Amply Rewarded (21 page)

Chapter Fourteen

I picked up my brush and sat by my vanity to smooth my hair. After Simon, I felt a great need to spend time alone. I think I needed to make sense of all of the things I’d engaged myself with, and that can really only be done in solitude. Looking at my face in the mirror, I noticed how I had changed. My face was different now than I remembered it being the last time I had taken a good look. I had been in Virginia for the last couple of months. I had met Hal three weeks prior to leaving San Francisco. I was lucky it had all worked out like this.

Lucky. What did that mean?

Other wives-to-be would have been busy in the throes of love with the man they had agreed to marry. We hadn’t even scaled the three-month mark. But it wasn’t like that with Hal. I was off having a consensual adulterous affair with my tailor—his tailor. And he was with whomever in Atlanta, Georgia, on a supposed business trip—well, what did I know of his trips? What did I know of whom he chose to be with?

I remember sitting there at my vanity and thinking about how my logic had changed. Even a few months earlier—just before meeting Hal—I would have thought that considering myself lucky in this situation would have everything to do with the huge mansion I was in and the giant ring on my finger, and a rich man’s affirmation that I would never have to worry about money again. In my dreams, that had been some kind of fantasy ideal. I would have sacrificed ordinary permutations of happiness in order to achieve it. I would have been fine with a man who was less than perfect, a man who was uncaring or adulterous, because I would have seen the whole enterprise as a job. I would have looked at my duties as being a public persona.

I’d thought that was what Hal wanted me for. I had been quite convinced of it when he’d embraced his attraction to men. I had been sure of it the whole way here with Timothy and I was still sure of it at that point, with him being away—that he was out exercising his virility with the lads of the land. What surprised me, utterly threw me for a loop, was that I felt lucky on a personal account. How many people can say that? Hal was a wonderful man. He had been gentle and compassionate from the first time we’d met. But what really got to me, in a way that I had not imagined, was his complexity. I was smitten with his insecurities.

I’d always found men’s insecurities to be heinous. From Tommy to that idiot college boy who’d first come to visit me at Carla’s, to all of my drivers, to almost all the men I’d ever known. Especially, I thought, men who’d grown up wealthy, like Hal. They had an air. They had a claim to things. Then they felt bad about some other component of their lives and it made me sick, because they didn’t even know what work was. They didn’t understand what it meant to feel inferior to a whole class of people, and they had no idea what it was like to grow up working with both your parents, trying to make a living off the land. I’d never expected anyone to understand what my childhood meant to me. It was, after all, my childhood, not theirs. But some men were so inclined to ignore the distinct possibility that I used to have a life before they came along, that I did, in fact, function as an entirely independent mind and body and that I had drawn my own conclusions about my power and abilities.

Why did I suddenly feel understood by Hal? Perhaps it wasn’t the kind of understanding wrought by similar experience, but more a respect wrought by struggle for freedom from conventional logic. Hal and I hadn’t had sex by conventional standards, but I felt a solidarity, an intimacy with him that was greater than any I had known with a man before. So, indeed, I was lucky.

And I had a week left until he came back from Georgia and married me in our verdant Southern garden under the autumn sun, for the whole world to see. I had arrived. I had achieved more than I had hoped to and, although my satisfaction was something I’d have to keep private, I was intent on welcoming him with a physical experience that could satisfy both of us. And since it was entirely optional on my part—Hal being content to merely have me at his side—I felt like our union would be sanctified and honest and pious and beautiful. I wanted to give him the greatest pleasure he’d ever known.

To most men, that would mean intense orgasms followed by boosts to the ego. That wasn’t Hal. I couldn’t imagine us in the missionary position. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to sit on his cock. I couldn’t even imagine him ejaculating the way most men do. It would be unique with us. Entirely unique. I hoped my cock would do him justice. I hoped that it would be what he wanted, even if he had never imagined it. I was determined to take him by storm, to provide for him more than mere companionship and paperwork.

It was a strange order of happenings. We’d met, got engaged in a superficial relationship, moved in together, were about to get married…then I realised I was in love with him. That was the genesis of my deciding to woo him.

