The Pearl Page 10

  She cupped Arthur’s crotch. “That’s more than a third. I suppose having Great-Granddad here isn’t as much of a mood-killer as you thought.”

  She kissed him, and no amount of wounded male pride could keep from kissing her back. She wasn’t cruel to him so much as she was just…cold. And the colder she was to him, the more he wanted to warm her. And the more he wanted to warm her, the colder she was to him. Even this, hanging his great-grandfather’s portrait was cruel, made him feel vulnerable, exposed. She alone knew how much he loved being exposed.

  He returned the kiss, pushing his tongue into her mouth, tasting her.

  “You like this so much,” she murmured against his lips, laughing between kisses. “You like being treated like this and I love it. I love it and you hate it.”

  “I hate that I love it,” he said soft as a penitent giving his confession. He wrapped his fingers around her long pearl necklace and lightly, lightly, oh-so lightly tugging on it to make sure he had her attention. “But I like that you like it.”

  If only she liked him a little. Maybe? She smiled, a real one, not mocking and it was gone as fast as it had come. “Get on your knees,” she commanded.

  She said it, so he did it. He released his grip on her pearls and went down onto his knees. As soon as he was there, he realized this is where he’d wanted to be all along.

  “You whore,” she said, tilting his chin up so he faced her. “Did I make you like this? Or were you like this before me?”

  “I was like this before you, but I don’t want to be like this after you.”

  “Why not? You’re enjoying it as much as I am.”

  “I just… I don’t.” If he could have waved a wand to make it go away, he would have waved it like a drowning man signaling for help. Once Regan was done with him, who would treat him like this? Who could he trust to tell that he needed it? How would he find someone who made him feel the things Regan made him feel?

  “Who told you this was wrong?” she asked him.

  He shot her a confused look. “I don’t understand.”

  “Someone must have gotten it in your head that this, what we’re doing, is wrong, bad, the sort of thing real men don’t do? Who was it?”

  “Nobody. You know the Godwicks. We’re one big happy whoring family.”

  Regan stared him down, but he refused to be goaded into answering. “Do you want to keep glaring at me,” he asked, “or do you want me to make you come?”

  “Well, when you put it that way,” she said and finally smiled. Then she grabbed him hard by the chin, hard enough he knew she’d leave red marks from the rough grip of her fingers. “But make it good.”

  He met her eyes. “I’ll make it good.”

  * * *

  Gently, he pressed his mouth to her stomach and felt the soft muscles fluttering. His hands found her ankles, fragile and birdlike. He stroked up her bare legs, up her calves, up her thighs, under her little black dress to her little black lace pants underneath. He held her soft small arse in his hands, kissed her stomach through her dress and slowly pulled her knickers down. When they were at her ankles, she lightly kicked them aside. Then she stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed.

  She crooked her finger and he crawled across the floor. It was only a yard, but it felt like a mile on a public street, just from the humiliation of it. The delicious humiliation.

  It was worth it for the reward at the finish line, to push her thighs apart and press between them. He lifted the skirt of her dress and tucked it under her to keep it out of his way. There she was, the soft light brown hair on her mound and the seam he’d touched and fucked but hadn’t tasted yet. He buried his face against her warm thighs, inhaling the light musky scent of her arousal. He kissed the curls of her sex as he pushed her legs wider. His fingers found the slit of her vulva and he stroked it slowly, carefully. Then he opened the folds, parting them like petals. And they were like petals, silky and warm as if in sunlight.

  He spread the folds of her labia wider. His mouth watered. Lowering his head, he pressed his tongue to her vulva, tasting his first drop of her. One drop wasn’t enough, so he licked her, drawing his tongue up and receiving as his reward Regan’s arm around the back of his head, her hand in his hair.

  “More,” she said, a quiet and gentle order. She wanted more, and she would get more.

  Arthur cupped her bottom again and tilted her toward him. She accommodated, spreading her legs farther apart on the bed so that her thighs fell wide, wide open.

