by JJ Giles
* * * *
The only sounds left to Morgan were the thundering waves and the throb of Cherry’s heart slowly retreating as she lay on a breast. So long since she had enjoyed this with a woman made her reticent to part.
Tenderly, Cherry kissed her, Cherry’s lips as eager as everything else about her.
“Is it really possible to fall in love at first sight?” Cherry mewed.
Morgan smiled, her tethered hands now before her to sweep over Cherry’s flat abdomen. “I did,” she whispered. She slid further down to nestle between Cherry’s legs and part those lips for a taste.
Cherry moaned. “I’m not sure I can go there again,” she admitted.
“Of course, you can,” Morgan murmured. “You’re a woman.” Uninhibited, she drove her tongue between those soft, moist folds and grasped that boiling clit with her lips.
Chapter Twenty
Jerry awoke in his bed, a little groggy from having drunk more than he promised himself he would. Painfully alone, knowing Morgan was in the next room, he dragged to the shower to wash and shave. A few aspirin and a little coffee might help.
In the kitchen he noted the tail of the hurricane washing over the shoreline, the torrents of rain pounding the windows. Nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, but he didn’t go to bed until three.
No Morgan. Was she still sleeping, or did she leave with Cherry?
He sat on the barstool, forcing wakefulness upon himself. Maybe Morgan was so smitten with Cherry, they did leave together. That his daughter couldn’t maintain a relationship after the chemistry wore off was a comfort just then. But then it wasn’t evident that Morgan could, either.
And then there was JD. Wondering what Morgan was charging these days. By the hour or the orgasm. Insipid bastard, Jerry thought. But it wasn’t JD’s fault that Cheryl was so available to JD. JD had the cash.
Without thinking he wandered down the hallway to Morgan’s door. No sound issued through it, only the thundering of rain. Timidly, he knocked.
“Good morning,” he heard through it.
He opened it and peered in to see her nestled comfortably on fluffy down pillows, a sheet pulled to her waist. Her exquisite long hair was strewn over them. When she raised her hands to rub at her face, her wrists were captured in silk. The very sight made his heart ache and his penis flood with blood.
“Morning,” he whispered.
“You had a nice evening?” she whispered.
Staring wantonly, he murmured, “Not as nice as you.”
She drew in the first deep breath of the day and let it out slowly. “You two are a tag team of sadomasochistic pleasure, are you not?”
Curious, he smiled as he moved into the room. “I don’t know about that.” Wearing only silk boxers, he perched on the edge of the bed, the better to be close to those soft round breasts filled with cream, the nipples filled with rose. Tenderly, his hand swept a few stray strands from her face when he wanted desperately those breasts.
“What does my slave want this morning?” she mewed.
Inside he laughed. If only she knew! Rather than reveal himself, he whispered, “Anything my precious Mistress wants.”
Her tethered hands swept up his arm to pull him to her. She grasped his face and directed it toward a breast.
Ah yes, sweet compassion, as he slid beside her and took them in his hands. Without prelude, he devoured the one and massaged the other.
She smiled. Yet she removed his hand and urged it lower.
Jerry’s heart skipped a beat to feel that softness between her legs. Even as he fed he slipped into a wetness created by his daughter a few hours previous. Her clit was huge, swollen and ready to burst again, yet he didn’t linger there. Gently, he forced her legs apart to melt into that heat inside of her.
He felt her hands slide down her body. A little twist and he could stay attached to that breast and watch as her fingers opened those lips and another drove tight hard circles over her clit. To watch her play with herself drove him to madness.
Her entire body tightened and her legs closed on his hand, to crush it, to keep it inside of her, it seemed. The sound of her voice was a deep lilting moan and drove him to distraction. He licked at the heated flesh under her breasts as she loosened a little, seemed to go limp. Gently, her legs divided.
As if still in a dream, she whispered, “Good boy. Now straddle me.”
Not a problem. Quickly he slid out of his underwear, remembering her admonition to never sport such a garment in her presence. One leg was thrown over her body and he perched on his knees peering down at her. A perfect place for him.
Gently, she played with his balls, lifting their weight and rolling them in her tethered hands. With the grace of a ballet, she wound the silk around his organ a few times, the smoothness in that sensation as wickedly distracting as everything else about her. Without touching it, she pulled it toward her, the purple throbbing glans to slide over her moist lips.
Jerry’s intestines quivered to the sight of her gently nibbling as if it were an ice cream cone. Her lips parted a little more and the first stroke of her tongue raised a quivering moan to his throat.
For the first time in his life he wished he was smaller so she could swallow it all. But Morgan didn’t need it all, only the best of it. She tightened the silken bond around the shaft and swirled her tongue on that very spot that could drive him to lunacy.
More than anything, she loved the feel of tension she could create. She opened her eyes to watch his muscles harden. In the strange gray light, his skin looked luminous, profusely covered in hair.
But from this angle, she noted jagged scars over his torso. One across his ribs on the right, others lower. Gall bladder...hernia? Whatever it was, he was cut open so quickly, there was no skill in the surgeon’s hands. No desire to be neat.
