34. SIENNA
SIENNA
The dress moves differently from anything I own.
I can feel it with every step, the fabric sliding against the inside of my knees. My back is completely bare. The corridor air moves across my spine and I feel every degree of it.
The corridor is quiet. The specific silence of a building that hasn't been used yet. My heels make a sound on the floor that seems too loud. I feel like I'm being announced.
I look down at my hands. The raw spot at the base of my right thumb from the rake handle is still there.
The polish Monica put on my nails is deep blue, almost black.
I keep looking at my own hands like they belong to someone else.
Two hours ago I was loading a spade into a truck bed with soil under my nails and perspiration at my hairline. Now, I’m here.
I find the right door. Orchard Suite. Gold lettering on a deep mahogany door.
I barely knock before it opens.
All three of them are on the other side.
They are wearing tuxedos.
Carter and William's tuxedo are black with white shirts underneath. The contrast of it severe and perfectly manly.
Adrian’s is midnight blue, his collar open the barest amount, enough to see his throat.
They are all looking at me. Like I'm the thing they've been waiting for.
William comes forward. He takes my hand, raises it slightly, and prompts a slow twirl. The skirt lifts and settles. When I come back around, his eyes are all-consuming.
"I just knew this dress would look amazing on you," he says. "I wanted your tattoos to be on full display."
My hand goes instinctively to my back. I feel the edge of the fabric, how low it sits, the exposed skin from my shoulders all the way down.
He chose this. He looked at the parts of me I keep hidden and he chose something that puts them in the light.
William is still looking at my back when Carter's hand settles at my waist and guides me inside.
When I step further inside I can see that there are no lights on.
Only candles.
They're on every surface, the credenza, the window ledges, clustered down the wide steps to the living area, the stone shelves.
The glass walls are retracted fully and the canyon is just there, open, the black and silver shapes of olive trees on the private terrace, small lights threaded through the branches like they grew that way. The fire pit is lit.
I stand in the middle of it and feel the precise distance between this room and my real life.
Adrian is watching me from across the room. He makes a loose gesture that takes in the candles, the terrace, all of it.
"I thought it would be romantic," he says. "I mean, candlelight dinners are one of the most romantic things. I googled it."
The laugh comes out of me real and involuntary.
Carter asks, "Did you enjoy your spa?"
He's standing near the steps that lead outside to the patio, watching me steadily. And just like that I know the spa was his idea.
"I did," I say. "I think I might develop an addiction to spa treatments. I had never had one before."
I feel that thank you is not enough but I say it anyway “Thank you. For everything. It’s really making me feel special”
Adrian says, "You are special." Simply, directly, and for one moment underneath the ease of him there's something unguarded and entirely real.
Then he claps his hands once. "Well, there is more. Carter, where is this amazing chef that—"
A voice from the kitchen: " This amazing chef's name is Elias Kassianis."
Adrian closes his eyes and grimaces in regret for the way it just came out of his mouth
Elias comes around the corner, straight to me and takes my hand bringing it toward his lips.
He doesn't quite make contact.
It's nothing. It is genuinely nothing.
William makes a low sound beside me.
Carter's arm wraps around my waist and pulls me flush against his side in a single smooth motion. His hand is warm through the fabric at my hip.
Elias looks at me with the calm of a man who has seen it all and smirks. Only at me.
"I have prepared you a fantastikós meal," he says. "The table is set outside on the private terrace. Would you like me to stay and help, or would you rather do it yourselves? Buffet style?"
"Buffet."
"You can leave."
"We'll do it ourselves."
All three of them say, at almost exactly the same moment. I press my lips together hard.
I send Elias an apologetic look but he is also smiling and he winks at me when he says “Very well, behave like savages if you prefer”
He says already over his shoulder as he starts to leave, "Kalinihta."
Then we're alone.
When Carter makes a motion and I follow him outside where I can see that the fire pit is lighted, throwing amber across the terrace stone.
The olive trees are silver-grey in the dark, the small lights in the branches catching when the canyon breeze moves.
The table is set for four, crystal and white linen, and beside it a side table with chafing dishes and champagne standing in a tall frapé.
Adrian goes straight to the chafing dishes and opens every one inspecting them. William pulls the champagne from the ice.
Carter says, "Come, let's go take a seat," and his hand goes briefly to my back as we move toward the table.
We sit. The jazz is coming from inside, low enough that I can hear the fire cracking.
Adrian comes back with a plate, leans down slightly to show me what's what, asks what I like. I tell him. He nods and goes back for the rest.
William pours. We eat.
Adrian starts talking about a mediation that went sideways last week.
Carter takes a drink. Says nothing. The corner of his mouth resists a smile when Adrian’s story becomes amusing.
I can’t help but laugh. Adrian sees it and grins. William's attention moves to my face, and something about being looked at like that, in this dress, at this table, makes my chest expand with joy.
I look at them in the light from the candles and the fire.
I'm happy.
That's the word. Just that. Simple and devastating. Sitting in my chest like something I don't know how to hold.
The champagne is cold. I drink carefully because I want to feel this without any blur on it.
They planned this moment. All three. Together. Nobody has ever done anything like this for me.
The atmosphere has been changing for a while before I register it consciously.
It starts with the way William is looking at me across the table. He's been looking at me all evening but it's different now, heavier. Longer. He's looking at the neckline of the dress, then at my face and he doesn’t bother to disguise the heat in his eyes when I catch him looking..
I shiver.
Not from cold. The canyon air is soft tonight, the fire warm at my side. It's the charge in the room, the way the evening has been pulling toward something for the last hour
Adrian's knee pressing against mine under the table.
