by Becker Gray
“What did he do, Rory?” Sloane asked softly, arranging my tuxedo jacket so it was a kind of pillow for her friend.
“What he always does,” Aurora whispered. “He makes me think he cares, and I start to believe that he really does. And then I find him with his dick wet.”
Sloane’s free hand curled into a fist, but she didn’t say anything. She merely kept stroking Aurora’s hair, and within a few minutes, Aurora’s soft snores filled the scullery. My sister was finally asleep.
Sloane got carefully to her feet, the slits in her dress showing off her leanly muscled legs as she did. Despite my sleeping sister only a few feet away, my cock surged to attention. I wanted to spend hours exploring those incredible legs of Sloane’s. Tracing every muscle with my tongue.
“What are you doing?” I asked Sloane as she started opening drawers and cabinets at the far end of the scullery.
“Looking for knives,” was the succinct answer I received.
“Er. Knives?”
Sloane turned and fixed me with a look that both made my cock hard as granite and also terrified the fuck out of me. This was the girl that made me finger her while she held her forearm to my throat. “Have you ever heard of a Colombian necktie?” she asked calmly.
“I—what?”
“I’m going to cut Phin’s throat and then pull his lying, manwhore tongue through it.”
I considered for a moment. Phin was my friend, but a Colombian necktie was about what he deserved after making my sister cry. “I’ll help,” I said. “Actually, I’ll do it while you hold him down.”
She glared at the empty cabinet in front of her, and then she slammed it shut with a bang. “I don’t have time to teach you how to cut someone’s throat, Lennox.”
But there was something like a smile on her face when she turned to face me.
“Come here,” I said from the floor, not sure what I was doing, but unable to stop. “Sloane, come here.”
She hesitated for a moment, and then she walked over to me. I reached up and pulled her by the wrists so that she was straddling my lap. Next to us, Aurora continued to snore.
“What are you doing?” Sloane asked. “More to the point, what am I doing? I need to go kill Phineas.”
“We’ll kill him later,” I murmured, looking up at her. It wasn’t very bright in the scullery, because the only light came in from the doorway, and the shadows made her so very lovely. Almost like she was meant to be in them always. They turned her eyes dark and glossy, like mistletoe leaves in midwinter, and they set off her sharp jaw and her elegant cheekbones. They even traced her plush pout of a mouth—a sliver of shadow lingering under her full lower lip, a curl of shadow in the dip of her cupid’s bow.
I extended my hand and traced her lips myself, all the places where they curved and dipped. And then I pushed my finger past her lips and groaned in surprise when she sucked it. And then groaned again when she bit it.
Fuck, I was so hard.
I dropped my hands and ran them up her thighs—exposed by the slits in her dress—and then gripped her hips and pulled her firmly onto my lap, so that her cunt was against my erection.
“Oh,” she said, her eyelids hooding as she felt me against her. She gave an experimental little rock against me and then shivered. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay, yes, we can kill Phineas later.”
I let out a strangled laugh and then yanked her down to my mouth, kissing her like we were still alone in the folly. Kissing her like I still had her mounted.
Breaking our kiss, she looked over at Aurora, as if to reassure herself that Aurora was asleep still, and then she reached between us, hiking up her gown and fumbling for the fastenings of my trousers. I hissed the moment her fingers found me, throbbing into the cool air.
“This isn’t because I care about you,” my shadow-kissed tormenter said. “But fair’s fair, and you’ve made me come so many times . . .”
I looked down at where she gripped me, her strong fingers wrapped around my shaft, the tuxedo and her silk gown rumpled between us, and then my head dropped back.
“Fuck,” I mumbled. “Fuuuck.”
She moved her grip up and then down, slowly, as if testing it. Without moving my head, I looked at her. “Have you ever tossed someone off before?”
She shook her head. “Am I doing it wrong?” She moved her hand again, her fingers so strong and tight, and my toes curled in my patent leather Oxfords.
“No,” I managed, my breath hitching. “Not wrong at all.”
