by Sorcha Black
How had Elodie managed to get off? While she’d been giving him a blowjob, her hands had been supporting her weight, mostly, or playing with his balls. So the orgasm had come from what? Getting that much satisfaction from a job well done seemed unlikely.
The way he held Elodie to his chest afterward and the soft expression in his eyes were endearing. He was in love with her every bit as much as she seemed smitten with him. Tess felt like an interloper on their affection, and thought about excusing herself to go to the bathroom to give them a moment.
“You look confused.” Lock smiled lazily at Tess, and she sank into the mattress, too exhausted to be polite, although watching the blowjob had made her hot all over again.
“Yes. I’ve never heard of a girl getting off from giving oral before.”
“The way she was kneeling, she had her heel pressed against her pussy. She’s sneaky.” He smiled and slapped Elodie’s ass, then rolled her between them. Elodie looked dazed, but pulled Tess closer, then moved her onto her side so they could spoon. As adventurous as Tess had apparently been feeling today, she was relieved the other girl wasn’t trying to kiss after that.
“I should go clean the house,” Tess murmured.
“Shut up and let me cuddle you, stubborn mouse.”
Lock snorted, and Tess glanced back to see he had spooned up behind Elodie. He draped an arm across both of them, like he was silently agreeing she should stay put.
“Nap first.” He commanded sleepily. “We’ll all clean later.”
*
They’d wanted to drive her home, but she’d managed to convince them that the neighbors would talk. Really, she had a need to get away from the situation and think.
Had she seriously slept in a bed with them? The whole day had been surreal. True to their word, they’d helped her clean the house when they’d woken up, then insisted on paying her as though she’d cleaned it all herself. Afterward, Lock had ordered pizza and they’d pigged out in the living room while they watched an Alien marathon, and sat draped all over each other on the couch.
On the bus ride home, the line she’d allowed to be blurred between personal and professional bothered her. They’d treated her like it had been a date, but she’d also worked and gotten paid. She felt like a sex trade worker who did windows. They’d explained that the money was for cleaning, and because they knew she needed it, but the fact that she’d had sex with them really made a confusing mess of things in her head, even if they seemed to have sorted it out for themselves.
The apartment building felt humid as she used her key to get through the security door. She fought to get the lock to let go of her key then held her breath as she walked down the hall. It was ridiculous that the landlord had never managed to get the stench out of the hall from poor Mr. Travers dying and decomposing in his apartment for a few weeks. They’d found him at least a year ago.
She unlocked her apartment door, feeling as though she was turning blue then quickly closed it behind her when she got inside. After jamming the towel back under the door, she carried the groceries Elodie had insisted she take, into the kitchen. At least she could avoid going back to the food bank for a while. It was nice that places like that existed, but every time she went the weight of their judgmental gazes lingered long after she went home. Knowing she had a college diploma didn’t shield her self-esteem from that. She’d done what she could to claw her way out of poverty, and had slid right back in again, now weighed down with a student loan too.
Now she wasn’t just broke, she was possibly a whore. Dad had been right about her future all along.
Chapter Eight
Elodie looked up at him with the kind of love and trust usually attributed to puppies and small children. He cradled her in his lap like a baby and ran his lips over her brow then down the line of her nose. It was hard to believe he’d almost told her not to come visit him, all those months ago. It had seemed so sudden, and yet here she was, now the center of his life.
“I’m too big to be sitting here like this.”
“No. You’re where you belong, Minou. On my lap where I can pet you.”
It had taken a while to convince her of that, early on, but now she accepted it.
“So what are your plans with the girl?” Lock kept his tone light, but his stomach was knotted. Elodie had slept through the night, but he’d spent most of it staring at the ceiling.
As unsure as he’d been, it had been too fucking hot to resist playing with them. The two women together were like watching the sexiest porn he’d ever seen, and he got to touch. He’d fucked Elodie as soon as Tess left, hard and rough, satisfying his lust and an odd need to reclaim what was his. Even now he looked at her and the urge to fuck every hole that could take him, to remind them both of the rightful way of things.
