The room was silent but for his ragged breathing and the sound of his thick cock pounding into her wet hole. His every muscle was taut. She saw the veins in his hands and forearms popping. His need was beautiful and aroused her all over again. She rocked back against him as hard as he slammed into her.

  It was primal.

  It was painful.

  It was perfect.

  Nora came when he came, not as hard as her first orgasm, but sweeter as Nico filled her with his semen, so much of it that a few drops fell out of her between his last thrusts and landed on the antique Amish bedspread.

  Oops.

  She knew she’d forgotten something.

  Chapter Five

  “Are you going to do that all night?” Nora asked.

  Nico nodded.

  “I thought so,” she said. “I do have wine.”

  Nico shrugged.

  “Later. Got it,” she said.

  Nico had nodded and shrugged because his lips and tongue were otherwise engaged with her nipples. After defiling the bedspread, they’d curled up together in bed, and Nico had pulled the straps of her gown down—without asking first, wicked boy—and had spent now...Nora checked the mantel clock over the fireplace...seven minutes sucking her breasts.

  “I should have brought a book to read,” she said at eight minutes. “Wonder if I could reach my phone...”

  She stretched her arm past Nico’s shoulder.

  No, she couldn’t reach her phone. Too bad. She could have answered a few more e-mails. She ran her fingers through his soft hair, rubbed his neck and shoulders…

  Nine minutes.

  “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Moosh,” Nora said. “It does feel good. It’s just...” She glanced at the clock again. “Nine minutes?”

  “You’ve sucked me for longer than nine minutes,” he said, coming up for air.

  “Entirely different situation and you know it.”

  He shook his head and returned to his task. Nora and Nico lay on their sides, arms and legs intertwined, Nora’s chin at Nico’s forehead, his head buried against her chest.

  Ten minutes.

  “This has got to be pathological. Were you bottle-fed as a baby?” she asked. “Never mind. That was mean. I’m childless. I have no room to judge.”

  Twelve minutes. She was starting to get a little sore. Aroused, but sore.

  “Guess it could be worse,” she said with a sigh. “If you’re going to have an orally-fixated boyfriend, better tits than cigarettes, right?”

  Finally, Nico laughed hard enough that Nora was able to pull away from him and yank her nightgown back into place. The boy was insatiable sometimes.

  Nico reached for her and she batted his hand away.

  “No, bad Moosh. It’s wine o’clock.”

  “I have wine every day of my life,” he said. “I only get your breasts four months a year.”

  “But it’s California chardonnay,” she said. “And I have more candy.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “If there’s candy...”

  He pulled on his jeans and went downstairs to hunt up wine glasses while Nora opened the bottle.

  He returned, triumphant with two white wine glasses just in time to catch Nora nosing through his weekender bag.

  “Looking for something?” he asked as he set the wine glasses on the side table by the sofa. He picked up the wine bottle, looked at the label, and grinned.

  “My present,” Nora said, still nosing. She had no shame about getting caught digging through his things. She owned him all the time. While they were together she owned him even more. That meant his body was her body, his heart her heart, and his luggage her luggage. So she figured anyway.

  “It’s in there,” he said. “Bottom.”

  “Is this it?” she asked, pulling out a flat white box with a black ribbon around it.

  “No, that’s for his birthday.”

  “Kingsley’s?” Nora asked. Kingsley’s birthday was November second, the day after she’d get back to New Orleans.

  “Yeah,” Nico said. “Although...ah, I don’t know if I should give it to him or not.”

  “You should give him a present. It’ll mean the world to him.” Nora wanted Nico and Kingsley to have a good relationship almost as much as she wanted Nico and her to have a good relationship.

  “It’s not that,” Nico said. “I don’t know if it’s the right thing to give him. He might...” Nico shrugged. His grandmother called him Moosh for a reason. Unlike nearly everyone else she knew—herself included—when Nico didn’t know what to say, he said nothing.

  “Can I look?” she asked.

  Nico pointed at the box with his wine glass as if to say, If you wish.

  She wished.

  She slid the black ribbon off the box. It was a pretty box with a pretty bow, which likely meant Nico’s cousin, the winery’s office manager Marbella, had done the wrapping. She lifted the lid and found a small book, black leather.

  “Photo album?” Nora guessed. Nico said nothing, so she knew she’d guessed right. He wasn’t looking at her while she opened the cover to the first photograph, but focused instead on the golden liquid in his wine glass.

  “Oh my God,” Nora said, clapping a hand over her heart. “Look how cute you are.” The photograph was of Nico—she’d know those eyes anywhere—at about age five. He was sitting on a tree stump on the edge of the winery with the house in the background. He’d caught a cricket or grasshopper or something and held it out to the camera in his palm. He was smiling and Nora saw he was missing his two front teeth.

  “There’s more,” Nico said. “All me from five to twelve.”

  Nora flipped through the photo album slowly, and found her eyes were welling up. It didn’t mean that much to her to see Nico as a little boy. It didn’t mean that much to her to see pictures of herself as a child either. But the thoughtfulness of giving Kingsley a whole album of photos of his son, of the years Kingsley had missed...

