My Fair Lacey
Chapter 16
Better in Leather
"We haven't played pool in a while," he remarked adding, "ever since I found out that you were a hustler."
"I have a few skills," she admitted, following him into the library.
"You are a pool shark," he insisted. "I've never seen anyone play the way you took down Killian." He considered. "If we're going to play, I need to do something to even the playing field."
"What are you thinking?"
"You take a drink between shots or should I say a shot between shots?"
"I couldn't stand that much whiskey. It tastes like brake fluid," she protested.
"Tequila then?"
"As long as it's not something like Everclear. Tequila will do," she agreed.
"What are we playing for?" he asked.
"We-ell," she hedged. "Usually it's something like a favor – nothing illegal, nothing immoral."
He considered. "I'm having a bad feeling about this. You know that I know you play really well and you were the one to suggest we play. Why would you do that?" He walked around the pool table and turned to look back at her. "You spent the morning with Jefferson looking at costumes."
The man was uncanny in his insights.
"All right, I found a costume. but I don't think you're going to be willing to wear it. I thought maybe I could win the pool game and . . . " Lacey dropped her eyes, feeling a little ashamed. "and I could ask you to wear what I had picked out as my favor."
"So, you do have a dark side, after all," Rumple murmured to himself. He smiled at her, "Let's go ahead and play and the winner will get to pick out the costumes."
"Really? You want to go ahead and play me, knowing I'd kinda planned to trick you?"
He poured her a shot of tequila. "Drink up, lady," he directed.
Lacey downed the first shot. Her eyes nearly crossed. This was top shelf stuff, very potent.
She was about to take her shot when Rumple came up next to her, standing very close. "Why don't you give me your panties?" he whispered softly.
"Sir?" she stood abruptly. Had he just asked her for her panties?
He held out his hand, waiting.
Lacey took a deep breath and reached up under her skirt. She pulled down her little wispy drawers and stepped out of them. She wadded them up and handed them to him. The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled and he took them from her.
"Nice," he told her.
Lacey took more deep breaths, pulling herself together, re-focusing her energies.
She made the first shot easily. She took another drink. As she walked around the table to find her next shot, she couldn't help but notice that he had entwined the panties around his fingers. It took some effort, but she was able to make the next shot. He handed her a third drink.
By now she was beginning to struggle – the combination of potent alcohol and the constant awareness of her secret nakedness was beginning to affect her concentration.
She lined up her shot and, as she made the shot, she caught a brief glimpse of him raising her panties to his nose. She missed – an easy shot – she missed.
He handed her another shot glass and stepped up. "My turn."
The game went back and forth but, even to Lacey's tequila soaked brain, it was evident that Rumple was winning, playing one of the best games she could ever remember him playing.
"I think you've been holding out on me. Maybe I should have been having you take a drink between shots," she mumbled after he had successfully made a particularly difficult banked shot.
"Well, perhaps, I'm not quite the inadequate player I've pretended to be. Not as good as sober-you, but not as poor as you've seen me be." He stopped a moment. "Why don't we call this a draw?"
"But then . . . who picks out the costumes? That was what all this was about."
"For you perhaps. Lacey, I'm perfectly willing to have you pick out the costumes. I'll wear whatever you want me to. I know you've put some thought and effort into the decision and . . . I trust you."
"You do?"
"I do. If we were to play on and I were to win, I will tell you now that my choice for a costume would have been whatever you had picked out."
Lacey sniffed and wavered. "Now I feel really bad that I'd thought of tricking you."
"But you didn't. You couldn't go through with it. You confessed your nefarious plan before anything happened. How can I not trust you?"
"Okay then, but if you really hate what I found, you promise me that you will tell me. Please? I don't want to embarrass you or make you uncomfortable."
"I promise, I'll tell you." He gently took her pool cue and replaced both hers and his into the cue hangers. "Now, I have another idea."
"Uh hum," she was feeling very woozy.
He walked back around her and shook his head. "I think we're going to need a couple of books to make this work."
"Any special books?"
"Thick, sturdy ones," he told her. "You're going to stand on them."
Lacey wasn't sure what the man was up to and watched as he stacked a couple of books in front of the pool table. "Stand on these." She complied. "Turn and face the pool table." She did so. "Bend over."
Oh, now she understood.
She felt him behind her, lifting her skirt, running his warm hand on her thighs, over her buttocks. "Tell me, this is all right with you," he said.
