Once Upon a Time

by Luna Doerr

  I shake my head at the words I just typed. Damn, Charles could be a real jackass.

  “You’re lying!” Erica cried as she pushed him out of the way and yanked open the study door.

  Yes, he was lying.

  I close my eyes to think. Charles wants Erica. He’s beginning to admit to that, somewhere in the dark corners of his jackass mind.

  Charles has to come up with a way to have her, though, in a way that will preserve his conception of her as a lady, as his wife. But he also needs to preserve the anonymity and the detachment he gets at the madam’s.

  I look over at Caterine, who is engrossed in something on the screen. She’s beautiful, even squinting and frowning at the details of Regency-era debauchery. As opposed to the more modern debauchery she’s exposed to closer to home. After another minute, she finally realizes that I am looking at her and turns her face to me.

  “How would Erica react if Charles went to her room in the middle of the night, and made love to her?” I ask. “In the dark.”

  She bites her lip as she thinks for a moment. “I think she would welcome it. She wants to be what he needs.”

  She turns her face back toward the computer. She’s uncomfortable, I realize. Probably torturing herself over the liberties she had taken with my story. I need to address what she did.

  “I liked the scene you wrote, by the way.” I try to sound casual about it.

  Her hands jerk away from the keyboard and begin fluttering around agitatedly. “I’m so sorry about that! I should never have done that. I won’t do it again, I promise.”

  “I’m not upset, Caterine. I’m going to keep it, in fact. You were right the night I called from California. The story does need more of Erica’s point of view. Her sexual awakening is too interesting a part of the story not to include more fully.”

  Your sexual awakening is too interesting, too. Way way too interesting.

  “Oh.” Her expression is still worried. “Still, I won’t do it again. I never should have done it in the first place.”

  “You apologize for too much, Caterine. If I was upset, I would have ripped your head off as soon as you walked in here.”

  She shrinks back in her chair and immediately I regret my choice of words. “That was a joke, Caterine.” Great, asshole. What a way to push her away, freak her out. “Come hiking with me this afternoon.”

  “What?”

  “Come hiking with me. We’ll take the afternoon off and relax. You haven’t seen much of Maine since you got here and I feel bad about that.”

  “Sim showed me around a little when you were away.”

  But I don’t want Sim to be the one to show you where I live, to acquaint you with the place I love more than any other.

  “Plus I don’t have hiking boots,” she adds.

  “Well, that’s easily remedied. We’ll pick up a pair in town.”

  33

  Caterine

  An hour later, I’m waiting outside the Jordan Pond House while Alaric dashes in to secure a reservation for a late lunch. I was skeptical at first but now, standing here, I’m glad he suggested the afternoon off.

  What I’m gazing at looks just a postcard, it’s that beautiful. People are dining on a grassy lawn that slopes down through a thicket of blueberry bushes on its way to the body of water beyond. Alaric said it was a pond, but it looks more like a lake to me. The pond is surrounded by woods; two hilly peaks rise up at the far end.

  Everything is a deep, rich jewel green. And the air is fresh, tinged with pine. I think it’s probably the cleanest air I’ve ever breathed.

  “Ready?”

  I feel a hand settle on my shoulder and I turn to see a smiling Alaric. If he were anyone else, this would be a lovely place for a romantic afternoon. I need to guard against being attracted to him, or more attracted to him than I already am. This thing with him is just a job. I have to remember that.

  Granted, the unusual nature of the job encourages a certain degree of intimacy but it’s a false intimacy. If I think I’m actually getting to know Alaric White, I’m fooling myself. When his book is done, my employment will be over and he’ll hire someone new for the next book.

  Just because I hate the thought of that doesn’t change the fact of it. Probably every single one of his research assistants fall in love with him to some degree. How could they not?

  We set out on the path that meanders around the pond. The trail is flat, so flat that I wouldn’t characterize what we’re doing as hiking. More like just walking.

  “I didn’t really need boots for this trail,” I say after awhile. “My sneakers would have been okay.”

  We’ve been walking side by side and Alaric reaches over and takes my hand in his. Oh please don’t do that. The feel of his fingers lacing into mine sends a shockwave straight to my heart.

  “Do you like hiking, in general?” he asks.

  “Yes. My mom and I used to hike the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. Before she got sick.”

  “Then we’ll go another day, too. Maybe try a harder trail.”

  “I could have bought my boots then. You didn’t have to“

  He stops walking and tugs me to a stop. His free hand cups my cheek and I fight the urge to close my eyes and lean in to his touch.

  “I wanted to buy the boots for you.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  His thumb presses down on my lips, stopping my words. “They’re a gift, Caterine. And getting to look at your pretty legs in them is recompense enough.”

  Don’t read more into it, I tell myself as we continue our walk. He’s a writer. Saying things like that comes naturally to him. As we round the head of the pond, he speaks again.

  “Do you miss your mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “I miss mine, too.” He squeezes my hand gently.

  “How is your father doing?” I feel suddenly boorish for not inquiring after his father’s health sooner. He told me back in Virginia that his father is dying.

  “The same.”

  “Shouldn’t you, uh, be with him? Or visit him?”

