Suddenly Fated (Wolves of Riverton #1)

10. Esyn

10. Esyn

Avelin and I spent the rest of the day in town, going from store to store. She wouldn’t be satisfied until I had every clothing item in Riverton.

“Avelin, I do have clothes at home, you know. I mean, at my parents’ house.” That seemed very odd to say. The manor house was now home. Maybe one day I’d feel comfortable with that, but I didn’t think it would be for a very long while.

“We’re going to have to start your training right away, and you’re going to need these things. You have to look the part of a Luna! Plus, how can we not get this dress? It looks like it was made especially for you.”

The dress in question ended just above the knee and clung tightly, lined in silk with a dark green velvet outer fabric and thick straps. I stood looking at myself in the boutique’s mirror, and I saw a stranger looking back at me. I was generally a jeans and a sweatshirt kind of girl–plain and fading into the background, and that’s the way I liked it. The person behind the camera, not the subject of the photo. This person in the mirror wasn’t fading into any backgrounds. She was the star. It made me incredibly nervous. People stared at us all day, practically falling over themselves to say hello to Avelin and to get introduced to me. Av was all grace, singing my praises and talking about Ari and I being chosen by the Goddess herself. She made sure everyone knew that she felt completely at peace with the whole situation. There were a lot of happy faces, but also a few disappointed ones. It seemed plain that they wanted a salacious story to pass on.

“I can see the self-doubt on your face. Are you always this easy to read? Maybe Ari doesn’t need a mind link after all,” Avelin joked. “Stop it, you look hot. Ari is going to lose his mind when he sees you. In fact, you should wear this one home.” I left the dress on.

We rode toward the manor house surrounded by so many bags and boxes that I could barely see Avelin across from me. As we neared the community building housing Ari’s office, I knocked on the glass partition between us and the driver to signal him to stop.

“Avelin, do you think Ari is still working?” I asked, and she gave me a knowing look.

“I’m sure he is, and I wish I could be a fly on the wall when he sees you.”

I walked through the dark, quiet building, my heels clicking on the marble floors as I went. When I got to the top of the stairs, the events of Gala night replayed in my mind. “Things certainly can change in an instant,” I murmured quietly, then looked around quickly to make sure no one saw me talking to myself.

I knocked on Ari’s office door. I could hear him speaking to someone in confident tones, but he called out, “Come in!”.

I paused in the open doorway for a second, watching him as he stood with his back to me, having what sounded like an important business conversation. I didn’t want to interrupt him. I’d just say a quick hello and then walk down to the manor from here.

He turned around slowly. His eyes popped wide, his mouth fell open, and he dropped the phone. I giggled as he scrambled to pick it up. “Sorry about that, Richard. Clumsy. Could I put you on hold for a minute? Thanks.”

“Esyn, holy shit. I…I have no words. Just… wow. ” He gestured me over and kissed me, running his hands up and down my waist and hips, over the velvet of my dress.

“Ari,” I murmured against his lips.

“MmmMmm.”

“Ari, weren’t you on a phone call?”

“Hmm?”

“Ari, the phone.”

Finally he pulled back. “Oh! Oh yes. Damn, I have to finish this. But please, don’t leave. Sit down, I’ll just be a few minutes.”

‘A few minutes’ turned into ten, then twenty, as I sat on the sofa beside his desk just watching him. My mind kept turning to last night and all of the things I wanted to do this morning but didn’t get to. Things like…

I licked my lips as a thought came to me. Ari sat in his desk chair, debating away with ‘Richard’. I got up quietly and went over to him. He reached up and grabbed my hand, smiling at me. “Sorry,” he mouthed and rolled his eyes. I moved to stand in front of him, then dropped to my knees. I ran my hands over both of his thighs, enjoying the muscular feel. He looked down at me with a questioning look on his face, which turned to utter shock as I slowly unzipped his zipper, unbuttoned, and then freed his cock from his pants.

Up close he was even more enormous and beautiful. I wrapped my hand around his length, sliding gently up and down as he grew incredibly hard. His breath quickly started to become erratic as Richard continued to blab away on the phone.

“Yes, Richard, I understand that but AHRGHAH -” he made an unintelligible noise as I put my mouth around him, fit as much of him in as I could and then swirled my tongue around, then sucked on the way back up. His hands gripped my head, fisting into my hair.

“I really need… that report…by, um…” his head fell back as mine bobbed up and down, gaining momentum. Distracting him and turning him on turned me on immensely.

“Richard, look, aaah… I’m going to have to go, something just, um…came up.” He hung up the phone abruptly and moaned. “Fucking hell, Esyn!”

He grabbed me underneath my arms and pulled me to standing, spinning me around and pushing my body down against his desk. Sliding the hem of my dress up, he made another strangled noise. “You’ve had no panties on this whole time?”

“Av said it ruined the lines of the dre… oh, fuck !” I cried out as he slid into me from behind. Gripping my hips, he pounded into me. Slapping sounds filled the room along with our moans and cries. After only a few minutes, he reached around and moved his fingers against my clit, and I saw stars. The explosion of pleasure came so fast, it overwhelmed me. While I reveled in the middle of one of the best orgasms of my life, he cried out, the sound so loud that it reverberated through the room. If anyone else was in the building, surely they heard it, but right now I didn’t give a damn.

Ari gentled his movements and finally stopped. We stood there for a few moments, catching our breath, me splayed out over the desk, him still inside me and holding onto my hips.

“So that was Richard, huh?” I asked him. He barked a surprised laugh.

“Sure was.”

“What did he want?”

“I don’t remember.”

We both laughed, then I stood and turned, and we wrapped our arms around each other.

“You going to call him back?”

“I am not. Because of you, from now on whenever I talk to Richard I’ll probably get hard. So thanks for that.”

