by Tillie Cole
“Where did you come from?” I said, seeing his skin bump as my breath ghosted over his chest. “So aloof, so withdrawn by day.” My finger followed the valleys and ridges of his abdominals. “Then so dominant in bed, so fucking good in bed.”
Harry’s fingers traced my spine then dipped lower. Kissing my face, he pushed a finger inside me. My forehead fell against his chest as he fingered me from behind, brushing over my sensitive G-spot, which had barely had time to recover before he was back, punishing it with those talented hands.
Harry’s mouth moved to my ear. “I’ve wanted to fuck you for so long,” he said, his deep voice and fingers causing tremors to rack through me. I felt his dick harden at my thigh. I bit my lip, brushing my cheek against his. “I wanked off so many times, imagining you on this bed, in my arms, under me, screaming my name.”
“Jesus, Harry,” I said, blood heating. Harry kissed the back of my ear. Harry shifted over me, pressing my front to the mattress. It felt like a cloud beneath me; it was so soft. And it smelled of Harry’s cologne. I breathed it in as he licked from the top of my spine to the bottom. Harry gripped my hips then pulled me to all fours.
I heard the crackling of another condom wrapper being opened; then I cried out, my forehead falling to the mattress, as Harry slammed into me from behind. I moaned and moaned and moaned as he filled me so impossibly full, moaning as he crawled over me until his chest was slick against my back and his hands covered mine as I gripped the sheet. Harry took hold of my chin and, without breaking his stride, guided my lips to his. His tongue plunged into my mouth in time with his thrusts.
Harry Sinclair was owning me, merging my body with his. He was inserting himself into my heart. Everywhere was Harry Sinclair. Every breath I took, every moan he consumed. I rolled my hips back, the movement setting off a spark in him. Growling, he gently linked his fingers through mine, in stark contrast to how he’d slammed inside me from behind. I was floating. As my pussy began to clench, Harry’s cock causing all my synapses to explode, I cried out my release.
Harry grunted, froze, then came with my name on his lips. “Faith!”
I collapsed to the bed, sure I would never be able to move again. Harry lay on top of me, his strong arms keeping his weight from crushing me. But he didn’t move. He stayed inside me for as long as he could, his lips peppering kisses along the back of my neck, my hair bunched into his hands.
Turning my head, I said, “You’ve literally fucked me into the mattress.”
Harry huffed a laugh, and the sound of it, him on top of me like this, felt familiar. Too familiar. Before I could think any more of it, he moved to the side and wrapped me in his arms.
We lay in silence for several minutes, just catching our breath. I looked up and saw we were in a huge four-poster bed, the posts gilded. We lay in the center and still had masses of room on either side. My eyes widened seeing the size of the room. I was sure it was as big as my entire apartment. The walls were painted navy with panels, making it look like a manor house. Antique dressers stood under large mirrors. A couch sat beneath the window, which showed the now-darkened sky and the vast Manhattan skyline, with Central Park visible in the distance.
“Harry, the view,” I said and lifted my head from his shoulder. I moved from the bed, dragging the top sheet with me, and wrapped it around me as I walked to the huge window. I inhaled and exhaled, for once realizing just how different our lives were.
I felt Harry behind me and leaned back against him, my heart missing a beat as his strong arms wrapped around me. I could feel he was still naked. “This view,” I said and saw joggers in the distance running through the park. “It’s beautiful.”
“I agree,” he said, kissing along the side of my neck. I smiled, knowing he wasn’t even looking out the window. I turned in his arms and looked up at him. In the glow of the lights outside, he looked like the angel my concussed brain had dreamt him up to be. I wrapped the sheet around him, our bare skin joining in an embrace.
“Can’t have the Upper East Side paparazzi catching you naked.”
“They’d need one hell of a lens.” He pushed my hair back from my face; then he cupped my cheek and kissed me. But this kiss was unhurried, his tongue slowly caressing mine.