* * * *

“Your new cock is here,” Simon announced on the phone a few days later.

“I’ll come by for a fitting,” I told him. “Have you tailored the second harness?”

“I think everything is perfect.”

“I knew it would be.”

* * * *

I sipped my morning coffee and browsed the local paper.

Hal, who had come home late the night before, stumbled into the dining room with his robe loosely covering him. He poured tea from his antique porcelain pot into his teacup, added a sugar cube and stirred. Lynette, his assistant, dropped the usual pile of mail in front of him and he proceeded to slice each envelope open with his silver opener.

It was our usual morning routine, which I had become accustomed to and loved. I cherished our silent mornings—we were comfortable around each other and didn’t need to talk.

Hal put his head down, rested his forehead on his index finger.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Nothing. Well, not nothing. Timothy’s coming to the wedding…with his wife.”

“Oh, dear.” I buttered my croissant.

“Yeah. What are we going to do with them?” He was clearly concerned.

“Lie.”

“I meant activity-wise.”

“So did I.”

“Oh, you’re so clever.” He smiled. Then he sighed. “She’s a nightmare.”

“To say the least.”

“It makes me tired just thinking about her—all those questions. She’s going to want to know all the details leading up to the wedding, all the details about our life together.”

“Well, so what?”

“So, her brother is one of the high-ups at immigration.”

“Well, shouldn’t that work in your favour?”

“
Should
would be the operative word. Francine Jean is… Well, she’s known to be mean and vindictive, and should she ever suspect anything about Timothy…”

“She won’t.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Because she’s the kind of woman who’s so deeply repressed that even if she had an inclination towards the thought, any kind of unbridled passion is repugnant to her and she’d dismiss it instantly. She’d go back to her gardening or embroidery or gossip or whatever she passes the time with,” I assured him.

Whether I was right or wrong seemed irrelevant. There was no use in worrying about it. It was mere speculation and fear on Hal’s part.

The manor was a frenzy of activity in the days leading up to the wedding ceremony. I was nervous and excited, like a debutante awaiting the ball. It was surreal for me, a reality I’d never imagined. And I did everything I could to look and fit the part. I hired aestheticians to come to the house. I was waxed and manicured and pedicured and tweezed and dyed and painted and powdered and moisturised and massaged for days. It got to the point where I almost became tired of it. Almost. But not quite.

The day before the wedding, our guests started to trickle in. Mostly, they were composed of Hal’s compatriots, business allies and old friends. None of his family members from England came. I’d only ever told Hal that my family had all been killed in a horrible accident. Being estranged from them carries too much of a stigma. I would have no guests at the wedding. I’d thought about inviting Kelly, but she seemed a world away. Hal’s guests would have found Sam’s attendance inappropriate. I would have liked it. But at least Timothy would be there. Simon, who had been invited, had made up a convenient story about having to be out of town.

On the morning of the big day, I met with my hair stylist and makeup artist and otherwise spent the morning preparing myself. It was a dream wedding, small and intimate, proper and stylish. The wedding planner had transformed a part of the estate and decorated the gazebo with dreamy white lace, dozens of white chairs, white roses and white lilies. The colour scheme couldn’t have been more ironic, as I was hardly pure. Although I supposed that the white was appropriate for Hal and I.

As I walked down the aisle, I felt confident and happy. Hal was waiting for me at the altar. The ceremony was courteously brief and not overly sentimental. Our guests hobnobbed around the afternoon tea affair. Our cake was brilliant—a stunning three-tiered white cake with Italian meringue butter cream, topped with more lilies and roses. Everything was pretty and frilly and the ladies in attendance were ecstatic about pointing out the details to each other.

Meanwhile, I was ecstatically thinking about my wedding night. I was so anxious to give Hal my wedding gift. I desperately wanted to change out of the white, designer dress and into my custom leather harness.

But playing along with the high society niceties had its rewards as well. Hal dipped me during our song as we danced in front of our guests. An elderly lady in a wheelchair, accompanied by a nurse, sat in the far corner and said nothing to any of the guests. Hal told me later that she was his aunt Myrtle, the mysterious benefactor, and that she approved of me.