It left her shuddering to think what required those scars.
Rather than dwell on it, she closed her eyes again and fed more voraciously.
He knew she would be good. He didn’t know she would sit on the Throne in the Hall of Fame. Only moments passed and she had him boiling. No baby, too soon, he thought. I wanna enjoy this. But she took that from him along with his sanity, the feel of her mouth, her insistence, her very desire to command him, and he exploded like Krakatoa.
It was as if he’d never enjoyed such a thing before. If he had to think about it, he might have been a teenager the last time it felt so intense. Unable to hold his quivering body buoyed above her any longer, he fell to his side, breaking that ingratiating connection, his lungs panting to sustain him.
Still dreamily drowsy, she rolled toward him and nudged his arm up with her head as would a puppy begging for affection. Easily, he enfolded her heated body next to his, listening only to the sounds of her purring, feeling her melt over him in her comfort.
So terribly content to just lie with her and hold her made him wonder about how simple the greatest pleasures of life are. Yet her tethered hands slid down his body and enclosed his balls, gently held them as she might a baby or a teddy bear. Her legs rearranged themselves to let her sleep.
Got to have this woman, he thought. But this woman can’t be bought, he knew. This woman has to be earned. The very concept left him impotent with panic.
* * * *
Renee’s yacht bobbed on the surface of a vast lake under the glittering stars of heaven. She lay on a bower of cushions in Brian’s arms.
“You’re so miserable,” she whispered.
Brian stirred a little and pulled her closer. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I appreciate you trying to distract me, though.”
Curious, she rolled over on him, the better to be close. “You’re really in love with her.”
“I am,” Brian said softly.
“Tell me. Tell me what it’s like.”
Brian only moaned at the thought of it and enclosed her in his arms. Gently, he rolled her over but held her close. “You know what it’s like to be turned on. You can’t imagine what it�
��s like to trust someone so much, and let them hold your heart in your hand. Until I lost my mind, I knew where I was gonna be every day, every night. I knew Morgan was gonna be right there with me and want me with her. It never mattered what we were doing or who we were doing it with, as long as we were together. There’s absolutely nothing I can’t talk to Morgan about.”
“Except who you really are.”
Aggravated by that, Brian huffed. “Guess I know how Romeo felt, huh?”
“Then tell me this,” Renee started. “If she’s this overwhelmingly accepting person, someone who can accept everything about everybody and still love them as you claim, why the hell is she so stuck-up about wealthy people?”
“Because she grew up dirt poor.”
“Oh, well, boo hoo,” Renee snarled. “Everybody’s got problems. Why are hers so much more important than everyone else’s?”
“You’re missing the point,” Brian insisted.
“I don’t think so. I think you’re just blinded by love, baby. I guess she thinks rich people shouldn’t have any problems. Money cures everything, right?”
“We’re talking about a woman who had to earn her education as a prostitute, Renee. Not somebody who went to Harvard and fucked off the entire time we were there. Whose fathers paid for their tuition, pretty damned plush apartment, and we both had new cars, if you recall. All we did was party our asses off.”
Renee snarled a little.
“Morgan didn’t even have any family to live with back then. She lived in a rathole over a hardware store. In order to make enough money to get an education, she worked as a corporate prostitute. Maybe you’ve never paid attention to what’s going on while the girls are in your office, but think about it. You’re talking about stock numbers, million dollars deals that just got flushed--your fucking yacht--while your tailor just stopped in for a fitting. You live in a fucking mansion but the girls you just relieved yourself with are going home to a dump over the hardware store, trying to get an education you took very much for granted. Do you think those girls are really gonna give a shit if your biggest concern of the day is whether your lobster comes from Maine or South America?”
Haughtily, she huffed. “I guess I never thought about it.”
“No shit,” Brian snarled. “There isn’t anyone in a corporate office anywhere that gives a shit about the corporate whores because if she doesn’t like how she’s getting treated, there’s thirty more to take her place. You don’t have a clue what it’s like to be disposable.” Brian scowled. “You’re the only child of a very wealthy man, gonna inherit every fucking dime and all you gotta do is pretend you give a shit about what he thinks. After that, all you care about is what’s gonna keep you entertained today.”
“Alright, alright already. I never thought about it.”
“If you were down to your last million dollars, I don’t think you’d survive.”
“Yeah, I’d be feeling pretty broke.”
“I know. And I just cleared my first million last year. But I didn’t do it alone. I got twenty people working for me. Morgan’s worth five times that and she did it all by herself. So if she’s feeling a little snobby about people who don’t have to work for it, I know where she’s coming from.”
“She’s still being snobby,” Renee said.
Exasperated, Brian rolled away from her. “Maybe she never met any of us that thought of her as more than a whore.”
“Until she met you,” Renee offered.
With that, Brian sighed. That was true. “But at least she had the sense to get money for it. You and I did it for free.”
* * * *
The rhythm of the islands slowed to a gentler pace. Jerry excused himself and Cherry peered through the dimly lit room at Morgan.
