by Hazel Parker
Chapter Two
I followed Warren inside, stepping straight into a cozy, warmly lit, rustic kitchen. There was a log fire blazing under the mantle, and another in the wood burning stove opposite the door. The center of the room was taken by behind a large, heavy wooden table that looked like it had been carved from a singletree trunk. The whole room smelled of delicious spices and sauces. Vanessa came in after me, closing the door behind her. I hadn’t even realized how cold it had gotten outside until the heat of the fire hit my chilled skin. It sure was a shock after Texas.
“Did you say you were hungry?” Vanessa asked. She took off her dark gray Versace long coat. I, once more, found myself marveling at the perfection that was her body, amazed at how it could wear that tight business suit so well.
There’s no way these two can be living up here for so long, I thought to myself, and not be humping each other’s brains out. I turned to look at Warren, to see if he was checking her out as she leaned up to hang the coat. He was paying no attention, though. He pushed my case over towards a door that led out of the kitchen. His shape was even more appealing in the light, and it took me a second before I realized I was staring. So much so, that I hadn’t noticed Vanessa talking, or even listened to her at all.
“In the pot, there,” Warren turned and pointed. He looked as though he was going to say something more, but seemed to go quiet when his gaze finally fell on me properly as I stood by the table.
The look on his face was hard to pinpoint. It was as though he was seeing me for the first time. As his eyes seemed to linger on my face, my lips, my body, for a heartbeat longer than was necessary, I felt a warm tingle run across my skin. He seemed to like what he saw, and I felt the heat rising in my cheeks, even as I tried desperately to fight off a full blush. He’d faltered for the barest hint of a moment, but I knew then he was looking at me differently than he ever had in the past. He was looking at me as a grown up, as a woman, and as a sexual being, instead of his old friend’s niece. I couldn’t stop the tiny smile I felt play across my lips any more than I could keep my suddenly hot clit from throbbing between my legs. The thought that he was certainly, at that moment, trying to picture me naked, turned me on.
“The pot?” I inquired, all of a sudden aware that no one had said anything for an uncomfortable moment.
“Traditional Scotch broth, if you’re hungry,” he smiled, regaining his composure.
“Sit down, Mary-Jane,” I heard a smile in Vanessa’s voice, as she appeared behind me and helped me with my own jacket. I sat down, as she went to hang it up next to hers. “I’ll take your case up to your room.”
“It’s a soup of local vegetables and barley,” Warren explained. Vanessa disappeared with my bag while I watched Warren open the oven and pull out a loaf of bread, its crust crackling from the heat. “I make it the traditional way, thick enough to stand your spoon in, straight up.” He smiled wider and placed the bread on a platter just in front of me. It smelled amazing.
“That sounds really good, actually,” I smiled back. He ladled a hearty helping into a big ceramic bowl. “I guess I could eat.”
“Excellent,” Warren said softly, placing the bowl in front of me. He slid over a tray of fresh butter as well, before returning to the pot to get himself a serving. “Go ahead and help yourself to the bread.”
I tore the loaf and steam escaped from the soft, fluffy white insides. I buttered a chunk with the knife by my bowl and scooped the soup up to my mouth. It was hot, warming me thoroughly, and very tasty. “I didn’t know you cooked,” I said, with my mouth full, as he sat down opposite me.
“Who did you imagine would feed us? A plump, ruddy-cheeked woman in a white hat telling us to get out of her kitchen?”
“Something like that.”
“Wow, Mary-Jane, how long has it been?” he beamed at me, changed the subject. “Five years? Six?”
“Not quite,” I smiled, buttering some more bread. Did he churn his own butter with milk from his own cows as well? I wouldn’t put it past him. “Four, I think.”
“Well, now look at you,” his eyes flicked up and down my body once more, “all grown up.” A terrified expression crossed his face for a second. “Holy shit! That came off really creepy, didn’t it? I’m so sorry.”
