though it was Ellie Graham who was in the back of a mob boss’s car on the way to a mob boss’s house?
Ellie had to be scared, surely? She wasn’t fucking stupid.
Or was it because she was smart, that she knew Estella would die before she harmed a hair on Ellie’s head, even though she did want to push her…
just a little more than she should. But — the thought both calmed and terrified her — that seemed to be exactly why Ellie was here. They wanted the same fucking thing.
The thought spurred her as Ken pulled up at the gate, opened the car door and stood guard while Estella led Ellie through her front door.
As it closed behind them, Ken vanishing off into the night, she didn’t hit a single light.
Instead, she let the low glow of the outside lights be enough as she disabled first one and then the other alarm system that turned her house into a fortress.
She could feel Ellie’s presence, still and hesitant, as she then enabled the external alarm system, the one that protected the whole perimeter of her property when she was home.
When she turned back, Ellie was exactly where she’d left her, just inside the front door, pale in the low light. She watched Ellie’s breath speed up once more, as she let Estella stare.
It had never felt so obvious as in that moment, the two of them alone, all that desire naked in the air between them.
Estella the lion, Ellie the lamb. One golden, one white.
One dangerous, one seeking danger. They wanted the same fucking thing, just one the inverse of the other.
Even their names, she suddenly realised — Estella Grant, Ellie Graham — as if they were two sides of the same fucking coin.
You could tilt your head, just so, and one merged into the other.
Who was the sun and who was the moon? Estella should feel surer about this.
Neither of them moved. It seemed, all of a sudden, too acutely vulnerable for either of them to reach for what they equally desperately wanted. Estella knew it should be her. She was in charge, or, more accurately, she wanted to be. But it was all she could do to keep breathing.
Ellie let her. Estella loved and hated her for it.
She didn’t say a word, didn’t push her an inch, even though Estella knew how on edge she must be, right here in the home of the most dangerous woman in the city, having been driven right to the precipice of an orgasm and then denied it.
Ellie was, she realised, far more in control than she was.
A thought hit her. She knew enough, at least, for this.
“You need a safe word,” she said, her voice coming out surprisingly steady. “Pick one.”
Ellie licked her lips, like she hadn’t quite expected Estella to give her this. Who was Ellie Graham, and why the hell had she walked in here, giving a woman like Estella Grant all the power? The heavy urge to protect her hit Estella just as sharply as the urge to bite.
“Cannoli,” Ellie said, a little flicker of light hitting her eyes, like she was looking all the way back in time and laughing at her.
A flash of heat hit Estella’s blood. A flare of like for this woman and an equal urge to force her to stop in her tracks.
That day on the picnic blanket, this hadn’t been there between them.
Had it? She felt it all rush over her. Running her hands over Ellie’s body for a wire, the flush of heat rushing up Ellie’s throat.
Ellie dripping wet in a black bikini that day in the pool, her lovely delicate skin, her nipples hard and evident, the flash of memory that Estella had tried to ignore of what Ellie’s naked breasts had looked like on screen, as she fucked someone else in Estella’s name. How long had Ellie known this?
“Take your clothes off,” Estella said sharply.
Ellie looked at her, that spark of impudence fading.
They were still in the grand entrance way of Estella’s mansion: cool air, sharp angles, impersonal white walls.
Ellie let her lashes fall. Toed her way out of her shoes, unbuttoned her white dress — all the way this time — let it fall to the floor, pooling around her bare feet.
She looked at Estella, goosebumps on her skin, nothing but pale lace.
Estella looked at that pretty, flimsy, matching set and knew that Ellie had come to her in full confidence that the night would come to this.
It turned her on and infuriated her in equal measure. Ellie, gliding that floral shower gel all over her soft skin, sliding into lingerie that spoke equal parts sex and innocence, wanting Estella to see it. To breathe in her scent. So sure that she would.
“Did I say to stop?” Estella snapped, and Ellie reached back instantly to unsnap her bra, to slide it off her arms, then tucked her thumbs into the white lace of her underwear and tugged it down her thighs.
That too, hit the floor of Estella’s entrance hall.
Ellie was entirely bare, entirely vulnerable, entirely sexy, and Estella quite suddenly wanted to weep at the sight.
Ellie, giving her everything. No one had ever given Estella that.
She remembered, just in time, that Ellie was getting what she wanted too. “Upstairs,” she ordered, gesturing the way and making Ellie go first. She didn’t want Ellie to see her eyes until she was back under control.
Ellie walked ahead of her, through the dark entrance hall and up the grand stairs. Estella was a beat behind her, drinking in the sensation of Ellie’s submission: naked with Estella still in her dress and heels, walking herself into Estella’s bedroom all because Estella had told her to.
Inside the room she let Ellie get her bearings, taking in the sight of Estella’s huge soft bed, the light from Estella’s glaring, golden security lighting outside flooding in through the open curtains of the plate glass french doors that led to the balcony.
