“Yes,” he says. “But like I tried to tell you four years ago, the price has never been what you thought it was.”
It’s so hard to think with his mouth so close to mine. With his fingers so expertly filthy between my legs. How long has it been since I came with a partner? A year? Two? And how long since I let a partner pin me by the neck and wring orgasms from me like it was their job?
Well, I know the answer to that. It was the night before I filed for divorce.
“What is the price, Lorne?” I manage to ask, as if I’m not already writhing against his touch, as if my nipples aren’t already threatening to punch holes through my bodice.
Lorne’s hand slides free from my hair, and he touches a finger to the corner of my mouth. “The price is that you forgive yourself for wanting what you want. That you let go of your fear.”
“I’m not afraid,” I say.
I’m so afraid.
He gives me a look like he knows I’m lying. “If a sub came to you, and told you they felt ashamed of what they want, that they felt like they were letting all women globally and historically down by what got them off behind closed doors—”
“You’re being deliberately reductive,” I protest. “I’m hardly just any woman, Lorne, and anyway, the fact that I’m a woman and you’re a man automatically reinforces norms that I refuse to reinforce.”
“Not if we choose it,” he says. “Choice is different than what you’re talking about, and choice is what we have. We don’t have to inherit any part of those norms we don’t want, Morgan. I swear it.”
I pause.
It’s a good answer.
And it may even be the right one.
“But is that enough?” I ask, still feeling the warmth of his finger against my mouth. A single fingertip on my lip, and it feels like the reassuring weight of gravity, like the idea of love itself in one small touch.
“Are you asking me if it’s enough for all women everywhere or just you?”
“I don’t know,” I say. Because I believe him when he says he would never ask anything to change. I would still be Morgan Leffey, Vice President, I would still be the same person in public I’ve always been.
“Let me show you it will be enough,” he whispers, his finger sanding lightly over the curve of my lower lip. “Let me show you one more time.”
I look past his shoulder to the party beyond our veiled alcove. No one notices us, and no one would be able to truly decipher what we were doing without stopping and staring. And somewhere out there my Secret Service detail is patrolling the perimeter and keeping any would-be documentarians at bay. The detail knows where I’m at, just as surely as they know what I’m doing, but after a few years of them escorting me to Lyonesse, I’m no longer shy about where I get my kicks.
I’m feeling shyer about admitting what I’m about to admit. “I want you to show me,” I confess. And then I confess something even worse: “I’ve missed it, Lorne. So fucking much.”
“I know,” he murmurs, and then he replaces his finger with his mouth and kisses me again. Long...slow kisses while his hand moves from my sex to the opening of his tuxedo pants.
I feel the moment he frees himself, I feel the idle stroke he gives it before he reaches into his jacket pocket and withdraws a small foil packet. He sheathes himself with a practiced hand, and I break off our kiss so I can watch. There’s just something about someone rolling a condom over their cock. I can’t explain it. The experience it belies, maybe? Or maybe it’s utilitarianism of it, this stark, practical confirmation that penetration is imminent? Or maybe it’s just the sight itself: an already delicious cock shining with clear latex, its shaft now a slick topography of veins and flares, rigidity and give.
Finished, Lorne lifts my thigh to his hip, and pushes the front of my dress up to my waist. The silk underthings are tugged to the side, and then he’s pressing against me, all thickness and heat against my opening. But he doesn’t push inside, not yet.
Instead, he threads his fingers through my hair and pulls—gently enough that it doesn’t hurt, but hard enough that I have to look where he’s making me look. Down to where we’re about to be joined, framed by tulle