“So we get there,” Owen continued, “and there’s another family with the photographer, so we have a little lag time. There was a hot chocolate stand at the top of the walkway.”
“Out of nowhere, Lowell starts freaking the fuck out.” Grayson’s voice vibrated against her arm as she leaned into him. “He’s writhing around and yelling like he’s possessed. Bear in mind, this is during the Christmas Market, so there are people everywhere. He had brought his guinea pig, shoved it into his sweater, because that’s obviously a great way to treat a guinea pig, and it was scratching his chest.”
“Mom tells him to give me the guinea pig and put it in the car, so it doesn’t get hurt, and he has a meltdown.” Jackson was chuckling at the memory as Trapp continued the story.
“Gray volunteers to bring the thing to the car, and then he and Jackson start arguing over this chore neither one of them can complete because Lowell won’t give it up. Now he doesn’t throw temper tantrums like normal kids. He was that kid who threw the sort of tantrums that made everyone in the vicinity stop to watch, you know what I mean? Like, every other mother is feeling sorry for whose ever kid that is, while also feeling really smug that it’s not theirs.”
“He is howling, Vanessa. Howling like it’s the gods damned full moon.” She didn’t know why everything was funnier in their father’s flat, slightly sardonic voice, but she was practically wheezing as he continued. “Screaming that the guinea pig is a part of the family, and if it can’t be in the picture, why should he? And is this how the Hemmings treat members of our family? Are we just going to throw him away like we’re doing to his guinea pig? This is also the night I started smoking again, I believe.”
“Remember what I said about everyone watching?” Grayson added. “It’s like the whole damn town was there standing around in the snow that night, watching one of the Hemming kids lose his fucking mind.”
“These two idiots are still fighting over bringing the guinea pig to the car,” Trapp motioned to his elder brothers.
“Mom told me to bring it to the car,” Jackson cut in, before Grayson quickly interrupted.
“But I had the keys.”
“You only had the keys because you knew I was told to go to the car!”
“And Lowell,” Trapp went on, rolling his eyes, “has his arms wrapped around the railing, screaming that he’s going to jump in and swim away.”
“So I went to get some hot chocolate.” Owen’s words were enough for her to deduce the rest of the story, and she was laughing too hard to be able to form words. “Obviously, you see where this is going.”
“So then dad tells us all that he’s bringing us down behind the falls and pushing us into the tunnel back there. You know, like most parents threaten with grounding or time outs, we got ‘you’ll have to resort to eating each other eventually, and the last one alive will have to survive with the knowledge of what they did,’ because that’s an extremely healthy thing to say to your kids, after all. And he’s Jack Hemming, so he’d probably get away with it.”
“So whatever, mom tells Lowell he can hold the stupid guinea pig because, of course, he always gets his way, and the tears turn off like a switch. He is just fucking beaming in this picture. The photographer tells my mom she should have the finished prints back in a week or so,” Trapp
continued, “but here’s the sheet of digital proofs for her to look over in the meantime, to decide what sort of package she wants to buy.”
“She’s staring at this little thumbnail, and she’s counting.” Grayson’s laughter was rough and deep, twisting something in her core, making her want to drag her nails up his thighs. “She’s counting because she knows something doesn’t look right, but she can’t figure out who’s missing. Then Owen comes wandering up like he’s been hanging out with someone else’s family, drinking his hot chocolate, and dad refuses to do the whole thing over again, so we leave.”
Everyone was laughing too hard at that point to continue, everyone but Owen, who shook his head in disgust.
“You assholes didn’t even know I was gone.”
As they left, his mother gave her a tight hug, saying she hoped they would see her the following month, giving Grayson a pointed look as he bent to kiss her cheek. As they pulled out of the development, Vanessa wondered silently if he would invite her again or if that would seem too much like catching.
They went back to Bridgeton after leaving his parents’ house, an oddly domestic tableau that flipped her stomach with equal parts wanting and dread, but she stretched against him in the center of his big bed all the same, not ready to go back to her apartment and work and the reality that in the morning she would be just another one of the attorneys who worked under him. She liked knowing that there were two Graysons, liked knowing she was the only one with the knowledge, almost as much as she liked him chasing.
“Do you think they liked me?”
She wasn’t sure why it was important to her. It wasn’t as if she was going to be granted some sort of VIP induction into the Hemming wolfpack based on the singular strength that she was fucking their son, but she liked seeing a slightly softer side of him, liked the family she had met, and understood him so much better.
“Of course they did,” he murmured, his voice already heavy with sleep. “You’re perfect. Are you staying the night, or are you leaving?”
“What do you want me to do?” she asked, nuzzling against the side of his chest. Indecision was not a hat she wore well, nor was submission, but perhaps she, too, had two sides in Cambric Creek.
“It doesn’t make a difference to me, but if you’re going to stay, you can jerk me off so I can get to sleep. I’m leaning towards that option at the moment.”
Vanessa raised her head, scowling. She was wrong. There was only one Grayson, she corrected, and he was the fucking worst. She continued giving him her pissy little look, but his eyes were closed, a lazy half smile on his face, and she knew he wasn’t joking. His cock had thickened as he laid naked beneath her — thick but not yet hard. He groaned when her nails dragged over his groin as she shifted down the bed, scratching against the base of his shaft. When she lifted it, pumping his foreskin and relishing the weight of it in her hand, he melted into his pillow.
“Yes, you should definitely stay.”
“Are you sure this is all you want?”
He lifted his head again, squinting down at her. “I’d love a blowjob, but I have an early meeting. I can’t be up all night while you dry heave all over my—” He cut off on a choked gasp when she gripped his testicles, twisting slightly.
“If you’re as smart as you think you are, you’ll stop while you’re ahead.” Vanessa grinned at his obedient silence, continuing to pump him slowly until his slit winked against his shiny pink tip. She slid her tongue into his foreskin, stretching the sheath of flesh away from his head and rubbing its sensitive interior before sliding it down gently and releasing his cockhead with a pop.
“This feels like a very lopsided arrangement, Mr. Hemming.”
“Then climb up here and let me suck on your clit. But be quick about it, rabbit, because I really am tired.”
“I honestly can’t stand you.”
She cupped his balls as she continued to pump his shaft, rolling his fat testicles in her palm, giving each one a bit of stretch. Still want to step on them sometimes. Straddling his face and letting him put his tongue to work did sound appealing, but she had to admit, she was also tired, and the roiling heat that had gripped her the previous several days had been thoroughly extinguished.
Besides, Vanessa was forced to admit to herself — she liked taking care of him this way. His heavy cock would stiffen to steel, her loose movements becoming focused, thumb pressing into his frenulum on every pull, pushing into his root on every downstroke until he was groaning. She liked the moment when he came, the first burst of semen rolling over his cock head onto her hand, while the second and third would be powerful spurts, ropes of white that would land on his chest and belly if she allowed them, the rest pooling at the base of his cock and running over her knuckles.