She shrugged. “It depends on what you want, chéri. I like her very much, but you’re my first choice, not her. Maybe we helped her get over her shyness about sex, and she’ll date that Tristan now.” Her brow lowered and her smile was grim and fake.
“You’re jealous when you think of her with someone else.” He knew that feeling all too well. “Were you jealous of sharing her with me?”
“Nooo.” The tension was gone and her eyes lit. “I would come in my pants if I watched you fuck her. How she’d whine and squirm beneath you, and I’d kiss her and comfort her as you shoved your big cock into her sweet little pussy. She was so tight I thought she was going to break my finger. We’d have to grease that huge dick of yours to get it into her.”
Shocked, he barked a laugh. “Elodie! Dirty!”
His girl squirmed in his lap. “Mmm. I know, but I can’t help it. She’s so adorable and making her come was...” She pressed a hand between her legs.
“So you have no specific plan to fall in love with her and leave me?”
“What? No!” She wrapped her arms around his neck and dragged him down for a kiss. “I wouldn’t choose her over you. Now if you were to tell me that you were okay with keeping the door open to playing with her again – that would make me happy. But if you’re not interested or if it makes you unhappy, it never needs to happen again.”
The earnestness in her eyes eased the tightness in his chest. If this would stop anytime he chose – if this was just a sex game to her, it was a lot less scary. They hadn’t really talked about playing with other people, but having been there and participated...maybe he’d let that door stay open, for now. At least it was a woman. Tess wasn’t exactly his type, but she was kind of cute and really that was all that mattered, since this was temporary. Maybe it made him sexist or something, but if Elodie had wanted another man, he couldn’t have handled that.
“Okay, Minou. We’ll see how things go with her.” He stroked her hair and she rubbed her face on his arm. “She might not want to fool around with us again anyway. That probably wasn’t the way she meant to lose her virginity.”
Elodie covered her eyes with her hands. “I know.” She made a sound of disgust. “I thought of that later. In the moment I just thought about how hot she was and how much I wanted her, then gave myself permission because she wanted more experience. If she never wants to see me again, I wouldn’t blame her.”
Hot? Obviously they had different taste in women.
“Maybe we moved too fast with her, but you two seem to have a connection. Why don’t you call her?”
“I can’t.” She sighed. “What if she regrets everything and doesn’t want to hear from me?”
Lock traced a finger up her arm, then down the side of her neck. Her shiver stirred his interest again and he cupped her breast, the weight of it in his hand satisfying the Neanderthal part of his brain. “Even if she regrets everything, she probably needs to talk to someone.”
“She should have stayed over.”
He rubbed a thumb over her nipple and she squirmed. Maybe cuddling naked had been a bad idea, considering this was supposed to be a serious conversation. Now he just wanted to throw her down and take her again. “She probably should have
, but she didn’t want to.”
“I should have tied her to our bed.” There was a growl in her voice that was simultaneously adorable and surprising.
“Down, girl. You don’t even know if she’s into kink yet.”
“Did you see how she responded to us? She’ll be into it.” She rumpled her wild hair. “If she ever comes back.”
*
“How’s that firecracker of yours?” The phone connection was tinny, but it was good to hear the old man’s voice, anyway. Even though his father had moved to Arizona two years ago, Lock still imagined him as being frail and having a phlegmy cough, instead of being hale and sun-baked like he was now. After the commune Lock had been raised disbanded, Jim had luckily met Annie, even though he hadn’t wanted to move on. Ten years of grieving for Lock’s mother was long enough.
Lock closed the door to his office then sat back in his chair and propped his feet on his wooden desk. “She’s a handful. You’d either love her or she’d scare the hell out of you.”
