by Cerys du Lys
I didn't answer him; I couldn't answer him.
He kicked the blankets away from the bottom of the stairs and stepped towards me. In his hand he held the four bookmarks. Hidden in my chemise blouse sleeve, I'd tucked the piece of paper with notes on which page he'd marked in which book, but he couldn't have known that. Walking to the edge of his table, he checked each of the books.
"Too afraid of this one?" he said, lifting up the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. "Probably a good idea. It's worth a quarter of a million easily."
I gulped. I wanted to cry all of a sudden, for no good reason. I'd done this on purpose, intended on doing this, but now I really didn't know why.
Asher left the table and came towards me. He tossed the bookmarks in my lap and stared at me, hard. "Do you think this is a game?" he asked.
I somehow managed to shake my head, no.
"Why did you do this?"
I lifted my shoulders in the barest hint of a shrug.
"I wanted you to leave," he said, talking to himself more than me. He began pacing in the library, fretting, rubbing at the sides of his eyes with his index finger and thumb. "I didn't want this to happen. Do you know how difficult this is for me? Do you know what I have to do? I have to tell Beatrice about all of this, and then what? Besides that, I have to deal with you now, too. I don't even know what you're doing. Why did you throw a tissue in the trash in one of the bedrooms upstairs?"
"I don't know," I squeaked. My voice cracked as I tried to speak normally.
"I don't know, either! I do know one thing, though." His eyes glimmered and he stared at me with vicious passion. "You're going to clean it all up. Now."
I stood immediately, hurried to the stairs. My God, Asher was scary like this. Scary and... I thought back to my episode in the bathtub. Probably a bad thing to think about right now. I ran to move past him, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. He squeezed me hard around my waist, his fingers tickling and digging into my sides. I started to laugh, but then a prick of pain sunk in and I opened my mouth, gasping.
He kissed me hard. His mouth covered mine, some voracious, wild thing, and he kissed me. His arms wrapped around me, pulling me close, and he eased his tongue into my mouth and toyed with mine. I paused, confused, but only for a moment before I engaged him in this wild, unforeseen passion. I kissed him, licked him, wanted to press my lips against every part of his face. My hands clung to his body and his coat and his belt. Before I knew it, he pulled me up against him, grabbed my thighs, lifted me up, and coaxed me into wrapping my legs around his waist.
He carried me to the ottoman as he kissed and touched and teased me with reckless abandon. Without a care or a thought in the world, he dropped to his knees and tossed me onto the ottoman. My back hit the leather cushions with a thud while my head landed on the seat of the chair behind me. I gasped, surprised, and Asher used my momentary shock to loosen himself from me.
He pulled and tugged on the buttons of my chemise blouse, undoing all of them. Moving the fabric to the side, he licked and caressed my stomach with his tongue and lips. His hands grabbed, greedy, at my skirt and he ripped down the zipper in the back then wrenched the skirt off with one hasty tug. Sliding one hand beneath my bra, he groped and squeezed at my breast. I squirmed on the ottoman, wriggling in his grasp, reluctant and trying to get free.
Or, my body acted reluctant, but I didn't want to go anywhere. I whispered shy encouragement to him, over and over. "Yes. Asher. I'm so sorry. Please."
He pulled aside my panties and licked a ragged line down my stomach towards my belly button, lower to my hips. His tongue left a wet trail across the fabric of my underwear as he bit and nibbled at the cloth. Then lower still, until he pressed his mouth against my slick folds. He sucked and licked at the lips between my legs, kissing them with the same fervid passion he'd used on my mouth. My feet pressed against the library floor and I pushed up and towards him with my hips. I placed my fingers in his hair, holding onto him, but he moved my hands away and made me grab onto the sides of the ottoman instead.
"You dirty slut," he said, his voice a growl. I looked down at him and he watched my expression with heated awareness. "Why do you keep getting distracted when I order you to do something? First in my office, and now in my home?"
"Asher," I whimpered. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to. I can't help it. I..."
"What?" he asked. "Say it." He lowered his face and licked around my clit, then stuffed two fingers inside me while somehow expecting me to speak.
