by Eden Myles
Robert and I stared at each other like a couple of irate gunslingers while the eggs continued to sizzle in the skillet and filled the kitchen with their greasy burning. “You don’t have to dismiss me, Robert,” I said with a calmness that shocked and frightened me. “I just quit five minutes ago.”
He changed just then. The anger drained from his face. “Margo, wait…” He reached for my arm.
But I raised my hands in a sign he should back off even as I moved toward the door and finally slammed out of the apartment. To my credit, I made it all the way to the street and inside a cab before I started to fall apart.
***
It didn’t take me very long to clean out my office at Burkett Associates. An hour and a half after I’d begun, I had a single neat box, most of which was made up of office supplies, certificates, diplomas and a few small personal items. Unlike Robert, and even our junior associates, I had never decorated my office or filled it with anything very important. The furnishings and pictures on the walls had all been picked out by the interior designer, and I had never had office toys, inspirational posters or lithographs hung on my walls. I didn’t put pictures on my desk, not even my family. There had been many a time when someone looking for me had had trouble finding my office due to its generic look and feel, its utter neutral emptiness.
I had never understood that about myself. I liked houseplants and had a dozen of them at home, hanging in my kitchen. I liked Greek and Byzantine architecture and design. I had spent years carefully designing my bedroom until it was picture perfect and ready for my future courtier. But I didn’t apply any of that enthusiasm to my workplace, even though I spent more time here than at home. I thought how Dmitri would likely say I was hiding again, refusing to share myself with the world. And he was probably right.
I took one more look at my poor, spare office, the place I’d occupied for the past six years, then picked up my box.
“Ms. Faulkner?” a voice called from the doorway. I turned and saw Lydia rushing into my office. She stopped when she saw me with my box, then glanced surreptitiously around the darkened office walls. I hadn’t told her or anyone else about my quitting Burkett Associates. “Ms. Faulkner, is everything all right?”
I sighed. “What is it, Lydia?”
“Have you heard? They caught him. They caught Adam. Some agents from the White Collar Crimes division of the FBI are here to take him away right now!”
“What?” I went over to the door and peeked out. Sure enough, I could hear voices from down in the computer pool, a plainclothes agent reading someone his rights. I closed the door and turned to Lydia. “What is this all about?”
“I told you! They caught Adam channeling funds. He and some big network of computer hackers. They were hitting all different firms all over the city. Can you believe that?” She looked by turns horrified and intrigued by it all. “He was transferring company funds and rerouting ISP’s so it looked like someone else was doing it.”
For a moment I was too shocked to say anything, to even react. But then, bit by bit, I started feeling like the biggest fool ever born. I went back to my desk and set the box down, then took a few deep breaths to keep from hyperventilating.
“Are you all right, Ms. Faulkner?” Lydia asked, placing a concerned hand on my shoulder. “Were you leaving us?”
After I got my breathing under control, I patted Lydia’s hand. “No, Lydia, I’m not going anywhere.” I hope. I stood up and straightened my skirt and ran a hand over my chignon as I prepared to eat crow for lunch today. I headed for the door but stopped with my hand on the doorknob. “Lydia?”
“Yes, Ms. Faulkner?”
“We’ve known each other for too long. Please start calling me Margo.”
“Yes, Ms. Faulk—Margo.” Lydia beamed me a smile.
***
The FBI agents were just finishing up talking to Robert when I stepped inside his office. I waited patiently until they were done explaining procedure to him, then closed the door and turned to my lover, my courtier, my best friend.
He stood at his big picture window, warming his hands around a cup of tea—the cup I had given him. He looked out over the city, seemingly oblivious to me. I looked over his office, the messy desk, the big patchwork quilt behind a dust shield that Joanne had hung years ago to warm his workspace, the pictures of antique cars on the walls, the sepia photographs of family members that sat comfortably between his law certificates. I saw how comfortable he was with his life and I envied that. I envied him.
