He shrugged. “That’s true. Still. There’s a whole world in between.”
And without a doubt, that conversation was exactly why, an hour or so later, as I sought my release with Sebastian thrusting between my legs, I was imagining another man, who looked suspiciously like Sebastian’s clone, filling my mouth. I came hard and fast . . . but that wasn’t a fantasy I wanted to make reality.
ON MONDAY, SEBASTIAN was back in the office, and I hit the Internet again. I only left the apartment to get a latte down at the corner coffee shop, which was a luxury but one I could afford, considering I was practically a kept woman.
At six, he texted me that it would be a later night, so I made dinner, ate my half, and put his away for later.
Shortly after nine, when he finally arrived, I was back on the couch, this time working on the text of my dissertation, on the parts that would be similar regardless of whether I went with my original argument or the backup.
I looked up briefly when he walked in and offered him a smile. His tired smile in return made my chest flutter in an uncomfortable way, and I focused on the computer screen as he went about the apartment, dropping his computer bag, taking off shoes, disappearing into the bedroom to change.
Only when he sat down next to me and peered over my shoulder did I close the computer and give him my attention.
Funny little chest flutter again.
“How is it going?”
“Good, lots of progress. How was your day?”
“Some issues with the IT department, but otherwise the usual,” he said simply.
By now I knew he wouldn’t elaborate, so I thought through the Harridan House work I’d done. “I’ve finally finished looking up all the people Colin mentioned from the first year he attended Harridan,” I informed him. The entire project had taken several days, including a return trip to the National Archives. “He could have blackmailed so many people. I mean, yes he didn’t name people by their full names, but I’m sure to anyone in society back then, these descriptions would have given it away.”
“We don’t have the benefit of that same knowledge.” Sebastian sounded disappointed.
“No, we don’t. I did, however, make a list of all the other young aristocrats who were of his age and listed as having attended the same school, and I checked it against his correspondence. It’s interesting your grandfather didn’t enlist.”
“Yes. His brother did, however.”
And that brother had died.
I moved on quickly. “So I managed to narrow it down to a few possibilities, only one of whom is still alive, and he’s not listed, or is, as you Brits say, ex-directory.”
Sebastian laughed. “Naturally. Who is he? I’m sure we can find his contact info fairly easily.”
“Marcus, Lord Young.”
Sebastian eyes lit with recognition. “I know Garrett Simmons, who’s in line for the title. I’ll inquire.” But as excited as he seemed, he also had that reticence.
“You know, if you feel uncomfortable disturbing a ninety-five-year-old man, I’m sure there are other clubs like Harridan House that exist today,” I teased. “Certainly swinger’s parties or even dungeons.” I might have been innocent and naive two years ago, but I’d read my fair share of erotica.
He shot me an inscrutable look.
“You think that’s what I want?”
I raised an eyebrow but didn’t say a word.
He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s what you think. That I want to go fuck a bunch of strangers.”
It’s what I’d done on my quest to be more like him.
“What? You’re obsessed with sex, Sebastian.”
“Right. The Bosworth legacy.” His lips set into a hard line, and, with jerky motions that indicated pretty clearly he was not pleased with my observation, he stood, unfastened his belt, and slid it out from his pants. Oh God, he was undressing? Unfair.
“And you’re not?” he demanded, opening his fly, pulling out his semihard dick.
Shock at the abruptness of his actions froze me for a moment, but I stared at him, licking my lips nervously. He was right. I was obsessed. At least with him. There was nothing more I wanted to do than be on my knees in front of him, tasting him as he grew bigger and harder.
In fact, he was growing under my gaze. I looked up to his face. He raised an eyebrow.
I slid off the couch and crawled over to him, not breaking eye contact. By the time I slid my lips over him, he was fully erect. The salty tang of precum met my tongue. I gave in with an internal sigh that seemed to release all tension, ease everything but the desire to taste him, feel him fully.
