by Moriah Jovan
He lowered his head, almost kissing her, but not quite. He studied her and she studied him.
“Welcome to my other world, Eilis Logan,” he whispered, his words arousing her to such a degree as she had never imagined words—and so few!—could do, “my world of decadence and hedonism and Bacchanalian pleasures. I’ll give you the best the world has to offer in music, wine, food, literature, and the arts; the finest silks, the deepest velvets, the smoothest cottons, the roughest linens, the loveliest furs; the most splendid gardens, the sweetest of flowers, the most fragrant of oils.
“Today, tonight, for the next few lifetimes, you’re here in my studio, my bed, my world, a world where only fine things live. I’ll teach you every wonderful thing about sex and love and fucking that you never knew existed.” His whisper became a breath. “But the finest, most decadent, most perfect thing in my world is you.”
“Sebastian,” she whispered when finally he kissed her.
* * * * *
67: DULCISSIME
Eilis had been drugged and that drug was Sebastian Taight.
He brought her chocolate and strawberries, exquisite cheeses and breads and wines, grapes and oranges and tropical fruits of every type—and fed them to her, caressed her body with them, squeezed the juices into the most sensitive areas on her body and licked it all up. Lazy. Slow. Hot.
He brought her champagne that she drank straight from the bottle, then shared with him in a kiss. He poured it over her belly and sipped from her navel.
He brought her absinthe and they shared it in glasses that were a hundred years old. He taught her how to pour ice water over the sugar cube cradled in absinthe spoons that were at least as old as the glasses.
He brought her mint chocolate chip ice cream and he drizzled it at the apex of her thighs, in her “nooks and crannies,” then leisurely licked it off, all the while whispering to her that mint chocolate chip ice cream was her name, and he said her name over and over again, reverently, like a whisper on a breeze.
He read to her from the Song of Solomon, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Ovid, The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, Fanny Hill, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Delta of Venus, Sextus Propertius.
He whispered to her in French when he made love to her.
He played for her all the operas of Puccini and Rossini, and Don Giovanni and Faust and Carmen; he played for her Rachmaninoff, deBussy, Smetana, and Orff. He played for her Gershwin and murmured in her ear of the things he had done and seen as an American in Paris. He made love to her to Delibes, “The Flower Duet” and again to Albinoni, “Adagio in G minor” and again to Liszt, “Sospiro.”
He brought her exquisite, delicate oils of jasmine and orange blossom that he rubbed into her skin, every square millimeter, every pore, and where he oiled, he kissed.
He brought her a blindfold and, while she was blinded, he drank from her the nectar of the gods.
He slid strawberries up inside her, then ate them before sliding in himself and loving her.
There was only one thing Eilis could do for him that he had never had a good experience with, and she was shocked when he told her.
“I spent my life learning how to give,” he murmured to her once she’d swallowed everything he gave her and rose above him to then settle beside him, lying half atop him, her legs entwining with his. “I was under the impression that wasn’t something women wanted to do, so I didn’t ask and the only volunteers didn’t make it worth my while. I didn’t figure I was missing anything. Silly me.”
She didn’t know how long she’d been with him in that dimly lit bed of velvet and silk, cotton and chiffon, in the corner of an equally dim alcove. There were no windows, no sense of day or night, no clocks, no sound except the music and the ventilation system, and absent that, the gasps and cries of their own passion.
They made love and slept in the bed whenever they felt like it; they took meals and drank the absinthe in that hedonistic red and gold salon she now realized was rife with sexual imagery; they showered in that sparkling white bathroom that had its own stark sensuality. It seemed Sebastian had an endless supply of clean sheets.
The fourth time they’d changed the linens, he said, “I like to eat in bed, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
She’d laughed in sheer delight.
Time had stopped.
Sebastian slept very little, she noticed, and certainly not on any pattern she could discern.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked when she awoke slowly to find that he was, again, awake.
“I’m thinking about the present I got you at Christmas.”
