Clusterf*ck Read online

  I’m laughing. “I remember teaching her that.”

  “Have you seen a lot of Rachel growing up?”

  “Whenever I was in Auckland I made time to see her. Why?” I don’t know if she’s fishing, or just curious.

  “I don’t know. She just seems to have appeared from nowhere.”

  “It started out as a contract, really. Her mother was a friend, and she felt Rachel needed protection so I became her legal guardian. It was a work matter, I guess.” That could be stretching the truth. “And I don’t discuss work. Client confidentiality, that sort of thing.”

  “Of course. How did your meeting go tonight?”

  That deflected so easily I almost feel guilty. “Tonight’s meeting was the fastest ever. Oliver wanted to get home to Darcy, and I wanted to get home to my girls. Well, one I knew would be asleep, and the other is exactly where I hoped to find her.”

  “Poor Cole, left to drink at the bar alone.”

  “Don’t sweat about Cole. He’s never alone for long. Three young women turned up at the Lodge today for a week’s pampering. Cole’s only problem will be choosing which one to ply with his charm.”

  She slaps my thigh. “You guys have such a reputation around town.”

  “Really? What’s mine?”

  “Sexy town grump.”

  “Sounds accurate. Turn around, your hair is pretty, but I’m tired of talking to it.” I flip her in my arms. “Hello, beautiful, how’s that newly fucked pussy?”

  “Tender, but not sore. I was sort of aware of it all day, if that makes sense?”

  “Makes sense. My cock is pretty aware of it right now.”

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed,” she says, rubbing against me.

  “I wonder if it’s possible to encourage Rachel to stay in her bed in the mornings. I want you to sleep with me all night.”

  “Walking into my room and finding my bed empty will probably freak her out only a fraction less than walking into your room and finding us both in your bed. Let’s not give her too much to be concerned about. Once she starts school, she’ll probably be exhausted and sleep longer. You should let it happen naturally. Pretty soon she’ll be all grown up and not wanting to get out of bed at all.”

  “I don’t even want to think about that.”

  “What do you want to think about?”

  “Your magnificent body. Are you ready for bed?”

  “What about my brain?”

  “Your brain is magnificent, too. If I was a zombie, I’d eat it.”

  “Gross, Luther.”

  I laugh. “That’s why you should always know the answer to a question before you ask it.” I draw her sweater over her head. “For instance, are these nipples hard?”

  “What’s my answer going to be?” she asks.

  “You’ll answer: ‘Not only hard, sexy town grump, they’re eagerly awaiting your mouth’.” I unhook her bra and it lands on top of her sweater. Thumbing her nipples makes her shiver. “You like that, huh?”

  “I like that a lot. But tonight I want to do something I think you’ll like.”

  26 ~ GINGER

  I have no idea how long I’ve dreamed of tasting Luther. I get that he likes to be in control, but tonight I want to make him lose it. I’m lying on top of him on the sofa. It’s tempting to think I have him pinned there but he could reverse our positions in an instant. My intention is to drive him so crazy, that thought doesn’t enter his mind.

  As I crawl down his body, I unbutton his shirt. Each pop of a button blessed with a kiss. Our eyes lock when I reach his belt, and we stay connected as I free it, lower the zip on his pants and hesitate, just a second, before slipping my hand inside. I grip him and he loses it a little, closing his eyes and sucking in his breath. His abs tighten when I squeeze him, and his hard cock pulses in my palm.

  All I can think is that this is a thousand times better in real life.

  I tug off his pants and boxers, and he’s lying there, open shirt and hard cock, looking like a feast. Straddling his thighs I stroke his length, from his balls to the thick head that glistens. “This is mine,” I say. Yeah, I heard what he said about my pussy, and if he’s making a claim on it, then his cock belongs to me.

  Licking his length makes him groan. Right then he stops being Luther whose scowls made me tongue-tied and blush. He stops being the person I thought I wasn’t good enough for, and he becomes mine. I suck along his length, the taut skin, the prominent vein, taste the sharpness of him. Reaching the head of his cock, I swirl my tongue around, tasting his salty essence, watching his abs draw tight as I tease him.

