by Amy Brent
He looked at my face, as if seeing me for the first time.
“And I haven’t even told you the details of why I left so abruptly on Monday like a royal jerk.”
“It’s fine,” I told him, squeezing his hand again.
“No. It’s not fine in the least,” he argued heatedly. “Not when it wasn’t even an actual emergency. It was about the tabloid article on Henry and one of the models he was seeing before he went out with your friend.”
He reached into his jacket, extracted his phone, and flipped through it a little before he angled it my way. Glancing at the scandalous title with the splash of equally scandalous pictures, I was struck with a shiver. What if something like that happened to Charles and me? When I glanced at him, he didn’t seem to share my fear. Instead, he said angrily, “My brother’s taking things too far, taking too many big risks. One of these days, it’s going to catch up with him, and I’m not going to be able to shelter him from the fallout.”
Shaking his head, his face was a tensed mask. When his gaze met mine, it softened. He brought my hand up to his lips and kissed it.
“Sorry. You don’t need to spend your dinner with me hearing about family drama. Suffice it to say, I have a lot on my mind and I’m really glad you’re here.”
“I’m really glad you’re here too,” I said.
Our gazes dipped down to my empty plate at the same time, then met once more.
A smile flickered on his face. Clearly, he was thinking exactly what I was.
“Dessert time,” he said.
Chapter 15
Charles
I couldn’t tell who was moving ahead faster, Heidi or me. All I knew was I wanted to ram my lips into that sweet, eager smile on her face.
She was one step into the bedroom when I attacked her. Our lips met in a seamless fusing of parts. Damn, did she taste good, like chicken and want and what I was about to do to her.
As her mouth sucked around my tongue skilfully, I realized what she’d wanted all along. All it took was guiding her kissing mouth down, down over my chin and over the ball of my Adam’s apple. She undid my purple shirt buttons as she descended. One button undone, then a sprinkling of kisses. Then again over the newfound uncovered skin until she was at the last button and the line of my pants.
By now, my boner was pressing insistently on my leg. She seemed to know this already. We stumbled into the room so that I was on the bed in a sitting position. Heidi let her fevered gaze roll over me before it settled on her plans for tonight: my rock-hard cock through my pants. When she dipped to her knees, I practically groaned.
Oh yes. Oh bloody yes, it was happening. She undid my pants and pulled them and my briefs off at the same time, as if she couldn’t wait. And then, with one last starving look, she dipped her sweet lips down.
At first, they taunted me. Her cheeks rubbed against my boner as she peppered kisses everywhere but where I wanted them most. Up and around my bristling shaft. Then down into the crease where my legs met my groin.
Finally, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I grabbed her hair and moved her head to where it was needed most. She wasted no time. She slurped her mouth all the way down to the base, ramming a joyous sensation deep into me.
My lids fluttered open to fix on her ecstatically, as if they weren’t quite sure this image I’d jerked off to more times than I could count in the past few days was actually happening. Heidi was on her knees, her face dipped, giving me oral adoration. As she swirled her tongue and swooped her mouth up and down, I quickly realized there was something very wrong. Very, very wrong. She was just too good. That slurping, rotating tongue pressing against my frenulum as her hand joined in on the sucking, popping dance was too much. I was going to come any second now. Hastily, I ripped her face away.
“Your turn,” I barked, pulling up her skirt. I kissed off her panties and swooped in my finger to find her deliciously wet. It seemed that sucking me off had served as enough foreplay. She was as wet as a rain forest.
Now it was time to get to the good stuff. Her clit was already swollen when my lips found it. I stroked her inside while my tongue stroked her outside, and she squirmed.
“Charles,” she asked in a strained and harried voice, “what are you doing to me?”
I paused just long enough to let a helpless yelp wring its way out of her throat.
“Making you come.”
I slammed my lips and fingers into the job with vigor. In and out, round and round, slurping and sucking and stroking, moving with the twists of her body. Her shriek came on fast, her orgasm even faster. One second, she was writhing and moaning; the next second, she’d fallen back, her body shaking of its own accord.
And then she put her hand on me to stop.
One look at her indicated that stopping was the last thing I should do.
Yes, what I had to do was pump her harder. I had to use my finger, my tongue, jam her so deeply into the rhythm that she didn’t know what was what.
So, in and out I went. As Heidi’s thighs clutched heatedly at me, her “I’m close” was utterly unnecessary. It was evident in every tremor of her limbs.
When the final orgasm exploded out of her, it shook both of us until she flailed no more.
Afterward, she looked utterly spent, completely done in, as if her release had also expelled the last dregs of her energy with it.
There was just one problem: I had a boner straining to get its own release.
When I arranged Heidi’s slick body on all fours, she didn’t protest. She allowed herself to be moved and positioned like a doll. Uncertainty creaked in me, but when I finally clambered over her and shoved my dick in, there was no uncertainty in her response.
One loud, gratified moan ripped through her body, shaking it with force. My next thrust shook her even more. Every second of it. Every bit. I pierced into her depths so deeply that her pelvis flopped down. I shoved it back up.
