The Pearl Page 8

  He had to go slow as she was tender, and his cock fat and blunt like a Cuban cigar. She was gripping the headboard as he worked himself into her, playing with her nipples with his free hand, playing rough—pinching and tugging on them. Her breasts ached and felt so heavy on her chest. It wasn’t enough for him to put his cock in her. He had a clitoris vibrator he used on her when he was fucking her. When she came, she said, it was like being turned inside out. Her muscles clamped down on the shaft so hard she nearly pushed it out.

  “After I came, he really let himself have at me,” Regan went on. “He took my tits in his big hands and just rode me into the bed.”

  All this was said as if she were reciting a recipe for scones or telling an anecdote about the time the butler lost the lid to her favorite teapot.

  It was quick and hard but good. She was shocked by how good it felt to have his cock in her and him rutting on her like an animal. She even came a third time, her clit was so swollen and her vagina so open…and then the come, shooting into her, filling her until it spilled out and coated her young thighs.

  Arthur’s cock was stiff inside his trousers.

  “He paid for a whole week before he had to return to Sydney,” she said. “I spent most of that week naked and coming. Mouth. Arse. Every hole. I was fully debauched in one night. Lovely man. Invited him to our wedding. Told Sir Jack I was a rugby fan.”

  The herald blew his trumpet and all eyes turned to the front doors, where new guests were arriving. Thank God. Arthur grabbed Regan by the wrist and dragged her toward the staff exit. She owned the hotel. She counted as staff, right? And he was certainly at full-staff.

  As he dragged her away, she laughed. “Where are you taking me? Or are you just taking me?”

  “I don’t know, and yes.” The staff exit led to the kitchen, but there was another door to the lobby.

  “Follow me,” she said. She pulled him across the lobby toward the old smoking lounge, now a private area for VIP guests. “All of our VIPs are at the ball,” she said, as took a keycard from her bodice and unlocked the lounge doors.

  As soon as they were alone inside, Regan turned the deadbolts. Arthur took control, pushing her onto her back on a hunter green leather sofa. He opened his trousers and pulled her gown to her waist. She was naked underneath her skirt.

  “You planned this,” he said.

  “I wanted the waltz to be scandalous again. That’s all. And this,” she said, taking his cock in her hand. “I wanted this.”

  She pulled him down onto her. As soon as the head kissed her opening, he felt her wetness and knew she was as aroused as he was. He entered her with a thrust and her slick walls parted to receive him. He came up on his knees and with one hand on the arm of the sofa to brace himself, he rode her with quick rough thrusts. She was wet, soaking wet.

  She bathed his aching organ with her slick fluids. He looked at her face, eyes closed and mouth open as she took it, took him. Her breaths were shallow, fast, her breasts rising and falling, straining against the bodice of her gown. He tugged the fabric down, freed one breast and latched immediately onto her nipple, sucking it, rubbing it with his tongue. It grew stiff in his mouth and he pulled on it, licked it to make it stiffer.

  Regan lifted her hips in need—a miscalculation. Arthur grabbed them, held them and yanked her against him, splitting her on his cock and forcing a cry from her throat that revelers at the ball had to have heard. Her vagina spasmed on his as she came on him. While she was lost in her own pleasure, he let himself have his own, ramming her hard. He didn’t want to hurt her. He just wanted to give it all to her, all of him—every inch, every thrust, every drop of come, all into her grasping little hole.

  Regan’s eyes opened as they were still moving together, slowing now, riding the wave of orgasm down, down, all the way down until they were still. Still, and still joined.

  She winced as Arthur pulled out of her. “My gown.”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, pressed it to her vulva to catch his come before it left a stain on her dress. Gently he cleaned his sperm off and out of her and wished the smoking lounge wasn’t so dark. He would have liked to have seen her in better light, open like this, dripping with his semen.

  “That’s enough,” she said. “I think we’ve gotten most of it.”