  “Open up,” he growls.

  He doesn’t give up control for long, but he wants to be in my mouth, and that’s good enough for me. I open, slide him over my tongue and feel him gently take hold of my ponytail. I love the way he tastes, the way he smells, the way he wants me as much as I want him. I stroke with my tongue, and suck.

  “That’s a lovely mouth you have, Ginger.”

  I take him deeper, all the way to the back of my throat until that pesky reflex kicks in and makes me cough. He lifts me off him, and I laugh before taking him again. We look straight at each other. The power is heady as I take him deeper this time. I slip my hand between his legs and cradle his balls while I suck. They’re hard and heavy and this time when he reaches the back of my mouth, his hips lift until my nose is tickled by his hair.

  He thrusts quickly a couple of times, then eases up. I lean my weight on his hips, trying to pin him to the sofa and concentrate on getting him to the back of my throat, then further. This time, I succeed. My eyes are closed but the sound that rumbles from his throat makes my pussy ache.

  “I’m coming in your mouth tonight,” he says. It’s not a warning, it’s a gift.

  I hum in response and every muscle in his thighs goes rigid. I want to take his entire length again. He guides my mouth down, I swallow, flatten my tongue, and draw a long breath through my nose. There. I got him.

  He lifts me again, let’s me take a breath, then I dive back for his cock. When he thrusts I trust that he won’t choke me as I open my throat and let him in. He holds me there, telling me to relax and breathe. His balls tighten in my hand and just when I think I can’t take any more, he pulls me off.

  Spittle runs down my chin, and he rubs it away with his thumb. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m great.”

  “Yes, you fucking are. No more breaks until I come.” His voice is rough and loaded.

  “Perfect,” I say.

  He thrusts into my mouth, his rhythm increasing in speed, pulling back a little to give me a moment to sip air around his cock before he thrusts again. His balls tighten, drawing up and he’s right at the back of my throat when his body goes rigid, hands tightening on my head, as his cock pulses and his cum jets down my throat. I swallow fast until he finishes, releasing my head and falling back against the arm of the sofa.

  I feel as though I won the lottery. He pulls me up his body, my bare breasts against the smattering of hair on his chest. His heart still pounds as he sucks in long gulps of air.

  “That’s a fantastically dirty mouth you have, Virginia.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I say.

  We kiss, slow and languid. Luther strokes my back creating a tingling sensation along my spine and I’m soon pushing myself against him, wanting his fingers in my pussy. He pulls my leggings down to my thighs and tells me to kick them off. His hand reaches between my legs and I sigh as he rubs my pussy.

  “I like that you didn’t lie about always being wet when you’re around me.”

  I answer with a murmur because I don’t want to do anything to distract me from the long strokes he makes with his fingers. Somehow he knows the ideal pressure to rush me to the brink of coming. One of his hands has a tight grip on my ass cheek, holding me open for him. It’s heavenly. I’m in a primitive state where all I am is a mass of sensation searching for a climax. If you wanted the answer to one plus one, I’d te
ll you some nonsense about the ball of excitement swelling inside me.

  I want his fingers in me, or his cock that’s already growing hard again. Luther draws the wetness from my entrance to my clit, and back the other way, circling my ass, pressing a little, sending showers of pleasure from the nerves there.

  “What is your finger doing there, Luther?”

  “Nudging you closer to an orgasm.”

  “That’s my ass.”

  “I love your ass. I want to fuck it one day.”

  “Perhaps not,” I say, because the idea is one I might enjoy reading about, but have never intended to experience in real life.

  “It’s a virgin ass, I’ll bet.”

  “Yes, it is, and it would like to stay that way.”

  “Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. Just relax. I’m good at this and I won’t hurt you.”

  “I think dentists say something similar.”

