A day before Papa was due to return, Alana and I ventured into the woods surrounding the mansion. We took a quad-bike down a well-trodden path and parked on the bank of a stream we had to wade through to reach our little island. The ‘island’ was a small rise of grass, crowned by a single sycamore that split the quietly gurgling water.
We laid out our quilt for our princess picnic, and for lunch, shared a Mediterranean antipasto platter and a bottle of Prosecco.
Sated, we lay together content in our silence. It was one of those rare spring afternoons, the weather was perfect and I didn’t have a single care in the world. The sky was a clear blue; a cool soft breeze kept the heat of the sun from being overbearing.

“What are you thinking about?” Alana asked turning onto her side to face my profile.
“Life.” I shifted onto my side too and draped one leg over her hip.
She blew out a breath. “Heavy.”
I’d been putting off calling the registrar’s office to see if I could be reinstated. Mum had been a nurse and before she fell sick, I was sure I’d follow in her footstep. Now I wasn’t sure.
I missed her, missed being able to talk and reason with her. She would have understood my reservations even though I could barely put into words why I suddenly had no heart for it. Maybe I was shellshocked, running away from a major reminder of her. Or I just needed a change, and to come to grips with the fact, school was no longer for me.
“I don’t think I want to return to school.” The words fell off my lips, as they always do when I’m around Alana.

She had that effect on me.
“What were you studying?” she asked, lightly raking her fingers along my thigh.
“Nursing. I don’t have a passion for it anymore.”
“What made you want to go into nursing?”

“My mum was a nurse.” I shifted again, laying on my back. Overhead the leaves rustled in a passing breeze. “I used to dream once I got my masters, we’d open our own holistic practice. But…” I clamped up.
My day had been going great, and I didn’t want to sour it with thoughts of the past.
“You could peruse another career.”
 Sure, if only I had something else in mind.
 “How about business?” Alana offered, when I said nothing.
“Pfft.” I dismissed. “You might as well tell me to be a mathematician.”
“Bhahaha.” Alana sat up and pulled out her sketchbook from the basket. “Well, you can always moonlight as my model.”
I perked up. The wicked woman had been drawing me for weeks. If I hadn’t woke to the sound of her pencil scratching paper I might never have found out the truth. Still, she refused to show me her work.
Did that stop me from pestering her? Of course not. I pounced. My fingers barely grazed the book as she leapt to her feet.
“Tsk, tsk,” she shook her head. “And to think I was going to draw you.”
I struck a pose, hand over my brow and my back bowed like a damsel in distress. “Draw me.”
She giggled. “Did you wear my gift?”
Pulling to my knees I reached for the hem of my summer dress and dragged it over my head to reveal the fishnet body-stocking I wore beneath.
Alana licked her glossy pink lips.
I squat low, parted my knees, leaned back and grabbed my ankles. Parts of my body, my nipples and crotch strained against the net sheathing my body.
“How about this pose?”
“Goddess,” she hissed, her roaming gaze settled between my thighs. “Your pussy is bursting out of it.” The words were so quiet, I doubted Alana realized she spoke out loud.
“No?” I leaned forward, arched my back and tooted my ass in the air. “How about this?”
She squeezed the hard eight-inch she’d been wearing all day for me. The strap-on came in the morning a day after I ordered it. My little Cinderella had been none too pleased with the idea of me using it on her.
“This is more than enough for me.” She’d cupped my pussy and kissed me deeply before she dropped to her knees and showed me with her skilled mouth just what she meant by ‘enough’.
Oddly enough, she was more than eager to use it on me but only after she was through punishing me for purchasing it. She had been a walking pussy-tease all day.
Alana traced her hand over the globes of my ass with gentle reverence. “The way I want to eat you out is ungodly.” She gave my nether lips a soft kiss from behind. “If I start now,” peck, “I won’t,” peck, “stop.”
“Don’t stop,” I moaned, rocking back into her quick kisses.
“Just a little,” she gave in. Spreading my cheeks wide she licked me through the net.
“Mm-mm just like that.”
“You like when I eat your pussy, Mistress?”
“Oh, yes. Don’t stop.” She shoved her tongue into my hole; face pressed into my ass. My whole body jerked as I spread myself wider, wanting her deeper. “Fuck me,” I begged, breathless.
Two more strokes of her tongue and she sucked me into her mouth, pulling hard. She hummed, sucking my gushing pussy.
“More, Mistress. Fill me up.” Her tongue lashed my clit, a whip, driving me to the edge.
“Arggh, oh fuck yes.” I fisted the quilt as I came apart on her tongue. “ALAANA.”
Easing up, she spread my ass cheeks wide and spat on my pussy. We both watched from different angles as her saliva slid down my slit and dripped onto the quilt.
