by Cynthia Dane
Sarah Clayborn handed it to Alice. “It is Mrs. Andrews, ma’am.”
Alice took the phone with a bit of reluctance. Getting a call from Lana Andrews was always a crapshoot. “Hello?” she greeted, her husband finally drinking his coffee with a bitter look on his face. Alice draped her hand across Damon’s thigh, the raw power of his body surging through her – and he barely moved. Her husband spent his downtime running, weightlifting, and sparring with his bodyguards. There was nothing but muscle beneath her touch. Something she needed if she was going to deal with someone as volatile as Lana. “What has you calling me on this fine, rainy day, Ms. Lana?”
A fervent chuckle answered her greeting. “Now why is your darling little assistant answering your phone calls instead of you, Alice? Did I call you at a bad time? Are you… busy?”
Everything Lana Andrews said was constantly laced in flirtation. Maybe not directly at Alice, but at… the world. Or something. If Lana could make a situation about sex, she would, as coyly as possible if they weren’t already talking about sex. As it so happened, Alice’s hormones made her particularly randy as of late. The last thing she needed was to be reminded of the sex she wasn’t going to immediately have with her husband. They had power, prestige, and privilege, sure, but not so much that they could start fucking in front of the help in the middle of a cozy café. Nope. Not that much.
“Simply enjoying a rainy afternoon before Christmas gets underway. What can I do for you, Mrs. Andrews?”
Her husband tensed beneath her touch. Someone did not like being reminded of whom he slept with before meeting Alice. Too bad for Damon, because he was about to get more of his sexual past coming to smack him upside the head.
“Well! I was calling to check in with how you’re doing, of course!”
Alice hadn’t known Lana for that long, but she knew the other woman well enough to hear bullshit in her voice. “I’m doing fine, thank you. Now for the real reason you’re calling me?”
Lana had not been expecting that kind of punchback from Alice, and she should have, because Alice was getting very, very good at knowing who wanted to chat simply to shoot the breeze and who wanted to be a busybody. Lana Andrews always wanted to be a busybody.
“Fine. I’ll cut to the chase. You know the Christmas Gala we were gabbing about going to the other day?”
“Yes. I just fired off our RSVP finally.”
“Excellent! I will be sure to see you there. Now, for the juicy bit: the Welshes putting it on have a little strumpet coming home to rejoin the flock. I don’t expect you to know who Cassandra Welsh is, dear, but you should ask your husband about her. Particularly before you give birth to his legitimate heirs.”
Alice didn’t stay on the phone for much longer. She hung up when polite to do so, handed the phone back to Ms. Clayborn, and turned to her husband. “Who is Cassandra and why should I be asking you about her?”
Two of the women around them sucked in their breaths before walking away from the couch. Dee, the only other one left, finished her coffee and leaned back in her chair. Her break would be over soon, but until then, she would look on with only mild interest. (Even so, she was still looking on, and enjoying every moment of this.)
Damon put down his coffee cup and cleared his throat. “I have no idea who you are talking about.”
“Apparently she is one of the Welshes. I know I’m not the most up to date on some of the older, more reclusive families around here, but I have a feeling I should know who that is and what she has to do with you. So, spill it.”
Her husband gestured to her mug. “Finish your tea and I’ll finish my coffee. I’ll tell you in the car.”
“Oh, so it’s that juicy?”
“I said I’ll tell you later.”
Alice didn’t challenge him. For now. She figured – and she would be right – that her husband didn’t want to air whatever dirty laundry he had concerning Cassandra out in the open air for everyone to smell. Apparently Alisha and Ms. Clayborn knew enough to immediately keep their distance. Ex-girlfriend, Alice surmised. She was close to the truth, but quickly stopped thinking about it when she looked over and found her husband going through the ultrasound photos of their daughter.
“She’s got hands already, huh?”
“Apparently.”
“Fascinating.”
Anyone else would have heard that tone in his voice and assumed he was being sarcastic, but Damon was not the king of sarcasm like some of his contemporaries were. Besides, the intense gaze in his eyes and the folding of his fingers around the delicate photos rightly implied that he was, in fact, amazed at what was occurring in his wife’s body. Damon could never a remember a time he was around a pregnant woman as much as he was around his wife. All of this was completely new to him, a man who never had to worry about getting pregnant and often slept with women who were too concerned with not having kids at the moment that purposely getting knocked up almost never crossed their minds. Just like he had been Alice’s first sexual partner, she had been his first in many things as well.
Twenty minutes later they were in the back of Damon’s sedan with his bodyguard-driver at the wheel. Sarah joined the man in the front seat while Alisha and Dee took Alice’s car back to the office.
“All right, spill.” Alice smacked the button that raised the privacy partition. “Who is this Cassandra Welsh and why is Lana Andrews calling me to ask you about her?”
“That last part is easier to answer than the first – she’s calling you to stir up trouble because she has nothing better to do.” When Lana wasn’t causing drama in her wake, she was out seducing people. Damon had been on both ends of Lana’s favorite machinations too many times to count now. Her husband wasn’t much better, honestly.