The truth was it was exactly what I wanted to hear. I sure didn’t want him to think of me as a child ever again. I couldn’t help myself; I was totally giving into my years-old crush. Only now, I was thinking about it in a far more adult way. I wanted to know what it would feel like to run my nails through the stubble around his neck; to have those soft-looking lips of his pressing along the different parts of my body; to see what his naked body looked like, lit softly by firelight. I certainly hadn’t been saving myself for him. I hadn’t even intentionally remained a virgin. Now I was here, and I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than for him to be my first.
“It’s okay,” I told him, “I didn’t think so.”
“Yeah, but you’re what, twenty-two? While I’m getting far too close to forty,” he grinned painfully as he spoke. “It’s not really appropriate, is it?”
“But you’re right, though,” I placed a reassuring hand on his. Although for me, that touch was far more electrifying than soothing. “I am all grown up. And I’m able to look out for myself. But, if it helps, you do look pretty good for close to forty.”
I smiled to myself as I thought I detected a light flush rise in his cheeks. We sat in silence for a heartbeat or two, before it dawned on me that I still had my hand on his.
“Anyway…” Warren tried, tactfully breaking contact to reach for more bread.
“Yeah…” I agreed, picking up my spoon again. “Isn’t Vanessa going to eat?”
“No, she has this crazy rule about eating nothing after six.”
I looked at the clock on the wall. It said seven thirty-five.
“She’s probably prepping my schedule for tomorrow. She likes to keep me busy,” Warren continued.
“I’ll bet,” I heard myself mutter, my mind suddenly picturing the two of them fucking like crazy all over an ancient four-poster bed. There’s no way I can compete with that goddess, came my inner voice, may as well give up thinking there’s any way I could attract him to me.
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing,” I told him, pushing the thoughts from my mind. “I want to thank you, Warren, for helping out with my degree. It means a lot to me.”
“Hey, when your Uncle Clive called, how could I refuse?” he seemed to relax a little more. “And I suppose I should do my part to help the next generation of photographers. So that you can all go about making me look even more obsolete and washed-up than I already am.”
“Are you serious?” I gasped. “Do you know how influential your last exhibition was?”
“I recall it sold well,” he said, self-deprecatingly.
“Well, I’m still grateful,” I stopped pressing. “Even though Clive said you owed him some favors.”
“Oh, did he?” Warren laughed aloud. “Me owing that old jerk favors? That’s rich.” I found myself laughing along with him. It was clearly an old argument that went back years between the two of them. “He knows full well he wouldn’t have the media empire he has now if it wasn’t for my photos, back in the day.”
*****
The conversation carried on between us for the next few hours, mostly warm anecdotes about antics Warren and my uncle were up to in college and during the early days of the news agency they founded. I hadn’t realized my uncle was so wild or such a daredevil in his formative years. I still had the impression that Warren was telling a lot of these stories in a way that cast himself in a better light than Uncle Clive. Probably an old habit born from years of being an international womanizer, I told myself, although I really didn’t mind at all.
“Wow,” Warren said eventually, as they were finishing a couple of brandies. We were still sitting in the warm kitchen. “I didn’t realize the time.”
; I looked up to see the clock reading nearly ten-thirty. I was not ready to let the night end just yet, in spite of the ultra-long day I’d had. It just felt so good being close to him, listening to him, watching his face. I had no illusions that he’d be trying to jump into bed with me that first night, but the longer I could keep him with me, impressing my cutting wit and smiling face on him, and keeping him out of bed with Vanessa, the better.
“It’s early,” I commented.
“Maybe for a twenty-year-old.”
“Twenty-two.”
“Even so, I want you up at seven tomorrow,” he instructed. “I need to see what they teach you about developing these days.”
“They teach us that immersing a digital camera in developing fluid is a bad idea.”
“Cheeky!”
I was, in equal parts, excited to see what I could learn from him and loathed the fact that I had to leave him for a cold, lonely bed. However, with no choice in the matter, I let him show me up to my room. Warren showed me where his room was, three doors down from mine, on the second floor of the house. He explained that the top floor was a converted attic space, which contained Vanessa’s office and apartment. I asked if Vanessa did all the ground work and housekeeping as well, as a joke, only for Warren to look at me, completely seriously, and tell me no way. He had a handyman called Angus and a cleaner called Clair that came around most days to take care of chores like that.
