Late

Wooo, a double entry, we all know how i love that!

Anywayz, because my reader, the incomparable Yelling Pigeon, has already guessed as much, I figured I'd post this next vignette to validate her wonderful imagination for plot and scandal!

I had it written and she was all over it already! Maybe i'd better try harder to shock and subvert?!?!?

Anyway, this takes place just a little bit BEFORE the Sick Day.  It is a little... um... revelatory about Vaughan Grey and Velvet's little side relationship...

Enjoy ;)

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Velvet was late. 

She was so busy being a young mother of four that she hadn’t been paying attention and she hadn’t been careful.

Now she was staring at the kitchen calendar with some distress, flipping back a month, flipping back another.

Shit.

With a measure of panic she tried to remember the date of her last ‘appointment’ with Vaughan.

Oh, God damn it.

She felt a heavy stone crash to the floor of her middle, and her heartbeat just about quadrupled.  Her mouth went dry and her eyes welled up.

Please, God, no.  Please.

She closed her eyes and tried desperately not to fly into hysterics.  Breathe.  Think.  Breathe.  With grim determination she opened her eyes once more and studied the calendar once again, as if willing it so might change the awful fact that she hadn’t bled since the last time she’d fucked her ex-husband.

“What’s the matter, Love?” 

She jumped a mile at the warm kiss atop the back of her head, the long arms wrapping around her from behind, and the sweet intimate murmur of Jonah’s voice against her skull.

“Oooh.  Sorry.”  He chuckled softly.  “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Velvet swallowed and placed a shaking hand over her heart—it was pounding so hard she was suddenly afraid he might just hear it and get suspicious.  “You snuck up on me.”  She gushed in a feathery voice, hoping she sounded like her adorable self despite feeling anything but.

She felt like a whore, and a lunatic, and a criminal, and a victim, and a frightened little girl all at once.

“Sorry Sweetheart.”  He murmured again, squeezing a little tighter, pulling her small, delicate body against his and nuzzling affectionately into her hair.  “Mmmm.”  He sighed, cozy and warm.  “Everyone’s in bed—finally—and maybe, if we’re very lucky—“  He chuckled almost giddily, “Maybe they’re actually asleep by now too.”

She let out a soft little laugh.  “Wishful thinking, Mr. Delaney.”  She cooed, spinning in his embrace and going up on tiptoe for a kiss.  He kissed her sweetly, with just an edge of something hungry and needy.

What was she going to do?  She could hardly think straight.  She’d been ill that morning, and the morning before, and, come to think of it, the morning before that!  But she’d ignored it because the flu was going around.  Grey’d stayed home from school with it last week.  She’d figured she would come down with it, and so the vomiting, the upset stomach, the aches, and the dragging exhaustion all seemed par for the course.

Ugh.  Golf metaphors?

“Hey.”  Jonah said, pulling back from the kiss and peering at her.  “Where are you?”  His voice was all gentle concern.  He ran two knuckles down the side of her face lightly and searched her visage as if he might be able to divine her troubling secrets.

She nuzzled into his hand and did her best to smile sweetly.  “I don’t know what we’re going to do about those twins.”  She supplied immediately.  She was very good at lying to her husband.  She hated doing it, but she had to do it, and so, she reasoned that she’d better learn to do it well.  She lived to make Jonah happy; to make him as happy as he made her every day.  He was a good man.  The best man she’d ever met. 

He didn’t deserve a wife that fucked around on him with her sonofabitch ex-husband twice a year at his fucking command.  Her frown deepened and Jonah looked genuinely sympathetic.

“Did they give you trouble at nap time again?”  He asked, moving his hands to gently massage the tension from her bird-like shoulders.  She closed her eyes and enjoyed how large and strong—and yet how gentle—his hands felt on her petite frame.

She nodded.  “They just play and sing and gab away at eachother up there.”  She sighed, moaning just a little at how good his ministrations felt.  He knew just how to massage her.  He was the best husband in the world.

“And we’re done trying to put them in separate rooms?”  He asked carefully.  It was the solution that made the most sense from a purely academic perspective.

“Jonah, you’re not here in the day, you don’t know what it’s like.”  She snapped with a fierce pout.

He promptly kissed that pout, eliciting a begrudging giggle from her.

He pulled back and grinned down at her.  “I know it Angel.”  He assured her.  “I get the picture well enough from the weekend days.  They scream bloody murder at me if I even try to put them down in separate bedrooms.” 

