52. Nora
CHAPTER 52
NORA
The apple orchard is in full bloom.
It’s a warm, sunny spring day, and I have to take advantage of it. I race to finish my work for the day so I can spend the afternoon outside sketching new designs. Sunlight falls dappled through the branches. They’ve exploded in the past week with white flowers that speak of the coming summer.
I’m lying on a large picnic blanket I found in one of the estate’s many cupboards. Pink flowers dot the fresh grass, and I think maybe this is my happy place.
I draw a curved line with my pencil, the sweep of a bow down the back of a ballgown. A single petal falls and lands next to the shape.
Of all the places in the world for my heart to feel at peace, it has to be Fairhaven. West’s home. What I first saw as a prison has become a refuge.
Summer must be gorgeous here.
But I can’t stay here. Maybe I can stay in New York, though, after the fashion show. Now that we know who the stalker is, there should be more freedom. Fewer guards. Ben Wilde is invited to the Spring Ball on Saturday, and we’re planning to confront him then.
And after that…
It all ends.
I sketch a flowing train and pause to look up at the deep blue ocean that stretches out in front of me. A few white sails dot the distance. I want to swim in it before I leave.
I want so many things.
It’s like all the years of trying to fit into what others want from me have built up a dam, and now that dam has burst, and I’m an endless swirl of needs. Of desires and wants and thoughts and ideas. Maybe this is how it feels to live life for me.
To be my true self.
A shadow falls over my sketchbook. I look up and find West standing beside the picnic blanket. I’ve been so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t hear his steps in the soft spring grass.
“Hey.” I shade my eyes. He’s in a pair of dark pants, a white shirt. “Come to do your work out here?”
“I just got a call that you’re looking into getting back into your apartment. The one in town.”
I push up to sitting. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
I pat the space next to me on the large blanket.
He sits down, long legs taking up the rest of the blanket. “You’re leaving Fairhaven?”
“Not now, no. But eventually I am.”
“Why?”
“Why? You know why. We know who the stalker is. We’re handling him at your ball… and I won’t need your protection anymore. You don’t really need me to keep your mom’s matchmaking at bay, either. You’ll have a wife by September.”
His eyebrows draw together. “You can live here for as long as you want to.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
“I do.” His jaw works. “The other night. In the library. What you told me…”
A blush races up my cheeks. I was frustrated and angry, and I wanted to prove a point. It had felt powerful, to wreck him the way he’s been wrecking me. “Yeah?”
“You were right,” he says. “About all of it. You were right. I’ve been a hypocrite. And I’m jealous at the thought of any man but me touching you.” He reaches out and slides a finger under the strap of my dress. “I imagine you with someone else… and it feels like I’m dying. Like I can’t breathe. I thought it would fade, but it hasn’t, trouble. It’s going stronger every single day.”
“Why have you been holding back, then?”
“Holding back,” he mutters. “It doesn’t feel like I have. I never want you to regret it if you sleep with me. I couldn’t fucking bear it if you did.”
“I won’t.” My voice is fierce. “Don’t talk like that, like I don’t know my own mind. You taught me to be clear about what I want. Trust me when I do.”
“I’d try to make it good for you.” His eyes shift back to mine. “So good.”
“I know.”
“I want you every minute of the day.” His fingers smooth down to the valley of my breasts. “The idea of never having you…”
“Then have me.” I arch my back, and he groans, eyes on the spot between my breasts.
His mouth finds mine. It’s hot and warm, and he kisses me with heady urgency. His free hand is on my bare knee, sliding up, and up, and up. My dress follows his touch, and then he’s brushing his thumb over the damp front of my panties.
I thread my fingers through his hair. Somewhere close by, a bird sings. It sounds triumphant.
“I can’t take it anymore,” he says. His mouth is hot against my neck. “I’ve tried to be honorable, but I can’t. I can’t. ”
“I don’t want you to be.”
He lifts up on one arm. In the sunlight, his eyes look brighter than ever. A warm amber. We both watch as he strokes long fingers over my panties, my knees parted for him. “You need to tell me, if you don’t want this.”
