“For the rest of my life I’ll remember.”
“When I was so nervous about everything, you said that while we were together I should do whatever I felt like doing, because you weren’t the guys I’d slept with before.” I slid my hand up his other arm, gripping his wrist and bringing it together with the other over his head. “Well, I am not that guy, either. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to make you lose control.”
He laughed beside my ear, and gently tested my grip on his wrists. I released my hold immediately, and he relaxed. Rising up a bit, I reached for the belt and wrapped it around his wrists, as he lifted his head to nibble at the front of my nightgown over my breasts. I moaned quietly, keenly aware of the relative silence of the plane and the presence of the flight crew. I didn’t know how much they would hear.
“So, how many times have you had sex on this plane?” I whispered as I pulled the end of the belt through the buckle and drew it up tight.
“Many,” he admitted. “If you had a plane, wouldn’t you?”
“I guess.” I gasped as his tongue found my hard nipple and circled it through the silk.
“Do I detect just a hint of jealousy?” he murmured against me. I sank my fingers in his hair and tugged his head down to the bed. A slow smile spread across his lips. “I do hope you’re the last.”
That brought his mortality uncomfortably to mind, and I ignored the comment. “I bet you’ve never been tied up in here, though.”
“That I have not.” He sounded less than thrilled, but he was still going along with it.
“I want to play a game. I want to draw words on you, and you have to guess what they say.” Sitting up straight, I trailed a finger over his chest.
“I think I understand the rules.” He smirked up at me. “What happens if I get them wrong?”
I scooted down his body with a knee on either side of him. When I straddled his thighs and leaned to press my mouth to the side of his torso, the hard ridge of his erection pressed into my belly.
Just nine more days.
It might as well have been nine more years, the way I wanted him. Starting at his hipbone, I carefully traced a letter “L” across Neil’s flesh with my tongue.
His breathing sped up a little as I finished the word, and he said, “Let.”
“Very good,” I murmured, switching to the other side. I tugged his boxers down just a little, and started the next word on his belly, just above his groin.
“Me,” he guessed, and I nodded my affirmation as I slid down, dragging my hair over his stomach. I lay between his legs and lazily stroked the next word onto his inner thigh.
“Make.” He sounded a little breathless now.
Tugging his boxers down his thighs, I drew the next word on his stomach, swirling my tongue through the narrow line of hair that bisected it. It was difficult work avoiding his cock; fully erect, it reached to just above his navel. My chin brushed the tip as I carefully spelled the next word, “You.” It took Neil two tries, but he guessed it and swallowed thickly as I hovered my mouth over his penis.
I only got to the O in “come,” written carefully along the underside of his shaft, before he groaned and lifted his hips.
“Yes, Sophie,” he rasped, his hands still above his head. He could have moved them at any time; the belt simply cinched around his wrists, and nothing physically restrained him from lowering his arms. He was choosing to play along, and something wicked in me responded to that.
I wasn’t a Dominant. And Neil wasn’t a submissive. We would probably never truly “switch.” At that moment, though, I appreciated that he trusted me enough to let me do this.
Licking a slow path up his cock from the base to the head, I moaned low in my throat. His harsh breathing stuttered, and he shifted beneath me. I traced the point of my tongue over the seam between his foreskin and glans, and then followed it up to the slit in the tip, teasing him just a bit before sucking the whole head into my mouth.
He made an incoherent sound, and I grinned to myself, taking him in one hand. I sat up and, as primly and daintily as possible, spat a huge glob of saliva onto his cock.
His eyes widened at the sight, and I gave him a lazy smile and lots of eye contact as I stroked the wetness down his shaft. When I lowered my head again, I never broke my gaze from his, preferring to hold him as a captive audience while I licked and sucked the hard flesh my pumping fist didn’t cover.