Carter's thumb moving on the back of my hand every so often.
William notices my shiver and says, "Are you cold? We can go inside."
I’m feeling safe and wanted so I become bold and I say “I’m not cold. But maybe we can go inside…”. For a moment I think that they don’t understand what I’m saying. That I’m going to need to be more specific. I don’t think I can.
Nobody speaks.
The fire crackles. I feel my own heartbeat in my throat.
William's champagne glass comes down onto the table very slowly.
Then Carter stands up.
He comes around the table, takes my hand, pulls me up and he kisses me like he's been holding that back all night. I grab the front of his jacket with both hands and hold on.
Still holding my hand he starts walking us inside.
Behind me I hear the soft scrape of chairs.
The bedroom is past the half-wall of pale stone, separated from the living space, and Carter leads me through it. Platform bed, wide and low, pale oak frame, bedding in warm white.
No candles. The only light is from the suspended fireplace in the corner, glass-fronted, the flame steady behind it, and everything in the room is golden and shadow.
I stand in the middle of the room.
Carter comes back to me, pulls me in and kisses me again, his hands firm at my waist.
I feel a mouth at my back.
I turn my head and Carter takes the opportunity to kiss my neck
Over my shoulder I see William directly behind me, eyes down, completely focused on my spine. He starts tracing my tattoo with his mouth. Slow and deliberate like he's learning it. His lips are warm, careful and I feel each point of contact shoot through me in a straight line to my center.
Carter's mouth is at my throat, his teeth dragging gently over my pulse. William's hands come to my waist from behind and he keeps kissing down my spine.
Across the room Adrian is undressing. He's pulled his jacket off and dropped it, already working his shirt buttons with the focused efficiency of a man who is done waiting.
He drops the shirt. His chest is broad and he's watching me between Carter and William with an attention that makes my skin feel too tight.
William turns me.
Gentle, his hands at my waist, rotating me to face him.
He looks at me for one second that stretches, his jaw set, something in his eyes that is barely contained, and then he kisses me and I feel all of it.
The want in it, the specific pressure and heat of William.
His mouth is demanding, passionate and his hands tighten slightly at my jaw.
Carter's fingers find the clasp of the dress at my neck. The halter loosens and his palms slide down my sides following the fabric as it falls, his hands warm and sure on my skin, dress pooling at my feet.
I’m not wearing underwear.
William looks at me and his jaw tightens further. He exhales through his nose once, controlled, like something almost got away from him.
He lowers his head and takes my nipple into his mouth.
My knee buckles. I press my nails on his shoulder. Hard. He doesn't react to that except to do it again, slower, more deliberate, tongue circling and teeth dragging gentle.
Carter kneels behind me, lifts each foot, takes the heels off.
Adrian crosses the room, slides his hand to the back of my neck turning my face to his and kisses me. Deep, hungry, a kiss with nothing patient about it. I feel his cock hard against my hip, the warmth of his skin, the specific heat of how much he wants me.
"You have no idea," he says, low, against my mouth, "what you look like right now." His hand slides to my jaw and he tilts my face up. "Both of them touching you and you're just—" He stops. His thumb traces my lower lip.
I can't track all of it. It’s an overload of sensations. William at my breasts. Adrian's mouth. Carter rising behind me, his hands at my hips. I feel surrounded in a way that should be too much and isn't. That should make me brace but doesn't.
William steps back.
Adrian bites my neck. One sharp deliberate press of his teeth. Then he goes to my breast, his mouth replacing William's, and a moan escapes me.
"God, I love that sound," he says against my breast.
Across the room William undresses in the most deliberate way. Each movement is precise, jacket, shirt, everything. When he is fully naked he sits down on the edge of the bed. His cock is hard and he wraps his hand around himself slowly stroking while he watches.
His eyes don't leave my face.
Carter's hands go to the insides of my thighs, from behind.
"Open for me, baby."
I part my legs.
His mouth finds me and I have to grab Adrian's arm with both hands, to stop me from falling.
Carter eats me from behind. He licks and sucks and when he bites gently I lose the thread of everything. He is not gentle. He is thorough and deliberate and his grip on my inner thighs is firm enough to feel like ownership.
Adrian has his forehead against mine, watching my face fall apart.
"There you go," he breathes. "Feel good?" His hand finds my breast, rolls my nipple between his fingers with just enough pressure that I gasp. "I want to hear you. Don't hold it in."
Carter enters me with two fingers and curls them and I moan so loud it startles me. He doesn't slow down. He fucks me with his fingers while he eats me at the same time and I am shaking before I am ready to be.
"Lick her asshole too. She likes it." William says from where he is seated at the edge of the bed.
I look at him across the room. He is watching my face with an intensity that is something beyond arousal, something obsessive and entirely focused, his hand moving slow on his cock, his eyes tracking every flicker of my expression.
Carter's tongue finds my asshole and my legs threaten to give out.
Adrian tips my chin up. "Stay with me." His fingers circle my clit, slow and precise. His mouth is at my ear. "I've been thinking about watching you come since the second I saw you in that dress. The whole dinner." His fingers tighten at my hip, just briefly.
Carter is inside me with two fingers, his tongue is on my ass and Adrian's fingers are at my clit while William is watching me from the bed with his hand on his very hard cock, his full undivided obsessive attention on my face and the orgasm hits me before I get to brace for it.
I come shaking, legs failing entirely, Adrian's arm coming up around my waist to hold me up, his fingers still on my clit, not stopping, working me through it.
Carter rises behind me. His arms come around me too, holding me against his chest while his chin comes to the top of my head.
I want this moment to last forever.