“I’m sorry I went through your things,” I finally said to break the silence. “It was a shameful thing to do. It was wrong.” I paused and reflected on how easily I’d been sucked into Adam’s story, how easily I’d been suckered in by own feelings of mistrust. A part of me had been prepared for Robert betraying me, and when it didn’t happen, I made it happen anyway. “There’s no excuse for my behavior. You trusted me all along, you gave yourself to me, but I never trusted you. The truth is, I’ve never trusted anyone.”
I waited in silence for him to react. But when he turned to look at me from across the room, his face was set with the most unlikely of emotions. I expected anger, resentment, pain. Instead, all I could see was a soft longing lighting his face and eyes from within. “I think you do have an excuse for your distrust, Margo. I know what happened to you when you were thirteen.”
I felt a jolt at his words. “I don’t understand,” I said, sounding angrier than I wanted to.
“Your friend Dmitri and I share a country club, it turns out.” He smiled at me, sadly, apologetically.
“He wasn’t supposed to tell you any of that,” I hissed. “That’s a violation of patient confidentiality…!”
But he cut me off. “It wasn’t easy, I can assure you. He’s a stubborn bloke, Dmitri. I hounded him for months for the details before he finally broke, but I’m glad he did. I wanted to know, Margo. I needed to know.”
I felt so embarrassed, so ashamed, so…unclean. I shivered and turned to leave but he crossed the office too quickly and put his arms around me, hugging me against his body. He kissed my hair and rested his chin atop my bowed head, said, “Margo…my Margo…I promise I will never let anyone ever hurt you again. Do you trust me? Could you learn to trust me?”
I nodded as I fought back tears. “I already to, Robert.”
“Good,” he said as he drew back, plucked the handkerchief from his breast pocket, and gently and thoroughly wiped the wetness from my eyes. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Margo, because I want you to meet Amanda.”
***
The ride up to the Hamptons took a little over two and a half hours in Robert’s jeep. It was an older model, but he had kept it up beautifully and it was in almost pristine condition. During the ride up, Robert regaled me with stories about his childhood, how his parents had instilled in him a “waste not, want not,” philosophy, which explained the jeep. It had been with him almost as long as he’d been in America. I sat in the bucket seat and listened to his beautiful country English accent even as the landscape turned wild and clean just outside the glass.
Eventually we turned off on a gravel road that snaked along until it reached a huge, rambling palatial house set on several cleared acres of forest. I thought at first that it was a B&B until I saw the sign out front that read Brookmont Clinic. The house had been renovated long ago to serve as a private hospital. We turned up the well-paved road and drove toward the meticulous manse on the hill.
After parking, Robert guided me up the wide stone steps to the clinic and held the door for me as we went inside. The halls were bright and cheery, painted in pastels and decorated with colorful watercolor paintings. Nurses in scrubs moved purposefully past up, carrying clipboards or guiding patients. We stopped at the nurses’ station and a pretty black woman in scrubs looked up and said, “Robert! How are you, hon?”
“I’m doing quite fine, Matilda, thank you.”
“You’ve brought company today, I see.” She smiled cheekily
like she suspected something.
“Yes, this is my partner and girlfriend, Margo. Margo, this is Matilda, head nurse at Brookmont.”
We made small talk for a moment and then Matilda said, “Amanda’s out on the patio, if you’d like to see her.”
“I would, indeed. Thank you, Matilda.” And reaching over the divider, Robert took Matilda’s hand and brushed a brief kiss over her knuckles, which made the woman blush like crazy. I might have been a little jealous, but I knew that was just Robert’s way. He was always the gentleman.
Robert then guided me down a series of corridors until we reached a pair of French doors that were open onto a sunny patio full of chairs and tables. Patients wandered among the beds of flowers in the vast, meticulously kept garden, or sat at the patio tables, drawing, playing cards or checkers, or just watching the birds wheeling overhead.
It took me only a few moments to recognize one of the patients as Amanda. We stopped at the table where the familiar, dark-haired woman was carefully painting flowers onto a canvas, and Robert said, “Margo, this is my sister Amanda. Amanda, would you like to say hello to Margo?”