"Sure." As mellowed out as she was, she'd be agreeable to just about any suggestion the man might make.
He was leaning over her and she felt herself pressed against the rim of the pool table. "You know I kept imagining you . . . like this . . . while we were playing pool," he whispered.
"Is that why you called the game a draw?" she managed to ask, even as she felt his fingers caressing her, making sure she was ready.
"Pretty much. I couldn't wait, knowing I could have you like this."
She yelped as he entered her, the angle different, the pressure, the feel of him - different inside of her. He stilled against her and allowed her to adjust, his hand snaking around to touch her, separating his fingers so that there was ever so much lovely stimulation, even more so when he began to push against her, thrusting back and forth, trapping her body between his hips and his hands.
"Good god," she was too drunk to actively participate, but he didn't seem to mind, leading her, directing her, riding her so that she began to fall into that sensuous coiling, sliding path. He leaned over her and kissed her on the neck, drawing his tongue up to her ear. She turned her head, but the rim of the pool table prevented her from really bracing herself, from gaining any stability. She was only a warm, welcoming receptacle for his attentions.
It was so nice, over and over and over. He was murmuring the whole time, telling her how beautiful she was, how good she felt, how much he wanted her.
This one started slowly, the coil, wound tightly in her gut, letting go a notch at a time, the waves catching her and her entire body shaking as the pulsing hit her hard. He followed soon after and nearly fell on top of her, pinning her to the pool table.
"That was great. You were great," he told her, breathing heavily and slowly pulling himself up. He gently helped her up. She leaned into him.
"I'm a little drunk," she confessed.
"You are. What say I help you up the stairs and into bed?"
"Okay," she nodded. He was going to take her to bed. "You're the nicest man I've ever met."
"You are drunk," he told her, helping her step off the books and guiding her along.
"And that was a really nice orgasm," she let him know as she began the process of climbing the stairs.
"For me too," he told her. "I'm thinking we may want to go for doing it in every room of this apartment."
"And the deck," she suddenly brightened up.
"Maybe, when it's summer and very dark," he agreed reluctantly. "Public sex has never been a particular kink of mine."
"What are some of your particular kinks?" she managed to ask as they stepped into his . . . their bedroom.
"Oh darling, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I'm always up for good old fashioned love-making and occasionally bouts of animalistic fucking, but I'm not much into toys and restraints and such."
"Maybe, in the shower?" she asked, the alcohol giving her courage.
"Oh sweetheart, shower sex is a young man's game. Not sure how much I can manage." She pouted, very prettily, he thought, at his answer and he relented. "But we might have to experiment to see what we can come up with."
Truthfully the thought of her all wet and slick and pliable in the heat of the shower was tempting. He got her into the bedroom and she fell face down on the bed. He helped her remove her clothing and tucked her in. She had dozed off.
The woman does not hold her liquor well, he thought. He undressed and joined her, pleased when she shifted over so that she was nestled against him.
The Costume Shop
"Is this the costume?" he asked dubiously, eyeing the silk shirt, the leather vest, and the leather pants. She nodded and he shook his head. "Jefferson had a hand in this, I'm sure."
"Will you wear it?" she asked.
"These pants appear a bit small."
"They're your size," she confirmed for him.
"Show me your costume?"
"Well, I was trying to decide between dressed down Beauty or dressed up Beauty." Lacey held up a simple blue dress and a luxurious golden one.
"For this Gala, the golden one," he told her, without hesitating.
"I wore a gold dress for the Governor's Ball," she reminded him.
"But that one was shimmery and sleek. This one is poofy and . . . poofy."
"All right then," she agreed. "So, are you up for the leather pants?"
"For you, I will, but I expect this to give me full passing marks for whatever final exam you had planned for me to prove my rehabilitation as a decent, pleasant human being." She wrinkled her nose at him, then smiled, then stood on her toes to give him a quick kiss on the cheek.
"I think you've already proven what you needed to," she whispered to him. She took the costumes up to the cashier's station.
Getting Ready
Gold looked at the pants. He'd studied them. How the hell was he supposed to get these bad boys on?
He called Jefferson.
"Getting readeeee," Jefferson answered the phone, obviously not pleased by the interruption.
"I need help."
"Well, I understand that some women like to be on top now and then."
"Not with sex, you tosser. Getting on these leather pants. I've made a couple of attempts and the damn things just won't go on." He might have heard Jefferson laughing.
