Dinner went well, with good food, great wine pairings and enjoyable company. The chef came back out a couple of times to explain the dish we were being served and to ask how we liked the previous one, but mostly the staff were unobtrusive.
Luisa, once she got over how star-struck she was at the treatment we were receiving, held up her side of the conversation just fine but when she got to talking about the art scene in New York, they lost me entirely. It isn’t as if I have no interest or appreciation for art, but I just don’t know the names of any current artists, or the labels of the types of art they were making. All I could do was nod and agree as if I knew what they were discussing, while thinking about the likelihood that the two of them were going to be spending a lot of money on art for the new house before everything was said and done.
It isn’t as if I was going to begrudge any of it, really. We couldn't buy a fifty million dollar Rembrandt, but if she wanted a fifty thousand dollar Warhol lithograph for the hallway, well, that was fine. We had the money, and Emmy had grown up with the finest things money could buy. I wanted her to feel like the queen of her domain, and if it meant surrounding her with expensive things, so be it.
I guess I got a bit lost in my own thoughts for a while, because before I knew it Danielle was serving our desert- this funny little sculpture of strawberries, watermelon and sherbet. Of course it was amazing, like everything else had been, and when the chef made his final appearance at the table he had an iPad with him. He was video chatting with David, the chef at the sister restaurant in California.
“So, what do you think?” Asked the Napa chef from the iPad. “Was dinner as good as what you get here?”
“I am not certain,” Emmy said, being coy. “I think we may need to make further evaluations- it was very, very good and the service was excellent. It has been weeks since we last stopped in for dinner at the Laundry, though, so perhaps we need to do another comparison!”
This seemed to make both chefs happy, keeping their rivalry going and complimenting both at the same time. Emmy really was good with people in that way. I discreetly handed my card to Danielle, and soon enough she came back with the receipt. I’d texted Wally, so the limo was waiting for us at the curb. Paparazzis snapped our photos again as the maitre d’ escorted us to where Wally stood, car door open.
Once inside the limo and headed back to the townhouse, Luisa said, “No, seriously, this is crazy. I mean, going out to dinner in your own limo, tabloids taking your photos, and that dinner! Oh. My. God. That was the best meal I’ve ever had in my life, and you guys are talking to the chef like ‘Yeah, this is O.K., for a Wednesday, anyway.’ And I saw the receipt. Dinner was over fifteen hundred dollars! For a dinner!”
“Well, when you put it like that…” I said, laughing. “But trust me- you get used to it.”
“Yeah, I don’t see that happening,” Luisa shot back.
After Wally walked us into the house, we told him he was done for the night and that we’d see him at nine the next morning. “Bagels for four,” Emmy said as he left.
“Wait- am I staying the night here tonight?” Luisa asked. “I need some stuff from my sister’s place.”
I texted Wally, and in moments he was back to take Luisa to get her stuff. While they were gone, Emmy and I went up to the master bedroom to kick off our shoes and change our clothes.
“Did you have a nice time tonight?” Emmy asked as she unbuttoned her blouse.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked, having been distracted by the sight.
“Did you enjoy dinner? Did you have a pleasant time this evening?”
“I did,” I said as I moved in to help Emmy remove her clothes. Reaching around to unbutton her skirt, I breathed in her familiar jasmine perfume. “But mostly because of you.”
“What do you mean?” Emmy asked as she unbuttoned my shirt.
“You light up the place wherever you go, Em. You make me happy just by being there, and I know for a fact I’m not the only one who feels that way. You make everybody fall in love with you a tiny bit just by being so you.”
“You are kind to say so, and I can only wish that were the truth,” Emmy responded, leaning down to kiss my breast. Looking up, she asked “Do you know what would light me up right now?” with a hopeful look on her face.
“How many guesses do I get?” I asked, slipping her panties off her hips and letting them drop down her slender legs.
“Only one guess,” Emmy said. “Unless you guess wrong. Then you will have to guess again.”
“I don’t know…” I said, stepping out of my skirt lying on the floor, moving my body up against hers. I reached down to cup her firm little butt in my hands and lifted her up. Emmy wrapped her legs around my hips and her arms around my neck. “Does it involve us getting really close?”
“Yes, very close,” Emmy confirmed.
“So close that I might even be inside you?”
“Yessss…” Emmy confirmed. “Definitely that close.”
“Does it involve me being horizontal and you mostly vertical?”
“It could. Yes, in fact, I am certain it does,” Emmy said, getting excited by the idea.
“We’ll have to be sort of quick,” I said. “I don’t know how soon Luisa will be back.”
“Not too quick,” Emmy replied. “She can wait until we are done.”
