by Gemma Weir
“Mr. Lexington, Miss Archibald, Mr. Hilborn, Mr. Windsor, Mr. Montgomery, right this way please,” he says, lifting the rope and stepping aside so we can walk past him.
Wats steps forward taking the lead, then I drop my arm from Tally’s shoulders, guiding her ahead of me with a hand at the base of her spine. “You ready for this?” I ask her quietly.
“No,” she says, shaking her head.
Laughing, I press a kiss to the top of her shoulder as we reach the club greeter who politely asks us to wait while the guests ahead of us traverse the red carpet.
“Are we all going in as a group?” Wats asks quietly so the greeter can’t hear us.
“Yeah, united front, Tally in the middle,” I tell him, scanning my eyes over to Olly and Carson, waiting for their nod of agreement.
“We’re ready for you now,” the greeter informs me, and I nod as Wats moves forward. Tally reaches behind her grabbing my hand and entwining her fingers with mine tightly, and I can’t help the grin that spreads across my face.
I take the lead, and she follows behind me as we step onto the carpeted club entrance, the wall behind us plastered with the club’s logo, as a sea of photographers shout for our attention.
These aren’t the common celebrity paps. These are the photographers that take pictures of New York’s elite, the wealthy socialites that call this town home. They know who we are, and I even recognize some of them from galas and events I’ve attended in the past.
“Hey, Carrigan, this way.” One of them shouts.
“Wrong twin,” Olly says.
“Twin?” Another photographer shouts.
I part my lips to tell them who she is, but she beats me to it, pressing herself against my body and looking up at me adoringly, before she turns and addresses the clambering hoard of cameras. “I’m sure you’ve all heard of my twin sister, Carrigan, but I don’t think you’ll have heard of me. My name is Tallulah Archibald and although I’ve been out of the spotlight for a few years, recently something happened that’s persuaded me to step back into the limelight.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I call loudly enough to be heard. “Let me introduce you to my fiancée,” I say, spinning her in my arms so her ring finger is visible to the cameras as I lift her hand to my lips and kiss it. She giggles and then throws herself into me, rising up onto her tiptoes and pressing her lips to mine.
The cries of the photographers become a cacophony of noise, the voices melding together to be nothing more than one long scream. When Tally pulls back, she curls herself around my body as the guys all crowd around us and we take picture after picture, letting the world know not only that she’s mine, but that the guys have her back too. The wealth, prosperity, and influence that our group will yield the moment we come of age is something no one who understands our world can ignore, and the fact that it’s Tallulah in my arms, not Carrigan, is going to set our world alight.
The noise of the club feels quiet in comparison to the frenzy of the red carpet, and when we enter the VIP area, I sigh in relief. The hostess shows us to a high table and Tally takes a seat at one of the stools. A server arrives almost immediately to take our drinks orders. “Champagne to celebrate, or cocktails to really celebrate?” I ask.
“Cocktails,” Wats says, listing off exactly how he’d like his Manhattan to be made.
“What do you want, baby?” I ask Tally, my palm on the back of her neck.
“A Long Island iced tea please. The one Olly made me earlier was delicious,” she says, not trying to get away from my touch like I’d expected.
The guys order their own drinks and I add my Old Fashioned onto the order before the server quickly disappears into the crowd. “So how was it?” I ask, whispering into Tally’s ear.
“Loud,” she replies, a small smile tipping at the corner of her lip.
“You were great,” Olly praises and I fight the urge to punch him. He obviously has a thing for my ghost, and he needs to fucking stop. He might be my friend, but she’s mine, and if I have to, I’ll do whatever’s necessary to remind him of that.
The server returns, handing out our drinks and Tally smiles sweetly, thanking them before they disappear again. I watch as she takes a sip of her drink, then I take it from her hand and lower it to the table, pulling her from her seat. “Come dance with me.”
She somewhat reluctantly lets me guide her out onto the dance floor, just beyond the roped-off VIP section, and we’re immediately swallowed by the crowd of people. I pull her to me, holding her tight as we dance a little dirtily to the pounding base of the music.