I smile against his lips. “I’ve been telling you that I do for weeks. Can you please just fuck me?”
He groans, and I laugh a little against his lips at the tortured sound. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Here, then.” He grips my panties. “Up, sweetheart.”
I lift my hips, and he slides my underwear down my legs. West’s hand returns, circling my clit, eyes between my bent thighs. He always looks at me like that. Eyes trained like my pussy is the best thing he’s ever seen.
I burn with a hunger that he’s awakened and stoked. I stretch out in the sunlight, in my summer dress, and let West touch me like I’m a goddess.
He slides a finger inside me, and a bumblebee ambles past my half-closed eyes. I’m breathing heavily. That used to be something I thought about, used to be an insecurity when we started this, but he blazes away all those thoughts.
“You’re so fucking sweet. And you’re tight. Even with our practice.”
He settles between my legs, and then he’s going down on me again, and I’ve gotten so used to this now, the way he uses his tongue like I’m the sweetest thing he’s ever had. “I want to be inside you so bad,” he says against my skin. “It’s all I think about. It’s what I dream about.”
“West,” I whisper. He’s flicking his tongue back and forth, and it’s so fast, how he’s learned just what I like and what I need. I stretch out my left arm, find the fresh spring grass. “Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t stop, doesn’t relent, and the orgasm shudders through me. Slow at first and then quick toward the end, my knees bent, feet braced against the picnic blanket.
I feel sun-drunk and heavy and aching. West finds the buttons on my sundress, and he undoes them, one by one, spreading the fabric out around me.
He looks like he’s transfixed. Eyes roaming, like he doesn’t know where to settle them. I’ll never get enough of it.
The way he wants me, the way it makes me feel.
The way I ache and the way he’s the only one I want to fill me.
“You told me you’re not afraid of this. But I am.” His hand goes into his back pocket, and he pulls out a foil packet. Has he been carrying that around all this time? “I’m terrified that if I have you once, sweetheart, I’m never going to stop craving this. Craving you. And whatever you’ve started here with these lessons… I won’t be able to stop. Consequences be damned. I’ll keep you.”
The words are everything I’ve ever wanted to hear. I can’t think around them. Keep me.
“Maybe I started out as your teacher, but you hold all the power now,” he says.
“You brought a condom?” I reach for the buckle of his belt. We’re outside. But we’re on his property, beneath his apple trees, with the ocean glittering behind the trunks. There’s nowhere else I want to do this.
He watches me pull his belt clean out of the loops. “I’ve been carrying one around since you first asked me to help you.”
“You have?”
“I knew it was only a matter of time before I caved.” His hand slides under my chin, tilts my face up. “I can’t have you regret this. Regret any of it. As much as it would kill me not to be your first, not to be inside you, it would damn me to hell to be something you later regret.”
“I won’t regret this.” I work his zipper down. “You have to trust me.”
He’s already hard, granite in my hand, and he groans at my touch. I run my thumb over his damp head.
“I want my first time to be without a condom. I’m on birth control. Have been for years, and, well… you know I haven’t been with anyone else.”
In the weeks since the first lesson, since he asked me all those questions, I’ve thought about it. Touched myself to the thought of it.
“Fucking hell.” West takes a deep breath, like he’s collecting himself. “Do you remember what I told you? All those weeks ago?”
“To always put a man through his paces.”
“That’s right.” His hips tilt forward, and his cock twitches in my hand. Eager, hard. Big. There’s no way it’ll all fit, and I can’t wait to try. “What else did I say?”
“To ask for proof before I let a man come inside me,” I say. “Well, Calloway? Where’s your proof?”
“I had my yearly health check-up two months before you came to New York. Haven’t been with anyone but you since,” he says. “I can show you the paperwork.”
“That’s awesome.”
He tuts and strokes a reverent finger down the length of my pussy. “You should look at the paperwork. Men will say anything, do anything to get the privilege of being inside you.”
“Except you.”
