Chapter 9: The Week Begins
The house had finally gone down. Rosa and Elena had been given the guest room across from Priya's, the sisters laughing once through the wall and then going quiet. Jordan climbed the last stair with his body heavy from the evening, six finishes deep across two sisters, and let himself into the lavender dark of the master bedroom.
Katherine was already in bed, her hair down, the grey robe over the chair. She watched him undress from the pillows with the unhurried attention she gave everything she considered hers.
"Lock it," she said.
He turned the lock. The small deliberate sound again.
"Come here." She pulled the sheet back. "You did well tonight. Both cousins handled gently, both of them welcomed properly. Rosa told Priya at the guest room door that she'd never felt anything like it." Her hand found him under the sheet, her fingers closing around him, measuring the evening's wear and finding enough left. "But the night is mine. That was the decree."
"Yes," he said.
She rolled onto him, her mahogany skin silvered by the moon, and kissed him deep, tasting the wine and the long day. She was wet already when she seated herself on his cock, sinking down slow, her breath going out of her in one long controlled note. She rode him with her hands on his chest, her silver-streaked hair falling forward, and the silk moved under them in slow waves.
"You feel how tired you are," she murmured. "Good. I want the last of you. Every drop you have left belongs in me tonight."
He reached up and held her hips, meeting her strokes, and she took her time, drawing herself up his length and pressing down again, her curls grinding against the base of him. Her breath shortened. He watched her face in the dark, the composure thinning the way it only did here, behind the lock.
Then three soft knocks on the door.
Katherine stopped. She sat still on him, fully seated, and turned her head toward the sound.
The knocks came again, tentative, and a voice followed, low and apologetic. "I'm sorry. I heard... I was getting water and I heard. Is he, is everything..." Elena's voice trailed off, and then, faintly embarrassed: "It's Elena."
Katherine's mouth curved in the moonlight. She did not lift off him. She reached down and found the sheet, and instead of covering them she pulled it aside deliberately, leaving herself plainly straddling him, him buried to the hilt inside her, her heavy breasts bare in the silver light.
"Come in," Katherine said.
The door was locked. A pause. Then the small sound of the lock turning from outside, worked with a hairpin or a fingernail or sheer nerve, and Elena pushed the door open a hand's width. She stood in the hallway light in the sundress she'd never changed out of, one strap fallen off her shoulder, her golden-brown skin flushed from the collarbone up.
"I didn't mean to," Elena said. Her eyes went to where their bodies joined and could not leave it. "I heard her voice and I just wanted to hear him. I heard Rosa tonight and I couldn't sleep."
"You came anyway," Katherine said. "Through a locked door. On your first night in my house." She rolled her hips once, slow, and Jordan's breath caught, and Elena's breath caught with it. "Priya's told you about this house for two years. So let me teach you the first rule of it. What happens in this room is this room's. The sisters don't know about the nights in here. Celeste knows and keeps it. That is the price of the bed."
"And if I want in?" Elena said. It came out before she could weigh it, and her hand flew to her mouth, and then she took it away and lifted her chin the way Rosa had at the gate. "I stayed the week. Katherine, I heard you through two walls and I walked here with nothing on under this dress because I didn't bother with it. Do I go back, or do I stay?"
For a long moment Katherine studied her, still seated deep on her son, still holding him inside her. The clock ticked on the dresser. Jordan lay beneath her and said nothing, because this was hers to rule.
"You don't knock on this door again," Katherine said finally. "Not ever. If you're called here, you're called. But you found it, and you asked plain, and I hate a woman who asks plain and then flinches." She crooked one finger. "Come here. Take that dress off at the foot of the bed. If you're staying the week, you'll learn what the week costs, and what it pays."
Elena crossed the moonlit floor and pulled the dress over her head in one motion. She was bare underneath, tanned and curved, her nipples dark and hard, still damp at the tips where Maren's mouth had left them. She climbed onto the foot of the bed and knelt there, watching Katherine ride him three feet away.