When her arms lift to wrap around my neck, I slide one of my legs between hers and grind my thigh against the seam of the tiny black shorts she’s wearing. If she weren’t so close, I wouldn’t have heard the moan that slipped from her parted lips. Using my fingertip, I tilt her chin up and hover my lips an inch from hers.
“Kiss me,” I taunt her. “Not because people are watching, not because it’s all part of the act. Kiss me because your pussy is wet and needy. Kiss me because you want to, because you want me.”
It feels like hours before she lifts her mouth and presses it against mine, but once she does, I let go, kissing her back like she’s the only thing I can see in the world. We dance for a while longer, then when my dick is so hard I can barely think about anything but the steel bar beneath my jeans, I pull her from the dance floor and back into the VIP area, holding her in front of me to hide my very visible arousal.
The table we sat at when we arrived is empty, but I find the others surrounded by more of our friends on a table that’s framed by low booth seating. I sit down, pulling Tally onto my lap and she wiggles against my dick. “If you keep doing that, I’m going to have to take you to the bathroom and bend you over the sink,” I growl against her ear.
Her wiggling slows but doesn’t stop and I wonder if maybe she’s as fired up as I am. The server delivers us more drinks and I hand Tally her cocktail while I take a sip of my own. Our entire table is all underage, but another perk of being well known and wealthy, is that rules like legal drinking age just don’t apply to us.
Richard Pullsworth, a guy from school, is eyeing Tally speculatively and I lean forward, catching his eye. “You’ve met my fiancée, haven’t you, Richie?”
Tilting so far forward he almost falls out of his seat, Richie reaches for Tally’s hand, dramatically lifting it to his lips and pressing a kiss to the back of it. “I haven’t had the privilege, no. I’m Richard Pullsworth.”
“Tallulah Archibald,” Tally replies politely, pulling her hand free of his touch and entangling her fingers with mine at her waist.
“Fuck, so there really are two of you,” he says in his affected Yankie accent.
“That’s what happens with twins,” she shrugs.
Stifling a laugh, I bury my face into her shoulder. “Has everyone met Tally?” I announce, still smirking.
For the next couple of hours my little ghost charms everyone. She dances with Olly, Carson, and Wats, then I pull her back onto the dance floor again. I wind us both up, asking her to kiss me again and again, always pushing it to be her choice, and forcing her to admit that she wants me just as much as I want her.
By the time we climb back into our limo, I’m ready to fuck her on the floor. I’m pretty sure the others were ready to leave, but one look from me had them changing their minds and asking me to send the limo back for them in an hour.
The moment we’re settled into the seat, the door closed behind us, I grab the remote, lifting the privacy screen so we’re alone. Dragging her onto my lap to straddle me, I wrap my fingers around her neck and pull her onto my lips as she grinds herself against my dick.
“I want you,” I whisper.
She kisses me, her fingers burying themselves in my hair.
“Tally, what do you want?” I ask, needing her to admit it, to say the words.
She pauses for a moment, her tongue dipping out to wet her full lower lip. “I…” Her eyes dart
across my face, as if she’s searching for something, but all she’ll find is open, honest, want.
“I want you too,” she whispers.
It’s all I need. I flip her until she’s beneath me, finding the zipper on her shorts and pulling it down, dragging them off her a moment later. The black lacey thong she’s wearing is pure fucking perfection and I lick a path along her pussy lips tasting her arousal through the fabric.
I rip her top from her next, taking her nipple into my mouth the moment her breasts are free. Sliding my fingers between her legs, I feel the wetness that’s soaking her pussy and I smile. It doesn’t matter how much she tries to convince me this is all an act. This, her wet dripping cunt, tells me everything I need to know.
The fabric tears with ease and I run my fingers along her sex, coating them in her juices, before I slide two fingers into her pussy. She parts her legs instinctively, moving her hips in time with my hand as I fuck her with my fingers until she’s bucking against my palm, gasping and calling my name.