“Especially me,” he mutters. He kisses me, his body braced above mine. The linen of his shirt is just a bit scratchy against my bare stomach, and the slide of his erection against my inner thigh is everything. I’m wet. I can feel it, embarrassingly, disastrously, dripping down my leg. “This shouldn’t hurt. We’ve practiced, warmed you up. If it does hurt, even a little, you tell me.”
“I’ll tell you.”
“Good girl.” West slides a strong arm beneath me, and then he’s rolling us over. He settles me over him.
“I don’t know how to be on top,” I say, like there’s any position I’m good at. I’ve never tried a single one. But I thought he would be the one to handle it.
“I know, sweetheart. But you control the pace this way.” He reaches down and grips himself. He looks so big from this angle, and even though I’ve craved it, wanted it, a tendril of nerves snakes through me.
West drags the thick head along my folds, and we both stop breathing. Watch him do it, coating himself, and it’s several agonizing seconds before he notches himself at my entrance.
I brace my hands against his chest, feel the burn in my thighs. “That’s it,” he grinds out, hand gripping the base of his cock. “Sink down on me.”
It’s impossible at first. A puzzle piece that won’t fit. His head is broader than the vibrator, and it won’t work. We’ve tried so hard, and it won’t work. But then he changes the angle slightly, and something suddenly gives.
I slide down an inch.
The stretch burns faintly, like the toy, like his fingers.
“You’re doing so well. Breathe for me.” His praise sends a rush of heat through me, and I push down another inch. And then another. The stretch grows almost uncomfortable, but I?—
West’s hands turn into an iron grip on my hips. “Slow down, baby.” He looks at where we’re joined. He drags his wet thumb over my clit in hard circles. “Be a good girl and just breathe for me. Can you do that?”
My knees grind down into the blanket, my fingers relaxing the grip on his linen shirt. And I slide down another inch. And then another, until I can feel the metal of his zipper against the curve of my ass.
“That’s it… Look at that. You’re taking all of me.”
I draw another shaky breath. The fullness inside is strange, all-consuming, thought-ending. I feel stretched full. It’s not entirely comfortable, but it’s not bad, either, and there’s a low ache pooling in my stomach.
He brushes over my clit again. “Look at your pretty pussy,” he mutters, “stretched around me. How does it feel?”
“I feel full,” I say.
“Keep breathing.”
I stay still, feeling, settling. Under the bright spring sunshine, I can see every taut line of his body beneath mine. How his muscles tense and how his eyes are locked on my body. It’s a kind of power I’ve never known.
I think of the woman I saw at the Paradise Lost party, who was riding her partner on the chaise. Her confident hips, her bouncing breasts. How he watched her with adoration.
West is looking at me like that.
I’m sitting perfectly still, and he’s still looking at me like that.
“Faster,” I say, and West’s thumb speeds up against my clit. The stretching burn turns into nothingness, and then into sweetness. I rise onto my knees and sink back down again.
“Oh.” I do it again and again. His hands grip my hips, helping my rhythm. I brace my hands against his chest, and the petal of an apple blossom dances past me. It lands in his brown hair. “West, we’re having sex.”
A glorious smile spreads over his face. “Yes, we are. And you’re doing so well.”
I tilt my hips a little, and it’s not easy, the burn in my thighs from riding him like this. Of all the positions I’ve fantasized about, it’s never been this. Never like this. It was some alternate version of me, some future perfect vision of me, who was never awkward, never unsure. But here I am, having sex, and it’s still just me. And it’s West. And it’s us.
It’s so much better for it.
He talks me through it, returns his wet thumb to my clit until I’m overwhelmed and too hot and every nerve ending is on edge. “West,” I beg, sliding back down to take him in to the hilt. “I want… can you…”
“I can.” He sits up and wraps his arms around my waist. “Hold on. Okay?” He turns us over on the picnic blanket, still inside me. The angle is different now. The sunlight falls through the blossoms and turns his brown hair alight. Gilding him above him.
My knees fall open, and he’s there, between them, inside me. He thrusts slowly, and I didn’t know it would feel like that. That I’d feel him so deep inside. Maybe I whisper the words against him, because he pauses, forehead against my neck.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” His voice is strained. “Just can’t end too soon.”