"All right. I suppose I owe you. There is a technique. I'll talk you through it. First, are you dry?"
"Am I what?"
"You haven't just got out of a bath or shower?"
"No."
"Good," Jefferson continued. "Next, have you got some baby powder?"
"Some what?"
"Please, this is going to take forever if you're going to have me repeat myself each time. Do you have some baby powder? Lacey has some, I'm sure. Go and get the entire bottle. You'll need it."
"I'm putting you on speaker phone," Rumple told him and went into the bathroom that he now shared with Lacey. The previously tidy and pristine bathroom counter was now covered with bottles and tubes and jars. He might have complained about her taking over his bathroom, but the end result was so delicious that he just accepted the price he was paying. It took him a while to find the white plastic bottle.
"Got it," he told Jefferson.
"Generously powder your legs," Jefferson told him. "All of your legs."
Rumple did so.
"All right, you've seen a woman pull on tights?"
"No," Rumple told him.
"Think back. At some point, you've seen a woman pull on tights . . . pantyhose . . . leggings . . . jeggings . . . tight jeans."
Rumple thought. "Maybe Milah. She'd end up doing all these gyrations to squeeze herself into things."
"That's what you're going to have to do. Start by bunching up a leg and pulling it up over your foot. Then pull the pant leg up over your leg slowly, no further than your knee. Then start the next leg the same way."
"Will these go over my boxers?" Rumple asked him, struggling with his first leg.
"Boxers? Good lord, you're not wearing boxers, are you?"
"I always wear boxers. I like the freedom it gives my boys."
"Of course, you do. Listen, you can't wear underwear with leather pants. You're going to have to freeball it."
"What?"
"You're asking me to repeat myself again. Listen closely. No underwear. Just you and the pants."
"Okay," Rumple sighed and the line went quiet. Jefferson assumed he was sliding his boxers down and over the one leathered pant leg that he'd already started. "I'm back on it."
"Switch back and forth. Pull up one side, then the other."
"This is working," Rumple told him. "Uh . . . spoke too soon. They aren't going over my fat arse."
"Well, there are a couple of ways to do this. You can jump up and down, pulling up on the pants or you can lie down on the bed and tug them up and over your precious little tushy," Jefferson directed him.
He heard some strange sounds and assumed Rumple was jumping up and down. Wish we were on a video feed – this has got to be priceless.
"Well, jumping up and down made a little progress, but now I'm trying this lying down thing," Rumple told him. There were some more grunts and then . . . "Got 'em. Good grief, these aren't very pliable, are they? I don't think I'm going to be able to bend over to get the boots on."
"They'll get more pliable as the night goes on, like a second skin," Jefferson promised him. "Anything else?"
"No, I've got to get Beast makeup on and Lacey said she'd help with that. Thanks."
"See you at the Gala," Jefferson told him, hanging up.
"Who was that?" Viktor asked him. "Sounded like you were talking someone through putting on leather pants."
"Rumple. He's wearing leather pants."
Viktor grinned at him. "So, Lacey did talk him into it. Doing us all a favor. I always liked that girl."
Final Touches
Lacey had some difficulties not gaping at the man. She was able to help him get on the exotic pointy-toed boots and helped with the body and face makeup. She glued on his black talons. When he finished dressing, putting on the wig, the red silk shirt, and a reptile-leather looking vest trimmed with carrion-bird tail feathers, he was startled at his reflection.
"I don't know if I'd recognize myself," he said. He postured, waving his hands.
"Maybe you should adopt a voice," Lacey suggested.
"I'll try a couple out. You tell me which one you like best."
"You almost sound like you're enjoying yourself."
He clapped his hands together and undulated his body. "Perhaps, dearie."
"That's a good voice," she told him. He sounded like a devious cartoon character.
"Maybe," he had gone back to his own voice. "You need any help dressing?"
"I got it. I'll slip the dress on and brush out my hair. I'm just wearing a little makeup. This character is supposed to be sweet and natural."
The Gala Begins
Lacey realized she was holding her breath. She had needed a little help getting the zipper on the dress pulled up – thankfully Rumple, even with the talons, was able to render her assistance. They enlisted his driver, Dove, to get them out to the country club venue for the Gala. Dove had brought his e-reader and was happy to wait for them.
Walking toward the front of the facility, Lacey looked around. There were many truly elaborate costumes. She began to realize that her efforts for Rumple and herself were on the lesser side.