“How do you want me to fuck you?” I ask, my voice barely a rasp as her wide eyes look back at me. “Do you want it hard and fast, or slow and deep?”
“Both,” she moans, pulling at my shirt.
Pulling my fingers out of her, I slide one wet tip along her full, pouty bottom lip. “Taste how sweet you are.”
Her tongue tentatively licks across her lip and I smile, shrugging off my shirt and unzipping my pants to palm my rock-hard dick. “I want you to suck your cum off my fingers, then I’m going to eat your pussy until you scream. When we get home, I’m going to fuck you until one of us passes out.”
Her nod is wild and enthusiastic and so I move my fingers toward her, taking a lick, before she sucks them deep into her mouth and I just about lose my mind.
I wake up once again with her naked body wrapped around mine. She’s asleep, still exhausted after I fulfilled my promise to fuck her until she passed out. Tallulah fucking Archibald, my little ghost, is going to be the death of me. This doesn’t feel like a lie anymore, but I’m pretty sure I’m much further into this thing between us than she is. How the fuck do I put things right when they started so wrong?
I don’t think there’s ever been anything in my life that I’ve wanted and couldn’t have, and I refuse to let Tally be the first.
Thirteen
Tallulah
I wake up with Arlo’s dark head between my legs, his tongue lapping at my poor overused clit. “No,” I cry, grabbing a handful of his hair and pulling. “I can’t take any more. You broke my vagina and I need at least a couple of days to recover,” I shriek so loudly I’m pretty sure everyone in the house heard me.
“So, let me kiss it all better,” he says, looking up at me, his chin rested on my mound.
“No, leave me alone, you nympho,” I say, fighting and losing the battle with the giggle that breaks free.
“Just one more time, then I’ll give you a break,” he says, stroking his hand along my thigh as his tongue laps at me again.
“No, I came six times last night. I’m done. Your tongue feels like sandpaper and you wore my clit out. Go away.”
Sighing, he crawls up the bed and flops to his back dramatically, his erect cock swinging in the air. “What am I going to do about this if you won’t let me fuck you?” he says, waving his hand in the direction of his dick.
“Won’t it just go away if you start thinking about something not at all sexy?” I ask, giggling again.
“Or I could put it in your ass?” he asks hopefully.
“No,” I cry, shuffling away from him.
“I was kidding,” he laughs.
“No, you weren’t.”
“No, I wasn’t,” he laughs again. “But we’ll need to build up to that.”
“No. No we won’t, because that’s not happening,” I say loudly, as if saying it with more volume makes it extra true.
“You could give me a blowjob or let me fuck your tits.”
“Or you could go away and leave me alone. We have school tomorrow and I really need to turn my cell back on.”
It’s been exactly seven days since I ran from my parents’ house, seven days in which my entire life has changed, but it’s time to get back to reality. Tomorrow we have school and it’ll be the first time that I’ll see Carrigan since she helped me up to my room and told me to run and I have no idea how I feel about that.
She’s my sister, my identical twin, but apart from that one act of kindness, she’s been awful to me for years. She hasn’t shown me any sisterly affection, no compassion. She’s behaved as if I was nothing more than a convenient employee and that one moment of care doesn’t counteract all of the times she’s belittled or disregarded me.
Arlo’s playful demeanor changes and he shuffles further up the bed, pulling the covers over our naked bodies. “Do you think they will have tried to contact you?”
I shake my head. “I doubt it. More than likely Carrigan called in sick this week and so they haven’t needed me.”
“Where’s your cell?” he asks.
I point to the FedEx box sat on the dresser and he rolls his eyes, climbing out of bed and grabbing it, before settling himself back next to me. “Seriously, you didn’t even bother to set it up?” He says, pulling the iPhone out and quickly turning it on, tapping the screen several times before he glances at me.
“Do you want me to import your contacts from your old SIM?”
I shrug. “If you want, but there were only four numbers in there and three of them I never plan to contact again.”
