Once Upon a Dream Read online

  And then Caroline is greeting another guest and Mark is sweeping me off to get a drink. Which is when I realize that the slightly uncomfortable parts of my dress are now suddenly very uncomfortable. Several spots across my ass are stinging and hurting. Almost like the atelier left pins in the fabric. But tiny, tiny pins.

  “Are you okay?” Mark asks as we walk. There’s no real concern in his voice, only a kind of wolfish amusement. “Your eyes are looking a little bright.”

  “Fuck you,” I say instinctively.

  “I would, but we’d tear each other apart, my old friend. I’ll take your bag—tuck your phone into that handy pocket of yours, yes, there’s a good girl. Now you should go drink and dance. I see some people I’d like to talk to.”

  I finish slipping my phone into the dress pocket—it’s almost as if my date knew I’d need to keep it close—and hand my clutch to Mark. “Talk to about murder things?”

  “I don’t do murdering anymore,” Mark says. “And even when I did, it was all with the approval of people like you.”

  “Officially, the White House doesn’t condone—”

  My voice falters and I pause, blinking into the crowd.

  “Morgan?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, clearing my throat. “I thought I saw... It’s nothing. Never mind.”

  Except then I see the silhouette again. Broad shoulders. Powerful build. Arms and thighs that even the best tailoring in the world can’t diminish. (And why would any tailor want to?)

  I see the dark hair, the dark stubble, all of it liberally threaded with silver. Olive skin and bright amber eyes. A strong nose and a full, well-formed mouth.

  It’s him.

  “Mark, don’t go,” I whisper, but Mark is already gone, that whoreson bastard prick asshole—

  He is walking toward me, the last man on earth I want to see, ever, ever, and I think I have to escape, I think I have to run away. Where to, I don’t know, and how, I don’t know either because this lavish ballroom is wonderful for hiding in but maybe not for running, and definitely not for running in while wearing fairy wings—and why I am wearing fairy wings at all? I’m forty-two and a grownass woman and—and I decide to flee to one of the mossy alcoves. I’m already trying to slip away when I feel a hand at my elbow. Warm. Large.

  I turn to see my ex-husband staring down at me with an amused expression.

  “Hello, wife,” he says.

  2

  “Ex-wife,” I say faintly, my breath caught somewhere in my chest.

  He nods, that full mouth tipped up at the corners.

  The stubble on his jaw is…edible. There’s no other word to describe it. I have the strange and dismaying realization that I could spend hours licking his face.

  “Ex-wife,” he repeats, and for some reason, it sounds just as intimate as when he said the word wife. Maybe it’s his voice, which has always been husky and deep, or maybe it’s the way he’s looking down at me, his eyes searing hot trails down my dress and then back up again. “You look lovely tonight.”

  “You look handsome.”

  It’s true. Even with a white mask over the top half of his face, he is the handsomest man I’ve ever seen. He’s always been the handsomest man I’ve ever seen.

  I try to regain my footing. “Lorne. What are you doing here tonight?”

  “What, a simple lawyer can’t come to the Constantine masquerade?”

  “You’re not a simple lawyer,” I reply. “You work for an environmental nonprofit that’s probably sued half the people here tonight.”

  He lifts a shoulder in a rakish shrug, still smiling. “I’ve never minded mixing business with pleasure.”

  “I seem to remember a lot less pleasure when we were married.”

  I’m too busy arguing about this to argue about him leading me onto the dance floor, which is how we end up facing each other in the rustling whirl of dancers.

  “And whose fault was that?” he murmurs, pulling me into his arms. His hand settles on the small of my back—intensifying the prickling there—and I’m so close to his chest that the fabric of his tuxedo lapels glides against my bodice. Under the tulle, my nipples harden. “Hmm?”

  I want to say it was his fault, but of course, I can’t. I was the political one, the ambitious one, the work all day and work all night one. I was the one too haunted by my past to relax enough to enjoy the present.

  And of course, there had been one other difference between us.

