Dance: Dance of the Seven Veils

by Cris Anson

  “That’s right,” Lyssa said, grateful for Savidge’s lawyerly ability to think on his feet. “It never occurred to me that it might be you.”

  Then her motherly instincts belatedly kicked in. “You must be exhausted, honey. Would you like me to make you some hot cocoa? I straightened up your room when I came back from New Hampshire, so the sheets are clean.”

  “Well, it seems like all’s right with the world,” Savidge said. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Michelle. Don’t worry about your trust fund. It’s in good hands. George, would you mind giving me a lift home? I only live in the next town.”

  George glared at the attorney with over my dead body written all over his face. Savidge absorbed his withering stare with nonchalance.

  Michelle was eyeing Savidge speculatively. Oh, God, Lyssa thought, don’t let her realize that there’s something between us. A quick glance at his crotch assured her that his hard-on had dissipated, but she couldn’t help wondering if Michelle had noticed it when she first came into the kitchen.

  “My ride isn’t going back until Labor Day,” Michelle said, still looking at him. “So I’ll be here all day tomorrow. Would it be possible, Mr. Savidge, since this trust fund is for my benefit, do you think maybe I could get a copy of it and you can go over it with me? After all, I am emancipated, right? Since I’m eighteen and living away from home?”

  “Now, Michelle, don’t get your pretty little head in a tizzy. You don’t need to—”

  “Oh, knock it off, Dad. Maybe you could browbeat Mom with that ‘Don’t worry about it, you belong in the kitchen’ crap from the 1950s, but this is me you’re talking to. I want to know. I have a right to know about something that impacts my future.”

  She turned back to Savidge with an ingenuous smile. “Would it be possible to meet at your office tomorrow afternoon to explain the provisions of the trust to me?”

  Lyssa gave her daughter a dark look. “Michelle, you can’t ask him to give up his Sunday. He just spent a long week in London on business. The poor man must be exhausted with jet lag.”

  “On the contrary. It would be my pleasure.” Savidge came to stand next to Lyssa. “I plan on seeing a lot of your mother in the future, Michelle. I look forward to getting to know you—both of you—better.” He bent down to press his lips to Lyssa’s temple. “But you’re right, I’m almost dead on my feet. George?”

  “You—you—how dare you?” Throwing one last baleful glare at Savidge, George spun on his heel. “Call a cab. I have a brand-new wife waiting for me at home.”

  But Lyssa barely heard him. Her mind was still trying to assimilate what Savidge had just publicly announced. He wants to get to know us better. Us. Meaning both Michelle and me. Her face must have reflected her astonishment, because she became vaguely aware of Michelle’s fingers gripping her arm.

  “Mom? Are you all right?”

  Lyssa came out of her stupor just in time to hear the front door slam hard enough to rattle the mirror hanging in the hallway.

  “Mom, it’s okay. I knew as soon as I saw the two of you that you weren’t just attorney and client.”

  Still speechless, Lyssa could feel her cheeks burning.

  “It’s okay,” Michelle repeated. “You deserve a life, too. I wasn’t cool with Dad getting married like that, without telling me, but truth?” She glanced at Savidge, then lowered her voice to whisper in Lyssa’s ear. “You made out a lot better than he did.”

  Lyssa couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing then wrapped her arms around her daughter. “Oh, ‘Chelle, you’re precious! I love you, you know that?”

  “Love you too, Mom.” She returned the hug. “But I’m really tired. I’ll take a rain check on that cocoa.” She yawned flamboyantly, as if to reinforce her statement. “Why don’t you drive him home?”

  “I can call a cab—” Savidge started to say.

  “Mom.” She stepped back and gave Lyssa a meaningful stare. “I’m planning to sleep really, really late tomorrow. So you take it easy on the road and drive real slow, y’hear?”

  Turning to Savidge, she said, “I’m so tired I probably won’t wake up until noon. Then Mom and I can have brunch and maybe Mom can bring me to your office at, say, three o’clock? Would that be okay with you?”

