“That’s enough!” Richard suddenly explodes. “Remember your manners, boy. You’re under my roof, and you’ll treat me with some damn respect!”
“You mean, the respect you show your family?” St. Clair spits. He shoves back his chair. “I’ve lost my appetite.” He throws down his napkin and storms out.
I nervously get up. “I’m sorry, I should go see—”
“Of course,” Alice says, and gives me a weak smile. “You go ahead, dear.”
I follow St. Clair’s route upstairs and look for him. But he’s nowhere to be found. “St. Clair?” I call, confused. “Charles?”
“Up here.” His voice comes from down the hall. I enter the room at the end to find furniture covered with drop cloths, and boxes of old toys. There’s a ladder pulled down from a hatch in the ceiling, and when I climb up, I find St. Clair sitting in the open window of the attic.
“Hey,” I say, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“You mean after that disaster downstairs?” He sighs. “And there I was thinking my dad could manage to be civil.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.” St. Clair gives me a sad smile. I look past him, out of the window. The dark hills are serene now, resting under a blanket of stars.
“It’s beautiful up here.”
“This is where I used to come as a child. To escape. I would look up at the stars and pretend I was a million miles away.”
He takes my hand, and helps me out through the window. There’s a flat section of roof, and he has a blanket spread out there. I sit next to him, tilt my head back and gaze up at the Milky Way, the millions of white spots scattered like paint drops across the sky. “Beautiful.”
“No one can see us up here.” St. Clair slips an arm around me and holds me closer. “It’s like we don’t have to exist if we don’t want to. For just a brief while.”
I imagine him out here as a boy, butting heads with his dad for being adventurous, rebellious, too smart for his own good. “Was your dad always like that? Even when you were little?”
“Always. He never understood me, never even tried. I wasn’t like him, so I was a huge disappointment.”
“That must have been hard.” I can’t imagine how much it would hurt to have parents who didn’t support me. It was just Mom and me, but she loved me enough to make up for my absent dad.
“He’s such a hypocrite, too,” St. Clair sighs. “Giving me lectures when I take business risks while he’s out drinking and gambling away our family fortune. Those are the real risks.”
I shake my head. “That’s awful.”
“Do you know that I pay all their bills now? All this—” he flings his arms wide, “paid for by me, the loser son. And has Dad once said thank you? Or even acknowledged my contribution?”
I shake my head.
“Bingo—not once.”
“I’m sorry it’s gotten so bad.”
“And it just keeps getting worse. The better the business does, the more success I have, the angrier he gets.”
“Shouldn’t that make him happy?”
St. Clair exhales slowly and stares out into the darkness. “I think he wanted me to follow the family line—be the same as him and his father. It’s like he thinks that I rejected him because I didn’t want to be exactly like him and so he hates me for it. And then I ignored his advice, did things my own way, and my methods worked.” He runs his hands through his hair. “I just couldn’t do it, Grace. I tried, but I couldn’t be a carbon copy kid. I wanted more than that.”
I take his hand. “You deserve more than that. You deserve to be who you want to be, who you really are. You can’t feel guilty for that.”
“Thanks.” He exhales slowly and looks at me, his eyes sad but less angry, and for a moment I’m lost in their color, layered with shades of blue, a gradient of ocean pigments. “How did you get so wise?”
I shrug, not wanting to admit all the time I spent on grief websites and message boards while my mom was sick. “A magician never reveals her secrets.”
He smiles, a glimmer of the St. Clair charm returning. “Oh, so now you’re magic?” He brushes a piece of hair behind my ear. He leans in to whisper, his hot breath on my neck sending shivers down my spine and lower. “What else can you do?”
“Well.” I kiss his cheek. “I’m not sure what you have in mind.” I kiss his neck, just where his collarbone comes together, that spot I spend so much time staring at when he wears his shirts unbuttoned at the collar. He makes a low growling noise in his throat and I shiver with desire. I move my face up to his, our breath mingling with the night air, our bodies close. “What was I saying?” I whisper.
He kisses me then, his tongue demanding my lips let him in. He tastes like brandy, sweet, and I can’t get enough of his lips, his mouth. But it’s not enough. I want more, to feel his skin against mine.
I pull at his shirt and we take it off. His sculpted chest glows in the moonlight and I run my fingertips down his abs. I’m just slipping my hand under his waistband, already imagining the feel of him in my mouth, when he pulls my hand away with a grin.
“You’ve done so much for me tonight, Grace.” He runs his fingertips up my thighs and I feel his touch like a trail of heat. “Let me make this trip worth your while.”
He continues to slide his hands up, up, getting excruciatingly closer inch by inch as I lay back, wanting, needing to be touched. He dips his head and flicks his tongue along my clit through my panties, teasing, and I moan. Then he tracks a finger along the lace waistband and lifts, running his finger along the edge, down, down, and down, to just glide over the tip of my clit. I let my eyes close, but instead of giving me more he reaches up to wrap both hands around my hips and then rips my panties off in one fell swoop that makes me gasp.
St. Clair moves his tongue to my belly and kisses his way down across my hips, along the dip in my pelvis that leads lower. My body aches for more. He extends his hand to caress my breast, kneading my nipple in his fingers. I want him so much my cells feel like they will burst.
He exhales a warm breath onto me and skims just the wet tip of his tongue across my throbbing clit, so slowly I think I might scream.
“Jesus…” I pant.
He brushes his tongue against me again, with more pressure, and then again, harder, the pleasure crashing over me in waves until I’m arching my hips to meet him. He growls, holding me down as I writhe against him. I look at the stars as his hot tongue glides up and down, thicker and faster, faster, faster, deeper.
“Charles,” I whisper. He groans against me, his tongue relentless, pushing me to the edge.
I don’t cry out, but I want to as I climax, as currents of pure explosive bliss rip through me until my thighs are quivering and I’m spent.
Afterward, St. Clair invites me to stay in his room, which is twice as big as my whole apartment. “Mind if I jump in the shower?” he asks, while I take in the palatial spread. “You’re welcome to join me…” he adds, pulling me close and dropping a kiss on my shoulder.
“I’ll be right in,” I tell him, melting into his embrace. “I just want to check my messages, in case Maisie sent some files.”
“So diligent,” he grins, then heads for the en-suite bathroom – but not before landing a light slap on my ass.
I laugh. I hear the water start up from the shower, and I find my phone. There are some work emails, but nothing pressing, so I look around the room instead. There are pictures of him and his parents from Paris, Rome, New York, his mom always smiling, his dad always straight faced. There are equestrian trophies on one shelf—it looks like St. Clair was particularly good at jumping—and a baseball signed by Mark McGuire.
I wonder what it would be like to have grown up with this type of money, and if it would be worth trading the love and support of a parent. I don’t think so, and I feel for St. Clair again, for his cold upbringing.
I’m passing his desk when I see blueprints half-covered by other papers. Is he designing something? I push aside some bills for the family estate and pull out the full blueprint. It looks like a museum.