  “We’re not close.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a long story, and a long story that would ruin our lovely walk. So let’s not talk about it.”

  I wrack my brain for alternate topics of conversation. It’s scary, really, how little I know about this man holding my hand. I know more about the private school where I interviewed for a job and was turned down than I know about Alaric White.

  Having grown up in Pennsylvania, I know of White Chocolate of course. But I’d always had a childish vision of the White family as being fusty old people. With maybe an eccentric character or two, like Willie Wonka.

  Instead, there is drop-dead gorgeous Alaric White, who is certainly eccentric in his own way. And has much better hair than Willie Wonka.

  “Do you still eat your family’s chocolate?”

  He chuckles and brings my hand up to his lips. He kisses it before replying. “No. I’m not much of a chocolate lover.”

  “How can you not love chocolate?”

  “It reminds me of my family. And I don’t come from a happy family.”

  I have no idea who my father was. My mother had been the entirety of my family. Still, I can say I had a happy family, while it was alive.

  When we make it all the way around the pond and back to the Pond House restaurant, we settle in at a wooden table on the lawn. I close my eyes to better enjoy the feel of the sun and cool breeze on my arms and face. Around me is the happy buzz of people enjoying a meal outside with friends or family. Children laugh and romp through the blueberry bushes.

  I feel at peace. I can’t remember the last time I felt so at peace. Maybe never.

  When I open my eyes, Alaric is leaning his chin on his hands and studying me. His face is neutral, a poker face. I wish I knew what he was thinking. I always feel off balance around him.

  “Thank you for bringing me here,” I say.

  “My p
leasure.”

  “It was good to get …” I let the breeze carry away my thought. He might take what I almost said the wrong way.

  “To get away from all the sex?”

  Well. Apparently, the breeze had carried my thought straight to his brain. I feel my face grow hot.

  “It’s okay to need a break, Caterine. I know you’re not like the other women I’ve hired in the past. You’re not someone whose identity is built around her ability to be sexually enticing to men.”

  I’m not sure what my identity is. At my age, isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing? Figuring out who I am?

  “Well, I guess that was part of the reason why I took this job. I want to learn to be more … enticing.”

  “I didn’t say you weren’t sexually enticing,” Alaric says, his voice low and determined. “I said your identity isn’t built around it. You are extremely enticing.”

  I shoot him a dubious look. I’m not ugly. I’m not falsely modest about that. I imagine that if you asked random men on the street to rate my attractiveness, they’d say I’m pretty enough. But then they would always choose another, prettier woman to speak to, ask out, seduce.

  That’s been my experience, anyway.

  “I didn’t fire Sim from this book because he was too much for you.” Alaric plucks a popover from the basket the waitress has just delivered. He tears it in two and holds out one half to me. “I fired him because I couldn’t stand to watch him touching you. I couldn’t stand to watch you touching him. Every second he was inside you, I wanted to kill him for it.”

  He tears off a chunk of popover with his teeth and watches me closely—darkly—while he chews.

  “I’ve never fired him from a book before,” he swallows and goes on. “It never bothered me to watch him with my assistants before.”

  “You never slept with any of them?”

  “A few. But not often. It still didn’t bother me to watch them with Sim.”

  “But it bothers you to watch me with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? I mean, besides the fact that I obviously have no idea what I’m doing.”

  Something flares in his eyes, something even I recognize as dangerous. He runs a hand through his breeze-ruffled hair.

  “Why did you take this job?” he asks. “Besides the money, I mean.”

  “Well, the money was a lot of it.” He hasn’t answered my question. “But it was also, you know, the …”

  “The sex?”

  I nod.

  “Why would a nice girl like you agree to a job that entails having sex with two—largely amoral—men?”

  “I need the experience. So when I do have a boyfriend, I’ll know better what to do.”

  Alaric stares off into the distance, his expression clouded.

  “But that side of the job didn’t pan out.” I laugh, trying to lighten the mood. “You fired Sim and you’re not interested in having sex with me.”

  In a flash, Alaric pins me with his gaze. “Every time we are in my office together, I want to throw my laptop across the room and just fuck you senseless, Caterine.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “Because that’s not the job I promised you. I told you the job included acting out sex scenes. It doesn’t include screwing your boss all the time. I don’t want you to feel that I misled you.”

  It looks like he wants to say more but the waitress takes that exact moment to show up with our bowls of tomato bisque. I pick up my spoon.

  Do I want to hear more? Do I want to know that this gorgeous man who has been with so many women—women surely far more beautiful than me—wants to fuck me senseless?

  And do I want to know that he has no intention of acting on it? I wish those words had never slipped from my mouth and started us down this conversational path.

  “Forget I brought this up, please.”

  “Caterine. It was on my mind before we got here. It’s on my mind all the fucking time. Wanting you is driving me insane.”

  It’s still early when we get back to Alaric’s house, even with the trip into Bar Harbor for ice cream after lunch. We haven’t returned to the topic of him wanting me. I am glad of that.

  His reasons make sense. I’m his employee. I was hired to do a job and we have been doing that job. We did several scenes together, and none of those scenes involved Charles inside of Erica.

