And Cal ruined every single slipper they wore.
Epilogue
Two Months Later
Cal
Cal caught the duffel bag easily and tossed it to the ground. He held up his hands to signal he was ready for more, and Tamsin leaned out of her window with her dance tote and dropped it down. That, plus a weekender bag and a pillow, and all of Tamsin’s worldly possessions were ready to be packed away in Cal’s car. He’d wanted nothing but this as early as eight weeks ago, the first weekend they’d met, but had respected her wish to stay until her successful audition with the American Ballet Theatre.
But finally, finally she was leaving, and instead of leaving on the train tomorrow like her father thought she was, she was sneaking out tonight with Cal. And he had one final surprise for her…if she wanted it.
Cal put her things in his car and came back to the window.
“Why don’t you come up here?” she asked in a low voice. “One last time?”
He wordlessly started climbing the tree; he knew the way into Tamsin’s room by heart now. Since their weekend at Persepolis, Cal had advised all the girls to stay in more often—Mistress Hell would protect them as much as she could, but a little caution would go a long way with a man like Purkiss. And they had cajoled and wheedled and touched him with butterfly hands to beg, and somehow he’d ended up agreeing to visit them on the nights they stayed in. They were insatiable, demanding, creative, and sweet, and after eight weeks of servicing all them, he understood Mistress Hell’s fascination with the dancers. They were like gifts from the gods of fucking, come to earth.
And Tamsin…Tamsin most of all.
Cal had assumed what happened that first weekend had been some kind of adventure for them, an experiment of sorts, and that even if there’d been no lasting harm done to Tamsin’s feelings, that it wouldn’t happen again. He was used to women who didn’t like to share after all, and he figured if a wife couldn’t share her husband with war, then this young girl couldn’t be expected to share him with eleven of her friends.
He’d deeply underestimated Tamsin. Tamsin and her obsessive craving for the wrong and the taboo in life. She loved nothing more than all of them playing together, she loved choreographing their orgies, debasing him and herself and everyone around them in delightful, ecstatic ways, and she came the hardest when she was the last one to fuck him. When she had him sweaty and raw and at the edge of his control. That’s how she liked him best.
Tonight wasn’t going to be elaborate or choreographed however. After he climbed up the tree and through the window, Tamsin nearly tackled him and pulled him to her pillow-less bed.
“I want it one last time here,” she breathed, hands on his zipper. She was in a tiny little nightgown and leg warmers and—Jesus—no panties. He ran his hands up her thighs, playing with the place where the leg warmers met bare skin.
“Just you and me,” he said, in a voice that brooked no argument. He loved fooling around with her friends—what red-blooded human wouldn’t?—but right now, with his surprise burning a hole in his back pocket, he only wanted her. He’d play whatever dirty games she wanted, but at the end of the day, it was Tamsin who had his heart. Tamsin he’d move heaven and earth just to be near.
And he damn well had.
“Yes,” she agreed, “just us.” Her warm hands found his stiffening cock and pulled it out, rubbing it up and down. “Can’t we do it without the condom?” she begged. “Just this once?”
“No,” he said, even though it felt like yes was the only word he could remember.
“Mmm,” she pouted, flipping up the hem of her nightgown to show off her pussy. She started rubbing the tip of him against her, getting it wet, slotting it inside her entrance and circling her hips and driving him mad.
“Just for a minute won’t hurt,” she said, batting her long, gold eyelashes up at him. “Just for a minute inside.”
His arms were shaking where he held himself above her. “Just for a minute,” he repeated. “No longer.”
Her eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Shh.” He put a hand over her mouth, because he wasn’t sure he could do this without coming immediately, and he especially wouldn’t be able to do it with Tamsin breathing naughty things in his ear. He closed his eyes and pushed inside.
There weren’t words for how good her pussy felt. Wet and hot, tight like a fist. Every nerve ending in his penis felt electrified, every sensation was magnified, every inch farther was like a new revelation from God. She moaned under his hand as he stretched and filled her, and once he sunk in to the hilt, he carefully lowered himself onto her, chest to chest, letting his hand fall away from her mouth so he could kiss her. And kiss her and kiss her.
He couldn’t wait to tell her, he decided. He wanted to tell her now, like this, when there was nothing separating them, no barrier, no distance, just the warm glide of them and their hearts beating so close.
“I’m moving to New York City,” he whispered against her mouth. “I got a place.”
Her lips parted underneath his, her hand reaching towards his face. “Really?” she asked, and her voice sounded so young then, so full of a hope and happiness that she hadn’t yet learned how to hide.
“Really. I’ve got a key for you in my back pocket. It can be your place too, if you want.”
“Yes,” she breathed. “I want that. I’ve been so miserable thinking we wouldn’t see each other as much as we wanted…”
“Remember what I said that night at Persepolis? With me. I want you with me, Tamsin, as long as you’ll let me close.”