She gave me more strokes, a little tentative, but plenty tight, and my balls drew up close to my body, ready to release. It was almost embarrassing how little it was taking to get me there, but in my defense, this had been almost four years in the making. Four years of jerking off in my room alone.
And then she did something that will undoubtedly lead to four more years of jerking off. She let go of me and then shifted forward, until her bare cunt was on top of my dick, and started moving. Fisting her hands in my shirt and rocking over me, like she was giving me a handjob still, but with her pussy instead of her hands, and oh my god, oh my bloody god—
“You’re so wet,” I breathed, finding her hips and moving her over me harder, faster. “So wet. More. Fuck, give me more.”
She widened her thighs and buried her face in my neck, letting me work her cunt over my erection, and it was so wet, so hot, and all I had to do was flex my hips just the right way and I could be inside her . . .
“Darling,” I said in a choked murmur, “my sweet nothing, I’m going to come. I’m going to get you wet with it if you don’t move.”
“Do it, Lennox,” she whispered against my throat. “Come all over me. I want to feel it on me.”
That’s all it took. I arched up, my thighs tense, my stomach rock-hard, and then for the first time, I came with Sloane Lauder. I came against her, on her, my cock throbbing jet after jet of hot fluid underneath her slick, wet cunt. I came and it spattered onto her, onto my dress shirt, making everything between us wetter and wetter. And every time she slid over me, I could feel the place where she opened. I could feel how close I was to heaven, and the knowledge made me come even harder.
I would be there. Soon. So fucking soon.
Sloane was mine, and tonight had proved it.
She gave a few small shudders against me as my pulses stilled and then slumped against my chest. I realized she’d been able to wring out an orgasm for herself too. I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight against me. Not because I wanted to be affectionate, obviously not.
Just . . . it felt better like this. My arms around her, her breath on my neck, our bodies still warm and wet and pressed together under her skirt.
“Seeing you with Aurora tonight . . . you’re different than I thought you were,” she murmured after a moment.
I ran my nose through her hair. Fuck, she smelled good. Like honeysuckle. Who knew the girl made entirely of knives and glares would smell like honeysuckle? “How am I different?” I asked idly.
“I don’t know,” she answered after a minute. “I guess I thought you were selfish, you know? Greedy.”
Greedy. The word punched through me like a cannonball.
“Greedy,” I repeated flatly. “Why would you think that?”
She tried to sit up a little, and I let her. I wanted to see her face. “Why did you think I was selfish? Greedy?” I pushed. “Because of my father? Because your father told you that’s what you should think of me?”
My voice was rising now, echoing off the walls of the scullery, but I didn’t care. I didn’t fucking care. It didn’t matter what I did or who I did it for—it didn’t matter how many years passed—I was always going to be my fucking father to the rest of the world.
Sloane regarded me warily. “You’re extrapolating,” she said in that quiet, clipped way of hers. “I never said any of that.”
“You didn’t fucking have to,” I growled. “Get off me. Get off me right now.”
A woun
ded look flashed over her face, and then it was gone before I could process what it really was or what it meant. She climbed off me and rose gracefully to her feet, adjusting her dress and checking on Aurora before walking to the door.
“Stay here with her,” she said. “And then after she’s awake, feel free to go fuck yourself.”
13
Sloane
My head spun.
How had everything gone so terribly wrong? How had I gone from writhing underneath Lennox in the maze—writhing on top of him in the scullery—to trying not to cry in Sera’s limo on the way back to Pembroke?
Sera was wrapped in a cashmere blanket, dozing on her seat, and I was pretending to myself that I didn’t have streaks of Lennox’s orgasm painted on the inside of my thighs. I was pretending that I didn’t want to curl into a ball and sob forever.
Everything in my world was upside down. But there were some simple facts.
First, I’d watched Lennox Lincoln-Ward masturbate . . . to me.
Secondly, I’d stolen information from him.
Third, Lennox proved in front of everyone that he had a thing for me.