"I..."
He pushed harder into me, frantically licked me into a frenzy. "Say it!" he roared into my pussy.
"I masturbated in your bathtub," I yelped.
He paused, completely caught off guard. His finger stopped moving, buried deep inside me, and his tongue lay still on top of the sensitive flesh of my clit. I whimpered and writhed, wanting him so desperately to give me more.
"You masturbated in my bathtub?" he asked.
"Yes," I whispered. "The jets and I was and... Asher, please?"
He grinned and added another finger next to the other two pressed hard inside me. His tongue explored every inch of space between my legs. I screamed out his name and tried to press my knees hard together, but he held one of my legs against the ottoman to stop me. My other leg twitched and spasmed, unsure what to do, and then I lost all control of anything. My body quivered, moving up and down, trapped between Asher's strength and the chair and the ottoman, trembling under his touch.
He never stopped, merely watched me climax. I clamped my eyes shut and squeezed my fingers into the sides of the ottoman, holding on for dear life. His tongue, my God! Inside me, his fingers curled up, pressing against me, finding my g-spot and delivering me into exquisite pleasure. I wanted him so very badly, wanted to grab him and pull him up and undo his pants and wrap my legs around him, squeeze him forward and into me, but I couldn't think well enough to manage anything like that. Asher plied my body, pulling my orgasm out of me, never relenting.
My breathing stopped and a rush of ecstasy soared through me. I clenched against his fingers inside me and soaked the leather cushions beneath me with my arousal. Too much, so much, I let out a heavy sigh and collapsed on the chair and ottoman while Asher slowed his pace and let me relax.
When I thought I was done, when I thought everything was over, he picked me up and put me on my feet. I stood, knees shaking. Asher stepped away and inspected me once I had some semblance of a proper standing position. The front of my panties were still pushed to the side, wet from his tongue and my climax, and the right side of my bra was out of place from when he'd shoved his hand under it to snatch at my breast.
"Go," he said.
"What?" I asked.
"Go! Go clean. Pick up the mess you left upstairs. The crust of bread on the basement stairs, too. And fold the blankets and put them back where you found them."
I went. I ran. I could barely feel my legs, but I managed my way up the stairs, nearly naked in only my bra and panties. I took the tissue from the trash in the bedroom and tucked it into the waistband of my underwear, then picked up the towel from the bathroom floor and hung it on one of the shower doors to dry. I smoothed out the corner of the sheets and fixed them back into place. Back downstairs, on the first floor, I tossed the tissue from my panties into the trash barrel in the kitchenette, then stumbled down the basement stairs and grabbed the crust from the steps, then back up the stairs to put it with the tissue.
To the library again, where I folded the blankets and put them on the chair. Asher lay on the couch now, reclining and reading The Time Traveler's Wife. He tossed a cursory glance towards me before sitting up and staring my way.
"Are you done?" he asked.
I shook my head, no. Rushing towards my discarded clothes, I searched through them until I found the piece of paper with the pages he'd bookmarked. He laughed as I pulled the paper from the sleeve of my chemise blouse and handed it to him without a word.
"You wrote down all the pages?" he
asked.
"Yes," I said, unsure and shy all of a sudden. "I didn't want to lose your place. I..."
"Jessika," he said. "We can't do this."
"I know, but..."
He looped his fingers into my panties and pulled me towards him. Dropping his book onto the floor, careless, with no regard to where he'd left off, he shoved his other hand between my legs. Two fingers inside me, as easily as that, with his thumb curved up towards my stomach. I shrieked, surprised, almost folding my knees and falling to the floor, but he held me up and pulled me onto the couch with him. Laying me down, fingers still in me, he stared at me as I squirmed against him. My body, his touch, it all felt so wonderfully perfect.
I wanted him to take me again, to bring me to climax, but he slipped his fingers out of me as easily as he'd slid them in and left me in a needy mess on the couch.
"Jessika, no more," he said, smiling.
"I'm... I'm sorry," I said. I lifted myself off the couch and sat alongside him.