  He favored Michelle with one of his lopsided, Harrison Ford smiles. “If you decide to study law, young lady, I’d be glad to sponsor you for an internship at Quick, Bowers & Savidge. For now, good night and sleep tight.”

  “I know, don’t let the bedbugs bite. See you tomorrow afternoon.”

  She got halfway down the hall before she turned and said, “Mom? You can come up in a few minutes and tuck me in, okay?”

  “Okay,” Lyssa said faintly.

  Listening to her daughter’s footsteps fade up the carpeted stairs, Lyssa sighed. “She’s all grown up, isn’t she?”

  “Children have a way of doing that.” Savidge came to stand beside her, slung an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “You did a good job with her.”

  Lyssa just shook her head in disbelief. “She knows.”

  “At least she’s older than I was when I realized my dad still had sex at the decrepit old age of forty.”

  A few minutes later, when she heard the toilet flush and the board creak in the upstairs hallway, Lyssa knew she had to face the inevitable grilling. She took the stairs rather apprehensively, wondering what kind of lecture she’d be receiving from her daughter.

  She needn’t have worried.

  “Mom, he’s a hunkster! Where’d you find him?”

  Lyssa’s heart skipped a beat. She wouldn’t, couldn’t tell her about the masquerade. Then she remembered. “The law firm. The trust’s regular lawyer was tied up in court all week, so Savidge stepped in. They needed some extra paperwork signed. Your father was on his honeymoon and not reachable, so they called me.”

  Michelle snuggled under the flowered sheet. “And the rest, as they say, is history, right?”

  A smile tugged at the corners of Lyssa’s mouth. “We’ll see about that.”

  “Mom, you were making out, weren’t you? And we interrupted you.”

  “That’s none of your—”

  “I could tell. You haven’t looked that, well, rosy in a long time. And he looks like a great kisser.” She giggled. “Is he? Come on, now, dish!”

  “Don’t be impertinent. Things will unfold at their own pace. When and if it’s time to inform you of anything, I will.”

  Michelle sighed. “You know, I really love Daddy, but he treated you rotten the last couple of years. I hate to say it, but you look much happier now than you did when he left.” She rolled her eyes. “And for that—that, good Lord, she’s not much older than I am! And too skinny by half. She looks anorexic. I hope he starts feeding her.”

  “Your father and I just grew in different directions. Now, I really have to go. Savidge is probably asleep in the front hall.”

  Eyes drowsing, Michelle murmured, “Mom? Why do you call him by his last name?”

  Startled at the question, Lyssa said, “I don’t know. It just seemed—appropriate.”

  “You mean, he’s ‘savage’?” She giggled again, a dreamy smile on her face.

  “That’s enough, young lady. You may be emancipated, but when you’re in my house, you still have to listen to your mother. Go to sleep now.” Lyssa hoped her voice was authoritative enough to forestall any more such awkward questions. She tiptoed out of the room, closed the door quietly, and went to find her savage.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Unhurried, exquisite friction. He lay behind her, both of them on their sides, tucked together like two spoons in a tray. Her head rested on his outstretched arm, with his other he gripped her hip. His cock was sliding in and out of her cunt with agonizing, tantalizing deliberation, like a film running in slow motion to give the viewer ample time to recognize and appreciate that she was being well and truly fucked by a master.

  Lyssa smiled inwardly as she watched the delic
ious dream unfold on the screen of her subconscious. Savidge had made a valiant effort to continue what they’d started in the kitchen before their interruption, but as soon as they undressed and fell into his massive bed, he’d pulled her into his arms and succumbed to jet lag. Lyssa snuggled into him and allowed herself to relax into sleep as well.

  With Michelle’s blessing resonating in her mind, her dream-self conjured up a fitting scenario to complete the coupling they’d started in her kitchen, to allow Lyssa the pleasure of bringing Savidge to his own release. Every leisurely stroke of his cock seemed to lift her passion higher, sending erotic shock waves through her womb and down into every microscopic nerve ending in her body.

