“You’ve brought an appropriate outfit?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Appropriate, Nellie.”

Sighing, I dropped my suitcase to the floor and unzipped it, removing the dress I’d packed haphazardly on top of my clothing.

“You approved this one last time,” I grumbled, shaking the fabric out. “Knee-length, black, tight enough to be alluring but not low-cut enough to look like a slut, remember?”

“That is Chanel!” Kimberlee whimpered. She reached forward instinctively, stopping herself before she rescued the fabric from my uneducated hands.

“You also wore it last time,” Dad said, ignoring Kimberlee as he took the crumpled dress from me.

“Well, yeah, but it’s just a black dress.”

Dad gave me a cold look, then turned to Kimberlee and handed her the dress. “Please pick something else for Eleanor to wear tomorrow. Not black. I believe Angelique said Clinton was intending to wear red, perhaps something Valentino would be best.”

“Clinton?” I repeated.

“Clinton Thibault.”

“Why does it matter what Clinton’s wearing?”

The look he gave me was clear: he was patiently humouring my idiocy, but losing tolerance.

“You will be attending as his date.”

“No,” I blurted. “No fucking way.”

“Eleanor!”

“It’s Nellie,” I said, gritting my teeth. “And there’s no way I’m going with Clinton Thibault. No way. I refuse.”

Kimberlee seemed to tremble as my dad set his eyes on me, drawing himself up to his full height. Luckily, he wasn’t very tall, and since I’d had a lifetime of experiencing that look, some of the intended intimidation was lost on me.

“Clinton’s father is an important investor,” he said. “He is well aware that you do not have another date, so you will be attending the gala with Clinton.”

“Dad, he’s a fucking pig, he—”

“Language!”

“He is!” I protested.

Clinton wasn’t just a pig, he was the worst kind of pig. Rumour had it he had a little trouble understanding what “consent” was, and at least three different girls had made claims about him that were swept quietly under the rug with undisclosed price tags applied to their silence.

But as Dad said, his father was an important investor. Investor in what, exactly, I didn’t know, but my dad spoke two languages: business and personal gain. When Clinton decided to cop a feel, well, what was a little loss of dignity if it meant keeping the investors happy?

“That seems rather harsh, Nellie,” Dad scoffed.

“Harsh? He doesn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘no.’ He’s not just a pig, he’s fucking stupid.”

“I’m quite certain those rumours are greatly exaggerated,” Dad said, impatience strung through his voice. “Boys will be boys. Clinton is a perfectly nice young man with a bright future. You could certainly do worse.”

“What if I get another date?” I asked, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt.

Dad raised an eyebrow. “Do you really believe I’d buy that after the last debacle?”

My face turned red and I struggled to maintain my cool. The last debacle was the previous month, just after I’d lost my waitressing job and went crawling back to my dad for money. I’d pushed the envelope a bit too far when I told Dad I’d find my own date for the charity dinner Kimberlee was hosting, then showed up with Sydney on my arm dressed in a very nice tuxedo with a painted-on mustache.

I’d thought it was hilarious. Dad, not so much. He would probably have reacted better if I’d gone with my original plan, which was to ask Ben to come as my date, but I thought having my former professor who also happened to be a man the same age as my father escort me to dinner would be even more scandalous than my best friend with a fake mustache.

“I won’t… I’ll get a real date,” I said. “Someone, um… A guy, obviously.”

“And where, exactly, are you going to find a date the night before the event who I would give my blessing to? Keeping in mind, of course, that we are talking about the Thibaults, and I am not about to offend them so you can find some lowlife to gussy up for an evening.”

I blurted the first name I thought of. My dad raised his eyebrows, glanced at Kimberlee, then chuckled with that condescending, patient humour.

“All right. I’ll let the Thibaults know that you, unfortunately, had already committed to going with someone else.”

“Thank—”

“And if you’re lying,” he continued, “you will be Clinton’s escort for every event he is to attend for the rest of the summer. I believe they were intending on going to Vermont for a festival next weekend. I’m sure they would be appreciative of your attendance.”

I nodded.

“And Eleanor? No further surprises,” he said. “Do not show up in a different dress than the one Kimberlee purchases. Do not dye your hair, get some horrid tattoo, or decide you need your nose pierced. You will be present and proper at this event or I expect you will need to find a new, less expensive place to live for your final year of school.”