  There was Nico in shorts and a t-shirt, running from one of his other cousins, a soccer ball at his toes. There was Nico on the beach, the French Riviera, wearing his mother’s too-large sunglasses with white sunblock on his nose. There was Nico, curled in a ball sleeping on a pile of clean laundry like a house cat.

  “Kingsley will never recover from this,” Nora said, grinning. “If the house catches on fire, he’ll save Juliette, Céleste, and this photo album.”

  “Not Søren?” Nico asked.

  “Søren will save Kingsley,” Nora said.

  “And what about you?”

  “Who do you think set the fire?”

  Nico laughed as Nora flipped through the album again.

  “No baby pictures?” she asked.

  He winced. “I couldn’t find any.”

  “You have to have baby pictures somewhere.”

  “I mean, I couldn’t find any that were me alone. Maman is the photographer, so in all the baby pictures...you know...” He fell silent again. Nora understood then. All the pictures of Nico as a baby, his father was holding him.

  “You sure it’s okay to give it to him?” Nico asked. “He won’t be...”

  “Triste?” Nora supplied the French word for sad.

  “Hurt,” Nico said.

  “He missed twenty-five years of your life. Of course he’ll be hurt. But if there’s one thing you’re ever going to learn from being with me, it’s that there’s good pain and bad pain.” She closed the photo album and held it briefly to her heart. “This is good pain.”

  “You can take it to him then,” he said. “And tell him bon anniversaire.”

  “He’ll be touched you were worried about hurting him. He wants you to love him as much as he loves you.”

  “In time,” he said. “Maybe.” Nora understood his reticence to really let go and love Kingsley. The man who’d raised him from birth until his death two years ago still held the high ground in Nico’s heart. Slowly but surely, Kingsley was making inroads. Impossible not to. Kingsley could be damn lovable when he wanted to be.

  “Kingsley is the reason we’re together,” Nora reminded Nico.

  He lifted his wine glass in a salute. “No,” Nico said. He pointed at her. “You are the reason he and I are together.”

  “You play so hard to get,” Nora said. “But this is proof you do love him. These aren’t copies. These pictures are originals.”

  Nico shrugged, but didn’t deny it.

  “Okay, enough about him...where’s my present?” Nora asked. She put the box away in her bag to give to Kingsley.

  “Small red box.”

  “Small red box,” she said, digging in Nico’s bag again. She found it stuffed under a pair of socks, neatly folded. “Can I open it? I don’t care if you say no, I’m opening it anyway.”

  “Open it,” he said.

  Nora ripped the ribbon off the box and lifted the lid and found inside...

  “Nothing?” She held up the empty box. “Or is there a very tiny diamond in here I’m just not seeing?”

  Nico was a born male submissive and any male submissive worth his salt brought gifts to his mistress. She knew dominatrices who posted wishlists on their websites just so their clients would know what sort of tribute they expected. Nora had never gone that far, but she never turned down a thoughtful gift given in the right spirit. And Nico... There hadn’t been one visit, one trip, one night together when he hadn’t brought her something. Their first time together had been the best gift: He’d given her his company during the hardest night of her life.

  Nico grinned. “It’s whatever you want it to be,” he said. “You tell me.”

  “I tell you?”

  “You want to do something to me that I’m not...” He waved his hand at her, indicating he wanted her to finish his sentence for him.

  “I see. You’re giving me permission to do something to you.”

  “That’s it.”

  “So I can use this for...pegging?”

  Nico blinked, but recovered quickly. “As I said, it’s whatever you want.”

  “Blood-play?”

  He held up his hands in surrender.

  “Making you get a cock piercing?”

  He winced so hard both eyes closed. Slowly one eye inched open. “If you want,” he said.

  “Oh...” Nora said, her voice a purr. “Good present. But you know I could make you do any of that if I wanted to any old time.”

  “You can,” he admitted. “But...I was thinking of when you were teaching me about us, about what couples like us are supposed to be like. You said real submission isn’t something taken but something freely given and freely accepted.”

  “I said that?”

  “Last year, during my, ah...training.”

  “God damn, I’m smart,” she said.

  He laughed. “Very. That’s my gift. I’m giving you my submission, and I want you to accept it from me.”

  “Thank you,” she said, walking over to kiss him. “I do accept this beautiful gift of your submission, and you are going to regret ever giving it to me.”

  “No regrets yet.”

  “The night is still young.”

  They kissed a good long kiss, a wine-flavored kiss, better than candy.

  “You aren’t really going to make me get a piercing, are you?” he asked.

  “Oh, maybe just a little one.”

  He took a ragged breath. “More wine, please?”

  Chapter Six

  It didn’t take long for Nico to want to make love again. (The lube Nora bought earlier came in handy for the particular act he was in the mood for.) After a quick shower together, Nico declared that he’d rather go for a walk than try to sleep just yet. Nora had taken a nap earlier to prepare for a long night. A night walk with her boyfriend at her side sounded pretty damn good to her, too.

  They dressed warmly, both of them in jackets, scarves, jeans, and boots. As soon as they left the house and stepped into the night air, Nora took a deep breath and smiled. New England autumn. There was nothing like it. She inhaled deeply again, taking in chimney smoke, crisp cold air, and the sweet rot of raked leaves left to molder.