His hands tangled in my hair, and I relaxed more, wanting him to take over, to fuck me this way, the way I’d read it described in books or seen in a porn video, or even in his grandfather’s memoirs. I wanted him hard and overwhelming.
Instead, he pulled away, knelt in front of me, and pressed his lips to mine.
“Don’t judge me,” he whispered. “And don’t presume this is all about sex.”
My mind swirled in haze of desire, trying to make sense of that. Not all about sex? Then what was that little battle of wills about? Why had he needed to prove that I was as depraved and obsessed as him?
“Okay,” I said, breaking the kiss. “What then?”
“Getting to know each other.”
I laughed. We knew everything we needed to know about each other for this little affair. In fact I’d told him too much that last night at my old flat, and he’d told me next to nothing about himself.
“I’ve never been to a dungeon,” he offered, his hands slipping down to the hem of my shirt, lifting. Yet again, a topic about sex, disproving whatever point he was trying to make. “Have you? Are you a secret dominatrix?”
I rolled my eyes even as I raised my hands over my head to let him pull the tank off, my mind filled with an image of leather, whips, ridiculously high stiletto heels—the clichéd limit of what I knew about the BDSM lifestyle.
“I don’t think so,” he continued. “I think you’re more of a submissive. I think you want to do everything I want.” Like suck him off at the unbuckling of his pants and the simple raising of an eyebrow?
I shuddered, the feel of him still fresh on my lips, desire building. If that was the definition, then maybe.
He tugged down on the cups of my bra until my breasts were free to the air, to his gaze, to the warmth of his palms.
“It wouldn’t have been this way between us two years ago.” He tugged on my right nipple, which pebbled under his touch. But inside, I was freaking out at his continued monologue, at this new direction: the past. “Whether I’d asked you out properly, or if you’d said yes to my rather ill-advised suggestion. Either way. Take your shorts off.”
I was a mess. Emotionally still responding to that mention of the past and then, suddenly, he gave an order, and my mind emptied of everything but that clear directive. Simple. Doable. I stood, slipped off my shorts and underwear, my bra as well. He stood, too, pushing his pants down and then off, unbuttoning his shirt.
I stood there, naked, trembling with desire and confusion, watching the slow reveal of his chest, of the defined but not overly developed muscles.
“Into the bedroom.” I went, looking back over my shoulder, half-worried he wouldn’t follow me. He seemed angry for some reason, but he was caressing himself as he walked, keeping himself erect. I was intensely jealous of his hand.
When I reached the bed, I stood there, directionless, and turned to him, waiting. We were role-playing maybe. Or perhaps there was some truth to what he had said. But either way, I needed him to tell me what to do.
“Knees,” he said simply, and I fell instantly, led him into my waiting mouth with a distinct sense of relief, of coming home. His hands tangled in my hair again, but this time firmly, as if he didn’t plan to let me go.
“Tanya was kinky,” he said. I stiffened at her name, but he pushed more firmly, held me in place as his hips rocked back and f
orth. “She had these handcuffs she liked me to use. Actually, she had this whole toy chest. Dildos, vibrators.”
I’d seen some of those toys when I’d accidentally walked in on her washing them in the bathtub. But why was he saying this to me now? He couldn’t have been so oblivious that he didn’t realize mentioning her would hurt me. Why was he being so cruel?
I laid my right hand over his and started to pull it away from my head.
“It was a game for her, but I think for you . . .”
I froze. Was he serious?
“I don’t think it would be a game.”
He was fucking my mouth and analyzing me. I was angry and turned on all at the same time. I dropped my hand from his and instead focused on his cock, on his balls, on stroking all his sensitive places and bringing him to the brink. On eliciting those delicious groans that made me know I had power, wasn’t some weak person who had no control over her life.
When he stiffened, holding my head still, I gagged a bit at the force of him nearly against my throat and struggled to take the flood of his semen. After his grip loosened, and I’d swallowed, I stood and angrily pushed him away.
