33 - COME BUY
Janice
I was walking on fucking air. She was sweet, my Lacey.
She even tasted sweet. I would never get tired of that taste, of feeling her under me.
And she was soft, after all. So soft, compliant, obedient.
Oh, Janice, you lucky bitch. My wildest fantasy.
Not just my lover finally, but my sweet, gorgeous pet.
And I would treat her like the precious gift she was. It was no less than we both deserved.
I couldn't wait to show her off. I'd been telling them about her for weeks. Wait till you meet her. By the time I walked her across that deck it felt like an unveiling.
I had her hand before we were halfway, laced our fingers, and worked my grip up to her arm and hooked it through mine, so we arrived as a pair.
"Ladies. This is Lacey."
Diane looked her over, slow. "Oh. She brought us new meat." They laughed, and Lacey laughed a half-beat late, that flustered laugh, and even her awkwardness was lovely to me.
"Be kind, Diane. She looks like she'll bolt."
"Sit down," Diane said. "Have something cold. Nobody here does anything you didn't ask for."
She sat. I settled on the arm of her lounger with a hand on her shoulder, and I liked how we looked. I'd wanted them to see her for a long time.
Then the Ramirez woman tilted her head. "Bonds. Wait—Lacey Bonds. Peds cardiology?"
"That's me."
"I know your name. The single-ventricle imaging work, the sedation protocols. We cited you last spring." To the others, pleased: "Half our fellows would fight to get on her service."
My hand closed on her shoulder. I'd known she was good but I'd never heard a stranger say her name like it carried weight.
The afternoon ran long. Two of the women had stopped listening to anyone, one's hand high on the other's thigh. Lacey kept her eyes on her drink. Soon you won't have to look away.
I kept a hand on her through the meetings the next day. Her knee, her back, her wrist. I found her hand without looking and said her name like a gift I was handing people. She gets adrift in crowds, my Lacey. She needs an anchor. And I could not stop touching her now that I finally could.
She went quiet under my hand once or twice. She'd been nobody's for so long, and now she was somebody's, and a woman goes soft under that after long enough.
That night Renée and Sloane came by with wine, and Sloane watched her, her mouth, the fallen line of her throat, how she was half-asleep on my shoulder. Over anyone else I'd have felt something sharp. Instead I felt glorious. Look at her. Look what came out of that careful shell.
But she'd gone heavy against me, all the way under, and I lifted the wine out of Renée's hand mid-pour. "Out, both of you. She's done." I put her to bed careful as glass. I had always been a happy woman, but never like this.
The next evening a crowd of us ended up in the aft-deck tub, foam thick enough you couldn't see beneath it, and I settled into the corner and held out my hand.
"Come here. Sit."
She folded down between my knees, back to me.
I put my mouth to her ear. "There she is.
" Coming alive at last, in my arms, where I'd always known she'd end up.
My hands ran up her thighs under the foam.
For years I'd wanted this, and here it was, and I didn't take it apart. It felt too good to take apart.
My hand went still, high on her thigh.
"I keep thinking about what we talked about," I said. "Me in charge." I found the edge of her bikini. "I think you'd love it."
My fingers were already moving. I wanted to be inside her, to feel that warm slick tightness. She'd told me herself, I don't say no to what I want anymore. She'd handed me the rule. So this was hers. I was only giving her what she'd asked for.
"Lacey," I said, soft. "Say yes."
She didn't say yes. She let her head fall back against my shoulder, and that was better than yes.
I pushed her bikini bottom aside and slid my finger over her pussy.
Touching her clit, and then slowly inside her.
Fuck, I could do this all my life. She went still, that whole, total stillness—and I told her she was perfect, doing so well, that I had her.
And I had her. She'd gone under in my hand like she was made for it, because she was.
I'd always known she was, and here it was, proof, and I was so full of being answered that my throat ached.
Just that one finger, in public no less, and she belonged to me.
The women knew what her stillness meant. Renée grinned. Sloane didn't. Sloane watched her face with an expression I pushed out of my head, because nothing was going to be wrong tonight.
Renée tipped her head toward the stairs. "Are we taking this down to your room, Jan, or are you keeping her to yourself?"
I wanted to keep her. And I wanted them to see her, how far she'd come, how deep she went, what I'd drawn up out of her. My Lacey. Flowering. Oh God yes I wanted that, to see her obedient, to know how far down she could go.
My hand didn't stop. "You okay with that, baby? The girls coming down."
"Yes." Automatic.
I laughed and said it to the room: "She's decided she doesn't say no to what she wants anymore." I squeezed, easy, inside her. "Her idea, not mine. God, she's going to be fun tonight."
Her idea. She'd said it. That fast little yes with nothing behind it—I felt it, some flat, empty note in it—and my thumb moved and my mouth was already at her ear and it was gone, past, the water loud and warm and the night ahead of us. She was a natural giver, given to me. Happily.
I drew my hand up out of her, slow, and stood us both up, my arm around her, and she followed on legs that didn't quite work, soft and gone, and I led her back toward the cabin.
All mine.