“You only had four numbers in your cell?” he asks, pity lacing his words.
“Don’t feel bad for me,” I snap.
“I really fucking hate your family for what they did to you,” he snarls, pulling me close when I try to pull away. “I want to do more than make them lose that money. I want to ruin them.”
Scoffing lightly, I smile up at his handsome face. “They’ll always have money to fall back on. Taking this inheritance away is the best revenge I could ever reap on them.”
“There you go, welcome to the twenty first century,” he says handing me the fancy cell phone.
The moment my fingers wrap around it, it beeps and I look at it, then Arlo. “It’s a text,” he says.
Swiping the screen, I tap into the message, glancing at Arlo to find he’s staring at me.
“What?” I ask.
“Is that old Nokia your only cell phone?”
“Yes, why?”
“Well then, how do you know your way around an iPhone?”
Rolling my eyes, I chuckle. “I chose not to have a fancy cell phone. That doesn’t mean I’m technologically inept. I’ve had a smart phone before, but I enjoyed the simplicity of my old cell, it made me harder to contact.”
His eyes fall closed for a second as he shakes his head and I take a moment to appreciate how beautiful he really is. Classically handsome with a square jaw and dark features, he’s gorgeous, rich, and popular. I should be falling all over myself to spend time with him, not keeping him at arms length, because despite everything he’s done for me, I still don’t really trust his motives.
He hates my sister, hates my family, so what makes me different?
“Are you going to read that text, or do you plan on staring at me a little longer?” he asks, blinking his eyes open and smiling at me so honestly I have to swallow down a lump of emotion that forms in my throat.
Without realizing it, I’ve started to care for Arlo Lexington. I don’t think I’ve ever really cared for anyone outside of the toxic relationships I have with my family, but Arlo has managed to sneak past my defenses, even though he’s really the last person I want to have any lasting feelings for.
No matter what else we mean to each other, I’m still his ‘get out of jail free’ card. If he’s engaged to me, he can’t be forced into marrying my sister and until that becomes a nonissue how can I ever really believe his motives?
If my plan works and by forcing my
sister to actually live her own life, she fails to meet one of the wills stipulations, then he won’t need me anymore and I won’t need him either. We’ll have no reason to use each other and then the only ties that will be left are the honest and real ones. Until that day comes, I refuse to let my barriers down.
“Tally,” he calls, pulling me from my inner musing and forcing me back into reality.
“I could just ignore it,” I say, looking at him with hopeful eyes. “Whatever it says, it won’t be the word sorry, it won’t be them begging me to come home because they miss me. So maybe I should just delete it.”
“You can delete it if you want. You can block their numbers and I’ll have your back, but it might be worth knowing how they’re going to play this before we get to school in the morning. I can look at it if you want? If it’s hateful, I’ll just delete it and you never have to see it,” Arlo says, cupping my face in his huge palm.
Reluctantly, I look away from him and glance down at my cell, clicking into the message with stiff fingers.
Mom – You’re an Archibald and you are obligated to play your part in this family. This childish tantrum is over, and we expect things to be as normal on Monday morning.
A bark of bitter laughter rings from my lips as I read her words. Not a single word of apology, nothing acknowledging that both she and my dad attacked me, just a reminder that as an Archibald I have a role to play.
Dropping my cell to the comforter, I climb out of bed and pad naked to the bathroom. I should probably feel self-conscious, but I don’t. Arlo’s seen everything there is to see. Turning on the shower, I step under the spray and scream into it, letting the water wash the noise away as it rushes into the drain at my feet.
I’m almost expecting it when he turns me, pressing me against his chest. I haven’t once cried, not at all since my dad’s fist smashed into my face. But now I want to sob and scream and cry and destroy everything, because it’s not fair. It’s not fair that my family are horrible. It’s not fair that they hit me. It’s not fair that they’re not better people. It’s just not fair and I don’t want to be strong and pragmatic about it, I want to behave like a child and be sad, mad, and heartbroken about their rejection.