We fumbled up the steps with lips attached, past the porch swing where he’d tried and failed to break my heart, into the living room, where we dripped little pools of water like a reverse archipelago behind us. I took his hand and walked him into the laundry room.
The laundry room was a foul, filthy place, and I was immediately ashamed of it. When I cleaned the house, the laundry room was the last floor to get a mop-over and the last sink to get wiped clean. So nine times out of ten, I just didn’t bother. And there I was, with a guy who had a team of people clean his corners with Q-tips, dripping onto gross, 1980s-era linoleum. It was the first water that floor had seen in months.
“It’s a mess in here,” I said, turning away from the towels I had strung up to dry, weeks ago.
He put his arms behind me and unzipped my dress. I noticed his chattering jaw and the ice of his fingertips as they grazed my spine.
“What does that have to do with me fucking you?” He peeled off my dress. My bra cups were heavy, soaked, hanging off me, and he slipped the straps off my shoulders, easily releasing me. I was down to panties and shoes, and he was still freezing in wet clothes.
Pushing him against the dryer, I unbuttoned his shirt, kissing down the center of his torso as I went. He was damp, and I warmed him with my mouth, licking his hard, tight, nipples. His arms came out of his sleeves like a molting caterpillar. I threw his shirt on top of my dress on the floor and worked on his pants while he kissed me.
“On your knees,” he said.
I got down, eye-level to his crotch, and opened his pants. The zipper didn’t work well wet, but I got it down. I hooked my fingers in the waistband and took his briefs down with the pants, arcing the elastic over his erection. He stepped out of the legs, kicking off his shoes while he did, and held up a foot. I peeled off his sock, then did the same with the other foot. He was naked. Perfect. I gazed up at him, his perfect, lean body with its cut lines and furrows making a triangle from his hips to the beauty between his legs.
I took his cock in my mouth, licking every surface as if to warm it. He put his hands in my hair and groaned.
“Let me feel you.”
He held my head still and pushed his cock all the way down my throat, balls-deep. I breathed through my nose, the aroma of his wet skin filling me. He held me still, and when I looked up at him, he was watching me. He slid out slowly. I put my tongue against him as he did.
“Have I mentioned you’re very good at this?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Stand up.”
When I did, he gathered up the clothes and put them in the dryer. He stared at the buttons and smiled.
“You have no idea how to use this, do you?” I asked.
“Not the knobs, no.”
I turned the machine on. Jonathan picked me up by the waist and put me on top of it. The dryer shook and rattled under me.
“Lean back,” he said, “and spread those knees for me.” He slid a finger under the crotch of my panties. I drew in a breath. His fingers moved from my entrance to my clit. “You’re wet.” He slid his fingers in me. They were cold.
“God, yes.”
He pushed my knees farther apart with his free hand. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you.”
“You want me, what?”
I wanted his cock in me. I wanted to come. I wanted him to do whatever he wanted to make me scream and beg for him. I looked at him, his perfect skin mottled with goose bumps, his nipples hard with cold, hair still wet. For the first time, I noticed the blue tinge around his lips. “I want you to dry off. You look hypothermic.”
I snapped a towel off the line and put it over his head, leaning forward to dry his hair. He let me, drawing me closer as I caressed his head more slowly and gently as he got drier. I hopped off the dryer and ran the towel all over him, chest to back to glorious butt to muscular legs and the tops of his perfect feet. Wrapping the towel around his shoulders, I kissed him.
“I feel better already,” he said.
“You need something warm to drink. I have tea.”
“You? Tea?”
“You can pick a flavor. Come on.”
He picked me up as if he was carrying me over a threshold, brought me to the kitchen, naked but for my underpants, and deposited me on the counter. I leaned to the shelf and got my teapot, then leaned the other way and filled it. I gave it to him, and he put it on the stove.
“The tea’s on the shelf above,” I said. “I have some assortment thingie in the back.”
“Assortment thingie. Let me see.” He found the box and brought it back, but he didn’t open it. I put my legs around his hips, drawing him to me. He stroked my eyebrow with his thumb. “I’m sorry. I was cruel last night. I said terrible things.”
“Yes, you did.”
“And I blocked you. I knew it would hurt you, and I did it anyway. What you sent made me question my actions. I wasn’t ready to question them. I thought I’d done the right thing, protecting you from me. I’m still not convinced otherwise.”
“Does that mean you’re going to leave me again? Because Darren’s going to shit if you do.”
“Fuck Darren.”
“Don’t leave me to protect me, Jonathan. I’m a grown woman, and I’m perfectly capable of ruining my life without your help.”
“Yes, Mistress.” A smile stretched across his face as he chose a black tea and held out the box for me.
“Not kidding.” I snapped out a chamomile. “I mean it. I had to hold my shit together for a meeting the next day, and it was the hardest thing I ever did.”