I had a pussy to fuck. And fuck it, I did. Shallow and fast. Deep and slow. Each new insertion was like a new act of God. Each new joining sent both of us shaking with it. In and out. Round and round. For every one of my cock’s merciless thrusts, Heidi’s juicy pussy met me. Oh yes, this was exactly what I needed, this with Heidi Fucking Sommers.
When another breathless cry seeped out of her lips and I realized she was coming again, my dick swelled with an almost painful premonition of its own release.
Yes. It was time. It was bloody time. So, I jammed her with it. My erection strained to get what it so desperately needed.
When I finally poured myself into her, she was practically weeping with ecstasy. We coiled together and then drew apart, our bodies replaying the glory we had just experienced.
Heidi was the first to get up.
“Let me guess,” she said with a wry smile. “We leave in separate cars?”
I shook my head.
“I was thinking more of a dogsled to take you back this time,” I quipped.
Her tingle of laughter was music to my ears.
“Well, I’ll be getting ready for your dogsled then.”
Everything felt like a strange sort of déjà vu as I watched her get dressed while putting on my own clothes. It continued as I walked her to the front door. My body was tense with the sense that this had happened before and yet would happen again, just as it was happening now. Past, present, and future fused together into one moment.
We shared a good-bye kiss that tasted more or less like the others, except this one left me almost painfully hungry for more.
After she left, I kept staring at the cherrywood front doors, as if their lustrous shine could tell me something about what had just happened here. In the gleam on the inlay, it seemed there was something that knew something I didn’t, that was as important as it got and yet was hidden.
Chapter 16
Heidi
Smelly. That had been my first impression when I’d stepped foot in Spats Bath and Body Shop.
Smelly in a good way, granted. The pl
ace was like Bath & Body Works back in the US, but it seemed to somehow be crammed with twice the number of products: fizzy bath bombs, bubbly soap dispensers, natural soap bars, you name it.
After today’s shoot, if I had any luck, I’d be getting us a swag bag of the stuff. At least that was what my agent, Ron, had promised.
Anyway, right now I had to stay on task. We were doing a photo shoot in the store after all, which they’d shut down for the affair. Management probably wanted to get this done and over with so they could get back to doing what they normally did—sell their handmade Spats products.
Taking in my surroundings, I smiled outright. They hadn’t started snapping shots yet, so I was still free to do so. On my throne of pink, sparkly soap bars, I was the goddess of bathroom products if there had ever been one.
In one hand, I held a blue-and-purple whirled bath bomb up to my mouth, as if it were an apple I was about to bite. I was a bit tempted to, truth be told. It resembled one of those Gobstoppers they sold at serve-yourself candy shops.
One fateful night a few months back at the end of a drunken romp, Liza and I had stumbled into one such candy shop and filled a bag full of ten pounds’ worth of candy. On the way home, our ambitious purchase had broken and we’d fallen to our knees sobbing, mourning the loss in a completely over-the-top fashion.
“You’re eating, not smiling, Heidi,” the photographer said.
Apparently he had decided to start taking pictures without letting me in on the fact. Although I guessed what he’d just said was a heads-up of sorts.
I obediently forced my lips more into the shape of an O. At least this photographer, a young guy with a wild nest of red curly hair, had called me by my name.
As the shoot progressed, I came to learn that Chancery, which was the photographer’s unusual name, had quite a few creative poses and setups for this. After my throne of soap bars, the various poses for which dragged on for a good hour and a half, I was instructed to lie on the floor with a whole army of soap dispensers in every color of the rainbow positioned on top. Sure, it wasn’t the most comfortable pose, but I was actually excited to see how the photos from it turned out.
The shot after that was even less comfortable. Chancery had set up probably every bath bomb they had in the store in a giant clear container, except it wasn’t the typical plastic container you bought at the store for five bucks. It was as tall as two of me and as wide as three. Its size did allow me to position myself in a sea of the bath bombs. Luckily, that pose took a grand total of five minutes, since getting crushed by pounds of pastel bath bombs wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.
“All right,” Chancery finally said, after I’d been smothered by the things so long I thought my body might shut down on the spot. “That’s a wrap, everyone.”
We breathed a collective sigh of relief. It’d been a long day. Chancery’s over-the-top ideas were not just creative, but they demanded a huge output in terms of manpower and even timing to get them right. The other two shots had taken over two hours apiece just to get one good photo. But now, finally, we were done. Finito.
After I had been helped out of my bath bomb hell, I hovered for a moment, considering what to do. Instinct urged me to just hit the road wearing the apron they’d provided me with and said I could keep. Even the prospect of swag didn’t seem worth the extra ten seconds to ask about.
After my first step toward the door, however, the store manager, Cindy, stopped me, trailing a suitcase behind her.
“Don’t forget your swag bag!”
The blinding whiteness of her teeth momentarily mesmerized me. Then I looked down at the bag she was rolling to me and grinned.
To think I’d almost left without this! There, in a pink-and-white striped suitcase of a shopping bag, was my swag.