  One too vast to bridge. Too deep to even try.

  “Morgan,” he says firmly. “Answer me. Whose fault was it?”

  I glare up at him. “Mine, if that’s what you want to hear.”

  He spins me gracefully around, and the prickling of my dress feels like full-on burning now. But the silky underthings are doing their job too, and I’m very aware of the silk cupping me between my legs as I dance, of the delicate garter belt around my waist. Of how my nipples push against the tulle of my dress.

  “It’s not what I want to hear, little witch,” he says, his voice going a little rough, a little possessive over his pet name for me. “Because you’re wrong, you know. It was my fault too.”

  I’m so surprised by this concession that I don’t know what to say.

  He just gives me another small smile. “Morgan le Fay struck speechless. I never thought I’d see the day.”

  And I’m speechless still. As we dance, the burning on my bottom is reaching the point where I imagine flames dancing along my skin. And then Lorne’s hand slides down from the small of my back to grip my ass hard.

  Pain—sharp and fiery—singes my skin. And then right behind it, right on its heels, are contrails of wet, achy pleasure. My cunt kicks hard enough with need that I gasp and stumble, although Lorne keeps us gliding effortlessly through the steps.

  His hand stays though. A handprint-shaped sizzle of pain right on my ass.

  “Lorne,” I manage. “You can’t—there’s something wrong with my dress.”

  “There’s something wrong with your dress? Not ‘Stop, we’re divorced’?”

  I blink up at him. I try to say stop, I really do. But that stubble and that mouth and those amber eyes behind that mask…

  “It hurts,” I whisper instead. “When you touch me there.”

  “Does it?” he asks. “So, if I reached into the slit in your skirt, I wouldn’t find you wet?”

  My mouth parts. No one talks to me that way. I talk to people that way.

  And yet—

  And yet.

  He’s not wrong. And the heat along my backside is sweetly mirrored between my legs now.

  It’s something about this particular pain... just burny enough to keep me on edge, but subtle enough that I can keep dancing, that I can savor the feel of Lorne’s powerful arms guiding me through the steps.

  But I’ve never been one to turn down a dare. I lift my chin and look right into his eyes. “Do it and find out,” I dare back.

  I think I’ve called his bluff. I expect him to scoff, to back down, to smile again in secret amusement but do nothing else.

  But then he does it. Right there on the ballroom floor, right there under the wisteria and roses, he pushes his hand into my skirt and finds the heart of me. Even through the silk panties, I’m embarrassingly wet.

  He makes an impatient noise and moves the silk to the side, his fingers searching out my clit, my entrance. And I know what he’s doing. I know because I’ve done it a thousand times with my own submissives. He’s checking to see if my clit is swollen, he’s discerning for himself how wet I am at the source. All while we keep dancing. All while he keeps me held fast in his arms.

  Panic hits me, fast and cold. “Lorne, you can’t, there are too many people—”

  “Are any of them looking?” he asks, his eyes on mine while his fingers keep probing me. “Are any of them staring at the pretty fairy with the hand between her legs?”

  Swallowing, I swivel my head and check around us. The party is in full swing—the nig
ht is rich with lust and booze—and everyone is too caught up in their own ecstasies and dramas to notice the vice president has her ex-husband’s hand up her skirt. And we’re masked anyway…

  But—

  “I’m supposed to meet someone later,” I blurt. “A date. Mark Tintagel set me up with a date.”

  This seems to bother Lorne not at all. “And you don’t want to meet this date with a wet cunt, is that it?”

  “I—”

  “I don’t mind making you wet for another man,” Lorne says, bending low to whisper in my ear. His fingertips glide back over my clit and begin working it. Small circles. Slow pressure. “As long as you let me. And you are letting me, aren’t you? You’re letting your ex-husband play with you in the middle of a ballroom because you need it so bad?”

  His voice is…it’s different. Not sharp, because Lorne Lothian doesn’t cut, he doesn’t slice—not even in the courtroom, not even on the other side of a conference room table about to sign the papers for his own divorce.

