22. West
CHAPTER 22
WEST
I’m in hell.
Nora is draped in my lap, a warm, soft weight. Her hair tickles my neck as she watches the couple in the corner with a kind of focus I’ve never seen in her before.
I’m hard as a fucking rock.
It’s more than inconvenient. It’s indecent . She has asked me to help her practice so she can feel at ease around dating and men, so she can learn to ask for what she wants. She’s told me that men sometimes act like creeps around her.
And here I am, blood painfully rushing south at the first taste of her lips.
I started by kissing her carefully. Slowly. A tempo she could follow along with and not be overwhelmed by. But then she scraped her nails over my scalp, and I couldn’t resist tasting her with my tongue.
She’s sweeter than I ever thought she might be.
And now that I’ve tasted her, I know I’m never going to get enough.
At the poker table, Dave is staring hard enough at his cards that I know he’s wishing they were different. He’s going to lose tonight. Just like he loses all the time.
He’s a Calloway, but only through my father’s cousin. And he can’t stay away from these parties… or the other privileges that his last name provides. Not that he’ll ever take on any responsibility.
I only told Nora half the truth.
Over my dead body will he gain access to Fairhaven. I know he’s already planning what he’ll do if my thirtieth birthday comes and I’m still unmarried. My home will show up in one of these games, gambled away because he thinks he has great cards when he doesn’t. It’ll be turned into a hotel or a college. The grounds desecrated and an elevator installed.
Nora shifts again, and I bite down on my tongue to hide a groan. I need my body to get a fucking grip.
After she kissed me the other day, hesitantly, sweetly, gloriously, I had to take a cold shower. Gripped myself and painted the tiles to the image of her face behind my eyelids.
I shouldn’t think about her that way. But shouldn’t doesn’t seem to work.
She was so sweet, kissing me carefully first and then in delight. Like she actually enjoyed it and was surprised by the whole thing. It took every ounce of control in me to not move. To keep my hands in my pockets.
“There’s another couple beside us.” Nora’s voice is breathless. “They’re the ones we’ve been hearing.”
“Oh? What are they doing?”
She leans forward to see, and my lip curves. Her excitement is charming. It’s rare that Vivienne’s parties have open displays of sex like this. If I had known… but now we’re here, and there’s no denying that there’s a dark, twisted pleasure in watching Nora fascinated by sex. It makes my cock throb beneath her thighs.
“He’s eating her out,” she whispers.
Fuck. Her voice, saying those words… I could eat her out. It would be so easy to slide my hand up beneath the virginally white angel dress and brush against her pussy.
To see if she’s wet from watching the others.
She’s Rafe’s little sister. She’s mine to protect and mine to teach how to date, but she’s not mine in any other sense. She’s definitely not mine to taste.
But the guilt doesn’t make my cock deflate.
“I never knew you were such a deviant.” I grip her tighter and shift her forward off my lap. “Time to go, trouble, before you start asking to join in.”
“I wouldn’t,” she says. But her voice is high, excited.
I reach for her hand again. “Think that woman is just performing too?”
“No. I don’t. Her pleasure looks… real.”
I wonder what she looks like when she comes. If the kind, polite, practiced charm falls and she’s just herself again. I don’t think she would be a screamer. I think her breathing would hitch, and she would grow tense, and her back would arch.
“Take your mental picture to use later,” I tell her, “and then we’ll leave.”
Her eyes flash to mine. “I’m not… I wouldn’t…”
I raise an eyebrow. “Everyone does it.”
“I can’t believe you’re talking about that.” She looks flushed. “That’s not something people just mention!”
“You’re watching people have sex in front of you, but you can’t handle talking about masturbation.” I narrow my eyes at her. “Is talking about sex something we need to add to your lessons?”
She bites her lip, and I have to look away. The image of those perfect teeth sinking into plump flesh is doing nothing to help my erection. Thank god it’s dark in here, and thank god the zipper is digging in painfully.
“Maybe, but I’m not sure it’s necessary,” she says.
“Your goal is to date more, right? Get into a relationship?” My words come out a little harsh as I lead her out of the room. Back toward the pulsing bodies on the dance floor and curve toward the staircase.
“Yes,” she says.
“I hate to break it to you, but in relationships, you talk about sex and intimacy. Now let’s get you out of here before you spontaneously combust from curiosity.”
“I’m not curious!”
“Sure you’re not.”
“Maybe a little,” she says, walking in front of me up the stairs. The ivory clings to her slim, curved shape, and that backless dress… Her dark hair plays at her shoulder blades. And her ass is now right in front of me.
My fucking hard-on was just starting to surrender.
“But aren’t you, West?” she asks with a small chuckle. “How could you watch that and not care ? Not be curious?”
“They’re exhibitionists.”
Heaven upstairs has soft blue lighting, and there’s fake ivy draped along all of the walls. Some of the Whitman family’s paintings are still up but torn in places. Most of their once ornate furniture is gone, too.
