"Good morning to you too, Mom."
"Sophia notices everything, just something to keep in mind." She shifts the phone and I catch the hotel room behind her. She’s in San Diego somewhere above their budget I’m sure, but I’ll pick up the tab, no questions in order to keep stress off Scotch. "Your father's group session went beautifully this morning. Dr. Hale says his progress is encouraging."
Elodie lights up, genuinely. "How is he?"
"Fragile." The pause is more dramatic than necessary. "He's doing the work, he really is, but he needs to know things at home are as they should be. He needs positive reinforcement right now." Her eyes settle on her Elodie with the particular warmth that always comes with strings. "He was asking about you, wanting to know if you were ready for your trials, and I told him you were at the top of your game ready to make him proud."
Make him proud.
I take a long, slow sip of coffee.
"I can’t wait to call him tonight with good news." She lets that sit exactly long enough to do its job. "I know you won't let him down."
"She won't," I say, and both of them look at me. I hold her mother's gaze with the most pleasant expression I can muster. "She's ready. Tell Scotch everything's handled on this end."
She doesn't entirely trust me but she'll take what I offer when it suits her. "Thank you, Rye." Back to Elodie, her voice dropping into the register she reserves for her motherly manipulation. "Call me the second it's finished. Don't let anything distract you today. You know what I mean."
She means me.
"Love you, baby."
"Love you too, Mom."
The screen goes dark and the kitchen settles into quiet and I watch Elodie do what she always does. Play the perfect daughter part. Eighteen years of being the thing this family points to when they need to feel like everything's going to be fine, and she still absorbs it without flinching, sets the phone face down with one of those smiles I’ve seen too often.
I set down my coffee and cross the space back to her, planting both hands on the counter on either side of her. She doesn't retreat. She just tips her chin up and looks at me the way she does, like whatever's coming, she was already waiting for it.
"She means you," Elodie says.
"I know exactly what she means." My mouth finds her neck and I feel the real exhale come out of her, the one nobody else gets. "You've got one hour before any of that matters, and nobody in this kitchen needs a single thing from you except me."
Her hands find my shirt and I think,good.I want Elodie to feel every bit of that weight lift off her until there's nothing left but me taking care of her.
Which, I intend to do.
Right.
Now.
I’m slurpingand drooling as I attack her tight little opening with my mouth. It’s been twelve hours since I saw her standing in the crowd at the club.
It feels like a lifetime.
It’s an hour before her little home visit and tryout. The kitchen at her house is a third of the size of the one at mine, but she tastes just as good here as she did when I ate her out on the counter at my house before we left.
“I just want to see if you taste as good on every kitchen counter.” I hiss into her clutching wetness. “I also have another little surprise for you.”
I lap at her clit as she shakes and moans, reaching into the inside pocket of my suit jacket and pull out the fully charged little silicone toy. I have a closet of toys at home with her name on them. Things I gathered in my delirium once she turned eighteen and my fantasies turned into madness.
“Wha—what’s that?” Her voice shakes as I touch the slender tip of the toy to her opening.
“You’ll find out. But this stays in you until I tell you to take it out, do you understand?”
Her mouth opens but I steal her words by sucking on her clit and easing the sleek, insertable vibrator into her still sore opening.
She hisses but I lick away any discomfort. God, hoe badly I want to push her legs apart and sink back into her down to my balls but I won’t. I can’t.
She wants this dance placement and I promised to help her in any way I can to make that happen. I didn’t have enough time to look up how to get to the powers that be that run TheFord Center Dance Company otherwise I would have showed up wherever they are with a stack of cash and a nine-millimeter hoping they would take the cash and I didn’t have to use the other.