“You think talking about your other fucks is a turn-on for me?” I demanded. “You think I want to be tied up and used by you? We’ve both made it very clear that we like sex, but that’s it, Seb. Don’t mind-fuck me, too.”
I turned away from him, ran my hand through my hair, and looked up helplessly at the ceiling. I’d put myself in an untenable position. I was living in his apartment. I couldn’t storm away because I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and changing my airline ticket yet again would involve more money I couldn’t afford to spend.
“There’s sex and then there’s what’s behind the sex, Mina.” He laid his hands on my upper arms, pressed me close to him, wrapping his arms around me. “Two years ago, you wouldn’t have jumped into bed with me on a first date. What changed?”
I swallowed hard. He’d been making a circuitous argument in response to my claim that he was obsessed with sex. All of this was his answer because he was too fucking perceptive.
“I had no idea you were so manipulative,” I fumed. “You want some deep, emotional answer from me? Like I said before, Seb, studious Mina needed a break. And I’ve always been curious what if.” It was half the truth. He wasn’t getting it all. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“I want to know what’s going on in your head,” he whispered, and I tried futilely to understand that expression on his face. “I want to know every single thing about you.”
Something about the words, his tone, strummed the despair in my chest. Once I would have loved him to say such a thing because it would have meant something far different. It would have meant he cared. But now there was this other element between us.
“Why?” I demanded. “I would think it’s enough that I’m willing to satisfy every one of your desires. That you have a living, breathing sex slave living in your apartment.” I reached for his cock, only semihard and still damp from my mouth, stroking it. “It’s early yet, Seb. Tell me what you want me to do.”
He pushed my hand away and stepped back, assessing me. He wanted to know what was in my head, but he was the mystery to me. Too much a mix of contrasts.
“You’re not my sex slave,” he said finally.
“But I was your virgin sacrifice, surely I can be a slave as well.” I was still angry with him, but I was settling into the role, the eroticism of playacting. I was determined to turn him on, to make him use me again the way he seemed to think I wanted to be used.
He ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath.
“It’s not all about sex,” he repeated. He turned away and I stared at his back.
What else then? There was nothing else between us.
I watched him pull boxers and a T-shirt out of his dresser. Pissed, I climbed onto the bed and lay down, hand between my legs. I knew exactly when he caught sight of me in the mirror. He paused and watched me for a moment. I closed my eyes and focused on the sensation of my fingers on my flesh, taking it slow. I moaned, even though I wasn’t anywhere near that point yet, but this was partly for show.
The creak of wood beneath his feet and a slight breeze of air made me open my eyes again. The room was empty.
I could hear the distant clicking of the keyboard. He’d retreated to his algorithms. His tidy game of numbers.
I finished masturbating angrily, the climax unsatisfying, then rolled over to my side and struggled to understand why I wept.
Chapter Ten
I STAYED ANGRY with him for days, yet it didn’t change how much I desired his body. He was pushing me, as if he wanted something more from me that I didn’t understand, even as he gave nothing of himself. I watched him in the evenings, working on his computer on a series of seemingly endless calculations, while I worked on either the Harridan House research or on my dissertation, making sense of whatever information I’d gathered during the day. I focused on Anne Gracechurch’s place at the nexus of several different social circles, her correspondence with renowned thinkers of the day, how they affected or didn’t affect the subject matter of her stories. If only I could prove the James Mead connection beyond statistical doubt, then this whole thing would really leap to another level.
For four nights, I slept on the couch, making good use of the pull-out bed. Friday was poker night with his academic and financial friends who apparently weren’t that welcome in casinos either, and the first evening that wasn’t filled with tense silence as we both simmered with our own private emotions. But somehow having him gone was worse. He still wasn’t back when I fell asleep after midnight, barely managing to turn off the television, which I’d used to drown out the complete solitude.