“Yes,” she said, kissing the corners of his mouth, his jaw. “I want to be with you always.”
The words made him want to slump in relieved joy. “I like that you feel that way,” he said gruffly, trying not to bother her with how much he felt. He still wanted her to be able to change her mind, leave him if she got unhappy or realized how old he was or met some other dancer that could better meet her needs. He didn’t want to cage her, not his little music box girl, not when she was finally getting free.
Tamsin seemed to have other ideas. “Oh, you bear,” she laughed. “I love you. And I know you love me. There’s no need to be so stoic.”
I love you.
“Tamsin,” he groaned, burying his face into her neck. “I do love you. I love you too much, I think, than is good for you.”
“There’s no such thing as too much for me,” she purred, biting his earlobe. “I think we’ve already proved that many times over.”
With a low growl, he pulled out and reached for his wallet, rolling a condom on amid Tamsin’s mewling protests. And then he grabbed the headboard with one hand, using his other to guide himself back inside her. With her heels at the small of his back, he thrust inside, deep and hard, wrapping both hands around the edge of the headboard now to drive in harder and harder and harder.
Soon they’d be in his car together, driving off to their new life. Soon she’d be in his bed every night that she wanted to be there. Soon they would see how far love could carry them as she danced and he worked and they had to fight off every problem that came with being in the real world.
But for now, he was happy to pretend he was still in fairyland, still inside the dream. And when Tamsin came and he came a moment later, filling his condom with heavy jerks and pulses, he murmured promises in her ear until they were both sweaty and still. I love you and you’re with me and I’ll take care of you, princess, always, always, always.
His promises were real, vows weighted with age and experience, and Tamsin seemed to wrap herself up in them like she wrapped herself up in his arms. “And we are going to live happily ever after,” she murmured to him.
He smiled in the dark. “Ruined shoes and all.”
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I couldn’t see the man in the shadows. It was nothing but dark out here, and then there was the red flare of a cigarette to my left, and I stepped back. Embarrassed and shaking, I tripped over my shoes. “I didn’t think anyone was here. I’ll go—”
“Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t…what?”
“Don’t leave.” Just that. And I was getting bossed around plenty in the house behind me, but no one managed to do it so plainly. It was all dressed up in manners. I was wrapped in chains of politeness. I didn’t know what it said about my mental health, but I liked the fact that he didn’t ask. And he wasn’t polite.
This whole situation was fucking me up.
He didn’t step forward to introduce himself, and I stepped away from him keeping my name to myself, too.
“You were just about to do the fifty-yard dash in a ball gown,” he said.
“Not…really.”
“Then you weren’t about to scream, neither.”
“No.” The lie came easy. So quick. Second nature now.
“Bullshit.”
“You know, you could leave. Give me some privacy.”
His low laugh rippled out from the shadows, putting goosebumps up and down my arms. “Could I?”
“It would be polite.”
“I’m not much for polite,” he said and took another drag of his cigarette. “I like screaming better than running, though. Gets the blood up.”
“The blood up?” That sounded very Braveheart. Truthfully, I liked it.
“For fightin’ and the like.”
“I’m not much for fighting,” I said, and it was so true, so funny and true and awful all at the same time I had to put a hand over my mouth so a weird laugh/scream thing wouldn’t come tearing out of me. And my chance to run was years behind me.
He made some speculative sound in his throat. Which could be agreement or disagreement or some kind of mix of the two, and it hardly mattered. He hardly mattered. This moment on the patio hardly mattered.
It was why I was still standing there.
Everything inside, every word I said, every drink I had, every person who looked twice at me – all that mattered. It got rung up someplace and added to the price I had to pay.
And I just needed a minute.
“You all right?” He asked.
Terrified.
“You working the party?” I asked, changing the subject. It was always easier to talk about other people.
“You making small talk with the help?” His brogue was so thick it took me a second to make sure I got the words right.
“If that’s what you are, then yes.”
“Well, I’m not sure what I am, to be honest with you.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“In that dress, sweetheart, you are not the help.”
I pressed my hands to the skirt of my ball gown, gold embroidery and sequins over blush gossamer netting. I felt naked under all the layers, if I was being honest.
“You look beautiful,” he said, like he could see my doubts.
“Thank you.” The compliment bounced off me. When people called my sister beautiful, she cut off all her hair and painted her face. Me? I said thank you and did what they asked of me.
“It came in a box,” I said, stupidly. “Like in the movies. A box with a big red bow.”
“Proof that you shouldn’t be out here with me, Princess,” he said.
He was right. 100%. There were people inside who, if they found out what I was doing, would be pissed. But the rest of my life was going to be spent trying to not piss those people off, this might be the very last second I had for myself.
“Are you a Morelli?” I asked.
