His fingers pulled her panties aside and then this very real thing was happening completely, fully. His cock parted her throbbing flesh between her legs and she spread wider to allow, no, invite… demand. Colleen had never wanted anything more than she wanted Rory Sullivan to be inside her, taking away all the responsibility, the pain, the heartache.
As he moved, at first jerky and nervous, and then with the smooth fluidity of a man confident, Colleen wondered why she had been so hard on herself. So unwilling to let these experiences in. The world hadn’t stopped, she was still Colleen, she was still breathing, even if her pulse was off the charts and the ecstasy… the pure, unabated pleasure…
When Rory shuddered and slowed his pace, she rolled her head to the side, exhausted, euphoric. She very distantly heard him whisper he loved her.
* * *
It was still dark outside when Colleen woke. Rory slept soundly on his stomach, arms spread to the side.
Her head throbbed. Stars appeared behind her eyes when she tried to sit forward. This must be a hangover, she thought, but the dizziness made her question instead whether she was still drunk. The tile on the clock ticked over. It was 2:27 a.m.
Another soreness appeared, this one between her legs. She was naked except for her underwear. She saw a flash of red chiffon at the end of the bed, where her dress hung half-on, half-off.
Where were they? She remembered arriving in the hotel room, but not how they’d gotten there. She squinted at the card by the phone. Bourbon Orleans. That was over a mile from the Roosevelt. Had they taken a cab? She could slap herself. Her family were long-time patrons of the hotel; they even had a room named for them. Word would reach her family before she could make her way home.
Colleen carefully stepped out of the bed and reached for the tattered dress, which was as clear a reminder as any of what had happened here only hours before. The bright red sat in homage, judging, like a scarlet letter. She clutched it to her chest, where her heart didn’t know whether to beat swiftly or not at all, and stumbled into the bathroom.
She closed and locked the door behind her. She could not let Rory see her like this, but she realized, also, as she hovered over the toilet to wipe away the evidence of the night before, as she cast her eyes from the mirror, that she couldn’t see herself this way.
Colleen flushed the paper down the commode but couldn’t manage to pull herself back up. Rory. The bed. The dress. The stark, quiet bathroom of the hotel. None of this was as it should be.
This is your night, Evangeline had said, though she quite surely didn’t have any of this in mind when she stated the reassurances with such confidence.
She reached for her hair. Half the curls had fallen out, and the other half stood atop her head, a further reminder of her shame.
Colleen had to leave. She had to be home, where she was safely herself, and ensconced within the world she knew best.
She dug around in her hair for the bobby pins she knew were still there. Then, slipping them in her mouth for holding, Colleen wrapped her hair in a tight bun, as tight as she could pull it, and one by one slipped the pins into place.
Better.
Colleen cast a forlorn gaze at the dress. It all came back to the dress. She couldn’t bear to put it back on, but nor could she catch a taxi naked. Then she remembered Rory’s dress shirt. On her, it would cover enough to get her home. He still had his jacket and pants, and wouldn’t be helpless.
She suppressed the tears she only just realized were rolling down her cheeks. They wouldn’t serve her here, in this moment. Whatever she had done, it could be fixed. The world could be righted. Only Colleen had this power, and she knew precisely how to wield it.
Quietly, she tiptoed around to Rory’s side of the bed and fumbled for his shirt. There was little chance of waking him, but any chance was more than she was prepared for. To hold together her thin vestige of control, she needed no further obstacles.
Colleen stood at the door and watched him. She held her dress in one arm, and her heels in the other. Rory. Had she really? Had she done this?
As he slept, she understood she did not regret what she had done with Rory. If there was ever a man to give her virginity to, it was the only one she trusted with her truest self.
What she regretted was that the night happened as a result of her lack of control.
And, no matter her desires, she could never allow her control to slip so easily away again.
Five
The Heir, the Spare, and the Affair
Charles’ relationship with his five sisters had always been contemptuous, excepting the gentle comradery he had with sweet Elizabeth. This was largely their fault, as he saw things, and he very rarely saw things in ways that put him in the direct line of responsibility. Not that his reasons weren’t perfectly sound, as far as he was concerned.
Colleen had a stick up her ass thicker and larger than the oak arms in Audubon Park.
Madeline’s misguided attempts at philanthropy showed, in contrast to what she believed, just how little she knew of the world from her magnolia-sheltered mansion.
Evangeline’s intelligence made him feel even stupider than he likely was, which was on good days an annoyance and on most days too keen a reminder that he, as the heir, was not the best and brightest at everything.
And Maureen—unlike Colleen, who was focused; unlike Madeline, who had a tender heart; unlike Evangeline, who was smart as hell—had so few redeeming qualities he wondered if she hadn’t accidentally fallen into their family after being switched at birth at the hospital. Those sorts of things did happen. He’d seen it on the evening news.
But Charles loved his sisters, because there was no power stronger and more binding than blood. He was the heir of this blood, and that came with a certain set of responsibilities, even if most of his responsibilities had been shoved aside in the name of living as he saw fit. August had impressed at least that on his eldest son, if he’d impressed nothing else. They are yours now, and may you never forget it.
