Earning Her Keep (Price of Love)

“Atta girl,” I growl, slowing my strokes, drawing my foreskin up over the tip. “You beautiful little slut. Nasty girl in Daddy’s bed.”

With a final, sweet moan of relief, she rolls onto her side, a heaving ball of sweat and cum. I wipe a bead of my own sweat from my brow. Feel my pulse throbbing in my dick as the last of my climax jerks through me.

Still catching my breath, I watch her slowly pull her fingers from her pussy and hold them up, admiring her juices, admiring what she did for me.

And then she slowly rolls over, and paints a fucking heart on my pillow.

In her pussy juice.

CHAPTER 4

Primrose

I’m just starting to doze off when I hear the click of the doorknob as it swings open and Ethel bursts in, looking as mad as a cat stuck in a staticky dryer.

“You hussy!” she yells.

Ruh-roh.

I scramble off Mr. Philipe’s bed, covering myself as best I can with his robe. But it’s all wonky—is that the sleeve or the hem? No matter what I do, I find I’m jiggling and wiggling and showing off something to Ethel that I most definitely shouldn’t be.

“Harlot!” she sputters.

Ooof!

“Come on, now, Ethel.”

“Strumpet!” she yells.

Hussy? Harlot? Strumpet?

I clutch the terrycloth to my boobs and pray I’m not showing any other bits and bobs. “Did you steal my Jane Austen? Why are you talking like that?”

“Tart!”

Who knew she’d become a walking 1805 thesaurus when she got angry? “Ethel, I can explain. I promise. It isn’t what it looks like!”

“It’s exactly what it looks like! You, naked, in Mr. Philipe’s bed!”

Welp, she’s got a point. Eeeeeesh. This is bad.

“I’m just here, you know, doing a deep cleaning.” I give her my best and most innocent smile. “Just checking this and that.”

But she’s not having it. Of course not.

“You know the rules,” she snaps, the little wrinkles around her lips deepening, grabbing me by the arm and tugging me forward. “No warning, no notice. You’re fired!”

The lovely safety of the last month dissolves and the full scale of what is about to happen hits me like a punch to the stomach.

What was I even thinking? I am stupid? Just like Judith always said?

Without this job, I have only one option. In my mind’s eye, I see the bus I arrived on reversing course, and me going back to Judith. And Tony. And that life that I can’t bear to live. Having no money and no choice and no hope. My stomach sours, bile singeing the back of my throat.

My tears are instantaneous, sheeting right down my cheeks, still warm from the tub and the orgasm, like a mirror image of the sleet on the day I arrived. “Ethel, please. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Her eyes widen. There’s a ferocious lioness behind those baby-blues. “That’s not my problem. Get your naked self out of this room, get the things you came with and get out of this house!”

She squeezes even harder and I eep out a little scream. I’ve heard of old-man strength, but post-menopausal strength is a whole different beast. Geez.

“Okay, okay!” I shriek. “Easy, Ethel! You’re hurting me!”

Out of nowhere, one of the mirrors on the far wall swings open with a bang and I jump. And there he is.

Mr. Philipe.

I instantly tense, expecting him to give me both barrels of wrath to join Ethel’s barrage of insults.

“Get your hands off of her, Ethel,” he growls. “Right this motherfucking second.”

Ethel releases me instantly and staggers backward.

I instinctively clutch my arm where she’d been digging her bony fingers into my bicep and hiss. Mr. Philipe locks eyes with me and I draw back. What’s about to happen here?

“Are you okay, Emily?”

Am I okay?

He’s asking if I’m okay. He’s not yelling at me.

I nod. “Yes. I’m…”

But the words are caught in my throat. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him not in the shadows but in the light. And my goodness, he’s gorgeous. He’s in his early forties I’d guess. Dark brown hair, deep as dark chocolate. He’s tall and muscular, thick with pure power. His eyes are a lovely green, more emerald than hazel, and they just…melt me.

While I’m swimming in those green pools, Ethel regains the power of speech, apparently, and coughs a little noise of interruption. As if she walked in on us alone together. “What are you doing here, Mr. Philipe? It’s 11:45 on a Tuesday!”

He groans out a kind of not this again noise. “But it’s a damned good thing I was home, wasn’t it? If you left even a mark on her, Ethel …”

“I’m fine,” I say again, rubbing my bicep hard enough to make the skin hot under my fingertips. “Really. I am. And she’s absolutely right. I don’t even know what I was doing in here.” Somehow, I manage to squirm my way into the robe, and I cinch it tight around me. My hands are trembling and I clutch the ends of the tie tight.