Dad stalked away, leaving Kimberlee standing in the foyer holding my dress as she stared at me.

“Regret it yet?” I asked her sarcastically.

She didn’t say anything, just looked at the fabric in her hands.

“What colour, if not red?” she replied.

“Black.”

“Nellie, please—”

“Rainbow, then. Honestly, Kim, I don’t care.”

“Kimberlee.”

“Kim’ll do.”

She sighed, but instead of walking away offended as I expected, she put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

With that, she quietly left the foyer, following my dad to the kitchen and leaving me standing next to my suitcase. I glared after her, more angry about the fact that she was being gracefully nice to me despite me lashing out. Kimberlee was supposed to be a dumb, shallow gold-digger. She was with my dad, after all. She was supposed to bite back, to snap at me when I called her Kim, to call me Eleanor instead of Nellie as a nasty retort.

She was not supposed to be kind to me. She was not supposed to apologize to me. That wasn’t something I knew how to handle.

I swallowed hard, picked up my suitcase, and went to my room to shower, change, and figure out exactly how I was going to pull this all off.

Dad and Kimberlee went out for dinner, meaning I had no excuse not to contact my potential date. I had told myself I wasn’t going to text him. I had told myself I was done with him, that enough was enough, that we were taking too many risks and things were getting too complicated.

I hadn’t said those things to him, though, so as soon as the car pulled out of the driveway, I sent him a text.

You home?

He responded seconds later.

Whole house to myself, if you can believe it.

I didn’t bother texting back, just slipped my shoes on and walked to the house beside my dad’s. Before I could even knock, J.P. opened the front door.

That cocky, jovial, infuriatingly attractive smile crossed his face as he saw me. “Hey, Nel—”

I didn’t even let him finish before grabbing his shoulders and pulling him in to kiss me.

“—lie,” he mumbled, the words mixed with laughter and muffled against my lips. Strong arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me in close, and he stumbled backwards into the foyer of his house.

I wouldn’t have put it past J.P. to lie about having the house to himself. He would have thought it was funny, probably, if I’d knocked on the door and someone else had answered, making me scramble to explain what I was doing there. Luckily for both of us, he’d been honest. As soon as the front door swung shut, I was unbuckling his belt and working on the button of his pants.

“Been on a dry streak or something?” he murmured.

I doubted it was a complaint. His hands were just as busy as mine, pushing beneath my shirt and up to my breasts, and his tongue flicked against my lips as he kissed me back eagerly.

Still, I didn’t respond, just unfastened the button and then unzipped his pants. I shoved his hands away and pushed him so his back was to the front door, eliciting a startled laugh from J.P. The laugh faded into something far throatier when I dropped to my knees, pulled his pants down the rest of the way, and wrapped my fingers around his quickly-hardening cock.

“Holy fuck, what—ugh.” He grunted as I took him in my mouth, his hands hesitating for a moment before resting on the back of my head. “Jeez, Nellie, you… ugh…”

His cock twitched in my mouth. I could feel his eyes on me, though I didn’t glance up, just continued working his cock deeper and deeper, relishing the feel of it thickening against my tongue. J.P. groaned again, his fingers threading themselves through my hair, and his hips jerked forward as my nose pressed against his pelvis.

I had no idea what was going through his head, and he likely had no idea what was going through mine. It didn’t matter; J.P. seemed to be more than happy with the turn of events.

He rested against the door as I sucked him, fingers only tightening in my hair when I did something he particularly liked, thrusting forward just slightly every now and then when he couldn’t help himself. I focused solely on him, refusing to think of the reason I was there, refusing to remember how angry I was with my dad, refusing to do anything but work towards having his cum shoot down my throat.

Wet noises echoed in the foyer as I bobbed my head, muffled gagging sounds punctuating them every so often as I took him down my throat. Before long he was gasping, then muttering under his breath, then leaning heavily against the door as I shoved his cock down my throat.

“Nellie,” he mumbled. “Oh my God. Oh, my fucking God.”

His hands tightened in my hair and I knew. He groaned, a stilted and staggered sound, and I relaxed my throat as I prepared for the inevitable moment that he pushed himself as deep in my mouth as he could. Moments later, his cock pulsed, and my eyes were watering as he ground my head against him, holding me there as he emptied himself into me.