Charles didn’t know the first thing about protecting others, despite that protection was clearly a key part of looking after one’s family. There was, of course, a certain protection extending from their name alone. This was why he’d never really be kicked out of college, despite Irish Colleen’s histrionic predictions. But their name would not protect his sisters from being assaulted, or from heartbreak. For Charles, the world fit most neatly into a set of absolutes, and when he strained to break down what it meant to be the heir, what his father truly intended with the words, they are yours now, it made the most sense to him to apply a literal interpretation.
He was their bodyguard.
Though he couldn’t remember precisely when he’d set some of his friends to the task of following the girls, he thought it was probably around the time Colleen first started bursting out of her argyle sweaters. Charles had never met a friend who wouldn’t bend over backward to please him—except Colin, but Colin was Colin, and maybe that’s why Charles liked him best—so it was no effort at all to find a couple guys to keep an eye on his sisters for him, just every now and then, to make sure there wasn’t anything Charles might need to get concerned with.
This was how Charles came to find out about Colleen spending the night in a hotel with Colin’s little brother, Rory.
Rory hung around the house a lot. Charles knew it was a lot, because he himself was hardly home, and whenever he was home, so was Rory Sullivan, in his colorful sweaters knitted by his mother, with that goofy smile that never seemed to disappear. That Irish Colleen let the kid hang out in her eldest daughter’s room with the door closed was either a testament to her trust in Colleen, or her acceptance that Colleen would just as soon cut a finger off than do anything fun or interesting. God forbid.
Charles didn’t think Rory had fooled around with his sister in the Deschanel home, and this was more a credit to Colleen than the Sullivan kid, but he could think of only one reason you took a woman to a hotel room. They could do
smart, nerdy stuff, like speak math to each other, anywhere, which is probably as far as things went sequestered in Colleen’s pristine room.
No, Rory Sullivan had taken Charles’ sister to a hotel room to fuck her, and that could not stand.
* * *
It would have been nothing at all for Charles to obtain the room number from the concierge, simply by flashing his name as leverage. Reminding them the Deschanels had a room in this hotel reserved especially for them at all times, that couldn’t be rented to anyone else under any circumstance. Yes, he was that Charles Deschanel, and no one wanted trouble. But his buddy had been thorough, following the drunken couple all the way to the ninth floor, and dutifully noting what room they disappeared through. He could have left out the details about Colleen’s dress hanging off her as she urged Rory to be quicker about it, before stealing the key and unlocking the room herself.
He didn’t suppose knocking would have the same effect as bursting in like a commando, so what Charles did need was a key, and a breach of security was a tougher hurdle than a slip of information.
The young kid at the front desk was an old classmate, which he immediately noted as exceptionally fortunate. He recognized the black glasses and ten thousand freckles painting his face like a disastrous explosion at the brown paint factory. This International Club reject was all too happy to find himself a silent conspirator of Charles Deschanel. Probably daydreaming about what a friendship with such a person could bring; the adventures they would go on.
“You remember me?” The kid actually said it, oblivious to how pathetic and ridiculous even hoping for such a thing made him seem.
“Of course, man. Of course.” He read the nametag. “My man, Jimmy.”
Charles didn’t disavow the kid of these fantasies, nor did he have any shame in using an unsaid promise to get what he wanted. A person had to employ what tools they had at their disposal, and those with too much compunction to do so never made it very far in the world. That had not been a lesson of August Deschanel, but a man could learn from more than just his father.
Key in hand, Charles retraced the steps of his goody-goody sister and her horny boyfriend. The growing lump in his belly was one of a vague nauseated disgust, like he’d eaten eggs before nine in the morning, and it only expanded when he realized he would have to do this very same thing for four other sisters, at some point, or many points. A job that would never end.
He hesitated just outside the hotel room door with a puzzled grimace. Hesitation was not a very familiar reaction for Charles, who was often—sometimes rightly, sometimes unfairly—accused of putting his temper before his temperance. But it wasn’t his anger that stilled him. Rather, a whisper of good sense pointed out to him that he might come upon his sister in a compromising position and inherit an image embedded in his mind that couldn’t be expelled with all the coke in the world.
“To hell with it,” he muttered and turned the key. If Colleen was in a bad way, that was between her and the Lord, and she was fortunate her brother cared enough to save her from herself.
Charles flung the door wide. It bounced off the rubber doorstop and nearly smacked him right in the face, but he deftly stepped through and left it swinging. He didn’t immediately see Colleen, which was almost a relief, but Rory lay spread across the bed, naked as the day he was born, sheets twisted around his ankles. The brazen audacity of the kid fired up Charles’ rage and jumped it into the next level. Naked. Naked because he had knowingly and calculatedly taken Charles’ sister to this room only hours before, with the full intent to screw her brains out. Naked, without a care or concern, without consequence.
Charles stormed across the room like an angry bull.
He ripped the remainder of the bedding off the mattress and dragged the Sullivan kid by his limp arm. Rory’s eyes flew open, followed by his stupid mouth, followed by what Charles could see was him working his mind around some kind of answer to this abrupt shift in reality.
