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Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.
Richard Siken, Crush
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It isn’t even that she says jump, Rupert thinks with some sense of deep irony. Taggie’s too sweet to ever demand such a thing. Instead she looks at him with those big eyes, and says, I think you could be the kind of man who wants to jump.
Rupert is used to being the master of his own destiny. The figure standing alone at the picture window, surveying all of his domain. The most eligible bachelor. The cad. The good time boy. The great lover and the terrible love. Women dying to drape themselves over his arm, slide into his bed, easy and breezy. And then a slip of a girl with a smile like sunshine comes along, and he’s barely more than a poorly trained hound, nipping at her very heels for just a second more of that warmth she exudes.
A faberge egg. A camera roll of photos. A bloody franchise.
No. Taggie never says, jump. And yet, promises to her father, Cameron be damned, Rupert finds his very muscles coiled, dying to take that leap, to find out just how high he can soar for her.
“Only he’s not you,” Taggie whispers when it’s just them in the shelter of her domain. When he’s tried to be a shadow of the man she thinks he could be, let her go, be with a boy her own age, kind and uncomplicated.
He can’t fucking breathe, and then she goes and says that, and fuck it, he’s only a man, isn’t he?
Rupert jumps.
She tastes like being found, like water after a deep drought. She feels real under his hands, the slight curve of her fitting into his desperate grasp like a lock embracing a key.
He’s so fucking fucked, he thinks, staring at her as she draws the slightest distance away, barely resisting the urge to pant, to beg for more, more, more.
It’s Taggie, of course, who finds the courage to break the silence, says, “I think you should take me home.”
There’s no mistaking which home she’s referring to, and although it’s perhaps the least wise course of action for them to both take at this very moment, with her still damp on his lips, Rupert knows there’s only one answer he can give.
“Angel,” he says, refuses to lose a single moment of contact with her, threads his fingers in between hers so they don’t take even a single step apart, “I can’t think of anything better.”
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She’s no practiced seductress, his Tag. Her authenticity is part of her charm, her artless appeal. He’s got twenty years of debauchery on her: has forgotten tricks she’ll never learn on how to take a woman apart in between silken sheets.
And yet, as he lays her down in the comfort of his own bed, his sanctuary against the world, it’s he who follows, he who chases, insatiable for the feel, the taste of her.
He rucks up that little dress of hers to get his mouth on her, perfect little pearl pink and swollen, ravenous for the sounds she makes as he eats her out, singleminded and starving. She gets her own though; twists her fingers tight into his hair and points him right where she needs him, presses him back to her weeping slit even as she’s gasping still from her first orgasm for more, more, more.
His perfect Tag, he thinks, drunk on her, only too eager to comply, buries his fingers, his tongue into her until she shudders and screams, her glorious thighs squeezed tight around his head.
He’s aching, desperate, by the time he peels that little dress off her, sheds his own clothes with unconcealed haste. Puts his mouth on her rosy nipples as he slides himself up to notch his iron hard prick at her folds, the fat head dripping with his need of her under the thin rubber.
He’s trying to find the air to ask, when she digs her nails into the meat of his buttock, as clear as if she’d had spurs to set into him. And so what else can he do but respond, cleaving himself into her in shallow thrusts, the clench of her like hot velvet even through the condom, the slick of her soaking his thighs.
He could die here happy he thinks, well and truly caught by her, his sweet girl. Still, he’s got work to do, and so he slings one of her stunning legs up by his waist and puts his fucking back into it, feeds off her moans, the rosy blush of her cheeks, her tits as she comes for him a third time, nails stinging into his flanks.
He means to give her a moments break before he chases his own clawing need for her where he knows she must be soft and tender. But Taggie, oh his wonderful Tag surprises him once more by bracing her hands at his shoulders, flexing her hips and so he follows her lead, allows the roll of them until he’s planted on his back with her above him, still nestled hard and wanting within her.
“You going to put me through my paces, angel?” he asks, only half teasing, commands his hands not to tremble as he rests a thumb on her swollen clit, meets the rolling lit of her hips with his own.
She’s disarmingly stunning above him, little rosy nipples and cascading mane of hair bouncing as she rides, heels down, seat soft. She’ll be a natural upon the horse he’ll buy for her, he thinks distantly, holding off his approaching orgasm with only the force of experience, half lost already in the bliss of her.
“You’re incorrigible,” she huffs, but the look she throws him is fond, before her eyes start to roll back and she crests, stealing his breath once again with the vision of her, sated and lovely and his. He nearly goes blind as he finally lets himself follow her over, flooding the condom, pleasure erupting from the base of his spine to the tips of his toes, devastating in its intensity.
They’re never going to be the same, he knows, catalogues this feeling alongside two decades of lovers, and finds it as dissimilar as comparing the flame of flickering candle to the fucking sun.
There are things he wants, in that moment, that don’t even have names. What her voice sounds like in the soft fresh dawn of a new day, nestled safe in his embrace. The feel of her body bracketed by his, lead around a dance floor, this time his loyalty known, pronounced to all that are lucky enough to witness it.
His big empty house filled with the laughter of children they’ve chosen to love and cherish, and the weight of her hand entwined with his, rings clinking softly.
Oh he’s well and truly fucked, he knows, caught by a whisp of a girl far too lovely for the likes of him.
And yet, in their sweat slick afterglow, she threads her hands into the damp hair at the nape of his neck, traces the skin there absently, fondly, and he can do nothing but stretch into her delicate little fingers instinctively, settle into the caresses like a beloved family pet. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, he thinks; something about old dogs and new tricks.
He’ll likely never be entirely the man he see’s in her eyes. There’s truth in that tired adage: he is an old dog, and he’s occupied the world for too long, seen its brutality too close to let his canines ever fully dull.
But perhaps they can find a balance, he thinks, between her goodness and his rough edges. Because here’s the truth of it: he’s hers now. She found him, the snarling, feral part of him under all the carefully fashioned glitz and glamour. The lonely man in an empty estate he fills with dogs and horses because he can’t quite seem to figure out how to make people stay.
But she’s Taggie, isn’t she? Miraculous Taggie, who takes care of everyone first before herself. He’s not the prize he is on paper, he knows, but oh, he’ll be her beast, leashed in her little hands, aimed ready at those who make her cry, who try and dim her light, so long as she keeps him.
He’ll care for her first, he vows. How could he do any less, in the face of what she is?
He rests his head on her breast, and her heart beats as steady as her fingers are strong at the back of his nape, guiding, grounding.
Oh yes, he thinks with a smile he knows must be uncharacteristically soft. She’s going to look at him with those big eyes and that devastating goodness, and teach them both how to be kept.
Still, those are tomorrow’s thoughts, he muses, letting the warmth of her skin carry him away. Tomorrow, there will be Cameron. Tomorrow, there will be Declan. Tomorrow there will be Seb, and Tony, and the whole fucking world.
Tonight, Taggie’s in his arms, in his bed, in his very lungs.
Tomorrow can fucking wait.
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FIN
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