She was glad the topic had so distracted him from her fretting over the calendar.  She wished it could be so easy to forget the dilemma herself.  “I don’t know why they can manage to fall asleep in the same room at night.”  Velvet wondered aloud for what felt like the hundredth time.  This little drama had been plaguing the Delaney household for weeks and weeks now.

“Maybe because it’s so dark.”  Jonah posited, abandoning the massage and pulling his wife in for a hearty bear hug.  “I read them four stories tonight.”  He informed her, trailing his fingers up and down her back slowly and soothingly.  “After that I went in to Ava’s room and she wanted just the one, you know, the one with the princess and the suitors?  But I had to re-read it over twice more.”  He laughed softly.  “I wouldn’t be heartbroken if that damn book got lost somewhere…”

Velvet giggled on cue, but she was only half listening.  If she was…she didn’t even want to think the word, that’s how terrified she was.  But if she was…you know, then it wasn’t necessarily Vaughan’s.  She and Jonah had a pretty active sex life for a couple of exhausted young parents with four small children.  It could definitely be Jonah’s.  It was possible.

But what if it wasn’t? 

She worried her lip and buried her face in his chest, wishing she could hide from this and make it all disappear.

“And then Grey and I got to chapter fifteen in our story—“ He was saying, sounding very pleased and a little proud.  “And he actually looked disappointed when I said we’d need to stop for the night.”  Jonah laughed once and sighed a little.  “Not bad for a book he called ‘stupid’ and ‘boring’ when I first suggested it.”

She murmured some positive response and focused on counting the steady, calm, reliable beats of Jonah’s good heart. 

She should have fought Vaughan harder last time.  When he’d told her he wanted to do bondage.  She should have been more assertive.  More adamant.  Instead she’d capitulated, like she always did when it came to Vaughan, and she’d let him tie her up.  Let him strap her to the bed.

Undeniably it had been hot.  It had been beyond sexy.  She’d felt like a character in a sexy novel; she’d felt scared and aroused and vulnerable and in danger and so turned on she was sure she must have been positively dripping with anticipation and arousal by the time he finally put himself inside her. 

He’d taken his time with the foreplay.  And he’d blindfolded her for some of it.  She’d almost fainted from the terror—he could be a frightening man, her ex-husband, and he’d played a very scary game with scissors. When she got home she told Jonah she’d just decided she wanted a haircut.  She’d cried about the new short length of it for hours after it was done.  She’d cried and Vaughan had smoked his cigar and when she’d finally stopped sobbing he’d made her suck him off so he could run his fingers through the newly shortened tresses while she did it.

And while she was tied up she’d had no say over him—over the contraception.  He’d taken out her diaphragm.  She’d begged him to put it back and he’d laughed at her.  He promised he’d pull out—said he wanted to cover her in his come.  The titillation of knowing her diaphragm was not in place had made her all the more aroused, despite her common sense screaming at her to stop him at all costs.

So she’d stopped her struggling and chosen to believe him. 

And he distracted her with foreplay that just about melted the wall paper from the hotel walls. 

She was ashamed of it, thinking of it now, in Jonah’s loving arms, but she had begged Vaughan, actually begged him to put his cock in her, he’d made her want him so much.

She hated him for that.  For being able to do that to her.  Hated herself for being weak and stupid and awful.

And he had finally slammed into her, and he’d fucked her hard, like a whore gets fucked, and she’d loved it.  Loved being bound and blindfolded and at his mercy. 

And he’d brought her close, so close to the release she desperately needed, and he was close too, and then he’d leaned down and snarled: “I lied Princess—I’m gunna fill you up—and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it.”

She’d screamed then, and struggled against the ties binding her, bucked wildly against him, tried in vain to throw him off her, make him slip out, and he’d just chuckled and thrust harder, deeper, more crushingly into her.  He’d smothered her screams with his broad, rough hand and fucked her like an animal in rut; indistinguishable from a monster but for the deliberate, controlled expression in his terrifyingly cold, dark eyes.

He’d liked the struggle.  Urged her on.  Taunted her so that she’d fight harder.  He’d liked the way she’d clenched around him, tried to squeeze herself closed against him, and thrown her body into wild contortions trying to be free of him.  He’d licked the tears off her face as he pounded into her.  When she bit his hand like a little hell cat he’d slapped her hard and replaced it before she’d even had time to react; he’d been unfazed and probably more aroused than ever.

She realized later that she should have gone limp to spite him, gone corpse-like to deflate his arousal.  But in the heat of the moment she’d panicked—just like he knew she would—and she’d fought like a hellion to wriggle free.