“Uh huh. And you’re playing into her hand more than I am by giving me an answer like that.” Alice didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed that this was the direction things were going in already. “Come on, Damon, it’s okay to tell me she’s an ex-girlfriend.”
“Well, not quite. It was never that serious.”
“So she is someone you were once involved with?”
“You could say that.”
“I definitely am.”
Damon cleared his throat. “We had a casual relationship that lasted a few months.”
“A few months?”
“Like I said, it was casual. We weren’t seeing each other every weekend. Hardly every month. But it was enough times for there to be… issues… between us.”
“You can’t leave me hanging.”
Damon’s eyes lingered on her protruding stomach. “She once heavily implied that she was pregnant because of me.”
Good thing Alice wasn’t trying to swallow anything right then. “Come again?”
“You heard me, precious. She was an ex-lover of mine who implied that I may have fathered a child of hers.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t yours?”
Damon’s hand meandered across her stomach, caressing the sensitive flesh and the baby growing beneath. “I never heard about it again. Never even heard if she was actually pregnant, although there were rumors. If she did have a child, she never told me about it or asked for anything. I’m assuming she either knew it wasn’t mine after all or there never was a child.”
“I see. Well, I’ve been informed that she’s going to gala I just RSVP’d to on our behalf. Suppose I’ll get to meet this very interesting ex of yours.”
“Yes. She was quite the interesting ex of most men we know.”
“Really? That so?” Not that it was any of Alice’s business…
“She got around, although it didn’t bother me any. If I were upset that every woman I slept with had been with my peers, I’d have an incredibly small dating pool.”
“At least we know how quickly STDs would spread among everyone we know at this income level.”
“All the better I’m married now.” Damon patted
his wife’s leg. His simple touch reawakened the stupid hormones battling for domination within her. “Let them have painful urination.”
Really, really not what Alice wanted to hear while she confronted how sexually aroused she suddenly was. What absolutely did not help was having her sexually charged husband sitting right next to her in the middle of a traffic jam. Well, she supposed, grazing his cock in his pants wouldn’t be a terrible thing to do. Just a touch. A light, simple stroke…
“Let’s say it was true,” she said, distracting herself. “That you have another child out there somewhere. It would most certainly be older than our daughter.”
“Alice.” His knuckles touched her beneath the chin. “I don’t have any other children. I’m fairly confident about that. A man in my position would have heard about it by now, regardless of the station of the mother. And at any rate,” he tipped her head back for a kiss, “you have my word as your husband and the father of this child that our daughter will be born the de facto heir to everything we’re building together. Even if it turns out I have another one, it will be a Welsh before it will ever be a Monroe. They need heirs too. Let it be.”
The thing that made Damon so sure, although he never told his wife, was that he had been as single as single got whenever he slept with Cassandra. The Welshes could be incredibly traditional. As soon as someone found out that the child was his, they would have made sure Damon knew about it. They probably would have asked for a temporary marriage to save everyone’s faces and to legitimize the child. Not that Damon’s father would have stood for that.Damon kissed his wife with enough tenderness to sate him until they got back to the office, whenever that was. However, Alice was not feeling any kind of tender except for what was going on with her swelling breasts and feet. All she wanted to feel was the sexual chemistry boiling between them in the back of their chauffeured car. Her hand grabbed his cock as she purred into his ear.
Well, if that’s how she wanted to play…
A pregnant woman always appreciated knowing that her husband still wanted her even though she was heavy and already carrying on his biological destiny. And, oh, did Damon want her. He wanted her when he first found out she was pregnant, and he would continue to want her until they made damn well sure that their legacy was going to last through multiple generations. None of that was coming to fruition yet, but as anyone reading this could probably anticipate, the Monroes were not going to stop at one child.
And as anyone reading this can also probably guess, there was at least one other person in the car who knew exactly what was going on – and didn’t care. Sarah Clayborn was perfectly capable of ignoring what her bosses were up to as long as she had enough work to distract herself with. But it had been a hard day. Seeing those ultrasound photos hadn’t rattled her, but hearing talk of heirs and other women were what finally got her. While the bodyguard drove diligently back to the office, Sarah kept her eyes glued to her tablet while she checked facts and figures Damon Monroe insisted on having once they were back at work. Yet her mind continued to flutter with sad memories of what she once could have had.
She wasn’t often a lonely woman, but there were days – particularly around Christmas – that it began to get to her. If anyone could tell Sarah Clayborn by this time next spring she would be living a very different life, she would not believe them. She would certainly never believe that she would have anything close to resembling a real family, and yet she was only one foolish decision away from turning the next year into something fantastic for herself.
As for the Monroes, well, they were having the first of several children, and that was enough to keep them occupied in the coming year.
Scene 8
The King-Christens
Judith was the type of woman to rank her orgasms on different scales. Best orgasm of her life? Best of the year? Best of the month? The week? The day?
The current one ranked best of the month so far, for sure. Her toes curled inward toward her soles. He body shuddered in ecstasy as her hands gripped and clawed the strong chest beneath them. Every ounce of breath was smacked from her body the moment climax claimed her sex-starved body. While she recognized this had a lot to do with her playing cowgirl on her boyfriend’s cock, there was one unfortunate angle to coming while on top: falling over.