We were still grinning at each other like fools later that evening as we left the car and walked up the drive to the manor door. The smile dropped from my face when Harris announced, “Luna Elise is in her sitting room and has instructed me to send you to her the moment you get in, Miss Stone.”

I looked frantically at Ari. “Alone?”

“No way in hell,” Ari reassured me. “I’m not feeding you straight to the beast on your first real night here. Let’s go.”

He led me up the other set of stairs and into the opposite wing of the manor where his parents resided. The decorations and furnishings on this side were more formal, more fussy and ostentatious.

“Enter,” Luna Elise called at Ari’s knock. She sat in a wingback chair with her hands resting on each chair arm, resembling a queen on her throne. A book rested on the delicate mahogany table beside her. I gave it a surreptitious glance and nearly choked when I realized that the book was ‘Lady Chatterley's Lover’. Both mother and son turned to me, him with concern on his face and her with annoyance. I coughed and cleared my throat, trying to get myself together.

“Michael, I don’t recall including you in my summons,” Luna Elise said.

“Regardless, here I am. Anything that you say to Esyn, you can say in front of me.”

Ari took my hand and squeezed it. We faced his mother as a united front. The thought made me smile and gave me a bit of courage.

“Luna Elise, was there something you wanted to see me about?” I addressed her directly for the first time. I imagined myself tall and regal, like Avelin, and attempted to mimic her normal stance. I hoped that I didn’t look more like a child playing grown up.

“Indeed. Tomorrow there will be a ladies’ tea to welcome you into the Belisarius family. I have invited a group of women from several prominent families of the pack. Please be in the dining room downstairs at 2pm. I assume you have attended a formal tea?” Elise asked me in a tone that suggested she assumed I’d be better off at a roadside diner than a ladies’ tea.

I hadn’t ever attended a formal tea, but there was no way in hell I would admit that to her. “Of course, Luna Elise,” I answered. “Thank you so much for arranging this on my behalf.”

“Oh your behalf? Don’t be silly. This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with our standing in the pack. Regardless of my feelings about your suitability for the role of future Luna, our family must appear to stand together. That is how we project our strength and authority to the rest of the pack, to protect the image that we’ve spent decades carefully cultivating. It will take more than one little upstart-”

“Mother.”

“Yes, as I was saying, in the face of adversity, we stand together. That is how it has always been and how it always shall be. Consider that your first lesson. Your formal training begins tomorrow. Oh, and Esyn, please wear something more modest for the event. Good night.”

With that, she dismissed us with a wave of her hand and a sniff. I waited until we were all the way to the other side of the house before I let out the breath I’d been holding.

“Ari, my goddess! How the hell have you put up with her your entire life? And your father? He must be miserable.”

“He is, and he has been for many years. Their marriage was also arranged, and I’m not certain that they ever even so much as liked one another. They had me because everyone expected them to produce an heir, and they did actually share a bedroom at one point. Not anymore, though. She defers to him because he is the Alpha, but she always makes sure that we’re all aware of her true feelings. Sometimes I think if my father could actually send her to the Outlands to live, he would.”

“What a life. Spending your existence trapped with a woman that you can’t stand seems like torture to me.” My own parents loved each other very much. Even at their age, I caught them hugging and touching when they didn’t think I was watching. “My parents had me and then couldn’t have another child even though they badly wanted more.”

“Well, my parents had me for the sake of obligation.”

“Your childhood must have been so sad.” I stopped and hugged him.

“It wasn’t so bad. I had grandparents, and I loved them a great deal. I had Jamie. And Harris used to be great fun. He’d time how long it took me to slide down the bannister and sneak me candy before dinner.”

“Harris was fun ?”

“Absolutely. He’s gotten super stuck-up in his old age,” Ari laughed. I giggled as we approached the bedrooms. Ari put his hand on his doorknob and I moved away, intending to go to my room.

“Where do you think you’re going, Little Mate?”

“Um. To my room?”

“I instructed the servants to unpack all of your new things in here. This will be your room now. Our room.”

He opened the door to a masculine but very comfortable-looking room. “You’re welcome to change anything in here that you don’t like,” he told me. Books and various knickknacks lined the shelves, and a fireplace identical to the one in my previous room held a crackling fire. Two deep cushioned chairs sat facing the fire with a table between them. On that table sat my camera.

“Ari! Oh my goddess, my camera! I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever see it again.” I picked it up and checked it all over, looking for signs of damage. “It’s still perfect.”

“Of course it is. I’d never let anything happen to it,” he assured me. “I do need to admit something, though. I took a peek at some of your photos. You are incredibly talented.”

I blushed but felt proud of myself. “That’s kind of you to say.”

“Kind, nothing. I don’t know why you don’t have your photos in magazines or galleries yet. They’re missing out.”

I grinned at him, not knowing what to say. “Well, I love this room exactly the way it is,” I said instead. I meant it. It was masculine, but comfortable, and it smelled like Ari, making me feel cozy and safe.

Ari ordered dinner sent to our room. We ate leisurely, talking about our childhoods, our friends, our lives. He told me about his warrior and Alpha training. I told him about University and about my best (and only) friend Ashley, who’d moved far away after graduation. I missed her a great deal. “I haven’t really had any other really close friends. I envy your relationship with Av and Jamie.”

“Well, they’re your friends now, too. We’re family. And no matter what anyone says, you belong right here with us. With me.” He leaned over our plates and kissed me gently, filling me with warmth and causing a small shiver to run down my spine. I confessed my apprehension about tomorrow’s tea.

“Don’t worry. Avelin will be there, and she can coach you beforehand. You’ll do a great job.”

“I wish I was as confident in that as you seem to be.”