  “My father taught me to never leave home without a handkerchief. I have to wonder now,” Arthur said as he wadded up the linen square, “if this is why.”

  “From what I’ve heard about your father, yes.”

  Arthur half-laughed, half-groaned as he tidied his uniform as best he could. “Please don’t remind me what whores my parents are.”

  “Happy whores from what I hear.” Regan stood. She smoothed her gown back into place. “Madly in lust with each other, even now.” She went to the liquor cabinet and poured herself a finger of whisky, neat.

  “I walked in on them in the kitchen once,” Arthur said. “Scarred for life.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “Something less than seventy and more than sixty-eight.”

  “Ah. Poor Brat.” She drank her whisky, then poured another. “You really aren’t a typical Godwick, are you?”

  “Why do you say that?” he asked as he walked around the lounge, contemplating how many uniform codes he’d just violated. The smoking lounge was every inch the Victorian gentleman’s paradise. Dark wood paneling ornately carved with stags and boars and foxes and other noble beasts old men liked to murder.

  “Oh, let’s see. Your parents are rather notorious for being in a lust-filled yet open marriage. Your sister, if the rumors are true—”

  “Whatever you’ve heard…it’s probably true.”

  “She ran a little escort service of her own while at King’s, didn’t she?” When he didn’t respond, she continued, “We’ve got Lord Malcolm, of course—as notorious as it gets. Even your grandmother was a bit of a lush, wasn’t she? And Charlie’s certainly following in the Godwick footsteps.”

  “My grandfather, the fourteenth Earl of Godwick, was notorious for not being notorious,” he said, thinking of his namesake, Lord Arthur. “Dad says he was as stodgy, humorless, and pompous as they come. Until me.”

  “You aren’t any of those things. You’re…” She looked at him through narrowed eyes. “You’re self-disciplined, strict with yourself. Unusual in someone your age. You’re only twenty-one. Why aren’t you out drinking all night in pubs and going to parties and clubs and all that?”

  He turned his back to the bookshelves and leaned against them, arms crossed over his chest. “Because of Charlie.”

  She eyed him skeptically.

  He continued, “When we were kids, ten and eight…there was a little winding river in the woods behind Wingthorn. I was mature enough, Mum and Dad trusted me to keep an eye on Charlie when we went out adventuring. One day in June, we were by the river and a tree had fallen across the water. Genius me decided to cross the tree trunk to the other side. It was mossy, slick. I fell in. Got my foot trapped under a branch. Nearly drowned.”

  “Good God.”

  He could still remember the panic, the immediate terror, thrashing in the ice-cold water, choking on it.

  “Charlie was only eight,” he said. “Just eight and he didn’t hesitate one second. Went right in the river and worked my foot free. Did I mention he was only eight?”

  “You mentioned it.”

  “Someone had heard us shouting and came running. When Mum got there, Charlie immediately lied and said he was the one who fell in and I’d saved him. I was too shocked to say anything, so I went along with it. Later that night I asked him why he’d lied. He said he didn’t want me to get into trouble because if I did, Mum and Dad wouldn’t trust me to watch him anymore. He’d rather get into trouble than lose me. Our parents still don’t know the true story. Nobody does but Charlie and me. And now you.”

  “And you never did anything foolish or childish again in your life, did you? Until me, that is.” She rai
sed her eyebrows.

  He didn’t argue. “You nearly get your baby brother killed, you’ll never let your guard down again.”

  “So now it’s your turn to save him from drowning.”

  “You’d do the same if you were me,” Arthur said.

  “It’s not your fault if he drowns this time.” Her voice was surprisingly kind coming from the woman who was holding Charlie’s fate in her hands.

  “Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but that isn’t going to stop me from diving in after him like he did for me.”

  She didn’t argue further, only said, softly, “The moment you realize you’re going to die someday is the moment your childhood ends.”

  That was it. He’d been ten years old when he’d learned that terrible truth, learned it with a bellyful of river water. That had been the end of his childhood, the end of even wanting to be a child, since to him it always meant letting his brother down.