I didn’t have to work long; my slow, steady strokes, sucking mouth, and wriggling tongue brought him to the edge quicker than usual. Probably because he was so out of his element, out of control. Gasping and writhing, he groaned, “Sophie, I’m—” and he didn’t finish his sentence as his cock jerked in my hand and his cum hit the back of my throat. I let a little dribble out of my mouth, onto my fingers, still squeezing and stroking him as he pulsed, but I raised my head before he could reach the point of oversensitivity. I delicately wiped the corners of my mouth with my ring finger and made a satisfied noise after I swallowed, smirking up at him all the while.
Now, he wasn’t content to play along with my fake restraints. He pulled his wrists apart to loosen the belt then slipped his hands free. Before I could even think to protest, he’d hauled me up his body and rolled me onto my back, pinning me. One hand moved down my stomach, and I froze.
“I will go utterly mad if I can’t make you come,” he groaned against my neck, his tongue fluttering over the pulse point there.
Well, what was I going to do? Risk his sanity?
“Please,” was all I had to say before he dove his hand into my panties, seeking out my clit with two fingers. He rubbed in slow, steady circles, and my legs, then my tummy, then my whole body tightened up.
“Oh yes, oh please,” I whimpered, clutching at his back. “Please, please, make me come.”
My throat was raw and hoarse. I could still taste him on my mouth. I needed to come like I needed oxygen, and when I did, I couldn’t hold in my wail of release. My thighs clenched around his hand and my fingernails bit into his shoulder as the familiar electric shock feeling seized me. When it was over, I was boneless, weightless, completely unwound, but for the delicious throb my orgasm left behind. And suddenly, my reluctance and guilt over sex seemed pretty silly.
Neil kissed my forehead and slipped from the bed to go into the bathroom. Maybe I should have felt embarrassed that he’d touched me when I was biblically unclean, but I had really needed that. The stress busting power of orgasm was second only to a long, hot soak in my beloved bathtub.
I felt a pang of homesickness for that, now.
Neil came back and climbed beneath the covers next to me. I didn’t open my eyes, preferring to drift in the afterglow of my much-needed release. “Do you want me to move, so you can have the inside?”
“No, stay where you are,” he said, and I heard the smile in his voice. “Well, move over a bit.”
I scooted to give him room, and he settled in beside me, his warm skin brushing mine. There was nothing around us but the thrum of the jet’s engines and the hiss of recirculating oxygen.
“Thank you,” Neil said, absentmindedly stroking my arm. “That was so nice, I almost forgot we were on this death trap.”
I giggled. If I’d had any strength in my muscles, I would have hit him with my pillow.
CHAPTER SIX
The voice of the driver over the car’s intercom woke us. Neil shook me gently, and I lifted my head from his shoulder, pushing the hair from my eyes.
“We’re here,” Neil said, giving my arm a squeeze.
I sat up. Neil’s plan to sleep on the plane and be perfectly adjusted to the time change had drastically reduced my jet lag, but even by private jet, traveling took a toll. My mouth felt like it was full of fuzz and my throat was dry from recirculated oxygen, and falling asleep on the car ride from Bristol had left me with a crick in my neck.
Neil pushed the intercom button. “Could you lower the partition, David?”
I had the oddest feeling o
f infidelity, riding in a car with another driver. It was like I was cheating on Tony. And on the other Maybach, at that, because this one was far more posh than the model Neil kept in New York.
The divider rolled down, and I blinked at the change in light in the back of the car. My eyes felt like they were full of sand. How could I be tired when I’d gotten eight hours of sleep? My body’s clock really was off.
All of that ceased to matter in the face of the fact that we were driving up a wide white gravel lane flanked by sculptured trees, toward what appeared to be a fucking castle.
“Holy fff—” I pressed my fingertips to my forehead. “Neil, you need to be a little more specific with me when you use words like ‘house.’”
“What?” He sounded a bit offended. “This is my house. I told you it was big.”
Big was not the word to describe it. Sprawling. That was closer. Gargantuan. Possibly able to reach the moon if it were stood on its end, that was another good description.
