Chapter 8: The Cousins Arrive
The gate buzzed at six, and Priya squealed loud enough to scatter the sparrows out of the jasmine. Two women came through it hauling a heavy cooler between them, a feed sack over the shoulder of the taller one, both already stripping off sunglasses against the golden light pooling across the pool deck.
Jordan watched from the grill, tongs in hand, as Priya ran the length of the deck barefoot and caught the pair at the waist, all three of them going down laughing in a tangle of dark hair and sunburned shoulders.
"Careful, they're heavy," the taller one gasped, still holding the cooler by one handle.
"They're my cousins," Priya announced to the whole deck, not that the whole deck had stopped looking. "Vanessa, Katherine, everyone. Rosa, Elena. Rosa's the tall one, Elena's the one currently putting a hand where it doesn't belong."
Elena was indeed the shorter one, curved and golden-brown, and her hand was on Priya's ass with the unembarrassed familiarity of family. She looked around the pool deck at the nine loungers, the sheer number of bare breasts, and turned to Rosa.
"Rosa. Rosa, look."
"I'm looking," Rosa said, setting the feed sack down by the gate with the careful calm of someone who had decided not to react until she understood the situation.
"You said horses," Rosa added.
"There are horses," Priya said, getting up and pulling both of them to their feet. "Sable's place, up the hill. This is the feed, right? Good. Offload later. Right now you're staying for drinks."
Elena was already looking at Jordan. She wasn't subtle about it. Her eyes went from his face down his body and back up, and she fanned herself with her sunglasses. "And who is that?"
"That's the reason for the season," Maren said brightly, appearing at Jordan's elbow with a tray of glasses. "Jordan. Our brother."
"Your brother." Elena's eyebrows climbed.
"Everyone here is family in one way or another," Katherine said from her lounger, and her voice carried the way it always carried, unhurried and final. She did not get up. She took a slow sip from her glass and studied the two newcomers over its rim. "Priya's told us about you both. Rosa, Elena. Come, sit. Sunset drinks are a house tradition."
Rosa hesitated for exactly one breath, looked at the turquoise water, the jasmine, the deck full of beautiful relaxed women, and sat. Elena sat before Rosa finished sitting.
Jordan came over with the tray, because that was his role in the house, pouring. Rosa took her glass and thanked him in a low, slightly hoarse voice, and Elena took hers and let her fingers rest on his hand a beat longer than the glass required.
"So you're the brother." Elena looked up at him from beneath her lashes. "Priya talks about you. I thought she was exaggerating."
"She never exaggerates," Priya said, settling onto the lounger on Elena's other side. "She doesn't need to."
Jordan felt Maren press in at his hip on his left, and Vanessa arrive on his right, silent and warm, her shoulder against his arm. The sisters had a way of closing around him like a tide. Elena noticed. Rosa noticed Elena noticing.
Katherine set her glass down with a soft click.
"Dinner in an hour," she said. "But the evening is warm, and our guests have had a long drive. Priya, do we still have any of your sister's droplets?"
Priya's smile spread slow. "Always."
"I've never heard of them," Rosa said cautiously.
"You will like them," Priya said. "Two drops, under the tongue. That's all."
Elena looked at Rosa. Rosa looked at the pool, the sun going molten behind the hedge line, the nine women arranged around them like a verdict already delivered.
"What do they do?" Rosa asked.
Katherine answered, and her voice made it sound like an etiquette. "They help you relax."
Jordan carried the little brown bottle on the tray, two drops measured out with a care that had become ritual. Katherine took hers first, and the family followed in order, Maren, Vanessa, Celeste, Priya and her cousins last. Elena took hers with a wink at him. Rosa took hers after a long look at her sister, and her hand was not quite steady.
The world went quiet, then warm, then electric. Eleven heartbeats.
Elena gasped first, her glass falling from her fingers to roll and spill across the deck stones, her spine arching off the lounger. "Oh my god, what is, oh, fuck, what is this," and Priya was already over her, hands on her face, mouth on her mouth, swallowing her cries.
Rosa lasted two heartbeats longer, and came with her head thrown back and her teeth bared, a sound torn out of her that she had clearly never made in her life, low and ragged and helpless. Celeste caught her before she slid off the lounger, gathered her against her heavy bare chest, and held her there, rocking her gently through it.
