She snorts and pats my cheek. “Only if you’re good.”
Oh. I suddenly understand the good girl/praise kink thing, because the idea of being good for Clover sends a thrill of excitement straight to my dick.
The mixer doesn’t last long and soon everyone over twenty-one is heading out for the bars. We leave, but not before getting a picture with Sandra and Greta, at their request. They are dressed asThe Price Is Rightcontestants. Even Miss Linch is in the spirit. Her boyfriend is a gender-bent Matilda and she is dressed as Miss Trunchbull.
When we head back to the dorm, we are held up by a vampire flash mob in the quad.
Haystack Halloween is in full swing upon our arrival and we give out the full-size candy bars I stocked up on. Dylan the RA is mysteriously missing in action, so between our rush of overgrown trick-or-treaters (many of whom thank us with mini bottles of liquor) and Briar’s grilled cheese operation, our hallway is a constant press of dubiously clothed college students.
We decide to close our door when we run out of candy and the most exciting thing happening in the hall is a few guys drunkenly arguing about whether you can use a Christmas stamp to mail things during other times of the year.
“Trick or treat, Bennett,” Clover whispers into my ear as she pushes me back against the bed. Her tongue travels up my neck before her teeth tug at the lobe of my ear.
“I was good for you, wasn’t I?”
She nods into a long, hungry kiss before stepping back so that she’s awash in the light from the projector, the opening scene ofHocus Pocusplaying out behind her. Slowly, she strips out of her costume, which is so sexy and fucking unhinged, too, because she leaves on her bald cap and singed beanie the whole time. Last year I went to aStar Warsburlesque show with Julian and Tex, but a striptease from my wife dressed as Joe Pesci is unmatched.
The feathers dusting her jacket go flying and soon I am given my treat. She wears the bra and underwear set I snuck into the bag with her costume. The underwear is a sheer black thong, and the bra is a skimpy little thing with white ghosts barely covering her nipples.
“Boo,” she whispers as she saunters over to me and straddles my lap.
I hit pause on the movie, a freeze-frame of an aerial view of Salem, leaves gusting from the trees.
“I’m very greedy,” I tell her as the tips of my fingers dig into the round globes of her ass. “Entitled, too. And there’s still one treat I’m dying to taste.”
The pulse in her neck flickers erratically.
I wet the pad of my thumb on my tongue before bringing it down to make tiny, teasing circles on her delicious clit. “I’m going to put my mouth here,” I tell her. “And every time you’re nervous or uncertain, I want you to dig those lovely fingers into my hair and pull. I want you to ride my face. I want you to use my mouth. Because I can imagine no greater fate than to be used by Clover Rowan Walsh.”
It takes a bit to warm her up to the idea, but eventually, she givesthis to me—shy at first, and then with hips bucking into my eager, eager mouth.
After two grilled cheese sandwiches and a random collection of candy, we wrap in blankets as the movie plays on the screen in front of us.
As I fall asleep, my mind is an echo chamber of self-doubt.I don’t deserve her. I don’t deserve her. I don’t deserve her. But again, I’m greedy. Too greedy to let her go.
The next morning, we are a tangle of limbs and the sky is dark with heavy clouds. The projector is still on, and I reach behind me where it is propped on the headboard to turn it off.
Just as I successfully slip back under the covers without waking the soft, warm body beside me, there is a rattling knock at the door.
Clover jerks awake, disoriented. I make soothing noises in her ear and then slip out of bed, yanking on the nearest pair of pants.
I’m still mumbling a string of expletives when I open the door and find my mother standing there in her beloved Gucci trench coat. Her frown deepens and she pushes past me before I can warn either her or Clover. “Excuse me if I don’t feel the need to be invited into a dorm room I am apparently paying for.”
Clover skitters to the back of the bed with our duvet clutched around her chest, and my mother stands there, speechless for one of the very few times in her life.
“Oh,” she finally says, and then looks to me. I can see all the many possibilities shuffling through her head. “Clover,” she says as her expression softens.
“Um, Mom, could you give us a sec?” I ask.
She jumps a little, noticing Clover’s state of undress, and then backpedals out of the room. “Of course.”
We get dressed in a quick, hurried silence before calling my mom back in.
“I can’t stay,” she says immediately, “but Roy noticed that I was being charged for a dorm this semester on top of your town house and when the school said it wasn’t an accounting error… I, well, I came here to see for myself. Which I wouldn’t have had to do, but you haven’t answered my calls for a few days.”
The tips of my ears warm, I turn to Clover, who is sitting in oversize sweats and a T-shirt in the farthest corner of the bed with her legs crossed. The rise and fall of her chest is more rapid than it should be. I want to crawl over to her and promise everything is fine and that she isn’t in trouble, but her cheeks are flushed with embarrassment.
“It’s my fault,” she blurts.