Her brow wrinkled. “Why didn’t you give it to me at Christmas, then?”
“Look,” he whispered as he pulled a pair of black French silk stockings out of a small box she hadn’t seen. Her eyes grew wide and her juices began to flow, hot and thick, like lava. “And this,” he said as he let a black silk garter belt dangle from his fingers. “And these.” The highest pair of fine silk sling-back heels she had ever seen. “Go sit in that chair. I want to watch you put them on.”
She put the garter belt on as she sashayed across the room to the deep chair, looking over her shoulder at Sebastian, who had the look and tension of a hungry wolf about him.
She sat facing him and rolled the stocking over her thumbs, then raised her leg. She slid the first one over her skin slow, languid, because she had nothing to be shy about now. She carefully rolled the next stocking up her leg, fastening it slowly, carefully to the garter belt. Once she’d finished rolling both stockings over her legs, she leaned back and spread her knees so that he could see everything between her thighs.
He sucked in a long, shuddering breath.
Lifting her leg high again, she put one shoe on, then repeated the process for the other foot. Then, standing, she modeled her new clothes, coming close enough for him to barely touch, then prancing out of reach once again. Sebastian sighed. He sat on the edge of the bed, then, his legs splayed out. He lay back until his torso was supported by one elbow. He grasped his hard cock in his hand and he slowly stroked himself while he watched her strut around in front of him with an intensity that made her even wetter.
So she sat and threw one knee over the arm of the chair, then the other knee over the other arm. She put a hand between her legs. Sebastian sucked in a deep breath, his eyes wide.
Eilis felt her own hand do to herself what she had done a thousand times before, what Sebastian had done to her almost that many times. She watched as his hand moved faster and faster, but Eilis decided she needed to be filled. She abruptly got up from the chair, pushed Sebastian roughly onto his back, straddled him, and slid down his cock, making them both groan in ecstasy.
And she fucked him, her legs strengthened by years of gardening and who-knew-how-many days of unrelenting sex. She felt every rub of every fine rib of her silk stockings between her skin and his. She didn’t go to bed without them on again.
Sebastian painted her as he would have painted her to begin with. Languid and dissolute from his lavish debauchery, she called up her own sexuality over and over again while he painted her.
“That,” he murmured to her when he’d finished, “is not getting hung anywhere but our bedroom.”
Our bedroom?
“Is that our bedroom?” she asked, pointing to the Den of Iniquity as he drew her up, twirled her around, and walked her backward.
“Do you want it to be?”
“We’re both rich,” she murmured as he slammed her up against the studio wall. “We’d never have to work again.”
“Ah,” he said as he stroked slowly in and out, her legs wrapped around his hips, “but I need the numbers and the game as much as I need the art; I won’t stay sane without both. And you, who’ve had to work and scrabble for everything you’ve built, would become very, very unhappy with this life soon enough and gardening alone wouldn’t fulfill you. Work without pleasure means nothing. Life without work means even less.”
“I’m bored with HRP,” she to
ld him breathlessly, tightening her legs to encourage a faster pace. “I want to do something different now.”
He obliged her, pounding into her until she came almost violently. “I’ve never been able to fuck a woman while talking business. I’ll never look at money the same way again.”
Some time after they had changed the sheets (again), showered, and slept, Sebastian took her to the magenta chaise and, his chest to her back, pressed her body forward until her hands found the carved wood on the back of the couch.
Eilis felt him slide slow, easy, inside her and she dropped her head down panting, bracing her body, preparing for the hard thrusts that she wanted but that didn’t come. His big hands wrapped around her, but his hips barely moved as he stroked her, long, slow strokes she could feel against her pubic bone.
She had no idea what he was doing to her; this wasn’t like anything she’d experienced before. She loved this, she couldn’t deny it, but it was foreign—the sensations were different. It felt richer, deeper in its subtle and never-ending buildup. He slid one hand down and around to her clitoris, but instead of manipulating it, his hand cupped the whole of her mons and pressed her firmly back toward him and then she understood.
