by S Doyle
I walked over to sit on the couch. Beyond the sliding glass doors, I could see the beach stretching past the hotel. Ash followed me and made herself comfortable in my lap. Her naked ass pressed into my crotch. As close as she could be while still giving me enough space to drink my coffee.
“You have to sit on my lap?” I said it like it bothered me. It didn’t.
“Yes, that’s what girlfriends do.”
“I’ve had girlfriends. They didn’t sit on my lap.”
“You didn’t have girlfriends,” she snorted.
I was offended by that. “What the fuck was Kaitlin?”
“A prop. Someone who looked good on your arm. Someone you went through the motions with. Did you even like her?”
Not that much. “She was okay.”
“I’m just saying this is different, Marc. You and me, we’re not like what you’ve done before. This is real.”
She cupped my cheek in her hand, like I did with her so often, and forced me to look at her.
“It’s okay to be scared,” she assured me.
“Are you scared?” I asked her.
She shook her head. Of course she wasn’t. She was the bravest person I knew. “I love you. There’s nothing to be scared of.”
I pulled her hand away from my face then. “I won’t ever say it. Do you understand me, Ash? I’ll never tell you that. Ever.”
I didn’t know if it was because I would never feel it or not. I only knew I’d loved someone once, and losing that person, that love, being torn away from it, being rejected by it, had broken me. I didn’t know if I was capable of the emotion, but I knew, without a doubt, I would never cop to it.
“Okay. Do you not like it when I say it? I don’t have to. I can say you’ve got the best dick I’ve ever seen in my life, instead.”
“Mine’s the only dick you’ve ever seen,” I reminded her.
Did I not want her to say it? That she loved me? It made me uncomfortable, so I guess that was enough of a reason to not want her to say it. It also made me feel guilty knowing I couldn’t reciprocate.
She shook her head. “No, it isn’t. There were all kinds of images online when I was researching blow jobs. I still think yours is the best, though.”
“Fabulous,” I muttered.
“Anyway, that’s a good rule we’ve established. No L-word talk. Fine. But we need a few more.”
“What for?”
“For you being my secret boyfriend.”
Yeah, I still wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about that. Last night I’d promised her I would fuck only her. I didn’t necessarily see that as an issue. Despite what she thought, probably because of the impression I’d given her over the years, it wasn’t like there were a lot of women for me. I was too focused on getting to the finish line of my degree to get distracted beyond the occasional fuck.
What Ash was talking about would be a distraction.
“Look, Ash. I won’t fuck anyone else if that’s what you want, but how the hell am I supposed to be your boyfriend? I’ll either be at Princeton, or in Manhattan working at your father’s office. And you’ll be wherever he lets you go.”
“That’s why we need rules. A way to establish our relationship, so that, even though we’re apart, we’ll know we’re still together. Not fucking other people is only one way to do that.”
“Okay fine. I’ll humor you. What kind of rules are we talking about?”
“You need to text me at least once a day. On my new phone. I’ll use my old phone to text you sometimes, but I still want to show a gradual decrease in usage. It will look like I just started to lose interest in you because you weren’t replying. Per Arthur’s wishes.”
“Fine.” We’d basically been doing that for years. I didn’t see that as much of a change. Touching base with Ash was just something I needed to do. That was something I could acknowledge.
“Also, you have to be nice to me once in a while.”
“I’ll try,” I said drily.
“And chocolates occasionally. I’ve set up a PO box at the post office in town. You can send anything to me at that address.”
“I don’t have money to waste on chocolates,” I said with a frown. Then I jiggled her in my lap to get her attention. “A burner phone, a secret PO box…how afraid of your father are you? Tell me the truth, Ash. Because I don’t think you have been up until now.”
“Last time I tried to tell you, you said I was just trying to hold your attention,” she reminded me.
I winced. “Okay. Fine. That was wrong. You wouldn’t lie to me. I get that now.”
She seemed to think about it for a second.
“No secrets. That was a rule, too,” I reminded her.
“Promise me you won’t overreact.”
“I absolutely do not promise that.” Because I had this gut feeling I really wasn’t going to like whatever she had to say.
“You’re not going to like it,” she said quietly. “But I think…I think maybe…my father is trying to sell me to someone.”
What. The. Fuck.
5
Amelia Island
Ashleigh
“You better start talking. Now,” Marc growled.
I got off his lap and took his coffee cup and mine to the sink in the kitchenette to have something to do with my hands. But he followed me like I was trying to run from him.
“Do you know Evan Sanderson? Or the Sanderson family? They’re older than you and you wouldn’t have gone to school with any of his brothers. But you might have heard of the family.”
“There was a Richard Sanderson in my class.”
I nodded. “I’m sure he’s related. Maybe a distant cousin. All the Sandersons in Harborview are. They come from seriously old money. Like, founding fathers of New Jersey old money. I’ve known them peripherally for years, but, lately, Evan has been showing up at places, calling himself one of my father’s clients.”