When I woke abruptly, it was dark in the apartment, the only light the intermittent green glow of the power cord on my computer. But there was something different about the darkness. Then I caught his scent and his heat.
“Seb?”
The bed shifted, and I felt him stretch out next to me.
“Mina.” He said my name as a sigh, and as he reached for me, I also caught the faint scent of alcohol. His lips closed over mine and I tasted it, too, the single-malt whisky he preferred, the desperate desire in his kiss.
Or maybe that desperation was mine. I’d missed his touch, and now it seemed his hands were everywhere on my body. My own slid over him, over his naked chest, the boxer shorts that did little to keep his erection from burning me where he pressed against my thigh.
Not quite awake, not quite asleep, sex was a fever dream of sensation, and when he finally slid inside me, we both made little whimpering sounds as if we’d finally been allowed something denied so long.
I came, again and again, the climax fading into sleep where it seemed to keep going forever.
THERE WAS MUSIC playing. Loudly. Irritatingly.
Then my mind pulled together the notes, the familiarity, and I realized it was my phone ringing. I sat up, eyes squinting open, and reached for the cell where it rested on the side table. As I flipped it open, a groan and the creaking of the sofa bed made me look over my shoulder. At Sebastian, naked, pulling the covers over his head. So it hadn’t all been a dream.
“Ms. Cavallari?”
“Yes?” My voice was rough and too high, and I coughed, trying to wake myself up.
“It’s Roberta Small, dear.” Sleepiness turned into excitement. It had been about a month since I’d last talked with her.
“Yes, how are you doing?”
“Did I call too early?” she asked, and then rushed on before I could assure her it wasn’t. Not that I knew the time. “I wanted to thank you for putting me in touch with my cousin. Bruce and Sally are just lovely, and their kids as well.” I listened to her go on and on about what a lovely family it was and how they planned to have a family picnic this summer if they could gather all the relatives.”
I was happy for her, but if that was the entirety of why she was calling me on a
Saturday morning at an hour that was too early regardless of what it was in actuality, I could have done without.
“I’m so pleased that worked out for you,” I said instead.
“And I wanted to let you know that my cousin Paul in Bedfordshire thinks he has some letters that might interest you.”
Excitement thrummed again, and I asked her to hold on while I fumbled for a pen and one of my spiral notebooks. I wrote Paul’s name and number down and thanked her. It was entirely possible that this guy had nothing, or that his findings would lead to nowhere in my search for a connection to James Mead, just as with Bruce Mallard’s treasure trove. Entirely possible, but I was still blissful from the 2 A.M. sex and the progress I was making in every other aspect of the research. I wanted to be hopeful.
I hung up with her and snuggled back under the covers next to Sebastian. With a small, sleepy growling noise, he wrapped me in his arms. I smiled against his chest. I needed to call Paul, but it could wait just a few more minutes.
SEBASTIAN WAS IMPOSSIBLY sweet to me that day, touching me constantly, looking at me with this indescribable intensity that was very different from the intensity of his desire, and when, a few hours later, I’d arranged to go out to Cranfield the following day, he offered to drive me. Which I, of course, accepted.
So Sunday morning we headed out. Cranfield was in the north of Central Bedfordshire, about thirty minutes past Luton, which itself was an hour outside of London. Of course, back in Anne’s day, those minutes would have been hours or even days.
I had been up this way several months ago to see the area and homes in which Anne had spent the majority of her life. I looked in the church records for the marriage and birth records, enjoyed seeing her signature. I had seen the name Randall on the list of local gentry, but there had never been a connection other than proximity before.
Paul Randall lived in his family’s ancestral home. Though he was a relation of Roberta Small, he wasn’t actually a blood relative of Anne’s. Instead, he was a descendant of a contemporary of hers with whom she had exchanged numerous letters.
If I had been more thorough in my research on all of Anne’s neighbors, perhaps I would have stumbled upon him earlier.
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