Jordan's own orgasm hit him in the middle of it, hard and sudden in his jeans, and he gripped the tray edge and rode it out with his eyes closed while the deck smelled of jasmine and spilled gin and milk.
When it passed, Elena was blinking up at the orange sky, boneless, Priya stroking her cheek. Rosa was pressed into Celeste's shoulder, breathing like she'd run a mile.
"What," Rosa rasped, "the fuck."
Katherine stood, unhurried, and looked down at the two of them with a satisfaction she didn't bother hiding.
"Now," she said, "let me introduce you properly to the house."
Katherine extended one hand, and Jordan took it, because that was what her hand meant. She drew him around the loungers to where Elena lay boneless against the cushions, Priya still stroking her cheek.
"Elena. Rosa. This is Jordan, our host, our brother, and the heart of this house. Priya has told you about him. Now you'll understand."
Elena's eyes were already on him, glazed and dark, her chest still heaving under the thin cotton of her sundress. "Priya did not tell me this," she said. "Priya told me nothing like this."
"I told you he was pretty," Priya said, and laughed, and kissed her cousin's temple.
Rosa had lifted her head from Celeste's shoulder. She looked at Jordan the way she had looked at the cooler, deciding whether to lift it. Her voice came out low and hoarse. "And the rule. There's a rule here, I can feel it. Everyone does what she says." She nodded at Katherine. "What does she say?"
"She says welcome," Katherine said, settling back onto her lounger with her glass. "And she says the house takes care of its guests. Jordan, help Elena out of that dress. It's far too warm for it."
Jordan knelt at the edge of Elena's lounger. She watched him come down, her lips parting, and when his fingers found the little buttons at her bodice she did not stop him. She breathed hard through each one. The dress fell open over a plain white bra, damp at the edges, and the soft curve of a belly still tanned from the city. He drew the straps down her arms. Her nipples were dark and hard in the golden light.
"God," Elena whispered. "Look at him. Look at his hands."
Priya took one of those hands and put it on her cousin's breast, closing his fingers around it for her. "She's been wound up for months," Priya said. "Work, the commute, that awful boyfriend she finally dumped. Be gentle with her, Jordan. But not too gentle."
He was not too gentle. He leaned down and took Elena's nipple into his mouth, and Elena's back bowed off the cushions with a sharp cry, her hand flying to his hair. Milk came in fast, warm, sweeter than Elena's gasp, and she held his head against her and shook.
"Oh, she's letting down," Priya murmured, delighted. "Look at her. Look at her face."
Elena's face was wrecked already, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open. "Nobody's done that, nobody has ever," and then words left her, because Jordan unlatched and moved to her other breast and drew it out long and slow, and Priya bent and kissed the sounds out of her mouth, drinking them.
On the next lounger, Rosa had gone very still. Celeste's arm was around her shoulders, and Celeste's heavy breast rested against Rosa's arm, and Rosa was staring at it.
"You can," Celeste said quietly. "Everyone here does."
"I don't know how."
"Neither did I, once. Open your mouth and let me do the rest."
Rosa opened her mouth. Celeste guided her down, and Rosa made a small shocked sound when the milk hit her tongue, and then she was drinking, her eyes closing, her whole tall frame going loose against Celeste's side. Naya appeared on her other side and began undoing the buttons of Rosa's shirt, one by one, patient, while Rosa drank and let her.
Jordan raised his head from Elena's chest. Her milk was on his chin and her hands were pulling at his shirt, impatient now, tugging it up his body. He let her pull it off. Her palms ran over his chest, his stomach, down to the waistband of his jeans, where the shape of him strained obvious and hard.
"You came in your pants," she said, wonder in it. "Just from watching. From the drops."
"Yes," he said.
"Then take them off," Katherine said, and he did, and Elena made a low sound in her throat that was half Spanish, half nothing at all.
He knelt over her. She reached between them and took him in her hand, curious, squeezing, measuring, and then she guided him to her and he pushed in, and Elena's whole body opened under him like a door. Her cry rolled across the water. Priya lay alongside them, kissing Elena's cheek, her ear, murmuring to her in rapid Spanish, and Elena answered in the same tongue, broken phrases, sí, sí, así, don't stop, please.
Jordan moved in her slowly. The deck was full of soft sounds now, milk and mouths and Maren's laugh somewhere behind him. Rosa had come up off Celeste's shoulder to watch, Naya's mouth at her bare throat, her shirt hanging open over a simple white bra, her dark eyes fixed on where Jordan's body joined Elena's.
