The Pearl Page 6

“She didn’t think so.”

  “Then she was a fool.”

  “Sometimes I can’t tell if you hate me or you’re starting to like me,” Arthur said.

  “Neither can I,” Regan said and wrapped her entire hand around him again and held him.

  A sound came out of his throat, half gasp, half sigh.

  “Good Brat,” she said. “I like that you like being treated like a whore.” She held him in her hand a little firmer. “Even if you won’t admit it.”

  She stroked him again, base to tip then around the head and back down. Her hand was soft and her grip strong. His head fell back. He closed his eyes.

  “What did I say about that?” Regan demanded. “Eyes open. Here. Look above the fireplace.”

  She pointed to the painting. “Berthe Morisot,” she said. “The Psyche Mirror. That’s what they used to call cheval mirrors, because it could show you your whole self. And there she is, seeing herself and liking what she sees. You are going to see yourself tonight. You understand?”

  “No.”

  “You will. Stand in front of the mirror. Undress,” she said. “All the way.”

  “Do I have to?”

  She gave him a look and that look answered the question so that no further words were necessary.

  He didn’t want to do it. He knew people found him attractive. He was twenty-one and had been doing hard military workouts for two years. Yes, he was in good shape physically, but he still didn’t go around staring at his naked body in mirrors. Too much looking in mirrors was dangerous. You ran the risk of seeing someone in there you didn’t want to see.

  What choice did he have, though? For Charlie, he reminded himself as he pulled his t-shirt up and off. This was for Charlie.

  He tossed his shirt onto the wingback chair. Then his jeans and pants and socks. And then, there he was, completely naked and standing in front of the cheval mirror. The “psyche mirror.” Regan stood near him, her back to the fireplace mantel, her arms crossed over her chest, studying him again as he stared at himself in the mirror. Seeing himself there, he remembered, finally, what his father had said to him about marriage, how it changes a man…

  “What do you see?” she asked, her tone cool and probing, like a psychotherapist’s.

  “Just me.”

  “Don’t lie. I can tell you’re thinking about something.”

  “Earlier today I was trying to remember something my father said to us years ago, and it finally came to me.”

  “What was it?” She came to him and rested her chin on his shoulder. He liked that she was tall enough to do that.

  “Charlie and I were complaining to Dad one day about how he was always chasing Mum around the house. We thought it was about as disgusting as anything could get. Usually he just said, ‘Put a sock in it, virgins.’ That day he actually sat us down and lectured us about how important Mum was to him. ‘Your wife will be like a mirror to you,’ he said, ‘except she’ll show you your true self. A man can be the life of the party at the pub with his mates and a monster at home to his wife. Who is his real self? Not the mask he wears in public but the soul he shows only to her.’”

  “Why were you trying to remember it?”

  Because of Monday night, he thought but didn’t say. Because that’s what had felt so monumental about that night, why he’d woken up Tuesday morning feeling like a man for the first time in his life. He’d shown his face to a thousand friends. That night with Regan, he’d shared some secret part of his soul for the first time with someone. With her.

  “I was just…you know, thinking about my parents when we were on the phone today. On their millionth honeymoon in New York.”

  “I see,” she said. There was a split second when he thought she might look disappointed in his answer. He relished that look.

  Regan wrapped her arm around his waist, took his cock in her hand, held it, stroked it.

  “What I see is this,” she said. “I see a young man who is getting harder and harder every second that passes, who chose this for a reason that has nothing to do with his brother, even if he won’t admit it. Yet.”

  He was so hard it hurt. His erection humiliated him, that he was this easy to manipulate. Everyone thought he was some perfect son, perfect soldier, perfect angel. That’s what Regan had said. But the truth was he was exactly what the mirror showed him to be. An absolute whore for this woman and the way she treated him.

  She released him, stood back and undressed. Off came her grey jacket. Down went the zipper of her skirt that clung to her round hips. Then her shirt and lacy white bra, lacy white knickers. She stood before him, naked and glorious, naked but for the pearl drop earrings hanging from her ears.

