“This, I could live with,” I said after the first heavenly bite. “As long as I also had access to your gym.”
Sebastian laughed. “The cook is one thing I am jealous about, actually. Trevor’s been with the family for at least as long as I’ve been alive. I always had a growth spurt after summer.”
I snacked over the next two hours, unable to stop myself from reaching for the tray again and again, even as I made progress through the accounts. By dinnertime, I wasn’t hungry at all, but when we sat down with Sebastian’s aunt and uncle at that same long dining table, the John Dory cooked in butter enticed me anyway. It was as if, after four months of barely subsisting on the cheapest food available, I’d been presented with a feast.
Like Sebastian, his uncle was tall, a trait I assumed ran in the family. Unlike his wife, he didn’t spend more than a minute inquiring about our afternoon activities, and despite his alleged lack of interest in the history of the estate, he certainly sounded invested in its future. He was passionate about green initiatives and active in promoting local developments in energy efficiency and sustainability.
“Worth investing in,” he said pointedly to Sebastian.
“I don’t work at the energy trading desk,” Sebastian replied noncommittally.
Of course, that segued into a conversation about investments and what Sebastian did actually do, which generally had to do with creating proprietary models for determining prices and managing risk.
It was funny to think of his uncle, who downed glass after glass of wine with his meal until his face was almost alarmingly pink, as a viscount. Until that day, the aristocracy, people who held titles, seemed so much more the stuff of history and literature. Yet, here I was sitting at a table with Lord and Lady Stanton, the whole situation somewhat surreal.
When the meal was over, Sebastian suggested a walk. His uncle waved us on as if he was much happier to not actually have to entertain anyone for a moment more.
It was chilly outside, much cooler than London. Despite my sweater, I shivered as I followed Sebastian outside into a night sky that was the royal blue of just past sunset. We strolled along a path on which solar garden lights illuminated our way.
To a wall of hedge that was draped with twinkle lights.
“They have a maze.” It was like a cliché of what an Anglophile such as myself would have wanted in a dream home.
“Indeed,” Sebastian said with a hint of humor. He took my hand, and there was something so tender in the way he held me that I clung to him as I followed. “Most of the acreage has long since been sold off, but the gardens and some of the woodland remain. I’ll show you tomorrow before we leave.”
Despite the near dark, he seemed to know his way, making each turn decisively. With his warm hand holding mine and the twinkle lights and scent of evergreen fragrant in the air, it was an utterly romantic moment. One that could lull me into believing I was there under different circumstances, in a relationship or maybe even in love, and that the future held promise.
The hedges opened into a wider space that enclosed a fountain and a bench. We sat, and I shivered again when the cold stone cut through my jeans. Sebastian noticed and pulled me close to him. I glanced up and melted under the look in his eyes. Almost—
I looked away.
“Your aunt and uncle seem nice,” I said, staring at the fountain, a very neoclassical sculpture of a woman draped in diaphanous clothes. I tried to find identifying features that would reveal if she were a nymph or a goddess or some other mythological entity, but time had worn away at the cheeks, hands, and feet.
He laughed. “Nice isn’t exactly the word I’d use for them. Entitled, perhaps. Self-absorbed.”
“Damning words.”
“Truthful words.”
“And you’re not?” I challenged. Although, as much as entitled seemed somewhat accurate for Sebastian, self-absorbed did not.
“I am,” he admitted with a shrug.
“So are you ‘not nice’ either?” I pushed further, not certain why I was needling him, but sitting here, in the fresh air, under the ridiculously romantic night sky, I wanted more from him. I wanted what he hinted at when he’d clasped my hand within his or when he looked at me as he had only a moment ago. Maybe I even wanted the charming, self-effacing grad student I’d crushed on. “I still remember when you told me how fast you wanted to make your millions.”
He laughed. “But at least I want to make the millions and not inherit them.”