“Sounds like your mother. She wasn’t the best housewife, not that either of us believed in stereotypical gender roles, but there was never a dull moment.” It was good to hear him talk about his mother and not hear the perpetual misery in his voice. The car accident hadn’t given them a chance to say goodbye. Lock’s own memories of his mother were fading, which scared him sometimes, but there was no help for it.
“Elodie is anything but dull.” Lock chuckled.
His girl on her knees this morning, begging for a quick fuck before he left for work rose to mind. Her pout when he refused had been adorable and she’d been texting nudie pics to him all morning, trying to lure him home for lunch. On break his close buddies had been bitching about their girlfriends and wives never putting out just as a pic of Elodie suggestively eating a banana showed up on his phone. Since he never participated in the water cooler bitchfests, there was much speculation about Lock’s girlfriend – especially since he never brought her to functions.
“Well, if you dated a boring girl, I’d wash my hands of you.” Jim snorted. “With your upbringing, I can’t believe you’ve been there so long. Remember – money isn’t everything, Lock. If they’re stifling you, get the fuck out of Dodge.”
Lock sighed. His father still had trouble dealing with how much he’d sold out, between business college and working for capitalists. “They’re decent men, just old and set in their ways.”
“I’m old, but that doesn’t mean I’m narrow. Age doesn’t automatically make you part of the establishment.” His father sighed. “Annie and I are going to the marriage equality rally here tomorrow. Is that company you work for against equal rights?”
“I don’t know. I never asked. All I do is work for them and get paid.” He linked colorful paperclips together until they made a chain, then snaked it around on his desk. Was this exactly the same conversation they’d had last week?
“The personal is political. If you keep silent, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution,” he admonished.
Lock lowered his voice to a whisper. “I know. You didn’t raise me to stand by and do nothing, but I have to make a living too. If they were complete asshats, I’d leave.”
“If money is ever a problem, you and your firecracker are welcome to move here. There’s plenty of space.”
Yeah, Elodie kneeling at Lock’s feet and calling him Sir would just about kill his hippie-activist-artsy-commune-living father. Not going to happen.
“Everything is fine, for now. The job is interesting, and I’ll take their money without feeling bad about it. If they do something unscrupulous, I’ll move on.”
“Good boy, Robin of Locksley.”
Lock rolled his eyes. His father hadn’t called him that for years, and it sounded so corny now that he was part of the regular world. How many kids got named after Robin fucking Hood? While he’d been growing up in the commune, his name hadn’t been all that odd compared to some of the other kids. Going to college after being homeschooled for all those years had been more than a little shocking.
“Okay, Jim, I have to get some work done before they fire me. Go paint something and stay out of mischief, old man.”
“Yeah, just make sure you bail me out when the cops call you.”
“Your legal fund is intact, you crazy bastard.”
“Love you.”
“Love you more.”
The line went dead. Jim didn’t stand on ceremony. He also didn’t believe in titles that implied power imbalance, like ‘Dad.’
Lock put aside his cell, vowing to ignore alerts until he got some shit done. It was almost noon and between Elodie and Jim, he hadn’t really done anything work related. On his email, there were messages from two of their toy designers. Personally, he found neither of the ideas as interesting as Elodie’s duck, but Caper wouldn’t pay her what it was worth. The broadening old-fashioned toy market meant work like hers was in high demand.
It was the same situation as the first toy she’d shown him. She’d submitted an idea to Caper Toys, but after talking back and forth for a while, she’d gotten a better offer from another company. Luckily, she and Lock had clicked and she’d kept emailing him anyway. His office didn’t buy ideas from freelance designers often, although they were always on the lookout, but Elodie was talented. If she applied for a position, he was sure they’d hire her, but she wouldn’t settle for their corporate bullshit and the crap money they paid designers.
A knock at the door drew his attention. Irving Stanley swung the door open and stood there, wearing his best corporate smile. “Locksley, I just wanted to let you know we’ve decided to host a couples’ golf tournament as a fundraiser for the hospital, probably in late August. Attendance is mandatory, but it’s going to be a hoot!”