"I can't cheat on my wife," he said. "We have, and I did, but it's not as simple as that anymore. We can't do this again. Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No," I answered. "I understand, though. I do, it's just..."
"You're curious," Asher said. "Curiouser and curiouser," he recited a line from the Wonderland book on his library table. "Do you think that's cliché? I find myself falling deeper down the rabbit hole, wanting to know more about you, but I'm afraid it's going to be the death of me. Off with my head."
"We can paint the roses red?" I offered.
Asher stared at me, blinking. All of a sudden he laughed and kissed my forehead. "I'm sure it's not that easy."
"I just... I'd like to be close to you, Asher," I said, candidly.
He nodded. "I think it's alright to be close," he said.
"But, your wife?"
"Yes, I have a wife, Jessika, and I have obligations towards her."
"I won't tell her," I said.
"It's not about telling her. It's about trust. If I don't tell her, then what do I do? She might never find out, but I'll always know, and..."
"I know," I said. "I'm sorry."
"Will you do it, still?" he asked, looking at me softly. "The surrogacy and everything we talked about?"
"Your wife and... I don't think she'll agree to that."
"She's returning from her trip tomorrow. We have plans for dinner tomorrow night. I think it's best if you join us, too. We can discuss everything and..."
I frowned. "Asher..."
"Jessika," he said firmly. "I know what happened and we both know we can't go any further, but that doesn't mean..."
"I think it does actually mean quite a lot," I interrupted.
"I'm ordering you to attend dinner with me and my wife," he said. He attempted to sound firm and confident, but I thought I heard a faint trace of uncertainty.
It slipped out of my mouth. I never meant to say it. "What if I get distracted beforehand?"
He stared at me, silent, and then he burst into laughter. "How distracted?"
"Asher, I'm really distracted right now," I said, teasing.
"Go," he said. "Put on your clothes. Get dressed. I'm going to yell at Jeremy, but then I'll come back. We can talk about things."
I nodded.
"Talk," he repeated, his tone solid and firm. "Talk and nothing more. What kind of pizza do you like?"
"What?" The question was so out of the blue that I didn't know what to make of it.
"I'll order pizza. We can eat and talk and get to know each other. We can watch a movie?" he offered.
"Asher..." I paused, stared, grabbed my skirt from the floor and squeezed it between my hands. "Yes, I'd like that. I like mushrooms. And ham. I usually ask if they can go light on the cheese. Anything else is fine, too. I'm not picky."
"Not picky?" He asked, sounding unconvinced. Grinning, he stood up. "Alright. I'll be right back."
He left me in his library basement, disheveled and half-clothed. I relished the idea of sitting with him, eating pizza like a couple and watching a movie. Talking. Leaning my head against his shoulder while he put his arm around me.
I needed to refrain from that, though. I needed to pull back and stop this right now. Asher accepted me, gave me a second chance, and though he'd acted in a fit of passion again, I didn't think we could do this anymore. Especially with his wife returning.
Some fluke, he might say. I'd apologize profusely to her, beg her to accept, and somehow Asher had decided he would weave in a request for me acting as her surrogate. Egg donation, pregnancy, their child in my womb. Except it would be partly my child, too, wouldn't it? Not exactly, but somewhat. My egg and his seed, but it was for her, his wife. Beatrice.
Could I handle that, though? Could I do any of this? I'd agreed so quickly, and I didn't have any real reasons for it.
That was in the long term, though. Thinking shorter, could I even manage to survive dinner with them tomorrow? Asher, yes, perhaps, but I pictured Beatrice, some cool, calm woman screaming at me and demanding I leave, threatening Asher with divorce, or more. I had no right to ask if he had a prenuptial agreement with her, but if he didn't I could very well be his downfall.
And then what would Asher think of me?
There was no reason to worry about it right now, I told myself. Tomorrow, dinner, I had plenty of time until then to think of what I was going to do and say.
His Absolute Desires
I sat on the couch waiting for Asher to return, feeling calmer than I had in months. Years, maybe? I didn't know for sure and couldn't have said why—since I felt like I should be anxious—but I felt wonderful. Asher, the man I'd met only a couple days ago, the CEO of Landseer Enterprises, was off ordering us pizza.