I didn’t know exactly how much he made now, but I did know that he worked long hours, and in the evenings he often spent his “free” time working on algorithms and reading about neurology, psychology, and artificial intelligence, casting a wide, interdisciplinary net for his pet projects. His obsessions. He was driven. There was something admirable about that pursuit.
And yet . . .
“In finance . . . aren’t positions like yours, companies like the one you work for, a big reason for the lingering recession and financial instability in Europe and the US? Banks getting bailed out again and again simply because they are ‘too big to fail’ and then ruining things for the rest of us?” I was pushing him, at the edge of my limited understanding of the early-twenty-first-century financial crisis, of the impact of quantitative analysis on Wall Street and on the rest of us. Hardworking people like my father, whose retirement funds had suffered a drastic setback through no fault of his own.
“I’m not going to argue the morality of it all, whether our actions cause instability or stability in the market,” Sebastian said softly. “But I enjoy the mystery and the challenge. I like finding solutions to mathematical questions, developing new ways to model behavior. However, one of the biggest problems is that people make the same mistake over and over again. They forget to take into account freak situations, extreme moves. They forget the power of human fear. But when we learn from the past . . .”
He didn’t need to finish. I knew the old adage: Those who do not study the past are condemned to repeat it.
“And people aren’t making those same mistakes now?”
“I’m not,” Sebastian said decisively. But he said nothing about the others. The great swath of investment bankers and hedge-fund managers. Of all the people like him who played with risk, all in the pursuit of money.
I shivered. He pulled me into his lap, wrapped me up in his arms, where I rested my head against his chest and listened to the constant trickle of water from the fountain. To the muted beating of his heart.
“No,” he said after a long while. “I’m not nice either.”
I DIDN’T SPEND the night in the pink guest room. Instead, I spent it wrapped in Sebastian’s arms in the big four-poster bed in which he’d spent so many summers since childhood. But naked and entwined, we weren’t children.
I woke up before he did and lay still, listening to his deep, even breathing and the sounds of a strange house rousing on a Sunday morning. I had no idea what time it was, but I was eager to get to work, to peek into the attic and take a first survey of all the family correspondence. Since Seb had work in the morning, and we had to drive the several hours back to London, we only had a few hours to make progress.
“Wake up,” I whispered, lifting my hand to stroke his cheek, feeling the roughness of the stubble there. I leaned forward and pressed a kiss where my hand had been.
He shifted, his eyelashes fluttering slightly.
“Time to wake up,” I repeated, trailing my fingers down his neck. His hand caught mine, stilling its progress, and his eyes were open, or somewhat cracked open, as he squinted at me. Then he pulled my hand lower, under the covers, his lips curved in a smile. I shook my head at him as my fingers wrapped around his morning hard-on. “Uh-uh,” I said, even as I stroked him. “We don’t have time for this.” I released him and rolled away, slipping from the bed before he could grab me.
He made some sort of grunt, then I heard the flop of his arms as they fell back against the pillows above his head. I ignore
d him, gathered my shirt and jeans from the night before, and crossed through the restroom that connected my room to his. My backpack was in the pink room, and I’d need to go there to change into fresh clothing.
I was washing my face when he joined me in the restroom, dressed but sleepy-eyed. He stood behind me and pressed his hips against mine. He was still hard and desire flooded through me. He cupped my breasts through my shirt. To steady myself, I lowered my hands and rested them on the countertop, even as water dripped from my face down into the sink. But when the water trickled down my neck and chest, making my shirt damp, I reached for the towel, slapping his hands away.
He released me with a sigh and reached for his toothbrush.
I was happy with the progress we’d made the day before. When we arrived back in London, I would take the lists of unaccounted-for vendors and expenses and compare them with each other in the hopes that I’d find Harridan House listed under some alias. While there was more we most likely could look through in the library, now that I knew what sort of information was available there, I wanted to start cataloging the papers in the attic before we headed back to London. That way I’d know if it made sense either to take anything back with us or to return the following weekend for more. If the ledger strategy I’d suggested didn’t work, then it would make sense to look through the older records.