  In the mirror’s reflection, he could see her hair, crimped from her earlier French plait, falling in waves down her back. Her lovely bottom, so soft and round, waiting for his two hands to clench it, hold it. Long lovely naked legs. Long throat and pale olive skin. Breasts that sat high on her chest and firm, perfect handfuls. Nipples a darker brown. Just seeing them and his mouth watered at the thought of sucking them. Narrow waist and the flare of her hips, and then her vulva with the softest curls of hair.

  Between her thighs, hidden from his eyes, was what he wanted to see more than anything. See and smell and taste and touch and push inside and fill. But he couldn’t, not yet. He had to wait for her instructions.

  She took a step to the right and revealed his body in the mirror again. Now he saw himself and her in the glass. Two of him. Two of her. His desire doubled as did his humiliation.

  Regan took his hands in hers and brought them to her breasts. “Touch me,” she ordered.

  He held her breasts with a firm grip in both palms, held them and felt the heat of her body and the smoothness of her skin. Her nipples hardened but not enough for him. He wanted them hard as diamonds. He cupped the mounds and ran the pad of his thumbs over and around the nipples. The skin puckered and tightened. He wanted a reaction from her. He was as tired of her coolness as she was of his coyness. Lightly, he pinched both her nipples and saw in the mirror as her lips parted in a gasp.

  Arthur found it was easier to let go and do what he wanted if he wasn’t looking at her but at her reflection. He pinched the taut brown tips again and then tugged them gently. They grew harder against his fingertips. He pinched and plucked them and the woman in the mirror, who wasn’t Regan but instead was some bewitching girl he couldn’t stop staring at, gasped again, this time audibly. That strange woman in the glass…he wanted to watch someone sucking her nipples. He lowered his head and took her left breast in his mouth, latching on to the tip.

  The mirror woman arched her back to give the man in the mirror more of her breast to suckle. The mirror man licked softly, licked hard, covered the areola with his lips and pulled the tip into his mouth, pulled more and harder, as her back arched even more until she seemed to hang from his mouth, as if it was all that was keeping her standing.

  Whoever he was, that man in the glass, he wanted that woman. His cock was engorged, a livid red, dripping. It rubbed against her hip as he sucked her breast, massaging the nipple with his mouth and tongue, unable to get enough. In the mirror, the woman put her hands into the man’s hair and held him to her breast, then wrapped her arms around his head and pushed her hips into his stiff organ.

  She pulled back and took his head in her hands, forcing their lips to meet again. Arthur closed his eyes and the man in the glass was gone. He was himself again, kissing Regan, pushing his tongue into the hot cavern of her mouth, opening her lips wider to press in deeper.

  She broke the kiss first, which almost broke him. But then she turned around, lifted her hair off her back with one graceful motion and draped it over her shoulder. The cheval mirror stood at an angle in the corner by the fireplace and reflected the whole room—the bed, the door, the shrouded painting of his great-grandfather. Now the mirror showed him Regan reaching out to grip the edge of the fireplace mantel. It showed her leaning forward slightly and ar
ching her back. It showed her spreading her thighs and lifting her buttocks.

  Then it showed him bringing his hand between her thighs, finding her vulva and stroking the silky soft hair he found there.

  The hair was damp, and he sought for the source of the dampness. He found the sealed folds of her vulva and ran his fingers along the seam. Wetness, more wetness. He pushed into the seam and parted it, found slick bare flesh, hot against his hand and wet. Up and down he stroked along the slit. Regan said nothing, but her breaths were fast and ragged. He found the hidden little hole into her, and he slowly pushed two fingers inside. The sound that came out of her throat caused his cock to stiffen even more. His muscles were hard as steel, his cock a rod of iron.

  The man in the glass did as Arthur had done—pushing two fingers into the woman in the mirror. He watched the man’s hand moving in and out of her body, watched his hand turning and going in at another angle. He saw the woman’s lips part and her eyes close tight as the fingers inside her spread apart, opening the hole.

