Chapter 13: The Second Dinner
The east sitting room smelled of beeswax and candle smoke, the same as before. The same silver candlesticks, the same velvet, the same low table set for two. But Anneliese stood at the window with her back turned, and she didn't turn around when the door opened.
"You came." Her voice was flat.
"You asked me to."
Chloe set her bag on the chair and looked her over. The blonde had changed since Monday. Her hair was pinned carelessly, one strand loose at her temple. Her dress was beautiful and buttoned to the throat, which was itself a kind of message. Wine sat untouched in both glasses.
"Sit," Anneliese said. "Eat or don't. I'm past pretending this is a dinner."
Chloe sat. She waited. She had learned that much from Voss: silence pulls faster than questions.
"My mother telephoned the house twice yesterday," Anneliese said, still facing the window. "My family has lent this school money for three generations. Three. And now the older board members are baffled over your instructor."
"Voss."
"She left campus Tuesday morning. Two first-years with her. No notice, no itinerary filed with the bursar." Anneliese turned. Her blue eyes had a glassy, sleepless look. "The board doesn't know where she went or why. Do you understand what that means? A teacher cannot blink without the board knowing."
"Where did she go?"
"That's the question nobody can answer." Anneliese finally sat, pouring wine with a hand that wasn't quite steady. "My mother thinks it's a power play. Vance building her own faction, Voss as her arm, the two of them moving against the old families. My mother wants me to find out before the next board meeting."
Chloe turned her glass slowly on the cloth. "There's more."
"The archive." Anneliese's jaw tightened. "Your mother's file is gone. The whole folder, out of its drawer. The register still shows Weller's signature from last week, but the file itself has vanished. Petitioned access, logged access, and now nothing to access."
"Who could take it?"
"Nobody. That's the point. Except." Anneliese looked at her, and for the first time since Chloe had known her, the blonde looked young. "Except Vance has the only key that isn't logged. If she took it herself, she's either cleaning up for whoever bought Weller's time, or she's cutting that person out. Either way, the school is tilting under our feet and my family is standing on the wrong edge of it."
Chloe let that sit for a moment. Then she asked the question that mattered. "And you don't have the name yet."
"I will. Within the month. I gave you my word." Anneliese's mouth curved without warmth. "But my word isn't worth much to my mother if the board fractures first. And now you know things I didn't intend to tell you. Which makes you dangerous to me, Chloe Bennett, and I find I don't like being in that position."
"You put yourself in it," Chloe said. "You kissed me. You set terms. You told me to keep wearing the plug."
Anneliese's eyes flicked down, involuntary, to Chloe's lap. That small tell was all Chloe needed.
Chloe stood. She walked around the table and put her hand on the back of Anneliese's chair, close enough that her breath touched the blonde's ear.
"You came to dinner armored to the throat," Chloe murmured. "You poured wine you didn't drink. Your mother is calling twice a day and the file is gone and you don't know which way the ground is going to break. You're not negotiating with me anymore, Anneliese. You need me."
"I don't need anyone."
"You needed me to keep this dinner." Chloe's fingers closed lightly on the back of her neck, where Vance had once touched her. "Stand up."
Anneliese laughed, one sharp note. "You're eighteen and three weeks into this school. Do you truly think you can handle me?"
"I think you've been managing everyone since you were born," Chloe said. "And nobody has ever made you ask."
The silence stretched. The candles hissed. Anneliese's throat moved, and then she rose out of the chair slowly, turning under Chloe's hand until they faced each other, the blonde half a head taller and somehow looking up.
"Then prove it," she said quietly. "Make me ask."
Chloe unbuttoned the high collar, one button at a time, watching Anneliese's face rather than the skin. Underneath, the blonde wore nothing at all, and the dress slid off her shoulders and down, pooling at her feet. Tall, long-waisted, pale, her breasts full and heavy with wide brown nipples already tightening in the candle-warmed air. Chloe pushed her back into the chair and knelt between her knees.
She pushed Anneliese's thighs wide apart and looked at her. Blonde curls, darker at the root, already damp, the lips beneath swollen and blushing red. Chloe flattened her tongue and dragged it up the whole length of her, slow, from the clenching entrance to the stiff bud at the top, and Anneliese's head fell back against the chair with a low, broken sound.
"Oh. God."
Chloe worked her with everything she had. She licked in slow, flat strokes first, feeling the clit harden against her tongue, then circled it with the pointed tip while two fingers slid into the slick clench of her cunt and hooked forward. She found the rough patch on the front wall and rubbed it in time with her mouth, and Anneliese's hips began to lift off the seat, chasing her.
"Your mouth," Anneliese gasped. Her hands found Chloe's hair and gripped. "Where did you learn to use your mouth like that?"
Chloe didn't answer. She sucked the clit between her lips and hummed, and Anneliese came hard, her whole body rigid, thighs clamping around Chloe's ears, a cry tearing out of her that no composed board daughter should ever make. Chloe kept lapping through it, gentler, until the blonde slumped, chest heaving, nipples dark and stiff.
"Get up," Chloe said. She stood and stripped out of her blouse and skirt, the chrome plug still seated snug in her ass, cold-warm against her body. She pushed the low table aside and lay back on the deep rug, spreading her legs. "Now you. On your knees. Show me what you'd give me."
Anneliese came down like a starving woman. She licked Chloe in long, eager strokes, sloppy and desperate, nothing like the controlled girl from Monday. Chloe hooked a leg over her shoulder and ground her cunt against her mouth, riding her face, taking what she wanted. When she felt the blonde's tongue stiffen and push into her, she pulled the plug out of her own ass and reached down to hold Anneliese's head, fucking her mouth through her orgasm, coming in a sharp bright wave that soaked the blonde's chin.
"In the drawer of the writing desk," Anneliese panted when Chloe let her breathe. "There's a harness. And a double. I bought them after Monday. I told myself it was for you to use."
"Then it is." Chloe fetched them. She strapped the harness on, the thick dildo standing out dark and heavy from her hips, and bent Anneliese over the arm of the sofa. She pressed the head into her soaked cunt and pushed, slow, watching inch after inch disappear into the blonde's clinging hole.
"Harder," Anneliese begged. "Please, Chloe. Harder."
Chloe fucked her deep and steady, gripping her hips, the slap of skin filling the candlelit room. After the older girl came on the fat strap-on Chloe stepped out of the harness. Then she took the double dildo, eased one end into Anneliese's twitching ass, and fitted the other into her own cunt, kneeling behind her, buried in both of them, joined. She rocked, and every thrust moved through Anneliese into her own body and back.
They came like that, grinding, screaming into the velvet, Chloe's hand in Anneliese's hair.
Afterwards, the blonde lay on the rug, wrecked and sweating. Chloe leaned over her.
"You'll have your name," Chloe said. "But you'll earn it from me now."
Anneliese looked up at her, and nodded.