“All right then. Shall we make our way to the bed?” I asked, which was sort of silly, since I was holding her up and walking that way anyhow. I knelt on the edge of the bed and lowered her down, then climbed on and lay on my back.
Emmy eagerly leaned in for a kiss, then slid her body up mine, giving me ample time to kiss and suckle on her breasts, then kiss my way down her belly. As she positioned herself above my face, I took in the sight of her body above me, all the way up to her beautiful, charcoal-dark face smiling down at me.
Taking her hips in my hands, I pulled her pussy down onto my mouth, eliciting a sigh from Emmy. “Yes, you guessed correctly,” she said, stoking my hair. “You are so smart.” Of course, I didn’t say anything in response as my mouth and lips were already busy.
It didn’t take long before Emmy started to tremble, but I wanted to prolong it some more so I lifted her up a bit and devoted my attention to her perfectly smooth labia. I’d never once seen her shave or wax, so how she stayed that way was a mystery to me, but one we both benefitted from so I wasn’t about to complain.
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Grumbling in protest, Emmy tried to shove herself down on my face again but I wouldn’t let her. I held her up just high enough that she could feel my breath and the very light little touches with the very tip of my tongue, but no more.
“Leah!” she protested. “You are not close enough! I need you inside me!”
A few more moments of teasing as Emmy struggled to lower herself, then I gave in and dove back in. I polished her little pearl, licked her labia and penetrated her pussy with everything my tongue had to give and in a matter of just a few minutes her trembling gave way to a giant full-body shudder, then after a moment of rigidity, she collapsed.
I rolled her over onto her back, admiring my handiwork. Or maybe ‘tongue work’ is a better description. I leaned down and kissed her sharp hip bone, then worked my way up her tummy, between her breasts and up her still-heaving chest. Up her neck I kissed, worked my way across her chin, then my lips captured hers. My tongue, that had so recently been between another set of lips, slid between her lips. I plundered her mouth as I had just plundered her pussy, and she welcomed my tongue once again. We kissed like that, passionate and savage, for at least as long as I’d gone down on her (or is that gone up on her, since she was sitting on my face?). I held her tightly, showing her how much I treasured her and how I never, ever wanted to let her go.
Eventually, though, we pulled apart. “I think we should get dressed,” Emmy said. “Luisa should be here soon.”
I went to wash my face, but Emmy asked me not to. “I want to know that you smell like me,” she said. “And you will know my legs are shaky because of you.”
I pulled on a comfy old Cardinal sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, while Emmy grabbed the dress shirt I wore at dinner and put her panties back on, but nothing else. At my look, she said, “If Luisa is going to live in our house, she must get accustomed to the way we choose to live, and not the other way around.”
I couldn’t really find any fault in that logic, so we went downstairs, only to bump into Wally and Luisa bringing her things in from the car.
Apparently they’d grabbed pretty much all her stuff, because it was quite a pile of boxes, bags and suitcases.
“It’s alright, Wally,” I said, once everything was out of the car. “You can go ahead and take off for the night. I’ll help her get this stuff upstairs.”
“See you in the morning!” Emmy called out as he left.
“Good night. I’ll see you at nine?” he asked, and when Emmy confirmed, he was gone.
“I’m not sure how much of this can go in each pass in the elevator,” I said, eyeing the pile. “And anyway, it only goes up to the sixth floor, so we’ll have to carry it all up the last flight of stairs.”
“I can’t believe Wally helped me bring all this down from my sister’s apartment,” Luisa said, looking at the boxes. “Did I tell you it’s a fourth-floor walk-up? As in, no elevator at all?”
“He seems to be a very diligent man,” Emmy said, pondering how many trips that must have been.
“I was just going to grab a few things, but he suggested that we could get it all in one trip if we just went ahead and did it,’ Luisa explained.
“You do not need to carry it all upstairs right now,” Emmy declared. “Just bring up what you need for tonight and leave the rest for tomorrow.”
Relieved, Luisa pointed out the two boxes and single suitcase she needed. “Just those, then,” she said, picking up a big bag.
“Easy enough,” I said, pressing the button to call the elevator.
It only took about ten minutes to get the minimum needed up to Luisa’s new apartment on the top floor. We didn’t bother unpacking or anything like that- we had a fifteen hundred dollar bottle of wine waiting, as Emmy reminded us.
While Luisa and I were toting the stuff upstairs Emmy had started the fire in the parlor’s gas fireplace and gotten three glasses and a corkscrew from the kitchen.
Emmy and I settled down on the off-white couch and Luisa took the matching chair so we could all face the fireplace. After Emmy opened the bottle and poured the wine, she jumped up to dim the lights. Sitting back down next to me, Emmy raised her glass.
“To our new house!” she toasted.