As we parted I smiled, saying, “With a dick this size…” I took it in my hand and gave it one gentle stroke. “They wouldn’t need a big lens.” Harry huffed but thrust into my hand. I felt it hardening again. “I’m pretty sure the astronauts on the space station see this from way up there. It’s their wanking material.” I cleared my throat, donning the voice of an astronaut. “Get ready, boys. Harry Sinclair’s at his window again.”
“They can keep looking,” Harry said, pulling me in closer. He was rock hard against my thigh. “You’re the only one my ‘massive cock’ wants.” My eyes rolled in pleasure at Harry speaking so dirty.
“Say cock again,” I said, smiling as Harry lowered his forehead to mine and whispered, “Cock.” I groaned and allowed him to push me against the wall beside the window.
“Was that good for you?” he asked, a hint of playfulness in his voice I had never heard before.
“More,” I demanded, dropping the sheet and hooking my thigh around his hip. I pressed against his erection. “Give me more. All the dirty words.”
Amusement rumbled in Harry’s chest. Between kisses he said, “Pussy, arse, clit, tits…” He smiled against my mouth and whispered, “Lady garden.”
Throwing my head back, I laughed. “No! Not the fucking creepy-ass lady garden!” As I fought to catch my breath, I felt Harry’s hand still on my cheek. When I cleared the tears from my eyes, I saw he was watching me, his eyes soft and…happy. They looked happy. My heart thudded so fast I thought I might pass out.
Taking his hand in mine, I pulled him from the wall. “Come. Show me your apartment.” As we moved by the closet, Harry stopped me and opened the door. He took out two robes. He released my hand and pulled one around my shoulders.
“My naked body too tempting?” I said as he tied the sash around my waist.
“Always,” he replied with a kiss on my lips. He slipped on his robe and I felt like crying when his Adonis body disappeared under white terrycloth. “But you’re right, we can’t have the perverts of Manhattan watching your sinful naked body though the windows with their lenses.”
Taking my hand, Harry opened the door and my mouth fell open. His apartment was epic. There was no other word for it. A small hallway led us away from the bedroom to a living room filled with plush, overstuffed furniture that looked out over all of Manhattan, the floor-to-ceiling windows like frames around the most perfect art.
As I walked through the living room, I stopped dead as I caught sight of the kitchen. “Holy shit, Harry,” I said and entered the white marbled room. I ran my hands over the granite worktops and all the top-of-the-range appliances. “You cook?”
Harry leaned over the countertop as I ran my hand over the mass of wooden cabinets. “Never.”
“What a travesty,” I said and, leaving the kitchen, walked down a hallway. “What’s this way?”
“My office. Two other bedrooms.” Harry opened the door to his office and I gasped. A traditional mahogany desk sat in the center, but all around him were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. And the ceilings in this penthouse were high.
“Oh. My. God,” I whispered as I ran my hands over the many volumes that stared back at me.
“You like to read?” he asked, perching on the corner of his desk. I walked past the library ladder and read the titles: Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia. All my favorites. “Dickens?” I asked, seeing a whole shelf dedicated to his works.
“When I’m in a dour mood,” he teased.
I stopped dead and looked at Harry. “Jane Austen?” All her works were present and accounted for.
“Her work has merit,” he said, like he was the judge and jury of all literature. I mean, HCS Media did have a publishing house, but still. A playful gl
int remained in his eyes. I couldn’t get enough of it.
“Merit?” I laughed and walked to Harry, pulling on the collar of his robe. His arm wrapped around my waist and I melted. “I think her works have more than ‘merit’.” I pretended to mull over this. “In fact, I’d say you and certain characters of hers share some attributes.”
“Is that so?” he said with a single raised eyebrow.
“Arrogant.”
“I’m offended.” There was no malice in his voice.
“Posh.”
“I suppose that could be argued.”
“Do you live in a stately home in England? That could be a similarity.” Harry froze, and when I looked at him he grimaced. I’d been joking. He, apparently, was not.
“A teensy-tiny one.” He held up his index finger and thumb and pressed them together to exaggerate his point.
“Is it really teensy-tiny?”