* * * *

My fateful night had finally arrived. After dinner, our guests left slowly, dawdling back to their rooms to pack their belongings and idly calling their chauffeurs. By the time they’d all made their exits of grandeur, Hal and I were both a bit peckish. Luckily, I had already arranged that the kitchen send a tray of chocolate-dipped strawberries, a bowl of whipped cream, some savoury snacks, some champagne and a jug of refreshing lemon iced tea. Preparations make the occasion, I’ve always believed. Hal was tipped off by the goings on. He was, as usual, taking a moment in his study when I came down to get him.

“There seems to be a fair bit going on tonight,” he observed, though I had convinced myself that he wouldn’t catch on.

“There certainly is.”

“Are you having company?”

“On our wedding night? You could say that. I have a number of racy ideas up my sleeve tonight.”

“Oh? Well, I’ll stay out of your way then.” He looked back down into his book. His glasses rested midway down his nose.

“You’ll do no such thing, Hal.”

He looked at me over the ridge of his glasses. I loved the way he could make eye contact with me, as if he were multi-tasking, like he was more distracted by me than by other preoccupations. There was an intensity about his eyes and a warmth that could not be beaten.

“Oh?” He closed his book but kept his thumb in the spine. “I thought you were preparing for a lover.”

“I am, Hal. You.”

He was perplexed.

“Come here, love.” He patted his lap.

I came to his desk and sat on his thighs. I put my arms around his large neck and leaned my face into him. I loved the way he smelt. It made me feel both safe and excited.

“You know I love you, right?” he whispered.

“Mm-hmm.”

“And you know you can have anyone you want, right?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“So what are you doing this for?”

“What?”

He touched my hair, caressed my cheek, held me. “All of this. Why don’t you save it for someone you’d rather choose?”

“I don’t get it, Hal. What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t want you to feel any kind of obligation. You know I love you the way you are, and I know you love me the way I am, and…”

“Hal, I really love you the way you are,” I said and kissed him softly. He pulled his face back ever so slightly.

“Honey…” I could feel his trepidation, his anxiety rising. He looked at me as if he thought I had forgotten all the rules and ideals we had so carefully established.

“I know what you’re thinking, Hal. Don’t. It’s not like that. Just come upstairs to my room. I have a surprise for you.”

“For me?”

“Yes. I’ve been planning it for a long time. I think you’ll like it.”

“Julie, you never cease to surprise me, with this, especially. Just when I thought I’d finally found a relationship I could understand…”

“What? Are you disappointed? You don’t even know what the surprise is. Have a little faith. You know it’s not going to be me in red lace. Relax.”

Hal smiled his coy smile. I could tell that, underneath his nay-saying, he was sincerely flattered. It was a magic time. We were scaling uncharted territory together. It was a strange mixture of vicarious attraction, fascination and love.

I went back up to my room, pulled my harness on, opened my velvet-lined briefcase and examined my cocks. I had had Simon commission a specially-made carry-case for me that fit each cock perfectly. Simon had liked the idea as much as I did. There was something about having a kit, like a toolkit, that made me feel like more of a magician than a woman, which was exactly how I wanted to feel. If I was going to use props instead of my God-given gifts, I wanted them to be beautiful extensions of me. I wanted them to be as valuable as I was. I had spent thousands on my collection of cocks. I was sure then, and I’m still convinced now, that they are the finest collection this country has ever seen. And no one had seen them but me and Simon, their designers, crafters and carvers…and now Hal.

My ivory cock had a gemstone ring around the base of it. Amethysts embedded in gold, then meticulously ensconced in the ivory in an ornate Rococo-inspired design. The cock itself was slightly curved, so that it would have the appearance of a natural erection. I loved the details on it. It had a head with life-like veins and lines and the texture at the tip was smooth but skin-like to the touch. If not for the temperature and the paleness, it would have made any man an object of envy. I could warm it against my thighs and the pallor suited my own alabaster skin tone. The size was smaller than many of the men I had seen, but its shape was what made it so spectacular. My admiration of my own perfect cock gave me a mental hard-on I couldn’t ignore. I was aching to feel myself grind against Hal. I wanted to fuck my husband more than anything I’d ever wanted.