“To our new house!” I said, holding up my glass.
“To the new house,” said Luisa, leaning forward to clink her glass on ours.
It didn’t take us long to finish off the bottle, which I will admit tasted good to me, but then again, I’m no expert. Honestly, the bottle was wasted on me, and probably Luisa. Emmy might have been able to appreciate the quality and the rarity, but she would have been the only one among us.
As we chatted and enjoyed the evening and the wine and the company, we talked about the work that was going to be done on the house, how Emmy wanted to decorate, and what we expected from Luisa.
Emmy made it very clear that she wanted Luisa to feel at home. “We may own this house, but you are the one who will live here full-time, so you must treat this house as if it were yours. In a very real sense, it will be yours more than ours.”
“Umm… what do you mean?” Luisa asked, uncertain she understood.
“I do not wish for the rest of the house to be off-limits to you while we are gone. I want you to use the house. I want you to enjoy living here,” Emmy said. “I want you make it your home, and not simply live in that small apartment on the top floor. Have breakfast in the sunroom, read a book in the library with a fire going on a winter night, while music plays on the sound system. Use the gym we will install on the third floor, then the sauna. Actually live in this house, Luisa. Don’t simply take care of it.”
“Seriously? Like, you want me to act like I own the place?”
“This is your new home,” Emmy agreed. “You are the new caretaker, yes, but you are also the one who will most benefit from this house.”
“Well, O.K…” Luisa replied, a bit unsure.
The conversation moved on to other topics, and eventually we all decided it was time for bed. Luisa went up to her new apartment and Emmy and I returned to the master bedroom.
As I lay on the big four-poster bed looking up at the ridiculous gold-leafed ceiling while Emmy used the bathroom to get ready for bed, I thought about the day. I had grown more and more comfortable with the idea of Luisa as caretaker, and understood what Emmy had meant over the wine. She wanted Luisa to feel as if she were a member of our family and not simply an employee, and I saw the value in that. I was lost in thoughts of whether keeping Wally on full-time made any sense when Emmy turned off the lights and joined me in bed.
“Earlier, when you lit me up, I did not get the chance to return the favor,” she said, her hand stroking my hip. “Are you in the mood?”
“Are you kidding? I’m always in the mood,” I said. “But mostly I just want to hold you, if that’s O.K.”
“Of course it is,” Emmy replied. “I always want you to hold me.”
Looking at the weather outside when I got up to go run, it looked somewhat ominous. Stepping out onto the terrace, I was surprised by how warm it was, even though the humidity was off the charts and the clouds were a fairly uniform gray. Dressing for the heat and humidity, I figured if it rained it would be a warm rain, so what the heck.
I ran my now familiar Roosevelt Island loop counterclockwise. Since I was looking at it from a different angle, I was pretty sure I could tell which one was our house across the East River, but I may have just been fooling myself.
As I’d expected, it did rain a little bit but it was plenty warm and didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I found it rather enjoyable. Warm summer rains just aren’t a thing in California at all, so it was quite a change for me.
Luisa was loading some of her things in the elevator when I surprised her by walking in the front door. “Oh, Leah- I hadn’t realized you’d gone out!” she said. “Did you go for a run?” She immediately realized how silly that sounded, so she said “Of course you did. I mean, look at you…” Which is exactly what she was doing. She’d stopped moving her stuff and was just staring at me as if I were some sort of alien or something.
“Is that what you usually wear when you run?” she asked, still staring.
“Well, sure, when it’s this warm,” I replied, wondering why she was so distracted. “Hey, I’m going to grab a shower. Wally is due at nine, and I’m sure he’d be happy to help you move that stuff if it’s too much for you right now.”
“Oh, no, it’s O.K.” Luisa replied, remembering what she was doing. "I’ll have it all up there in just a few.”
Emmy was still snoozing when I got to the master bedroom, to my complete lack of surprise. She did join me in the shower, though, which made me happy. It’s just so hard to get all those nooks and crannies and hard-to-reach spots clean without help, you know what I mean? Eventually even soapy fun has to end, so we got dressed for another day of meetings with contractors and designers and various others. There was no need to impress anybody today and I wanted to get some things done around the house, so I opted for jeans and a Stanford T, and Emmy picked a light sun dress.
As we were getting dressed, I mentioned that Grant’s plane had already taken off and he’d be in New York in time for the meeting that afternoon.
“Grant Henry? He is coming here?” Emmy asked, surprised.
“Yeah, I wanted him to look at the house and talk to the contractor about security measures,” I said, tying my shoes. “You know he used to implement defensive plans for embassies around the world, right? I figure he could make sure this house has appropriate safety measures.”
“That makes sense,” agreed Emmy. “It would be good to have his expertise.”