  It’s just that right now Erica is dying for Charles to be inside her.

  I get out of the BMW as soon as it stops next to the house. I am hurrying toward the door, when I turn.

  “Thanks for lunch.” I look down at my feet. “And the boots.”

  He smiles. “My pleasure. And thank you for the ice cream.”

  I turn back toward the door but somehow he manages to get there first. He walks me upstairs to my room, which is oddly date-like and entirely unnecessary. I know my way around the house by now. We stop at the door to the guest room.

  I glance up at him and see the idea of a kiss in his eyes. I drop my own eyes to his lips—bad idea—then to the indentation at the base of his throat.

  God, I want him to kiss me the way he did in his office the day of the disastrous blowjob scene with Sim. He had pulled me onto his lap and kissed me like I’ve never been kissed before. I know it would mean nothing, like it had meant nothing the first time. But my lips ache for it anyway.

  Instead, he leans in and brushes his lips over my jaw. “Back to work first thing in the morning?”

  I nod and go inside my room, where I immediately collapse back onto the door I just closed. I shouldn’t feel this way, feel like his kiss on my jaw has set every nerve in my body aflame.

  After I get my breathing under control, I stumble over to the bed, unlace the new hiking boots, and lie down. My emotions should not be all in a jumble over Alaric White.

  He has been very clear about where we stand. There is nothing to be confused about. I work for him. He is paying me. He has a surfeit of charm and charisma that he directs indiscriminately at everyone. I am no different. Nothing special.

  Stop thinking this is more than it is.

  34

  Alaric

  I can’t sleep. It’s three in the morning and I’m wide awake in bed, rereading the scene that Caterine wrote. The idea of Charles’ dreams colliding with reality that way is genius. Not to mention, fucking hot. I’m hard just reading it.

  I wanted to kiss her that afternoon. I wanted to go into her room with her and take her to bed. That was why I walked her all the way to the room in the first place.

  What is going on with me? I never think about women twenty-four-seven like this. I don’t need to. When I want a woman, I go out and get one. I satisfy my urges, then go back to thinking about my books.

  I don’t want a woman right now. I want Caterine.

  Maybe she’s still awake. We could talk. I like talking with her. She’s smart, though very careful about what she reveals to me. Which, of course, only inflames my need to know more about her.

  I pad softly down the hall to her room, glad once again that I did not bunk her in the carriage house with Sim. When I try the doorknob to her room, I find it unlocked. She’s entirely too trusting. I slip inside and softly shut the door behind me.

  She’s asleep and I stand next to the bed for a long moment, debating. I know what the right thing to do is. The right thing is to go back to my own room. But the memory of sleeping next to her the other night is like a siren’s sweet call. I crawl into bed behind her and kiss her hair, her ear, her neck until she begins to stir.

  “Alaric?” Her voice is sleepy and raspy.

  “Mmm.” I nuzzle her neck and drape my arm over her. She is so warm and soft next to me. Tantalizing.

  “Is everything okay?” she asks.

  “Fine, sweetheart.” I pull her a little closer.

  “Then what do you want?”

  What do I want? I want plenty of things, and at the moment all of them involve this woman. My mind drifts back to
what I was doing in my room, reading the scene she had written. That’s what I want. Caterine coming on top of me the way Erica had come on Charles.

  “Do that to me,” I whisper. “Act out the scene you wrote.”

  She turns in my arms, her sleepy eyes now wide awake. I roll onto my back and watch her, waiting to see what she will do. I know she likes to be in charge. She showed me that back in the hotel in Virginia when she’d given me the most amazing blow job ever.

  But every time she has taken the reins, it was about giving me pleasure. I want her to give herself pleasure tonight, using my body.

  “You have to close your eyes,” she says quietly.

  I immediately do as she asks. If only she realized how little there is that I won’t do if it’s her doing the asking. I feel her hand soft on my cheek, then feel her warm breath in the instant before her lips press onto mine.

  Slowly I kiss her back, tasting her lips, enjoying the way she opens up to me. I deepen the kiss as I pull her on top of me. I’m wearing just thin cotton pajama pants and the feel of her bare legs tangled in mine has me hard and aching immediately.

  “Should I take this off?” she breaks the kiss to ask, plucking at the shoulder of the tee shirt she’d been sleeping in. “Erica wasn’t wearing anything in the scene.”

  “Then yes.”

  I run my hands beneath the shirt and pull it over her head. I suck in a breath as she resettles her now nude body back on mine. In all of the scenes we’ve done together, in the hotel in Virginia, we haven’t been this close—body to body, skin to skin. I can barely breathe for the sheer pleasure of it.

  I splay my fingers over her ass and pull her against my throbbing cock. The moan from her lips matches my own. I rock my hips beneath her, rubbing the hardness of my erection against the softness between her legs.

  “Oh god, Caterine. I’m not going to last.”

  “Me either.”

  She grinds herself against me and it takes every ounce of restraint on my part not to shove my pants down and thrust myself into her. That’s where I want to be, buried deep in the wetness that’s soaking my pajamas. But this is about her. About Erica taking what Charles feels he can’t give her.