The girl looked up shyly and offered me a brief smile before returning to her task.
“Amanda doesn’t speak,” Robert explained as we sat down at the girl’s table. “She was my mother’s youngest, and she was born extremely autistic. She never learned to communicate. But she does like to paint.”
Over the next hour, Amanda painted us many pictures, including one of Robert and I together, with me dressed in what I could only presume was a wedding dress and veil, surrounded by flowers. Robert blushed at that and explained that when he visited Amanda, which was at least once a week, he frequently talked about me to her, telling her all about me.
It was late afternoon by the time we said goodbye to Amanda and returned to the car. As we started back to the city, I said, “All those checks you wrote were to keep her here.”
“Amanda loves it here. She wouldn’t do well in the city. There are no flowers.” He smiled at that.
I watched his face, the love he had for his sister. “Why didn’t you ever say anything about her? Why hide her?”
Robert frowned with concentration. “When my mother died, she had me promise I would always look after her, protect her. But this job we do sometimes attracts bad elements, and Amanda is an innocent. Always has been. I didn’t want to risk anyone learning about her, hurting her. Hence the reason I always paid for Amanda’s care by check. Less paper trail.” He looked over at me with that same fierce look of devotion he had for Amanda. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her, Margo. I should have.”
I took his hand and kissed it. “And I should have trusted you.”
“Even?”
I grinned. “Even.”
“Well, bloody hell.”
“What is it?”
He shrugged and looked over at me with a shy smile that was all Robert, all male. “Here I was hoping you might punish me tonight, milady.”
***
“Are you nervous?” I asked Robert as my driver ushered us through the light-studded New York streets, on the way to the Dollhouse. I lounged on the seat in my Grecian-inspired cutaway gown in a soft, dark shade of velvety chocolate. It emphasized more than it hid, leaving my arms, cleavage and lower belly bare. Long strips of floor-length fabric covered me front and back, leaving my legs, thighs and hips bare as well, and my heeled gladiator sandals were on full display.
Robert sat beside me in his pristine tuxedo, his hands folded carefully in his lap, composed and obedient, though his eyes were trained on me like metal attracted to a super magnet. I knew he was being particularly attentive to my instructions tonight, and the thought made me wonderfully wet. I thought he looked magnificently beautiful. “No, of course not,” he said, though I sensed an edge to his voice.
I took one of his hands and kissed the space just below his knuckles. “Trust me,” I told him.
The driver pulled up and Robert climbed out first and then turned to help me from the backseat. I was his lady tonight, but he had insisted that I let him act like the gentleman that he was. I tucked his hand into the crook of my arm as we climbed the wide stone steps to the front entrance, nodded a greeting to the bouncer on duty, and then stepped inside the receiving hall where all the other gentleman lingered, drinking bourbon or champagne and chatting about their workweek.
I nodded greetings. Most looked surprised to see I had a companion tonight. Normally, I visited the Dollhouse alone to enjoy the plays in relative exile. It wasn’t that the men here weren’t progressive or being deliberately rude—Malcolm had many fiercer supporters—but all the “bachelors,” as the unattached were referred to, had a habit of hovering on the fringes for the first few years, or however long it took for them to find a courtier or courtesan.
Malcolm immediately spotted me and he and his best friend Ian Sterling made a beeline for me. I had long ago made Robert aware of the rules of conduct inside the Dollhouse, and he knew the gentleman headed my way could not speak to him, the first time for him in a social situation, I realized. By remaining with me, it was going to be a very lonely situation for him, so I turned to him and said, “Would you like to meet the girls? Well, there are some delightful men among them now, as well, thanks to Malcolm’s progressive campaigning.” The men would be a nice bonus, but I knew that, above all, Robert loved women of all kind.
“I would be delighted, milady,” he said, bowing in a courtly way over my hand before taking his leave for the next room where the courtesans and courtiers waited for tonight’s play to begin.
