Thanksgiving dinner at Pickering Farm was a massive affair. More than thirty guests sat in the window-lined dining room while piano music drifted in from somewhere in the house.
Poppy seemed listless the entire meal, pushing food around her plate and not eating, even refusing dessert and wine. She made half-hearted conversation with her parents’ friends and attempted a smile or two, but otherwise she continued to look tired and out of sorts. I circled my hand around the middle of her back, pressing into the sensitive spot between her shoulder blades, enjoying the feeling of her body melting into my touch.
Penelope, I thought. It must have been those two hours Sterling and I hid in the library talking guy stuff, and I’d left her (essentially) alone with a woman she abhorred.
Guilt chafed at me. What had I been thinking, leaving her alone like that? So I could be with Sterling of all people? And now she was probably socially exhausted and emotionally drained¸ and I hadn’t done anything to help her.
I leaned in close, my lips grazing the shell of her ear as I spoke. “Are you okay, lamb?”
She looked down at the table, as if she were avoiding eye contact with me. But then I realized it was probably Penelope and Sterling she didn’t want to look at right now. “Just tired,” she said quietly.
“Do you want to go lay down?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine, really.” But she wasn’t fine; a lone tear escaped out of the corner of her eye, trailing down her cheek as a single, clear droplet. I caught it with my thumb and pressed the thumb automatically to my mouth. It wasn’t conscious or intentional, but the way Poppy’s eyes followed my movement with avid interest—the first spark of life I’d seen all night—sent a rush of blood to my groin.
I knew what I wanted to do. I still had to get her back for this morning, after all, and her family was sitting at the other end of the table…
I reached under the long tablecloth and found one smooth thigh, crossed over the other, and I slowly pushed those thighs apart, all while keeping my eyes trained on Poppy’s. She resisted at first, but the moment I mouthed lamb at her, her legs parted.
Maybe I didn’t know what was wrong with her. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to help her even if I did. But I could do this, right here and right now, reminding her of all the things we’d promised each other and God in that church three years ago. That we loved each other. That we belonged to one another. That our love would be eternal and all-consuming, patient and kind and would not boast or envy…
Okay, so I still had work to do with the envy part. But everything else, I could demonstrate to her in the way that we communicated best: with our bodies.
Keeping my upper body still and my expression neutral, I slid my hand higher, past the pleated skirt of her Saint Laurent dress and to her warm center. She took in a deep breath, her eyes flashing, and I paused, giving her a quirked smile with a raised eyebrow.
Do you want me to stop? I asked her with that eyebrow.
In response, she spread her legs farther apart.
At the other end of the table, a vibrant conversation about an upcoming tennis match had broken out, and at our end, the non-family guests were engrossed in some foreign-property-acquisition-gone-wrong tale.
Nobody was watching us.
I ran a middle finger over the damp silk covering her cunt, knowing without needing to look that she wore a pair of panties I’d bought for her just last month, for the express reason that I liked the way the fabric felt against my fingertips. And—yes—there was the little bow at the top and the lace trim around her legs…and all of my slow, gentle exploring was taking its toll on her. She squirmed in her chair, trying to subtly rock her pelvis against my hand, spreading her legs far enough apart that I could easily skate my fingers underneath the fabric at the crotch, which I did next.
She sucked in a breath through her teeth, which no one seemed to notice, and I casually used my left hand to take a sip of wine while my right hand eased her panties off to the side and started stroking the soft skin underneath. She was wet, wet enough that there was no resistance as I circled her entrance with my middle finger. Wet enough that I could easily slide my finger up to her clit, making everything slippery and slick and effortless. The pad of my finger rubbed over her swollen bud while my thumb traced soothing circles on the bare waxed skin of her mound.
“So, Tyler,” one of the guests said, angling his head to me. “Tell us more about Princeton these days. I’m a Yale man myself, but I have to admit, their Bendheim Center is doing some pretty impressive things.”
Poppy flushed pink and tried to shift away from my touch, but I kept rubbing her while I leaned my other forearm on the table and turned toward the man who’d spoken.
“The Bendheim is excellent,” I answered conversationally. “I honestly think they’ll be adding more programs beyond a master’s soon. The demand for finance and business education is simply too high to ignore.”