  Regan turned her head to meet his eyes in the mirror.

  “Enough playing with me, Brat. Put your cock in. I want to see you watching yourself in the mirror while you do it.”

  He took his penis in his right hand and guided it to her wet and swollen seam. With a slight push of his hips, the tip went through the folds and found her entrance, resting against it.

  With one hand on his cock and the other arm wrapped around her stomach, and with slow thrusts of his hips, he pushed his way into her body. Watching in the mirror, barely breathing, hardly blinking, he saw his penis disappearing into her inch by inch. Saw and felt it as her hot inner depths enfolded and drew him into her.

  She moved with him and against him as he went into her, arching her back again, bowing it as they both moved in tandem to work all of his thick organ into her tight but eager cunt.

  Regan spread her thighs wider, lowered her head. The woman in the mirror did the same, as the man in the glass took her hips into his hands and began to slide his cock deeper into her.

  He wanted to thrust. His body screamed at him to pound her open, but he held back. He worked with the rhythms of her own movements, sliding slowly out of her to the tip, sliding in as far as he could go, taking as much as she could give and giving as much as she could take.

  And in the mirror he watched it all. He watched his thick inches pulling out of her, glistening with her wetness, watched her vagina enveloping his cock, taking it inside of her until he couldn’t go any farther into her.

  It wasn’t enough for him that they were joined, wasn’t enough that he’d watched as it happened, as he’d speared that beautiful slit of hers. He had to touch her, too.

  He pulled her even tighter against him, and, with the fingers of his right hand, he sought and found the place where their bodies joined. As he pushed into her, he felt himself, the hot hard length of him, now wearing her wetness as it plunged into her. He touched her folds, speared by his cock, and then went up in search of her clitoris.

  He knew he’d found it when she cried out with pleasure again. The woman in the cheval glass cried out, too. A sharp intake of air followed by a gasp as his fingertip touched the small but throbbing knot where they met and melded.

  “Harder,” she said, and he didn’t know if she wanted her clitoris rubbed harder or her cunt pounded harder, so he did both. He thrust and watched himself thrust. He rubbed and watched himself rub. And he saw the girl in the glass come undone as the man between her thighs undid her…

  She lowered her head again and shuddered. He felt her orgasm as much as heard it, felt her vaginal muscles twitch and clench at his cock, fluttering madly all around him. He lost his mind then and every last bit of self-control as he rode her to his own completion. He bent over, hands on her small shoulders, splitting her like an iron nail into soft, tender wood.

  He felt his own orgasm bearing down on him, unstoppable as a tsunami. It rushed over him and crashed into her. His thrusts were rapid-fire as the pleasure spiked and the dam burst, and he let go. He wrapped his arms around her stomach and pulled her back against him, holding her in place as he used her hole. His come rushed out of him in hard spurts, filling her and filling her with his semen. He wanted to fill her until there was nothing left inside him to give her. And when there was nothing left, he just held her against him and breathed.

  Slowly they pulled apart and Arthur stood up straight, swallowing air, eyes closed. When he opened his eyes again, he looked in the mirror to see Regan’s face. She was smiling, wickedly, triumphantly.

  “Do you see what I see in the mirror?” she asked.

  He looked and saw what he’d been trying not to see for years—that he was one of those men who was turned on by the power and cruelty of a woman. His cock hadn’t been hard inside her—it had been solid steel. Regan had forced him to look and now that he’d seen what he’d seen in her psyche mirror, he couldn’t look away. Even if it meant admitting he hadn’t thrown himself on the sword to save Charlie. He’d thrown himself on the sword because she was wielding it.

  “You know what I see?” she asked. “I see Lord Malcolm.”

  “I am nothing like my great-grandfather.”

  “You are actually,” she said. “But that’s not what I meant.”

  He followed her gaze into the mirror. She wasn’t looking at him or her own reflection. She was looking at Lord Malcolm.