"Touch yourself," Katherine said. "Watch. He's mine tonight, but the last of him, the very last, I may decide to share."
Elena's hand went between her thighs without hesitation. She was wet already; the sound of it reached Jordan across the sheets, small and obscene in the quiet room. She watched Katherine's hips rise and fall, watched the place where his cock stretched her open, and bit her lower lip.
"He came four times in me today," Elena whispered. "And I still want more. What is in him?"
"Patience," Katherine said. She rode faster now, her breath ragged, her son's hands tight on her hips, driving herself down onto him in long greedy strokes. "Or rather, no patience at all. Take what's in front of you. That's the house way."
Katherine came quietly, the way she always did, her spine bowing, her hand seizing the headboard, and Jordan held himself back through it by will alone, not finishing.
Katherine opened her eyes. She looked down at him, then across at Elena kneeling at the foot of the bed with two fingers inside herself and her mouth open.
"Celeste knows," Katherine said, half to herself, catching her breath. "Now the guest knows. My kingdom is getting crowded." She lifted herself off him, slow, his cock slick and aching as it left her, and gestured him to sit against the headboard. "Elena. Come up here. He's had six tonight and I've had my turn. Whatever's left is yours. But you'll drink first, because that's how the house takes him. He is not properly had until you've had his mouth."
Elena moved up the bed on her knees. She straddled his chest, took his hair in both hands, and looked down at him with her dark eyes glazed.
"Two years I heard about you," she said. "Open your mouth."
Elena lowered herself onto his mouth, knees braced either side of his head, and he opened under her. Her sex was hot and already slick, and her weight settled on his jaw, and she gasped the moment his tongue found her.
"His mouth," she said, half to Katherine, half to no one. "Oh, this is what she meant."
Katherine lay beside them on her side, watching, one hand idle at her own thigh. "Drink him, Elena. She's a guest of the house. Guests get fed."
He drew his tongue up through her and around her clit, slow, and Elena's hips jerked. Her hand left his hair and found her own breast, milk beading at the tip, and she pinched the nipple and shuddered. Her taste ran over his chin. She was loud here the way she'd been loud on the deck, low cries that she pressed into her own wrist until Katherine reached up and pulled the wrist away.
"Don't muffle it," Katherine said. "This room hears everything or it hears nothing."
Elena came on his mouth in the third minute, grinding down, her thighs clamping his ears, her cry breaking into pieces. When she lifted off him she was shaking, and she turned and looked down at his cock standing hard against his stomach, slick from Katherine.
"I want that again," she said. "I want it in me at this hour, in this bed, with her watching."
Katherine nodded once. Elena took him in hand and sank down, and both of them made sounds at the depth of it. She rode him facing Katherine, her breasts swinging with milk, and Katherine reached over and pressed one palm flat on Elena's sternum between them, steadying her like a rider.
"She's fertile," Katherine said to Jordan quietly, her fingers tracing the warm skin below Elena's navel. "Priya told me at dinner. She keeps count of herself the way I used to. You felt that tonight, four times." She met her son's eyes. "You know what this house does with what it has."
Jordan understood. He reached up and took Elena's hips and drove up into her, and her mouth fell open.
"Yes," Elena breathed. "Yes, like that, all of it, give me the last of it."
He finished inside her in hard pulses, his seventh of the day, and she sat down on it and held him there, rocking, milking every drop higher. Katherine watched the whole of it with an expression Jordan had learned to read as arithmetic.
Then, in the quiet after, came the sound of the hallway. Not one pair of feet. Several, walking softly and without shame, and then voices whispering at the door.
Katherine laughed once, low, genuinely amused. "The house hears everything," she said, and raised her voice. "Come in. All of you. Leave the lock alone."
The door opened and they filed in, the ones who couldn't sleep, or who had heard, or who had simply followed Elena's absence. Rosa in her borrowed shirt, clutching the hem. Priya in nothing but a sheet from her own bed. Maren, barefoot, wearing only the gold heart at her throat. Vanessa with her arms crossed and her eyes knowing. Naya last, wide-eyed, her braid loose down her back.
