The drive to Newport was brutal. Sleet and intermittent snow turned I-95 into a miserable crawl of traffic, a slow-moving river of honking and merging and near-accidents. After Stamford, it opened up a little, but not a lot, and Poppy fell asleep listening to my audiobook about ancient Greek mythology. So I navigated through the drizzle and stroked her thigh as she snored softly and the narrator droned on about the fucked up familial politics of the Olympians.
Around Westerly, she roused, her hair adorably mussed and her large hazel eyes blinking away sleep. Yawning, she looked out the window. I didn’t need to tell her we were almost here; she knew this part of New England as intimately as I knew the neighborhoods and fountains of Kansas City. I flipped the stereo from my audiobook to the Bluetooth audio. Blues rock, loud and raw and lo-fi, started pounding through the speakers.
“This should help you wake up, sleepyhead,” I said, steering my truck onto US-1.
I couldn’t see her smile, but I could feel it as she stretched in her seat. “Well, someone kept me awake last night.”
She was talking about me, and the fact that I’d fucked her until the day finally dawned gray and wet outside our window. But for a minute—an instant really—I thought someone meant Anton, and white-hot anger pricked at my chest.
I swallowed it down. “We should be to your parents’ in about an hour.”
She nodded, reaching over to squeeze my thigh. I swore I could feel her every finger through my jeans, I swore I could feel the heat of her palm searing marks onto my skin. And with my jealousy beating its restless rhythm inside my chest, it only served to make me agitated in a very particular sort of way.
I glanced over at her, at her perfectly applied lipstick and sparkling eyes, and then said, “Unzip me.”
She licked those flawless crimson lips and complied, her hands pale in the fading light as she unbuckled herself and reached for me.
I leaned back, giving her better access to my zipper and also so I could get the view I wanted: those manicured hands on my jeans and then parting the fly and taking hold of me. There’s something incredibly hot about driving fast with a woman unzipping your pants, something powerful about having your foot heavy on the gas and your vehicle eating up the road and a beautiful face about to be buried in your lap.
She stroked me once or twice, but I didn’t need it, not with her lipstick and my restless jealousy and the engine thrumming around us as I pushed the truck faster and faster. And then she gave me one of her painfully gorgeous grins, leaning down to kiss my tip, her tongue darting out to tease me.
I should have let her take her time, I should have savored each and every one of her warm breaths as she pressed those lips everywhere, from my base to my crown, but when I looked down, I saw the red lipstick marks on my cock and I couldn’t hold on to my self-control, threading my hands through her hair and pushing her head down. Her lips parted and her mouth was so fucking warm, and there was suction and heat and the fluttering of that wicked tongue…
“Shit,” I swore as my dick hit the back of her throat. “Holy shit.”
She moaned in response, the vibration going straight to my balls, and I dug my fingers deeper in her hair as I pressed harder on the gas, thankful for the lack of traffic but also wishing that this was more public, more exposed.
“On your knees,” I said. “I want to touch your ass.”
She did as she was told, easing up onto her knees, never breaking in her attention to my dick, and I was able to move my hand from her hair to her ass cheeks, rucking up the skirt of her expensive dress to reveal her expensive underwear. I gave her a small spank and then squeezed. God, I loved the feel of her ass in my hand. It was so soft and firm and just so damn juicy, the kind of ass you could play with for hours and never get bored. And the way it segued into her firm, dancer’s thighs, the way it led to her warm, lace-covered folds…
I rubbed her over the damp lace, making her moan again. I spanked her once, twice, three times, alternating cheeks, and then wrapped my hand around her hair, yanking her face up to mine.
I kissed her with my eyes on the road, tasting myself on her tongue, smearing her lipstick around her mouth, and then shoving her back onto my dick, practically running the truck off the road when she put her mouth on me again.
“Fuck, Poppy,” I managed. “Just…fuck.”
This time, after I spanked her, I found the tight rim between her cheeks and began teasing it open, pressing inside and making her squirm. I hadn’t fucked her there in far too long; I made plans to fix that as soon as humanly possible. And shit, with the way her ass clamped around my finger, hot and greedy, it was hard not to justify pulling over and making as soon as humanly possible happen right this very minute.
She leaned farther down, so that the head of my dick was squeezed at the back of her mouth, and then she did that swallowing thing again.
“Jesus,” I muttered, my head dropping back against the headrest. She did it again, and I was so close, so fucking close, with the road hissing under my tires and my foot on the gas and her ass and hips curving into her tiny waist. With her red lipstick smeared around her lips as she sucked me, with her silky, tousled head moving in my lap, with the bass and drums of the music thumping through the car.
And then I felt it, a barbed tension in my balls, and then I was holding her head down as I shot into her mouth, over and over again, vaguely aware that I was chanting my name for her,
lamb
lamb
lamb.
And then I was aware of every pulse and throb of my orgasm in her mouth, and she swallowed it all, even milking me for more after it seemed I had no more left to give.
