physically, but he still didn’t go around staring at his naked body in mirrors. Too much looking in mirrors was dangerous. You ran the risk of seeing someone in there you didn’t want to see.
What choice did he have, though? For Charlie, he reminded himself as he pulled his t-shirt up and off. This was for Charlie.
He tossed his shirt onto the wingback chair. Then his jeans and pants and socks. And then, there he was, completely naked and standing in front of the cheval mirror. The “psyche mirror.” Regan stood near him, her back to the fireplace mantel, her arms crossed over her chest, studying him again as he stared at himself in the mirror. Seeing himself there, he remembered, finally, what his father had said to him about marriage, how it changes a man…
“What do you see?” she asked, her tone cool and probing, like a psychotherapist’s.
“Just me.”
“Don’t lie. I can tell you’re thinking about something.”
“Earlier today I was trying to remember something my father said to us years ago, and it finally came to me.”
“What was it?” She came to him and rested her chin on his shoulder. He liked that she was tall enough to do that.
“Charlie and I were complaining to Dad one day about how he was always chasing Mum around the house. We thought it was about as disgusting as anything could get. Usually he just said, ‘Put a sock in it, virgins.’ That day he actually sat us down and lectured us about how important Mum was to him. ‘Your wife will be like a mirror to you,’ he said, ‘except she’ll show you your true self. A man can be the life of the party at the pub with his mates and a monster at home to his wife. Who is his real self? Not the mask he wears in public but the soul he shows only to her.’”
“Why were you trying to remember it?”
Because of Monday night, he thought but didn’t say. Because that’s what had felt so monumental about that night, why he’d woken up Tuesday morning feeling like a man for the first time in his life. He’d shown his face to a thousand friends. That night with Regan, he’d shared some secret part of his soul for the first time with someone. With her.
“I was just…you know, thinking about my parents when we were on the phone today. On their millionth honeymoon in New York.”
“I see,” she said. There was a split second when he thought she might look disappointed in his answer. He relished that look.
Regan wrapped her arm around his waist, took his cock in her hand, held it, stroked it.
“What I see is this,” she said. “I see a young man who is getting harder and harder every second that passes, who chose this for a reason that has nothing to do with his brother, even if he won’t admit it. Yet.”
He was so hard it hurt. His erection humiliated him, that he was this easy to manipulate. Everyone thought he was some perfect son, perfect soldier, perfect angel. That’s what Regan had said. But the truth was he was exactly what the mirror showed him to be. An absolute whore for this woman and the way she treated him.
She released him, stood back and undressed. Off came her grey jacket. Down went the zipper of her skirt that clung to her round hips. Then her shirt and lacy white bra, lacy white knickers. She stood before him, naked and glorious, naked but for the pearl drop earrings hanging from her ears.
In the mirror’s reflection, he could see her hair, crimped from her earlier French plait, falling in waves down her back. Her lovely bottom, so soft and round, waiting for his two hands to clench it, hold it. Long lovely naked legs. Long throat and pale olive skin. Breasts that sat high on her chest and firm, perfect handfuls. Nipples a darker brown. Just seeing them and his mouth watered at the thought of sucking them. Narrow waist and the flare of her hips, and then her vulva with the softest curls of hair.
Between her thighs, hidden from his eyes, was what he wanted to see more than anything. See and smell and taste and touch and push inside and fill. But he couldn’t, not yet. He had to wait for her instructions.
She took a step to the right and revealed his body in the mirror again. Now he saw himself and her