The house was an odd mixture of what seemed to be gothic elements and French chateau style, with tall peaked roofs and a row of dormer windows on the third floor. Everything was symmetrical, from the two tall, square towers at the ends of each wing, to the round ones flanking the center of the building. With its slightly yellowed tan stone and gray roofs, the place looked like some fantastical combination of Hogwarts and Frank N. Furter’s mansion.
I thought up at least fifteen Downton Abbey jokes on the spot.
Stepping from the car, I slipped my ballet flats back on. The front doors seriously looked like something that could withstand a medieval battering ram.
“If Riff-Raff doesn’t open that door, I’m going to be real disappointed,” I said with a low whistle.
“No hunchbacked butlers, I’m afraid, but if you need to do the Time Warp, I promise I will look the other way.” He stretched and groaned. “I have had enough travel for today.”
There was a butler, though he was nothing like Riff-Raff or Carson. He was probably close in age to Neil, though his gray hair was thinning on top and his face was kind of jowly. He wasn’t dressed in livery, either, but wore a high-collared, crisp white shirt and dark blue tie beneath a double-breasted navy suit. He smiled politely and said, “Welcome home, Mr. Elwood,” as Neil headed toward the door.
“Thank you, Rob. I trust my daughter hasn’t been driving you too crazy?” Neil asked him.
“Not at all, sir. She’s very efficient. Helps to shake the staff up a bit.” Rob the butler motioned to the young man who’d followed him out. He went to the trunk and retrieved two of our bags. A twinge of guilt niggled me at the thought that I was letting a real servant carry something for me. If my family ever found out, I would never live it down.
“This is Ms. Scaife, she’ll be staying with me over the holiday,” Neil introduced me to Rob, and I reached out to shake his hand.
“Madam.”
“Oh, um.” I shrugged. “You don’t have to call me madam. Sophie is fine.”
Neil steered me through the door, onto the checked marble floor of the entrance hall. Tall stone arches rose over our head. They reminded me of the vestibule at St. Patrick’s cathedral back in New York. Rob took our coats, and Neil led me the rest of the way into the house. The hall widened, stretching into an impressive dark wood foyer. Winter flowers— pale pink Christmas Roses and white Poinsettias— were gathered in enormous arrangements in tall urns on either side of a massive staircase. The ceiling was open to the second story, where toga-draped cherubs pointed down at us from an intricate mural. The tall, leaded glass windows on the landing lit the otherwise dark foyer, though I was certain the fuck-off huge chandelier hanging overhead would provide plenty of illumination.
Neil’s footsteps echoed off the marble. “Sophie? Are you coming?”
I snapped my head down so fast I almost got whiplash. Neil was standing at the wide doorway to the left of the staircase, his hands in his pockets, super relaxed and slightly perplexed at my gaping mouth and wide eyes.
“Yeah,” I said quickly, taking hurried steps across the huge space to catch up with him. “This is... well, I mean, it’s no Chinatown walk up, but it’s okay.”
“You haven’t seen the rest of it,” he said, walking slowly to meet me. “There are forty-five bedrooms. I think we should make a check-list, so the next time we’re here, we can begin marking each one off.”
I stepped into his arms and stood on my tiptoes for a quick peck. “Do you anticipate spending a lot of time here?”
“I anticipate retiring here— if I ever do.” My sudden stomach plummet must have been visible on my face, because he quickly added, “Because I like working. That’s all I meant by it.”
I couldn’t think of a good response that wouldn’t just invoke more death thoughts, so I said, “Well, show me more of this place. Do we take a shuttle, or...”
He swatted my behind playfully. “Come on. I want to find Emma.”
Beyond the doorway was a long room done up with butter yellow brocade on the walls, more tall leaded glass windows surrounded by heavy drapes, two huge oil portraits of folks that were probably long dead, and a fancy marble fireplace that seemed to have been placed there as an afterthought.
“This is the east gallery,” Neil told me as we walked. “If you ever get lost, the house is oriented facing south.”