"You locked the door," Vanessa said to Katherine, "and Elena picked it. I taught her the hairpin at fifteen. You should have counted on that."
"I counted on nothing," Katherine said, sitting up against the headboard, her hair loose over one shoulder, the sheet abandoned. "You're here because you followed. Sit down. All of you. If the room is full, the room is full." She looked around at them, at Rosa and Elena and her own daughters, and her voice went quiet and absolute. "Then hear it once. No more secrets among the women of this bed. The sisters don't know what I keep. Tonight they learn it."
Maren climbed onto the bed first, because of course she did, and pressed in at Jordan's other side. "What does she keep?" she asked, looking at her mother, then at him.
"Look at her," Katherine said, and nodded at Elena, still seated on Jordan with his finish inside her, glowing. "Look at all of them. Rosa. Priya. Me." She laid her hand flat on her own belly, and let them see it. "I'm carrying his child. Twelve weeks in March. Celeste carries another. Sable likely a third."
The room went still. Maren's mouth opened. Vanessa uncrossed her arms slowly.
"You stopped taking it," Vanessa said. "In the spring. I saw the prescription gone."
"I stopped it for him," Katherine said. "This family has one son and no more coming, unless a woman in this house makes them. So." She looked around the bed, at every face, lingering on each. "Every woman here who isn't already carrying has the same choice I made. The droplets, the nights, the finishes, all of it was leading here. Take him. All of you. Take all of him."
Rosa sat down on the edge of the bed like a woman sitting down to sign something. "I'm not carrying anything," she said, hoarse. "And I decided this at the gate, I just didn't know it yet."
"Then you're first," Katherine said. "Rosa. Take him while there's anything left. The rest of you will wait your turns, and there will be turns."
Elena lifted herself off Jordan at last, his seed running down her thigh as she moved aside, and Rosa came across the sheets on her knees and lay down where Elena had been, opening her legs without hesitation this time. Jordan turned to her and found her wet already, watching him with dark steady eyes.
"Again," Rosa said. "Like you told me. Whatever I want."
Maren took his face in both hands and kissed him hard before he moved. "Third," she said against his mouth. "I'm keeping count. Third tonight, and I'm not leaving this bed until I'm in the family way."
"Fourth," Vanessa said, and there was no competition in it, only resolve.
"Me too," Naya whispered, and Priya laughed and pulled her down to sit beside her. "Me too."
Katherine settled back against the pillows, silver hair spilled across them, and gestured her son down between Rosa's thighs.
"Then let's begin," she said. "Every drop, Jordan. Nobody in this room leaves the bed empty."
Jordan slid into Rosa in one long stroke and she pulled her knees up around him, and around the bed the women closed in like a tide, hands finding him, mouths finding each other, the moonlight falling across eleven bodies and the work of the whole night ahead.
Rosa met him hard from the first stroke, her heels crossed at his back, her borrowed shirt rucked up under her arms. She was loud now in a way the deck had never heard, each thrust pulling a lower note out of her. Celeste knelt at her hip and nursed her again, and Rosa drank with her eyes rolling, milk and cock and the rhythm of the bed all arriving at once.
"I felt the first one," Rosa gasped against Celeste's breast. "In my belly, hot. Give me it again."
He drove deep and gave it to her, his eighth finish, pulsing into her while her body clenched around him in long waves. She held him in with her legs until the last of it stopped, then let him go with a sound like a confession.
"Third," Maren said, already rolling into the space he left. She'd been waiting on her knees at his shoulder, the gold heart swinging at her throat, and she pushed him onto his back and climbed over him. "You came in me twice at the table and the pool and I've been counting ever since. This one goes deeper."
She took him to the root in one drop and sat still, her eyes closed, savoring the stretch. Then she rode, fast and greedy, her small breasts beading milk that ran down his chest. Katherine reached over and pressed two fingers to the soft skin under Maren's navel, feeling him move inside her from the outside.