When his grip on my hair loosened and I could pull myself off him, I gasped for breath and wiped my eyes.

“Fuck,” he gasped. “Sorry.”

I ran the back of my hand across my mouth before looking up at him and grinning.

“You’d think with how many times we’ve done this, you’d realize you can stop apologizing.”

He laughed and helped me to my feet, kissing me again before pulling up his pants and boxers.

“Jeez,” he murmured. “Fuck. That was unexpected.”

I licked my lips, then bit the bottom one.

“So. I have a favour to ask.”

J.P. laughed harder than I’d ever heard him laugh before.

“You sure you don’t want to be a lawyer?” he chuckled. “Like, honestly. You’d be perfect.”

“I’m sure. I might be a bit of a sleazebag, but not enough to be a lawyer.”

“I’d tell you to suck my dick, but you just did, so…” J.P. kissed me again, still grinning. “Right. What’s the favour?”

“I need a date for the Diamond Gala tomorrow night.”

He froze, the grin turning to more of a grimace.

“Uh…”

“I know. It’s totally and completely ridiculous for me to be asking and this… whatever this thing is we have going on isn’t, you know, dating or dating-adjacent or any of that. I wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t desperate.”

He snorted. “You sure know how to flatter a guy.”

“You know what I mean. Please, J.P.? I really need help.”

“Nellie, come on.” There was almost pity in his eyes as he looked down at me. “Look, you said… I mean, fuck, after the whole thing with Anne-Marie almost walking in, I thought—”

“I know.” My face was turning red.

“I thought you were done with me,” he said bluntly.

“I’m not.” I bit my lip, embarrassed that he had realized how upset I’d been paired with the discomfort of admitting I wasn’t, as he put it, done with him. “Are you done with me?”

“Of course not.” He leaned against the door again, looking past me down the foyer. “There’s no one else? Like, really, honestly no one else?”

“No one else my dad will—”

“You told your dad?” He looked horrified.

“Not… no. Sort of. Not about…” It was so uncommon for me to get flustered, it took me a moment to realize that’s what was happening.

“Jeez, Nellie.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, I… ugh. Fuck. It’s not that I don’t… I was surprised to even hear from you tonight. Look, you’re the one who said this is a casual thing.”

“I know what I said.” My stomach curled, partly from nerves and partly from the disgust of having to beg for anything, let alone for J.P. to escort me to a charity gala with my father.

“You don’t think my sister will lose her fucking mind when she sees us together?”

“She’ll be ecstatic. She’ll start planning the wedding before dessert is served.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I know. So… I just, I don’t know.”

“If you don’t, I have to go to every event for the rest of the summer with Clinton Thibault.”

J.P. may have been cocky. He may have been arrogant. He may have been the kind of guy who everyone just knew was a lawyer. He could talk himself out of almost anything and charm himself out of the rest. He was incredibly privileged and knew it, though sometimes was still ignorant about what that meant.

The thing about J.P., the thing that had stolen my heart as a kid and kept it until he’d finally taken my virginity as an adult, was that he was truly a good person beneath all of it. Where Clinton Thibault’s disgusting actions were paid off by his family, J.P. owned up to his. Not that he’d ever even consider trying something as despicable as Clinton would, but I remembered him getting expelled in high school for fighting. The first time, he’d gotten a warning after his dad intervened, while the other kid got expelled. The second time, J.P. had purposely picked a fight directly in front of the principal’s office on the day the superintendent was visiting.

Anne-Marie had come over crying when their father got home because he was yelling so loudly. J.P. had insisted it wasn’t fair that the other kid got expelled when he didn’t, and that was that.

He had a firm sense of justice. He had that smug lawyer-like personality, but in my eyes, he was redeemed by a moral compass that was a lot stronger than other people in the ritzy social circles our families kept. J.P. couldn’t stand people like Clinton Thibault, and more specifically, he completely despised Clinton Thibault. He despised him enough that when I said his name, J.P. groaned and tilted his head back.

“It had to be that piece of shit,” he grumbled. “Damnit, Nellie.”

I folded my arms and looked up at him. He glared at me.

“I know what you’re doing,” he said, waving a finger at me pointedly. “Don’t think I don’t know.”