  “When did your childhood end?” Arthur asked.

  “My mother died when I was four,” she reminded him. “I never got to be a child.”

  The door handle rattled. Someone wanted in.

  Arthur froze, looked at Regan. “Should we unlock the door?” he mouthed.

  “No,” she whispered. “I may make you fuck me again.”

  “Shouldn’t we go back to the ball?”

  “After.” Then she called out, “Lounge closed for private party.”

  The door handle stopped rattling. They waited until the footsteps faded.

  “So, are you going to force me to listen to another story about your sex life?” he said.

  “I’ll tell you one right now, if you’d like.”

  * * *

  She sat on the sofa and Arthur took the club chair opposite her. She was an absolute mystery to him, despite being a seemingly open book. He’d found photographs of her online from every year of her marriage to Sir Jack Ferry. Their hotels. Their charitable functions. A few high society weddings in Milan and Rome and New York. But something was amiss. Something beyond the trauma of a bad marriage, beyond the unconventional way she’d lost her virginity. Something that made her work too hard and drink too much.

  “I cheated on Sir Jack only once in our entire marriage,” she said, swirling her drink in her glass. “We were in New York dining at one of his hotels there. I saw a painting on the wall near our table and it was very good. I asked the waiter if he knew the artist, and he said it was one of their servers, a young woman. He told me a bit about her work, how she was in art school. That’s all. When he stepped away from our table, Sir Jack quietly and calmly called me a disgusting tart for throwing myself at our waiter in front of my own husband.” She laughed to herself. “All for something as innocent as asking the name of a painter.”

  Arthur wanted to hold her but didn’t dare move. Her eyes told him she had only just begun her story.

  “It was Fleet Week. Do you know what that is?”

  He nodded. “When the U.S. Navy docks its ships in New York and other ports.”

  “Five years into our marriage…I thought I was immune to Sir Jack’s insults,” she said. “Apparently not. I ran from the restaurant, really ran and ran straight into a white wall.”

  “A white wall?”

  “A Naval officer. Full dress whites, cap and everything. Executive officer on the U.S.S. Something or Other. An officer and a gentleman. I had never seen a more handsome man in my life. I don’t even know if he was handsome or if he was just so kind that he might as well have been wearing a golden halo. He offered to take me up to my room. I said I couldn’t go there, never wanted to go there again. We went to his room instead.”

  She took a sip of her drink.

  “I seduced him,” she said. “It was easy enough. He asked what he could do to help me. I said he could make love to me.”

  Another drink.

  “He knew I was married. I didn’t lie to him. He said a man who would treat a woman that badly didn’t deserve to be married. Maybe it was a line, but it was a line I needed to hear. After the sex, he gave me a bath so I wouldn’t go back to Sir Jack ‘smelling like a sailor,’ he said. That evening with him was the first tenderness I’d felt in years. I can still see him in the lobby of the hotel, like something out of a dream. When I saw you in your uniform at my door, it brought it all back in an instant.”

  She put her elbow on the sofa arm and leaned her head against her hand. “I suppose that’s not a very sexy story though,” she continued. She smiled but Arthur saw through it. “No virgin girls in white socks getting spanked with Ben Wa balls inside of them.”

  “What can I do to help you?” he said.

  “You can’t help me.”

  “Why not?”

  She looked away and he followed her eyes to a painting hanging on the wall by the door. Nothing special, just a ship sailing away from the shore. “Because no one can help me. Not even King Arthur. Not even Lieutenant Godwick.”

  “Regan, what’s wrong?”

  She smiled at him. “Nothing. Nothing and everything.”

  “That’s not helpful.”

  “You’re not here to help me.”

  “Then what am I here for?”

  “To make me forget for a few minutes that no one can help me.”

  “Then I’ll do that,” he said.