  No, Lorne is like the aged whiskey echoed in the color of his eyes. He pours himself inside you; he burns on the way down. He intoxicates you and thrills you and coaxes himself inside your veins, and before you know it, you’re drunk. You’re drunk with his convictions, his passions, his utter presence, and you’re stumbling with it all, you’re falling down. You’re trying to close your eyes to make the spinning stop and it won’t, it won’t, it won’t.

  It’s enough to make a woman beg for sharpness instead. Because a blade will dull over time—but whiskey? Whiskey only gets stronger with age.

  And neither of us are young anymore.

  “Lorne,” I say. “Stop.”

  He stops, although the minute he’s no longer stroking me, I wish he was. Especially when he brings his fingers to his mouth for a taste.

  I feel like I can’t breathe. “You’re shameless,” I whisper.

  “Better than being ashamed, Morgan le Fay.”

  “Don’t call me that name,” I say.

  I miss you calling me that name; I miss it every day.

  “And I’m not ashamed.”

  We’re still stepping and spinning, but at some point, Lorne maneuvered us to the periphery of the dancing. “I think you are,” he says. “I think you’re so ashamed that you can’t even speak your desires out loud. I think you’re so ashamed that you’d rather divorce a man than admit you want him.”

  I stop dancing, glaring up at him. His hand is still on my ass. “Is that what this is about? The divorce?”

  A smile under his mask. “Not the divorce, no.”

  “Sure feels like it,” I mumble.

  “Can’t a man dance with his ex-wife? Can’t he play under her skirt a little?” To emphasize his point, he pulls me close—close enough that my thighs have to part around his. And the pressure of that muscular, tuxedo-clad thigh against my pussy nearly undoes me. I slump against him and pant like an animal in heat.

  This was why I divorced him. He makes me drunk, and he makes me senseless. He slides into my soul and whispers my secret desires back to me. He wants my control—my surrender—and I can’t give it to him. I can’t give it to anyone.

  Except you want to, don’t you?

  That’s what you couldn’t admit in the car.

  After all these years, you want something different, and you’re afraid.

  “Come here, sweet witch,” he says, releasing me from his arms, but taking my hand in his and guiding us to one of the mossy alcoves in the ballroom. Living branches arc above us, hung with lights and flowers, and a gauzy fabric hangs like curtains around us. We aren’t invisible, but we are mostly hidden, and it’s hard not to feel that we are in some kind of fairy glen, alone in a forest.

  But I can’t be alone with Lorne, I think as he turns and faces me. I can’t, I can’t, because I will drink him all down, I will tumble right into those scotch-colored eyes and drown.

  “I can’t do this,” I say, my voice shaking. “Like I said—I’m meeting someone, and I can’t—”

  I can’t get lost in you again. It terrifies me.

  “Why are you meeting someone here, at a party in Bishop’s Landing?” Lorne asks, folding his arms and leaning against the ballroom wall behind him. “Why, Morgan, when I know you could ensorcel any Lyonesse submissive you wanted into bending the rules for you?”

  I don’t want a submissive.

  “I don’t fuck club subs,” I say instead.

  Lorne levels a look at me like he sees right through my deflections, which he probably does. He always has. “So instead of literally any other option, you asked a former assassin to set you up on a date.”

  “Mark is the most discreet person any of us know, and anyway, it’s not like there’s a hookup app for vice presidents.”

  Lorne’s posture doesn’t change. His voice stays the same. And yet there’s something different when he speaks. “You could have called me.”

  I try to mirror his posture and lean against the wall too, except the damn wings—and fuck—my dress. With a hiss of pain as the burning and prickling renews itself on my backside, I straighten up again. “I didn’t call you for a very obvious reason.”

  “That we’re divorced?” He gives me an expression like I’m being very boring and prudish right now.

  “No, Lorne,” I huff. “Because I’m not a submissive.”

  “I never said you were.”

  “But you wanted me to be.”