And he apologized for the inconvenience of there being only one bathroom at the end of the hall, but assured me that there would be hot water for a shower in the morning, which he told me, in a three-hundred-year-old Scottish farmhouse, was something of a miracle. We said good night and Warren left my case for me to drag into my room.
Inside, beautiful dark wooden panels lined the walls and there was a comfortable blaze going in the fireplace which nestled under a huge, blown-up print of one of Warren’s most famous pictures – his 2008 portrait of Halle Berry, tastefully nude and heavily pregnant – and opposite a huge wooden four-poster bed, not unlike the one I’d imagined him and Vanessa on earlier.
I set my bag up and thought about unpacking, when it hit me that it was now around three in the afternoon in San Antonio, the day after I’d left. I was exhausted. I summoned just enough strength to struggle out of my clothes and slip naked between the incredibly soft sheets, before I fell dead asleep.
*****
I opened my eyes to find everything was muddled. I couldn’t make out exactly what was happening, but my ears were filled with the soft moans of lovers in ecstasy. My body tingled, like a thousand pelts of the softest fur were caressing me, running down the sensitive skin that covered my ribs, over the thin, normally-hidden membrane on the sides of my tits, and across the smooth flesh of my inner thighs.
I saw Warren, his face handsome and his torso bare, smiling at me. In an instant, he was achingly close to me. I knew he was trying to kiss me, but I couldn’t feel his lips against mine or the stubble on his chin against my face. I could feel his hands though. As my mouth searched for his, a soft moan escaped it, as his palm covered my naked breast. His fingers slid over my nipple and a sensation, like a jolt of electricity, sparked its way through my body, like there was a direct line from that hot, hardening nub straight to my clit. My sex throbbed, suddenly open and so wet, and just in time to feel his firm fingers against it.
Still waiting to taste Warren’s kiss, I bit my lip as he touched me. He lightly brushed against my most sensitive parts and it felt nothing like the high school and college boys I’d been with. His fingers were smooth, his exploration unhurried, and he forced my body to respond, wishing he would touch me deeper. I wanted him. I wanted him so bad. I had no idea what it would feel like to draw him inside me, to have him penetrate me, achingly slowly, but I wanted it more than anything. I knew it would make these sensations I was experiencing grow stronger and stronger. What would happen when I couldn’t take anymore, I didn’t know. But I was desperate to find out.
“Please,” I heard myself whisper. “Please fuck me!”
I saw his face again, and his naked, sculpted torso. I wanted to see more of him, to see his cock hard before me, proud, erect, and aroused by my body. I tried to reach down but I couldn’t find him. Again, it was different from the boys before. Warren wasn’t grabbing my hand and forcing my fist around his cock, which made me yearn to feel him, hot and twitching in my palm.
I said the words again and he seemed to hear me, but he moved so slowly. His hand still cupped my breast and his fingers continued to edge their way past my slick lips, but he didn’t seem to be getting any closer to me.
“Please,” I breathed one more time, “why won’t you fuck me?”
As I said it, it felt different. I felt my lips move as the words came out, and heard my voice ring in my ears. The sighs, the shapes, and Warren’s firm body quickly faded from my vision to be replaced by the full canopy of the four-poster I was laying in hovering above, gray in the half-light.
My left hand was grasping my right tit hard, while the other hand was jammed between my thighs, my fingers pushing their way into the soft, wet folds within me. Every muscle in my body was tense and my mouth was dry. I realized the ecstatic sighs and moans I’d heard had been coming from me, but those amazing feelings, the desperation to be taken and satisfied, was retreating from me at super-fast speed.