  “Ginger, I’m trying to give you a new experience here. I don’t want you thinking about the dentist, or shopping, or whether you switched off the oven. Close your eyes, stop listening to that voice that’s telling you this is dirty, and enjoy what I’m doing. If you say stop, I’ll stop, but I really hope you won’t, because you try this once and you’ll be begging for it again.”

  I somehow doubt it, but I have to admit what he’s doing right now feels incredible. Then he stops.

  “Why did you stop?”

  Luther laughs, and I notice he’s reaching for his pants. He’s going to dress?

  “No, no, no,” I say, “you can’t leave me like this. It’s totally unfair.”

  He pulls a condom out of his pocket. “I’m hard again, Ginger, and I want my cock in you while I play with your ass. Shuffle down while I wrap your present.”

  It’s my turn to laugh. “That’s the worst line I’ve ever heard.”

  “I doubt that,” he says, tearing the wrapper and rolling the condom onto his very hard dick. “Back here now.”

  He guides me in place, one hand on my hip, the other taking the head of his cock to my entrance. “That’s it, down you go,” he says, sliding inside me. One arm slips around my waist and he pulls me to him. “Lie there and enjoy my cock in you while I play with your ass.”

  He rocks slowly. His cock hardly moves but I can get all the pressure I need to my clit. There’s a slippery finger back playing with my ass. This time he teases the rim, adding more pressure until just the tip of his finger is inside me. I still. He strokes my back and tells me to settle.

  “Let me in here.” He says the words against my lips.

  I take a deep breath and he slides in a little further. It feels amazing. One zillion nerves have jumped to life and my entire body feels as though it’s going to explode. Luther’s arm bands around my waist and he holds me firmly against him as he lifts his hips and drives deeper inside me. His thrusts speed up, his cock and finger driving me wild.

  I’m moaning and begging.

  “Do you want me to take my finger out of your ass?”

  Is he kidding? “No…no, don’t.”

  “Feels good, doesn’t it? Next time, I’ll make you all slippery with lube. I could play with your ass for hours, loosen you up, fuck you there. I think you’d like that. Every time I slide my finger out, your ass grips it tight.”

  “You have a filthy mouth, Luther.”

  “You have a spectacular ass.” He lifts me, changes the angle of the reach of his cock and drives harder and faster.

  I warn him I’m going to come and he takes my mouth, sucking the very breath from me. My cries of pleasure are muffled by his mouth as my back bows. I can’t take any more and I come all over his cock and his hand completely aware of every inch of him that’s inside me. My entire body shakes. I curse him and thank him in the same sentence, and he comes with a roar right after me.

  We lie there, panting, drenched in sweat.

  “You’ve bewitched me, Virginia Hough,” he says.

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Probably not. But it’s too late to change the way I feel. If you can’t sleep in my bed tonight, let’s sleep down here.”

  “No, Luther. That’s not cool.”

  “We need to revisit the ‘no touching the nanny in front of the child’ rule. Until then, let’s have a bath. Have you seen my bath? It’s fucking luxurious and I’ve never used it.” He gives my butt a stinging slap. “Upstairs. Now.”

  27 ~ LUTHER

  Pampering Ginger gives me an immense pleasure that’s on a par with making her come, or burying my dick in her beautiful pussy. I haven’t done this sort of thing with a girlfriend before. I’ve never invested myself this far into a woman’s well-being. In the past I’ve invested dollars, but never emotions.

  For me, dating has been casual with an understanding that it would last as long as it was fun. And the type of women I hung out with were equally mercenary. They did it because I was never cheap. Always the best food and wine, or an invitation to the A-list event they’d otherwise never have access to, and at the end of the night, the best sex they’ve probably ever experienced. So long as the money was there to pay for the things they wanted, they didn’t seem concerned with wanting much more. I was upfront about the arrangement and if they didn’t accept the terms they were free to find somebody else.

  I never cared enough about any of them to give up much of myself. My work means I’m constantly distracted, and I realize that since I’ve been home this evening, I haven’t thought about work at all. I wasn’t joking when I told Ginger she’d bewitched me.