The place I once visited as a boy is now a wreck.
Sold and repossessed in a lengthy court battle and scandal that consumed the city. The boy who was once heir to it all hasn’t shown up. I hope he stayed far, far away, whatever Vivienne might say.
I haven’t seen Hadrian in years. Not since that night at Belmont, not since everything unraveled like the threads in a tapestry, spinning out of control. We’re four now, but we were once five.
Nora dances a little in front of me in the large hallway by the front door. Other people look at her, smiling.
She doesn’t seem to realize.
She holds my hand and lifts it up. Twirls under my arm. A smile spreads across her face. It’s so unlike the way she’s been with me so far that it makes something tighten in my chest.
It’s not a mask, either. It’s a real smile, and it lights up her face like a sunrise. “I like this party,” she tells me.
I brush a tendril of her hair back. “How much have you had to drink?”
“I’ve had a few shots.”
“From upstairs or downstairs?” I ask.
“Both, I think.”
Vivienne’s parties are known to break every legal rule there is. Lord knows what was in the shots. “We’re going home,” I order.
She pouts a little, but dances backward toward the front door all the same. Her hips sway in a way that speaks of hours spent perfecting her movements. “Fine.”
I push open the door for her. “You’re in a good mood.”
“Yes, I guess I am. I’m also a tiny bit drunk.”
“You don’t say?”
“Tonight was very educational.”
I scoff. “That’s what we’re calling it?”
She laughs again. “It was! I’ve never seen anything like… that before. It was fascinating.”
“I’m corrupting you.”
She waves a hand, like that’s neither here nor there. “No you’re not. But I’m surprised by you, actually.”
We walk down the long, candlelit driveway. I’ve already texted Arthur that it’s time. “Surprised how?”
“I used to think you went wild. You and the guys, like on your trips.”
I shove my hands into my pockets. “You shouldn’t know anything about those.”
“I’ve heard enough from Rafe. Including stories about you .” She walks to the large gate that guards the old Whitman property and peers out through the iron. “You flipped a water scooter once.”
“Yeah, yeah. Come on.”
“And you cliff jumped in Ibiza. At midnight!”
“That was a long time ago. And I was very drunk.”
“So you’ve mellowed out with age?” she asks. “I’ll admit, I’ve really only seen you all stern and serious and arrogant.”
“Arrogant?”
She puts a hand to her mouth, laughing behind her fingers. “Yes. I’m sorry. I guess I’m taking the whole ‘you can’t make me angry’ thing to heart.”
“Good. I meant it.” Arthur pulls up, and I open the car door for her. She slides in with a cheery hello to my driver. They chat a bit as he drives the short way from the old estate back to my home up in King’s Point. There was a time when I came here often. A lifetime ago.
When we get home, Nora doesn’t wait for me to open her car door. She walks up the steps to Fairhaven with a hand lifting the long skirt of her dress. The moonlight bounces off the ivory silk, and she does look like an angel.
A smiling angel with slightly smudged lipstick. Smudged because of my kiss.
I open the front door for her, and she walks inside. She drops her clutch on the center table and steps out of her tall heels. “Finally,” she says with a happy sigh. “Do you have any snacks in the kitchen?”
“I have no clue.”
She giggles again. “It’s your kitchen. That’s silly. What… oh! Look!” She hurries to the open doorway between the twin staircases. “Did you see that?”
“No.”
“Your cat! It’s inside again!”
I follow her, rounding the corner into the hallway. She’s half running toward the library wing.
“I don’t have a cat,” I say.
“Yes, you do,” she protests. I catch the hint of two gray back legs and a tail held high before the cat disappears into the half-open door to the library. Nora disappears in after it.
I follow at a slower pace. When I open the door fully, she’s crouching near the large leather sofa and talking softly to a feline I can’t see. “Hi, sweetheart. Don’t be scared. We won’t hurt you.”
“Don’t speak for me,” I say.
She looks at me over her shoulder. “Don’t say that! He’s your cat.”
“I don’t have a cat.”
“Well, the cat has you. Or Fairhaven does, at least. I’ve asked Ernest about him, but he didn’t know either.” She smiles a little. “If he’s a lodger, we’ll have to get him properly moved in.”
“He might belong to someone.”
She makes more soft, beckoning sounds. “Then we check if he has a chip first.”
I walk toward the bar cart in the corner. I pour myself a glass of whiskey, but I don’t offer Nora any. She’s had enough.
There’s a small basket here filled with bags of bite-sized snacks. I grab what looks like a small bag of nuts and a bag of chips, then sit on the couch near where she’s trying to lure out the cat.
“Here,” I tell her and toss the snacks on the table between us. “Eat… and answer some questions for me.”
She sits on the thick oriental carpet and looks my way. “Questions?”
“Yes. I want to know exactly why dating is so hard for you.”