I flicked at my own hard nipple and tried rubbing my fingers against my clit again, but I couldn’t regain that blissful state. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach and felt my pussy beginning to dry out. I turned over and thumped at the mattress in frustration. Everything was tight and uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to do, how to feel better. Along with keeping my distance from boys, I’d never really bothered with any special alone time either. I’d never felt the need. Aside from some pretty innocent adolescent fantasizing about Warren, around the times he came to visit, I’d just never really been in the mood.
Everything seemed different now, however. My body was telling me things and sending me signals that it never had before. I knew the theory behind an orgasm; I wasn’t stupid. I’d just never gotten anywhere near that ‘sweet release’ that so many romantic novels seem to like talking about. But then, laying naked in that opulent, supremely comfortable bed, that heat inside me still fading from my close call, I got the feeling that it was exactly what I needed. And I needed Warren to give it to me.
Chapter Three
A tap, tap, tapping at my window woke me, which meant I must have fallen back to sleep eventually. It took a few seconds to realize where I was again. I blinked my eyes clear and reached for my cell phone. The clock said almost six and, most probably because of the jetlag, I discovered I felt wide awake and ready to go.
The fire in my hearth was quiet and cold but, as I pulled the covers off me, I discovered it was still quite warm in the room. I got up and paced barefoot to the window, pulling back the drapes to see it was still just before dawn outside, and that I was right by that old, famous oak tree. Sure enough it was close enough for the wind to keep it tapping against my glass.
“Better get started then,” I said out loud, picking up one of the fluffy white towels that had been left in a neat pile for me. I was used to dashing out of my dorm room to the showers in my block, and I’d always found it best to wrap a towel around myself, just in case any of the other girls had a male visitor staying over. This felt exactly the same except, as I checked my reflection in the lowlight that was creeping in through the window, I remembered the dream. All the sexual tension I’d been feeling came flooding back and I felt like it was me that had been misbehaving with a man in my room all night, even though I knew it was all in my head. I just hoped that Warren wouldn’t read my mind when I finally met up with him. I stepped outside to find it was chillier in the corridor than it was in my room, and crept along to where Warren had told me the bathroom was.
I found the bathroom illuminated as I pushed open the door. With the lights on in the hallway
, I hadn’t even noticed. Then I felt the warmth and swallowed steam as I stepped inside. I must have just missed Warren, I thought to myself, before something stopped me in my tracks.
His buff body was wet and glistening; his hair was dripping sparkling droplets down to his rippling shoulders. Warren stood facing away from me as he slowly toweled himself off. I had no time to react, before he brought the towel up to dry his head, and I found myself feasting my eyes on his firm and toned bare ass, forcing a small, excited gasp from my mouth.
Say something or get out! screamed the grown-up voice inside my head. Don’t you fucking move! yelled the still present teenager. As he bent forward, Warren turned around with his towel covering his face, exposing his long, pink, perfect cock to me. It hung between his thighs. Another louder gasp escaped from my open lips and I felt that tingling throb from the low place between my own legs. I was right back in my dream. I instantly felt ready, my insides quivering in anticipation as I stared at his soft dick. I softly chewed my lip, as I imagined sucking him into my mouth, like I’d seen a girl do in that porn movie some frat boys insisted on showing me a couple of years ago. I could almost feel him on my tongue, growing hot and hard and becoming as ready for me as I was for him. My eyes darted all over his body, until I spotted that he was about to stand up. I flipped around as fast as I could, facing away from him as though I’d only just stumbled in and not seen him yet.
“Oh shit!” I heard him spit. “Sorry, Mary-Jane.”
“No, I’m sorry!” I blurted out. “I figured you were done in here.”
“It’s my fault,” he continued. “I’m so used to being on my own that it never crossed my mind to tell you the door doesn’t lock. Okay, you should turn around now.” I turned back to face him and he had his towel fixed firmly around his waist. I tried not to stare too obviously at his rock-hard abs and gorgeous pecs. “I’ll let you get on,” he mumbled awkwardly, indicating he wanted to get past me to the door. I stepped aside and leaned back against the wall for him to pass. “See you downstairs in thirty?” he suggested, closing the door behind him.