Eilis came as slow and easy as he was stroking her, filling her, sandwiching her pubic bone between his cock and his hand. She raised her head and breathed deeply, pulling all the air into her lungs that she could, which only deepened this burgeoning . . . thing . . . that she never knew existed.
She sighed as it went on and on, never quite satisfying her but not wanting to let go, until at once her legs trembled. It didn’t burst so much as bloom and make her feel like she had had an epiphany. She clenched around him and pressed back against him for more, more.
Sebastian pushed back hard enough to make her cry out as her body gave her what he had promised. He began to move then, both hands back on her hips, pulling her to him, thrusting into her the way she’d expected to begin with.
And as his strokes got shorter and harder, faster and more urgent, she came again, the way she’d expected the first time, with flash and energy and the lovely, familiar sensations in all the familiar places.
He buried himself in her and shuddered as he came, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hips and pulling her back to him as he emptied himself inside her.
“What was that?” she breathed.
“That,” he replied, hushed, “is the elusive and infamous G-spot. It’s what I wanted to do to you the night you came here to Ford. I wanted to make love to you so badly that night, Eilis, to tell you it was just me, tell you I loved you. I was afraid you’d be disappointed that it was just me, that I wasn’t the man in your head.”
“I’m so sorry, Sebastian,” she breathed. “I—”
He put his fingers over her mouth. “Don’t. We both made mistakes, but we’re here now, so it’s all good.”
They awakened when footsteps sounded overhead and came down the stairs to the studio. Sebastian’s mouth curled in a wicked smile, his eyes still closed.
“How long have we been here, Sebastian?” Eilis asked, curled up against him, his arm around her.
“I have no idea.”
“How did they get in the house?”
“Knox and Giselle, a few more of my cousins, are free to come and go as they please. They have codes for the keypad at the front door.”
“Is this a sign that we’ve been missed and need to get back to our lives?”
“I’m guessing yes. Or else they want to use the bed.”
Eilis laughed. “Perhaps you should padlock the studio door.”
It was only a minute or two before a woman’s voice rang out. “I found them.” Then, “It’s been a week and a half, you two. Wall Street burned you both in effigy three days ago. And Sebastian? Air this place out. Even the turpentine can’t cover the smell.”
Sebastian only chuckled and raised his voice above a murmur for the first time in days. “All right,” he croaked. “Get us some clothes.”
Not long after that Eilis heard the thwack of clothes on the floor at the foot of the staircase.
A long, slow shower and an even longer exchange of oil massages, all the while snickering and laughing at the thumps and squeals, giggles and groans directly overhead.
“Freaks,” Sebastian muttered with a wry chuckle.
Eilis’s jeans were loose, surprising her; she’d not really noticed how her body had changed since Sebastian had cleaned out her refrigerator.
He noticed, however, and quirked an eyebrow at her, unhappy about that state of affairs. “I’m going to have to take you to Subway twice a week for the next few weeks,” he groused as he followed her up the stairs. “How much have you lost?”
“I don’t know.”
“Too much is how much. I wanted you to stop going hungry, not lose weight.”
“So you made very clear,” she said with a chuckle, unexpectedly pleased with both her weight loss and the fact that he’d rather she have more padding.
It was nine o’clock in the evening. Which evening, Eilis didn’t know; Giselle and Bryce still hadn’t emerged from wherever they had gone.
Eilis heard a loud gasp, then a moan from behind the other door in the corridor.
“Deviants!” Sebastian yelled as he pounded on the door, then led the way up to the kitchen.
Eilis helped Sebastian scrounge leftovers from their retreat from society. Strawberries. Flat champagne, which he made her drink and she did, straight from the bottle. Exquisite chocolate that he fed her, then followed with deep kisses so that they could share it.