“Erm…no.”
“Like, how many bedrooms?”
Harry sighed. “Seriously, Faith, can we not—”
“How many, Harry?”
“Bedrooms? Twenty-three.” I stopped breathing. “That’s just in the main house. Then there’s the outbuildings.”
“Outbuildings,” I echoed.
“Guest houses. We have…a few of them on the property.”
Right, I said, starting to realize there really was an entire world separating us. I normally wouldn’t have given a damn about that, but…twenty-three motherfucking bedrooms!
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and I heard the panicked plea in his voice for me not to close off on him. His lips were parted, and he looked at me in such a heated and affectionate way that it made my toes curl.
I ran my hands through his hair, Harry’s eyes closing at the comfort. “You can appear prideful.”
“On occasion.” The tug of amusement was back on the side of his mouth.
“One might say, prejudiced.”
“No,” he argued. “I think that one better fits you.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he was probably correct.
“Okay. Well on that note, shall we leave it there?”
“Of course.” I leaned down and kissed him, his hands parting my robe and moving to my ass.
I moaned into his mouth but pulled away. “Come,” I said and held out my hand for him to take. “I’m going to put that pristine and batshit-crazy expensive kitchen to good use and cook for you.”
Harry did as I asked. As we headed for the door, a book stood out from a shelf, one that was not in line with the others, as though it had recently been read and not put back properly. My pulse kicked into a sprint. Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
“Faith?” Harry asked, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and kissing my cheek. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I said, so confused it felt like a fog was invading my head. I pushed the fog aside. It was coincidence. It had to be. There was no way Harry…
I turned to look at him. All prim and proper and very British. He was a damn viscount for heaven’s sake. There was no way he was in any way tied to NOX. It was impossible. My pulse calming, I took his hand and pulled him to the kitchen.
I opened the cupboards, searching for the right equipment and ingredients. Harry poured us both a glass of wine and sat at the breakfast bar, never taking his eyes away from me. “Ah-ha!” I said, finding the pasta maker and the ingredients I needed. I placed them on the counter where Harry sat. “Why on Earth do you have all this stuff if you don’t cook?” I asked, beginning to prepare the bowl with the ingredients for fresh pasta. Tortelli de Zucca, my favorite.
“I’m loathe to tell you,” Harry said and took a huge gulp of his wine. The more alcohol he consumed, the more relaxed he became.
“What?”
He grimaced. “I have a chef that comes in four times a week while I’m at work. He prepares my meals for me.” He pointed to the pasta roller. “That is why all this is here. I asked him what he needed. He gave me a list. I have no idea what most of these are.”
“Harry,” I said, pausing to place my hand over his. “That is the poshest thing you’ve ever said.”
“You are correct. Although I could hear myself muttering ‘where is my favorite pocket square?’ the other day and immediately thought that if you were there, I would never have heard the end of it.”
I laughed, pouring the flour, sending a cloud of white into the air. I blew it out of my face and was sure it was now in my hair.
“Faith, you are the clumsiest person I have ever met.”
“I know,” I said, once the cloud had disappeared, and continued cooking. “I like to think it’s sexy in a roundabout way.”
“Sexy clumsy,” Harry agreed and raised his glass.
“Sexy clumsy.” I began kneading the dough. “So, you said at my parents’ you went to Eton?”
Yes, I was using this as an excuse to find out more about him. He was a damn locked file. I needed to crack it open. Harry’s lips twitched; he knew exactly what I was doing. “Harry, you had dinner with my parents. They told you about me and all my colorful ways. Give me something here. We’ve just fucked like rabbits.” I pointed at him with my rolling pin. “One of whom had a massive cock. And although that is a good thing, the other rabbit will be stinging for days, thus deserves some kind of compensation.”
“Thus?” Harry said dryly. “You just said ‘thus’.”
“Answer my questions or pasta shall be denied.”
Harry held his hands up in surrender. “Don’t threaten that. Please. I’ll tell you anything you need to know.”
“Eton. Go.”