Falling over when said boyfriend came as well.
Oops.
Judith landed heavily on her bed, breath still gone from her lungs but consciousness coming back to her in waves of giggles and kicks of her feet. Boyfriend Seth was not as amused. Sexually sated, yes, but amused? He had intended for his orgasm to reach his girlfriend’s core, not across her leg and his thigh.
“Sorry!” Judith slapped a hand against his chest and lightly bit his shoulder. “Don’t know what came over me, hon. Must’ve been that fucking awesome orgasm. ‘Cause I’ve been hungry, you know. Neither of my men are visiting enough to keep this kept woman’s pussy happy.”
“Liar.” Seth needed a tissue, but that orgasm had him as spent as Judith. Nobody was reaching for anything but each other right now. “Last time I saw you I fucked you until you actually started begging for mercy.”
“And mercy wasn’t my safe word, so…”
Sometimes it was difficult dating such an insatiable woman, but only sometimes. “You kill me, Judith.”
“I’m not trying to kill you, though! Just draining you of your life essence!” Judith had done a pretty good job that day, too. She was very familiar with what her boyfriend’s cock was capable of, and it had outdone itself in the ejaculation department today. Too bad she only got about 10% of it inside of her before doing some dying of her own. Whatever. Not like she hadn’t called to have her sheets cleaned after one of her boyfriends left before. “Look at him.” Her hand gripped the base of Seth’s wet and spent cock. The determined fucker was still stiff but quickly losing interest in the world. Excellent! Easier to play with! Especially when its owner could only drum up enough strength to give her a cautious side glance.
An awkward silence filled the air. Judith bit her lip and grinned at Seth, her fist manipulating his cock until the tip started smacking the lower part of his stomach.
“Fucking hell,” he tackled her to the other side of the bed, her squeals of delight almost enough to arouse him again. “I love you.”
This was exactly what they both wanted on a drizzly December day up in the mountains. It was also one of their last times together before New Year’s, for Judith was already packing her bags to go join her other boyfriend Miguel in Monaco for Christmas. She was doomed to meet his parents and to be formally introduced as his girlfriend. (Although they were leaving out Seth. Miguel’s parents were Catholic and not likely to appreciate their oldest son being in a ménage relationship that included another man.) Judith needed all the fun she could get with Seth.
“You’re not getting much work done, doctor,” she teased. “I’m starting to think you didn’t come here to get any work done. You just wanted to fuck me.”
“Shit, what gave it away?” The fact that he never bothered to remove his painting materials from their bags? The fact that they were having sex within fifteen minutes of his arrival? The fact he straight up said “Honestly, I would like to fuck you right now?” “Although if it makes you feel better, I need to rest before tonight. I’m assuming you want more sex before going to sleep.”
“Duh!” What was the point of having her boyfriend stay the night if they weren’t boning as much as possible? Hadn’t Judith claimed to be insatiable? “But you can give me kisses in the interim, I’m sure.”
Seth was more than willing to provide kisses. Especially the long, intimate kind that made a man feel like he completely owned – and was owned by – a woman. In fact, Seth would have been perfectly content to lie there and kiss Judith until dinnertime if it wasn’t for the brusque knock at his girlfriend’s door.
That’s what sucked about meeting up at the Château. There were always people coming and going (but mostly co
ming,) and Judith’s personal time could be interrupted at any moment. But she had served drinks at a party the night before, and had asked her boyfriend to come meet her there so she could get some sleep for once.
Judith roused herself from bed. She grabbed a robe off the back of a chair and had herself presentable by the time she cracked open the doorframe and saw one of many maids that kept the Château running when nobody was looking.
“Sorry for the interruption,” the meek woman said, “but Lady Warren wishes to speak with you urgently.” The maid glanced beyond Judith and witnessed Seth covering himself up in the messy bed. Judith had half a mind to open her door wider.
“Tell Lady Warren that I’ll be there in a jiff.” Judith closed the door in the woman’s face. When she turned back to her boyfriend, Seth had already kicked back the covers again.
“Leaving so soon?”
He dared to display his post-coital nudity like that to her? Oh, he knew what he was doing. He knew what a naughty woman Judith could be when tested. All Seth had to do was give her a hot naked body and she would be all over it like cheese on pizza.
“I’ll be back.” She bent down and kissed him. “And when I get back, you better still be naked.”
“God help me, I will be.”
Judith left her room with a twiddle of her fingers. The moment the door closed, Seth’s phone rang. Somewhere. In the room.
Somewhere.
The sound was muffled enough that Seth feared it was in his jeans, which were somehow trapped beneath Judith’s bed. How much of a hurry had they been in to get naked earlier? Too hurried, if there was such a thing.
Seth would’ve answered it regardless of who it was by the time he finally found the stupid thing. But when he saw his best friend Zack’s name flashing on the screen, he groaned. The man only called when he was drunk or plotting something diabolical.