And then he’d come.  Hard and long and gloriously.  Come deep inside her.

And she’d wept beneath him.  Wept bitterly while he remained within her, running his hands possessively over her body, putting his mouth wherever he pleased while he waited for his tumescence to recede all the way.  She’d cursed him and railed at him between sobs and told him how much she hated him.

He’d grinned, forced his mouth on hers until she was short of breath and sure she’d die, and then he’d pulled out of her, pulled a robe on over his nakedness, and left the room without a word.

Left her there.  With his filth stewing inside her. Left her tied up, and naked, and used, on the bed while he went to do whatever the fuck he’d felt like.

She was sure she’d suffered a panic attack there, alone, not knowing when or if he’d be coming back to let her lose.  She’d rather have killed herself than let some hotel worker find her in such a position.

She wasn’t able to see a clock, and at some point she’d finally dozed off, and when he came back the room was pitch black.

He’d woken her by pouring the contents of an ice bucket all over her.

She’d screamed and he’d stuffed a rolled-up pair of socks in her mouth.

Then he’d gone down on her. 

And Vaughan Grey didn’t simply go down on a woman.  He ravaged her with his fingers and tongue and lips and teeth.  He fucked her with his mouth until she was coming, quite against her will.  Coming, wave after wave after blessed wave of release—cresting in pleasure, and laced with bitter, angry regret.

He made her come, there in the pitch black, shivering and humiliated and at the mercy of a man she loathed.  He made her come in the way only Vaughan Grey could—that way that made her feel completely owned by him and bound to him forever.

Then he’d showered, again leaving her there, cold and unable to escape the pervading dampness of the melted ice cubes on and around her.  Left her trembling and moaning and whimpering and begging simultaneously for more and for him to leave her the fuck alone.

When he came back he brought her to another climax with just his fingers while he lazily smoked a cigar.  She still got a little wet thinking about laying bound in that dark hotel room, watching that red-orange ember on the end of his cigar blaze and then dim, flare and then fade while her stroked her steadily toward babbling madness and then to ecstasy.  Still felt tingles all over when she remembered how after she’d come back to earth he’d sucked in on the cigar, long and deep, and then exhaled all of it onto her slick, throbbing sex.

Eventually he’d untied her.  Mocked her by thanking her for a lovely evening.  ‘We’ll have to do it again sometime.’  He’d said with that rancid smirk of his, and she’d wanted to lunge at him, throw herself on him and kick, and bite, and scratch, but he’d quelled her preemptively by reminding her that she’d need to go home to her husband looking fresh as a daisy. ‘It’ll be hard enough explaining the haircut, Sugar, you don’t want to have to try and talk your way around a black eye too.’

So she’d pulled herself up and off the bed with as much dignity and poise as she could muster and she’d carried herself to the hotel bathroom, trying not to look at the hanks of her beautiful hair laying cast-off on the floor.  And she’d showered.  Showered and scrubbed and practically scalded herself in an effort to wash herself clean of what he’d done.  She’d pissed in the shower and hoped the urine would kill any chance of conception—she’d heard that it would—and she reached inside herself and tried to clean out residue that might remain of him.  She’d sobbed the whole time.

“Love?” 

Presently Jonah was looking downright stern.  He’d been trying to get her attention and she’d been lost in those terrible thoughts.

“I’m so tired.”  She confessed meekly.

His stern expression melted into a kind, sympathetic one.  “Of course you are, Angel.”  He said in a soft, smooth voice.  “It’s been a long week.”  He gathered up her small hands in his large ones and brought them to his lips.  “I’m home now though, and you can let me do all the work.”  He smiled at her happily.  “I love weekends with you.”  He told her genuinely.  “I love to make sure you put your feet up and get a little bit pampered.”

She smiled weakly.  “Take me to bed?”

He blinked, momentarily surprised.  “It’s still early.”

“I didn’t mean it was time to sleep.”  She said in a silky tone she only really half-felt.

His eyebrows lifted.  “Ah.”  He said and nodded thoughtfully.  “In that case, love, let’s get you to bed, shall we?”

He slipped her right hand into his left and shut off the kitchen light as they went.  She’d think about this tomorrow.  She’d think about it when he was busy being the perfect father to their perfect little family. 

She knew she had to figure out a way to rid her body of what she was sure was Vaughan Grey’s sordid poison. 

And do it before Jonah ever suspected she was…anything other than completely his.