“Please.”
One word. Unguarded. No armor around it.
“One more time.”
“Please.” This one comes out almost broken.
I let her have it.
Her body contracts around me as she comes, a full, shuddering response, her hands sliding on the marble. I watch her face in the mirror, and I follow her, coming again inside that tight little pussy.
The bath has been running long enough that the water is nearly at the top. I turn off the taps, and she gets in. I slip in behind her, which is not what I planned. And yet here I am, in my bathtub, with Elizabeth Calloway between my knees and the back of her head resting against my chest, the steam moving in slow patterns above us.
I watch her.
The flush from before is still on her face, high color in her cheeks, her lips slightly swollen, her hair loosely tied with a few dark strands falling at her neck. She’s looking at the far wall.
The tension in her shoulders is visible.
“What?” I ask.
She turns her head slightly and glances at me from the corner of her eye.
“What happens now?” Her voice is careful. “Is this the part where you fire me?”
I look at her.
The question is almost comical; the priority hierarchy visible in a single sentence.
“No,” I say.
“Then what part is it?”
“Now,” I say, “you can’t go anywhere.”
She turns slightly, listening.
“I’ll take you wherever I want,” I continue. “Whenever I want. And you’ll be a good girl and behave yourself.” I hold her gaze. “Or I’ll have no other option.”
The way her thighs press together under the water is not subtle. She enjoys this.
Good.
Because she isn’t going anywhere.
After a while, the water begins to cool.
I should send her back to her room. I don’t sleep with anyone. The last person who shared this space with any regularity had her own room in the east wing and used mine as an instrument. She’s also been dead for six years, and the lesson I took from that situation was to keep my bed to myself.
I look at Elizabeth.
Her head is still against my chest, and her breathing has gone slow and even, but she’s not asleep. I can tell by her stillness, the slight tension that remains in someone who is conscious and present. But she’s unwound in a way I haven’t seen.
The thought arrives:If I send her to her room, she might leave.
Not the estate. She can’t leave the estate. The contract, the debt, and the reality of her situation all prevent that. But she could leave this. Reassemble herself overnight, reconstruct the careful management she applies to everything, and come to breakfast tomorrow morning with the professional distance back in place and the armor rebuilt.
I would sit across the table from a woman who has decided that tonight was an anomaly she’s chosen not to repeat.
