I want her in my bed. I want her in my shower. I want her in my office.
I want her in my limo. In my helicopter. On my boat.
And I want to deserve her.
My lips slide down her sternum, kissing and licking lower, over her belly, until I reach her exposed pussy.
“Yes,” she moans when I lick at the wetness between her legs. “Please, yes.”
“You’re exquisite,” I murmur against her exposed flesh.
Her body trembles, and she tilts her hips into my mouth.
“And eager.” I lick her.
“Oh, god, so good.”
“How about here?” I twirl my tongue around her clit, and she doesn’t reply.
Not with words, that is.
But her high-pitched moan of approval tells me everything I need to know.
For all that I got wrong today, this, I’m doing right, and so I lick and tease her again, inhaling her scent, tasting her, pleasing her.
She’s not quiet as I devour her pussy, nor is she still, and I love it.
Mind your manners, Hayes. A Rutherford is circumspect.
Fuck that too.
I want her screaming my name.
I want the whole damn household to know she’s satisfied.
No, not satisfied.
Mindlessly, bonelessly, wholly sated.
My cock aches. My balls ache. She’s delicious, and she’s writhing in her chair, head back, arms flinging about until she settles with one hand gripping my hair, the other pinching her own nipple as she rides my face and I eat her like I’ve never eaten another woman in my life.
I want her to come.
I want her to come all over my face, and then all over my dick. I want to watch her fall dead asleep in that coma that comes after a good, hard fuck, then feel her reach for me in the middle of the night, hungry for more.
“Oh, god, Hayes, I’m—”
Her words are cut off by the splintering shriek of the smoke alarm.
I register the bitter taste of smoke, sense heat, and then—
And then my sprinkler system explodes all over my bedroom.
22
Begonia
“Good boy,” I say to Marshmallow once again.
He harumphs and sits at my feet, looking away from me like he’s pissed.
Understandable.
He tried to tell us a couple times that I’d knocked the candle over, and we ignored him, because oh my god, Hayes Rutherford is a vagina-worshipping king, which I should not be thinking about while he’s inside the house with the fire marshal and I’m out here on the fanciest patio I’ve ever seen in my life—no, it’s a courtyard, not a patio—chilling in the rapidly cooling evening with sex-hair and a singed silk robe and a pouting dog and, you know, the rest of his entire family, who are all dressed and who all know exactly what we were doing.
“Are penises really worth it?” Keisha asks me. “I’ve never understood the thrill. Plus, you have to put up with the man to get the penis, and I’ve never understood putting up with men either.”
“One or two,” I tell her. “It makes dating hard.”
We stare at each other for half a beat, and then Keisha cracks up.
I was interrupted in the beginning of what promised to be the best orgasm of my life, and I ruined what was left of the cheese rolls in the fire and subsequent dousing from sprinkler water that had clearly been in those pipes for years, based on the smell of me, Marshmallow, and my robe, and so even though jokes about hard penises would be funny in other circumstances, I barely manage a smile.
Liliane Sussex-Williams makes a delicate huff of disapproval.
Marshmallow gives me the stink eye.
Giovanna Rutherford sighs heavily.
And two gentlemen I haven’t met yet cross the courtyard toward the large brick fireplace that Millie’s lighting for us. One is unmistakably Hayes’s father—they have the same gait, the same eyes, and the same twist of their mouths when they’re irritated, plus, he’s Gregory Freaking Rutherford, president and CEO of Razzle Dazzle, so of course I know who he is, even if I don’t read the gossip pages—and the other man must be the legendary Uncle Antonio.
I don’t know if he’s legendary to anyone else, but he’s Keisha’s father, and I know he’s the instigator of today’s house party, so he’s legendary to me.
“Begonia.” Uncle Antonio wins the race to reach me first. “So good to meet you. Never seen Hayes disappear to his bedroom with a woman so fast before. I mean, when he knew people were looking. There was that time in high school he thought he could sneak his girlfriend upstairs, and he was moving pretty quick then too, but he got caught. Pretty sure that boy enjoys the privileges that have come with age. Nice robe.”