“Yes…okay.” Two words and I was finished with talking. The most conversation I could manage in my heightened state of stimulation. The anticipation of what he would do to my body sent me off into a sexual haze of need and desire, rendering me unable to vocalize much at all. I never worried about what he’d do to me during sex. No matter whatever it was, he would make it good. Ethan made sure.
“You take my breath away,” he purred from behind, where he was working to prepare me to take him in. I knew he was staring, getting turned on by the sight of me on my knees and bowed forward. I felt the slick drops of lube he pumped from the bottle to help ease the way. He was thick and wide, and perfect, but I still appreciated the lubrication.
His hands gripped my ass cheeks and spread them.
I realized what was coming at me the instant before I felt it. His glorious tongue.
Ethan used that on me first, the gentle teasing of my tight hole bringing me to a kind of helpless state where I trembled, hovering between this world and somewhere else.
He stopped with his tongue and moved into position. “You do, baby. You take my breath away.” The head of his cock came against my flesh. “Every.” He pushed forward, penetrating with just the tip of his penis. “Fuckin’.” I felt the enormity of his flesh trying to merge with mine, the intensity of his need to sink into me, the craving I had for him to do it. “TIME,” he shouted on a heavy groan, as his cock slid into place, filling me all the way to the root, his balls slapping against my sex with a jolt.
“Oh!” I gasped at his harsh, but beautiful invasion, riding through the sexual heat and sensation of extreme fullness that bordered upon pain but didn’t cross into it. Just steadying myself for the real intensity that would come—once he started to move in and out of me in long, purposeful slides. I started to shake, nearly out of my mind with sensations so intense I could hardly breathe.
“Okay, my beauty?” he rasped at the back of my ear, his beard abrading my skin as he dug his chin into my shoulder to hold himself still, waiting for my answer. He sought my approval, of him, of his taking of me, of his physical domination over my body.
I would always give it to him. I wanted it so badly.
“Yeeees.” I rolled my head back, unable to say more than that one word. I needed to focus on holding myself together before I blew apart into millions of pieces. Our joining felt that overpowering.
“Oh, fuck, yeah.” He filled one hand with my hair and started to move within me, long careful slides of hot male flesh piercing me with exquisite deliberation. “So good, baby…” He groaned into each thrust, filling me deeply, taking me along on an erotic, lust-filled trip of sensation. “You’re so beautiful…and sexy fucking amazing,” he chanted, working his cock with the skill I’d come to know and love. Possessing me completely, every part of me laid bare.
I heard something else in his voice, too. A kind of desperation—a frantic desire to meld with me. A dark craving for his body to enfold mine so fully, there couldn’t be any delineation where he ended and I began. His cock, fingers, tongue, his breath, his cum—his everything, wanted in.
And so, Ethan took me until he brought me to the highest peaks of my release, and held me when it broke into a billion shards of shimmering glory. He swallowed my cries with his mouth, and gave me more of him, his cock swelling to irrational hardness in preparation for the blast. He said things to me as he came, shuddering declarations of love and adoration…for me alone…as he filled me up with himself.
3rd January
London
WATCHING Brynne putting on her makeup, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I hoped she didn’t notice me watching because I didn’t want her feeling self-conscious. I knew she was a little worried, because her body had changed so much. But my girl was more beautiful to me now, than ever. Our little blueberry had grown right along with her, and was now a thirty-two week-old, tiny little person, who kicked, and wriggled, and rolled around for me all the time now.
“You’d better start getting ready or we’ll be late. Aunt Marie’s plans wait for no man…” she trailed off, never taking her concentration away from the mirror where she was applying some kind of dark smudge around her eyes. She had on a short black lace getup that made me hard just looking, but she was only halfway dressed.
I realized quickly, it would be best to stick with the plan or we’d never make it to Dad’s birthday dinner on time. So I forced myself to think of something very non-arousing, about work instead. It didn’t take long. The minding of young Prince Christian of Lauenburg at XT Europe certainly helped to cool my cock. My trip was just two days away, and I dreaded leaving Brynne already. Ridiculous fuckin’ job.
“But I’d much rather look at you,” I told her.
She made a soft sound. “Well my ass is getting bigger by the second, in direct competition with my belly. I hope my ass doesn’t win. At the end of this gig, I just want the baby, not the extra ass.” She looked up into the mirror at me, her expression giving away little of what was on her mind. Still so mysterious, my girl was. I loved that aspect of her, though. Made me even more determined to get as close to her as I possibly could, so I could touch and taste and absorb every available molecule. My need for Brynne was still as strong as ever. I had no doubts that would ever change, either.
“Your arse is perfection and you’ll never hear me complaining ’bout a bit more of you to grab hold of.” I gave her a slow wink and a lecherous grin. “From back here, you don’t even look pregnant.” I came up behind her, my hands sliding forward to rest on her bump. “I have to do this, to really know you’ve got anything here.” I splayed my palms over the firm rounded swell of our baby growing strong inside her.
She leaned back and rested her weight against me. “Oh something’s there all right,” she said, “that you put there.”
I laughed softly behind her. “I really enjoyed doing that by the way.”