  This bath is great. I’ve got the jets on low, the water temperature perfect, and bath salts that actually do you some good rather than make the room smell as though a florist shop has just exploded. In my arms, I can feel Ginger becoming so relaxed she’ll soon be asleep.

  “Come on, treasure, let’s get you out of here before you turn into a prune.”

  She groans. “I just want to sleep, Luther.”

  “Nonsense. You really want me to fuck you again, but I’m going to make you wait. Out you get.”

  I help her from the bath and make sure she’s steady on her feet before I find one of those massive fluffy towels to wrap her in. I have all these things the interior designer insisted I needed, and I swore I’d never use. Towels made for giants was one of them, and as I wrap it around Ginger she gives a little murmur of pleasure.

  “I feel as though I’m in a five-star hotel,” she says.

  “I’ll take you to one soon to prove to you this, in fact, is better.”

  I lead her down the hallway to her room and put her in bed. I found some massage oil on a shelf in the bathroom—another interior design purchase, probably because of the bottle shape rather than what’s inside it. Ginger lies on her stomach and I straddle her gorgeous round ass which for some reason I didn’t think would distract me. With the oil warmed in my hands, I get to work on the muscles in her shoulders.

  She starts to wiggle her butt underneath me.

  “Keep still. This isn’t foreplay, it’s a back rub that’s supposed to put you to sleep.”

  Her response is muffled by the pillow. At first she reacts to my kneading but in minutes, her body relaxes and I soften the intensity until I’m making long strokes down her back and she scarcely murmurs. I lie down beside her and brush the hair off her face. She sighs, smiles, but her eyes remain closed. In minutes her breathing is slow and shallow, and I force myself to leave her before I fall asleep in her bed, too.

  I check on Rachel before I head back to my bedroom. She’s kicked off the covers again, but is curled up as if she’s cold. I tuck her in and slip out the door.

  In bed I marvel at the pace of change in my life. A five-year-old, and Ginger. Surprisingly, Ginger is the most disruptive to my regular routine, but she’s changed it in a good way. Too good if I’m being honest. She completes this household in a manner that means it would feel hollow without her here.

  ***

  “My Luther,
are you awake?”

  “I am now. Did you have a bad dream?”

  “No. It’s morning, silly,” Rachel says, jumping onto the bed. “It’s time to make Ginger her breakfast.”

  I’d forgotten I’d suggested to Rachel that she should let Ginger sleep and we’d make her breakfast in bed seeing as it was her day off.

  “Ginger might like to sleep in a little longer, babe. Why don’t you go and get a book, and you can come back and hop into my bed and we’ll read it for a while?”

  “No. We need to do it now. It will take forever. Please, Luther.”

  “Fine, yes, but I promise it won’t take forever. Go and put your dressing gown and slippers on and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

  “Yes,” she says, clapping her hands and skipping out of the room. She closes my door with a bang. If Ginger was asleep, she won’t be now.

  When I get to the kitchen, Rachel has started preparations.

  “I made a menu,” she says, holding up a piece of paper covered in different colored splodges. “Let me tell it to you. This is coffee. See, it’s brown. And this is cereal. I’m going to make that. And this is pancakes. You make the pancakes, Luther.”

  “Ginger might just like coffee and toast.”

  Rachel gives me a dramatic sigh. “Nobody likes toast. Ginger likes pancakes.”

  “Does she now.” I can cook, but I can honestly say I’ve never made a pancake in my life. The kitchen has shelves of cookbooks, but I ignore all the hardcover fancy ones and find the battered copy of my grandmother’s Edmonds Cookbook circa 1958. Sure enough, there’s a pancake recipe.

  Rachel insists on supervising me mixing the ingredients in between assembling Ginger’s cereal.

  “I’m making oats, but I’m going to dress it up,” she declares. Her hands fly around above her head as she does some sort of interpretive dance depicting a flamboyant chef. Meanwhile, I drop an egg on the floor which breaks, obviously, and I try not to do my own interpretation of Gordon Ramsay in front of the five-year-old.