“I forgot to bring my compass.” I snapped my fingers with an “aw shucks” arm motion.
“That smart mouth is going to earn you a spanking.” He looped his arm around my waist as we walked. “Through there is a staircase, and at the end is the drawing room.”
“What are these doors in between?” I asked, and he shrugged.
“I don’t know, actually. The servants come and go through them all the time, I assume they know where they lead.”
There were places in his own house that he hadn’t seen. Oh, I didn’t have the strength to deal with that one right now.
At the end of the gallery, another wide doorway stood open, and I spotted movement inside.
“Ah, they must be putting up the tree,” Neil said, clapping his hands together and speeding us along.
When we stepped through the door, a dozen people in snappy black uniforms stopped what they were doing and looked at us with wide eyes. A slender middle-aged woman with graying brown hair in a pixie cut emerged from behind one massive evergreen bough. The tree was so big, it almost distracted me from the grandness and vastness of the room itself. The high ceiling was worked with dark wood beams. The walls were the same dark wood, the floor covered in a plush red carpet. A seating area in the center boasted furnishings that probably belonged in a museum of Victorian style, and I noted that despite the number of people in the room, no one was sitting on any of it.
“Mr. Elwood,” the woman said with a pleasant smile that contradicted the mildly panicked looks on the faces of everyone else. “We didn’t realize you’d be arriving so soon. Shall we clear this room?”
“No, no need, just passing through. Have you seen the lady of the house?” Neil asked casting his gaze around for Emma.
“Ms. Elwood?” The woman’s eyes absolutely sparkled at the mere mention of Emma. “I believe she was giving instructions to the kitchen for lunch.”
Neil turned to me. “Why don’t we wander about until we find her?”
As we left via the east gallery, I whispered, “Do all those people work here?”
“Not all of them work in the house. Some of them are groundskeepers who get occasionally pulled inside for things like putting up the Christmas tree or refreshing the flower arrangements.” At my wary look, he continued, defensive, “It takes a lot of people to keep a house this size running properly. In the summer, when it’s open to the public, we have a regular staff of about eighty people.”
“Open to the public?” I squeaked. “You let strangers just walk around in your house?”
“Only in about forty of the rooms. The main floor, a few of the bedrooms upstairs that
are done up in antiques—” his sentence, delivered in a bafflingly normal tone, as if everyone in the world let people pay to enter their homes and poke around, was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Emma at the other end of the gallery. She half-ran, half-walked toward us, unable to contain her huge smile.
Emma is adorably elfin, with a short blonde bob that frames her face. She’d inherited her father’s dazzling green eyes and her expressions were uncannily similar to his. That was where the similarities ended; they loved each other deeply, but the undercurrent of antagonism in all their interactions in my presence was palpable.
Although, that wasn’t true today.
“Daddy, I’m so glad you’re home,” Emma exclaimed, leaping into her father’s arms. She hugged him hard. “How was the flight?”
“I slept through it, as always.” Neil’s expression when he looked at his daughter was one of absolute and unconditional love. It made my heart ache for her; I couldn’t imagine what it would be like, being faced with possibly losing a parent.
No, you’re not going to think like that, I ordered myself sternly. I was going to stay positive, or die trying. And there you go again, thinking about death.
“Sophie,” Emma said, stepping back. “So nice to see you again.”
“You as well.” I’d kind of lulled myself into a false sense of security, after our last somewhat successful lunch meeting. What I’d glossed over was the part where she’d listened to her father breaking up with me in a hospital room just a week before. I hoped that wouldn’t create any further awkwardness between us; we already had that in spades. The fact that we were exactly the same age, and that she had overheard her father and I having some particularly vocal sex once made things plenty uncomfortable between us already.
“I’m really glad that you two are getting to spend Christmas together,” Emma told us quietly, looking down at her hands. When she raised her eyes again, she addressed me. “I know how much my father cares for you, and how much it means to him that you’re here. He was absolutely devastated after... well. I’m just very glad it all worked out.”
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