  His eyes darken then. “I only wanted you to be yourself.”

  “But that’s the problem with you. When I was with you, I felt like I was being myself. I felt like I wanted it, but I couldn’t have. I can’t want that. I don’t want that.”

  “How do you know?” my ex-husband asks calmly.

  I sputter. “Because I’m Morgan Leffey. I love power. I’ve built my entire life around power, around getting more of it, around holding onto it. And before you, I’ve always craved power in bed. Always. And then you showed up, and I—I got confused. You made me think that I could give all that up, that I could give up everything I am—”

  He comes off the wall in an instant, taking my elbows in his hands like he wants to shake me senseless. “I never wanted you to give up a single thing,” he says, his eyes searching mine. “Do you understand? Never. I knew what you wanted—I know what you still want. You want the White House for yourself, just as you always have, and there was never a moment I wouldn’t have been proud to be the man at your shoulder. The partner in your shadow. I have never, ever, wanted to steal your glory, Morgan, I have never wanted to dull your shine. It never bothered me that everyone else might think me your prop or your plaything, I would have given you everything of mine—including my own career—to help further your ambitions.”

  Conviction burns in his voice, and his eyes are hot and honest on my face.

  “Do you understand? Do you understand now? What you imagined—what you are still imagining—was never what I wanted. I never asked you to give up a single thing then, and I never would now.”

  “But when we were alone…”

  “I still only wanted what you did,” Lorne says, his hands tightening on my elbows. I shiver a little, remembering them rough on my ass, possessive between my legs. “I only wanted what you still want.”

  “I’m not a submissive,” I say thinly. “I know I can’t be. I would have known before now, I would have felt differently before now—”

  “I’m not asking for you to choose between words, Morgan, and that was never what our marriage was about anyway. I couldn’t have cared less what you called yourself, as long as you called yourself mine—as long as you stopped hating yourself for what you wanted from me when we were alone.”

  My pride flares. “I never hated myself.”

  Lorne’s eyebrow arches above the line of his mask. “Oh, is that so?”

  “Well, I never hated myself for that,” I amend.

  I have ten thousand other reasons for self-loathing, and I’ve commi
tted sins that will bar me from the gates of heaven, which he now knows. He didn’t during our marriage, but when my sins caught up with me two years ago, they caught up with everyone around me—splashed on every magazine cover and dissected on every cable news show for months. Lorne and I were well and thoroughly divorced by then, but he still learned my greatest pride and my greatest shame along with the rest of the world.

  His eyes soften, and so do his hands. He pulls me closer into him, and I can smell the clean bite of mint and soap that always lingers on his skin. “I’m sorry you had to go through that alone,” he murmurs. “I wanted to be there for you so badly. I would have, if only you would’ve let me.”

  I close my eyes and nod. I know he’s right; I believe him.

  When the news broke, he called and called and called. He texted, he offered to sue every magazine and news corporation on my behalf. He showed up at my door and I hid in the kitchen until he finally went away.

  “Why didn’t you let me help?” he whispers, his lips in my hair. “Why do you never let me help?”

  “You know why,” I say, resting my forehead against his shoulder.

  “Because my help frightens you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because accepting it feels like a concession of need.”

  I shudder. “Yes.”

  “And a concession of need is too close to...”

  “Don’t make me say it, Lorne,” I beg. “I don’t want to say it.”

  Frustration ripples through him. “You’ve broken both our hearts because you’re afraid of a word. A word that doesn’t even have to be yours.”

  I pull back enough that I can look up at him. He doesn’t understand—how could he ever understand? He’s brilliant and handsome and driven, he’s got a face made for idealism and sin, he’s got stubble that people would pay money to feel scratching against their thighs. Of course he’s a Dominant, of course he can waltz into a club, into a bedroom, into a cold, political girl’s heart and make himself the king there. But when an otherwise powerful woman is a submissive, it’s a tacit confirmation of something. It’s acceding to the sinister notion that all women secretly crave submission somewhere, and I refuse to be a party to that.