“If it was possible I’d spend every waking hour and the sleeping ones too, eating you out.”
I collapsed on my stomach laughing.
She chuckled. “Get on your side Mistress, pose for me. I want to see these fat lips covered in my spit on display.”
An hour later, long after she’d arranged me in the pose she wanted, and the wind had dried her salvia on my skin, I was still horny.
“Stop fidgeting.” Alana’s hand paused mid stroke, her gaze lifting off the page of her sketch book to look at me.
“I can’t help it.” I grinned, shifting my right leg back into place. 
I lay on my side, propped on my left elbow for balance, my right leg bent, overlapping the other, and my back partly turned toward her as I looked over my shoulder.
“I think I ripped the stocking,” I said working my finger to widen the bit covering my sex.
Alana sighed, setting her book and pencil down she pulled to her feet. “You’re impossible.”
I rolled over, laying on my opposite side. “Not true.” I bit down on my bottom lip, my breath spiking as she walked toward me.
The micro-mini denim shorts riding low on her hips did nothing to hide the massive dick print she casually squeezed and stroked.
She stopped a few feet away. “Like what you see, Mistress?”
I nodded. “I think I’ve been punished long enough.”
“I don’t know,” she edged. “Maybe you want the real thing. Aren’t you seeing Bash, later?”
“Yes, I see Bash every night, just like I see you every day.”
“And what if there are nights, I want to see you?”
I sat up, the sudden shift in our conversation had taken on a serious tone. “I guess you’d tell me, and I’d have to do something about it.”
She stepped forward and knelt between my legs. Her blue gaze locked with mine. “Good, this is me telling you.”
 I rose up on my knees to meet her at eye-level. “You said you could handle me being with Bash.”
“I did and I am. I don’t care that you fuck him or anyone else. Just as long as he knows he has no more right to your time than I do.”
“He’s not your forever.” The finality in those words cut through the air between us.
“Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say to her.
We’d gone from flirty sexual tension to a pair of awkward jagged pieces that no longer fit. The truth of it, I was doing a terrible job of juggling my two lovers all the while pining for the one, I truly wanted. Jax.
“I’m sorry. You don’t do relationships and I’ve made things complicated.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” I said quietly.
She laughed. “It is. But not for the reasons you think.”
“Enlighten me.”
“I don’t want this between us.” She unbuttoned and unzipped her shorts and, pulled out her silicone cock.
“Then take it off.” Mistaking her meaning I reached to help her unfasten it.
It really wasn’t important. The last thing I wanted was to offend her, which it seemed I had. It wasn’t as though I was hard up for dick; like she said, Bash dropped by to beat my pussy up nightly.
Alana placed her hand over mine and stopped me. She kissed me, hard, desperate even.
When she broke the kiss she looked me in the eye, searching for something I prayed from the very bottom of my heart she found. I didn’t want to lose Alana. She had quickly become my confidante, my true north in the storm brewing around me.
“I want more. I want when I enter you, it isn’t about the dick or chasing your next nut. I want it to be about us. Am I asking for too much, tell me I’m not.”
“You’re not.” I barely got the words out and she was kissing me again.
She reached between us and ripped a hole in the net covering my crotch. With the same brute force, she tugged her shorts off and kicked them away. Our mouths were fused together as she guided me to lay down and climbed on top of me.
I gasped for breath when she finally broke the kiss. Her eyes were dark, too serious.
“I’m going to make love to you, until you scream my name and beg me to never let you go.”
My chest rose with every breath. If she listened closely, I was certain she could hear my heart bucking like an untamed horse. I’d been running from this, avoided catching feelings at all cost. Yet there I was, caught, with no quick comebacks. I wasn’t even doing the usual shuffle and sliding I usually did when I was around Jax, backpedaling my way out of the lasso tightening around my heart.
She kissed me all over, her lips a whisper on my skin, her touch tender, reverent.
“Shit, Alana.” I gasped as she wet two fingers and eased them into me. “Do you even know what you’re doing to me right now.”
A grin split her face as she lined her dick head up with my entrance and entered me. “Getting you in touch with your feelings.”
I laughed. What else could I have done, she was right.
Alana pulled back and thrust deep, seating herself. I locked my legs around her waist and with my arms around her neck pulled her down until her chest was flushed with mine.
“Don’t disappoint me.”
“Don’t you ever fucking leave me.”
“I’d rather die.”
Our mouths crashed together. For the first time in my life, someone held and made love to me…no for the first time I let go of my fear of committing to someone.
Jax would have been proud, even though it wasn’t him.
Alana tore down the path at breakneck speed. Thunder clapped overhead, and the once clear sky, now darkened, lit-up with jagged flashes.