"Rosa," Katherine said. "Don't just watch. Come here."
Rosa crossed the deck on unsteady legs. Katherine steered her down onto the wide lounger beside Elena's, Celeste flowing after her like water, and then Rosa was on her back with Celeste's mouth at her breast and Naya's hands at her waist, drawing her shorts down her long legs. She was trembling.
"Has anyone ever taken care of you?" Celeste asked her, lips brushing her ear.
"No," Rosa said. "Not like this. Not ever."
"Tonight you're the guest of the house."
Jordan split his attention the way Katherine had taught him without ever saying it aloud. He kept moving in Elena until she was climbing, her heels digging into the cushion, and then when Elena broke, when she came around him with a long shuddering wail and Priya's fingers rubbing her through it, he stayed hard and let her ride it out, kissing the sweat from her throat. Then he withdrew, and turned, and Rosa was waiting, open and wet and wide-eyed.
"Rosa," he said. "Tell me if you want this."
"Yes," she said, too fast, and then again, steadier. "Yes. Please."
She was tighter, quieter, a woman who had never made noise in her life learning it now. He entered her a little at a time while Celeste held her hand and Naya kissed her mouth, and when he was all the way in Rosa's breath left her in one long note. Celeste pressed her heavy breast to Rosa's lips and Rosa nursed through the first strokes, milk and motion together, her body trying to do three things at once and surrendering to all of them.
Jordan took her slowly, then faster when her hips began to answer him. Elena, still trembling beside them, reached over and put her hand flat on her sister's belly, feeling it.
"He's in you," Elena whispered. "Rosa. Rosa, can you feel him?"
"I feel everything," Rosa said, and her voice cracked, and then so did she, her orgasm breaking up through her in pulses that gripped him, her free hand seizing Jordan's shoulder, her milk and Celeste's running warm down her chin. Jordan drove deep and let go, finishing inside her in long hard pulses while Celeste held her face and told her, soft, that's it, take all of it, good girl.
He stayed in her until he softened and slipped free, and Elena pulled him down between them, both sisters flushed and shaking, milk-slick and spent. Priya leaned over the three of them and kissed her cousins' damp foreheads.
"Stay the night," Priya said. "Stay the week."
Behind him, Katherine's voice, warm and final. "Dinner can wait."
The cousins stayed down a long while, the three of them tangled on the wide lounger, the sky going from molten orange to a deep bruised purple over the hedge line. Elena's hand lay flat on Rosa's belly the whole time, as if she could still feel him there. Priya fetched a fresh bottle of cold white wine and poured it straight into four mouths, tipping the neck to Rosa's lips last, and Rosa drank with her eyes closed and her throat working.
Then Katherine rose from her lounger and crossed the stones barefoot, and the deck quieted around her the way it always did.
"Dinner can wait," she said again, "but not all night. Elena, you've had one. Rosa, you've had one. In this house, a guest is not properly welcomed until the house has finished with her." Her eyes moved to Jordan, and the look she gave him was the old one, patient and absolute. "Both of them. Before the grill goes cold."
"Oh god," Elena said, and laughed, breathless, covering her face with both hands. "There's a protocol. There's a whole protocol."
"There's always a protocol," Priya said, peeling her cousin's hands away from her face and kissing her knuckles. "You'll love this part."
Elena was already reaching for him. She hooked her fingers into the waistband of his jeans where they lay discarded on the stones and pulled, a wordless summons, and Jordan came to her. She sat up against the cushions, flushed dark from throat to ears, and took him in her hand again, steadier this time, studying him.
"Rosa," she said to her sister without looking away from him. "Are you seeing this?"
"I'm seeing it," Rosa said. She was sitting up too, Naya's arm around her shoulders, her shirt gone entirely now, her bra unsnapped and hanging off one shoulder. She looked wrecked and alert at once, a woman recalculating everything.
Elena lay back and opened her thighs for him, unhurried, deliberate, a woman who had decided something on the long drive out here and was only now saying it in the clearest language she had. "Come here," she said. "Priya talked about you for two years. I want the whole thing."
He entered her again and she was softer now, looser, still slick from before, and she pulled her knees up and watched his face while he moved. She made noise this time freely, low cries in Spanish that rose over the water, and Priya knelt at her head and bent to kiss her, and the two cousins' mouths worked against each other while Jordan fucked her in long, deep strokes.