  “I love that smile,” Nico said as they headed down the sidewalk. He put his arm around her waist, a possessive protective gesture she had no objections to.

  “I was smiling thinking about all the possibilities of the gift you gave me. So many sadistic things I can do to you...”

  Nico exhaled heavily. “Next time you’re getting jewelry.”

  “Too late now. But speaking of smiles...”

  “What?” he asked.

  “When you poured the wine earlier, you smiled when you saw the label, like you were about to laugh at something. What was it?”

  “Ah, you noticed.” He looked sheepish, like she’d caught him cheating at cards.

  “I noticed. I notice everything about you,” she said, playfully elbowing him in the side.

  “You bought Six Hills chardonnay. I know that winery,” he said. “I worked there one summer a few years ago.”

  “The guy at the store said it was his favorite. Yours too?”

  He shrugged. “Good wine, but, ah...I might have been involved with the owner’s daughter.”

  Nora laughed. “Nico, did you have sex with the wine we’re drinking?”

  “Not with it...near it,” he said, laughing that quiet way he had.

  “How old was she?” This was a fun question Nora loved asking about Nico’s exes. All the women he’d been involved with since he was seventeen were significantly older than him.

  “I was twenty-two. She was...forty? Forty-two? It wasn’t serious.”

  “I’m not jealous,” Nora said. “It’s okay to have exes. Neither one of us were virgins.”

  “My last girlfriend was jealous. It’s good you aren’t.”

  “It’s even better you aren’t,” she said with a wink.

  “How is he?” Nico asked. This was an approved question that didn’t break the separation of church and state rule. How is he? was fine. How is he in bed? was not.

  “He’s irritated. He’s in Petaluma now for a conference he’d rather not attend. Otherwise he’s fine. Kingsley’s good. Juliette and Céleste send their love. Michael and Griffin just got engaged, which is exciting. Oh, and I had very good sex half an hour ago with my beautiful boyfriend. Safe to say we are all doing well. And you?”

  He smiled. “I’m in Halloween-ville,” Nico said. “Of course I’m good.”

  Nora glanced around the street. Nico was right. This was Halloween-ville. Their B&B was in a residential neighborhood that did Halloween to the nines. Nearly every house they passed had a pumpkin on the porch with an electric votive candle inside, making it look like little orange monsters were grinning and glaring at them from all around. Spiderwebs holding enormous plastic spiders hung from trees and black and orange crepe paper fluttered across doorways and porch railings. Skeletons dangled in windows. Witches with red eyes glared from rooftops. Zombie arms reached through the posts of white picket fences.

  “It’s just like the movies,” Nico said, giddy as a schoolboy. She knew what he meant. The houses were classic New England cottages and Colonials. As they walked, red and gold leaves blew across the quiet street.

  “I hope it’s not a slasher flick,” Nora said. “The horny girls always die first in those movies. I’ve got a target on my back the size of a barn.”

  “I’ll protect you and all the horny girls of the world,” Nico said. “You should watch more French films. We love horny girls. I know I do.”

  “That’s it,” Nora said. Horny girls. Yes. Perfect.

  “What’s it?”

  Nora leaned back against a white picket fence and faced Nico. “I know how I want to use my present you gave me.”

  “What is it?” he asked, trying to look unconcerned though his eyes betrayed him.

  “I want to watch you with another woman.”

  From the look of shock on his face, Nora could tell that was the last thing Nico had been expecting her to do with his “gift.”

  “Watch me? How?”

  “Have sex,” Nora said. She thought that was obvious.

  “Are you serious?” he asked. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “Of course,” she said. “Why not?”

  “When I said I was glad you weren’t the jealous type, I meant, I’m glad you don’t hate how much I have to work or hate when I mention ex-girlfriends. I never thought you might...”

  He paused and exhaled hard. He’d stopped talking and didn’t seem like he was going to start again anytime soon. Nora filled the silence.

  “I would never make you do it,” she said. “If you don’t want to, obviously you don’t have to. But if you’re open to it...”

  “I’m not...” Nico took a long breath again. He wasn’t having an easy time with this conversation.

  “Not interested?” Nora asked. “Not into it? Not that kinky? Not ready?”

  “Not him,” Nico said. His face was a blank mask, emotionless, but his eyes flashed with turmoil.

  “Nico, I know you’re not Kingsley.”

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “Yes, I do, as a matter of fact,” she said. “You wear the same size shoe. You stand the same way. You shrug the same. And you have the same nose and jawline, which is why anyone who sees you two can tell you’re related. But you couldn’t be more different.”

  “I don’t sleep around with every woman—or man—on earth,” he said.

  “Neither does Kingsley,” Nora said. She paused, rethinking the truth of that statement. “Well, not anymore anyway. And you can’t judge him without judging me. I’ve had a lot of lovers, too. And sometimes several at once.”

  “I don’t judge. It’s not that,” he said. “I’m yours.”

  “I know.”

  “Only yours,” he said.

  That “only” stung a little. She wondered if he felt like she was foisting him off on someone else.