She cupped my balls playfully as she sat up, and I growled, “Come here,” and pulled her into another kiss, wishing that our trip was nothing but this—kissing and being sucked off as I drove, just loud music and smeared lipstick and damp lace.
Alas. Nothing is ever that simple.
After stopping at a gas station so I could wash my hands and Poppy could freshen up—which after three years of marriage I’d learned was a term for twenty minutes of unknowable fiddling and trifling in front of a mirror—we were back on the road and to her parents’ house before six o’clock.
The Danforths lived right on the coast, in the kind of hundred-year-old house that looked like it should have a name. It did have a name, in fact, Pickering Farm, although there was nothing farm-like about the stately white mansion with its gables and massive chimneys and many, many windows. It had a vast green lawn that sloped down to a rocky ledge and then to the sea, and it was surrounded by the kinds of gardens that managed to look both incredibly elegant and incredibly understated at the same time. The whole place exuded money and oozed class—the kind of money and class that didn’t need to proclaim itself because it was so established and comfortable.
Everything about it reminded me of my lamb. My elegant lamb, who froze in the car with her hand on the truck’s door handle.
“What is it?” I asked her, my brows furrowing together.
“Nothing,” she said nervously, her eyes lifted to the house in front of us. The Danforths had already decorated for Christmas, and Christmas trees sparkled from every window, accented by candles and wreaths and garlands wrapped both inside and outside the house.
I put my hand on the back of her neck. It was a possessive gesture, but it calmed her. Her breathing slowed and then she twisted herself so she could rub her face against my arm, like a cat would.
“I just don’t like coming back here,” she finally admitted. Her voice was small. “It feels like defeat. Like I’m still a part of their world.”
Poppy had abandoned that world the minute she’d walked across the Dartmouth graduation stage to receive her MBA, going on to wait tables and eventually dance for money, seeking a more authentic life than the gilded cage she’d grown up in.
“You’re not a part of their world, lamb. You’re part of my world, you understand? You belong to me.”
That seemed to soothe her. She took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. I belong to you. This place doesn’t matter.”
“Tonight, after we get settled, I can show you how much it doesn’t matter,” I promised, and that earned me a smile.
Inside, we were assaulted by the family—Poppy’s parents and her two brothers and their wives and then the host of well-groomed nieces and nephews in their flouncing dresses and bow ties. Despite Poppy’s need to flee all those years ago, her family was actually very nice—polite and intelligent and charming, if occasionally a little more proper than my Midwestern ass was used to. They’d been nothing but kind to me, even with my middle-class pedigree and non-existent income. In fact, since I had been the reason she started visiting regularly again, I think they felt very warmly for me. At least as warmly as they were capable.
I made good on my promise to Poppy after we went to bed and ate her pussy for as long as she could stand it, through silent orgasm after silent orgasm, until I finally had to clap my hand over her mouth because she couldn’t keep quiet anymore. And then we fell asleep in her childhood bed, a canopy bed so wide that four people could comfortably lay together and so tall that even I had to exert myself a little to climb on top. A princess’s bed in a princess’s room, and the princess herself nestled in my arms, her dark hair spilling over the pillows and my arms like a sleek curtain.
The morning dawned even colder than the last, bringing with it real snow, the kind that blew more than it fell, sending forlorn gusts of wind to rattle against the windows and doors. I woke after my wife, as usual, finding her sitting at her vanity with her hair already in loose gleaming curls and her lips already bright red.
“Who’s the sleepy one now?” she asked, eyebrow arched, as she fastened an earring into her earlobe. She was looking at me in the mirror as I got out of bed and walked over to her, stopping to raise my arms over my head and stretch. She stared at my reflection with undisguised fascination, staring particularly at the way my loose pajama pants slid even lower down my hips as I stretched, exposing a line of dark hair and highlighting the morning wood I was sporting.
“Come back to bed,” I said in a lazy, husky voice.
She turned, fastening her other earring and standing up. “Believe me, there’s nothing I would rather do. But as I recall, you were the one who wanted to spend Thanksgiving with my family. You were the one who sermonized me about the importance of family and connection. And it’s Thanksgiving morning, which means Grandmamma’s cinnamon rolls, and I know you don’t want to miss your chance to eat some.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but she held up a hand. “And yes, I know what you’re about to say, and yes, I know there’s something else you’d rather eat.” She leaned close to whisper in my ear. “But cinnamon rolls only stay good for the eating for a handful of minutes. I’m always good for it.”
She reached into my pajama pants, gave my hopeful cock a few teasing pumps, and landed a soft, light kiss on my cheek. And then her nude heels were clicking on the floor and she was gone.
She’d pay for that teasing later, I decided. In a big way. But for now, a cold shower was in order. No point in terrifying Grandmamma with my boner.
“You know, this house used to have a ballroom. But it burned down in the 1940s.”
We were alone together in the massive front entry, me staring at a family portrait and Sterling coming in from the morning room. I didn’t bother turning at the sound of his voice. It didn’t matter how little or how much interest I showed in him, he had decided at some point four years ago that we were buddies, and there would be no shaking him.