The attic was stunning and far more cluttered, though in a fairly orderly way, than the addition behind the Mallards’ house. One glance revealed layers of history and, luckily, the most recently stored materials were obvious and labeled in plastic storage bins.
I wrote down the names of all the people with whom he’d corresponded, to check it against the list of friends who had accompanied Colin Bosworth to Harridan House, but none of the letters referenced the club at all. In fact, if we hadn’t read the journals, it was unlikely we’d ever have imagined that he’d spent a few years of his life dedicated to complete hedonism.
Until, at about ten in the morning, when the sun was finally starting to shine through the windows and heat up the room, we found the faded black silk half mask with the small gold-embroidered letters HH. Out of context, the item would have meant nothing, perhaps been thought part of a costume for a masquerade, but there it was in front of us: tangible proof that this club had existed outside the pages of one man’s journal.
Sebastian fingered the silk carefully, his eyes alight with excitement.
Then he reached for me, caught me at the nape of my neck, fingers intertwining with my hair, and kissed me. I understood this kiss, one of excitement over our discovery, and yet, I so wanted it to mean more.
But for Sebastian, this was the ultimate treasure hunt. He spent his days searching for truth in numbers, for the essence of finance. He loved the hunt, the search, the relentless progress toward a final goal, even with all the circuitous twists and turns that cropped up along the way. And I did too. As frustrated as I was with being stymied in my Gracechurch research, I enjoyed the moments of discoveries, the feeling of being on the trail of something great.
This little scrap of cloth was our gold.
We worked with renewed vigor after that. Despite that find, we were still far from any sort of concrete progress. Yet Sebastian didn’t seem bothered by that. Had he had an equal lack of urgency about his research before I’d agreed to help? Or was it that now that he’d delegated this “obsession” to me, he was free to pursue others, lessening the intensity?
We stopped at lunchtime, after which we had to head back to London. I was surprised when, instead of sitting down to eat with his aunt and uncle, Sebastian picked up a picnic basket from the kitchen and led me outside.
“I want to show this to you before we go,” he explained as we trekked across the lawn, over a stile and stream, and through a small copse of trees. I was amazed at how large the estate still was despite the years of selling off land.
Finally, we came to a meadow with the stone ruins of a castle.
“It’s not real, of course,” Sebastian said. “Or rather, wouldn’t have been real when it was first built two hundred years ago. Faux ruins of a Norman castle. Now it has its own history.”
I loved it. We were still high on our find of that morning. Somehow the day was more beautiful, the grass greener, and this folly that much more magical. I helped him lay out a large woolen plaid blanket over a flat patch of grass and started to open the basket.
“We used to play here every summer. My sister, Lydia, and me. Nigel, sometimes, when he felt like humoring us. Sometimes Ruby and James, or Matthew.” The last were all second cousins from Rose Felch’s line. “Hide-and-seek, it.”
“It . . . like tag?”
“That’s right,” Sebastian said, a familiar glint in his eye, and my whole body tensed in readiness for flight. He reached for me, but I was off already, stumbling over the grass and fallen (or carefully placed) stones. Of course, I’d only made it as far as the outer wall before he grabbed me by the waist. I squealed as he pulled me back, struggling, my gasps warring with laughter.
“Stop. I’ve caught you. You’re mine.”
His. With his other hand he fumbled with the fastenings of my jeans, then thrust his hand down the front, under my panties, grabbing me, fingers sliding between my lips and up. His touch was rough and shocking. I struggled again, this time to turn around so that I could be an active participant in this new game. But his fingers slid up and inside me, two of them pushing in and out, the motion limited by the constricting fabric of the jeans.
“I’m sure your games weren’t nearly this X-rated as a child.”