The quad shot out of the forest nearly airborne from how fast we were going, straight into pandemonium. An army of staff and hired hands setting up for Morana’s, A Night in the Secret Garden, swarmed the grounds. Under the sharp direction of my aunt’s companion, Julisa, men and women darted in and out of the maze, hastily covering everything before the downpour. Over a dozen quads zipped around shuttling supplies from the garden to the maintenance bay, where half of the equipment was being stored.
“Look out!” I shouted.
Alana swerved to avoid colliding with another quad brimming with boxes of décor and two frazzled women, who jumped off the manicured grass onto the private drive slightly ahead of us.
“Sorry,” the woman behind the wheel shouted.
I waved her on, leaning into the sharp turn Alana made, headed toward the carriage house, away from the chaos.
The first fat drop hit the windshield seconds before Alana cleared the entrance. She parked and I jumped off, grabbing the picnic basket and quilt. I’d donned my summer dress again to hide the fact I wasn’t wearing anything but the ruined fishnet body-stocking beneath.
Alana climbed down and I quickly slapped the quilt at her crotch, covering the unmistakable bulge. She giggled, grabbing the quilt and holding it in place.
“People are going to think we’re freaks,” I groused.
“Since when do you care what people think?”
“I don’t. But this is my daddy’s house.”
“True.” Alana was all smiles as she leaned in and pecked my lips. “But I wonder,” she whispered, “if your daddy knows how much of a cock-hungry slut his daughter is.”
Behind us, the rain fell in heavy grey sheets, cutting visibility down to nothing.
“What daddy doesn’t know, won’t hurt him.”
Grinning, Alana moved the quilt aside and brazenly squeezed the thick bar pressing against the front of her shorts. “You want this again, don’t you?”
I pinched her nipple hard and ran squealing as she chased me through the house all the way to my wing. The halls were empty save for a staff here and there. The house wouldn’t stir for another few hours, and since papa was away, I’d decided to skip the nightly gathering.
We collided, crashing into my door. She dropped the quilt at our feet. I was pressed up against the barrier, my back arched as she reached around and squeeze my breasts.
Our mouths found each other over my shoulder, and I no longer cared to open the door. Her hands slid down my sides. I moaned into her mouth, hot and ready as she reached under my dress and gripped my hips.
“You feel that?” she asked, thrusting into my backside.
“Mm, is all that for me?”
I rolled and ground my ass into her shallow hip thrusts, too engrossed in our naughty fun to realize we were not alone.
A throat cleared and we sprang apart like two startled kittens up to no good.
I spun around. My mouth dropped open.
“P-pappa.” I stuttered at the same time Alana blurted, “ohmygod.”
“Master,” she stared wide eyed up at him, then remembering, she quickly composed herself and dropped her gaze. “Welcome back.”
Alana’s breath rushed out of her on a startled squeak as we both noticed at the same time the massive dick print, barely concealed by the scarp of denim covering her lower half. She spun around showing Papa her back, and her entire ass hanging out of the shorts. Rushing to smooth out my dress I stepped forward to block her from Pappa Knight’s view.
“Papa, you’re back early.”
My father, bless his heart looked everywhere but, our direction. It was the first time I saw colour in his face.
“Everything went well?”
“Yes, business concluded ahead of schedule.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re back.”
He nodded. “I will see you at the gathering.”
At this point, I knew it was neither a suggestion nor a question but an expectation.
“Yes, Papa.”
Blessedly, Aldis was still away, so I didn’t have to see his stupid face.
  Papa grunted a quick goodbye and disappeared behind his door. Alana and I burst through mine a few seconds later. The door slammed shut behind us and we fell all over each other, laughing our asses off.
“I’ll never be able to look him the eye again.” I said cupping my warm cheeks.
“Well, I don’t have that problem, I’ve never once looked him in the eye. Master Knight is…intimidating. My God,” she blew out, “how can I go on after this?”
This sent us into another bout of laughter.
“Just pretend it never happened,” I told her.
“Easier said than done.”
In a move to distract her, I tugged her close and kissed her. “You could start by finishing what you started.”
A storm rolled in, and it rained for three days straight.
On the fourth morning, the sun peaked out, weak and pale against a grey sky. But by midday, the tightly pack clouds broke apart. The few that remained were white puffs scattered over a vault of bright blue.
Alana was off at her weekly, mandatory meeting with the other companions. Yes, every single member of the Knight family had a companion. Save for Julisa, and Devine, Calister’s girl, whom I ran into on my first night, I’d yet to meet any of the others.