Marc held up his hands. “Your father manages a hedge fund. That’s entirely possible.”
I shook my head. “The Sandersons don’t need people like my father. As wealthy as Arthur is, he’s small potatoes compared to them.”
Marc’s jaw dropped a little then, and I nodded. “You’ve lived on the periphery of this world. And I know you want to be part of it, but to do that you have to understand how it works. There’s old money, new money. Flashy money, private-jet money and own-a-private-island kind of money. My father has always been one of the flashy, new-money types. Buying the estate in Harborview, he wanted to make a statement. But I’m not sure it ever worked.”
Marc’s eyes narrowed. “Back in high school, girls used to make fun of you for your shoes. The kind of money you’re talking about, I would think five-hundred-dollar shoes were to be expected.”
I smiled gently because it was clear how much of my world he didn’t see. “Harborview High is a public school, Marc. The people I’m talking about don’t go to public school. They go to private academies with other people who have just as much money as they do. That’s why those girls were making fun of me. They didn’t think I belonged there because of the estate we lived on. They thought I should be with my own crowd.”
“You’re telling me your father is considered low rent among the Sanderson crowd?”
I nodded. “Don’t get me wrong. My father has plenty of money. He’s just not at their level.”
“So why is this guy hanging around?” Marc asked.
“I don’t know. He came to the house a few times for dinner after you went to Princeton. Then he showed up in Switzerland—”
“Switzerland?”
I nodded. “When my father was visiting. They just happened to be doing business nearby.”
“And you think these visits are what, exactly?”
I sighed and crossed my arms over my stomach. “I don’t know. He’s never been creepy. He doesn’t leer at me or try to touch me, ever. He’s polite, charming, very formal. Of course, I’m polite back. But it just doesn’t feel ri
ght. Like he’s biding his time before he makes his move. And all these visits are just to show me he has my father’s approval already.”
“So he makes his move and you say, back the fuck off, asshole.”
It wasn’t as simple as that. Not with the kind of power and money they wielded.
“See, you think I’m being dramatic again.”
“Ash,” he said, taking hold of my biceps. “Think about what you’re saying. Your father is going to sell you?”
“Or force a marriage. Which is pretty much the same thing.”
His hold tightened. “You’re not marrying anyone. No one can force you to do that. This guy is poking around and giving you the creeps. I get it. You do everything in your power to stay away from him. We’ll tell George. This guy tries anything with you, touches you at all, and George will rip out his throat. You know that, right?”
I did. George would do anything to protect me, but at what cost to him?
“You can’t go to work for my father,” I insisted. “If you do, that will just put you further under his control.”
“Too late. The deal has been made. You don’t have to go back to Switzerland, and I give him what? A year of my time? If he threatens me again as a way to manipulate you, I’ll quit. It’s not the same thing as getting expelled from Princeton. Besides, I told George maybe it’s a good thing for me to get in there and find out what’s really going on. George said your father’s changed in the past few years. Don’t you want to know why?”
He had changed. But no, I didn’t care why. I only knew the night he hit me, then sent me away the day after, that he didn’t love me. That’s all that mattered.
I was an object in his household. A pretty girl to be dressed up and told to behave properly. To be controlled, isolated and restricted from any freedoms. The second I stepped out of line, I was shown a leash I hadn’t realized I’d always worn.
Poor, sad, little, rich girl.
“…your life is his, until he says it isn’t.”
“No. I don’t care why. But let’s not think about that now. You’ve still got a year at Princeton. Anything can happen between now and then. I don’t want to think about it anymore. Let’s just go sit in the Jacuzzi until we turn into prunes.”
He hesitated before letting me go. Like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t know how to say it.
“Yeah. Okay. Anything can happen between now and then. You going to wear a skimpy bikini?”
“Will it make you hard if I do?”
He snorted. “Probably.”
I beamed. “Then absolutely.”
Later that night
Marc
I gathered up her hair in my fist so I could watch. Her hand was slowly jacking me off, her tongue was swirling around the head of my cock. Sometimes she sucked the head into her mouth, and sometimes she just licked me like I was her own personal ice-cream cone.
The torture of staying still, of not thrusting a little deeper, was fucking delicious. But I wasn’t doing a damn thing that would, in any way, turn her off from sucking dick. Whatever she figured out, she had to do it at her own pace.
So when she took me farther and deeper into her mouth, I hissed.
Immediately, she backed away. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. It feels incredible. All of it. You did excellent fucking work studying blow jobs.”
“I know, right? I think I’m pretty good at it. Well, at least based on the number of your grunts. I sort of love it, too. Like I can feel all of you in my mouth. Tongue your veins, feel your pulse.”
She was going to kill me. “Will you please stop talking and start sucking?”
She did, and that killed me a little, too. I watched her sink her mouth down on me. Felt the swirl of her tongue along the edge of my cock.
I thought about her swallowing my cum.
If I asked her to do it, she would. If I told her to do it, she would.
She would do it for me because there wasn’t much she wouldn’t do for me.