  Slowly she stood and set her empty glass on the side table. She came to him and stood in front of the chair, where she gathered her gown and lifted it. Arthur pulled her down onto his lap. Clothes were pushed aside, his cock hardened, and he slipped easily inside her still-damp cleft.

  Regan rested her chin on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his neck. He unzipped her gown and lowered it to her waist. He licked her nipples, sucked them, as she moved on him slowly, slow enough he could count her breaths. And from the ballroom came the sounds of a Viennese waltz as she sunk down onto him and rose in time with the music.

  One, two, three… One, two, three…

  5

  Black Iris

  Arthur woke from heavy sleep Monday morning. His phone on the bedside table vibrated loud as a jackhammer in his ear. He saw it was his sister, declined the call and shoved his phone under his pillow.

  He wasn’t surprised to hear it beep a few moments later, warning him he had a text message.

  The message was simple. Only two words, all caps, plus punctuation.

  REGAN FERRY?!?!

  Arthur groaned and rubbed his forehead. The hunt ball had only been two nights ago. Gossip really did fly faster than the speed of light.

  He replied with two words. No punctuation.

  Regan Ferry.

  The next text summed up his sister’s thoughts on the matter—two thumbs-up emojis.

  Arthur tried to return to the dream he’d been having before Lia’s call woke him. In the dream Regan was on his old bed at Wingthorn, naked but for white lace-trimmed socks on his white sheets with the red pinstripes. She’d been on her hands and knees and he was in her from behind. All good. All very good. Except while they were having sex, she said something to him like, “Don’t stop or I’ll die.”

  He’d laughed at that, but she hadn’t laughed. She’d said it again, like she meant it. Don’t stop or I’ll die. So he’d fucked her harder, deeper, as if he would never stop.

  Arthur wanted to go back to sleep and find out what she meant by that, but now it was too late. The bloody front doorbell was ringing. First the phone. Then the doorbell. Why did the universe not want him to finish the most intensely erotic dream he’d had in his life?

  Quickly he yanked on his jeans and a t-shirt and went down to the front door. He knew exactly who he’d find there, and he was right. Regan’s redcoat was waiting on the front steps.

  “Can’t she send an email?” Arthur said to Zoot. “A text? A carrier pigeon?”

  “She says to come at eight tonight, and you can pick the painting.”

  “I can pick the painting?”

  “That’s what she said.”<
br />
  “Anything else?”

  “Your shirt’s on inside out.”

  Arthur looked down. Yes. His t-shirt was definitely on inside-out. Seams for miles.

  “It’s a viscount thing,” he said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I understand you’re a daft prick, but the boss likes you, so sod me and my opinions from now to next Thursday, I guess.”

  “That’s an extraordinary amount of sodomy,” Arthur said.

  “I can take it,” she said, and spun on her red Wellie to leave.

  Arthur stopped her on the steps by calling her name.

  “What?” she asked, facing him again.

  “Is Regan…okay?” he asked.

  Zoot scrunched up her face, looking confused as if she’d asked him if Regan occasionally transformed into a werewolf. “She’s all right, far as I know.”

  “You’re sure? I’m not asking for gossip.”

  She grinned. “Yeah you are.”

  “Fine. So I am. But only because she sometimes says things that make me wonder. She’s not depressed or anything?” He wasn’t sure what he was asking. All he had was a hunch that there was something moving under the surface of Regan’s tough exterior, a deep current of sorrow or maybe even fear?

  “She’s been in a better mood than I’ve seen her in a long time. Hasn’t threatened to sack me all week.”

  “And that’s unusual?”

  “I usually get the boot twice a day.”

  “Only twice?”

  Zoot pointed at his face. “Brat,” she said, then turned and stalked off again.

  Arthur called after her, “I like your coat.”

  The reply came in the form of her two fingers in the shape of a V.

  Eight o’clock was a full day away. And the sun was out—a rarity in London in November. Arthur went for a long run followed by a full English breakfast. Buoyed by the knowledge he’d get to see Regan again tonight, he decided to brave texting Charlie.