“I seem to remember that you did,” she said dryly.
“Oh, you enjoyed it too.” I slid my hands up to her luscious tits and lifted one in each hand, squeezing softly. “Now these…are a different story. They’ve changed a great deal, and I fucking love the transformation.”
“I’ve noticed.” She closed her eyes for a moment and tilted her neck, just allowing me to touch her at will. Always so giving of herself to me and my crazed needs.
“Mmmmm…you feel perfect to me, Mrs. Blackstone, and you always will.”
“Did I ever tell you how much I love it when you call me Mrs. Blackstone?” she asked lazily, pegging me with those lovely eyes.
“A few times, yes. And I’m delighted you love your new name.” I grinned back at her in the mirror. “I know I love saying it to you. I know I love that my name is now your name. I love a lot of things…now.”
She reached her hand up to hold my cheek, still looking at me in the mirror. “But you’re getting a new name, too. We have someone coming to us soon who will know you only by one name, and it’s not Ethan.”
“Dad.”
“Yep. You are somebody’s dad now.” She smiled softly, a mixture of happiness and maybe a little sadness at the thought of her own father. “You’ll be the best ever…” she whispered.
Brynne always amazed me in her generosity—her ability to be so lovingly giving even in the face of her grief and loss. Brave. Strong. Magnificent. I kissed her on the back of the neck and rested my chin on her shoulder, both of us staring into the vanity mirror. “I love the sound of it—Dad. I’m a dad and you’re a mum.”
“We are indeed.”
I returned my hands to her stomach. “I love our little pineapple.” I turned her around to face me and took her smiling face in my two hands. “And I love you, Mrs. Blackstone.”
“I love you more,” she said.
CHAPTER 15
4th January
London
THE charity my father championed when he was alive sent out a notification whenever a donation was left in his name. The amount o
f the gift in the message I’d just read made my eyeballs bug out. I checked it again, counting the digits to make sure. All six of them.
The second shock was the message left from the donor in the comments section. Please let me make it right, Brynne.
Lance.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Lance had done this? He had made an obscenely large donation in my father’s name to the Meritus College Fund? Assisting disadvantaged, but motivated kids to get a university education?
Why would he do it?
I really couldn’t imagine why he would, but I knew I needed to find out. So I went to my purse and dug around in the side and end pockets until I found the card he’d given me. I flipped it to the back and read the message he’d handwritten with blue pen, just to make sure. Please let me make it right, Brynne.
I sent him a text with shaking hands and a pounding heart, afraid to hear what he wanted to say to me, but knew the time had come for me to know.
Ethan was at the offices, preparing for his trip to Switzerland the next day. I’d not told him about either of Lance’s attempts to meet with me, at his hospital bed, and after my pre-natal check-up. I’d found the more time that passed, I just didn’t want to dredge it up. What purpose would it serve? I needed to move on and deal with the here and now, instead of dwelling on the shit that had gone bad years ago.
I didn’t tell Ethan, even though I knew I probably should have given him a warning. He wouldn’t be comfortable with me seeing Lance alone, and he’d be over-the-top territorial to the point any meeting, including his presence, would be made useless. No, I needed to meet Lance on my own. This was my history. My past. And I was the one who needed to face up to it, and put it to rest.
So I left a short note for him on the kitchen counter instead. In case he made it home before I did, he would find my note saying I’d gone for a walk.
IN favor of some exercise, I did walk down to Hot Java, the coffee shop just around the corner from the flat.
Lance arrived before I did and was waiting window-side, at a table for two. He looked as he had the last time I’d seen him—completely and totally different from the boy I’d known a lifetime ago. In so many ways it was true. He was now a political celebrity, the tatted-up, war-hero son of the Vice President-Elect. He had an escort waiting for him too—Secret Service most likely, considering the terrorist risk. For someone like him, it must be enormous.
He looked miserable sitting across from me, and I wondered if he was still in any physical pain from his injury.
“I’ll be heading back to the States very soon. Command performance for the inauguration.” He tapped his leg with a tattooed finger. “But, I’ll miss London. It’s a good place to fade into.”
Yes, it is. “Why did you send that huge donation in my father’s name? Is it something you truly want to spend your money on, Lance?” I asked, pushing the raspberry tea bag in my mug into a mini vortex from over-stirring. No matter how much I’d thought about it, I could not for the life of me, see his motivation for the money. So, all I was left with was the unimaginable idea that he could really be sorry. Mind. Fuck.
Lance looked out of the café window, staring at the busy street traffic, and the equally busy foot traffic, managing the winter drizzle to go about their business. “Thank you for meeting me, Brynne. This is something I’ve wanted for a very long time…and also, very much dreaded.” He turned his eyes back to look at me when he finished speaking.
“You said…you said you wanted to tell me what really happened that night at the party.” I could feel my heart thumping erratically deep in my chest.
“Yeah.” He shifted in his seat and seemed to brace himself for what he wanted to say. “But first, I want you to have my deepest apology for how I treated you, the things I did to you, for how I hurt you so very badly. I have no justification for anything that I did, no excuses, only regrets.”