He laughed. “Oh no. Games are much more fun as an adult.” He withdrew his fingers, leaving a damp trail along my belly as he dragged them up. Then he lifted his hand, past my cheek. We were so close that I could smell myself on him, just before he sucked his index finger into his mouth and slowly drew it out. “I love the way you taste. Like sex, primordial.”
He slid his hands back down, over my breasts, my waist, hips, and then he turned me around. Took my hand in his and led me back across the clearing and into the folly’s inner circle of stones.
“I’ve always wanted to do this.” Sex here, I assumed, until I saw the big stone worn away by time so that its top was near flat. Centered in the middle like some sort of sacrificial table.
“Someone had kinky games they wanted to play here,” I noted.
“One of my brilliant ancestors, naturally.” He positioned me in front of the stone. “I’ve always wondered about the ancestor who had this created. Why he chose to move this rock here and if it was ever actually used in any ritualistic way.” Whether it had or hadn’t been, it was certainly about to be used creatively. “For a virgin sacrifice, you’re wearing far too many clothes.”
“It’s chilly,” I said, amused. “And I’m not a virgin.”
“We can pretend.” He tugged my jeans down my legs, stymied for a moment by my sneakers, but then pulled those, the jeans, and my panties off. I shivered
“Would you have liked that? To be my first?”
“Perhaps. I think I would love to have seen your face the first time you were penetrated. The first time you reached orgasm. Arms up.”
“My first time hurt, and there was blood everywhere,” I said flatly, my voice somewhat muffled through the wool of my sweater as he pulled it over my head.
“Then we’ll have to make up for that this time. Although the blood might have been useful to appease whatever deity we’re sacrificing you to.”
Standing there naked, I was acutely aware that despite the noon hour, the sun hadn’t warmed away the chill of the night or the previous day’s rain.
“Come here.” He lifted me up to sit on the stone, which was also cool still from the night. I shivered.
“We’ll get you warm soon enough.” He stripped out of his own clothes. I noticed the condom he pulled out of his pocket and set on the stone before he tossed the pile on top of mine. Always prepared for sex.
�
��I doubt those were part of the ritual,” I said, but my gaze was trained on his erection, on his beautiful, hard length. I was on the pill and, as we’d discussed, I’d been tested before I’d left for England, but it hadn’t been more than six weeks after the last guy I’d fucked, so there was no way I could say for certain I was a hundred percent disease-free. For both of us, it was better to be safe than sorry. Even if I did have an overwhelming desire to know how he’d feel inside me completely bare.
“Lie back.”
I did, and with more surface area now touching the stone, I shivered even more. He moved to my side and stroked my neck with his hand. “Shh,” he said, his voice low and soothing. “This is your duty.”
My duty as the sacrifice.
My nipples were hard already from the cold, and when he closed his mouth over one, the heat was nearly painful in contrast.
He worked his way down my body, ensuring this duty was a pleasure, and soon my shivers weren’t all from the cold. I writhed on the smooth stone, fingers moving down, needing to ease the growing pressure. But he pushed my hand away, pulled my hips to the edge gently. Then his mouth was there, tongue sliding up my folds, parting me and delving within. He feasted on me like he loved it, and maybe he did. After all, I loved his cock in my mouth—funny how it was always a cock to me when I thought of oral sex, everything harder and more forceful—I loved the taste of his semen and knowing that I could take everything from him.
His lips closed on my clitoris, and his tongue’s probing was replaced by fingers. One, then two. My legs tensed. I was close, so close. Then, for a moment, there was only cool air on my damp flesh, before he was back, his hips perfectly aligned with mine.
“Look at me.”
I opened my eyes and lifted my head a bit to look down the length of my body at where he stood poised to enter, the tip of his cock pressing against me. I met his gaze, dark and intense, focused entirely on my face. Our eyes locked, he pressed in, parting me, filling me. I gasped when he suddenly thrust forward, sinking into me fully, deep. My head fell back, eyes closing even as I reached for him, wanting to wrap myself around him.
Private Research: An Erotic Novella Page 10