It was late afternoon, and I’d just returned from lunching with Papa and Aunt Olida. Eager to take advantage of the weather, I quickly changed out of my blue, off-shouldered romper jumpsuit into a yellow bikini, shorts set. Slathered in sunscreen I grabbed my favourite ray-bans from the dozens I owned, slapped a straw-hat on my head and walked barefooted down to the pool.
“Heya,” I greeted the young female staff standing in the pool, the leg of her uniform pants rolled up to her knees.
I didn’t know this one.
“Good day, Mistress.” She paused in stacking the ice-bar on my canopied, floating island raft and smiled up at me. “I’m Michie.”
“Hi, Michie.” A strong wind skimmed over the water. “Oh, damn, it’s colder than it looks,” I said, hugging myself.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Would you prefer I set up in the grotto.”
“No,” I waved off, to save her the trouble of unpacking the raft and setting it up again.
“I brought up a few snacks I hope you’ll enjoy.”
“Thank you, it looks delicious,” I said, eyeing the pitcher of mojito next to the platter of fruit skewers and plate of savoury shrimp bites.
Michie finished stacking the bar with bottles of water, and my favourite cans of tropical punches.
“Whew.” I shivered, wading the shallow end of the beach-entry pool.
I climbed onto the raft and quickly dried off my legs with one of the towels folded neatly stacked next to a bouquet of blue-pink roses.
Papa. I grinned knowing the roses were from him; all because I’d remarked over lunch red roses were played-out.
He’d argued the colour was a classic, and for a reason.
Childishly I blew him a raspberry, further disagreeing with a thumbs down.
“Would you like a glass?”
I thanked her but declined her offer to stay and wait on me. Stretched out with my head propped up on a pillow, I sipped my cocktail and scrolled through my socials. Laughing at a few videos, I saved those ones and shared a good amount with Jax.
Of course he didn’t respond. I drank more, and pretended, his silence didn’t gut me.
For a while, I even forgot about the wicked breeze blowing through the garden. I closed my eyes, exhaled and imagined I was sunbathing on a yacht somewhere in the French Riviera.
The bitch wind was unforgiven and soon I abandoned my raft for the grotto, where it was much warmer and the water gloriously pleasant. I splashed around for a little. By then I was onto my third glass of mojito.
The speakers were blaring. And I was as loud rapping along with Trick Daddy. “‘cause I’mma thug.”
My playlist shuffled to Jay-Z ‘Forever Young’ and suddenly I’m Mr. Hudson singing my heart out on the chorus. “Forever young, I wanna be forever young. Forever and ever…”
I climbed out of the pool, tipsy and light on my feet. Whistling I grabbed a large towel, wrapped it around my body and stretched myself out on one of the loungers overlooking the water.
Within minutes, the steady drumming of the waterfall and warmth of the grotto lulled me to sleep.
          I woke sometime later with my back against a firm chest and a hand, too big to be Alana’s, kneading my breast.
         “Hm,” I hummed, tilting my head back as my nighttime lover dropped soft kisses on my shoulder and along the length of my neck. “What time is it?” I asked drowsily.
         “The moon’s up, my little peach.”
         That voice.
For a heartbeat, my whole body locked. Then my muscles went slack. My mouth flew open, but the scream never came. His hand clamped over it, as he rolled on top of me and pinned me to the lounger.
         “Don’t,” he warned, brushing the hair out of my face with his free hand.
         I bucked, kicking my legs out from under him. “Get off me.” My muffled words died behind the palm of his hand.
         Aldis sighed, holding still until I stopped thrashing.
My harsh breathes filled the silence between us. Chest heaving, I willed myself to calm down.
“Good.” Resting his chin on the back of the hand clamped over my mouth, he stared at me. “There’s no need for panic,” he said conversationally, his warm breath fanning over my face. “If my intentions were to hurt you…” he let the words linger between us.
“Get off me.”
He ignored my muffled grunts. “Did you miss me? I’ve missed you.”
I could no longer hear him. My pulse roared in my ears, drowning out everything else. My chest heaved, and every instinct screamed one thing—fight.
“Get off me!!” I thrashed, bucking wildly to get him off me.
Aldis rolled off me and stood in one fluid motion.
I flew up, my stance wide, hands balled into fists. “If you ever touch me again, I’ll kill you.”
He ignored my warning, speaking as if I’d said nothing.  “I’ve had time in the dark to think on all the ways I plan on touching you, again.” A slow grin slid over his face. “Next time my sweet peach, you’re going to beg me.”
“You’re a sick fuck.”
He gave me a sailor’s solute and walked off. Halfway across the room, he stopped and looked back. “Oh, this never happened.”
I stood there, shaking. My thoughts tangled. Terror skated up my spine and I didn’t know why.
Had I woken from a nightmare?
I couldn’t remember.