I almost felt a little guilty. I almost threw all dignity aside and begged, almost gritted my teeth and apologized, despite the fact that I hated apologizing more than I hated begging. Thankfully, I hesitated for a brief moment, and J.P.’s glare turned to a mischievous smirk.

“What do I get out of this?” he said.

I raised an eyebrow. “I just sucked your cock.”

He shrugged. “I can get that from you any time. That can be payment for me agreeing to the favour. The actual doing of the favour, though…”

I couldn’t help laughing at his audacity. “You’re such a fucking lawyer.”

“You’re the one who wants the favour.”

I tried to stop smiling and tilted my head, shrugging. “What do you want, then?”

His eyebrow twitched, he seemed to unconsciously lick his lips, and his eyes grazed down and back up my body.

“I want to fuck you in the ass.”

I managed to keep myself from laughing. I tried to look appropriately affronted, slightly hesitant, but not hesitant enough that he’d feel bad. I pursed my lips, pretended to mull it over, then nodded.

“Okay.”

J.P. raised his eyebrows. “Okay?”

I shrugged again, hoping I looked somewhat helpless. “I really need a date for this, so yeah. You can. Tomorrow, after the gala. My dad and Kimberlee are staying at the hotel so… so you can come over.”

He couldn’t quite hide the shock in his eyes, though it might have been an excited gleam.

“What colour tie should I wear?”

After telling him I’d text him once Kimberlee had bought my dress and leaving to walk back to my dad’s house, I finally grinned. I had my date, I didn’t have to spend the night or the summer with Clinton Thibault, and J.P. didn’t need to know I had been wanting to try anal for ages anyway.

Kimberlee had a dress ready for me by noon the next day. She didn’t go with red or rainbow or black, but instead a light blue that was entirely unlike anything I would have picked for myself. I texted a picture of it to J.P. and he said he had a tie that matched, so that was one thing taken care of.

I was in my room later that day, still in a bathrobe after the hair stylist and makeup artist Kimberlee hired had finished my hair and face, when the doorbell rang. Moments later, my dad’s butler Pierre stammered loudly from the foyer that I had a visitor and she was on her way up.

Raising my eyebrows, I turned just as my bedroom door opened and Anne-Marie burst in.

“You asked my brother to be your date and you didn’t even tell me?!” she squealed. “Nellie! Are you together? How did you make him agree to that? You must tell me everything.”

“It’s not like that,” I said, even though it was definitely like that. I wasn’t about to tell J.P.’s sister that I agreed to let him fuck me in the ass so he’d be my date. She didn’t even know we had hooked up. Not the first time, not any of the subsequent times, none of them.

“I knew you always had a crush on him,” she giggled. “Look at you, look at your hair. You look ravishing.”

“It’s not like that!” I repeated. “He’s helping me out because otherwise…”

I trailed off, glancing out to the hallway before closing my bedroom door.

“Otherwise my dad was going to make me go with Clinton Thibault.”

Anne-Marie nodded in understanding, though she frowned. “That still doesn’t explain why Jean-Paul is going with you. When did you ask him?”

“I, um. Went to your house last night. To see if you knew anyone who would go with me.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Well, you know I don’t know many people around here anymore,” I said.

“I told you I was out last night. Why didn’t you just text?”

Of course she wouldn’t just drop it. I shrugged, trying to look miserable.

“I was really upset and I just forgot. J.P. was home and he, uh, saw that I was upset. So I told him about it.”

“And he… offered?” She looked even more confused.

“No, I asked. I mean, I was desperate, obviously.”

“That doesn’t sound like him at all,” Anne-Marie stated bluntly. “What is Jean-Paul getting out of this? Honestly, Nellie. Tell me.”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Nothing at all, he just—”

“There is no way my brother is getting nothing out of this.” She raised her eyebrows at me, grinning maniacally. “Nellie Belanger, cherie, are you lying to me?”

“I owe him a favour,” I said. “That’s it.”

She pressed her lips together.

“That’s it, Anne-Marie. Nothing… nothing else.”

She was still suspicious and pressed a little further, but left when I wouldn’t say anything more about it with a promise that she would see me that night. Heart racing, I texted J.P. quickly to tell him what I’d told her.