  And Lord Malcolm was looking back.

  She’d covered his portrait with the scarf, but the scarf had fallen off the frame, and the painting hung uncovered. Where was the scarf? On the floor by the door halfway across the room.

  Regan laughed wickedly. “I told you if he wanted to watch, he’d find a way.”

  Arthur didn’t tell her that she didn’t know the half of it.

  4

  The Waltz

  Two nights down with Regan.

  Eight to go.

  And in the meantime, Arthur was snooping.

  On Regan, of course. He told himself it was because she had made herself an enemy of the Godwick family—finding a way to legally steal a painting from them and then practically forcing Arthur to sleep with her to get it back.

  “Really,” Arthur muttered to himself as he fought off another pesky erection. “How dare she.”

  In the back of his mind, he knew he was snooping because she fascinated him, aroused him, infuriated him, and stripped him of all his defenses. He had to get some of those defenses back.

  Know thy enemy, he reminded himself. Biblically, if necessary.

  His parents had a private service they used to vet employees and household staff, which included complete background checks and that sort of thing. Seemed rather intrusive to Arthur, so he turned instead to the internet. He spent half the morning after his last encounter with Regan in his father’s office at the townhouse, online, digging up everything Google could tell him about her.

  First, he learned her maiden name was Moira Regan Pryce, but she’d always gone by Regan.

  She was thirty. Her birthday was in August. Clearly her parents had found something to do on those long, cold December nights in Wales.

  With a little more digging he found that Regan and Sir Jack Ferry had a grand wedding at St. Paul’s. He even found a photograph of them standing on the steps afterward—Regan looking like his granddaughter in a white lace wedding gown and Sir Jack looking a little like that American actor Gene Hackman. The article mentioned a candle had been lit on the altar in honor of her mother Hannah, who’d died when Regan was only four years old.

  Four? How horrid. She’d mentioned her mother had died young, but she hadn’t said exactly how young. What would that do to someone, to lose their mother at four years old? He couldn’t imagine life without either of his parents, even his father who drove him mad most days, but especially his mother who’d been the love of his life at that age. He remembered how she’d read to him and Charlie every night at bedtime, fairy tales and silly stories abou
t frogs and toads, cats and hats, and bears going to the moon. She called him her Morning Star since he always woke up so early. Charlie was her Evening Star who went wild at night before bed.

  He had to wonder if, subconsciously perhaps, that was why Regan had gotten married so young? To recreate in some way the family she’d lost?

  He discovered only one other piece of information that seemed significant. When Regan married Sir Jack Ferry, there were a few small write-ups in the gossip rags. The usual rubbish about a social climber marrying a rich old toff. One thing jumped out at him: she was described as a student at the time. She’d been studying painting at LOCAD, the prestigious London College of Art and Design.

  Regan was an artist. Or had been once. He tried to find out if she’d ever graduated, but couldn’t access any of the alumni pages.

  He sat back in his father’s big leather desk chair and with the toe of his shoe, swiveled the chair toward the windows that looked into the shadowy back garden and the trees shedding their autumn leaves.

  Once upon a time, Regan had been a young artist. Then she’d met a rich man who’d offered her the security of money and marriage and discovered the price of both was higher than she ever expected to pay. She seemed to be paying the price now, even months after Sir Jack had died. Working late at The Pearl, still wearing her watch to cover her wrist tattoo, buying Arthur to sleep with because she wouldn’t give herself time to date.

  After their most recent encounter in front of her mirror, Regan had slipped on her robe and said, “You can go now. After years of sleeping with a man I loathed, it’s the height of luxury to sleep alone.”

  He hadn’t even asked to sleep in her bed…although if she’d asked him to, he would have. How was it that he could feel so close to her while they were having sex, but the moment it was over, he was dismissed like a servant? Probably, he admitted to himself, because to her, he was a servant and nothing else. And, as she’d said, he’d have to get used to it.

  When he was done snooping, he knew more facts about Regan, but the truth of her still eluded him.