"Look at her," Priya said against Elena's mouth. "She goes quiet for months and then some beautiful boy's cock makes her sing. I've been telling you, Elena. I've been telling you for years."
"You didn't tell me," Elena gasped, "you'd be watching."
"You'd have said no."
"I'd have said no," Elena agreed, and then Jordan changed his angle and found the place that made her stop agreeing with anything. Her heels pressed into his back. Her milk came again, a slow bead at one dark nipple, and Maren leaned across the lounger and latched on without asking, sucking gently, and Elena cried out at the doubled sensation, her hand finding Maren's blonde bob and gripping it.
When she came it went through her in long rolling waves, and she said his name once, half-swallowed, and then Priya's mouth was over hers and the name went into the kiss. Jordan drove through the grip of her, feeling her pulse around him, and when she stopped shaking he pressed deep and let himself go, his finish pouring into her in hot pulses that made her arch and moan into her cousin's mouth. Katherine watched the whole of it from her lounger with her wine, and when the last of it left him she lifted her glass a half inch, an acknowledgment.
Elena pulled him down onto her chest, both of them slick, and spoke into his ear in Spanish, low and private. He didn't understand the words. He understood the tone.
"She says you're not allowed to leave the county," Priya translated, grinning.
Rosa was waiting. She had been waiting through all of it, sitting up straight, Naya's hands moving over her shoulders, her dark eyes on the place where Jordan's body met her sister's. When he looked at her she swallowed.
"And me," she said. It wasn't a question. It was her deciding out loud.
"Whatever you want," Jordan said.
"Again," Rosa said. "I want it again. The first time went by too fast. I couldn't feel it properly, I was..." She stopped, and her jaw set, and she said it plainly. "I was scared. I'm not now."
Celeste drew her down onto the wide lounger and arranged her like something precious, a cushion under her hips, her long dark hair smoothed off her face. Naya knelt at her head and took Rosa's hands and held them, and Rosa let her. Rosa's body was tall and long-muscled and unguarded now, her thighs falling open without resistance, and the wetness of her first time was still visible on her, glistening in the low purple light.
Jordan moved between her knees. She reached for him this time, both hands, taking him and guiding him in, and they both watched it happen, watched herself open around him inch by inch. Rosa's breath came out of her in a shudder.
"Slow," she said. "Stay slow. I want every part of it."
He stayed slow. He gave her long, deliberate strokes, and she felt each one visibly, her stomach tightening, her lips parting, small involuntary sounds rising from somewhere deep in her chest. Celeste bent over her and offered her breast again and Rosa took it without hesitation this time, nursing hard, milk running from the corner of her mouth, and Naya kissed her temple and her closed eyelids and murmured to her in a voice too low to carry.
"You feel it now?" Elena asked her sister, still flat on her back on the next lounger, Jordan's finish inside her, one hand between her own thighs idly.
"Everything," Rosa managed around Celeste's nipple. "I feel everything now."
"Then stop holding your breath."
Rosa laughed, a broken sound with Celeste's milk still on her tongue, and let the breath go, and something in her body unlocked with it. Her hips began to move. She met him, at first awkwardly and then with a growing rhythm, her long legs wrapping up around his back, her nails digging into Naya's hands, and the sounds she made stopped being small.
"Faster," she told him. "Now faster, yes, like that, don't stop," and Jordan gave it to her, driving into her with hard even strokes, the slap of their bodies loud over the water, and Rosa's orgasm built in her face before it arrived anywhere else, her brow drawing tight, her teeth showing.
She came with her spine bowing off the cushions, a long low cry that didn't stop, wave after wave, and Priya leaned over from Elena's lounger and pressed her mouth to Rosa's and Rosa screamed into the kiss. Jordan held himself back through it by force of will, and when the last pulse left her he was still buried hard inside her, aching with the effort.
"Finish," Katherine said from across the deck, and it was not a suggestion.
He drove deep and let go, his second release spilling into Rosa in thick pulses, and she felt every one of them, crying out softly at each, her hands finally pulling free of Naya's grip to seize his hips and hold him in her.
They lay still. The pool light had come on somewhere, turquoise glow rippling up across all their faces. Elena reached across the gap between the loungers and took her sister's hand, and Rosa held it, both of them full of him, both of them boneless under the strange stars of this strange garden.
Katherine set down her glass and stood, and the deck turned toward her.
"Now," she said, "dinner. And you two are staying the week."