  She arched her back so as to press her hips more firmly into his, signaling her desire and impatience for him to increase the tempo of his thrusts. Maddeningly, he didn’t take the hint, but kept sliding, sliding into her pussy with infinite precision, withdrawing to the very tip of his hot cock, then slowly pushing his thick length back in until she could feel his balls tight against her thighs.

  Heat scorched her back, her ass cheeks. Fingers of pressure dug into the soft flesh of her hip. Puffs of warm air tickled the fine, soft hairs at her nape.

  Lyssa’s breathing roughened. She felt caught in one of those dream sequences she’d experienced in the past, as if she was running from—or maybe to—something, but inexplicably stayed rooted to the spot, unable to stir. She needed to pump her hips, to move, to make him quicken his strokes, or she’d go insane with wanting. But she discovered that her hips were caught in a vise, her legs held hostage between two solid lengths of supple pipe that held her immobile.

  The arm supporting her head moved, cradling her more firmly to the heat of his chest. She felt a tug on her nipple. The incredible sensations rocketing through her almost made her come right then and there. She struggled to wake up from the dream—the feelings she was experiencing were too scorching to be only half-remembered in the light of day. She needed to masturbate herself to climax, because the dream was much too vivid and yet, somehow, unfulfilling, because the dream Savidge refused to speed up the tempo of his fucking, something the real Savidge would never countenance, knowing the way he’d always fucked her with abandon.

  Her eyelids fluttered open. The darkness was alleviated by the soft silver light of moonglow through an uncurtained window. The heat—

  The heat at her back continued unabated.

  So did the measured stroking between her cunt lips.

  So did the sharp tugging on her nipple.

  “Savidge!” she rasped. “What are you doing?”

  A low chuckle rumbled in his chest, vibrating through her very bones. “What does it feel like I’m doing?”

  “I thought—I thought I dreamt that we—”

  “Were fucking?” The question was punctuated by another leisurely movement of his cock, making her vividly aware of how aroused, how slick and wet she was, how much she wanted his thrusts to be more forceful.

  She felt, as well, the firm grip of his hand on her hip, became aware that her legs were held captive by his. Became aware that she was sheened with a film of perspiration and that her entire body was erotically charged.

  “But you fell asleep—”

  “A few hours was enough to refresh me, but by damn, I couldn’t wait for the sun to wake you, not when you were in my arms and making my cock as hard as a boulder. I had to be inside you, to give you what we both want. It felt so good just to hold you close, to slip it in and out while you were sleeping.”

  “How—how long have you…?”

  He lifted his head and nipped at her earlobe from behind, gave another leisurely stroke. “Long enough to go crazy with wanting you.”

  “But you have me,” she countered logically, wiggling her ass into him as much in desperation as in suggestion.

  “Now I do,” he murmured. “I had to wait for you to wake up before I…”

  He slammed into her. A feral cry ripped from her throat. “Yes!”

  It was as though that single word opened the floodgates. Savidge began pumping into her with a vengeance bordering on frenzy. Lyssa braced herself against his onslaught, welcoming his savage thrusts. She reached an arm across his hip to his ass cheeks. With his thighs spread to clamp around hers, she had easy access to his balls. She squeezed them, molded them, reveling in how tight they were up against the base of his cock. She felt, heard their distinctive slap as they pounded into her flesh every time he moved.

  With a visceral cry that sounded as though it emanated from the very core of him, Savidge climaxed, shooting his juices into her in one pulsation after another. In seconds, Lyssa joined him in an earthquake that triggered aftershocks for several minutes before she could think coherently.

  Many moments later, when his breathing had finally changed from harsh panting to slow, even breaths, he managed to say, “I’m glad you woke up when you did. I don’t think I could have waited another minute.”

  He kissed her shoulder, then eased back away from her. “Good thing I used a super-large condom. My body must have spent the whole week manufacturing my cum. Probably because all I did was think of you. And this.”

  Totally boneless and replete, Lyssa felt her mouth stretch into a Cheshire cat smile. She wanted to tell him what a mind-blowing experience it had been, but she simply hadn’t an atom of energy left. All she could do was purr.