And a movie! I wondered what movies he might have. Did he watch classics, like Casablanca, or did he prefer newer movies? Comedies? Action films? Or, dare I think it, romance? The latter was, perhaps, awkward wishful thinking. I didn't actually care what kinds of movies he liked, or what in particular we watched, but I enjoyed the idea of sitting in his guest home and watching a movie with him. By ourselves, alone, with pizza, like some kind of casual date.
Of course it wasn't a date, but some small part of me had classified it as that. He had a wife, told me multiple times he needed to be faithful to her, but why? I didn't want to ruin his marriage, not by a long shot, but I wanted him to be happy. She left for weeks at a time from what he mentioned, and when she was here she rarely spent time with him from what I knew, so it wasn't a very expressive marriage. Convenience and association, and since they both came from well-to-do families it made sense, but that didn't mean marriage needed to be that way.
There was love and passion. Fervid desire and anticipation. There was emotion, like butterflies caressing your skin and sinking into your stomach, making you feel weak in the knees and oh so wonderful. I knew Asher was fully capable of these feelings and of making someone else feel them, too. He'd shown me passion aplenty in his office when I first met him. Just last night he'd shown me even more, too. He had love and desires and excitement bottled up inside of him, begging to get out, but he had no way to release them.
I wanted all of him. He was rich, yes, but that wasn't what was important to me. I wanted his affection and his love, his release and his happiness. Maybe that was why I accepted his request to act as an egg donor and surrogate mother for his infertile wife. It was an awful, horrible, horrendous idea, and I knew in the end I would come to regret it if—or more like, when—the entire ordeal was over and Asher and I parted ways, but I felt like I needed to do it anyways. For him, for his happiness, and for a brief glimpse of happiness for myself, too.
Asher was kind. He was aloof and dominant and sometimes too aggressive. I don't think he knew exactly what he wanted in his life, even if he had precise control over everything regarding his career and his finances. He was quiet and isolated and the sort of person who preferred curling up in his private library with a good book over attending fa
ncy parties and showing himself off to the general public. He was a lot of things that a lot of people probably wouldn't like, but he was everything that I wanted.
I desired him beyond belief. His touch, himself, his warmth and his body pressing against me as he whispered words of adoration into my ear.
Unfortunately it was not to be. I knew this, and he'd said it, and despite the fact that we'd gone against it and I'd made him feel terrible about cheating on his wife, I knew it couldn't happen again. I understood that and I told myself to let it go, but some part of me refused to accept it. A passing fancy, something stuck into my head that would come loose over time, dislodge, and vanish as quickly as it appeared. Whim, pure fantasy, and nothing more.
That's what I told myself, but I didn't believe that, either.
...
"Jeremy," Asher said, seeing his driver hastily walking through the main house foyer and heading to the front door. "A word?"
Jeremy paused, looking as if he needed to decide whether he was going to keep going or listen to the man who paid his salary. "Hey, Asher," he said, reluctant. "Is everything alright?"
"No," Asher said. "Not particularly. There's an annoying, ridiculously stubborn, absolutely infuriating woman in my guest home, and I'm not sure why she's still there."
"Oh," Jeremy said, face turning red. "Right. I don't know?"
"I think you do," Asher said.
"You, uh... did she...?"
Asher fully suspected Jeremy knew exactly why Jessika was still in his guest house. He'd asked the man to drive her home early that morning, and was surprised to hear she'd refused to leave. Except, why would she do that? Jessika didn't seem the sort to take risks like that; not unless she knew it would pay off. True, he didn't know her that well, but from what he did know she was respectful with a slight feisty streak.
Except, how feisty? Enough to refuse to leave, and enough to go around his guest home and mess the place up. Not a huge mess, nothing more than superficial dirtiness, but still. And, my God, she'd admitted to masturbating in his bathtub while he was away. Granted, he'd been easing away her aroused distraction at the time, pulling her clothes off and pushing her panties to the side so he could...