  The light from the bedside lamp showed her cunt in all its glory as he pulled the labia apart again, spreading them open. Regan’s breathing quickened. She liked this, being opened, being seen. Had her old husband even been able to fuck her, or had he just kept her on his arm to make the world think he could satisfy a woman like Regan?

  Her clitoris was hidden under a little shield of skin. He lightly rubbed around it, the tips of his two fingers on either side, kneading it in circles. She inhaled a long breath and held it. The tight knot of flesh swelled under his touch and in the lamplight he could see the clitoris itself starting to come out from hiding. As carefully as he could, he pulled that hood of flesh back, exposing the tiny knot. He brought the very, very tip of his tongue to it. Regan gasped at the gentle contact. He licked it again, a little harder and then again, again, again. Her clitoris swelled more, blooming before his eyes.

  He pushed a finger inside her. She was slick and scalding hot. He needed more of that heat on him. He pushed in a second finger, then a third. Was there anything more exquisite than her open cunt wrapped around his hand? If she’d been more open, he might have tried working his entire fist inside of her. But she was too taut, too tight. He pushed against the clenching muscles inside her and they pushed back.

  “Are you seeing this, Lord Malcolm?” Regan said. She was speaking to the painting, but her gaze was locked on Arthur’s eyes. “You see how your family has fallen? You used to buy women for your pleasure like a boy in a candy shop, and now your heir is worshipping at the cunt of the great-granddaughter of a whore.”

  Her arrogant tone was like petrol tossed on a fire. Arthur’s cock throbbed inside his pants. As he licked her cunt, he unzipped his jeans, freed his erection from the confines of his clothes. He wanted to climb on her, mount and enter her…but he didn’t, of course, though the urge to fill her was painfully strong, to release into her ropes of thick white come and then to pull out and watch his own semen drip out of her…

  Arthur kissed a path up her body, up her belly, coming up high on his knees and kissing her neck. He took the long string of pearls around her neck and started to take them off of her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “You told me to make it good.”

  She gave him a look but didn’t argue and surrendered her pearls to him. Her face was flushed. Her pupils were so wide and dilated, she had black irises, just as she’d wanted.

  He kissed her once on the mouth, letting her taste herself before going down on his knees again.

  The pearls were heavy in his hand. True saltwater pearls, a fortune in pearls. He poured them into his hand, and they filled his entire fist.

  He pushed her thighs open again, kissed and licked her clitoris until she was moaning. But it wasn’t enough to make her moan. He wanted her to scream.

  Arthur began to push the pearls into her cunt.

  At first it was clear she didn’t understand what he was doing. Then at once, she rose up on her elbows. She didn’t say anything, didn’t stop him, just watched. He glanced at her and saw her face, her eyes, looking at her own open cunt, her thighs wide, heels braced on the edge of the bed.

  Pearl by pearl, inch by inch, he pushed the strand into her, filling her hole with enough pearls to pay a year’s rent on a two-bedroom flat in Mayfair. And she let him.

  She lay back as more pearls filled her, too many to count. She lay back and let him push the entire long strand into her. It took time. God knows how long, but she
lay there and panted while he did it, panted and pulled at the bedcovers. He saw her fingers nearly tearing the silk as she twisted her hands into the fabric.

  “Too much?” he asked.

  “Too much. It’s perfect.”

  And that was Regan. Enough was not enough. Too much was perfect. He pushed in the last of the loop. Her lips were wide apart, her hole as dilated as her eyes. The small shining white beads were visible inside her, her inner muscles expanding and contracting to accommodate them. He pressed his hand flat over her opening to keep them from being pushed out.

  Then he licked her clitoris again. It was so swollen he didn’t even have to hold the hood back to get to the naked organ. Regan’s hips rose in tight and tiny undulations. She was coming undone, utterly undone. Her breathing grew louder, and her head writhed on the bed. She made sounds, lovely pained sounds. She didn’t ask him to stop, instead spreading her legs wider.