What? Fuck. “Irving, you know I’ll be there with bells on, but my girlfriend’s work schedule is hectic. I doubt she can make it.”
The elderly man shuffled into the room and sat across the desk from him. “You keep saying that, but it’s not the kind of family atmosphere we’re working toward here. Now I know some of the young wives have their own jobs – that’s all fine and dandy.”
Inwardly, Lock winced at the older man’s sexism, but he did his best to keep his expression unreadable. Irving was old and Lock wasn’t there to teach him new tricks.
“But the fact that you’ve never brought anyone to one of these functions, well that’s starting to seem unfriendly and standoffish, do you understand what I’m saying? Everyone knows you’re involved with someone, and never bringing her to functions goes against the company’s family atmosphere. I’m giving you a two months’ heads up here.”
The thought of Elodie playing golf, wearing dress casual, and not cussing when she missed a shot, was completely ludicrous.
“So you’re saying this is mandatory for both of us, then?” He laughed lightly so he didn’t sound argumentative, but he was pissed. This put him in a very awkward position.
“Well, we’re not unreasonable. I’m just saying that full participation in team-building activities is good for your career.” He rose and nodded in a friendly way, then moved out into the hall.
The implied threat was received and understood. Elodie would be going golfing.
The shit show was going to be epic.
Chapter Nine
The elephant dipped its trunk in the water then stalled.
“Merde.” Elodie stuck a curl of hair in her mouth and sucked on it. What had she missed? She’d gone over the design again and again, but today her brain was like a skipping record. Just when she started to feel she was going to have a breakthrough, her little mouse would make a noise and her focus would shift. There was no reason why Tess should have been distracting her, except for the fact that the dress she’d worn today was making her think about Tess’s legs instead of toy schematics.
Giving up on being productive for the time being, Elodie let her nose lead her to the kitchen.
The girl was at the stov
e stirring something that smelled irresistible. Or maybe that was Tess. Bare feet, a June Cleaver dress. Tess was hard at work, adding sliced vegetables to the pot, unaware that Elodie's gaze was licking her from ten paces.
She walked up behind Tess, not sure what she was going to do until she got there.
“Lunch smells sooo good.” Elodie slipped her arms around Tess and gently bit her neck. The girl yipped, jumped and spilled a spoonful of soup across the clean stovetop.
“El-Elodie. I…uh…you scared me.” The girl whirled in Elodie’s arms. Her cheeks were as red as the minestrone soup she’d been working on. Although her eyes were wide and nervous, that just made playing with her more interesting.
It had taken all of Elodie’s willpower to leave her alone and give them both time to get things done until now. She got the impression that Tess had been hoping to avoid talking about anything other than work, but they needed to discuss things – even if the girl didn’t want to continue with whatever was going on between them.
Elodie shut off the stove and drew her away from it. She sat on a kitchen chair, drawing the girl down onto her lap.
“I’m too big to sit on you.” She tried to jump up, but Elodie held her in place.
“You’re vraiment petite. You’d have to jump on me to squish me.” Strangely, she felt like Lock had more or less said the same thing to her before.
Tess settled on her lap, but was stiff in Elodie’s arms.
“Now, you and I need to talk.”
“This isn’t about work, is it?”
“Non, Souris.” Elodie chuckled. “We need to talk about what happened the last time you came over.”
She sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Do we have to?”
“Well, no.” Elodie let her go, but the little one stayed where she’d put her. Such a good girl. A flash of the same possessive feeling she’d had at the grocery store surprised her. The plan, such as it was, had been to help Tess get over her fear of being touched. To play with her – maybe have sex with her if it was okay with Lock. But now that Lock had given his permission, a whole other door had opened in her mind. What if they could play with her for a while, instead of just a couple of times? What if Tristan was an asshat who didn’t deserve her?