“Tell me,” Cherry pleaded. “What does it take to be successful in this world?”
Morgan stared back a moment and then turned away. How could she tell these people anything about success? She was sitting in the midst of their fabulous success at the moment. But maybe Cherry wasn’t talking about money.
“I don’t know,” Morgan admitted. “All I can tell you about is me. Life is the ultimate do-it-yourself project,” she whispered with all humility. “If you know there’s always someone or something around to break your fall, you can be as cavalier as you want to be. Whether you lean on your family, your family’s fortune, your education, drugs…” She shrugged. “You know you won’t have to go it alone. The most successful people I’ve met are happy with what they’ve got at the moment while they continue to strive for the next level rather than feeling like it’s not enough.”
“What’s the secret to relationships?”
Morgan laughed. “Human beings are the most fragile constructs in the entire universe,” she whispered. “More fragile than a butterfly, which would die if so much as a drop of rain fell on its wings. The deal here is God gave butterflies the sense to get out of the rain. Human beings don’t have the sense to take cover from an approaching storm. Don’t ever forget you’re a human being. More importantly, don’t hold it against yourself or anyone else.”
Cherry reared back. Just then, Jerry returned to see a look of astonishment on his daughter’s face.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
Quickly, Cherry rose and ran to the bathroom.
Jerry laughed out loud. “What the hell happened?”
“She was asking for a little philosophical insight, what life according to Morgan is like. I guess I shook her up.”
“Good,” he said. “But then again, that’s what you do.”
“Every chance I get,” with a gracious smile.
Chapter Twenty-One
The plane rose aloft without so much as a quiver of its thin skin. Morgan sat demurely peering into Jerry as he watched intently with a grin. “You like St. Maarten?” he asked.
With a subdued, amused laugh she nodded. “There’s an awful lot there to like, isn’t there?”
“Cherry?”
“Interesting woman,” Morgan stated. One who doesn’t act like the spoiled brat she expected to find, never once mentioned how much money she’s got, and didn’t try to buy her or even rent her out for the evening.
“There’s actually a little more to Cherry than she lets on. She doesn’t let just anybody have it, either. That party girl shit is just a facade. The vain, shallow thing she goes at people with keeps them at arm’s length. I just wish that sense of emotional detachment and business savvy would translate to her love life.”
“Apparently,” Morgan said. “Mind you this is none of my business...”
“It’s alright,” he whispered. He would answer any question she had because he wanted Morgan forever not just the weekend.
“Don’t I remember a buzz years ago about her doing a spread in Playboy?”
He laughed to remember the fervor that caused. “That was her coming-out party and a test of my affection. I’ve always encouraged my children to do what they know is right for themselves and everything else falls into place. My family had a friggin’ cow over it, especially my sister who thinks of herself as the family’s moral authority. Her mom suffered a meltdown over it. That was after she had a baby and gave it up for adoption when she was nineteen. She distanced herself from me, thinking I was as angry about it as her mother, yet she went to St. Maarten after she graduated from college to learn the hotel business. It screwed her up when she came to the penthouse a few years ago and saw the entire thing framed hanging on the wall.”
“I bet it did.”
“Well...she never asked me what I thought about it and merely assumed what her mother said spoke for us both. Even then, she knew she wasn’t my daughter but she was still trying to get my attention, tell me she was gay without talking to me. That woman she did the spread with moved in with her, but that didn’t last long at all.”
Sadly, Jerry shook his head. “I think my kids understand that their mother married me for the money, the prestige, the license it allo
ws. And they see what that’s led to.”
“It’s hard to image money can cause problems,” she whispered.
“Having too much is as bad as not having enough. It might sound ignorant, but it’s almost impossible to know if someone loves you or the money. But don’t get me wrong, Morgan. I’m proud of my kids. They both work for a living and only occasionally dip into the family’s fund for what they want. My son owns and operates his own business completely independent of Abernathy,” he said gushing with pride. “Didn’t even ask me for the financing. But they’ve both led hard lives. My father beat the hell out of Cherry when she was only five years old. Nearly killed her.”
“Ooooo...what the hell for?”
“For being five years old and wanting her mommy at the moment. The problem was that my father was with her mommy at that moment getting a piece and he didn’t want to be bothered with a baby having nightmares. My son was so traumatized over it I had to take him to a shrink.”
For a long moment she stayed deathly still staring into him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Full of empathy, both with the shock of hearing that the children were so brutalized and knowing Jerry had been brutalized caused her to shiver. “Your father was screwing your wife?”
“Since the day we got back from our honeymoon. Four days of it was all I could stand and she moved into my mom’s apartment and I moved into the master suite. Dad moved into the apartment adjoining hers.”
“That’s disgusting.”
Aggravated, he shook his head. “So you understand now that my father’s intention was not that she be my wife, but his personal indentured whore. But I got to marry her to keep her around for him. And I married her willingly to keep my brother’s boy with me. My kids don’t know anything about relationships. Never once saw their mom and dad even hug each other. Don’t even know where to start and that’s not their fault.” Tears welled in his eyes.
“So you’re blaming yourself?”