“But you did it.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I’m proud of you.” He put his hand on my cheek, and we kissed until the teapot whistled. He shrugged his towel tighter and poured the steaming water into two cups, dropping in the teabags.
“I called Margie,” I said, crossing my legs and waiting for my tea to cool. “She’s getting an entertainment lawyer from her firm to work with me. I’m sorry if that was wrong.”
“It’s fine. She likes you. You’re the eighth sister she never had.”
I cleared my throat. “And you know that thing? That collector’s party?”
He glanced up at me, head bent toward his tea. “The Collector’s Board at L.A. Mod. Of course.”
“Carnival is a donor, so they’re sending Eddie. They want me to go with him. It’s part of presenting me as an artist.” I saw him tense, changing the angle of the towel draped on his shoulders. “It’s business.”
“Absolutely not.”
I was silent as I stared at him over the rim of my cup.
“Monica?”
“Jonathan.”
“He wants to fuck you.”
“I don’t think you’re actually threatened by Eddie Milpas.”
He rubbed his eyes. “I’ll tell you what. You’ll go with me.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh, Jonathan, I’d so much rather go with you.”
“I want you to be warned it’s all Jessica’s crowd. They’re nasty. They’re bored and rich. If you’re with me, you’re a target for their boredom.”
“I don’t care.”
He put his face to mine. I smelled the tea on his breath. “They’ll whisper about you.”
“Fuck them.”
“We found the whole audio on her phone, and we posted it online. It’s gone crazy. Everyone knows.”
I got closer, put my nose next to his, and whispered, “What part of ‘fuck them’ was unclear?”
“That’s my goddess.” He pressed his face to mine, his mouth open only enough to move them in time with me, giving me a kiss made purely of lips and skin. There was sex in the kiss, but only the wafting hint of his breathing. Then he slipped his tongue between my lips, and my spine tingled as if some unholy spirit used my vertebrae as piano keys.
I groaned. My mouth accepted his darting tongue, the command of his lips. I arched when his hand slipped down to my breast, grazing the back of his hand against my hard nipple.
“Take me,” I whispered into his mouth.
“I’ll do as I like,” he said into mine, and I felt the force of his words in the pressure between my legs. The personality change that accompanied play was so stark that the first utterance in his stern, serious voice, made my cleft quiver like a plucked string. “Hands behind you on the counter. One on top of the other.”
I did it. He put his hand at the small of my back and pressed upward until I was arched and facing the ceiling.
“You need to go back to Bordelle.” He pulled my knees apart roughly. “This cotton shit is unworthy.” Opening two drawers, he placed my feet on the edges so my legs stayed open. I heard the clink of silverware. “This thing,” he said before I heard the soft crunch of fabric being cut. He’d sheared my panties with a steak knife. “It offends me.”
“Yes, sir.”
He ran his hand over me. I couldn’t see what he was doing. I felt his dry skin awaken nerve endings, grazing over my breasts, belly, thighs. Even the slightest pressure sent shards of pain at the black-and-blue base of my rib cage and the soft meat between my legs, a punctuation for the pleasure of his touch.
“You’re still bruised,” he said. “That’ll take time to heal.”
“Don’t stop.”
“I’m going to be gentle where you’re hurt,” he said. “But everywhere else is mine.”
“Yes.”
“Now, you want your tea?”
“Yes, sir.” Though my body was awake with desire, my voice was husky with heat and exhaustion. My vocal cords hadn’t forgotten that it was close to midnight.
He pressed my mouth open with his thumb and forefinger, as if I was a kitten taking medicine. The teabag hovered over my face, dripping hot liquid over my mouth. I felt hot fluid on my lip and the dry, waxen taste of chamomile tea on my tongue. It traveled down my chin and my throat. I swallowed it like an offering of communion.
“Thank you, sir.”
I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth of dripping tea down my chest. He must have dipped the bag back into the cup because the heat renewed on my nipples. Lines of molten liquid dripped down around my ribs to my back. I gasped when he put the bag on my belly and dragged it down to the edge of my triangle. I quivered in anticipation. That hot thing, on me. Soft and pliant, yet firm in its burning intensity. But he didn’t. He leaned over, kissing and licking the tea from me. He sucked my nipple gently as his hand stayed on the teabag, which felt as though it was cooling too fast.
I groaned. I had never thought to put a hot teabag on my clit, but it was all I could think about. He had to do it. Had to. Before it got cold.
When he moved his mouth to the other nipple, cleaning it with his tongue and lips, he slid the bag down, pressing it against my clit with the heel of his hand while putting two fingers in me. I yelled. Hot. Not straight-from-the-pot hot, but hot enough. Ten times hotter on my clit than anywhere else, and the fire added exponentially to my desire. Hot tea dripped down my cleft. I shuddered everywhere, spreading my legs wider, pushing into his fingers. His tongue was still at my nipple, and I was bruised, yes, but I wanted him to bite it. I wanted him to hurt me. I was addicted to it.