A better phrase for what was encompassed was a whopping wonder of ah-mazing goodies. Tucked in the striped depths were enough bath bombs to keep me happy for years, every last soap I’d seen in the store, and, not to mention, an alluring fragrance the whole dang day. There had to be at least hundreds of pounds of free makeup in there. It was wild.
“Thanks so much, Cindy!” I told her.
She gave me another glinty grin and shook my hand warmly.
“No, thank you, Heidi. This is really going to help build our customer base over in the States. You have a nice day.”
“You too,” I told her.
--
The “fun” wasn’t over yet. Once I was out of the mall, a man lunged directly in front of me with a camera where his face was supposed to be.
Wrenching away, I groaned. Paparazzi stalking me was way less funny when I wasn’t with Liza. When I was beat tired and probably looking like a horse ran into my face, it just felt invasive and creepy.
All there was to do was shove on the biggest sunglasses I had and run in my most dignified manner to my car. One quick glance behind me revealed that one man had just been the tip of the iceberg. There was now a whole stream of paparazzi following me, yelling questions over one another that I couldn’t make out.
Luckily, I was already at my car. After ducking in, I pulled away just as they were flocking near. I didn’t let my relieved exhale escape my lips until they were just an ugly, faraway blot in my rearview mirror.
Driving down the road, my heart still thumped heavily in my chest. One of my greatest fears was hitting one of those idiots with my car on an impromptu flight from their nosy selves. I’d seen and heard of it happening to other public figures in enough horror stories to know it wasn’t unheard of.
Catching my anxious expression in the rearview mirror, I forced my lips into a grim smile. Anyway, that was all over now. Now I could kick back, drive home, and relax at the flat with Liza.
It only took about fifteen minutes to get there since there was little to no traffic, although waiting for the crappy old elevator to decide to show up wasn’t exactly the fastest thing in the world.
Once I finally made it through our rickety front door, I was just about ready to keel over onto the first soft surface I spotted. Halfway to the couch, I froze. Liza was in the main living space. She was sitting on the floor watching Lady and the Tramp and crying.
“Are you okay?”
As I tentatively approached her, she glared at me as if I’d suddenly lost my marbles.
“It’s a beautiful story, okay?”
Checking the TV revealed that Lady and Tramp were currently sharing that iconic piece of spaghetti.
“He took me out for spaghetti that second date night, you know.”
Liza’s voice was low as I settled beside her. I shifted uneasily, partly because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how she found this floor-sitting position comfortable, and partly because it really tore at me to see Liza this way.
For as long as I’d known her, she’d never been one to cry easily. She was usually the one to laugh it off, whether the issue was a contract flaking out or even a guy ghosting her. The one exception to her steadfastly unnerved temper was the loss of food, as the expiring of yogurt was sometimes cause for a five-minute rant on the transitoriness of life.
“I think things are over between us.” Her voice was both decided and wretched.
All I could think to do was to give her shoulder several awkward pats. Even though Liza was my best friend, I had no idea how best to comfort her, probably because I never knew what to do when another person was upset and I wasn’t.
Any attempt I made always felt fake to me, like I was putting on a front of feeling sorrier for them than they were. Although, right now, seeing Liza, the most carefree and devil-may-care of all my friends, reduced to this was nothing short of galling. If her breakup with Henry, who she’d only seen over a weekend, hurt her this much, then what would my inevitable breakup with Charles do to me?
My stomach swirled at just the thought of the answer, and I returned my attention to Liza.
“Want to go shopping?”
She snapped off the television and stood up. On
the way to her door, she said, “I think I’m going to just sleep.”
“I hope you feel better,” I called, rising, tormented about whether I should be following her, holding her, and telling her he was an idiot, to screw that. But the shutting of her door was followed by the click of her lock, which meant she definitely did not want me in there with her.
Which I could understand. Whenever I started crying when I wasn’t 100 percent alone, the one thing I wanted most was to be alone, to despair unobserved, cocoon myself in my sadness. So best to let Liza have her space for now.
My wooden legs flopped on my bed while my aching mind realized what all this really meant. Liza was nothing more than a blond version of me. Henry was a younger and wilder version of Charles. Their fling had burned brighter, but faster too. It was just a foreshadowing of what was inevitably coming for Charles and me, what I had hardly let myself think of and could hardly bear to.
Things with Charles couldn’t—and wouldn’t—last indefinitely.
Chapter 17
Charles
“Charles, whatever is the matter? You’re distracted,” Mother declared, her eyes stopping on me like a spotlight.
I drew my lips into a tense smile. This was the first time all of us, Henry included, had had anything resembling a regular family dinner. I wasn’t going to let my moodiness ruin that.
“Have you thought of who you’re going to invite to the ball?” she quizzed. Her well-lined dark brows and their severe slant served as a warning to me.
“Not yet,” I said evenly.
Now definitely wasn’t the time to mention that what I’d been distracted by—who, rather—would basically make my short list of people to take to the ball. A short list that , now that I thought about it, consisted of one. Never was probably a better time to bring this fact up, considering my mother had made herself abundantly clear over the years as to what she thought about models and Americans.