The Virgin and her husband emerged from the bedroom while she and Sebastian kissed. They were rumpled and breathless, but jovial. “You guys inspired us,” she said as she bumped Sebastian out of the way of the refrigerator with her hip, uncaring that Sebastian had his tongue in Eilis’s mouth. Her husband came up behind her, reached between her legs, and squeezed. She screeched and hit her head on the freezer door.
Everybody laughed except Giselle, who rubbed her head and pouted.
“Well, Sebastian,” she finally said as she snatched berries from Eilis and leaned back against Bryce, who wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on the top of her head. “I guess you managed to spring the news on her without her keeling over.” He rolled his eyes.
Eilis had something to say. “I want to thank you so much for your kindness that week.”
“You needed it,” Giselle murmured with a warm smile. “I get the feeling you haven’t had a lot of TLC in your life.”
Somewhere down deep inside, Eilis’s soul hurt, because she didn’t know she’d missed it until it was pointed out to her. Sebastian pulled her into his arms. She dug her nose into his shoulder and smelled him: one part soap, one part him, one part turpentine. After she’d collected herself, she turned to look at Giselle again and whispered, “No. Not like that, no. Never. You were my mother.”
There were tears in Giselle’s eyes and her mouth trembled. Eilis didn’t think she could have spoken without letting it all out.
“What day is it, anyway?” Sebastian asked.
“Sunday,” Bryce said. “We wouldn’t have bothered you at all, but late Friday, the SEC approved a buy order Fen had made for HRP.” Eilis’s gut clenched and her eyes widened. She felt Sebastian’s huff of impatience. How soon their time together had come to an end. “On the other hand,” he added, “I took it upon myself to match him share for share. The SEC just cut me off at the knees with OKH, so Jack’s been putting whatever he can find into Eilis’s account. Kevin’s campaign is getting national coverage now and Oth’s former anti-Taight buddies are refusing to talk about you at all. What with OKH and now HRP wrapped up in it, people are making connections left and right. At this moment, the whole country’s just sitting back, eating popcorn, and enjoying the fireworks. The Journal actually called us Pendergast Friday, so you owe me ten bucks.”
Sebastian grinned. “Well, that only means I’m not the only thug in t
his room now.”
Bryce barked a laugh, and Eilis looked at him, sorry that she had eavesdropped on them, sorry that she had thought so badly of the way he and Giselle expressed their love for each other. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Bryce shrugged. “No skin off my nose. I don’t like bullies.”
“He didn’t count on you joining up,” Sebastian said. “Some days I wonder where that man’s long-term planning went. How much OKH has Jack gotten for Eilis?”
“Two percent. I got another four before I got shut down.”
Sebastian’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. That much! OKH stock’s getting a little sparse around the trading floor now.”
“Jack can wring blood out of a turnip. Fen’s got thirteen percent of HRP and I’m there with him at thirteen.” He laughed again, and Eilis watched him carefully, beginning to understand what Giselle saw in his face; the beauty of a warrior’s battle scars, the mark of not only survival, but utter dominance.
Where Bryce was Ares, though, Sebastian was Dionysus, the god of wine, bringing an end to care and worry. “I’ve been enjoying myself and entertaining my interns and juniors with this all week long. They’re getting quite an education. I bought you as much time as I could before I figured you should be rousted out of your honeymoon for business tomorrow.”
“Let me get this straight. You have ten percent of OKH and Eilis has two percent.”
Bryce nodded.
“I have twenty-three,” Sebastian said, “so thirty-five percent amongst us. Fen controls fifty-one percent himself, which means his board and employees probably own the other fourteen percent.”
“They’re bailing.”
“It’s about damned time. Well, I think we can sit on that and wait him out another year and a half. Are you up for going to shareholder meetings now?”
Bryce chuckled wickedly. “I’m all for the games. I vote Eilis comes too.”
“Yes! Oh, yes! I would love to!”
“It’s the HRP we’ve got to concentrate on now,” Sebastian said to Bryce. “How much more can you get?”