At least I had a drink with me.
Sterling Haverford III—former trust fund kid and now a business mogul—sidled up to me with his own whiskey glass in hand, looking as smug and handsome as ever in his bespoke suit and Italian shoes. Blue eyes, black hair and cheekbones from some sort of Abercrombie and Fitch hell completed the image, and when I glanced over at him to nod an acknowledgment, I felt the familiar burn of jealousy in my chest.
Did I mention he was also Poppy’s ex-boyfriend? And the man I saw her kissing the day I’d decided to leave the clergy in order to be with her?
I hated that he was handsome. I hated that he was rich. And I hated most of all that he was charming—so charming that I didn’t even really hate him at all. In a weird way, he reminded me of my brothers, Sean and Aiden, who were as different from me as humanly possible, but still some of the closest people in my life. Under Sterling’s veneer of money and good breeding was a horny American businessman, and with two out of three brothers meeting that definition, I knew the type pretty well.
Oblivious to my thoughts, Sterling continued, “Rumor was that my great-grandfather’s uncle started the fire in the ballroom by ashing his cigar too close to an unsuspecting debutante and her giant dress.”
Oh, how I loved to be reminded how historically close the Danforths and the Haverfords were. (Which was ridiculous, since Sterling and his wife being invited to share the holiday with us was reminder enough.)
“The house has recovered well,” I said, moving away from the portrait and over to one of the massive Christmas trees. Surely the Danforths hired people to do these things; I couldn’t imagine Margot Danforth untangling strings of lights or looping garland around a ten-foot tall tree.
“So, what’s the over-under on the Cowboys stomping the Raiders this afternoon?”
Dammit. How did he always know the exact kinds of things to say to capture my attention? I fucking loathed the Raiders, and I tried not to miss any opportunities to explain to people why.
Which is how I found myself in the library with Sterling, both of us on our third whiskey, arguing about whether or not Roger Goodell should step down as commissioner of the NFL, and also about whether or not Margot would let us watch the game instead of playing cards. And yes, bridge is what the Danforths did after their Thanksgiving meal instead of watching football.
Blue bloods.
Sterling stood—a little unsteadily—to get me another glass of whiskey while he refilled his own. “You know, Tyler,” he said as he walked to the globe bar that Mr. Danforth kept by the fireplace. “You’re not half bad. And you fit in well here.”
I didn’t know about that. Despite the kindness of my in-laws, I still felt out of place. At home in Kansas City, Thanksgiving was fried turkey and football, naps stretched out on the carpet punctuated with games of Monopoly and Chinese checkers. Here at Pickering Farm, it was a formal coursed meal with paired wines and different forks, followed by interminable bridge games and (if we were lucky) a frigid walk along the shore. I still felt like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby when I was here: a passive observer at best, a charity case at worst. I wasn’t family. I wasn’t a Danforth or a Haverford or any other name that could be traced back to the Mayflower or any of the original colonies. My pedigree dissipated less than five generations back, an illegible scribble on a forgotten ledger, people who epitomized the poor, huddling masses, people who carried nothing with them across the Atlantic except for rosaries and exhaustion and hope.
I would always be a guest here.
A clumsy outsider.
A tourist in a life I could never hope to have for myself.
I accepted the glass Sterling offered, taking another warm sip before I answered. “I suppose. The Danforths have always been very nice to me.”
“They like you.” Sterling sat, automatically unbuttoning his jacket as he did. “Hell, I like you.”
“I like you, too. Even though I think you’re an asshole.”
He choked on his whiskey laughing and I had to smile. It fucking pained me to admit it, but he was a hard bastard not to like. Which reminded me of how much I had detested him when we’d first met. He’d tried to blackmail me, he’d tried to steal Poppy away from me, he’d been despicable in every way…he tested my ability to forgive and think God-like, compassionate thoughts about my fellow humans.
And yet, here we were four years later, sharing whiskey and football facts. And even though I did feel that low-level jealousy every now and again, it was mostly absent from our interactions now. Somehow, I’d mastered my envy of him, and more than that, I’d come to terms with my envy of his place in Poppy’s world. I would never be him, I would never be Tom or Gatsby, I’d always be Nick. I would always look out of place inside my in-law’s house, just as Sterling looked perfectly at home here.
And that was okay.
“Sterling?” came a musical voice from the door. It was Penelope, his wife, looking a little desperate. I didn’t blame her, given that Poppy had once considered Penelope to be her mortal enemy. It was probably difficult to find common ground with a history like that, and Sterling and I had basically abandoned the rest of the house in order to get drunk and talk about the NFL.
Sterling grumbled something unintelligible but still pushed to his feet to go to his wife. I, however, sat in the library and chewed over this new realization, this epiphany over something that had happened so gradually I hadn’t even noticed it.
But if I truly wasn’t jealous of Sterling any longer, how come Anton Rees made me so fucking furious? If I’d found the way to shut off that instinctive, terrible part of myself with one man who’d been interested in my lamb, why couldn’t I do it with another?