“Princeton doesn’t care about demand,” another man said, in that half bluster, half chortle that these kind of men got after three or four glasses of wine. “They only care about academia.”
I shrugged, using the movement to disguise the shift in my arm and shoulder so that I could—oh fuck there it was—press one finger slowly inside her pussy. Her ragged breath was surely undetectable to anyone but me; it was their loss, because it was the loveliest sound in the world, lovelier than the piano still playing softly, lovelier than the sound of the sea-whipped wind against the glass.
Just feeling her turned my semi into a full erection, which was thick and long and fairly uncomfortable in my narrow, low-waisted slacks. But I relished the discomfort, the feeling of being hard for her while she was so wet for me, and her held helplessly captive by my hand alone.
I pushed farther in, wiggling it a little, as the men started arguing about what Princeton’s lack of a proper business school meant about its place in the Ivy League. Her hand came up and gripped the edge of the table as I finally pressed up against her G-spot, pushing against it and then dragging my finger out again to rub against her clit in hard and fast circles, then plunging back in to toy with her G-spot again.
Those perfectly imperfect front teeth dug into her lower lip so hard that I thought she might bite through it, and her knuckles were white as she held on to the table, all while I chatted casually about Princeton politics and tossed a few Harvard jibes out there, much to the amusement of the tipsy faux-aristocrats.
“And Poppy, are you still a Dartmouth girl through and through? Even with a Princeton husband?”
She swallowed, those teeth letting up on her lip for just a second, long enough for her to manage a weak, “Still a Dartmouth girl, Richard.”
I loved every millisecond of this, of my proper wife in her proper home surrounded by all these proper people, while I slowly finger-fucked her under the table. All these people talking about Ivy League colleges and investment plans and the increasing costs of yacht maintenance while the daughter of the house had her pussy stroked in the very same room.
Her head was bowed now, one hand clenching the table and the other wrapped tightly around her water glass, her cheeks pink and her breathing fast, her dress revealing the erect buds of her nipples. If anyone was paying close enough attention—which they weren’t, thankfully—they’d see that something unusual was happening to her. They’d see the subtle tilt of her torso as her body overrode her mind and tried to get my fingers deeper, faster, harder.
I was so fucking hard that I thought my dick would drill a hole right through my pants, but I didn’t care. I only cared about her, about owning her with just these small movements of my fingers and wrist, about making whatever had caused that tear vanish, about replacing it with pleasure.
And, if I admitted it to myself, there was something appealing about making her come only a handful of seats away from the same bastard that took her virginity. Something addictive about bringing this well-heeled young woman to the brink right in the middle of this American shrine to wealth and influence. Who is Nick Fucking Carraway now? I wanted to shout. Now who doesn’t belong?
Just as I parried some man’s joke about the Princeton rowing team with a riposte about Harvard’s, I felt it. The tell-tale tightening in her core, that abrupt clenching, and then she was closing her eyes as I shoved two fingers inside for her to ride out her climax on. Silently, she rocked against my fingers, eyes squeezed shut and teeth buried in her lower lip. And I bit my own lip, because it was so wet down there and I could feel every pulse and quiver, every single ripple of her coming, and that drove me fucking crazy.
So fucking crazy.
I wanted to pull her onto my lap and then I wanted her to bounce on my dick until she came again. Or maybe I’d be happy with her on her knees in between my legs, sucking me off like she’d done in the truck yesterday. Or, honestly, even a quick hand job through my slacks. At this point, my dick was not too interested in the particulars.
But instead I laughed and nodded with the other people at the table while Poppy ground out the last of her orgasm, and then when she finished, I gently withdrew my fingers, pulling her panties back into place and smoothing her skirt over her legs. And when the coast was clear, I lifted my fingers to my mouth and licked her taste off of them.
Her eyes widened, but so did a shy, creeping smile, and I sat back, satisfied that I’d cheered her up, even if it was at the cost of a raging erection that had no hope of being tended to any time soon.
