And I get Begonia to myself tonight.
I hardly mind.
She’s already tossing her head back and laughing. “It’s not as bad as she makes it sound,” she assures me.
Hyacinth snorts. “B, you can’t tell a man that. It’s always as bad as we make it sound.”
“Speaking of bad,” I interrupt, “Begonia, have you been to a gala before?”
“In Richmond with Chad. Kind of. Not in New York with the Gossip Girl crowds.”
“If you’ve seen Gossip Girl, you’re prepared.”
“She hasn’t seen it,” Hyacinth offers. “She quit reading the gossip magazines because she was upset when some celebrity went into rehab and it was all the headlines were about for months, and Gossip Girl was like an extension of that.”
I remember. And the reminder of Begonia’s sensitivity for others makes knowing that my time with her is limited even harder to bear.
“Mr. Rutherford, we need to finish,” Begonia’s stylist murmurs.
I acquiesce and retreat to my own dressing room, despite the fact that a leisurely shower will have me ready well before Begonia.
And by leisurely, yes, I do mean I lock the door and double-check it so that the dog can’t get in, close my eyes while the hot water pounds my neck and shoulders, grip my cock, and jerk off to images of Begonia’s glorious body and the memories of her panting my name in the meadow.
And nearly two hours later, I’m waiting in the sitting room off the foyer, reading a biography of Catherine the Great and not comprehending a damn word, when I hear voices.
The ladies are ready.
Hyacinth for her private flight home—she’s reiterated the request through my staff, and all is prepared for her—and Begonia to accompany me.
I step out of the sitting room, casually stroll to the door for the best vantage point despite wanting to jog, and when I glance up, all I can do is stare.
I’ve seen Begonia in a gown before. She was lovely for our evening picnic in Maine.
But tonight, she’s more.
Her bright hair has been trimmed and styled and frames her face, which seems to glow even brighter.
Whatever she’s done with her lashes and her eyes—they utterly pop. Her lips are ripe cupid’s bow cherries, her cheeks soft and round and perfect. She’s selected a few pieces from the family jewels, with emeralds around her neck and dangling from her ears, all complementing her hair.
And the dress—
I’d thought her mermaid dress, as she called it, made her shine.
Tonight’s ensemble puts every other dress in existence to shame. It’s silver, sparkling in the light of the chandelier, with a strap over one shoulder but bare on the other, the fabric clinging to her from her breasts to her hips and flowing down to the floor, with a slit just high enough to let her thigh play peek-a-boo as she descends the stairs. She looks like an elegant holiday package topped with a bright bow, and I would very much like to unwrap her.
Begonia in her leggings and an oversize T-shirt, coated in clay and muddied water, is beautiful.
Begonia in jeans and a crop top pushing a bike along a dirt path on an island in Maine is perfect.
Begonia dressed to the nines for a gala takes my breath away.
And it’s not the dress.
It’s Begonia in the dress.
I do believe she’ll fit in better tonight than I will.
Somehow, she’s managed to dress to fit in with the highest of the high-class in Manhattan, but still maintain everything that makes her her.
“Aww, B, he’s speechless,” Hyacinth whispers, and yes, it’s every bit as loud as you’d expect of Hyacinth whispering.
Begonia touches her cheek as if she’s testing its temperature. “Makeup does this every time,” she whispers back in a much more whispery voice.
“Right? Remember freshman homecoming? You were batting them off like maggots on poop.”
“Hyacinth.”
The brown-haired twin laughs with glee.
She’s in a lovely ivory gown, flowing around her belly, crisscrossed with crepe across her breasts and accented with thin, gold-trimmed straps holding it aloft.
And despite their identicalness, she can’t hold a candle to Begonia, whose eyes are dancing, smile beaming so bright the sun itself would shield its eyes, her shoulders held back, chin high, as if she were royalty in a previous life and will carry this essence of confidence with her until the end of all time.
“Hayes?” she says softly, though that twinkle leaves no doubt she knows why I’m speechless.
“We’re not going,” I hear myself say.