And finally, I’d come with Rhys to the gala event. And then, I’d made out with aforementioned Lennox, nearly banging him in the gardens and then riding him in the scullery like a seasoned seductress.
Who the hell was I? None of this was my life. I was hardly a femme fatale.
But tonight you are.
The worst part of this whole damn thing was a part of me liked him. Or at the very least, was drawn to him. I couldn’t fight the attraction. There was no more walking around pretending that I didn’t orient myself around him, even if it was for express avoidance. Even if I could tell myself that I was around him for my own protection, so I could watch him better. It was a lie. I wanted to be around him.
I wanted his attention. I’d been pulled to Lennox like a magnet since the first moment we met.
I could still feel his lips on mine. The way his tongue delved into my mouth. His hands on my body. His lips on the tips of my breasts. The low growl he’d made as he’d pushed inside me still reverberated in my ears, making my body and skin hum with awareness, and arousal, and adrenaline.
I wanted Lennox Lincoln-Ward.
For once in my life, I felt like I was important to someone. I’d felt beautiful. Like someone saw me. The real me. Someone thought I was beautiful and stunning. Someone thought I mattered.
Yes, we’d been interrupted, but then there had been a deeper shift. As we’d worked to take care of Aurora, there had been this connection between us. As if we could actually like each other. Like we could speak and get along. Maybe we were just at the tipping point where hate and distress turned into something else. And then, that sweet, sweet friction as I’d worked my slick heat over him, making him come . . . all over the both of us.
Then I’d said the wrong thing. And there had been the disgust in his eyes, the hatred in his voice, the anger on his cruelly beautiful face.
Because your father told you that’s what you should think of me?
I’d wanted to bite back at him, to yell, to seethe. I hated that Lennox’s fascination with me began and ended with my father. I hated that the moment he was wounded, he assumed it was my father doing the wounding through me.
My father had nothing to do with me!
Your father has everything to do with you. Your father arrested his.
Your father asked you to spy on him.
And Lennox still doesn’t know.
I winced just thinking about it, because I had done what my father asked. Not necessarily blindly, but I had done what I was told to do. And I hadn’t asked any questions. I hadn’t wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have been doing it. Or why it felt icky. I’d done it. But now, as Lennox’s words rang in my head, I couldn’t help but wonder what piece I wasn’t seeing, because there had to be more to the story. Yes, my father had lied about his involvement, but even knowing that now . . . there had to be more than my father simply investigating Lennox’s.
Investigated is a kind word, Sloane. A very kind word.
I was used to seeing the pieces and making them fit the puzzle. And all puzzles eventually made sense. You just had to find out where your thread was, how to pull it correctly, and I still couldn’t quite figure it out.
When we got back to Pembroke, it was late enough that the lights in the dining hall were on as the cooks began to work on the Sunday morning pastries. Sera stumbled sleepily into the en suite and started a shower I knew would last until dawn, and I got a single text message from Keaton—not Lennox notably—that Aurora was spending the night at the Huntington mansion with everyone else and would be back at the dorms tomorrow. Keaton promised to keep Phin away from her, and as pissed as I was at Lennox, I trusted him and Keaton to protect Aurora. Lennox obviously cared for her deeply, maybe more than he even cared for himself.
I zipped out of my dress, relieved to be able to breathe in a full gulp of air for the first time in several hours. But after I scrubbed my face clean, peeled off the lashes that Sera had made me wear and scooped my hair back into my usual tiny little ponytail, I stared at myself in the mirror. The same green eyes, fair skin, and completely unremarkable face stared back at me.
It was as if that hidden fairy princess that I had felt like tonight hadn’t existed. Without the adornments and without the gaze of the fairy prince, I was just plain old Sloane again.
I checked the clock. It was close to five. Which meant my father would be awake, getting ready for his morning run while he glanced through any new APBs that came out while he was asleep. I picked up the phone and made a call, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to ask for.
“Sweetheart?”
“Hey, Dad.”
“Sloane, the sun hasn’t even risen, what are you doing up?”