For the next hour, Malcolm, Ian and I made small talk and shared in bourbon and the bounty of Malcolm’s wonderful Cuban cigars. Malcolm expressed great interest in my play tonight, and asked whether I and my courtier might be available for a shoot sometime next week. Ian expressed interest in hiring Burkett Associates for a particularly sticky legal issue he had overseas with a distributor. I knew that would delight Robert; Sterling of New York, a cosmetic company giant, would be a hugely profitable account for us.
Not long after, Malcolm checked his pocket watch and said to me, “Shall we begin, then, Margo?”
I felt a thrill of nervous anticipation. This was definitely a red-letter day—or night, rather: The night the Dollhouse Society officially welcomed a lady into their midst. In some ways, it was like the Society gliding out of the old century and into a new one.
The gentleman turned to me and raised their drinks, encouraging me to begin. I led the way into the Main Hall with its vast checked floor and three hundred years’ worth of erotica hanging on the walls. There the courtesans and courtiers were enjoying their gossip and their bubbly drinks. The girls were of course fawning over Robert, who looked tall and so very handsome. Even the other courtiers seemed taken with him.
Since it was our debutante ball, our fantasy, I had been allowed to request that the hall be decorated to my taste. I had chosen a simple kline, or a backless Grecian reclining sofa, surrounded on both sides by two kebeti—two giant incense burners draped in veils.
I crooked my finger to Robert and he immediately tore himself away from the courtesans who had been oohing and aahing over him and came to me. I wasted no time cupping the back of his head and kissing him, slowly and unhurriedly. I breathed into him until he relaxed against me. I loved the hard, familiar feel of his body pressed against mine, the thrill of the others watching us together. “Trust me?” I whispered against his lips, and Robert’s eyes fluttered in response.
“I’ll always trust you, Margo.”
The kebeti were filling the hall with the delightfully exotic scents of sandalwood and spicy, lemony frankincense. I led him to the kline and told him to kneel down before me. A part of me feared he wouldn’t be able to perform in front of the others, that this exhibitionism would be too much for him and he would immediately use the safe word of the evening to stop our play, but he surprised me by going to his knees for me.
&nbs
p; I took the crop I wore in a little loop on my specially designed dress and brushed the heart-shaped nip over his lips and chin. I brushed it down the front of his body and over the already hardening member in his trousers, then trailed it back up his body once more until the nub caught him under the chin, forcing his head up so he was looking me in the eye. I gave him his instructions. “You’ll do exactly what I say, when I say it. You won’t speak unless spoken to, and you won’t come without permission. Do you understand, Robert?”
“Yes,” he immediately answered.
I flicked the crop and slapped it against his hard-on, quick and decisively. Robert flinched and corrected himself by saying, “Yes, milady.”
“Good,” I said. “Lick me. Make me come.”
The skirt of my gown was comprised of little more than a few panels of filmy material, and beneath it I wore only my skin and my anticipation. Robert parted the material reverently and I felt the coolness of the room on my bare, wet sex. He flicked his tongue under the hood of my clit, quick and light. I gasped at the sensation, and very soon he was lapping at my wetness, teasing it from me, stopping only to feather kisses up the inside of my legs and to blow gently against my sex before continuing. Each touch of his tongue or his breath on my supersensitive flesh sent shivers through me from top to bottom.
He finally gripped my leg behind the knee and lifted it to the level of his shoulder, balancing it there while he went about the job of drawing more precum and a drowsy, almost hypnotic bliss from my body. His fingers parted the slick folds of my labia, and then three of his fingers were there, up inside of me and making such a delightful squelching noise as he touched me inside, moving steadily inward.
I rolled my head back on my shoulders and my hips thrust against the plunging fingers of his exploration. It wasn’t long before we found a rhythm that had me jerking and groaning and finally pouring my juices out for him as he coaxed the first orgasm of the evening out of my body. As I came, he withdrew his fingers and clutched my ass, holding my pelvis against his mouth so I could come, trembling, in his mouth, so I could fill him with my desire.