“What are your plans, Tyler?” one of the anonymous wives asked right as I’d finished licking my fingers. I struggled to remember her name, but honestly, they all looked the same—carefully coiffed, subtly Botox-ed, expensive brooches pinned to their wool dresses. “After you finish your doctorate? Will you teach?”
Just like that, my satisfied mood vanished, replaced by something much more ambiguous. Something much more anxious.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said delicately. “I’m still focused on finishing my dissertation, so I haven’t given too much thought to what comes after.”
I could feel Poppy’s eyes boring into the side of my face, but I didn’t turn to look at her. What happened after this degree was something we didn’t talk about, the proverbial elephant in the room. Poppy would want me to do something big and meaningful and authentic, and other words that people like her and Jordan threw around like parade confetti. To them, those words were fluttering and light, easy to grab out of the air and hold onto.
Not for me.
For so long, I’d built meaning around this one singular goal—working to make sure what happened to my sister didn’t happen to anyone else. Systemic change. Institutional reform. Large scale awareness and activism.
And then came Poppy. And then came seven months digging wells and building schools in Pokot. And I started to see how seemingly small things, ordinary things, kisses and pick-up games of soccer and shoveling dirt, could be important and fulfilling.
So I didn’t know what meaningful and authentic looked like for me anymore. I’d given up trying to know God’s plan for my life, but I hadn’t given up trying to live a godly life, and I wasn’t sure what that meant in my new context. Did I stay in academia and guide other people in their discoveries? Did I go back to mission work? Did I find a non-clergy role in a church, maybe in administration or as a youth director?
The hard, cold truth: the only job I felt suited for—the only job I felt made for—was being a priest.
And I could never be one again.
The thought sent a bolt of fear through me. An electric current of panic and agitation. What if leaving the priesthood had damned me in this life as well as the next? What if I never found another calling, another vocation, and I was doomed to live my life in this perpetual state of restlessness, searching for an answer that I would never find?
“That’s too bad,” the anonymous wife said. She was giving me one of those why don’t you come help me with my tennis swing smiles that all these wives seemed to give me when I was here. “You have so much to give the world.”
Then came the men, now completely drunk, offering me jobs and referrals, and then the hired waiters cleared dessert off the table and it was time for cards. I frowned at my wine glass while my plate was taken away, my stomach churning, fucking miserable with myself and my future and this Gatsby house and my life.
“Tyler,” Poppy said quietly, touching my arm. I looked around; we were the only ones left at the table. In my brooding, I hadn’t noticed everyone adjourning to the next room.
We stood, and I took the opportunity to quickly adjust my lingering erection. I followed Poppy as she walked around the table, her dress hugging the slender dip of her waist and flouncing over her pert ass, the hem hitting the middle of those toned and creamy thighs…
I took her arm and yanked her into the corridor, pulling her into the small room off the foyer that served as the coatroom, closing the door behind us. The only light in here was a weak golden glow from the Christmas trees in the foyer, seeping in from under the door.
“What are you—”
I put a hand over her mouth as I spun her around so that she faced away from me. I was upset and I was angry with that stupid question from the dining room, the question that forced me to confront yet another part of my life I was failing at, and Poppy was so beautiful and soft and mine, and I was still so fucking hard for her.
I nudged her feet apart as I flipped her skirt over her ass. I didn’t care that this was her parents’ house or that anybody could walk in here to get their coat or purse. I only cared about the sharp intake of breath she gave as I pulled her silk underwear down her legs and stuffed them in my pocket.
“Say red if you have to, lamb. Otherwise, keep that pretty mouth shut.”
She shuddered at my words, at my hand checking to see if her cunt was ready for me, at my other hand flat on her back and pressing her forward. She braced her hands against the wall and looked back over her shoulder, kohl-rimmed eyes smoldering at me.
Fuck, she was hot.
I unbuckled my belt with one hand and then unzipped my pants, loving the way she unconsciously arched herself closer when she heard the purr of my zipper.
I stepped even closer to her, grabbing my cock and lining it up with her entrance. I paused though, right before I shoved inside, wondering if this was an immoral thing to do. To use the woman I loved as a salve for yet another of my spiritual dilemmas. To use her body and those willing hazel eyes for a few minutes of respite from my guilt and anxiety.