“I was sent there when I was eleven. For high school as you say here in America.”
“Did you like it?”
“It wasn’t bad.” He ran his fingertip around the rim of his wine glass, losing himself in the memories. “I just missed home. I missed…”
“Your mom.” Then my stomach sank remembering the hospital and that he had been twelve when his mother died. “Harry, please tell me you were with her, when…”
He shook his head. “I was at school. My father called the school when she had died. I couldn’t speak when I was told. I never got to say goodbye. I knew she’d been having tests, but I wasn’t told anything else. I found out later, my father didn’t want it to affect my studies.”
“He kept you from her?” I whispered, stopping what I was doing.
Harry rubbed a hand over his head. “You have to understand, my mother was the lifeblood my father had been denied growing up. It was an arranged marriage of sorts. He had to marry well, as did she. My mum once told me that they never expected to fall in love. But they did, fast and deep. When she got sick, he went into denial.”
Harry took a breath then continued. “I think he felt that if he didn’t send for me, then it wasn’t really the end for her.” Harry lifted his head when I walked to him and sat on his lap. “When I went home for the funeral, the man I knew and loved was gone. And in his place was the man he is now. Cold, distant. Missing half his heart and soul.” Harry looked up into my eyes. “I never used to understand how he changed so much…” He swallowed and let that hang in the air between us.
I became dizzy with the amount of affection in his eyes when he looked at me. Harry kissed me. “When I was eighteen I went to university. But I always knew I would go into the family business. I wanted to. It can just be hard at times.” I knew he was talking about his father again. I kissed him on the cheek and went to cut up the pumpkin for the filling.
As I sliced into the orange skin, something Harry had said circled in my head. “Harry,” I asked and met his eyes. “You mentioned that your father and mother had an arranged marriage of sorts.” Harry stilled, paling a little. “I’ve seen you in magazines, with a woman with blond hair and pretty eyes.”
“Louisa,” he said stiffly, the old Harry rearing his head.
I dropped the knife. “Are you expected to marry well? As in to money? Another member of the aristocra
cy?”
Harry stayed still for so long I thought he might never move again. “I’m going to refuse to,” he said and rose from his seat. He walked around the counter and lifted me to sit on it. Cupping my face, he said, “There are certain expectations of me. To marry well, to produce heirs, to never step out of line. To not embarrass the family, to not do anything that would rock the status quo of the famed Sinclair dynasty.” My heart plummeted with everything he said.
“I write a sex column, Harry. A filthy one. I’m the daughter of an Italian immigrant and a first-generation American, neither of whom have ever known what having money was like.” I felt my eyes glisten and hated myself for it. “This,” I said pointing from him to me. “Is just sex, right? A story to tell your mates back in England. You fucked Miss Bliss and gave her some of her own medicine.”
“No, Faith. Most certainly not.” I tried to turn my head away from his gaze, but Harry’s hands on my cheeks kept it in place. “Has any part of being together felt like nothing? Has any part of it felt like just a fuck?”
“No.”
“Because it’s not. Look at me, please,” he begged when I lowered my eyes. I lifted them and saw with crystal clarity the conviction written on his face. “That won’t be my life.” Harry kissed my forehead. “I decided a long time ago that I didn’t want it. Then you came along, annoying me and getting under my skin. Smiling sarcastically at me, hitting me with your quips, and I knew I was done. And those bloody pencil skirts you wear around the office.” I laughed and he smiled. “You made me stop wanting it, Faith, and instead made me crave it.”
“So this is not just sex?” I hedged.
“There’s sex,” Harry said and pressed his hard length between my legs. “There’ll be lots and lots of sex. But…” He kissed the back of my hand. My breath stuttered. Harry Sinclair acting like a real-life Prince Charming was going to be the death of me. “No. That’s not all I want.”
I felt reborn. I felt like a firework on the Fourth of July exploding into a million colors in a dark sky. “Stay with me tonight, Faith. Let’s eat the pasta, watch crap TV, and go back to bed. Stay with me. Please.”