"Fertile," Katherine said quietly. "I can tell. Look at her flush."
"Then look at this," Maren said, and came, her milk spraying in thin arcs over his stomach, her hips grinding down through the pulses. He arched up into her and finished on the heels of her orgasm, and she stayed seated, rocking, coaxing every drop up into the place Katherine's fingers had marked. "That's the one," she whispered. "I know it. I feel it."
Vanessa took her turn without ceremony. She'd always been the tallest presence in any room and tonight she used it, drawing him down the bed on top of her, opening her thighs, guiding him in with two fingers and a look. He moved in her slow and deep while Maren lay panting at her side and Elena watched from the pillows with her hand idle between her legs.
"Harder, Jordan," Vanessa said. "You've been gentle all week. Not with me."
He gave her what she asked. The headboard knocked the wall, the silk bunching under her shoulders, and Vanessa came with her teeth set and her hand clamped on his ass, pulling him in to the hilt as he spilled inside her.
"Fourth," she said, breath ragged, her forehead against his. "And I'm done pretending I don't want what Mother has."
Naya was trembling when her turn came, but she didn't flinch. She lay back in the middle of the bed with her loose braid fanned across the pillow, and she reached up and took his face in both hands.
"I've been counting down to you for two years," she said. "Now I'm counting to this. Be inside me when it happens."
He entered her and she wrapped around him, all long limbs and held breath, and Celeste bent over her and kissed the tension out of her mouth while he moved. Naya came in a rush that surprised everyone, a bright sharp cry, and Jordan finished inside her with his face in her neck and her pulse hammering against his.
Priya was laughing when she pulled him over. "Cousins get it, I get it, and my two years of talking earn me the ninth." She lay back and hooked her knees over his forearms, folding her open for him, entirely unashamed. "You heard my mother. Nobody leaves the bed empty."
He fucked her the way she liked, quick and playful, her heels drumming his back, until the play burned off and she was gasping his name with real weight behind it. He came inside her and she purred, rubbing her own belly in slow circles.
"Do you feel it?" Elena asked her. "The flutter. I felt mine while he was still in me. A little fish turning over."
"Liar," Priya said, but her hand stopped moving, and her eyes went distant, counting.
Elena claimed him once more before the moon shifted. She rode him facing the room this time, wanton and vocal, milk running down her ribs, and Katherine sat up and drank from her while she moved, the two of them locked together over his body. When he finished his eleventh time, Elena threw her head back and laughed out loud, pure and unguarded.
"Twelve weeks from now," she said, "I'm going to send that awful boyfriend a photograph of my belly and no caption at all."
The bed settled around them, bodies rearranging, silk pulled back over hot skin. Eleven heartbeats, then the smaller ones starting beneath them. Rosa lay curled against Celeste, both hands on her own stomach, feeling. Naya had her cheek on Priya's shoulder. Maren was asleep against Jordan's ribs with one arm thrown over him, already done counting.
Katherine rose last. She stood at the foot of the bed in the moonlight, surveying her full house, her daughters and her friends and her guests all heavy with him or soon to be, and her hand came to rest on the curve of her own belly where his first child was already growing.
"Celeste," she said. "You felt it before I said a word, didn't you. In this bed. You kept it."
Celeste lifted her head from the pillow. She looked at Katherine across the whole length of the bed, across Rosa and Priya and the sleeping house, and she didn't deny it.
"I kept it," she said. "I wanted it to be mine first. Just mine, for one night."
Katherine studied her for a long moment. Then she came around the bed, took Celeste's hand, and pressed it flat against her own belly, over the low flutter of the child there.
"Then we're even," Katherine said. "Mine, and yours, and likely the stablewoman's, and every woman in this bed by morning. You'll all keep each other's secrets now, or none of them will hold." She straightened, and her voice went to the room, quiet and absolute. "Jordan stays in my bed. The rest of you distribute yourselves as you like. And in four weeks, this house starts buying cribs."