“Why—oh.”
“Yes. Oh . You feel too good.”
“I’m sorry?” It comes out half whispered, and West groans into my skin. “That was a joke. I’m not really sorry.”
“Neither am I,” he mutters, and starts to move again, hands braced on either side of me. I look from him down between our bodies, at where he’s disappearing inside me.
Oh.
West’s movements are methodical, precise, but he’s holding on by a thread. He grips my knee and pulls it up to his hips. “Wrap your legs around me, sweetheart. Yes. Just like that… So good.”
I want him to feel as undone as I do. Like he’s made me feel over, and over, and over again. With his fingers and toys and tongue. “Don’t hold back.” I run my nails along his back. “I want it all.”
There’s a brief second where I can tell that he teeters on the edge, and then he falls, his hips speeding up. He mutters dirty things into my skin, about how good I feel, how he’s never going to last, how he knew I was going to be perfect.
I soak it all up like sunlight.
There’s something so honest about it, about being consumed by his want. He was right. This is about trust. It’s always been about trust.
Everything we’ve been doing has led us here.
He groans that he’s not going to last and I tell him I don’t want him to, and then his hips stutter against mine, and he’s fracturing.
He groans like his soul is tearing in two.
I was full before. Now I feel like I’m overflowing, and he’s a heavy weight on top of me, warm and big and everywhere .
I squeeze my eyes tight, like it will keep the moment from ending.
We lie there for a long time. He might be my new favorite blanket.
“That was…” He pushes up on an elbow, and there’s wonder on his expression. “Fuck. I went hard there at the end. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I wanted you to.” I brush back hair that falls over his forehead and smile at him, and somehow, I feel shy and perfectly at ease at the same time.
His own lips curve. “Yeah?”
“Mhm.”
He shifts to his side and pulls out of me. I wince at the sudden emptiness, and he catches it, like he catches everything. “Are you sore?” He looks between my legs, and I laugh, pushing my knees together.
“West,” I protest.
His hand is there, brushing my thighs apart. “Lie still and let me look.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“No, it’s not. I’m the one who left a mark there.”
I let him spread my legs apart, and for a few long moments he just watches me, a serious expression on his face. And then he groans. He falls forward, head against my knee, like a tree felled.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he mumbles. “Everything’s right. Too right.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m dangerously obsessed with you.” He reaches for the edge of the blanket and checks that it’s clean before folding it up and using it to gently wipe between my legs. I’m swollen and a bit sore, and he gives me an apologetic look. “Hope you didn’t like this blanket.”
“It’ll survive a wash.”
“You didn’t bleed.” There’s something deeply pleased about his voice, and I think of his mouth on me, of my orgasms, his fingers stretching me out.
His words are like a warm, tight grip around my heart. I’m dangerously obsessed with you. And don’t move out and I’ve dreamed about this and maybe, maybe…
“This should have happened in a bed,” he says. He zips himself up, and then he’s fitting my panties back around my ankles, pulling them up my legs.
“Probably,” I say. “I think I saw one of your gardeners over there.”
West’s hands stop at my hips. “ What ? They’re fired.”
I laugh and reach to push against his chest. “I’m joking.”
“Don’t.” But his voice has no bite, and one by one, he does up the buttons of my sundress. Afterward, he stretches out beside me and pulls me against him, and I ask if he has to work or if he can stay.
“Yes,” he says, and I know he means both. “So? What did you think?”
“About having sex?”
“Mhm.”
“It was okay,” I say, and he groans into my hair.
“ Nora .”
I giggle and sling my leg over his. “You once told me you didn’t have a fragile ego!”
“I lied.”
“I suspected.” I kiss the skin exposed by the open V of his button-down. “I liked it. A lot, a lot.”
He wraps his arms around me. His heart is beating steadily beneath my ear, and he’s warm, too, and above us, the blossoms fall gently in the breeze.
He was wrong, before. But he was also right. Because in the end, I did do it with someone I love.