His eyes flickered over me, a hint of longing in his expression—for what, I wasn’t sure. Longing for me? About what might have been with us?
“So, before I tell you the rest, I wanted you to at least hear that part.”
I felt something strange glimmer inside of me, like a crack feathering out on a frozen lake. I couldn’t speak just yet, but I managed to acknowledge his apology by nodding my head.
“You saw the video, Brynne?”
I nodded my head again and kept my eyes on my mug of raspberry tea. “Once. That was all I could watch—” My mind went black at the remembered images that flashed in my head. The other guys, me being used, the laughter, the song lyrics, the torment of my body with objects, how they spoke to me like I was a whore who wanted what they were doing to me.
“I am so sorry…I didn’t mean for it to go that far,” he said.
“What in the hell did you intend by filming us then?” I spat back, lifting my head. “Do you even know what that video did to me? How it changed my life? That I tried to kill myself because of it? Are you aware of all of that, Lance?”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes and winced. “Brynne, if I could take it back—I just—I’m just so very sorry.”
I sat there and stared at him, nearly unbelieving at what I was experiencing. For so long I’d understood my dark place for what it was. An evil deed, done to me by evil people, devoid of remorse, or even humanity for their actions. But with Lance before me, apologizing so sincerely, he didn’t seem evil at all…and it was a very hard concept to accept.
“So…what was your intent that night, Lance? If you feel you must make things right with me, then I guess I’ll have to try to hear it.”
“Thank you,” he whispered, tapping the table top with his hand softly, rhythmically, only his fingers lifting up and down. The tattoos that decorated him covered the whole surface of his right hand—a skeleton of the bones of the hand interspersed with spider webs in between the individual finger bones.
I wondered what Daddy-O thought of all the goth ink on his son.
After a moment, he started talking.
“I was a complete prick to you,” he began, “I know that, and I have no excuses, but when I went off to Stanford and found out you were with other guys when I was gone, I got insanely jealous that anyone else would have you. I wanted to punish you for it because that’s how my mind worked back then.” He started flicking his thumb onto the side of his coffee mug. “I got you drunk at the party with the intent of filming us having sex, so I could send it to you as a reminder that you were my girlfriend, and nobody else got into what was mine when I was away at college.” He cleared his throat and continued. “That was the extent of what I intended for the video, Brynne. I would never have posted it anywhere, or shown it to people. It was a reminder of me…for you.”
“But, those others…Justin Fielding and Eric Montrose—they were there.” I couldn’t look at him, so I just stared out the window at the rainy sidewalk and busy people instead.
I kept on listening, though.
“Yeah,” he said sadly. “I got you drunk, but I was even more wasted, and to the point that I passed out after I…finished. Those two had come home with me for the holiday weekend and they knew I was bent on teaching my girlfriend a lesson she wouldn’t forget. I told them what I was going to do with the sex video. Like an idiot. I was so arrogant I never imagined they would try to get in on it. You can clearly see on the video that after I fuck—after I’m done—I’m not there on screen again. There’s a cut in the filming, and then it’s just Fielding and Montrose…and you. Trust me, I watched it over and over, horrified by what they did.” I looked away from the window and studied his face. He met me head on without shielding himself. I saw regret and shame in him. “Brynne, I—I never meant—”
I knew Lance was telling me the truth.
“They watched us…and then when I passed out, they took over. I don’t even remember leaving you in that game room, Brynne. I woke up the next morning in the back of my car. The video had already been posted to a sharing site and it was too
late. It got passed around all weekend.” He hung his head and shook it slowly. “And that music they put on there…”
I tried to remember the sequence of imagery, but I’d been so traumatized by my one-time viewing of the video, I couldn’t really pull up much memory of Lance’s involvement at all. I knew he’d been very angry with me for dating Karl. Being an immature seventeen-year-old slut hadn’t left me with good judgment skills in where I went, what I did, or whom I did it with. Sadly, I’d learned my lesson in a very hard way, but it was still remarkable to hear this new information from Lance.
“So, you didn’t do it because you hated me?” I asked him the question I’d always wanted answered. It was the thing that never made any sense to me. We’d had our problems, but I had never felt hatred from Lance before that night. The video had felt like hate to me for all of the intervening seven years, and had been hard to bear because it was so confusing.
“No, Brynne. I never hated you. I believed I would marry you some day.” His dark eyes blinked at me, regret and sadness clearly readable in them.
I gasped, unable to respond to what he’d just told me. I had no voice, so I sat there silent and stared at him, unable to do anything else.
He slid his hand forward as if were going to reach for mine, but caught himself in time, leaving his fingertips about an inch away on the table. It was so awkward I picked up my mug of tea and held it in both of my hands so I could make them useful.
“I tried to call you and see you, but your father, and mine, shut that down. My dad informed me that I would die before he allowed me to destroy his political career. He had me withdrawn from Stanford and enlisted in the Army within two days. I was shipped off to Fort Benning for Basic Training, and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t even talk to you to say I was sorry, or to find out how you were.” He held his palm up in question. “And now with my father’s political aspirations…I’m just caught up in all of it, carried along without a way out. And with him in the West Wing, I’m more trapped than ever…” he trailed off sadly.