I fidgeted with the hem of my t-shirt. Part of my Sloane uniform was a t-shirt and boy shorts to bed. Hair pulled back. Nothing sexy or beautiful. “I have a question. And I need you to be honest with me.”
“Sure. I’m always honest with you.”
A brief shot of anger hit my blood, followed by hurt. How quickly he seemed to forget that he’d lied to me. He’d lied to me and while he hadn’t known that Lennox was torturing me, he’d inadvertently made everything worse by not giving me all the facts.
“The Lincoln-Ward case . . .” I started, and then paused, not knowing how to phrase the question I wanted to ask.
There was a moment of silence, and then a long sigh. “Sloane, is this what you really want to talk about? It was a complicated case. I worked on it. That’s all.”
“Yes, it’s what I want to talk about!” The hiss of Sera’s shower through the en suite door mimicked the blood rushing through my ears. “You asked me to pull information on Lennox—don’t you think I deserve to know why? Don’t you think I deserve some context? Some background?”
I knew he’d agree. I had a point. If he could ask me to spy on Lennox, then he could tell me what I needed to know.
“All right,” Dad said, sounding suddenly very tired. “What do you want to know?”
“Just—more. I guess. More than what you’ve told me.”
A heavy exhale. “It’s not a pleasant story.”
“I know it’s not,” I replied. “Ponzi scheme stories rarely are.”
“I meant it’s not a very pleasant story about me,” Dad clarified. “I meant what I said to you last week. I’m not—I’m not proud of this chapter in my life. I just want you to know that before I begin.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
Investigated is a kind word.
What had my father done?
“So their father, Boris Lincoln-Ward,” Dad started.
“Billionaire Ponzi scheme guy.”
“Exactly. When he got caught, he was quick to argue the charges until we leveraged him for someone even bigger. He was part of a Ponzi scheme, as you know, but he was also connected to
a woman who had thwarted Europol for nearly a decade. She not only swindled rich men out of their money, but the people they worked for, and companies as well. Up until Boris, she had walked away with over ten million dollars. She used different aliases and was hard to track. When we caught Boris, he was already going to go to jail for a long time. Word was that he had hidden billions of his own money away, and not all of it was recovered. But he was willing to work with us on a deal. Less time. He was only going to do fifteen years, instead of the thirty many of the complainants called for. His children’s trusts weren’t to be touched. In exchange, he gave us the woman.”
“Okay,” I said, still not seeing why this would have been worse than any other criminal investigation. “So he traded away an associate?”
“Her name was Graciella de Marco,” Dad said. “She’s basically an international thief. As best we can imagine, but with access to the kind of people and money most of us only dream about. Her mother was a minor heiress of a Greek shipping tycoon who made bad investments, lost all his money. Her family was destitute. Not much was known about her after her family had lost everything. Either way, she wanted to go back to living a bountiful life, thus the criminal escapades. She’d been on the scene for a decade. Finding rich men, not just getting them to fall in love with her and allowing her to live the lavish lifestyle, but to invest in things that she suggested. Invest in her ‘friends’, invest in businesses she would talk up to them. Businesses that didn’t actually exist. Before we caught her, she was able to take off with a lot of money. Most of it American. She was the bureau’s white whale for over a decade. So when Boris offered to give her up—well. It was two birds with one stone, in a way. Except . . .”
He trailed off, clearly hesitant to say what he needed to say next.
“Except?” I prompted.
“You have to understand, once I had my teeth in Boris, I wasn’t about to let him go. I was tenacious, and it took two years of my life to pin him down and nail him for what he was doing. Men like him are slippery—so slippery—and they rely on charm and camouflage to get by, and it was the same with Graciella. After years of watching the both of them slip through the net time and time again, I had to make sure. I had to make sure that everyone would know their names. I had to make sure not only that they were caught, but that if they got away, the world would still know every terrible, criminal thing they did. So instead of bringing them in quietly, like we’d arranged with Boris, I arranged for something more . . . visible.”