But then she took the decision away from me, pressing her ass into my hips and impaling herself on my shaft.
My lips parted as my erection slid home, and I swore I could feel every single millimeter of her cunt as it swallowed my dick, every fucking one. For a minute, I just stood there, absorbing the feeling. She felt so wet and so tight, so good, and in the faint light I could see the outline of her bent over, the heart shape of her ass pressed into my groin.
I grabbed her hip with one hand and her upper arm with the other, bringing her upright and closer to me, and even with her heels on, I had to bend my knees for my petite lamb. But I knew the second I found the perfect angle, because she let out a low, breathy moan, and then I began to thrust in earnest, deep, curved thrusts that made her hands reach back to dig into my thighs.
Silence was of the essence, but I couldn’t help but to fuck her hard. The kind of hard where the slap of our skin and the wetness of our fucking and the smack of my balls against her cunt made distinct noises that not even these repressed New Englanders could fail to identify.
I didn’t care. Because for a few minutes, life was perfect again. My lamb and I, alone, fused as one. No family, no ex-boyfriends, no looming future. No dissertations and no Anton. Just us, and the jagged sighs of my wife as I found her clit—still sensitive from the dining room finger-fucking—and teased it. It didn’t take long, thirty seconds maybe, and then her stomach muscles clenched and her pussy squeezed around me.
She shoved her fist into her mouth to keep from crying out, and then everything released, powerful contractions that milked my own orgasm from me. I leaned over her back and bit her shoulder as I pumped my cum into her, deep inside her sweet body.
I felt the climax everywhere—the muscles of my thighs and abs, my spine, my toes. Every part of me released into her and she welcomed me, all of me, the messy heat of my insatiable lust and the unbearable weight of my guilt and the uncertainty ahead of us. Somehow she took it, and for the first time in weeks, my mind felt quiet. My heart felt at peace.
I pulled out, wiping us both dry with her panties. They went back into my pocket, and I helped her straighten her dress while she buckled my belt.
In the dim gold light, I could barely see her face tilted up to mine, those blinking eyes, those entrancing lips. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “You seemed…preoccupied.”
“Is that your way of asking why I dragged you into a coat closet to fuck you?”
Her throaty, queenly laugh. “Yes.”
“I’m fine now,” I said honestly. “You healed me.”
“With my magical vagina?” she asked skeptically.
“With your magical vagina,” I confirmed. “And just by being you.” I cupped her face with one hand, wondering if she could see my eyes as clearly as I could see hers in the dusky light. “Sometimes I don’t think you know how much I love you.”
She turned her face into my hand, and I brought my other hand up to trace her jaw. She really has no idea, I realized. How just by being her, royal, sexy Poppy, she made me a better man. She made me feel at peace. She made me more like myself. I worried that she only saw herself through certain lenses—the lens of her family, maybe, or her own lens, which was harsh and overly critical and unyieldingly demanding.
She never really appreciated how smart she was, or how talented. She never seemed to realize exactly how gorgeous she was and how much I craved her. To fuck, certainly, but also simply to stare at. Staring at her made me happy. I couldn’t think of a simpler way to describe it than that. She was so beautiful to me that all I had to do was watch her, and life made sense again.
The first time we’d made love, she’d been my communion, a new covenant that I was making between her and me and God. I had thought that was the most intense—the most luminously spiritual and carnal—moment we could ever share, but somehow that covenant had grown, until now every time I looked at her, I felt like a convert newly baptized. I felt like the Apostles witnessing the Transfiguration.
God was my god. But Poppy…Poppy was my prophet.
I opened my mouth to tell her this, but then she pressed a finger to my lips, her mouth lilting into a mischievous smile. “I hear someone outside,” she whispered.
I did too, the clinking of ice in a glass, the droning tones of yet another WASP-y dialogue about horses and boats. We stood there, frozen, Poppy fighting off a fit of near-teenagerish giggles at almost being caught in the coat closet. When the conversation finally died away as the speakers moved into another room, we let ourselves out of the closet and scampered up to our room, where I covered my protesting prophet in kisses and herded her into the shower, where we proceeded to get clean—and then dirty—and then clean again.