“A who?”
“A member of the Morelli family.”
The worst thing he could be was a Morelli. He could be a murdering son of a bitch, and being a Morelli would still be worse. Elaine, Caroline’s daughter, got caught up with Lucian Morelli at Tinsley’s birthday, and it was as if she’d fucked the devil himself.
This guy wasn’t the devil. He was a waiter having a smoke. And I wasn’t a Constantine. I wasn’t even going to be a Waverly for much longer.
“No, I’m not a Morelli,” he said.
“Then we’re okay.” The night seemed to breathe. The party sounds faded. The scream in my chest was gone.
We’re okay.
“Why are you out here?” he asked.
“There are a lot of answers to that question,” I laughed.
“You always go for a run during a party?”
“I do,” I nodded. “I’m in training.”
“For ball gown racing?”
“Yes, it’s a very obscure event. But I’m ranked.” I was being ridiculous. The nerves were making me ridiculous, and I was only ever ridiculous with my sister.
“National or international?” Oh, he was playing along. It made me want to cry for missing my sister.
“International, of course.”
My feet were cold and naked in the grass, so I put on the shoes.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked.
“I haven’t been invited inside yet.”
“Really?”
“No.”
That did make me laugh. I liked this shadow Irishman with the quick wit, and maybe it was the grass I could still feel between my toes or that my world was coming down around me in ways I couldn’t stop, but the truth just came out of me.
“Adolescent on-set schizophrenia. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m… everything.”
It was wild to say that out loud. We never talked about it. We never gave the words air or sound. Or light. They lived in shadows, dark and unsaid. Alone and festering.
From the shadows he held a flask. “Here. You look like you could use a drink.”
“I shouldn’t,” I said. I needed to be clear. Sharp. Tonight was like throwing myself into a sea of piranhas. For the rest of my life.
“Your hands are shaking.”
Honestly, I couldn’t see him. At all. The glow of that cigarette, the gleam off the flask and the white of his shirt at his wrist. He had nice hands. A jagged scar ran along the side of his thumb down to his wrist.
“What happened?” I asked, and I couldn’t believe it myself, but I touched his hand. My fingertip brushed the raised pink skin of the scar. The insanity of that made me light-headed, and I quickly took the flask. I cupped it in my cold shaking fingers like a flame.
“Jumped out a window,” he said, flexing his fingers out wide and then curling them into a fist. “My hand got caught on an eaves-shoot. Tore it open, like.”
“Why’d you jump out a window?”
“Because someone who wanted to hurt me was coming in the door.” He said it like a joke.
I took a sip from the flask. The booze burned down my throat and exploded in warmth in my belly, and I gasped. Another sip and the same effect until I could feel my feet and my fingers. Another sip, and my face was warm. Yep. This was what a person needed for a few minutes before jumping into the pool of piranhas. To feel alive. Warm. Bloody and real.
And another sip, the flask lighter in my hand.
“Slow down there,” he said and took the flask from me. His fingers didn’t touch mine, but I could still feel the heat of them. “I reckon you haven’t eaten.”
“That,” I said. “Is a fair point.” When was the last time I’d eaten? Last night? Two days ago? I couldn’t remember being hungry or full. It felt like I was very tiny inside of my body.
From the shadows around him came one of the china plates from inside. There was cheese there. Little qui
ches. Asparagus in prosciutto. “Have something,” he offered.
“What else have you got over there?” I joked.
“You probably don’t want to know. But if you’re hungry.” The plate came closer. I reached for a piece of cheese but in the end didn’t touch it. My stomach was in knots.
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Suit yourself.” The plate disappeared, and I was suddenly ravenous.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“What makes you think I’m not from here?”
Laughter again. But this time, thanks to the flask, it didn’t hurt. It didn’t sound half like a scream.
“Something about your voice.”
“Northern Ireland.”
“Belfast?” That was the only town I knew in Northern Ireland.
“Eventually. Derry, too. I was born in a cow pasture you never heard of.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
He sighed, and I tried again to see him in the shadows, but they were too dark. Too complete. “Five hours.”
“I meant the States.”
“So do I. I flew into LaGuardia five hours ago.”
“And you’re here? At this party?”
“Do you know Caroline Constantine?”
“I do,” I thought with a laugh. My mom’s best friend and a fairy godmother out of the dark when my dad died. We were in her house right now. I slept in her pool house. The net keeping us safe–she’d created. “Did she bring you?”
“In a sense.”
“Wow. Well, welcome.” It was comforting a little bit. If Caroline was a friend of his, he was one of the good ones. There were rumors around Bishop’s Landing that the Constantines were bad news, but those rumors were mostly started by the Morelli’s who were actual bad news, so I didn’t listen to them. And if this guy was attached to the Constantines, being out here in the dark wasn’t nearly so scandalous.
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