She turned slowly to look back at her: Ellie in the low light, everything glinting, dipped in dull gold, and all of it Estella’s.
Right at the moment, Estella realised she knew exactly what she wanted.
She held up one finger in warning, revelling in the fact that was all it took to keep Ellie controlled.
She prowled slowly over toward her bed and made Ellie watch.
Estella slid her dress up her hips, inch by inch, just enough to hook her fingers into her own underwear and slide it off her hips.
She heard Ellie’s helpless little moan from across the room.
This was Estella’s comfort zone: being wanted.
Wanted so badly they’d get married at twenty-two, so badly they’d kill for her, so badly they’d destroy their whole legal career and betray the justice system along the way, so badly they’d walk naked through the house of a mob boss just for the chance to be touched by her.
Estella gripped hold of the edge of her elaborately ornate bed head.
She crooked that same one finger at Ellie, who moved towards her as clearly as if pulled on a string.
“On your knees,” Estella said. Ellie breathed out fast, falling to her knees, her face upturned, supplicant, wanting.
Estella cocked an eyebrow. “Make it good,” she warned, stepping her feet out just wide enough. Ellie whimpered.
She tugged Estella’s dress back up, and without hesitation pressed her face right between Estella’s thighs.
She inhaled slowly and Estella was almost undone just by that.
Then, just as she was about to lose patience and grab Ellie’s head to pull her in, Ellie’s whole mouth seemed to find her.
Lips, tongue, breath, chin; her tongue was hot velvet and Estella could feel, finally, how desperately wet she’d been for this.
The sound that escaped her was almost embarrassing, a whine of want, followed by a gasp of pleasure.
Ellie ate her like she’d been pressed face first into her favourite dessert.
Her licks were luxurious, hungry, knowing and how dumb had Estella been?
Her thighs were shaking. She looked down at Ellie, on her knees, licking her like she’d been born for it.
This wasn’t humiliation for her, it was her wet fucking dream.
“Touch yourself,” Estella ordered shakily, and Ellie gasped against her sensitive flesh.
She watched avidly as Ellie’s right hand slipped between her own thighs and began to move.
She took a handful of Ellie’s hair, tugging her in closer but also back, so she could see the little furrow of concentration on Ellie’s forehead as she tried to lick Estella and get herself off at the same time.
Each moan of agonised pleasure that tipped out Ellie’s throat throbbed against Estella’s flesh, and she found herself racing close to the edge shockingly quickly.
Ellie too, seemed to be teetering towards orgasm, judging by the pitch of her moans, even as she worked Estella with increasingly messy swipes of her tongue.
“You’re not allowed to come—” Estella managed to choke out and Ellie whined, needy, distressed.
Estella gripped hard to the bedpost with one hand, her other grabbing Ellie’s upper arm, pulling her hand away from giving herself the climax she was about to hit.
Ellie sounded almost ready to sob as she moaned out her desire right into Estella’s body, her hips moving helplessly as she worked, desperate to come.
That, as much as the heady swipe of her hungry mouth, turned Estella inside out with pleasure.
She heard, as if from far away, her own cries as she ground hard against Ellie’s mouth, wringing every drop of pleasure from her own release.
Victory was fucking sweet, Ellie literally on her knees before her.
She cried out at the win — finally — as much as the unspeakable pleasure of Ellie’s mouth.
When she came down from her high, she was panting, and Ellie was still on her knees, face still pressed against her, like all she wanted was more.
“You’ve done that before,” Estella got out, the very second she could trust her own voice.
Ellie still didn’t move from where she knelt, her tongue pressing in, delicately, wanting, like she didn’t want to leave the taste of Estella, like she’d eat her all over again if only Estella would let her.
Estella pushed her away — achingly sensitive — and Ellie sat back on her heels looking up.
“How did you not know I was a lesbian?” she asked, her eyes full of her own fucking victory, as if Estella hadn’t just pushed her down and owned her. Estella looked down her nose at her, naked, flushed, her chin glistening with Estella, still so sure she was getting exactly what she’d wanted.
“It’s not on your fucking Wikipedia bio,” Estella defended herself. “And you didn’t decide to tell me that when we talked about our sex lives!”
“I was too busy trying not to drool at you in a bikini,” Ellie told her, her eyes bright with the memory, like it was obvious.
And, oh… it was. The day in the pool, had Ellie been wet for her beneath that swimsuit?
How much more was Ellie going to win? Estella wanted to wipe that satisfaction from her eyes.
She took hold of her dress where it was still pushed up around her hips and pulled it all the way off over her head.
She watched Ellie’s eyes go large. She was still on her knees, like she was praying at the altar of Estella, and for all Estella was concerned, she could fucking stay there.
“You mean like this?” Estella raised her eyebrows, watching Ellie swallow as she took in the sight of Estella Grant, still in heels, nothing but a push-up bra, towering over her. She undid the bra, heard Ellie suck in her breath. “Get on my fucking bed,” she ordered.
Ellie didn’t need to be told twice.