  She felt the mattress shift as he presumably discarded the used condom. Then he returned to mold himself to her curves. They lay for an interval in delicious, sleepy silence, Savidge’s arms around her, Lyssa’s back pressed into him. In a half-dream state, she realized that of all the explosive times they’d had sex, this was the first time they’d actually spent the night together. It felt so peaceful, so right to be sharing his bed.

  He stirred. “I still haven’t given you the gift I brought you from London.”

  She turned in the circle of his arms. “This is the best present you could’ve given me.” The hint of moonlight through the uncurtained window gave him a ghostly look, all angles and shadows except for pinpoints of light in his dark eyes.

  Kissing the tip of her nose, he said, “Me, too. But I still want to give you this.” He turned to his side of the bed and flicked on the lamp, which gave off a soft, dim light akin to a candle’s glow. She felt the bed tilt slightly as he reached inside a drawer of the nightstand.

  “Here. I had it specially made at Harrod’s.”

  “Savidge. You don’t have to—”

  “I do, and I did. Open it.” Sitting up, he held out a silver-wrapped package about two inches square and an inch thick. A lapel pin, maybe.

  At least it isn’t an engagement ring, she thought, remembering his declaration to Michelle about getting to know both of them better. She wasn’t ready for a commitment after her rotten experience with her ex. She’d just found her sexuality, her freedom, and didn’t want to be subservient to any man, even one as luscious as this one.

  She scooted up to the top of the bed, fluffing her pillow at her back, and settled her attention on the box. The sheet lay crumpled at her waist, leaving her breasts bare to his scrutiny, but she discovered she’d lost her inhibitions about her body, thanks to Savidge—and the men of the Platinum Society, she silently added.

  Unwrapping the silver paper, she opened the box. Nestled inside a black velvet bed lay—a ring. With a catch in her throat, she picked it up, inspected it. The silvery band was intricately engraved.

  “Oh. Just like my new bracelet.”

  His gaze on her was tender. “Right down to your initials.”

  Lyssa tipped up the ring. The LMM winked at her in the soft light. And reminded her of the bracelet she’d found under his sofa cushion. With the initials CYS. Columba Yount Savidge.

  She would not give in to curiosity. To jealousy. To ask about his relationship with his former wife.

  “Do you still see your wife?” she blurted out anyway.

  Savidge stiffened
beside her. “Ex-wife. What the heck made you think of her?”

  Lyssa ducked her head. “I’m sorry, I just—the initials—they reminded me of the bracelet I found in your living room.”

  “Because…?” Savidge raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

  Sorry she’d opened her stupid mouth, Lyssa squirmed under his intense look. “CYS. Aren’t those her initials?”

  “Yes, but if you’ve looked through the roster, you’d know that Columba isn’t a member of the Platinum Society, so she wouldn’t have had a bracelet. She was more interested in money than in sex.”

  Marginally mollified by his comment, Lyssa resisted the urge to ask whose it was. She’d already ruined the cozy mood his surprise gift had created. Closing her grip around the ring within her palm, she edged away from him with another apology on her lips.

  He reached out to grab her arm and pulled her close to him. Off balance, she came to rest diagonally across his naked chest as he asked, “Is that a note of jealousy I detect in this line of questioning?”

  “I—maybe.” There. She’d said it. After all, he admitted being jealous when she’d teased him about his father being a good kisser.

  “I think I know who owns that bracelet.”

  “Who?”

  “Yuki.”

  “Your cook? But the initials are C—”

  “I know, CYS. But Yuki is thoroughly Japanese. He still writes his name in the Asian style, with the surname first. Chiba Yuki Santoro. CYS. I’m sure he requested it that way.”

  Her heart unaccountably soaring at the answer to the riddle, she snuggled against him. “You won’t punish him, will you? For doing—things—on your sofa while you’re traveling?”

  A deep chuckle reverberated through his chest. “Won’t even mention it. If you want me to, I can just put it in some unobtrusive place where he’ll find it.”

  “Sounds good. But weren’t you even a little curious whose it was when I told you over the phone? You just said ‘Finders, keepers’ like it wasn’t a big deal.”