"I think we look pretty good," she heard Rumple. "We don't look desperate or cheap."
"Thank you, I was beginning to think that we hadn't done enough," Lacey confided in him.
"We'll be fine. We'll get a couple of drinks and I think I will be able to manage a few dances. Just don't drop anything. I won't be able to do the gentlemanly thing and pick it up – I can't bend over in these pants."
Lacey soon saw Viktor and Jefferson who came over to join them.
"You look splendid. I expected no less," Jefferson told her. "Good grief, Rumple. I don't know that I would have recognized you. Your costume is amazing."
"It might help you recognize me if you looked at my face instead of my crotch," Rumple re-directed him.
"Not if I'm trying to recognize you," Jefferson said slyly. "Well, darlings, we're going to circulate. I haven't seen your mother yet." He spied her coming towards them.
Fiona was dressed in a killer black dress. She wore a wig of short black hair, sported strings of pearls and was smoking a cigarette. "Rumple darling. What a great costume. I wouldn't have recognized you. Jefferson and Lacey must have worked tag-team to get you in those pants."
"And you look good, mom. Who are you?"
"Good lord," Jefferson rolled his eyes. "Fiona, you've got her down perfectly."
"Well, I wouldn't have been able to except for a friend who found me this dress in a little New York boutique. Thank you so much," Fiona offered Jefferson a chaste kiss on the cheek.
"When I saw it, it screamed Fiona." Jefferson turned back to his husband and friends. "Vintage Chanel. I snapped it up and sent it to her – she was the only one I knew with enough élan to carry it off."
"Chanel?" Rumple repeated.
"Who else? I'm Coco Chanel. I'm with Cordie who's Greta Garbo. We don't think the two ever met, but they should have."
"Interesting choices," he told her.
"We thought so. Now," she was talking to Rumple and Lacey, "I hope you're two are going to be able to share a dance together. I think there's a good chance you will win the prize." And Fiona flitted away.
"Prize?" Lacey asked.
"Yes, darling," Jefferson explained. "It's like being elected Prom King and Queen. There's a prize for having the best . . . . stuff – costume, attitude, characterization, the whole package."
The Ex-Wife
There was a proper crush of people and in a short time, it became difficult to maneuver through the crowd, especially for Lacey, whose dress took up room enough for three people. She ended up on the sidelines, watching the dancing. Rumple graciously offered to get her a drink and some nooshes from the buffet bar, leaving her alone for a while. Emma came by, dressed as a fairy princess.
"Just a generic fairy princess," she explained to Lacey. "Neil's here, dressed as my Prince Charming."
"That's sweet. Rumple and I went with the whole fairy-tale theme, too," Lacey told her.
"You know Professor Gold's ex-wife is here," Emma leaned in to whisper the news to Lacey. "She doesn't look happy."
"What is she dressed as?" Lacey found herself asking.
"Oh, she and her husband are dressed up as John Steed and Emma Peel, from the 1960's Avengers series. Killian's wearing a nice suit, a bowler hat and is carrying an umbrella. Milah's wearing a body suit and I think she's carrying a real gun."
Lacey let out her breath in a gush of air. "Great." She had a sudden urge to search for Rumple amid all the revelers. She had an abrupt sense of pending doom.
Passing Years
"I never thought my ex-husband would look better in leather than I do."
He recognized the voice and froze. "Really dearie," he'd turned to face her.
"I have to admit. You look good, back and front. Tell me, how far down does that body paint go?"
"Far enough," he told her. "By yourself?" he looked around but didn't see Killian.
"Usually," she answered him and took the drink he'd gotten for Lacey. "I hear you're living with that Spanish princess or whatever she is."
"I am."
"Of course, I know she's not a Spanish princess. More likely she's from Montreat."
"Frog Level, actually," he clarified. "She was a special student of mine and we . . . connected."
"It's serious?"
"Decidedly so."
Milah was looking at him steadily.
"You look good."
"You too," he told her.
"Ha. I'm beginning to feel my age, the years starting to take a toll. The passage of time isn't as kind to a woman as it can be to a man," Milah told him.
Rumple regarded her, "I still see you as that gorgeous sixteen-year-old I fell in love with."
Milah studied him for a moment, "Thank you. It's times like this, that I remember why I fell in love with you." She considered her next words carefully. "What would you say if I told you I regretted leaving you?"
Rumple gaped at her.