  He licked her hard. She was long gone now. He thought about stopping—to punish her, to turn the tables. But it would have punished him more to stop licking her, kneading her pulsing little clit with his tongue as she pushed her hips up and into his mouth.

  She came with a sudden jerk of her body and a loud cry. Her head rose off the bed, head and shoulders, before she fell back panting, still softly moaning. She went limp and Arthur let the pearls begin to fall out of her body, one loop dangling out a few inches. He caught the loop in his finger—the pearls were damp—and gently he pulled on them, emptying her out. Her vagina gave little gasps, little twitches. He gathered the long string of her pearls into his hands as he pulled them out of her and then she was empty. He stood and gazed down on her, her dress ruched up to her waist, her eyes closed, her body listless and spent.

  Arthur pushed his cock into her dripping opening and when she didn’t stop him, he entered her with a stroke. Her cunt was open now, supple and soft against his cock. It was ecstasy to feel her body taking every inch of him without any resistance. He was bathed in heat and wetness. She lay motionless under him, insensate, eyes half-closed, letting him have her. He pounded fast, rutting on her, ashamed of his lack of self-control but not ashamed enough to stop. His thrusts were pistons firing fast and hard and it was only seconds before he started to come. He pulled out. Gripping his cock in his hand, he came on Regan’s neck. Spurts of semen landed white and wet on her glistening olive skin, on her chest, in the hollow of her throat, and each spurt harder and stronger than the last.

  When he’d finished emptying himself out onto her, he looked at her, at what he’d done, he decided he’d seen no work of art in the world more magnificent than this woman wearing his come.

  “I’ll clean you off,” he said. “Lay there.”

  “No,” she said. “Leave it.”

  He slid to his knees again and rested his head on her lower stomach. Regan slowly moved her legs, spreading them again. She sat up, still wearing his come and opened her vulva wide open for him. Her cunt was a livid red, almost purple, tender from how hard he’d used her and supple enough to spread out wide as an iris in bloom.

  She touched his burning face. “Well done, Brat.”

  He kissed her thigh. She dug her hands into his hair and stroked it tenderly. Then she picked up the pearls and examined them.

  “I’ll clean your pearls,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “I promise.”

  She put them on over her head and let them settle around her glistening neck and tits.

  “No,” she said. “I think I’ll wear them just like this.”

  6

  Woman With a Pearl Necklace

  Regan sent him to fetch their wine from her office while she cleaned herself—and, presumably, her pearls as well.

  Arthur winced slightly as he took the winding staircase. His still-damp penis was tender from the rough fucking. Though it was painful, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. His body was alive with feeling, right down to the bottoms of his naked feet on the cool, polished wood of the steps. He liked this new awareness of his body, this new sensation of having a body for a reason other than carrying his brain around town. To please Regan, that’s what his body was for—his fingers, his tongue, his hands, his lips and his cock and come—all for her. And what he’d just done to her to please her…

  He couldn’t believe that had been him in her bedroom. In this place, in this private little world of theirs in The Pearl, no one could see him or mock him or judge him or laugh at him. No one but Regan. Regan, the woman whom he wanted to see him, to mock him, to judge him, to laugh at him. He would have to thank Charlie down the road for his bad decisions. Some good had finally come of them.

  The penthouse was dark and quiet. When he found the door to Regan’s office, he switched on her desk lamp to see where they’d left their abandoned bottle of wine.

  A heavy art book lay on the floor next to one of the bookshelves. It was open, having landed on its spine. Had he knocked it off earlier? He bent to pick it up, but stopped, when he saw it had fallen open to a painting.

  His peace, his contentment, his afterglow…it all evaporated in an instant.

  “Are you hungry, Brat? I can call—” Regan was standing in the doorway to her office. She had slipped on her kimono and followed him down. She looked at the book on the floor, then back at him kneeling beside it. “Were you reading? You were supposed to be getting—”

  “I turned on the light, and found this book on the floor open to this page.”

