Page 11 of Once Upon a Dream
His warm lips find my nape, my neck, as he throbs in my cunt, and I know the minute he starts pumping the latex full of his release, because he sighs again—a sigh like a man dying. A sigh like a man coming home.
For a long moment we stay like this, his lips against my neck, his cock finishing inside me. His arm stays around my waist and his heart is beating so hard I can feel it even through the thin wool of his tuxedo and the wire and netting of my wings.
Happiness.
That’s what this is.
It’s the same happiness stolen night after night in our marriage, always followed by a crashing fear that I was somehow a coward or a liar for stealing it.
Morgan Leffey, the Witch of the White House, becoming a kitten in the arms of a man.
I don’t need to see Lorne’s face to know that when he pulls out, it’s with a deep reluctance, because I feel the same.
If only the entire world could be this moment, this hot embrace against a ballroom wall while a party whirls and twirls behind us…
I feel the cool, damp emptiness signaling his withdrawal and hear the slick noise of latex over skin and the rustle of fabric as he pulls off and wraps the condom in a handkerchief—an old trick of his from when he used to fuck me at fundraisers and charity galas.
I feel his knuckles against my ass as he tucks his spent organ back into his tuxedo and fastens his trousers, and then I feel his fingers ghost appreciatively over my backside. He kneels behind me and kisses the welted skin there, his lips at once soft and searing over the abused skin.
“Hold still,” he commands, and then I look behind me to see him pulling a small tube from his inner jacket pocket. Some kind of medicated ointment.
He unscrews the cap and with the care of a surgeon, applies it onto the worst of my welts. Each and every one, he kisses before he rubs the soothing cream over it, like a priest kissing his stole, like a pious man kissing his holy book before setting it aside.
And with each and every one weal he cares for, the awful truth assembles itself in front of me.
He has ointment for the welts.
Which means he knew the welts would be there.
Because he sent the dress in the first place.
He was my date all along.
I’m going to kill Mark. Maybe he’s the former assassin, but I am going to kill him so fast and so hard, and then I’m going to kill him again and again. How dare he?
And how dare Lorne?
I lied earlier. This was why I divorced my ex-husband. Because every whiskey-sweet moment inevitably turns sour; because every moment blissfully intoxicated is paid for with nausea and pain later. Because every heady, happy orgasm is stained by its price.
I let Lorne finish; I let Lorne carefully rearrange my silk underthings and then tear free the bottom layer of the skirt, the layer that had inflicted so much pain.
I let him smooth the skirt of my dress back down. And then I turn to face my ex as he stands up.
“You were testing me,” I say quietly.
He’s already shaking his head. “There’s no test you have to pass for me, Morgan, and there never was. I was proving to you, not testing you.”
“Proving what, Lorne? That I’m too stubborn to take off a dress when there’s clearly something wrong with it?”
He touches my jaw, and I turn my head away. Petulant, maybe, but prudent too: I don’t want him to see my eyes swimming with tears.
Instead of answering my question, he asks one of his own. “Why did you really ask Mark to help you find a lover?”
I don’t answer. I’m worried I won’t be able to speak without wavering, without choking on four years’ worth of loneliness and a lifetime of pride.
“Was it because you knew he was a good enough friend to sense what you needed? Was it because you knew he would find a Dominant lover for you without you having to say the words out loud?”
I still don’t answer, and I can’t look at him. But I do finally manage a tiny nod.