How the fuck did I deserve her? What had I ever done in my life to make it possible I had her absolute faith and trust in me?
I could feel my balls get tight and knew I was close.
I could just come and fill her mouth with my spunk, watch her swallow it, or watch it dribble down her chin. A new claiming. Just liked I’d claimed her pussy and marked her tits.
She would take it. She would take it all…for me.
“Enough,” I barked, and started to tug on the hair still in my fist.
Only she didn’t stop. She kept working her hand and the base of my dick even as she worked to take more and more of me deeper down her throat.
“Stop!”
This time I tugged harder and she did pull away. I looked at her, naked between my knees. Her hands now on either side of my hips. Her nipples were hard little points, which suggested she hadn’t lied about enjoying what she was doing.
“I’m going to come,” I said, my head leaning back on the pillows. “I don’t want to do that in your mouth. You’re not ready.”
“I want to try. I mean, I have to see what it’s like to know if I’m going to love that part, too.”
She was still pumping my dick slowly. She wanted to try, and, maybe at some point, I would let her. But not now. If only because I had those wicked thoughts about telling her to do it and knowing she would do whatever I demanded. At least in bed.
I reached for the box of condoms on the table—the contents dwindling at a rapid pace.
“Come ride me instead.” When she looked a little confused, I pulled her thigh over my hip so she was straddling me. “You on top. You said you wanted to control things sometimes in bed. Now you can. You’re going to have to work to get your orgasm, and I’m telling you right now I don’t know how much control I have left so you better work fast.”
She smiled down at me and her hair dropped over us like a curtain. With one hand braced on my chest, she used her other hand to bring my cock to her pussy, then she worked herself down me with a few hesitant pushes. I could feel how slick she was, more proof she got off on sucking my dick. Then when she was firmly planted on my cock, I groaned as she rolled her hips in one smooth motion.
“Do that again,” I demanded.
She did. Over and over, this slow delicious wave of movement. Like she was a seductress. Like she was in control, which I imagined she was. I thrust up hard into her then, making her tits jiggle, letting her know I could take the control back whenever I wanted. Then I let her set the pace again.
I watched her face. Watched her close her eyes in ecstasy. “Look at me,” I demanded.
She did, and we held each other’s gaze, while I rested my hands on her hips. Not controlling her motions, but letting her have her way.
“You like this?” I asked her. I nudged my thumb up against her swollen clit. “You like fucking me?”
She nodded, but then she bit her bottom lip. I knew what that meant. I didn’t have to ask her. This was Ash and I knew her as well as I knew myself.
“Get off me.” Immediately, she slid off of me and the loss of her wet heat made me hiss again. “Hands and knees, Ash. I’m going to take you from behind.”
She got on her knees and braced herself on her elbows. I moved so that I was behind her.
In one hard thrust I was planted deep inside her. I put my hand on the back of her neck and forced her lower onto the bed, making her back arch more to take me in.
“Yeah, you liked riding my dick, but you weren’t going to come, were you? You need me to make you do that. You need to know it’s my cock fucking you to get you there.”
She was grunting into the pillow, trying to contain her screams.
“Say it,” I barked, even as I reached around her to find her swollen clit again, circling it until she started to whimper. “Say you need my cock.”
“Yes! I need your cock. I need it!” she shouted.
That was my girl. I snapped my hips and fucked her
even harder. Faster. Maybe too hard. Too fast. I didn’t know because I was lost in her, in the moment. It felt like my fucking head was going to explode. I heard her scream, felt her body tense. Her ass slammed back into my crotch and I shoved as hard as I could into her and let myself go, feeling the cum ripped from my body.
When it was over, I slipped out of her pussy carefully, and dumped the condom in the waste basket we’d put next to the bed.
She was stretched out on her stomach and I stretched out next to her. She turned her head to the side to look at me, to say something. But I shook my head. We didn’t need to talk. We didn’t need to break down what we’d learned about each other sexually. We didn’t need to say anything, because our eyes, our bodies, said it all.
And of course, we had that rule. The no L-word rule.
Yeah, it was a good thing we’d decided against ever saying it to each other. It made things simpler.
At least that’s what I told myself.
6
Amelia Island
The following week
Ashleigh
My father changed his plans and came on Friday instead of Sunday. This could have been a disaster for Marc and me, but it wasn’t. For me, the key was all about staying one step ahead.
George had been our early warning system. He texted me about Arthur’s change in plans and Mark left Thursday, well in advance of Arthur’s arrival. Plenty of time to open all the windows and remove any lingering scent of sex.
Now, it was Arthur and me sitting on the balcony, overlooking the beach, enjoying a breakfast he’d ordered through room service. At least I thought he was enjoying it. I was struggling to casually sit there quietly while I nibbled on my toast. While two thoughts kept running through my mind.
When was I going to see Marc again?
How long was Arthur going to stay?
“More orange juice?” Arthur asked me.
“Yes, please,” I said politely, as he refilled my glass from the carafe of orange juice he’d ordered.
