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Can two people know each other even if they don’t use a lot of words? How many childhood stories do we owe each other before we can confidently say we’re close? What are the requirements for love? Is it time? Shared hardship? Telling each other secrets?
I don’t know if I can ever tell her my secrets. They would only push us farther apart. I wave Vinny away and open the car door for her myself.
By the time we reach the exclusive shopping district, Maddie has fallen asleep against me.
I nudge her. “Maddie, wake up.”
She seems self-conscious when she realizes where she is and that she was sleeping against me. She wipes the back of her mouth as if to make sure she didn’t drool all over me. She didn’t.
“Are we home?”
Has she accepted my estate is her home, or is it just a less cumbersome thing to say?
“No. I wanted to take you shopping.”
She looks suspicious as though I’ve planted a bomb in one of the stores, but she allows me to help her out of the car.
I spend the afternoon flashing my black card. Maddie models clothes and shoes and jewelry, and I buy her whatever she wants. At the last designer boutique, I follow her into the dressing room. It’s a large space and the door goes all the way down to the floor and locks so nobody can look under or just walk in. I take the pile of clothes out of her arms and drop them on the small love seat.
“Aidan…”
It’s an uncertain response to me shoving her against the wall. My mouth finds her neck easily, and she puts up only the smallest token resistance, the light push against my chest, just enough so we can both remember she “resisted” when it’s all said and done.
But when my mouth moves to hers, I’m not the one devouring and consuming. She is. I take a step back from her and pull a small black tube from my pocket.
She eyes it warily as I unscrew the lid. “What’s that?”
“Love Potion number 9.”
“Funny,” she says.
“Don’t believe me?”
Brian gave me a box of this arousal cream as a wedding gift. It’s incredibly potent. That really is the name of it. They use it in their training methods at The Pleasure House—a business he’s part owner of that trains willing women as submissives for wealthy men who are into that sort of thing. He offered to train someone for me to get my mind off Maddie a few years ago, but I declined.
Then he offered to take and train Maddie, and that’s the closest I’ve ever come to killing Brian. But he couldn’t have known about my mother.
“Take your pants off.”
“Aidan…” She glances toward the door.
“No one can come in. And I won’t let you get too loud.”
She bites her lip, and I can see the moment she makes the decision and unbuttons the slinky beige pants, letting them fall to the ground. I help her step out of them.
She goes for the panties, and I shake my head.
“Keep them on. I can’t take that much temptation right now.” I’m certainly not going to deflower her in a dressing room, no matter how upscale.
I squeeze some of the cream onto my finger and slide my hand inside her panties to apply it to her pussy.
“Lock the door behind me. I’ll be right back.”
I go to the bathroom to wash the cream off my hands. Brian said it takes about fifteen minutes to reach full effect and I want her to be close to the edge before I return.
When it’s had time to work its magic, I return to the dressing area.
“How is everything in there? Is she finding anything she likes?” one of the sales clerks asks. “Do you need any other sizes?”