  Regan stepped into the office and bent down to pick up the book. She drew her hand back, gasping, as if the book had burned her.

  “Arthur.” Not Brat. Arthur.

  The book lay open to a full-color, full-page reproduction of a Mary Cassatt painting, a painting of a beautiful woman sitting in a box at the opera. Beautiful hair, beautiful gown.

  Beautiful pearl necklace. That was the name of the painting—Woman with a Pearl Necklace.

  “Is this a joke?” she asked. “It’s not very funny.”

  “I was about to ask you the same question,” he said, but he could already tell she hadn’t left it out for him as some sort of prank or mind game. The confusion in her eyes was too real. Either she was scared to her bones or she was an actress worthy of both a BAFTA and an Oscar.

  “Was someone watching us?” Her voice was low, scared and her eyes were wide, clouded with grey fear. “Someone had to have been watching us. How else would they know…”

  How else would they know Arthur had, moments earlier, given Regan a very special “pearl necklace” of his very own?

  Arthur scooped up the book. It was heavy. Too heavy to simply flutter off a shelf. He closed the book and handed it to Regan.

  “Call hotel security,” he said. “I’ll look around.”

  * * *

  Heart racing, Arthur left her in the office and began a sweep of the penthouse. Regan had money, jewelry, expensive artworks. And hotels weren’t known for their air-tight security, what with half the staff having keys to get into every room. But if someone had broken in while they’d been upstairs, why taunt them? Unless it was personal…

  His first stop was the galley kitchen, where he picked up a knife. No one in the kitchen or the butler’s pantry. No one in the bathroom downstairs. No one in the sitting room or dining room. He returned to her bedroom, where he snagged his clothes—no one there either.

  What if they were overreacting? Books fell off shelves all the time, of course. Not by themselves, but he could have bumped it when he was talking to Charlie. He’d had a little wine by then. But for the book to land open to a painting of a woman in a pearl necklace? It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Arthur started for the French doors to the garden terrace, determined to search every corner of the penthouse.

  “No,” Regan said. She’d come into the sitting room. “Don’t go out there. Security’s on their way up.”

  He hesitated. He was certain if someone was still here, they would be on the darkened terrace, where there were plenty of hiding pla
ces behind the plants and trees.

  “I need to check—”

  “No,” she said, her tone stern. “Stay with me. That’s an order.” Then desperately, she said, “Please. Please stay.”

  Regan still had the Cassatt book clutched to her chest. He sat on the arm of the club chair and took her by the hips, pulling her close to him. “Could it have been Zoot?”

  “She left,” Regan said, shaking her head. Not so much to say no, but to show she was baffled. “I was in the office with you when I sent her home, remember?”

  “I heard the door close, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “She follows orders. If I tell her to go, she goes. And she doesn’t have a key.”

  A knock sounded on the door, strong and steady. “Ma’am? Security.”

  “I’ll get it,” Arthur said. He went and opened the door. Two large male security officers in blue uniforms, one white and in his forties, one Black and in his twenties, entered the penthouse.

  “Lady Ferry?” the young Black man said. His name tag read David J. “Someone was in here, you say?”

  Arthur watched as Regan quickly transformed herself from a frightened young woman and back into the boss lady. Her spine straightened and she dropped her arms to her side. Her voice was calm as she explained the situation, leaving out a few salient points about exactly what they’d been doing upstairs—although in their state of dishevelment, it wasn’t much of a mystery.

  As the guards searched the suite and the garden terrace, Arthur poured a drink for Regan, two fingers of whisky neat, and sat with her on the chaise in front of the fireplace.

  She took a sip of her drink and stared at him over top the rim of the glass. “You were alone in my office when I went out to feed Gloom.”

  “For about thirty seconds, texting with Charlie. Not reading…” He glanced at the book’s cover. “Not reading The School of Paris—A Survey of Nineteenth Century Female Painters. I couldn’t even tell you where it came from on your shelves.”