Chapter 64
The black silk sheets were cold against Brett's back.
Richard had laid him down like something precious, like a bride on a wedding night, in the middle of the huge penthouse bed in Whitefish. The lights were low, the city glittering far below through the glass walls, the room silent except for Brett's ragged breathing.
Brett lay there in his ruined white wedding lingerie — the push-up bra still holding his breasts up, the garter belt twisted around his hips, one white stocking torn at the knee, the other still perfect. His honey blonde hair was a mess around his face, his makeup was destroyed, his cherry lipstick smeared, his eyes red and swollen from crying.
The white satin choker with slutty tramp in cursive still circled his throat, tight enough that he could feel his pulse beating against it.
Richard stood over him for a long moment, just looking, his suit jacket gone, his white shirt unbuttoned at the throat, his sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He looked like a king surveying his kingdom. Like an alpha surveying what was his.
"Mine," Richard said again, softly, like a promise and a threat. "For twenty-three hours, you're mine."
Then he came down onto the bed, his big body covering Brett's smaller one, his weight pressing Brett into the silk, his mouth finding Brett's throat, just above the choker, kissing the frantic pulse there.
Brett whimpered, his hands coming up automatically to push, then faltering, then fisting in the black sheets instead. He didn't know what to do with his hands. He didn't know what to do with his body.
Richard's mouth moved lower, slow and deliberate, tracing the line of Brett's collarbone, the swell of his breast over the white lace bra.
Brett's breath hitched. "Please," he whispered, his voice hoarse and broken and low, the testosterone making it sound like a stranger's. "Please, don't—"
"Shhh," Richard soothed, his breath hot through the lace. "Let me have you, pet."
His mouth closed over Brett's breast, right through the push-up bra, kissing, teasing, his tongue tracing circles that made Brett's back arch off the bed before he could stop it.
The sensation was instant and overwhelming — heat and pressure and something deep and aching that Brett hadn't felt in weeks. Not since the hormones ran out. Not since his mind started going flat and male and distant. Not since he'd started pushing Lance away because he didn't feel like a wife anymore.
It was delicious.
It was horrid.
Brett's hands flew to Richard's silver hair, meaning to pull him away, but instead his fingers tangled and held on, his body betraying him completely.
"Oh God," Brett gasped, his head thrown back into the pillows, his eyes squeezed shut, tears leaking out the corners. "Oh God, it feels— I don't— I'm not—"
"Confused?" Richard murmured against his skin, his voice vibrating straight through Brett's chest. He moved to Brett's other breast, giving it the same slow, worshipful attention, his mouth hot and wet through the lace. "Ashamed?"
Brett nodded frantically, sobbing. "Yes, yes, both, I hate this, I hate my body, I hate—"
"And?" Richard prompted, his hand sliding down Brett's stomach, over the white silk panties, over the smooth front Brett had maintained so carefully.
Brett couldn't answer. He couldn't breathe. His whole body was on fire, caught between shame and a euphoric bliss he didn't understand, a pleasure that felt like coming home to a body he'd been trying to leave.
Richard's hand paused, his palm flat and warm and possessive over the place Brett had been tucking for months for Lance, for himself, for Brielle.
"Let me see you," Richard whispered, his mouth still at Brett's breast, his teeth grazing lightly over the lace. "All of you. The real you."
Brett's eyes flew open, panic cutting through the pleasure like a knife. "No— Sir, please, I'm tucked, I can't, it's—"
Richard looked up at him, his blue eyes dark and absolute, the eyes of a true alpha who was used to being obeyed.
"Untuck for me, pet," he ordered softly, his hand still resting there, waiting. "Let me have all of you. Not just the pretty parts you made for my son."
Brett shook his head, tears pouring down his temples into his hair. "I can't, I can't, it's ugly, it's wrong, I'm supposed to be—"
"You," Richard interrupted, his voice firm and gentle at once, "are supposed to be whatever I tell you to be for the next twenty-three hours. And right now, I'm telling you to let go."
His hand moved, not forcing, just guiding, his fingers hooking lightly into the waistband of the white silk panties.
Brett sobbed once, a deep, broken sound from his chest, his whole body shaking with shame and confusion and a terrible, unwanted anticipation.
Slowly, with hands that trembled violently, Brett reached down and helped him.
He untucked.
The moment his body was free, the moment the pressure was gone, Brett felt a rush of relief so intense it was almost pain, followed immediately by a wave of humiliation so deep he thought he might die from it.
He lay there exposed, in his white bra and garter belt, his body finally honest, his mind screaming that this was wrong, his nerves singing that this was right.
Richard made a low sound deep in his throat — approval, hunger, possession — and his mouth returned to Brett's breast, kissing and teasing, while his hand stayed low, warm and steady and claiming.
Brett arched off the bed with a cry that was half sob, half moan, his hands fisting in the sheets, in Richard's hair, anywhere he could reach.
It was too much. The mouth on his breast, the hand holding him, the choker at his throat, the lingerie he hated, the body he didn't recognize anymore — all of it combined into a storm of sensation that left him confused and ashamed and floating in a euphoric bliss he hadn't felt since before the hormones ran out.
"That's it," Richard praised against his skin, his voice thick. "Let me feel you, pet. Let me feel the man my son fell in love with."
Brett sobbed his name — not Richard, not Sir, just a broken sound — and surrendered completely, his body shaking, his mind blank, his heart breaking in time with every press of Richard's mouth.
Outside the glass walls, Whitefish slept on, unaware that twenty stories above the lake, Brett Sullivan was unraveling in his father-in-law's bed, wearing his wedding lingerie and a collar that called him a tramp, finally feeling something real in a body he'd spent months trying to hate.
Twenty-three hours to go...