“You fucking dare touch my sister, you hooligan,” Charles seethed, and Rory bounced half off the bed and onto the thin carpet on the floor. He searched around for something to cover himself, but Charles shoved him away, and he half-skittered, half-flew on to his back. His hands scrambled for purchase, and he crawled around backward like a drunken crab, until he hit the paisley green armchair in the corner.
“Jesus, Charles!” Rory, in the absence of any other defense, threw his hands up over his face to shield himself. He drew his knees high to protect other assets.
“Where is she?” Charles ripped one pillow off the bed, then another, and chucked them at Rory, drawing from his days as a pitcher for Brother Martin’s varsity baseball team. The plush pillows lost momentum in mid-air, but this only pissed him off more, and he chucked the next one so hard something in his arm started to burn. “Where is my sister?”
“She left,” Rory replied as he dodged the assault. Even after Charles had run out of pillows, his arms didn’t ease. “Early. I don’t know. She didn’t say anything, and I thought maybe she wanted it that way, so I didn’t stop her.”
“Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am?” Charles lobbed at the cowering Rory. He searched for something else to throw, but the remaining items in the room were of a much heavier nature. The television. The clock. A good direct hit with those would probably land him in jail, and he needed at least another week or two of distance between the call from Tulane and yet another questionable incident with his name on it.
“No! No, it wasn’t like that at all.” Rory plied one arm away and squinted as he looked up at Charles. “Colleen is my friend. I would never hurt her.”
“Just fuck her and dump her.”
“We aren’t going steady, or anything like that, it just happened.”
Charles eyes stretched open so wide he wondered if it was scientifically possible for them to pop out of his sockets. And if they did fall out, could he shove them back in? Would they still work, or would he need to find a doctor to perform some rare procedure to grant him his eyesight back? Evangeline would know. “That’s what a dick says when he’s messed with a girl.”
Rory winced again, but Charles had nothing left to throw. “I wouldn’t mess with Colleen. And I pity the idiot who ever tries. You and I both know she never does anything she doesn’t want to do. I didn’t pressure her. She came here because she wanted to.”
Spittle flew from Charles’ mouth as he prepared to launch some other unpleasant counterattack, but Rory’s logic had him stuck. “So why did she leave?”
“I told you, I don’t know. You know her, she’s afraid of letting go and having fun, and maybe she felt bad about that. I heard her leave, passed back out, and only just woke up again when you burst in here like Steve McQueen. I plan to go see her this afternoon and find out what’s going on with her. Reassure her it wasn’t just a… fun night for me.”
“Fun,” Charles repeated, but he gave serious consideration to Rory’s words. Colleen was even more stubborn than he was, in many ways, if not different ways. “Does Colin know what you’re into with my sister?”
Rory shrugged. He pulled himself into a more erect seated position, but at an angle, where he could easily shift back into a defensive stance. “He knows I like her.”
“I came here to kill you.”
“I figured as much.” Long breath.
“No one fucks with my sisters.”
“I figured that much as well.” Rory chanced a reach forward and pulled the sheet up and over him. “Look, if you’re worried about your sisters, maybe check into what Maureen has gotten into.”
“Maureen?” Charles wrinkled the center of his face together. This wasn’t part of the plan. His immediate reaction to being caught unawares was fresh anger. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Rory shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s true. I’ve just heard things.”
“Things? What things?” Charles’ temples throbbed. He reached up to massage them, as if that ever helped.
; “She’s possibly in over her head with some guy.” Rory looked as if he deeply regretted mentioning this and wanted to retreat under the chair and disappear entirely. “I don’t know a lot about it, to be honest. But people talk, and her name has been coming up a lot.”
“Why tell me now? Why not before?”
“Our father, he’s always told us not to gossip. To never repeat something that isn’t backed by evidence. I don’t have any evidence, man, I’ve only heard rumors. Might be nothing.”
“Nothing,” Charles repeated, but suddenly had a very acute feeling it was not nothing at all.
* * *
Charles had no plan when he left the hotel, only a fresh, roiling, and mostly confused wrath that he had very little understanding of, or control over. He’d rushed to the hotel with one form of vengeance in mind, one that was very clear in his head, and was now on his way home with a very unclear plan, with even more unclear details.
He’d hoped to be at the Playboy Club by midday for some of his favorite antics, but that seemed less and less likely.
Maureen. The girl was trouble, no doubt. She had no focus in school, which Charles could not himself judge without some heavy hypocrisy, but she was also not very nice, or bright about the world in general. Maureen approached everything in her life with an open hostility that made Charles uncomfortable, even when he himself was in a state. She was pretty, though. Maybe the prettiest of all the Deschanel girls, if she could bring herself to wipe the constipated look from her face from time to time. Charles used to joke that she’d make a good trophy wife, a dig at her apparent lack of any other useful skills, but now, when she was more woman than girl, that joke was not nearly as funny.
Fourteen. When he was fourteen, he’d started fucking his way through the Sacred Heart Academy, though he didn’t garner the momentum he desired for another couple years, when the girls finally came around to the idea that what the nuns didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
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