“Chloe tells stories about how some folks behave in her store. People can suck. But that’s another level,” Rix remarked.
I nodded my agreement.
And sadly, since there was more, kept going.
“And she had some family sue, because apparently she messed up their boathouse pretty badly. In the end, with all her larking about, Dad’s spent a lot of time and money smoothing things over for her.”
Since it seemed he thought he’d paid short shrift to it, Rix put that foot down, and went back to the other one.
I was very okay with that.
I went back to talking.
“Which is a thing with her. Damage and destruction. She had a party here once when Dad was out of town, and I guess the results were extreme. To the point there was graffiti spray-painted on the walls, and Dad had to hire some experts to restore and clean some pieces that had been vandalized. And we’re not talking this happening when she was sixteen. She was twenty-six.”
“Jesus,” Rix muttered.
“Yeah,” I said. “She’d had other get-togethers, and those weren’t good either. But that one was the last. I think that’s one of the reasons he tends to be precious about his space, definitely with Blake. I don’t think she’s ever here without Dad here. She doesn’t even have keys to get in anymore.”
I rolled this around in my mind while Rix dug his thumbs into my sole.
And then I noted, “I also think he might be kinda like me. He never seemed really comfortable in big social settings, and he likes his space to be just his. So when she did what she did to his home, that was kind of a last straw deal for Dad.”
“Mm,” he hummed, that sound getting my full attention.
That meaning Rix had my full attention.
And I didn’t want to think of Blake anymore.
Or Dad.
Or any of them.
I wanted to think of Rix.
Here.
With me.
How handsome he’d looked that night.
How he made it fun, being all he was.
The preposterously beautiful ring he’d chosen for me.
So that part was pretend.
Still, that ring was gorgeous.
How we were now…us.
No end.
No limits.
Exploring this.
Together.
“Want to see something?” I asked.
He didn’t miss my change in tone, his gaze growing more attentive on me, and he nodded.
I pulled my foot from his hand, got up, which put me close to him, and I took his hand.
On bare feet, I led us out of the crisp and impersonal creams and whites with the elegant flash of De Gournay wallpaper on the wall behind the bed and minimal accents of chartreuse green of the guest room.
Then I led him up the stairs to the third floor, down the hall to the middle room at the back with a view to the garden.
We walked in, and I flipped the switch.
The personal touches were gone, and impersonal ones were put in their places in order the room could be ready for the guests who were never invited who would never use this space.
But the queen-size bed still had the filmy canopy gathering and draping around its head, fit for a princess. The satin bed linens were elegant, but just that shade or two beyond simply feminine to being girlie.
And the walls had been refreshed, but that paint had always been the same ballet pink.
“My room,” I told him, “sans the piles of books and CDs and smelly tennis shoes and reset, so if anyone ever used it, though no one does, Dad wouldn’t expose a single thing about me. And I’m not talking about him hiding me. He’s just private that way.”
Rix wandered in.
“No Rage Against the Machine posters. I was allotted the Degas that was moved to the library,” I said. “Though I had a couple of their CDs.”
I stood in the door and watched as he stopped at the window. He pulled the curtain aside, looked down.
He then turned, his eyes moving around, taking in the space, before he went to the bed and sat at the foot.
Shirt open. Dark slacks. Shoes that would remain on his feet once he removed his legs.
He seemed just like what he’d teased me he liked to pretend to be.
The invading marauder, a slash of alluringly sinister against an ivory satin duvet.
“I used to lie in that bed,” I started, and his caramel eyes came to me, “and dream about being a pirate.” I pushed from the door and began making my way to him. “Or living in a gunslinger town, drafted into a posse, riding my horse fast, chasing the bad guy.”
He opened his legs, and I came to a stop between them.
He put his hands on my waist and stared at my middle.
I put my hands on his shoulders and kept talking.
“I was quite a swashbuckler,” I whispered.
His head dropped back to look up at me as his hands went down, under my skirt, and hit bare skin.
My body welcomed that with a surge of wet.
I felt pressure on the back of one knee and got the message.
I welcomed that and climbed on his lap.
Rix spent some time under my skirt, arranging it just so over his lap and legs and the bed and even up his chest.
There was something tender about that.
Tender and excruciatingly sexy.
I slid my hands to his jaw and recaptured his attention.
“After all my adventures on the high seas, or bringing order to the Wild West, why is it not a bummer I ended up the damsel-in-distress sex slave?” I asked.
His answer was simple and so Rix.
“Your captor’s got a big dick.”
I laughed softly and murmured, “Oh yeah. Right.”
“He needs that dick in you, wearing this dress,” he murmured back.
“As his sex slave, I’m powerless to stop him.”
Rix grinned, and his hand worked under my skirt again until what I felt straining against my damp panties was freed.
He slid the gusset of those panties aside and rubbed the head of his cock against me.
I bit my lip.
He positioned, wrapped his fingers around my hips, and agonizingly slowly, he took me.
And he kept doing it. I did none of the work, his strong hands guided me.
I watched the heat build in his eyes, my heart tripping faster, corresponding to his breath coming more and more heavily.
No noise. No grunts. No mews. No whispers. No kisses.
Just labored breaths.
Breathing into each other.
Breathing each other.
Our eyes remained locked as Rix made me make love to him on my bed, where I’d spent hours while growing up, absolutely dreaming of the shadowed, dark, strong, protective savior who would love me for me and sweep me away into a world of adventure.
I knew he was almost there when his thumb shifted to my clit.
My orgasm was massive.
But it came out as a sigh.
I watched and saw his was powerful.
But it exposed itself only as the cords of his neck tightening.
When we were done, he again took pains to keep my skirt as it was even as he pulled his hands out from under to wrap his arms around me.
I rested my cheek on his shoulder, my face in his neck, and whispered, “You really like this dress.”
“I really like this girl who can sleep under the stars and glide along lakes and show kids the beauty of trees and then command every man’s attention in a bar in the big city and be the only one in her entire high-class family who’s lousy with grace.”