Her hand finds mine in the dark. “It’s real enough.”
“Then you’re mine, Zenny-bug. And we’ll do as I say.”
“Okay,” she whispers. “I trust you.”
And I decide that’s wholly enough talking for now. I disappear under the sheets and take care of the part of her she’d been so cutely rubbing against my leg, and afterwards, I hold her until she falls asleep, a newfound contentment staggering around on coltish, weak legs inside my chest until I too fall off into slumber.
Chapter 16
“This is ridiculous,” Zenny says. “And bad for the environment.”
It’s the next morning and I’m driving Zenny to class. I glance over at her, eyebrow raised. “I know you’re not referring to my beautiful German car.”
“I’m referring to this insane plan of you driving me to class and having someone drive my car down to my dorm room parking lot for me…after you have them drop off those supplies at the shelter.”
“I was running out of things for my assistant to do anyway.”
She sighs, but when I sneak another glance, I see the reflection of the smile she’s fighting off in the window.
I don’t bother to fight off my own smile.
“We decided it’s real, remember? This is what happens when it’s real. I don’t want to be away from you a minute more than I fucking have to.”
Now she can’t hide her smile, although she keeps her head ducked away. “You’re ridiculous,” she repeats.
“I am. And you know what you are?”
“What is that?”
“Mine, Zenny-bug. All mine.”
Now she looks at me, her eyes more copper than usual in the August morning light. “Yes,” she says softly. “I am that.”
This morning, we woke up and made out for a solid forty-five minutes, grinding like teenagers until she came against my thigh. And then she watched me with huge, sleepy eyes as I peeled off her fuzzy pajama shorts, wrapped them around my fist, and fucked my aching cock into them. After I shot thick ropes of ejaculate all over Winnie the Pooh and his hunny pot, she begged me to put my fingers inside of her, and she came like a champ after only a minute.
And then with my fingers still coated in her, I handed her a pen and paper and sternly ordered her to write down her schedule, along with a list of what she needed from her dorm room so she could stay the month with me.
“You’re being bossy again, aren’t you?” she’d said as she’d taken the pen. She was naked from the waist down, her nipples hard and her thighs quivering from her last orgasm.
“Would you like to call me an asshole right now? Would you like me to stop? I will the moment you say so, darling.”
She’d shaken her head, her expression full of disbelief. “God help me for saying it, but keep going, Sean. I like it. And consider me your new roommate.”
Even Charles Northcutt sitting in my office when I walk in can’t ruin my mood, although it gets pretty fucking close. I really hate him.
“Happy Friday,” he says. He’s sitting behind my desk, just to be a jackass. “I just wanted to let you know that my assistant heard from Trent that you were sniffing around my schedule.”
Goddammit, Trent. Loose lips sink ships.
Northcutt gives me the kind of smile I imagine a logging executive gives a stand of redwoods before ordering them sawed down. “That wouldn’t have anything to do with a pretty little nun, now would it?”
I drop my leather satchel on the short client sofa across from my desk and then walk over to Northcutt. “You’re in my seat,” I say calmly.
“Valdman already put me in charge of the nuns, Sean. You can’t control that.”
I regret ever showing him an ounce of interest in the sisters; it’s the only reason he wants to work with them, with Zenny. Just to fuck with me. Just to prove that I’m not made of the right stuff to sit in Valdman’s office after he retires from day-to-day.
“You’re in my seat,” I repeat, and into my voice, I pour every schoolyard match, every drunken Irish boy brawl, every fight I’ve ever won. Northcutt is the kind of man who thinks holding someone’s head down a toilet in fourth grade has acquitted him as some kind of badass, and I would welcome the chance to show him his mistake by smashing his teeth in.
Unfortunately, Northcutt seems to sense I’m past the point of playing, and he gets out of my seat.
“I’ll let you know how my meeting goes with them next week.”
“You’re not meeting with them next week,” I say through gritted teeth.
“It’s not up to you,” he answers with an evil smile, and finally leaves me the fuck alone.
I stare at my hands for several minutes afterward, willing them to unclench, and then once they do, I shoot off a quick email to Valdman, asking him if he got my earlier message about Northcutt and the Keegan deal, and then I calm down by sending my assistant an email asking him to buy five or six sets of satin sheets by tonight. All that taken care of, I finally get to work.
The day passes quickly, although I’m beginning to feel Zenny’s absence like a palpable thing, physical and awful. But I’ve got several contracts, memos, and client calls to catch up on, plus several returned inquiries for new shelter properties, and by the end of the day, I’ve done a hell of a lot and I’m ready to drive to the shelter and scoop up my sort-of virgin and bring her home where I can spend the evening with my face between her legs.
Sadly, she won’t be done with her shift at the shelter until after ten o’clock tonight, so instead I gather my things and drive to Mom and Dad’s house in Brookside.
The family house is a modest cream-colored Colonial from the 1920s with sage-green shutters and a giant oak tree in the front yard. The shutters have changed colors at least eight times in my life; the tree has changed not at all. It’s not a big house—at least it never felt big with five of us Bell kids jostling for space inside—but it’s well maintained and it’s got all the stuff people like in older houses—the wood floors and big staircases and big fireplaces. So obviously, a plumber and a social worker could never have afforded it on their own. It came to my parents after my father’s mom passed away when I was a baby, and it never escaped my notice as a kid that my parents felt slightly ill-at-ease in the upper-middle-class neighborhood.
Even now, at thirty-six and several years after acquiring some substantial wealth, I can’t suppress my habitual satisfaction at driving to their house in my R8, at pulling into the driveway that I paid to replace, seeing the fresh siding and roofing that I pay to maintain. For so long, the Bells were the poorest family in the neighborhood, but now Mom has the kitchen of her dreams and my father has the best television money can buy to nap in front of. And maybe it makes me a materialistic dick that I noticed being poorer than my peers growing up, maybe it makes me a dick that I still care now, but making enough for Mom and Dad to never worry about money again is the best fucking feeling in the world and I refuse to give it up.
I pull into the driveway, averting my eyes from the garage out of habit as I walk to the front door and let myself inside. Dad doesn’t seem to be home yet, but Mom is in the kitchen, slowly putting away dishes, pausing between each and every plate to catch her breath.