He pushed his hand against me, heel on hot teabag on clit, fingers in cunt, and he rubbed them in circles. My pussy drank it. The bag got drier as the tea was squeezed out of it, making it rougher, like crackling leaves in the fall. The little scratches from hot, sticklike herbs drove me to the edge.
“I want to come,” I cried.
“No.”
“I can’t.” I opened my eyes to find him looking down at me.
“You’re mine. No matter what happens. Your pleasure and pain. Your skin. Your lips. Your cunt.”
He pushed the bag and his fingers into me. “Jonathan. You own me. I am yours. God, who else? Fuck. Please. My king. Please let me—”
“Come.”
With a sharp movement, he brought me to orgasm in my kitchen again. I thrust against his hand, screaming, back twisting. He put his other hand behind my head so I didn’t bang it on the cabinet, and when I found myself winding around to the point where I almost kicked out a drawer, he caught me, panting and naked.
“Thank you,” was all I could say.
“You’re welcome.”
“God, I love you.”
“And I, you,” he said softly. “You still want tea?”
“It’s cold,” I said into his ear. “I don’t like it cold.”
“You have it all over you. Let me get you in the shower.”
He took me to my bathroom and got me into the tub. I stood under the water, letting it run where the tea had.
Jonathan got in, exquisitely naked, taut, lean, skin over muscle over bone in perfect proportion. I didn’t know if he worked out. I didn’t know where he’d find the time. He could just be the way he was with no effort whatsoever, and that was all right with me.
“You just dried off,” I said. “And I’m making you get wet again.” I put the bar of soap to his chest and rubbed, working over his shoulders slowly, and back to his nipples, to his tight stomach. His erection was huge, waiting, a sign of things to come. I stroked it with the soap. I didn’t want to rush. I wanted to take him in fully, in all his beauty, touch every surface, feel every bump and curve.
His eyes went over my body as I washed him. I cleaned his back by putting my arms around him, feeling his dick press against me. He took me by my hair and pulled my head back. The water got in my face, and I smiled. He wet my hair as he kissed my neck. He squeezed too much shampoo into my hair and massaged my scalp. The suds were everywhere. I laughed when they went into my eyes, and he laughed too, pressing his thumbs to my eyes to stroke the suds away. I was covered in shampoo, and Jonathan used it to bathe me, sliding his hands where the tea had gone. He went gently where I was hurt, roughly where I wasn’t, until he got to where the teabag had made me come, and I groaned.
“Ah, goddess....” He slid his hand under my ass, his fingertips slipping into my folds. They were wet but not from the shower.
“Again, please.”
“Put your hands up to the showerhead.” I did, and his followed the line of my arms, cupping his hands over mine, sliding them to the pipe that held the shower head. “Hold that.”
My arms up as if tied, he pushed me against the tiles and put one of my legs around his waist. The head of his cock sat at my entrance, waiting. I pushed against him, and where his member touched me, my body responded in waves of pleasure. He kissed me, hands at my ass, spreading me apart with his fingers.
“Please,” I said. “I want you.”
“I’m yours.” He thrust into me. It felt like an electric shock through my body, pulsing as he thrust, every inch adding to the pressure. I was full, engorged, all surface area for him. “Look at me.”
I opened my eyes. His hair was soaked. Rivulets of water dripped down the angles of his cheeks and neck as his hips worked into me. He pulled my ass open and slipped in a finger. Just a finger. Exquisite. The pleasure with none of the pain. I clenched around him.
“Soon, when you’re healed, I’m taking this ass again,” he said.
“It’s yours.”
He pushed another finger in, and his eyelids dropped a little. I groaned, feeling stretched and possessed, as though every part of me was under his control and protection.
“Look at me when you come,” he said.
“I’m close.” My arms ached, but I didn’t move them, just held the pipe above me because he commanded it.
“Yes.” He went faster, pushing into me. He used the fingers in my asshole to draw our bodies together fast and hard as he slapped against me.
My clit filled, my cunt opened with sensation, my ass sucked him in. “Oh, God Jonathan. Jonathan.” I looked in his eyes, holding his face still in my vision.
“Come with me.”
“Yes.”
I released. The effort of keeping my face to his while I came prolonged the orgasm that washed over me. My arms were frozen. I couldn’t arch or close my eyes. I just exploded in a controlled way, toes curling, my hands gripping the pipe. My cries echoed against the tile walls. My vision blurred. His mouth opened, and he grunted a long slow vibration, slowing, pulsing in a different rhythm. His eyes and mine watched each other, locked in pleasure, above and below.